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{2P 

DICTIONARY 

OF 

NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 

1931-1940 


sSAffe       THE 

DICTIONARY 

OF 

NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


/    Founded  in  1882  by 
GEORGE  SMITH 


1931-1940 

Edited  by  L.  G.  Wickham  Legg 


With  an  Index  covering  the  years  1901-1940 
in  one  alphabetical  series 


506426 

It.  4.  so 


OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:  GEOFFREY  CUMBERLEGE 
1949 


Oxford  University  Press,  Amen  House,  London  E.G.  4 

aiiASQOW   NEW  YOBK   TOBONTO    MELBOUBNE   WELLINGTON 
BOMBAY   CALCUTTA  MADBAS   CAPE  TOWN 

Geoffrey  Cumherlege,  Publisher  to  the  University 


PBINTED  IN  OBEAT  BBITAIN 

AT  THE  tTNIVEBSITY  PBESS,  OXFOED 

BY  CHABLES  BATEY,  FBINTEB  TO  THE  UNIVKESITY 


PREFATOEY  NOTE 

THE  Supplement  to  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  which  is 
now  offered  to  the  public  contains  the  names  of  King  George  V  and 
729  of  his  subjects  who  died  during  the  decade  from  1931  to  1940.  The 
Editor  has  endeavoured  to  follow  in  the  steps  of  his  predecessors  and 
to  keep  a  mean  between  too  much  stiffness  in  refusing  and  too  much 
easiness  in  admitting  names,  bearing  in  mind  that  the  purpose  of  the 
Dictionary  (as  he  conceives  it)  is  to  assist  the  student  by  opening  its 
doors  as  widely  as  circumstances  and  reason  will  permit. 

Between  the  earliest  birth  and  the  latest  death  recorded  in  this 
volume  there  is  a  space  of  104  years.  The  senior  in  the  list  is  Arch- 
deacon J.  M.  Wilson,  mathematician,  schoolmaster,  and  antiquary, 
whose  name  is  the  only  one  to  come  down  from  the  reign  of  King 
William  IV ;  the  junior  is  '  Gino '  Watkins,  the  Arctic  explorer,  who, 
with  Humfry  Payne,  the  archaeologist,  represents  the  many  who 
were  born  in  the  twentieth  century  and  called  away  out  of  due  time. 
All  the  others  are  men  and  women  born  under  Queen  Victoria,  in 
almost  the  middle  of  whose  reign  comes  the  birth  of  King  George  V. 
Round  him  are  here  clustered  stars  of  the  very  first  magnitude.  Of 
all  in  this  galaxy  the  brightest  are  those  who  belong  to  the  constella- 
tions of  natural  science.  First  and  foremost  are  two  physicists,  alike 
both  in  the  hopes  and  in  the  apprehensions  which  their  labours  have 
aroused,  Rutherford  and  J.  J.  Thomson.  The  future  alone  can  reveal 
their  true  place  in  the  history  of  mankind ;  it  is  easier  to  assess  the 
place  of  other  scientists.  In  prophylactics,  it  needs  no  great  imagination 
to  realize  the  measure  of  relief  to  human  suffering  that  is  associated 
with  the  names  of  David  Bruce,  Ronald  Ross,  and  W.  J.  R.  Simpson. 
And  it  is  surely  no  disparagement  of  the  work  of  such  men  as  Sharpey 
Schafer  in  physiology,  or  of  Henry  Head  and  Robert  Philip  in  thera- 
peutics, or  of  Robert  Jones,  Moynihan,  and  Trotter  in  surgery,  if 
those  who  have  cause  to  bless  their  memories  are,  in  mere  numbers, 
far  fewer  than  those  who  should  remember  with  gratitude  the  inven- 
tion of  Henry  Wellcome.  Among  biologists,  Karl  Pearson  may  weU 
rank  as  the  founder  of  a  new  school ;  the  important  work  of  William 
Pope  will  show  the  lay  reader  that  'wonders  of  modern  science'  is 
a  phrase  which  the  nomenclature  of  biochemistry  raises  into  the  very 
province  of  letters.  Among  the  practical  engineers,  Charles  Parsons, 
held  by  some  to  be  the  most  original  engineer  produced  by  this  country 
since  James  Watt,  takes  rank  in  historical  significance  with  R.  J. 
Mitchell,  the  designer  of  those  '  Spitfires '  in  which  a  band  of  heroes 
saved  their  country  from  subjugation  in  the  Battle  of  Britain.  And 
let  it  be  remarked  in  passing  that  the  senior  veteran  of  all  the  fighting 
men  here  commemorated  is  an  engineer,  Colonel  R.  E.  B.  Crompton, 
who  as  a  boy  of  eleven  earned  the  Crimean  war  medal  by  a  visit  to  the 


Prefatory  Note 


trenches  before  Sebastopol.  It  is  of  course  from  younger  generations 
that  are  drawn  the  warriors  whose  names  appear  in  these  pages,  for 
they  include  almost  the  last  of  those  great  admirals  and  generals  who 
by  the  aid  of  the  inventions  of  the  engineers  led  their  men  to  victory 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918:  Beatty  and  Jellicoe  at  sea,  AUenby,  Byng, 
Plumer,  and  Robertson  on  land,  together  with  that  master  of  irregular 
warfare,  the  soldier-scholar  '  Lawrence  of  Arabia ',  whose  capture  of 
the  imagination  of  the  world  should  not  obscure  the  services  of  Percy 
Cox  in  the  Middle  East,  nor  the  career  of  Reginald  Johnston  in  China, 
nor  the  '  saga '  of  '  the  most  picturesque  Scotsman  of  modern  times ', 
*Don  Roberto'  Cunninghame  Graham  of  Ardoch.  In  days  when 
man's  view  of  the  world  is  ever  more  distorted  by  the  fog  of  mechanics, 
and  enterprise  is  discounted  by  the  yearning  for  social  security,  these 
men  showed  that  something  not  unlike  Elizabethan  adventure  could 
still  be  open  to  those  born  in  the  nineteenth  centiiry. 

Whether  in  the  region  of  art,  letters,  and  politics  there  are  names 
which  can  be  conlpared  with  the  great  lights  of  natural  science  is  a 
question  which  does  not  call  for  discussion  here.  Critics  will  doubtless 
long  dispute  over  the  value  of  the  compositions  of  Delius  and  Elgar, 
and  of  Tovey's  contributions  to  musical  learning ;  but  none  who  heard 
Melba  in  her  prime  will  deny  her  supremacy  among  the  singers,  nor 
will  those  who  saw  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  contest  her  pre-eminence 
in  the  theatre.  Roger  Fry  taught  the  public  to  see  beauty  where  the 
Ught  of  nature  unaided  would  not  reveal  it,  but  it  may  be  that  Tonks 
exercised  an  even  greater  influence  on  rising  artists  of  his  day.  Yet 
it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  their  teaching  did  more  for  the 
survival  of  a  true  aesthetic  in  this  country  than  did  those  great 
successors  of  the  old  aristocratic  patrons,  the  merchant  collectors  like 
Eumorfopoulos  or  great  dealers  like  Duveen.  They  at  any  rate  have 
now,  in  museums  and  elsewhere,  held  up  standards  of  former  days 
before  a  generation  which,  striving  towards  originaUty  in  technique, 
is  as  yet  uncertain  of  the  line  to  be  drawn  between  the  beautiful  and 
the  bizarre. 

Of  those  who  in  political  life  helped  to  shape  the  destinies  of  the 
subjects  of  the  Crown,  we  here  find  the  names,  not  only  of  two  prime 
ministers  of  Great  Britain,  Ramsay  MacDonald  and  Neville  Chamber- 
lain, but  also  of  Lyons  in  Australia  and  Borden  in  Canada.  Round  the 
first  two,  fierce  fires  of  party  strife  will  blaze  for  many  a  year.  Sub- 
ordinate statesmen  like  Austen  Chamberlain,  Grey  of  Fallodon,  and 
Arthur  Henderson  at  the  Foreign  Office,  with  others  like  Lothian  and 
Reading,  all  strove  to  promote  harmony  in  the  world  and  a  better 
understanding  between  the  mother  country  and  all  her  daughters. 
In  contrast  to  the  moderating  influence  exerted,  not  in  parliament 
only,  by  Speaker  Whitley,  the  names  of  Carson,  Healy,  Plunkett,  and 
Snowden  will  recall  bitter  controversy,  and  so,  too,  wiU  those  of 
O'Dwyer  in  India  and  Percy  FitzPatrick  in  South  Africa;  but  if 


Prefatory  Note 


statesmanship  is  to  be  measured  by  peace  brought  to  the  greatest 
number  of  human  beings,  the  pahn  may  well  be  awarded  to  Hubert 
Murray,  the  great  AustraUan  administrator  of  Papua.  Nor  can  those 
be  overlooked  who  have  advanced  the  development  of  features 
characteristic  of  modern  society :  Goodenough  and  Schuster  among  the 
bankers  of  London,  Boot  and  Lipton  in  the  development  of  the 
multiple  shop,  Tata  in  the  growth  of  a  steel  trust,  Ellerman  and 
Inchcape  in  shipping,  all  helped  to  illustrate  the  old  adage  that 
competition  tends  to  monopoly;  and  readers  will  here  find  some 
attempt  to  pay  tribute  to  another  characteristic  of  our  life  to-day  in 
recording  the  achievements  of  Guy  Nickalls  on  the  river,  of  John  Ball 
on  the  links,  and  of  'K.  S.  Ranjitsinhji'  on  the  cricket  field. 

In  the  region  of  letters,  the  star  of  KipUng  shines  with  a  lustre  which 
no  political  detraction  can  dim.  As  a  poet  he  stands  beside  Henry 
Newbolt  and  William  Watson,  as  a  writer  of  fiction  beside  Arnold 
Bennett  and  John  Buchan,  to  say  nothing  of  Galsworthy  and  Barrie 
who  as  playwrights  as  well  as  novelists  call  to  mind  the  contemporary 
Irish  literary  movement  here  represented  by  'AE',  Lady  Gregory, 
George  Moore,  and  W.  B.  Yeats.  Among  essayists,  it  is  not  easy  to 
find  a  rival  to  Chesterton,  and  journalism  has  good  reason  to  remember 
with  honour  G.  E.  Buckle,  C.  P.  Scott,  and  J.  A.  Spender,  who 
maintained  its  high  traditions  in  days  when  they  began  to  be  seriously 
menaced.  Andrew  Bradley  and  Saintsbury  as  critics  in  English 
.  Hterature  may  not  unfairly  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  such 
a  giant  as  A.  E.  Housman  in  the  classics,  while  the  uncanny  cleverness 
of  D.  S.  Margoliouth  both  in  Greek  and  in  oriental  scholarship  is 
balanced  by  the  rigid  accuracy  of  A.  A.  Bevan.  If  the  versatility  of 
H.  A.  L.  Fisher  makes  it  uncertain  whether  he  should  be  classed  among 
the  historians,  the  statesmen,  or  the  educationists,  there  can  be  no 
such  doubt  about  Firth,  the  last  survivor  of  a  generation  of  great 
historians,  and  one  of  the  most  prolific  and  most  valued  contributors 
to  this  Dictionary.  In  any  age,  the  contribution  of  Frederick 
Pollock  to  the  science  of  jurisprudence  would  stand  conspicuous,  as 
judges  like  Buckmaster,  Scrutton,  Sumner,  or  Trevethin  would  be 
the  first  to  recognize.  In  philosophy  Samuel  Alexander  and  Seth- 
Pringle-Pattison  gained  reputations  comparable  to  that  of  Mohammed 
Iqbal  in  India.  In  theology  Gore's  chapter  in  Lux  Mundi  first  revealed 
how  far  the  younger  disciples  of  the  tractarian  movement  had  broken 
away  from  the  fundamentalism  of  Pusey  and  Liddon.  Nor  was  this 
field  wanting  in  practical  workers:  Cardinal  Bourne  and  Archbishop 
Edwards  of  Wales  were  both  champions  of  the  interests  of  their  own 
flocks,  and  Donald  Eraser,  Robert  Laws,  and  E.  de  M.  Rudolf  in  the 
missionary  and  social  fields  are  of  them  that  have  left  a  name  behind 
them  for  many  years  to  come. 

Like  his  predecessors,  the  Editor  must  first  and  foremost  give  grate- 
ful recognition  to  the  help  given  by  his  sub-editors  in  the  preparation 


Prefatory  Note 


of  this  volume.  Without  the  experience  of  Miss  Margaret  Toynbee, 
her  accurate  eye  for  detail,  and  her  tenacious  memory,  it  would  have 
been  impossible  for  the  Editor  to  overcome  the  many  difficulties  that 
have  been  attendant  on  the  preparation  of  this  volume.  He  would 
also  like  to  express  his  thanks  to  Mrs.  Christopher  Ritchie  who  for 
some  months  assisted  in  the  work  of  sub-editing.  For  help  and  advice 
given  from  all  quarters  with  great  liberality,  the  Editor  is  under 
an  obligation  too  multifarious  to  be  acknowledged  in  its  entirety, 
but  he  would  like  especially  to  mention  the  information  and  advice 
tendered  by  the  late  Sir  Hugh  Allen,  Dr.  E.  H.  Alton,  Mr.  C.  T. 
Atkinson,  Sir  Vincent  Baddeley,  Mr.  A.  M.  Binnie,  Mr.  Martin  S. 
Briggs,  Sir  Frank  Brown,  Mr.  B.  Burdekin,  the  late  Sir  Richard  Burn, 
the  late  Mr.  L.  Burpee,  Sir  Patrick  Cadell,  Lord  David  Cecil,  Dr.  R.  W. 
Chapman,  Dr.  G.  N.  Clark,  Dr.  Hugh  Clegg,  Dr.  Alexander  Cooke, 
Mr.  R.  C.  K.  Ensor,  Professor  M.  G.  Fisher,  Mr.  Hamilton  Fyfe, 
Professor  H.  A.  R.  Gibb,  Mrs.  E.  S.  Goodrich,  Sir  C.  N.  Hinshelwood, 
Mr.  R.  H.  Hodgkin,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Hodgson,  Lord  Horder,  Sir  Robert 
Hutchison,  Mr.  E.  A.  A.  Joseph,  Professor  R.  W.  Lee,  the  late 
Sir  H.  V.  Lovett,  the  Very  Rev.  John  Lowe,  the  Very  Rev.  Dr. 
Norman  Maclean,  Dr.  C.  A.  Malcolm,  Sir  Dougal  Malcolm,  Colonel  K. 
Mason,  the  Rev.  Dr.  N.  Micklem,  Sir  Humphrey  Milf ord  (whose  reading 
of  the  proofs  has  put  the  Editor  under  a  special  obligation),  Mr.  John 
Parker,  Mr.  K.  T.  Parker,  Lord  Eustace  Percy,  Mr.  A.  L.  Poole, 
Professor  G.  V.  Portus,  Dr.  D.  R.  Pye,  Sir  Bruce  Richmond,  the  late 
Admiral  Sir  Herbert  Richmond,  Sir  David  Ross,  Mr.  Albert  Ruther- 
ston.  Sir  Charles  Sherrington,  Professor  Nevill  Sidgwick,  the  late 
Dr.  W.  T.  S.  Stallybrass,  Mr.  C.  W.  Stanley,  Mr.  J.  A.  Stevenson,  the 
Hon.  W.  Downie  Stewart,  Rear-Admiral  H.  G.  Thursfield,  Mr.  J.  R.  H. 
Weaver,  Mr.  Geoffrey  Whitworth,  and  the  Hon.  Hugh  Wyndham.  He 
also  asks  his  contributors  who  by  their  courtesy  and  forbearance  have 
lightened  the  burden  of  his  work  to  accept  this  expression  of  his 
thanks ;  but  a  very  special  meed  of  gratitude  is  due  from  the  Editor  to 
the  secretary  and  staff  of  the  Clarendon  Press.  Help  so  generously 
given  enables  this  lexicographer  to  say  that,  whether  harmless  or  not, 
he  has  never  been  a  drudge. 

L.  G.  W.  L. 
January  1949. 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Adams,  William  George  Stewart: 

Plunkett. 
Ady,  Cecilia  Mary: 

Paget,  Violet  (Vernon  Lee);  Toynbee. 
Allen,  Walter  Godfrey: 

Simpson  (J.  W.). 
Altrincham,     Edward     William     Macleay 
Grigg,  Baron: 

Hichens;  Poynder  (Islington). 
Anderson,  David: 

Mott. 
Anderson,  John  George  Clark: 

Ramsay. 
Andrews,  Hilda: 

Terry  (R.  R.). 
Andrews,  John  Miller: 

Craig  (Craigavon). 
Arber,  Agnes: 

Scott  (D.  H.). 
Armfield,  Maxwell  Ashby : 

Wilkinson  (N.). 
fARMSTRONG,  Edward  Frankland : 

Cross. 
Atkins,  John  Black: 

Butler  (E.  S.). 
Atkins,  William  Ringrose  Gelston : 

Young. 
Atkinson,  Christopher  Thomas : 

Butler    (R.    H.    K.);    Cobbe;    Fortescue; 

Hunter  (A.);  Methuen. 

Baddeley,  Sir  Vincent  Wilberforce : 

Backhouse;  Colville;   Douglas;   Henderson 

(R.    G.    H.);    Madden;    Milne;    Murray 

(O.  A.  R.);  Pakenham;   Wemyss  (Wester 

Wemyss). 
Baerlein,  Henry: 

Dillon  (E.  J.). 
Bailey,  Cyril: 

Conway  (R.  S.). 
Baillie,  Donald  Macpherson : 

Mackintosh. 
Baillie,  John: 

Kennedy. 
Baird,  Matthew  Urie : 

Gordon,    I.    M.    (Aberdeen).    See    under 
Gordon,  J.  C.  (Aberdeen). 
Baker,  Charies  Henry  Collins : 

Holmes  (C.  J.). 
Baker,  John  Randal: 

Bourne  (G.  C). 
Ballard,  Philip  Boswood: 

Adam^. 
Balston,  Thomas: 

Gertler. 
Barber,  Eric  Arthur: 

Famell. 
fBARBOUR,  George  Freeland : 

Gordon,  J.  C.  (Aberdeen). 
Barry,  Frank  Russell,  Bishop  of  Southwell 
(Fr.  Southwell) : 

Dearmer. 


Bartlett,  Frederic  Charies : 

McDougall. 
Barton,  Sir  William  Pell : 

Mysore. 
Battiscombe,  Georgina: 

Anderson  (Benson,  S.);  Caine;  Ford;  Harri- 
son (Lucas  Malet);  McNeile  (Sapper). 
Beazley,  Sir  John  Davidson : 

Payne. 
Beharrel,  Sir  John  George : 

Geddes  (E.  C). 
Bell,  Sir  Harold  Idris : 

Hunt  (A.  S.). 
Benians,  Ernest  Alfred: 

Tanner. 
Bentley,  Edmund  Clerihew: 

Lawson  (Bumham). 
Bethune-Baker,  James  FrankUn: 

Barnes  (W.  E.);  Burkitt. 
Bishop,  WiUiam  John : 

Dudgeon;    Kettle;    McLeod;    McMurrich; 

Robertson  (G.  M.). 
Blacker,  Lady  Doris : 

Peel. 
fBLAKiSTON,  Herbert  Edward  Douglas : 

Jones  (H.  Stuart). 
Bolitho,  Henry  Hector: 

Greville  (Warwick). 
Bonham-Carter,  Sir  Edgar : 

Wilson  (A.  T.). 
BoNNEY,  Victor: 

Sutton. 
BosANQUET,  Ellen  Sophia : 

Bosanquet. 
fBoTTOMLEY,  Gordou : 

Shannon. 
BowLEY,  Arthur  Lyon : 

Foxwell. 
Boycott,  John  Agg : 

Boycott. 
fBRADBY,  Henry  Christopher : 

Vaughan. 
Braithwaite,  Richard  Bevan: 

Johnson. 
Bramwell,  John  Crighton: 

Bramwell. 
Brand,  Robert  Henry  Brand,  Baron : 

Kerr  (Lothian). 
Briggs,  Martin  Shaw: 

Champneys;  Dawber. 
f  Brown,  Alfred  Barratt : 

Furniss  (Sanderson). 
Brown,  Sir  Frank  Herbert : 

Bhownagree;  Butler  (S.  H.);  Fuller;  Nehru; 

Yate. 
Brown,  Sir  Harold  Arthur : 

Oram. 
Bucknill,  Sir  Alfred  Townsend,  Lord  Justice 
Bucknill : 

HiU. 
fBuRMESTER,  Sir  Rudolf  Miles : 

Calthorpe. 


List  of  Contributors 


BtJKNETT,  Richard  George : 

Hocking  (J.  and  S.  k!). 
BuKROw,  Thomas: 

Rapson. 
BtTRTON,  Herbert: 

Anstey;  Lyons;  Quick;  Ryrie. 
Butler,  Harold  Edgeworth : 

Clark;  Deller;  Foster  (T.  G.). 

Cadell,  Sir  Patrick  Robert: 

Baroda;  Besant;  Nawanagar. 
f  Caixender,  Sir  Geoffrey  Arthur  Romaine : 

Jellicoe,  J.  R.  (Earl). 
Calman,  William  Thomas : 

M'^Intosh. 
Cantelupe,  Dorothy  Jeffreys,  Viscountess : 

Louise  (Argyll). 
Carlyle,  Edward  Irving: 

Banbury;  Buxton;  Cavendish  (Devonshire); 

Dyke;    Evans   (L.    Worthington);    Ewing; 

Ferguson    (Novar);     Hicks     (Brentford); 

Macnamara;  Russell,  A.  O.  V.  (Ampthill); 

Shortt;  Thomson  (B.  H.). 
Carnegie,  Moir: 

Mackenzie  (A.  C). 
Cecil,  Algernon: 

Bailey  (J.  C). 
Cecil,  Lord  Edward  Christian  David  Gas- 
coyne: 

Morrell;  Strachey  (G.  L.). 
Chalmers,  William  Scott: 

Beatty. 
Champion,  Harry  George: 

Troup. 
Chandler,  Noel  Raymond : 

Royce. 
Chapman,  John  Alexander: 

Ross  (E.  D.). 
Chapman,  Sydney: 

Lamb. 
Chapman-Huston,  Desmond: 

Low. 
Charlton,  Gteorge: 

Tonks. 
Chaunby,  Theodore  William: 

Elliott;  Rogers  (L.  J.). 
Choksi,  Rustum: 

Tata. 
Christie,  EUa  Robertson : 

Haldane  (E.  S.). 
Christophers,  Sir  Samuel  Rickard : 

Bruce  (D.);  Ross  (R.). 
Clapperton,  Gladys  Laura: 

Yapp. 
Clark,  George  Norman : 

Firth;  Montague;  Poole  (R.  L.). 
Clark,  Sir  Kenneth  McKenzie: 

Fry. 
Clegg,  Hugh  Anthony : 

Herringham. 
Cleveland-Stevens,  William : 

Dibdin. 
Cobb,  John  WUham: 

Smithells. 
Cobham,  John  Oldcastle: 

Hoskyns. 
fCocHRANE,  Alfred: 

Baillie,  C.  W.  A.  N.  R.  Cochrane-  (Laming- 


ton);  Boot  (Trent);  Buchanan,  J.  (Wool 

ington);  Clarke,  G.  S.  (Sydenham);  Cc 

ridge;  Falkner;  Guest  (F.  E.);  Guest,  I. 

(WimI)orne);    Harris,    G.    R.    C.    (Lor 

Hawke;  Lunn;  Mills  (B.  W.);  Nawanag 

Noble;    Philipps,    J.    W.    (St.    David 

Philipps,  O.  C.  (Kylsant);  Vestey. 
Cochrane,  Sir  Arthur  William  Steuart : 

Charrington;   Howard  of  Penrith;   Kii 

Nathan. 
Cockerell,  Sir  Sydney  Carlyle : 

Walker  (E.). 
Coffey,  Diarmid: 

Campbell,  J.  H.  M.  (Glenavy). 
Cohen,    Sir  Lionel  Leonard,  Lord  Just 
Cohen : 

Warrington. 
Cook,  Stanley  Arthur : 

Bevan;  Kennett. 
Cook,  William  Lewis : 

Hartshorn. 
CoRBYN,  Ernest  Nugent : 

Currie  (J.). 
fCouLTON,  George  Gordon : 

Fowler  (H.  W.). 
CouPLAND,  Sir  Reginald: 

Thesiger  (Chelmsford). 
CowEN,  Zielman: 

Duffy. 
Craig,  Maurice: 

Devlin. 
fCREWE,    Robert   Offley   Ashburton   Crev 
Milnes,  Marquess  of: 

Birrell;  Paul. 
Critchley,  Macdonald: 

Wilson  (S.  A.  K.). 
CuNDELL,  Edric: 

German;  Ronald. 
Cunningham,  William  Ross: 

Rait. 
CuRGENVEN,  Sir  Arthur  Joseph : 

Sankaran  Nair. 
CxmLE,  Alexander  Ormiston : 

Macdonald  (G.). 
Curtis,  William  Alexander: 

Paterson. 

Dale,  Sir  Henry  Hallett : 

Andrewes. 
Dampier,  Sir  William  Cecil  Dampier: 

Glazebrook;  Leathes. 
Danby,  Herbert: 

Cooke;  Montefiore. 
fDARK,  Sidney: 

Waggett. 
Darlington,  William  Aubrey: 

Drinkwater;  Robertson  (J.  Forbes-);  Wyi 

ham  (Moore). 
Darwin,  Bernard: 

Ball;  Hutchinson  (H.  G.). 
•{■Daukes,  Sidney  Herbert : 

Wellcome. 
Davidson,  Sir  Nigel  George : 

Lawrence,  A.  T.  (Trevethin). 
fDAViES,  Sir  Alfred  Thomas : 

Hopkinson. 
Da  VIES,  David: 

Horridge. 


List  of  Contributors 


Dawes,  George: 

Tucker. 
Dawkins,  Richard  MacGillivray : 

Giles  (P.). 
De  la  Mare,  Walter: 

NewbolL 
Denny,  Sir  Maurice  Edward,  Bart. : 

Denny. 
Dent,  Edward  Joseph: 

Baylis. 
Desch,  Cecil  Henry : 

Carpenter;  Hadfield;  Rosenhain. 
DiLLiNG,  Walter  James : 

Cash. 
fDiLNOT,  Frank: 

Wallace. 
Dingle,  Herbert: 

Fowler  (A.). 
Dixon,  Henry  Horatio : 

Joly. 
Douglas,  Claude  Gordon: 

Haldane  (J.  S.);  Pembrey. 
Douglas,  James  Archibald : 

Sollas. 
Driver,  Godfrey  Rolles : 

Cowley;  Langdon. 
fDuGDALE,  Blanche  Elizabeth  Campbell : 

Sidgwick. 
DuGGAN,  George  Chester: 

Pollock  (H.  M.). 
Duncan,  Gleorge  Simpson: 

Milligan. 
DcTNCAN,  Leslie: 

Laws. 
Duncan- Jones,  Arthur  Stuart: 

Edwards. 
DuNSANY,    Edward    John    Moreton    Drax 
Plunkett,  Baron: 

Watson. 

Eason,  Herbert  Lightfoot: 

Perry. 
Edmonds,  Sir  James  Edward : 

Snow. 
Egerton,  Sir  Alfred  Charles  Glynn : 

Bone. 
Elliott,  Thomas  Renton : 

Bradford;  Fletcher  (W.  M.). 
Ellis,  Lionel  Frederic : 

Bamett. 
Elton,  Godfrey,  Baron: 

MacDonald  (J.  R.). 
fELTON,  Oliver: 

AbercTombie;  Sampson  (J.). 
Emmet,  Dorothy  Mary : 

Stocks. 
Ensor,  Robert  Charles  Kirkwood : 

Birrell;    Dalziel;   Ellis;   Hobhotise;   Side- 

botham;  Snowden. 
Enthoven,  Reginald  Edward : 

Temple. 
Ervine,  St.  John  Greer: 

Du    Maurier;    Kendal;    McNeill,    R.    J. 

(Cushendun);  Pinero. 
Esdaile,  ArundeU  James  Kennedy : 

Wise. 

Falls,  Cyril  Bentham : 
Allenby;  Byng. 


Farmer,  Herbert  Henry : 

Oman. 
Ferguson,  Allan: 

Lodge  (O.). 
•j-FFOULKEs,  Charles  John : 

Dillon,  H.  A.  (Viscoura). 
Field,  Guy  Cromwell: 

Morgan  (C.  L.). 
fFiSHER,  Edwin : 

Goodenough. 
Fisher,  Matthew  George: 

Johnston,  C.  N.  (Sands). 
Fletcher,  Sir  Frank : 

Page  (T.  E.). 
Fleure,  Herbert  John : 

Haddon. 
FoRDYCE,  Christian  James: 

Lindsay  (W.  M.). 
Foss,  Hubert  James : 

Tovey. 
Franckenstein,  Sir  George : 

De  Bunsen. 
French,  Sir  James  Weir: 

Barr. 
Fyfe,  Henry  Hamilton : 

Donald;  Harmsworth  (Rothermere);  Mar- 
lowe; Riddell. 

Galbraith,  Vivian  Hunter: 

Clarke  (M.  V.);  Lyte. 
Garrod,  Heathcote  William: 

Allen  (P.  S.). 
Garvin,  Viola  Gerard: 

Wolfe. 
Geddes,  Arthur: 

Geddes  (P.). 
GiBB,  Sir  Claude  Dixon: 

Parsons. 
GiBB,  Hamilton  Alexander  Rosskeen : 

Iqbal;  Poole  (S.  Lane-). 
Gibson,  Charles  Stanley: 

Pope. 
GiLLON,  Stair  Agnew: 

Buchan  (Tweedsmuir). 
GiRDLESTONE,  Gathomc  Robert: 

Jones  (R.). 
Godfrey,  Walter  Hindes : 

Burnet. 
GoDLEY,  Hon.  Eveline  Charlotte : 

Godley  (Kilbracken). 
Gold,  Sir  Harcourt  Gilbey : 

Nickalls. 
Gooch,  George  Peabody: 

Temperley. 
Gore,  John: 

Holland  (Knutsford). 
Graham-Camfbell,  Archibald  Rollo : 

Brooke. 
Graham-Smith,  George  Stuart: 

Nutiall. 
Graves,  Philip  Percival : 

Cox  (P.  Z.). 
Gray,  Basil: 

Eumorfopoulos. 
Greenwood,  Major: 

Pearson  (K.). 
Greg,  Walter  Wilson : 

McKerrow. 


List  of  Contributors 


Grensted,  Laurence  William : 

Knox;  Streeter. 
Gbier,  Lynda: 

Hadow  (G.  E.). 
Griffiths,  Ezer: 

Griffiths. 
Grimsditch,  Herbert  Borthwick  : 

Dyson  {W.  H.);  Grahame;  Jagger;  Ldszld; 
Upton;  Orage;  Rackham;  Ramsden;  Speyer; 
Thornton;  Wilkinson  (N.  R.);  Wyllie. 
tGuBBAY,  Moses  Mordecai  Simeon: 

Mackay  (Inchcape). 
GuNN,  George  Battiscombe : 

Griffith  (F.  L.);  Peet;  Sayce. 
GuNN,  James  Andrew: 

Dixon  {W.  E.). 
GuTTERiDGE,  Harold  Cooke: 

De  Montmorency. 
GwYER,  Barbara  Elizabeth: 
Rogers  {A.  M.  A.  H.). 


Hackett,  Felix  Edward  Walsh: 

Orr. 
Hadley,  Patrick  Arthur  Sheldon: 

Delius. 
Hadley,  William  Waite: 

Chamberlain  {A.  N.). 
Hamilton,  Mary  Agnes : 

Henderson  {A.);  Lansbury;  Smillie. 
Hamilton-Edwards,       Gerald       Kenneth 
Savery : 
Stevens. 
fHAMMOND,  John  Lawrence  Le  Breton  • 

Scott  (C.  P.). 
Hanbury,  Harold  Greville : 

Buckley  (Wrenbury);    Dreyer;    Eve;  Mc- 
Cardie. 
Hannon,  Sir  Patrick  Joseph  Henry: 
Ashley  {Mount  Temple). 
fHARDY,  Godfrey  Harold: 

Hobson  (E.  W.);  Mercer. 
Hare,  Tom: 

Hobday. 
Harington,  Charles  Robert : 

Barger. 
Harris,  Henry  Albert: 

Smith  (G.  E.). 
Harrison,  John  Vernon : 

Gregory  (J.  W.). 
Harvey,  Godfrey  Eric : 

Keith;  Scott  (J.  G.). 
Hay,  Agnes  YeUand,  Lady  Dalrymple-  • 
Hay. 
fHAYNES,  Edmund  Sidney  Pollock: 

Bottomley. 
fHEADLAM,  Arthur  Cayley: 

Nairne. 
Headlam,  Maurice  Francis: 

Chalmers;  Heath;  Murray  (G.  H  ) 
Heaton,  Trevor  Braby: 

Thomson  (A.). 
Hetherington,  Sir  Hector  James  Wright 

MacAlister.  * 

HiELD,  Robert: 

Colvin. 
Hill,  Archibald  Vivian: 
Hardy. 


Hill,  Walter  Scott: 

Dixon  (R.  B.). 
Hinkson,  Pamela: 

Harrell. 
Hirst,  Francis  Wrielev: 

Cox(H.).  ^ 

Hodgson,  Stuart: 

Lygon  (Beauchamp);  Maclean. 
HoDSON,  Henry  Vincent: 

Dove. 
HoLLiNS,  Clara  Joyce  Elizmar : 

McCormick. 
Hone,  Joseph  Maunsell : 

Graves;    Healy    (T.    M.);    McNeill   ( 
Sexton  (T.);  Yeats. 
Horner,  Norman  Gerald: 

Sprigge. 
Hornyold-Strickland,  Henry: 

Strickland. 
Howes,  Frank: 

Dolmetsch. 
Humphreys,  Sir  Travers : 

Avory. 
HuRD,  Sir  Archibald: 

Beardmore  (Invernairn);  Isherwood;  Ism 
HuRD,  Sir  Percy  Angier: 

Hewins. 
HuTTON,  John  Henry: 

Balfour  (H). 
Huxley,  Elspeth  Josceline : 
Cholmondeley  (Delamere). 
Hyamson,  Albert  Montefiore: 
Gaster;  Sutro. 

Illingworth,  Charles  Frederick  William  i 

Wilkie. 
Irvine,  Su-  James  Colquhoun: 

Morgan  (G.  T.). 


James,  Howell  Ewart : 

Evans  (E.  V.). 
James,  Sir  WiUiam  Milburne: 

Bayly;  Custance. 
Jamison,  Evelyn  Mary: 

Lodge  (E.  C);  Wordsworth. 
Jeffery,  George  Barker: 

Pilon. 
Jenkins,  Claude: 

Robertson  (A.);  Robinson;  Sheppard. 
Jenyns,  Roger  Soame: 

Johnston  (R.  P.). 
Johnson,  Charles: 

Crump. 
Johnstone,  Alfred  Ernest: 

Rundman. 
Jones,  Bernard  Mouat : 

Baker. 
Jones,  Sir  Harold  Spencer: 

Brown  (E.  W.);  Dyson  (P.  W.). 
Jordan,  Karl: 
Rothschild. 

Kenyon,  Sir  Frederic  George: 

Lindsay,  D.  A.  E.  (Crawford);  Warner 

Wnght. 
King,  William  Bernard  Robinson: 

Marr. 


List  of  Contributors 


Knowles,  Dom  Michael  David : 
Butler,  E.  J.  A.  {Dom  CtUhberl). 

Knox,  Edmund  George  Valpy : 
Lucas  (E.  v.);  Reed;  Seaman. 

Knox,  Ronald  Arbuthnott: 
Fraser,  S.  J.  (Lovat). 


■j-Laird,  John: 

Alexander;  Pattison. 
Lamb,  Sir  John : 

GilmouT. 
Landon,  Philip  Aislabie : 

Astbunj;  Mathew. 
Laski,  Harold  Joseph : 

Robertson  (J.  M.). 
Laski,  Neville  Jonas : 

Darling. 
Latham,  Sir  John  Greig : 

Murray  (J.  H.  P.). 
Laver,  James: 

Gilbert;  Greiffenhagen;  Jones  (A.);  Tweed. 
Lavrin,  Janko : 

Maude. 
Lawrence,  Sir  Henry  Staveley : 

Patel. 
Layton,  Thomas  Bramley: 

Symonds. 
Leathes,  John  Beresford : 

Mellar^y. 
Lee,  Amice : 

Macdonell. 
Lee,  Robert  Warden : 

Jenks. 
Le  Fanu,  William  Richard : 

Ballance;  Moynihan. 
Legg,  Leopold  George  Wickham: 

Bourne  (R.  C). 
Levien,  John  Mewburn: 

Butt;  Cowen;  Melba. 
Levy,  Reuben: 

Le  Strange. 
LiTTLEwooD,  Samuel  Robinson : 

Asche;  Greet;  Poel. 
LocKHART,  John  Gilbert: 

Wood  {Halifax). 
"fLovETT,   Sir  Sackville  Hatton  Harrington 
Vemey : 

Besant;  Craddock;  O^Dwyer. 
f  LowiNSKY,  Thomas  Esmond : 

Philpot;  Ricketts. 
Luce,  Arthur  Aston : 

D'Arcy. 
LtJNN,  Arnold: 

Conway  of  Allington. 
Lynd,  Sylvia: 

Hinkson  {Tynan). 


MacAlister,  Sir  Ian : 

Caroe. 
MAcARTHtJB,  Sir  William  Porter : 

Keogh. 
McDowALL,  Robert  John  Stewart : 

Halliburton. 
Mackenzie,  Agnes  Mure : 

Terry  (C.  S.). 


Mackie,  John  Duncan : 

Fleming. 
•fMAcKiNNON,  Frank  Douglas,  Lord  Justice 
MacKinnon : 

Hamilton     {Sumner);     Scrution;     Talbot 
{G.  J.). 
Maclagan,  Michael: 

Gibbs. 
McLaren,  Martin  John : 

McLaren  {Aberconway). 
Maclean,  Norman: 

Balfour  {F.);  Fisher  {R.  H.). 
Macmillan,     Hugh     Pattison     Macmillan, 
Baron : 

Home;  Shaw,  T.  {Craigmyle). 
Macmunn,  Sir  George  Fletcher: 

Plumer. 
Macnaghten,  Hon.  Sir  Malcolm  Martin : 

Clarke  {E.  G.). 
MacNalty,  Sir  Arthur  Salusbury:  ' 

Balfour  {A.);  Buchanan  {G.  S.). 
Magee,  William  Kirkpatrick: 

Russell,  G.  W.  {AE). 
Maine,  Basil  Stephen : 

Elgar. 
Major,  Henry  Dewsbury  Alves : 

Gardner  {P.). 
Malcolm,  Sir  Dougal  Orme : 

Joel  {S.  B.  and  J.  B.);  Oliver. 
Mansbridge,  Albert: 

McMillan  {M.). 
Manson,  Thomas  Walter: 

Charles. 
Marriott,  Charles: 

Collier;    Mackennal;    McKenzie   {R.    T.); 
Ouless. 
f Marriott,  Sir  John  Arthur  Ransome : 

Horton. 
Marshall,  Francis  Hugh  Adam : 

Schafer. 
fMARTEN,  Sir  Clarence  Henry  Kennett : 

Fletcher  {C.  R.  L.). 
Martin,  Sir  Alec : 

Duveen. 
Martin,  Sir  Charles  James : 

Harden. 
Martin,  Thomas: 

Jackson  {H.). 
Makyon- Wilson,  Sir  George  Percy  Maryon, 
Bart.: 

Jellicoe  {J.  B.  L.). 
f  Mason,  Alfred  Edward  Woodley: 

Barrie;  Hawkins  {Anthony  Hope). 
Mason,  Kenneth: 

Bruce  (C.  G.). 
Masterman,  Lucy: 

Lyttelton. 
Mauchline,  John: 

M'Fadyen. 
Maurice,  Sir  Frederick  Barton : 

Birch;  Marshall;  Robertson  {W.  R.), 
Mawson,  Sir  Douglas : 

David. 
Maxwell,  Sir  Alexander: 

Ruggles-Brise. 
Mayor,  Henry  Bickersteth : 

Wilson  (J.  M.). 


xm 


List  of  Contributors 


Meek,  Charles  Kingsley: 

Girouard. 
Meikle,  Henry  William : 

Hannay;  Mathieson;  Maxwell. 
Mellanby,  Sir  Edward : 

Laidlaw. 
Melville,  Harry  Work: 

Walker  (J.). 
Metcalfe,  Sir  Herbert  Aubrey  Francis : 

Grant;  Patiala. 
Middleton,  James  Smith : 

Allen  of  Hurtwood;  Barnes  (G.  N.);  Cook; 

Graham    (W.);    Hodge;    Purcell;    Saklat- 

vala;  Sexton  (J.);  Shaw  (T.);  Smith  (H.); 

Ward  (J.). 
Middleton,  Noel: 

Baieson. 
MiLLiCAN,  Percy: 

Norgate. 
Mills,  William  Hobson : 

Lowry. 
Milne,  Edward  Arthur : 

Love. 
MiLNEB,  Violet  Georgina  Milner,  Viscountess : 

Maxse. 
Morgan,  Charles: 

Moore  (G.  A.). 
Morgan,  John  Hartman : 

Murison;  Petty-Fitzmaurice  (Fitzmaurice). 
Morgan,  Louise: 

Ellerman. 
MoRSHEAD,  Sir  Owen  Frederick : 

Bigge  (Stamfordham);  King  George  V. 
MoRTLOCK,  Charles  Bernard : 

Lacey. 
Mure,  Geoffrey  Reginald  Gilchrist: 

Joachim. 
Murray,  George  Gilbert  Aim6: 

Fisher  (H.   A.  L.);   Galsworthy;   Margo 

liouth. 
Murray,  Sir  John : 

Huxley. 
Murray,  John: 

Stewart  (J.  A.). 
fMYERS,  Charles  Samuel : 

Seligman. 
Myres,  Sir  John  Linton: 

Fotheringham. 

Newberry,  Percy  Edward : 

Carter. 
Newton,  William  Godfrey: 

Worthington. 
NoppEN,  John  George : 

Lethaby. 
Nuttall,  Geoffrey  Fillingham: 

Bartlet. 


tOLLARD,  Sidney  LesUe : 

Brightman. 
Orwin,  Charles  Stewart: 

Prothero  (Ernie);  Strachey,  E.  (Strachie); 

Tumor. 
OsBORN,  Theodore  George  Bentley: 

Druce;  Ewart;  Vines. 
O 'Sullivan,  Donal: 

Lynch. 


Owen,  Charles  Venn: 

Blood;  Cochrane  (Dundonald);  Curr 
(A.  W.);  Harington;  Lake;  Monast 
Philipps  (I.);  Bundle;  Weston;  Whi 
(C.  B.  B.). 

Page,  Frederick: 

Dames;  Monro. 
Paget,  Grace  Hartley,  Lady: 

Paget  (M.  E.  V.). 
Parker,  John: 

Benson   (F.   R.);   Grossmith;   Homima, 

Lytton;  Ropes  (Adrian  Ross). 
f Parker,  Richard  Barry: 

Unwin  (R.). 
Parsons,  Leonard  Gregory: 

Barling. 
Pearson,  Egon  Sharpe : 

Gossett. 
Peel,  Albert: 

Stewart  (H.). 
Peers,  Sir  Charles  Reed : 

Page  (W.). 
Peirson,  Lewis  Guy: 

Meyrick. 
Petrie,  Sir  Charles  Alexander,  Bart. : 

Chamberlain  (J.  A.). 
•j-Phipps,  Sir  Edmund  Bampfylde : 

Arthur  of  Connaught. 
•fPiTMAN,  Charles  Murray: 

Bourne  (G.  C). 
Playford,  Humphrey  Blake : 

Fairbaim. 
Powell-Price,  John  Cadwgan : 

Morison. 
PowiCKE,  Sir  Frederick  Maurice : 

Norgate. 
•j-Previt^-Orton,  Charles  WiUiam: 

Whitney. 
Proctor,  Philip  Dennis : 

Dickinson. 
Purser,  OUve: 

Purser. 

Ramsbottom,  John: 

Rendle. 
Randell,  Wilfrid  Lawson : 

Crompton. 
Rattenbury,  Owen  Alfred: 

Perks. 
Redmayne,  Sb  Richard  Augustine  Studde 

Joicey;  Merz. 
Reed,  Sir  Stanley : 

Lawrence  (W.  R.). 
Rice,  David  Talbot: 

Brown  (G.  B.). 
Richardson,  Sir  Owen  Willans : 

Thomson  (J.  J.). 
Richmond,  Sir  Bruce  Lyttelton: 

Buckle;  Maitland. 
Richmond,  Ian  Archibald : 

Ashby. 
Ridley,  Maurice  Roy: 

Bradley. 
Risley,  Sir  John  Shuckburgh : 

Lucas  (C.  P.). 
Ritchie,  Sir  John  Douglas : 

Kearley  (Devonport). 


List  of  Contributors 


RiVETT,  Sir  Albert  Cherbury  David : 

Simpson,  Sir  George  Clarke : 

Masson. 

Schuster  (A.). 

RoBBiNS,  Lionel  Charles: 

Simpson,  Percy: 

Cannan. 

Herford. 

f  Robertson,  Sir  Charles  Grant : 

Singleton,  Sir  John  Edward: 

Bain;  Lodge  (R.);  Muirhead. 

Swift. 

Robertson,  Donald  Struan : 

SiTWELL,  Sir  Osbert,  Bart. : 

Housman;  Pearson  (A.  C). 

Sassoon. 

fRoBERTSON,  Sir  Robert : 

Smith,  David  Nichol: 

Mond;  Petavel. 

Saintsbury. 

Robinson,  Lennox: 

Smith,  John  Sandwith  Boys: 

Gregory  (I.  A.). 

Creed. 

Rodd,  Ernest  Harry : 

Smith,  Sidney: 

Armstrong. 

Budge. 

■fRoLLESTON,  John  Davy: 

Smith,  Walter  Campbell : 

Browne;  Cheyne;  Craxofurd;  Garrod;  Head; 

Hutchinson  (A.);  Thomas. 

Whitla. 

Southwell,  Richard  Vynne : 

Ross,  Hugh  Munro : 

Jenkin. 

Brennan;  Buchanan  (G.  C);  Clerk;  Dew- 

Sparks,  Hedley  Frederick  Davis : 

ranee;  Edge;  Hunter  (G.  B.);  Mills  (W.); 

White  (A.  J.). 

Snell. 

Spence,  James  Calvert: 

Ross,  Sir  WiUiam  David : 

Murray  (G.  R.). 

Phelps;  Smith  (J.  A.). 

Spencer,  Leonard  James : 

fRowE,  Frederick  Maurice : 

Ttaton. 

Peridn. 

Stanley,  Carleton  Wellesley: 

RuDMOSE  Brown,  Robert  Neal : 

Borden;  Gordon,  C.  W,  (Ralph   Connor); 

Freshfield;  Jackson  (F.  G.);  Watkins;  Wild. 

Parker. 

Rudolf,  Cyril  de  Montjoie : 

Stenton,  Sir  Frank  Merry: 

Rudolf. 

Childs. 

Russell,  Geoffrey  William: 

Stevenson,  John  Alexander: 

Buckmaster. 

Foster  (G.  E.);  Graham,  H.  (Aiholstan); 

McLennan;  Macphail. 

Sadleir,  Michael: 

Stewart,  Hon.  William  Downie: 

Bell. 
Storrs,  Sir  Ronald : 

Benson  (E.  F.);  Harraden;  Savage  {Ethel 
.    M.Dell). 
fSANKEY,  John  Sankey,  Viscount : 
Duke  (Merrivale);  Talbot  (E.  S.). 

Lawrence  (T.  E.). 
fSTURT,  Henry: 

Slrhillpr 

Sansom,  Sir  George  Bailey : 
Eliot. 

Sutherland,  Halliday  Gibson: 

Saunders,  Hilary  Aiden  St.  (Jeorge : 

Houston. 
Savory,  Douglas  Lloyd : 

Carson. 
ScHOLFiELD,  Alwyn  Faber : 

James. 
Schuster,  Claud  Schuster,  Baron: 

Philip. 
Swan,  Kenneth  Raydon: 

Steel-Maitland. 
Swinnerton,  Frank  Arthur: 

Bennett;  Harris,  J.  T.  (Frank). 
SwiNTON,  Sir  Ernest  Dunlop : 

Wilkinson  (H.  S.). 

Schuster  (F.  0.). 

Scott,  John  Waugh : 

Tate,  Sir  Robert  WiUiam: 

Mackenzie  (J.  S.). 

Ross  (J.). 

fSEYMOUR,  Sir  Edward : 

Tatlow,  Tissington: 

Victoria. 

Eraser  (D.). 

fSHAW,  Richard  James  Herbert : 

Tawney,  Richard  Henry: 

Healy  (J.  E.). 

Hobson  (J.  A.);  Postan  (Power). 

Shepherd,  Edwin  Colston : 

Taylor,  Frank  Sherwood : 

Mitchell;      Salmond;      Samson;      Smith 

Gunther. 

(C.  E.  K.). 

Temple,  Reginald  Cecil: 

Shera,  Frank  Henry : 

Aston;  Paris. 

Hadow  {W.  H.). 

Tennant,  Frederick  Robert : 

Shewring,  Walter: 

Sorley. 

Gill. 

Tennyson-D'Eyncourt,  Sir  Eustace  Henry 

Shuckburgh,  Sir  John  Evelyn : 

William,  Bart. : 

Dohhs. 

Biles;  Yarrow. 

SiEPMANN,  Harry  Arthur: 

Thomas,  Frederick  William : 

Blackett. 

Waddell. 

Simon,  John  AUsebrook  Simon,  Viscount : 

Thomas,  Ivor: 

Isaacs  (Reading). 

Heath. 

Simpson,  David  Capell : 

Thomas,  Mary  Gwyneth  Lloyd : 

Lock. 

Newall  (Phillpotts). 

List  of  Contributors 


Thompson,  Alexander  Hamilton : 

Baillie  (J.  B.);  Frere. 
Thompson,  John  Eric  Sidney: 

Gann. 
Thomson,  Gladys  Scott: 

Russell,  H.  A.  and  M.  du  C.  {Duke  and 

Duchess  of  Bedford). 
Thursfield,  Henry  George : 

Duff;    Fisher    {W.    W.);    Jerram;    Kelly; 

Ottley;  Phillimore. 
TiLLEY,  Cecil  Edgar : 

Harlcer. 
TizARD,  Sir  Henry  Thomas : 

Rutherford;  Threlfall. 
Tobias,  Theodore  Cronhelm : 

Atkinson. 
ToMLiN,  James  William  Sackett: 

Welldon. 
Tomlinson,  Henry  Major: 

Graham  (R.  B.  C). 
ToYNBEE,  Jocelyn  Mary  Catherine : 

Gardner  (E.  A.  and  P.). 
ToYNBEE,  Margaret  Ruth : 

Finberg;  Wain. 
Trevelyan,  George  Macaulay: 

Grey. 
Tkewin,  John  Courtenay: 

Campbell  (Mrs.  P.);  Terry  (F.). 
Tucker,  Bernard  WilUam : 

Jourdain. 
TwYMAN,  Frank: 

Taylor. 


Unwin,  Sir  Stanley: 
Macmillan  {F.  O.). 

fUTHWATT,      Augustus 

Baron : 
Tomlin. 


Andrewes    Uthwatt, 


Vaugeian  Williams,  Ralph : 
Hoist. 


Walker,  Edward  George: 

JJnvdn  {W.  C). 
f Walker,  Ernest: 

Maitland. 
Wallace,  William  Stewart: 

Grenfell, 
Walshe,  Francis  Martin  Rouse : 

Trotter. 
Wand,   John   William   Charles,   Bishop  of 
London  (W.  Londin.) : 

Donaldson. 
Ward,  Maisie  (Mrs.  Sheed): 

Chesterton. 


Watermeyer,     Ernest     Frederick,     Chief 
Justice : 

Kotze. 
Waters,  Sir  George  Alexander: 

Macpherson  (Strathcarron). 
Watson,  James  Anderson  Scott: 

Somerville. 
Watson,  Sir  Malcolm : 

Simpson  (J.  W.  R.). 
f  Watts,  William  Whitehead : 

Sollas. 
Weaver,  John  Reginald  Homer: 

Hunt  (W.). 
Wellington,  Hubert  Lindsay: 

Orpen. 
Whayman,  William  Matthias : 

Oram. 
Wheare,  Kenneth  Clinton : 

Morris;  Ward,  W.  H.  (Dudley). 
Wheeler,  Sir  Henry: 

Carlyle. 
Whittaker,  Sir  Edmund  Taylor : 

Macdonald  (H.  M.);  Sampson  (R.  A.). 
Whitworth,  Geoffrey  Arundel : 

Fagan;  Playfair. 
Williams,  Alwyn  Terrell  Petre,  Bishop  of 
Durham  (Alwyn  Dunehn.) : 

Gore. 
Wilson,  Sir  Horace  John : 

Shackleton;  Whitley. 
Wilson,  James  Bromley: 

Wilson  (H.  W.). 
Wilson,  Sir  James  Steuart: 

Greene;  Henschel. 
WiNFiELD,  Percy  Henry: 

Amos. 
Wood,  Hon.  Marion  Evelyn : 

Ashton  of  Hyde. 
Wood,  WilUam  John : 

Bourne  (F.  A.). 
Woodruff,  John  Douglas : 

Guthrie  (F.  Anstey). 
Wright,  Robert  Alderson  Wright,  Baron: 

Pollock  (F.). 
•fWROTTESLEY,  Sir  Fredcric  John: 

Pollock,  E.  M.  (Hanworth). 
Wyndham,  Hon.  Everard  Humphrey: 

Bridges;  Bulfin. 
Wyndham,  Hon.  Hugh  Archibald: 

Bailey  (A.);  FitzPatrick. 

Young,  Gerard  Mackworth : 

Kipling. 
Young,  Robert  Arthur : 

Fowler  (J.  K.). 

Zimmern,  Sir  Alfred  Eckhard : 
Wallas. 


CORRIGENDUM 

p.  195  Cox,  Harold: /or  'is  reputed  .  .  .  1859' 

read  'was  bom  at  Wimbledon,  16  August  1859' 


DICTIONAKY 


OF 


NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


(TWENTIETH  CENTURY) 
PERSONS  WHO  DIED  1931-1940 


Aberconway 


Abercrombie 


ABERCONWAY,  first  Baron  (1850- 
1934),  barrister  and  business  man.  [See 
McLaren,  Charles  Benjamin  Bright.] 

ABERCROMBIE,  LASCELLES  (1881- 
1938),  poet  and  critic,  the  fifth  son,  and 
the  eighth  of  nine  children,  of  Wilham 
Abercrombie,  stockbroker,  of  Ashton- 
upon-Mersey,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Ann 
Heron,  was  born  at  Ashton  9  January 
1881.  Even  in  boyhood  he  was  devoted 
to  music  and  letters ;  his  taste  was  fostered 
at  a  preparatory  school,  and  also  at  Mal- 
vern College,  where  he  read  Greek  and 
Latin  eagerly.  From  1900  to  1902  he  read 
science  at  the  Owens  College,  Manchester, 
but  then  turned  to  journalism  for  a  living 
and  to  poetry  for  his  vocation.  He  re- 
viewed much  in  the  Liverpool  daily  press ; 
his  first  poem,  'Blind',  appeared  in  1907 
and  his  first  volume  of  verse,  Interludes 
and  Poems,  in  1908.  In  1909  he  married 
Catherine,  daughter  of  Owen  Gwatkin, 
surgeon,  of  Grange-over- Sands ;  they  had 
three  sons  and  one  daughter.  After  a  stay 
of  more  than  a  year  in  Birkenhead  he  and 
his  wife  migrated  first  to  Herefordshire 
and  then  (1911)  to  Gloucestershire,  where, 
inspired  by  happiness  and  by  the  noble 
scenery,  he  published  some  of  his  best 
verse.  It  included  Mary  and  the  Bramble 
(1910),  The  Sale  of  St.  Thomas,  Act  I 
(1911),  and  also  some  poetic  plays  in  New 
Numbers,  i-iv  (1914),  a  periodical  privately 
issued  in  partnership  with  Rupert  Brooke, 
John  Drinkwater  [qq.v.],  and  Mr.  Wilfrid 
Gibson. 

Abercrombie  now  came  to  be  recognized 
as  a  leading  poet  of  the  new  generation, 
distinguished  for  his  lyrical  power  and 
speculative  daring.  He  was  praised  by 
Robert  Bridges  for  his  lucid  exposition  of 
difficult  themes.  He  responded  profoundly 
to  natural  beauty;  his  love-poetry  was 
ardent  and  exalted ;  and  the  mystical  and 
'metaphysical'  strain  was  never  far  away. 


It  is  heard  again  in  the  prose  of  Speculative 
Dialogues  (1913),  with  its  musmgs  on  life 
and  love  and  on  the  Last  Things ;  and  also 
in  several  dramatic  poems,  such  as  Deborah 
(1912),  which  were  not  designed  for  the 
stage.  But  several  were  acted;  of  these 
the  most  notable  is  The  End  of  the  World 
(published  in  New  Numbers),  in  which 
some  homely  folk  are  terrified  by  a  false 
alarm  that  doomsday  has  arrived. 

Abercrombie  was  still  to  write  his  best 
verse,  but  his  richest  period  of  poetic  pro- 
duction was  over.  The  war  of  1914-1918 
came  as  a  grievous  interruption.  Although 
a  keen  patriot  he  was  not  strong  enough 
for  miUtary  service  and  laboured  in  Liver- 
pool as  an  examiner  of  munitions.  When 
peace  came  he  was  at  a  loss  for  employ- 
ment, but  after  a  while  funds  were  found 
for  a  lecturership  in  poetry  at  Liverpool 
University;  this  appointment,  which  he 
held  from  1919  to  1922,  was  an  event  that 
was  to  affect  his  whole  career.  He  spoke 
upon  liis  own  craft;  he  held  public 
audiences,  not  least  by  his  rare  gift  for 
reading  aloud ;  and  he  taught  small  classes 
the  outlines  of  literary  criticism  and  of  its 
history.  Abercrombie  now  devoted  him- 
self chiefly  to  prose,  and  pubUshed  many 
critical  studies,  often  based  on  the  public 
lectures  which  he  gave  at  Cambridge,  at 
Baltimore,  to  the  British  Academy,  and 
elsewhere.  They  include  An  Essay  towards 
a  Theory  of  Art  (1922),  Principles  of 
English  Prosody  (1924),  and  Romanticism 
(1926).  Poetry,  its  Music  and  Meaning 
(1932)  is  a  felicitous  statement  of  his 
artistic  and  critical  convictions.  The 
article  on  Thomas  Hardy  in  this  Diction- 
ary is  eloquent  of  a  lifelong  admiration. 
A  very  active  professor,  Abercrombie 
rose  quickly  in  the  academic  world.  He 
occupied  the  chair  of  English  literature 
at  Leeds  University  from  1922  to  1929 
and  was  Hildred  Carlile  professor  of  Eng- 
lish literature  in  London  University,  at 


Abercrombie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Bedford  College  for  Women,  from  1929 
to  1935.  In  1935  he  became  Goldsmiths' 
reader  in  English  at  Oxford  and  a  fellow 
of  Merton  College.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Cam- 
bridge, Manchester,  and  Belfast;  held 
several  special  lecturerships,  including  the 
Clark  lecturership  at  Trinity  CoUege,  Cam- 
bridge, in  1923,  and  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  British  Academy  in  1937.  But  his 
health  declined,  and  he  died  in  London 
27  October  1938. 

In  1930  the  Oxford  University  Press 
published  (in  'The  Oxford  Poets')  Aber- 
crombie's  collected  Poems,  all  but  one,  the 
richest  and  maturest  of  all,  the  completed 
Sale  of  St.  Thomas  (1931).  Here,  in  a  style 
which  often  rises  to  grandeur,  he  proclaims 
his  faith  in  an  omnipresent  divine  spirit 
embodying  the  law  of  ideal  beauty.  Aber- 
crombie deepened  and  ennobled  English 
'metaphysical'  poetry.  He  charged  it 
anew  with  his  passionate  feeling  for  the 
essential  beauty  of  nature  and  of  human 
nature.  The  symbolism  may  be  now  and 
then  excessive,  or  too  difficult ;  yet  again 
and  again,  as  in  some  of  his  early  lyrics, 
in  the  stately  choruses  of  'Peregrinus',  in 
'Marriage  Song',  and  never  better  than 
in  'The  Death  of  a  Friar',  he  achieves 
either  beauty,  or  strength,  or  magnificence, 
or  aU  these  in  harmony. 

[The  Times,  28  October  1938 ;  Oliver  Elton, 
Lascelles  Abercrombie,  1881—1938  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxv,  1939 
(portrait  and  bibliography) ;  Wilfrid  Gibson 
in  English,  vol.  ii,  No.  10,  1939 ;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Oliver  Elton. 

ABERDEEN  AND  TEMAIR,  first 
Marquess  of  (1847-1934),  statesman,  and 
ABERDEEN  AND  TEMAIR,  Marchion- 
ess OF  (1857-1939).  [See  Gordon,  John 
Campbell.] 

ADAMS,  Sir  JOHN  (1857-1934),  educa- 
tionist, was  born  at  Glasgow  2  July  1857, 
the  son  of  Charles  Adams,  of  that  city,  by 
his  wife,  Barbara  McCallum.  From  St. 
David's  School  he  entered  the  Jordanhill 
Training  College  and  the  university  of 
Glasgow  (1875),  where  he  graduated  with 
a  first  class  in  mental  and  moral  science. 
He  became  headmaster  of  Jean  Street 
school,  Port-Glasgow,  and  afterwards 
rector  of  Campbeltown  Grammar  School. 
This  experience  of  school  practice  formed 
a  sound  basis  for  his  subsequent  work  as 
a  trainer  of  teachers  and  as  a  luiiversity 
lecturer  in  education.    In  1890  he  was 


appointed  principal  of  the  Free  Church 
Training  College,  Aberd^|^,  and  in  1898 
became  rector  of  the  Free  Church  Train- 
ing College,  Glasgow.  Here  his  connexion 
with  university  teaching  began,  for  he 
then  held  the  lecturership  in  education  in 
the  university  of  Glasgow. 

The  year  1897  was  noteworthy  in 
Adams's  career ;  he  not  only  had  the  local 
distinction  of  being  president  (from  1896) 
of  the  Educational  Institute  of  Scotland, 
but  gained  much  wider  fame  by  the 
publication  of  a  provocative  httle  book 
the  forbidding  title  of  which,  Herbartian 
Psychology  applied  to  Education,  belied 
the  sprightliness  of  its  contents. 

The  year  1902  was  another  important 
landmark  in  Adams's  career.  He  visited 
Canada;  published  an  account  of  the 
Protestant  schools  of  the  province  of 
Quebec;  was  appointed  principal  of  the 
London  Day  Training  College ;  and  became 
the  first  professor  of  education  in  the  uni- 
versity of  London.  For  the  next  twenty 
years  London  was  the  main  field  of  liis 
labours.  He  was  pre-eminently  the  teacher 
of  London  teachers — not  only  teachers  in 
training,  but  also  teachers  at  work.  For 
he  lectured  abundantly  in  the  evenings  as 
weU  as  in  the  day-time.  After  he  had,  in 
1922,  retired  from  training  college  work 
and  become  emeritus  professor,  he  set  out 
on  his  journeys  overseas,  and  by  the 
delivery  of  series  of  lectures  m  the  United 
States  of  America,  South  Africa,  Australia, 
and  New  Zealand  he  became  an  inter- 
national figure  in  the  world  of  education. 

Adams  published  many  books,  the  most 
important  of  which,  in  addition  to  Her- 
bartian Psychology,  are  Exposition  and 
Illustration  in  Teaching  (1909),  The  Evolu- 
tion of  Ediccational  Theory  (1912),  The 
Student's  Guide  (1917),  and  Everyman's 
Psychology  (1929).  AU  these  works,  like 
his  lectures,  are  characterized  by  an  easy 
style,  a  shrewd  wisdom,  and  a  'pawky' 
humour. 

Adams  was  singularly  happy  in  his 
marriage  in  1893  to  Agnes  Anne,  youngest 
daughter  of  John  Cook,  of  Ashley,  Aber- 
deen. There  were  no  children.  In  1925 
he  was  knighted  for  his  services  to  educa- 
tion, and  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
was  conferred  upon  him  by  St.  Andrews 
University.  > 

As  a  lecturer  Adams  was  a  memorable 
figure.  His  impressive  bald  head,  his 
Scottish  accent,  his  clear,  incisive  style, 
and  particularly  his  sly  humour,  rendered 
him  attractive  to  audiences  all  over  the 
British  Empire.  He  died  suddenly,  as  the 


2 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Alexander 


result  of  a  stroke,  at  Los  Angeles  30  Sep- 
tember 1934. 

[The  Times,  2  October  1934 ;  Titnes  Edtica- 
tional  Supplement,  6  October  1934;  liecords 
of  the  Educational  Institute  of  Scotland ;  Sir 
Michael  Sadler,  John  Adams  (University  of 
London  Institute  of  Education,  Studies  and 
Reports,  No.  vi),  1985 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
P.  B.  Baixard. 

A  E  (pseudonym),  Irish  writer.  [See 
Russell,  George  William.] 

ALEXANDER,  SAMUEL  (1859-1938), 
philosopher,  the  third  son  and  fourth  child 
of  Samuel  Alexander,  an  Australian,  by 
his  wife,  Eliza  Sloman,  who  came  from 
Cape  Town,  was  born  at  Sydney,  New 
South  Wales,  6  January  1859.  His  father, 
a  saddler,  died  of  consumption  at  the  age 
of  thirty-eight,  shortly  before  his  birth. 
His  mother  died  in  his  house  at  Man- 
chester in  1917,  having  gone  to  live  with 
him  there,  with  the  rest  of  her  family,  in 
1908.  About  1868  the  family  left  Sydney 
for  St.  Kilda,  a  suburb  of  Melbourne,  and 
Alexander,  after  a  varied  early  schooling, 
entered  Wesley  College,  Melbourne,  in 
1871.  There,  and  in  his  two  years  at  the 
university  of  Melbourne,  where  he  held  an 
exhibition,  he  gained  all  the  distinctions 
open  to  him.  In  1877,  without  completing 
his  degree,  he  sailed  for  England  on  a 
voyage  lasting  108  days,  with  the  express 
purpose,  bold  in  view  of  the  family 
finances,  of  winning  a  scholarship  at  Ox- 
ford or  Cambridge.  Being  advised  that  a 
scholarship  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
might  be  beyond  his  reach,  he  prudently 
entered  for  one  at  Lincoln  College  as  well, 
and  did  not  succeed.  But  he  won  his 
scholarship  at  Balliol.  Lincoln  made 
amends  by  electing  him  to  a  fellowship  in 
1882.  Its  choice  was  amply  justified  by 
the  sustained  distinction  of  Alexander's 
undergraduate  career,  for  he  obtained 
first  classes  in  mathematical  and  classical 
moderations  (1879)  and  in  literae  human- 
iores  (1881).  According  to  the  Jewish 
Chronicle  (5  May  1882)  this  was  the  first 
election  of  a  professing  Jew  to  a  fellow- 
ship in  either  of  the  ancient  English 
universities. 

Alexander  retained  his  fellowship  for 
eleven  years,  residing  in  Oxford  except 
for  the  period  between  the  end  of  1888  and 
the  June  of  1891.  The  break,  originally 
designed  to  be  permanent,  was  due  partly 
to  his  desire  to  mingle  with  a  wider  world, 
partly  to  his  determination  to  increase  his 
proficiency  in  experimental  psychology.  In 


pursuit  of  the  latter  aim  he  studied  imder 
Hugo  Miinsterberg  at  Freiburg-im-Breis- 
gau ;  in  pursuit  of  the  former,  he  lectured 
at  Toynbee  Hall,  Whitechapel,  and  busied 
himself  in  other  ways  with  the  populariza- 
tion of  academic  subjects.  These  activi- 
ties grew  out  of  the  settled  policy  of  his 
mind,  in  or  out  of  Oxford.  In  Oxford  he 
was  one  of  the  rebels  who  thought  that 
the  course  in  'Greats'  needed  quickening 
from  modern  science,  especially  psy- 
chology. He  lectured  on  that  subject  to 
any,  dons  or  undergraduates,  who  were 
sufficiently  interested  to  attend  super- 
numerary courses.  The  same  policy 
directed  Alexander's  occasional  writings 
and  his  first  book.  Moral  Order  and  Pro- 
gress (1889),  an  expansion  of  his  essay  for 
the  Green  moral  philosophy  prize  which 
he  had  won  in  1887.  It  may  still  be  what 
in  its  day  it  was  widely  believed  to  be,  the 
best  systematic  general  treatise  on  evolu- 
tionary ethics  in  the  English  language. 
Ir^  his  preface  Alexander  expressed  his 
'present  dissent  from  Green's  funda- 
mental principles'  and  added:  'I  have 
come  to  the  ideas,  borrowed  from  biology 
and  the  theory  of  evolution,  which  are 
prevalent  in  modern  ethics,  with  a  train- 
ing derived  from  Aristotle  and  Hegel,  and 
I  have  found,  not  antagonism  but,  on  the 
whole,  fulfilment.' 

In  1898  Alexander  became  professor  of 
philosophy  at  the  university  of  Man- 
chester, where  he  taught  for  thirty-one 
years.  It  was  a  happy  appointment.  Even 
the  physical  climate  of  'dear  old  sooty 
Manchester'  was  tolerably  congenial  to 
him.  In  its  university,  while  he  had  rather 
too  many  courses  to  give,  their  variety 
stimulated  him,  and,  his  classes  being 
small,  he  could  think  aloud  as  he  lectured. 
His  academic  influence  soon  extended  far 
beyond  his  lecture-room.  Indeed,  he  was 
of  the  stuff  of  which  legends  are  made  in 
advance  of  the  subject's  actions.  His 
width  of  interests,  his  vmstudied,  notor- 
ious, picturesque  untidiness,  his  catholic 
understanding  of  whatever  was  young 
almost  compelled  this  result.  Long  before 
he  reached  the  peak  of  his  fame  he  had 
become  a  focus  for  admiration  and  for  vast 
affection  in  the  university  and  in  the  city. 
He  was  prominent  in  the  university's  more 
public  activities,  especially  in  the  move- 
ment for  providing  university  residences 
for  women.  In  an  extra-academic  way  his 
feminist  principles  made  him  favour  the 
cause,  although  not  always  the  tactics,  of 
the  lively  local  advocates  of  women's 
suffrage. 


Alexander 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


As  the  years  passed,  many  of  his  friends 
began  to  fear  that  Alexander's  wide  know- 
ledge and  his  highly  original  powers  would 
never  find  expression  in  print.  A  very  few 
articles  and  an  admirable  little  book  on 
Locke  (1908)  were  inadequate  counter- 
evidence.  By  1907,  however,  according 
to  his  own  modest  statement,  he  had  come 
to  believe  that  he  might  have  something 
to  say.  He  took  his  cue,  in  a  measure, 
from  the  'realist'  principle  of  Dr.  G.  E. 
Moore's  'Refutation  of  Idealism'  {Mind, 
1903),  but  unlike  many  contemporary 
'realists'  was  never  content  with  polemi- 
cal forays  into  the  theory  of  knowledge, 
lie  was  always  bent  upon  a  comprehensive 
system  of  ontological  metaphysics,  and 
this  attitude,  at  the  time,  raised  excep- 
tional interest  and  expectation  in  the 
small  world  of  technical  British  philo- 
sophy. The  interest  grew  as  Alexander  in 
a  series  of  presidential  addresses  to  the 
Aristotelian  Society  (1908-1911:  he  was 
again  president,  1936-1937)  and  in  articles 
in  Mind  (1912-1913)  attempted  the  ex- 
ploratory work  which,  as  he  always  main- 
tained, should  precede  the  composition  of 
a  serious  philosophical  treatise.  When  the 
university  of  Glasgow,  shortly  before  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  invited  him  to  become 
its  Gifford  lecturer,  there  was  a  general  be- 
lief that  he  would  use  the  opportunity  to 
complete  the  huge  task  for  which  he  had 
been  preparing  so  sedulously  for  at  least 
seven  years. 

An  elaborate  essay,  The  Basis  of  Real- 
ism, published  for  the  British  Academy  in 
1914,  tlie  year  after  he  had  been  elected 
a  fellow  of  that  body,  is  an  admirable 
summary  of  the  results  which  Alexander 
had  reached  during  this  preparatory 
period.  The  Gifford  lectures  themselves, 
given  in  the  war  years  1917  and  1918, 
were  called  'Space,  Time,  and  Deity'. 
Strenuously  revised,  but  not  very  much 
altered,  they  were  published  under  the 
same  title  (although  Alexander  much  pre- 
ferred the  hyphenated  form  'space-time') 
in  two  substantial  volumes  in  1920.  By 
that  time  the  issue  of '  realism'  had  become 
subordinate  in  the  author's  philosophy, 
although,  if  the  name  matters,  he  remained 
a  realist,  holding  that  mind  takes  its  place 
among  the  differentiated  compresents  in 
space-time.  Primarily  Alexander  was  a 
metaphysician  who  attempted  to  describe 
and  'identify  in  concrete  experience'  'the 
ultimates  which  the  sciences  left  over'. 
Whatever  is,  he  maintained,  is  a  specifica- 
tion of  space-time,  either  a  'categorial' 
(or  wholly  pervasive)  attribute  of  space- 


time,  or,  like  the  neural  process  which  is 
'enjoyed'  as  personal  experience,  some- 
thing 'empirical'  (i.e.  non-pervasive) 
which  nevertheless  evolves  or  'emerges' 
from  the  'continuum  of  motions'  which 
is  the  ultimate  matrix  space-time.  Deity 
is  the  stage  beyond  mind,  as  yet  unaccom- 
plished but  descriptive  of  a  nisus  in  space- 
time  towards  a  specific  accomplishment 
which,  just  because  it  expresses  the  march 
of  things,  should  receive  the  reverent 
acquiescence  of  'natural  piety'. 

The  value  of  the  book  has  to  be  esti- 
mated by  the  vision,  skill,  and  resolution 
with  which  it  pursued  its  sweeping  design. 
It  is  only  accurate  to  say  that,  after 
Hobbes,  no  English  philosopher,  before 
Alexander,  had  built  in  accordance  with 
so  ambitious  an  architectural  plan  or  had 
given  comparable  attention  to  the  pro- 
portion and  solidity  of  all  the  parts  of  his 
edifice.  In  less  than  a  decade  the  general 
opinion  was  that  the  book  marked  the  end 
of  an  epoch  rather  than  a  fresh  beginning, 
and  Alexander  himself  considered  that  the 
future  was  with  A.  N.  Whitehead,  rather 
than  with  himself,  so  far  as  such  a  philo- 
sophy had  a  future.  He  preferred  to  let 
his  book  stand  with  very  few  published 
afterthoughts,  although  his  essay  on 
Spinoza  and  Time  (1921)  is  an  important 
supplement.  Probably  several  decades 
must  elapse  before  a  verdict  can  be  given 
with  the  relative  finality  which  such  cases 
permit.  Whatever  that  later  verdict  may 
be,  it  is  undeniable,  in  the  interim,  that 
Alexander  was  a  great  philosophical  archi- 
tect whose  skill  and  resourcefulness  deserve 
abiding  recognition.  In  himself  he  was 
modest  although  not  self-depreciating.  He 
wrote  and  planned  in  the  grand  manner 
simply  because  no  other  maimer  suited 
his  theme. 

Alexander  resigned  his  chair  in  1924, 
but  continued  to  reside  in  Manchester  in 
honoured  and  busy  tranquillity.  Man- 
chester's pride  in  him  seemed  to  increase 
with  his  years.  In  its  university  he  pre- 
sented for  honorary  degrees  until  1930, 
in  a  memorably  delightful  way.  His  fairly 
frequent  public  lectures  were  eagerly 
attended  in  Manchester  and  elsewhere. 
At  philosophical  congresses  he  held  as  of 
right  the  unofficial  position  of  the  fore- 
most British  philosopher,  distinguished  in 
appearance,  matter,  manner,  and  beauty 
of  voice,  sensitive  to  the  meeting's  mind, 
and  overcoming  the  lifelong  handicap  of 
his  deafness  in  the  most  charming  manner 
imaginable.  His  main  interest  in  these 
closing  years  was  in  literature  and  aesthetic 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Allen,  p.  S. 


theory.  This  is  shown  in  several  of  the 
essays  published  after  his  death  in  Philo- 
sophical and  Literary  Pieces  (1939)  and  in 
his  last  book,  Beauty  and  Other  Forms  of 
Value  (1933).  Here,  despite  the  perils  of 
a  refractory  and  elusive  subject,  Alex- 
ander's delicate  ear  for  verbal  music,  his 
love  of  the  illuminating  magic  of  appro- 
priate imagery,  and  his  vivid  psychological 
interest  in  the  mind  and  methods  of  great 
artists  in  many  spheres  of  art  made  his 
book,  if  not  altogether  great,  something 
more  than  merely  a  great  man's  book. 

Alexander  died  at  Manchester  13  Septem- 
ber 1938,  and  his  ashes  lie  in  the  section 
reserved  for  the  British  Jewish  Reform 
Congregation  in  Manchester  Southern 
cemetery.  He  was  unmarried.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
St.  Andrews,  Durham,  Oxford,  Birming- 
ham, Liverpool,  and  Cambridge,  and  was 
appointed  to  the  Order  of  Merit  in  1930. 
He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Lincoln  College  in  1918  and  of  Balliol 
College  in  1925.  In  the  latter  year  his 
friends  presented  him  with  a  bust  by 
Jacob  Epstein :  it  is  now  in  the  hall  of  the 
Arts  Building  of  Manchester  University. 

[The  Times,  14  September  1938 ;  The  Times 
Literary  Supplement,  23  March  1940 ;  J.  Laird, 
Samuel  Alexander,  1859—1938  in  Proceedings 
of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxiv,  1938 ; 
Memoir  prefixed  to  Philosophical  and  Literary 
Pieces  (containing  a  bibliography) ;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Laird. 


ALLEN,  PERCY  STAFFORD  (1869- 
1933),  president  of  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Oxford,  and  Erasmian  scholar,  was  born 
at  Twickenham  7  July  1869,  the  younger 
son  and  fourth  child  of  Joseph  Allen,  a 
London  bill-broker,  by  his  wife,  Mary, 
youngest  daughter  of  Hans  David  Chris- 
topher Satow,  and  sister  of  the  diplomatist 
and  historian  Sir  E.  M.  Satow  [q.v.]. 
Percy  Allen  was  educated  at  Clifton,  and 
at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  was  a  scholar.  He  obtained  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations  in  1890  and  a 
second  class  in  literae  humaniores  in  1892. 
In  1893  he  travelled  with  a  pupil  in 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  Returning 
to  Oxford  at  the  end  of  that  year,  he  won 
the  chancellor's  prize  for  a  Latin  essay  in 
the  summer  of  1894.  In  1896  he  became 
a  master  at  Magdalen  School,  Oxford,  and 
in  1897  was  appointed  professor  of  history 
in  the  Government  CoUege  at  Lahore.  In 
the  summer  of  1898  he  visited  England, 
marrying  in  September  his  cousin,  Helen 


Mary,  daughter  of  Arthur  John  Allen,  of 
Chislehurst.  They  had  one  child,  who  died 
at  birth.  The  climate  of  India  seriously 
affected  the  health  both  of  himself  and 
his  wife,  and  in  1901  he  resigned  his  Lahore 
professorship  and  returned  to  Oxford, 
where  the  rest  of  his  life  was  spent.  In 
1908  he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at 
Merton,  which  he  held  for  sixteen  years, 
and  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  in 
1925.  In  1924  he  was  elected  president  of 
Corpus.  He  received  honorary  degrees 
from  several  British  and  foreign  univer- 
sities, was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1923,  and  was  a  foreign, 
honorary,  or  extraordinary  member  of 
several  Dutch  and  Belgian  academies  and 
learned  societies.  He  died  at  Oxford 
16  June  1933. 

Allen's  name  will  always  be  associated 
with  his  masterly  edition  of  the  Letters 
of  Erasmus,  Opu^  Epistolarum  Des.  Erasmi 
Roterdami,  of  which  the  first  volume  ap- 
peared in  1906  and  the  eighth  was  pub- 
lished posthumously  in  1934 ;  he  left  it  to 
Mrs.  Allen  (his  collaborator  since  1922) 
and  Mr.  Heathcote  William  Garrod  to  com- 
plete the  last  three  volumes,  for  which  he 
had  collected  the  materials,  but  without 
furnishing  commentary  and  introductions 
(vol.  ix  appeared  in  1938,  vol.  x  in  1941, 
vol.  xi  in  1947).  Allen's  interest  in  Erasmus 
dated  from  1892,  when,  immediately  after 
taking  his  first  degree,  he  competed,  un- 
successfully, for  the  chancellor's  English 
essay  prize.  The  subject  was  Erasmus.  A 
year  later  (1893-1894)  he  attended  for  two 
successive  terms  Froude's  lectures  on  '  The 
Life  and  Letters  of  Erasmus'.  Froude 
influenced  him  profoundly.  To  the  end, 
he  maintained  that  the  Life  and  Letters 
(published  in  1894)  was  better  than  any 
other  book  on  Erasmus.  On  the  day  on 
which  Froude  died,  he  began  to  read  the 
History  of  England;  and  he  was  never  will- 
ing to  listen  to  disparagement  of  it.  His 
first  published  book  was  a  volume  of 
Selections  from  the  Writings  of  James 
Anthony  Froude,  which  appeared  in  1901. 
His  errorless  scholarship  and  his  gentle, 
impartial  temper  make  his  admiration  for 
Froude  seem  paradoxical.  But  he  was  a 
man  incapable  of  paradox.  The  truth  is 
that,  on  the  main  issues  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, he  thought  that  Froude  was  right. 

During  his  four  years  in  India  Froude 
and  Erasmus  were  always  with  Allen. 
While  at  Lahore  he  was  already  projecting 
his  edition  of  Erasmus's  correspondence, 
for  which,  indeed,  he  had  made  extensive 
collections  in  the  libraries  of  Holland  and 


Allen,  P.  S. 


D.N.B.  1031-1940 


Germany  between  the  years  1893  and 
1896.  After  his  return  to  Oxford  in  1901, 
he  spent  the  summer  of  every  year  (the 
years  of  the  war  of  1914-1918  only 
excepted)  in  the  Ubraries  of  the  conti- 
nent, collating  all  the  known  material  and 
bringing  to  light  an  immense  amount  of 
material  hitherto  unknown.  Every  letter 
was  copied  fair  in  the  library  where  the 
manuscript  of  it  (or  the  first  printed  text) 
was  to  be  found.  The  copy  so  made 
became  the  '  printer's  copy ',  with  no  inter- 
vening transcript.  The  proof  of  each  letter 
was  always  corrected  in  the  library  where 
the  original  copy  had  been  made.  In  the 
decipherment  of  difficult  fifteenth-  and 
sixteenth-century  hands  Allen  had  no 
rival.  There  resulted  a  critical  edition  of 
the  letters  of  Erasmus  which  is  perhaps 
the  most  accurate  book  in  the  world. 
Text  apart,  it  is,  in  its  commentary  and 
introduction,  a  treasure-house  of  un- 
borrowed learning.  Nobody  knew  the 
texts  of  the  Reformation  so  well  as  AUen. 
To  nobody  were  the  lives  of  the  great  and 
little  men  of  the  period  so  intimately 
famUiar.  The  commentary  is  full  of  bio- 
graphical notices  which  array  in  brief  all 
the  available  material.  Often  the  persons 
whose  lives  or  works  are  sketched  are 
persons  obscure  or  insignificant.  But 
Allen  knew  them  and  their  writings,  and 
anything  that  anybody  else  had  written 
about  them,  at  first  hand.  It  was  not  for 
nothing  that  Ingram  Bywater  [q.v.]  in 
1915  called  him  'the  most  learned  man 
in  Oxford'.  The  Opus  Epistolarum  is,  in 
truth,  one  of  the  great  monuments  of 
English  learning.  As  a  commentary  on 
the  Reformation  it  has  the  defect,  per- 
haps, of  leaving  too  much  to  the  reader. 
Allen  was  unwiiling  to  make  historical 
judgements,  or  moral  judgements.  The 
student  will  not  discover  from  Allen  (al- 
though he  may  do  so  from  the  Letters) 
what  kind  of  a  man  Erasmus  was,  or  any- 
body connected  with  him.  The  material 
for  judgement  is  there ;  but  it  is  presented 
with  a  scrupulosity  and  bareness  which 
sometimes  achieves  the  effect  of  a  sup- 
pressio  veri.  Often  the  reader  sighs  for 
something  of  Froude's  partisanship. 

Besides  the  Opus  Epistolarum  Allen 
published,  in  1914,  eleven  lectures  on  The 
Age  of  Erasmus.  In  1929  he  and  his  wife 
edited  the  Letters  of  Richard  Fox,  1486- 
1527,  the  correspondence  of  the  founder  of 
Corpus.  In  1934  appeared  posthumously 
another  volume  of  Erasmian  studies, 
Erasmus:  Lectures  and  Wayfaring  Sketches. 
In  1939  a  selection  of  his  letters  was  pub- 


lished, the  greater  number  of  them  ad- 
dressed to  his  lifelong  friend  Sir  Aurel 
Stein.  The  letters  exhibit  happily  a 
scholar  of  single-minded  devotion  and  a 
man  of  lovable  and  saintly  character. 

A  portrait  of  Allen,  painted  by  Herbert 
Olivier  in  1929,  hangs  in  the  president's 
lodgings  at  Corpus  Christi  College. 

[H.  W.  Garrod,  Percy  Stafford  Allen,  1S69~ 
1933  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  xix,  1933 ;  Oxford  Magazine,  12  October 
1933 ;  Letters  of  P.  S.  Allen,  edited  by  H.  M. 
Allen,  1939 ;  P.  S.  Allen's  diaries ;  personal 
knowledge.]  H.  W.  Garbod. 

ALLEN,  REGINALD  CLIFFORD, 
Baron  Allen  of  Hurt  wood  (1889- 
1939),  labour  politician,  was  born  at  New- 
port, Monmouthshire,  9  May  1889,  the 
elder  son  of  Walter  Allen,  a  Newport 
draper,  by  his  wife,  Frances  Augusta 
Baker.  He  was  educated  at  Berkhamsted 
School,  University  College,  Bristol,  and 
Peterhouse,  Cambridge.  His  political 
interests  were  first  aroused  by  hearing 
J.  Keir  Hardie  [q.v.]  as  a  boy  at  Newport ; 
and  at  Cambridge  he  was  chairman  of  the 
University  Fabian  Society.  In  1911  he 
was  appointed  secretary  and  general 
manager  of  the  first  official  labour  daily 
newspaper,  the  Daily  Citizen,  xmtil  it 
ceased  in  1915.  He  was  also  chairman  of 
the  University  Socialist  Federation  from 
1912  to  1915. 

In  November  1914  he  was  one  of  the 
founders  and  the  chairman  of  the  'No 
Conscription  Fellowship',  the  members  of 
which  opposed  the  military  service  acts 
and  refused  service  in  the  armed  forces, 
some,  like  Allen,  also  refusing  to  perform 
'alternative  service',  on  conscientious 
grounds.  While  chairman  of  the  fellow- 
ship (1914-1918)  he  was  three  times 
imprisoned  during  the  years  1916  and 
1917,  and  the  hunger  strikes  which  he 
sustained  almost  cost  him  his  life  and 
certainly  undermined  a  naturally  frail 
physique. 

In  1920  AUen  visited  Russia  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  delegation  representing  the  inde- 
pendent labour  party,  of  which  he  was 
an  active  officer,  serving  (1922-1926)  as 
chairman  and  treasurer,  and  as  chairman  of 
the  New  Leader,  its  official  weekly  journal. 
He  contributed  by  counsel,  speech,  and 
pen  to  the  '  Socialism  in  Our  Time'  propa- 
ganda which  the  independent  labour  party 
conducted  in  the  'twenties.  So  long  as 
the  official  labour  movement  was  solely 
responsible  for  its  publication  he  was  a 
director  of  the  Daily  Herald  (1925-1930). 


6 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


AUenby 


When  the  labour  government  dissolved 
in  1931,  Allen  joined  Ramsay  MacDonald 
in  the  national  labour  organization,  and 
approved  its  collaboration  in  the '  national ' 
government  formed  in  that  year;  he  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Allen  of 
Hurtwood,  in  Surrey,  in  1932.  He  was  a 
keen  and  informed  supporter  of  the  League 
of  Nations  and  severed  his  connexion  with 
the  national  labour  group  in  1936,  owing 
to  disagreement  on  this  aspect  of  inter- 
national policy.  After  meeting  Hitler  and 
Goring  in  Berlin,  in  1935,  Allen  wrote  and 
spoke  extensively  in  favour  of  collective 
security. 

Intensely  interested  in  educational 
affairs,  Allen  of  Hurtwood  was  chairman 
of  the  executive  of  the  Home  and  School 
Council  and  chairman  of  the  New  Schools 
Association.  He  married  in  1921  Marjory, 
second  daughter  of  George  Joseph  Gill, 
and  with  her  conducted  a  co-educational 
school  on  modern  lines  near  Guildford. 
He  published  various  political  works,  a 
preface  to  Conscription  and  Conscience 
(1922),  Putting  Socialism  into  Practice 
(1924),  Socialism  and  the  next  Labour 
Government  (1925),  Labour's  Future  at 
Stake  (1932),  Britain's  Political  Future 
(1934),  and  Peace  in  Our  Time  (1936),  in 
addition  to  many  articles  in  newspapers 
and  reviews. 

Suffering  from  a  complete  breakdown 
in  1938,  Allen  of  Hurtwood  was  taken  to 
Switzerland,  and  died  at  Montana-Vermala 
3  March  1939.  After  cremation  his  ashes, 
at  his  own  request,  were  scattered  in  the 
Lake  of  Geneva.  His  only  child  was  a 
daughter  and  the  peerage  therefore  became 
extinct. 

A  portrait  of  Allen  of  Hurtwood,  by 
Colin  Gill,  is  at  Hurtwood  House,  Albury, 
Guildford. 

[The  Times,  4  March  1939 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

ALLENB Y,  EDMUND  HENRY  HYN- 

MAN,  first  Viscount  Allenby  of  Megid- 
DO  (1861-1936),  field-marshal,  was  born 
23  April  1861  on  the  estate  of  his  maternal 
grandfather,  Brackenhurst,  near  South- 
well, Nottinghamshire.  He  was  the  eldest 
son  and  second  child  of  Hynman  Allenby, 
a  country  gentleman,  by  his  wife,  Catherine 
Anne,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Coats 
Cane.  From  the  year  of  their  marriage 
(1859)  until  that  of  Edmund's  birth  his 
parents  had  lived  at  Dartmouth.  Soon 
afterwards  they  purchased  Felixstowe 
House,  in  Suffolk,  and  West  Bilney  Lodge, 


with  a  considerable  estate,  in  Norfolk. 
The  family  thenceforth  spent  spring  and 
summer  at  Felixstowe,  autumn  and  winter 
at  West  Bilney.  Young  Allenby  grew  up 
in  close  contact  with  the  life  and  sport  of 
the  countryside.  He  rode,  shot,  fished, 
and  sailed,  and  he  early  acquired  the 
ornithological  and  botanical  interests 
which  were  to  remain  with  him  all  his  life. 

Allenby  was  educated  at  Haileybury, 
a  new  public  school  founded  the  year 
after  his  birth,  and  at  the  Royal  Military 
College,  Sandhurst.  It  had  been  his 
original  intention  to  enter  the  Indian  civil 
service,  but  he  failed  to  pass  the  entrance 
examinations  in  1879  and  1880,  when 
there  were  vacancies  for  only  about  one- 
seventh  of  the  candidates.  His  next  choice 
was  the  army.  He  was  not  particularly 
distinguished  at  work  or  sport  at  Hailey- 
bury but  he  passed  well  into  and  out  of 
Sandhurst,  where  he  was  an  under-officer 
in  his  last  term.  In  May  1882  he  was 
gazetted  to  a  commission  in  the  Innis- 
killings  (6th  Dragoons).  He  was  then  a 
big,  strong,  good-looking  young  man, 
somewhat  clumsy  in  build,  although  his 
weight  did  not  increase  unduly  to  his 
dying  day.  His  eye  had  been  trained  for 
observation  of  country,  and  he  possessed 
a  strong  and  dominating  character,  physi- 
cal and  moral  courage,  and  presence  of 
mind,  so  that  he  had  good  prospects  in 
his  career. 

The  Inniskillings  were  stationed  in 
South  Africa,  and  Allenby  gained  invalu- 
able experience  in  two  little  expeditions, 
both  bloodless,  or  nearly  so,  into  Bechu- 
analand  (1884-1885)  and  Zululand  (1888), 
as  well  as  knowledge  of  people  and  country 
which  were  to  serve  him  well  later  on.  In 
1886  he  went  home  for  two  years'  service 
at  the  cavalry  depot  at  Canterbury.  He 
was  promoted  captain  early  in  1888,  the 
year  of  his  return,  and  appointed  adjutant 
next  year.  It  was  noted  by  his  brother 
officers  that  the  new  responsibility  not 
only  made  him  take  his  profession  much 
more  seriously  but  also  induced  a  certain 
grimness  of  disposition. 

The  regiment  returned  to  England  in 
1890,  and  in  1896  Allenby  passed  into  the 
Staff  College,  by  competition,  at  a  time 
when  few  cavalrymen  entered  except  by 
nomination.  He  made  no  outstanding 
mark  in  his  military  studies  but  was 
popular  with  his  fellow  students,  and  was 
elected  master  of  the  drag  hounds  in 
preference  to  Douglas  (afterwards  Earl) 
Haig,  a  better  horseman  than  himself.  He 
passed  out  with  a  good  report.   While  at 


Allenby 

Camberley  he  had  been  promoted  major 
in  May  1897,  and  qualified  as  an  army 
interpreter  in  French.  He  had  also  married, 
in  1896,  Adelaide  Mabel,  daughter  of 
Horace  Edward  Chapman,  of  Donhead 
House,  Salisbury.  In  March  1898  he 
became  what  would  now  be  termed 
brigade-major  but  was  then  termed  ad- 
jutant to  the  3rd  Cavalry  brigade  at  the 
Curragh,  in  Ireland.  While  he  was  hold- 
ing this  appointment  his  only  child,  a  son, 
was  bom. 

Allenby  rejoined  his  regiment  the  follow- 
ing year  on  the  outbreak  of  the  South 
African  war.  Shrewd  and  cautious,  with 
knowledge  of  the  character  and  qualities 
of  his  adversary,  he  fell  into  none  of  the 
traps  laid  by  the  Boers,  and  it  was  due 
to  his  good  work  in  the  operations  round 
Colesberg  that  his  squadron  was  chosen 
as  part  of  the  cavalry  division  formed 
under  General  French  for  the  relief  of 
Kimberley  in  the  early  part  of  1900.  In 
the  numerous  small  actions  or  marches 
with  convoys  his  losses  were  small. 

Early  in  1900  Allenby  assumed  tempor- 
ary command  of  his  regiment  at  Bloem- 
fontein  and  with  it  took  part  in  the  main 
advance  to  Pretoria.  His  great  chance 
came  with  the  final  period  between  Janu- 
ary 1901  and  May  of  the  following  year, 
when  the  Boers  remaining  under  arms  had 
been  reduced  to  a  handful  of  picked  men, 
not  exceeding  50,000  even  at  the  outset, 
yet  brilliantly  manoeuvred  against  the 
numerous  columns  sent  out  to  round  them 
up  and  to  clear  the  country.  In  these 
trying  operations  he  commanded  a  column, 
generally  of  two  regiments  of  cavalry, 
artillery,  and  half  a  battalion  of  infantry. 
He  suffered  no  reverse  and  never  lost  a 
convoy,  and  at  the  end  of  the  war  had 
established  a  sound  if  not  a  spectacular 
reputation.  He  received  brevet  promotion 
to  colonel  and  was  appointed  C.B. 

Allenby  began  his  home  service,  which 
was  to  last  until  the  outbreak  of  war 
twelve  years  later,  in  command  of  the 
5th  Royal  Irish  Lancers  at  Colchester.  In 
October  1905,  as  a  brigadier-general,  he 
took  over  command  of  the  4th  Cavalry 
brigade.  In  September  1909  he  was  pro- 
moted major-general,  and  after  some  six 
months  on  half-pay,  during  which  he 
visited  ^outh  Africa,  was  appointed 
inspector-general  of  cavalry.  So  far  he 
had  been  generally  popular  in  the  army 
and  with  his  subordinates,  but  his  always 
high  temper  was  now  becoming  even  less 
imder  control  and  his  roughness  of  manner 
was  unwelcome  to  the  staffs  and  regi- 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


mental  officers.  On  the  outbreak  of  wai 
in  1914  he  was  appointed  to  the  command 
of  the  unwieldy  cavalry  division,  of  which 
the  brigades  had  seldom  trained  together, 
to  accompany  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  to  France. 

Allenby's  conduct  of  his  command 
the  retreat  from  Mons  is  a  matter  which 
has  aroused  controversy.  By  some  he  is 
held  to  have  displayed  weakness  in  losing 
control  of  a  large  proportion  of  it,  while 
others  consider  that  circumstances  would 
have  been  too  much  for  any  commander 
in  his  position.  It  is  tmiversally  acknow- 
ledged, however,  that  he  showed  coolness 
and  resolution  throughout  and  that  the 
rear  and  flanks  of  the  retreating  British 
infantry  corps  were  effectively  protected 
from  a  superior  force  of  German  cavalry. 
In  the  advance  to  the  Aisne  the  cavalry 
was  handled  with  a  prudence  approaching 
timidity,  but  that  was  in  part  founded  on 
orders  from  British  headquarters  and  in 
part  upon  reactions  from  previous  over- 
confidence,  in  which,  however,  Allenby 
himself  had  never  shared. 

Five  British  cavalry  brigades  were  now 
formed  into  two  divisions  of  more  manage- 
able size,  and  after  the  transfer  of  the 
Expeditionary  Force  from  the  Aisne  to 
Flanders  these  became  the  Cavalry  Corps, 
to  the  command  of  which  Allenby  was 
appointed.  In  the  first  battle  of  Ypres 
(19  October-22  November)  the  cavalry 
performed  magnificent  service.  One  of  the 
decisive  elements  in  the  British  defence 
proved  to  be  the  skill  of  the  dismounted 
trooper  with  the  rifle,  for  which  the  former 
inspector-general  must  be  given  at  least 
part  of  the  credit.  In  fighting  of  this 
nature  there  was  little  that  a  corps  com- 
mander could  effect  beyond  maintaining 
a  reserve  for  the  ugliest  situations,  and 
this  Allenby  contrived  to  do.  On  6  May 
1915  he  took  over  command  of  the  V  Corps 
in  the  midst  of  the  second  battle  of  Ypres, 
which  had  opened  with  the  German  gas 
attack.  Later  in  the  year  he  carried  out 
local  operations  in  support  of  offensives 
farther  south,  but  his  efforts  were  rendered 
abortive  by  superior  German  observation 
and  equipment. 

In  October  1915  Allenby  was  appointed 
to  the  command  of  the  newly  formed 
Third  Army  north  of  the  Somme.  He  was 
not,  however,  destined  to  take  part  in  the 
battle,  as  in  the  following  March  his  army 
side-slipped  northward  to  relieve  the 
French  in  front  of  Arras.  He  was  by  this 
time  identified  with  the  costly  and  some- 
what unimaginative  methods  on  which  the 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


AUenby 


offensives  and  counter-attacks  had  been 
conducted,  but  it  should  be  recognized 
that  his  loyalty  to  his  superiors  was  so 
complete  that  he  always  fulfilled  his  orders 
to  the  letter  and  allowed  no  criticism  even 
in  the  bosom  of  his  own  military  family, 
his  staff.  His  nickname  of  'the  Bull', 
dating  from  days  of  peace,  had  by  now 
become  universal. 

The  outstanding  episode  in  AUenby's 
military  career  in  Europe  was  the  battle 
of  Arras  in  1917.  The  plan  had  been  to  a 
certain  extent  compromised  by  the  Ger- 
man retreat  to  the  Hindenburg  Line, 
which  extended  on  its  northern  flank  to 
the  front  of  his  right  corps  and  necessi- 
tated an  improvisation  of  dispositions 
prejudicial  to  its  chances  of  success.  In 
an  effort  to  obtain  a  measure  of  surprise 
Ailenby  had  decided  to  cut  down  the 
length  of  the  preliminary  bombardment, 
at  the  same  time  intensifying  it  by  in- 
creasing the  rate  of  fire.  This  project  met 
with  objections  from  general  headquarters 
resulting  in  a  compromise  by  which  the 
bombardment  was  to  cover  four  days 
instead  of  the  forty-eight  hours  proposed 
by  him.  As  the  attack  was  postponed  by 
one  day  to  suit  the  French,  the  bombard- 
ment was  in  fact  increased  to  five  days. 
The  object  of  the  Third  Army's  offensive 
was  to  break  the  German  defences  between 
Arras  and  Cambrai  while  the  First  Army 
on  the  left  captured  the  Vimy  ridge.  The 
attack  was  launched  on  Easter  Monday, 
9  April,  a  day  punctuated  by  squalls  of 
snow  and  sleet,  which,  however,  blew  in 
the  faces  of  the  enemy.  Although  the 
right-hand  corps  made  only  limited  pro- 
gress, the  main  attack  on  the  first  day 
was  remarkably  successful.  The  maxi- 
mum advance,  just  north  of  the  Scarpe, 
was  three  and  a  half  miles,  believed  to  be 
the  longest  carried  out  by  any  belligerent 
on  the  western  front  since  trench  warfare 
had  set  in.  As  so  often  in  that  war,  however, 
the  success  was  not  exploited.  The  com- 
plete breach  through  which  it  had  been 
hoped  to  pass  the  Cavalry  Corps  was  never 
fully  opened  or  cleared  of  wire.  The  Ger- 
mans made  a  partial  recovery  and  brought 
up  some  reinforcements.  The  fighting  de- 
generated into  costly  local  actions,  until 
Field-Marshal  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, ordered  a  pause  on  the 
14th  to  reorganize  for  a  further  co- 
ordinated attack.  This,  known  officially 
as  the  second  battle  of  the  Scarpe,  was 
launched  on  23  April  and  achieved  only 
limited  success  after  very  heavy  fighting. 
A  third  attempt,  on  3  IVIay  (the  third 


battle  of  the  Scarpe),  was  disastrous. 
Against  AUenby's  will  the  assault  was 
carried  out  in  darkness,  and  the  half- 
trained  reinforcements  with  which  the 
ranks  of  the  divisions  had  been  filled  fell 
into  confusion. 

Meanwhile  a  new  commander  M'as 
wanted  in  Palestine,  where  the  British 
had  suffered  a  sharp  check  in  April  in 
front  of  Gaza.  Ailenby  was  known  as  a 
man  of  abounding  energy  and  it  was  con- 
sidered that  he  would  be  more  likely  to 
give  of  his  best  outside  the  orbit  of  Haig. 
The  two  men  were  uncongenial  to  each 
other  and  Ailenby  always  felt  himself 
tongue-tied  in  the  presence  of  the  com- 
mander-in-chief. He  assumed  command 
of  the  Egyptian  Expeditionary  Force  at 
the  end  of  June  1917,  and,  as  soon  as  the 
move  could  be  carried  out,  transferred 
general  headquarters  to  the  Palestine 
border,  close  behind  the  front.  He  came 
like  a  fresh  breeze  to  the  somewhat  dis- 
pirited troops.  As  he  drove  from  camp  to 
camp  for  brief  visits  of  inspection  he  con- 
trived to  impress  his  personality  upon 
them.  The  independently  minded  Austra- 
lians took  to  him  at  once  and  gave  him 
their  full  confidence.  It  was  a  promising 
beginning  to  his  command.  He  received 
most  of  the  reinforcements  which  he 
demanded,  bringing  his  army  to  a  strength 
of  seven  infantry  and  three  mounted 
divisions. 

AUenby's  plan,  largely  based  upon  an 
appreciation  put  forward  by  Lieutenant- 
General  Sir  Philip  Chetwode,  and  the  work 
of  his  staff  officer,  Brigadier-General  Guy 
Payan  Dawnay,  was  to  capture  Beersheba, 
on  the  Turkish  left,  then  roll  up  the 
enemy's  centre  and  net  the  largest  possible 
proportion  of  the  forces  between  it  and 
the  coast  by  a  sweep  with  his  three 
mounted  divisions.  It  was  a  difficult 
operation  in  which  every  move  depended 
upon  the  capture  of  water  supplies  for 
men,  horses,  and  camels.  The  attack  on 
Beersheba  began  on  31  October.  The 
opening  stages  of  the  offensive  were  bril- 
liantly successful,  but,  as  so  often  happens 
in  a  campaign  of  this  type,  there  were 
some  delays  and  the  cavalry  became  more 
dispersed  than  was  desirable.  As  a  con- 
sequence, although  the  Turks  suffered 
heavily,  their  main  body  escaped  envelop- 
ment. Meanwhile,  however,  AUenby's  left 
had  broken  through  at  Gaza.  He  immedi- 
ately transferred  all  available  transport  to 
this  flank,  leaving  much  of  the  rest  of  the 
force  temporarily  inunobilized  round  the 
railhead,  and  drove  the  enemy  northward 


9 


AUenby 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


up  the  Philistine  plain,  beyond  Jaffa,  to 
the  Nahr  el  Auja. 

Allenby  then  decided  to  wheel  a  strong 
force  into  the  hills  and  capture  Jerusalem 
— which  for  religious  and  political  reasons 
it  was  important  not  to  harm — by  envelop- 
ment between  this  force  and  another  ad- 
vancing northward  from  Beersheba  up 
the  road  through  Hebron.  He  penetrated 
without  excessive  difficulty  almost  to  the 
Nablus  road,  but  then  his  XXI  Corps 
and  Yeomanry  mounted  division  became 
Involved  in  fierce  and  bloody  fighting. 
To  the  east  progress  was  blocked ;  to  the 
north  the  thinly  held  British  flank  was 
fiercely  counter-attacked  by  the  able 
and  energetic  hostile  commander-in-chief, 
General  (Marshal  in  the  Turkish  army) 
von  Falkenhayn.  Floods  in  the  plain 
delayed  the  movement  of  supplies.  But 
the  flank  held  and  the  supply  situation 
gradually  improved,  Allenby  brought  up 
the  XX  Corps.  Another  assault  proved 
successful,  and  on  9  December  Jerusalem 
was  surrendered  intact  to  Allenby,  who 
made  his  impressive  ceremonial  entry  on 
foot  into  the  holy  city  on  11  December. 
During  the  following  days  a  counter- 
offensive  was  defeated  and  the  front  ad- 
vanced to  a  distance  sufficiently  far  north 
and  east  of  the  city  to  ensure  its  safety. 
The  Turks  had  suffered  some  28,000 
casualties,  almost  half  as  many  again  as 
those  of  the  British. 

Allenby  was  called  upon  by  the  govern- 
ment to  exploit  his  success  to  the  extent 
of  driving  Turkey  right  out  of  the  war, 
but  his  attitude  was  cautious.  Storms 
prevented  the  unloading  of  supplies  on 
the  coast.  Railway  construction  was  re- 
quired. While  it  was  in  progress  he  pro- 
posed to  operate  against  the  enemy 
beyond  Jordan,  on  the  Hejaz  railway. 
His  plans  were  finally  approved,  but  all 
hope  of  a  major  offensive  early  in  1918 
was  removed  by  the  success  of  the  German 
offensives  of  March  and  April  in  France. 
Heavy  demands  fell  upon  the  Egyptian 
Expeditionary  Force  for  reinforcements. 
Two  whole  divisions,  nine  yeomanry  regi- 
ments, twenty -three  infantry  battalions, 
heavy  artillery,  machine-gun  battalions, 
etc.,  were  withdrawn.  Their  place  was 
taken  by  two  Indian  divisions,  and  by 
Indian  cavalry  regiments  and  infantry 
battalions,  the  latter  being  in  many  cases 
raw  and  without  experienced  officers  or 
specialists.  The  spring  and  summer  were 
occupied  in  reorganization  and  training, 
and  it  was  not  until  mid-September  that 
Allenby   was   ready   for   his   next   main 


stroke.  His  operations  beyond  Jordan 
were  not  particularly  successful,  but  they 
caused  acute  anxiety  to  the  new  Turkish 
commander-in-chief,  the  German  Liman 
von  Sanders.  Allenby  accentuated  this  by 
keeping  a  strong  force  in  the  low-lying 
Jordan  valley  despite  its  torrid  heat  and 
other  discomforts. 

On  his  arrival  Allenby  had  taken  over 
from  his  predecessor  and  strengthened  the 
policy  of  assisting  the  Arabs  in  the  Hejaz 
and  Trans -Jordan  in  revolt  against  the 
Turks.  He  worked  through  a  body  of  able 
officers,  of  whom  the  most  outstanding 
was  Colonel  T.  E.  Lawrence  [q.v.].  Much 
had  already  been  effected  in  breaching 
the  Hejaz  railway  and  locking  up  garrisons 
at  Medina,  Ma'an,  and  elsewhere  along  the 
line.  In  his  final  offensive  he  called  upon 
the  Arabs,  now  partly  organized  as  semi- 
regular  forces,  to  keep  the  Turks  engaged 
round  the  vital  station  of  Der'a,  the  junc- 
tion of  the  Hejaz  and  Palestinian  systems, 
to  interrupt  the  traffic  in  any  case,  and  if 
possible  to  block  it  altogether.  It  was  the 
one  key  objective  which  he  could  not  reach 
quickly  himself.  Arab  activity  also  in- 
creased Turkish  fears  of  a  British  thrust 
on  this  flank,  and  they  were  strengthened 
by  a  number  of  skilful  ruses. 

It  was  actually  Allenby's  intention  to 
attack  on  the  left,  in  the  coastal  plain,  mass- 
ing the  bulk  of  his  forces  of  all  arms  in  that 
sector,  carrying  out  with  the  infantry  of 
the  XXI  Corps  a  huge  right  wheel  to  drive 
the  enemy  into  the  hills  and  open  a  gate- 
way for  three  cavalry  divisions  concen- 
trated immediately  in  the  rear.  These 
were  to  cross  the  Samarian  ridge  which 
ends  with  Mount  Carmel  above  the  Bay 
of  Acre,  sweep  down  into  the  Plain  of 
Esdraelon  (or  Megiddo),  and  pass  through 
the  Valley  of  Jezreel  down  to  the  Jordan 
near  Beisan,  thus  throwing  a  net  round 
the  Turkish  armies.  Allenby  possessed  a 
superiority  of  four  to  one  in  cavalry,  about 
six  to  four — the  exact  figures  on  the  Turk- 
ish side  are  still  a  matter  of  dispute — in 
infantry,  and  nearly  three  to  two  in  artil- 
lery. He  had  complete  command  of  the 
air,  so  that  his  concentration  could  be 
carried  out  unobserved.  His  troops  were 
fit  and  well  found,  whereas  the  Turks  were 
ill  supplied  and  ragged. 

The  assault  was  launched  at  4.30  a.m.  on 
19  September  with  complete  success.  The 
two  leading  cavalry  divisions  entered  the 
gateway  before  9  a.m.  They  carried  out 
their  great  drive  against  only  scattered 
opposition.  The  hostile  commander-in- 
chief  was  surprised  in  his  headquarters  at  ( 


10 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Allenby 


Nazareth  and  narrowly  escaped  capture  in 
person.  The  4th  Cavalry  division  reached 
Beisan  after  covering  over  seventy  miles 
in  thirty-four  hours.  The  Turkish  forces 
west  of  Jordan  were  almost  completely 
destroyed.  Their  transport  was  smashed 
by  the  Royal  Air  Force  in  defiles.  Those 
down  the  Hejaz  railway  were  trapped  at 
Amman,  and  those  east  of  Jordan  harried 
and  hunted  by  the  Arabs.  The  remnant 
streamed  north  towards  Damascus.  Allen- 
by ordered  the  cavalry  to  push  on  to  that 
city,  the  Arabs  moving  parallel  to  its  right 
flank.  Damascus  was  entered  on  1  October. 
Already  malaria  was  taking  a  heavy  toll, 
as  Allenby  had  known  would  be  the  case 
when  he  left  an  area  in  which  precautions 
had  been  taken  for  country  in  which  there 
had  been  none.  A  wave  of  influenza  fol- 
lowed. Allenby  sent  on  his  fittest  cavalry 
division,  the  5th,  which  captured  Homs 
and  Tripoli  and  entered  Aleppo  on 
26  October.  Almost  immediately  after- 
wards an  armistice  was  signed  with  Turkey 
in  Mudros  harbour  on  30  October.  Allenby 
had  captured  75,000  prisoners,  360  guns, 
and  taken  or  destroyed  all  the  enemy's 
transport.  His  own  casualties  were  5,666. 

It  was  the  last  great  campaign  of  cavalry 
employed  in  strategic  mass  in  the  annals 
of  war,  and  one  of  the  most  notable.  That 
fact  alone  would  suffice  to  render  AUenby's 
name  immortal.  The  distances  covered 
were  enormous.  The  5th  Cavalry  division 
marched  550  miles  in  38  days,  fighting 
four  considerable  actions  and  losing  only 
21  per  cent,  of  its  horses  from  all  causes — 
there  never  have  been  better  horse-masters 
than  AUenby's  Indians,  British  yeomanry, 
Australians,  and  New  Zealanders.  And 
throughout  the  offensive  his  inspiration, 
thrustfulness,  and  the  confidence  which 
he  inspired  were  priceless  assets. 

Many  problems,  chief  among  them  the 
rivalry  between  French  and  Arab  claims 
in  Syria  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  Turks, 
were  still  to  be  solved,  but  Allenby  was 
not  left  to  deal  with  them  for  long.  In 
March  1919  he  was  appointed  special  high 
commissioner  for  Egypt,  where  his  former 
corps  commander  in  Palestine,  Lieutenant- 
General  Sir  E.  S.  Bulfin  [q.v.],  was  engaged 
in  stamping  out  a  dangerous  revolt.  It 
was  a  difficult  post  because  Egypt  felt 
herself  conscious  of  nationhood  and  had 
found  a  national  champion  in  the  person 
of  the  violent  Saad  Zaghlul.  Allenby 
began  with  a  disputed  measure,  for  which 
he  obtained  the  rather  reluctant  approval 
of  the  Foreign  Office,  the  release  of  Zaghlul 
and  three  colleagues  who  had  been  arrested 


and  deported  to  Malta.  In  September  of 
that  year  he  went  on  leave  to  England, 
which  he  had  not  seen  since  June  1917. 
He  was  feted  as  one  of  the  great  victors 
of  the  war.  He  had  already  been  promoted 
field-marshal  (July  1919) ;  he  was  now 
created  a  viscount  (October  1919),  received 
the  thanks  of  parliament,  and  was  given 
a  grant  of  £50,000,  while  during  the  war 
he  had  been  appointed  K.C.B.  (1915), 
G.C.M.G.  (1917),  and  G.C.B.  (1918).  The 
allied  countries  had  bestowed  upon  him 
their  principal  decorations.  Among  the 
universities  which  conferred  honorary 
degrees  upon  him  were  Oxford,  Cam- 
bridge, Edinburgh,  and  Aberdeen.  In 
1920  he  was  made  colonel  of  the  1st  Life 
Guards,  which  included  the  court  appoint- 
ment of  Gold  Stick  in  Waiting. 

Back  in  Egypt,  Allenby  carried  through 
his  task  grimly  and  in  face  of  difficulties 
in  the  country  and  dijfferences  of  opinion 
with  the  Foreign  Office.  He  produced, 
and  persuaded  the  British  government  to 
accept,  a  declaration  abolishing  the  pro- 
tectorate and  recognizing  Egypt  as  a 
sovereign  state  in  February  1922.  The 
end  of  his  tenure  of  office  was  clouded  by 
the  murder  of  Sir  Lee  Stack  [q.v.],  the 
sirdar,  and  his  indifferent  relations  with 
the  then  foreign  secretary,  Mr.  (after- 
wards Sir)  Austen  Chamberlain  [q.v.], 
which  brought  about  his  resignation.  He 
left  Egypt  in  June  1925.  There  may  still 
be  discussion  as  to  the  value  of  his  work 
there  and  by  some  he  is  considered  to 
have  committed  grave  mistakes,  but  on 
balance  the  view  must  be  favourable.  His 
moral  courage  and  integrity  and  his  grip 
of  the  essence  of  the  Egyptian  problem 
cannot  be  questioned. 

As  a  field-marshal  Allenby  remained 
theoretically  on  the  active  list,  but  the 
remainder  of  his  hfe  was  spent  in  retire- 
ment. His  chief  public  work  was  done  as 
president  (1930)  of  the  British  National 
Cadet  Association,  which  owes  him  a  deep 
debt.  He  was  able  to  indulge  to  the  full 
his  hobby  of  bird-watching,  and  estab- 
lished an  aviary  in  the  small  garden  of  his 
London  home.  He  fished  enthusiastically 
and  travelled  extensively.  He  died  very 
suddenly  in  London,  through  the  bursting 
of  a  blood-vessel  in  his  brain,  14  May 
1936.  His  ashes  are  buried  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  His  son  Michael,  a  young  man  of 
the  greatest  promise,  had  been  killed  in 
action  in  France  in  1917.  His  viscountcy 
passed  by  special  reniainder  to  his  nephew, 
Dudley  Jaffray  Hynman  Allenby  (bom 
1903). 


11 


Allenby 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Allenby' s  worst  foe  was  his  violent 
temper,  but  he  rarely  punished  except 
with  his  tongue,  and,  like  Napoleon,  con- 
stantly continued  to  employ  men  whom 
he  had  forcibly  abused.  It  is  also  true  to 
say  that,  although  he  never  apologized 
for  fits  of  unjustified  anger,  he  often  made 
amends  for  them.  He  was  grateful  for 
good  service  and  generous  in  rewarding  it, 
and  in  many  respects  kindly  and  thought- 
ful. Like  some  other  famous  soldiers  he 
was  devoted  to  children.  The  men  who 
knew  him  best  and  were  brought  most 
closely  in  touch  with  him  either  in  the 
army  or  during  his  six  years  in  Egypt  were 
his  warmest  admirers,  and  on  them  he  left 
the  impression  of  a  great  man.  The  worst 
error  that  can  be  made  about  him  is  to 
look  upon  him  as  an  unimaginative,  heavy- 
handed  soldier  on  the  western  front  and  a 
brilliant  and  inspired  soldier  in  Palestine. 
Doubtless  he  expanded  and  gained  con- 
fidence in  independent  command,  but 
essentially  he  remained  the  same.  The 
difference  was  in  the  conditions.  This  is 
not  to  say  that  his  plan  and  performance 
in  Palestine,  especially  in  the  final  offen- 
sive, were  not  masterly.  As  a  man  he  was 
eVer  animated  by  the  highest  sense  of 
duty,  simple  and  sincere,  thorough  in 
everything.  The  strength  of  his  character 
may  be  exemplified  by  the  fact  that  he 
imposed  upon  himself  restraint  in  indul- 
gence in  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  to 
which  he  was  at  one  time  addicted,  because 
he  feared  they  were  injuring  his  health, 
just  as  he  gave  up  smoking  because  he 
thought  the  habit  might  affect  his  remark- 
able eyesight,  which  he  considered  a  pro- 
fessional asset.  Although  he  had  never 
been  a  scholar  he  was  a  man  of  consider- 
able cultivation,  widely  read,  and  a  pass- 
able Grecian  and  Latinist.  But  the  most 
significant  thing  to  be  said  of  him  is  that 
he  stands  in  the  tradition  of  the  great 
cavalrymen  and,  if  the  term  be  confined 
to  horsemen,  that  he  is  the  last  of  the 
line. 

A  portrait  of  Allenby  is  included  in  J.  S. 
Sargent's  picture,  'Some  General  Officers 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1922.  There 
is  also  a  chaUc  drawing  (likewise  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery)  by  Eric  Ken- 
nington. 

[The  Times,  15  May  1936 ;  Viscount  Wavell, 
Allenby:  a  Study  in  Greatness,  2  vols.,  1940- 
1943;  Cyril  Falls,  (Official)  History  of  the 
Great  War.  Military  Operations.  France  and 
Belgium,  1917,  1940,  and  Egypt  and  Palestine, 
vol.  ii,  1 930 ;  private  information.] 

Cyril  Falls. 


AMOS,  Sir  (PERCY)  MAURICE  (MAC- 
LARDIE)  SHELDON  (1872-1940),  jurist 
and  judge  in  Egypt,  was  born  in  London 
15  June  1872,  the  only  son  of  Sheldon 
Amos  [q.v.],  a  judge  of  appeal  in  Egypt, 
and  grandson  of  Andrew  Amos  [q.v.].  His 
mother  was  Sarah  Maclardie,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Perceval  Bunting,  of  Manchester. 
After  private  education  in  Egypt  and  a 
brilliant  career  as  a  scholar  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge — he  was  awarded  a 
first  class  in  both  parts  of  the  moral' 
sciences  tripos  (1893  and  1895)  and  the 
Cobden  prize  (1895) — he  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1897.  The 
chief  part  of  his  life  was  spent  in  Egypt 
where,  in  1903,  he  was  appointed  a  judge 
of  the  Cairo  Native  Court,  and  in  1906 
was  promoted  to  the  Native  Court  of 
Appeal.  In  these  offices,  but  quite  apart 
from  his  ordinary  judicial  functions,  he 
established  close  contact  with  the  leaders 
of  the  French  Law  School  and  the  foreign 
judges  of  the  Egyptian  mixed  courts,  and 
he  took  a  prominent  part  in  attacking  the 
administrative  and  social  problems  with 
which  the  country  was  beset.  He  retired 
from  the  bench  in  1912  in  consequence  of 
a  decision  of  his  relating  to  an  assault  on 
an  English  child  which,  although  credit- 
able to  his  views  as  to  equality  of  admin- 
istration of  the  law,  excited  the  disappro- 
bation of  the  local  English  community. 

For  the  next  two  years  (1913-1915) 
Amos  was  director  of  the  Khedivial  School 
of  Law.  In  1915  he  returned  to  England 
and  accepted  the  post  of  adviser  on  foreign 
contracts  to  the  Ministry  of  Munitions. 
His  familiarity  with  the  law  and  language 
of  France  and  other  countries  made  his 
work  of  great  value  to  the  government.  In 

1917  A.  J.  Balfour  enlisted  his  services  in 
a  mission  to  the  United  States  of  America 
in  connexion  with  the  prosecution  of  the 
war,  and  his  visit  there  sharpened  his 
interest  in  the  American  constitution, 
which  often  formed  the  subject  of  lectures 
that  he  gave  in  later  years.  From  1917  to 
1919  he  was  acting  judicial  adviser  to  the 
government  of  Egypt,  and  thereafter  he 
returned  to  Cairo  as  judicial  adviser  and 
held  this  office  until  1925.  Here  again  he 
gave  proof  of  his  abilities  by  taking  a 
prominent  part  in  the  discussions  which 
led  to  the  treaty  of  1922  between  Great 
Britain  and  Egjrpt  which  terminated  the 
British  protectorate  and,  subject  to  certain 
conditions,  made  Egypt  an  independent 
state.  Another  successful  achievement 
was  his  work  at  the  end  of  the  war  of  1914r- 

1918  as  counsel  for  Great  Britain  before  a 


12 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Anderson 


mixed  arbitration  tribunal  at  Constanti- 
nople ;  he  was  also  the  chief  British  dele- 
gate to  the  International  Committee  of 
Experts  on  Private  Aerial  Law  from  1 933 
imtil  his  death. 

Amos's  later  years  were  spent  in  Eng- 
land where  he  had  a  house  in  Cambridge 
and  another  at  Ulplia,  near  Broughton-in- 
Furness.  From  1932  to  1937  he  held  the 
Quain  professorship  of  comparative  law  at 
University  College,  London.  He  was  ap- 
pointed K.B.E.  in  1922,  took  silk  in  1932, 
and  in  1928  was  awarded  the  grand  cordon 
of  the  Order  of  the  Nile.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Lausanne 
University  in  1936.  His  chief  publication 
is  The  English  Constitution  (1930).  He 
married  in  1906  Lucy,  elder  daughter  of 
Colonel  Sir  Colin  Campbell  Scott-Moncrieff , 
R.E.,  and  had  two  sons  and  three 
daughters.  He  died  at  Ulverston  10  June 
1940. 

The  most  impressive  characteristics  of 
Amos  were  his  intense  intellectual  curiosity 
and  the  wide  range  of  interest  that  was  its 
natural  consequence.  His  friends  might 
occasionally  differ  from  his  point  of  view, 
but  they  could  never  ignore  the  arguments 
by  which  he  supported  it.  Conversation 
with  him,  whether  on  professional  or  social 
topics,  always  provided  a  mental  stimulus. 

[Journal  of  Comparative  Law,  vol.  xxii, 
1940 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

P.  H.  WiNFIELD. 

AMPTHILL,  second  Baron  (1869- 
193.5).    [See  Russell,  Arthur  Oliver 

ViLLIERS.] 

ANDERSON,  STELLA  (1892-1933), 
better  known  as  Steli^  Benson,  novelist, 
was  born  at  Lutwyche  Hall,  Shropshire, 
6  January  1892,  the  younger  daughter 
and  third  child  of  Ralph  Beaumont  Ben- 
son, of  Lutwyche  Hall,  by  his  wife,  Caro- 
line Essex,  second  daughter  of  Richard 
Hugh  Cholmondeley,  rector  of  Hodnet, 
later  of  Condover  Hall,  Shropshire,  and 
younger  sister  of  the  novelist  Mary  Chol- 
mondeley. 

Being  a  delicate  child  Stella  Benson  was 
educated  at  home.  After  eighteen  months 
spent  in  Switzerland  she  sailed  in  1912  on 
a  voyage  to  the  West  Indies,  an  experience 
which  supplied  the  material  for  her  first 
book,  /  Pose  (1915).  On  her  return  (1913) 
she  took  up  social  work  in  Hoxton,  where 
for  a  time  she  carried  on  a  small  business 
for  the  sale  of  paper  bags  in  partnership 
with  a  local  woman,  finding  time  mean- 
while to  continue  her  writing  and  to  take 


a  part  in  the  women's  suffrage  movement 
early  in  1914. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Stella 
Benson  worked  for  eighteen  months  in 
east  London  and  afterwards  for  a  time  on 
the  land ;  but  her  health  was  never  good 
and  in  1918  she  left  England  under  doctor's 
orders  for  California.  Here  she  stayed  for 
two  years,  making  many  friends  and  sup- 
porting herself  by  a  strange  variety  of 
occupations  until  in  January  1920  she 
sailed  for  England  by  way  of  the  East. 
On  this  adventurous  journey  she  found 
herself  teaching  in  a  mission  school  in 
Hong-Kong,  working  in  the  X-ray  depart- 
ment of  the  Rockefeller  Institute  in 
Peking,  and  escaping  from  the  dangers 
of  civil  war  in  Chungking. 

In  September  1921  Stella  Benson  was 
married  in  London  to  James  Carew 
O' Gorman  Anderson,  of  the  Chinese 
customs  service,  only  surviving  son  of 
Brigadier-General  Sir  Francis  Anderson, 
R.E.,  of  Ballydavid,  co.  Waterford.  There 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage.  With 
the  exception  of  visits  to  England,  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  the  Baha- 
mas, the  rest  of  her  life  was  spent  in 
China.  Whilst  living  in  Hong-Kong  she 
helped  to  organize  a  successful  campaign 
against  the  system  of  licensed  prostitution 
then  existent  in  that  colony. 

Between  1915  and  1931  Stella  Benson 
published  several  novels,  short  stories, 
travel  sketches,  and  poems,  but  her  great 
popular  success  came  with  the  appearance 
of  Tobit  Transplanted  (1931),  a  novel 
which  won  for  her  in  1932  the  Femina 
Vie  Heureuse  prize  and  the  A.  C.  Benson 
silver  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Literature.  She  was  now  at  the  height 
of  her  powers,  but  in  that  same  year  she 
had  a  severe  illness  and  she  died  of  pneu- 
monia at  Hongay,  Tongking,  in  northern 
Indo-China,  6  December  1933. 

Stella  Benson's  genius  is  paradoxical; 
she  combines  fantasy  with  realism  and 
satire  with  a  profound  pity.  Her  un- 
finished novel  Mundos  (published  post- 
humously 1935)  shows  that  had  she  lived 
she  would  have  surpassed  her  already 
notable  achievement.  English  literature 
is  the  poorer  for  her  early  death. 

A  portrait  of  Stella  Benson  by  Cuthbert 
Orde  is  in  the  possession  of  her  brother, 
Major  George  Reginald  Benson,  and  Mr. 
J.  C.  O'G.  Anderson  owns  two  drawings 
by  the  same  artist  and  a  drawing  by 
Wyndham  Lewis. 

[The  Times,  8  December  1933;  R.  Ellis 
Roberts,    Portrait    of   Stella    Benson,    1939; 


13 


Anderson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


S.  J.  Kunitz  and  H.  Haycraft,  Twentieth 
Century  Authors;  a  Biographical  Dictionary 
(New  York),  1942.] 

Georgina  Battiscombe. 


ANDREWES,  Sir  FREDERICK  WIL- 
LIAM (1859-1932),  pathologist  and  bac- 
teriologist, was  born  at  Reading  31  March 
1859,  the  eldest  of  the  four  sons  of  Charles 
James  Andrewes,  J.P.,  by  his  second  wife, 
Charlotte  Parsons.  The  father  was  en- 
gaged in  business  connected  with  iron- 
works and  was  a  substantial  and  respected 
citizen  of  Reading,  of  which  he  was  some- 
time mayor,  but  Andrewes  held  the  opin- 
ion that  his  inheritance  of  special  ability 
came  chiefly  from  his  mother's  side. 

Andrewes  began  his  education  at  Oakley 
House  School,  Reading,  and  among  his 
schoolfellows  there  were  (Sir)  Edward 
Bagnall  Poulton,  W.  F.  R.  Weldon  [q.v.], 
and  (Sir)  Owen  Seaman  [q.v.].  Andrewes 
formed  then,  and  kept  throughout  his  life, 
a  special  friendship  with  Poulton;  they 
had  like  interests,  as  boys  and  young  men, 
in  field  entomology  and  geology ,  and  shared 
many  expeditions  in  school  holidays  and, 
later,  in  vacations.  Andrewes  always 
retained  these  interests  of  a  field  natural- 
ist, and  Poulton  records  with  pride  that 
he  was  able  later  to  include  in  the  Univer- 
sity Museum  at  Oxford  entomological 
varieties  of  great  interest  which  Andrewes 
had  taken  in  school  holidays  when  he  was 
between  thirteen  and  fourteen  years  old, 
showing  thus  precociously  a  skill  and  alert- 
ness of  observation  which  were  later  to 
serve  him  well  in  other  fields. 

Andrewes  entered  Christ  Church,  Ox- 
ford, in  1879  as  a  junior  student ;  his  essay 
is  said  to  have  made  an  especially  favour- 
able impression  upon  his  examiners.  In 
1881,  with  biology  as  his  subject,  he  was 
placed  alone  in  the  first  class  of  the  final 
honours  school  of  natural  science.  In  1883 
he  was  awarded  the  Burdett-Coutts  imi- 
versity  scholarship  in  geology.  In  1886  he 
was  elected  to  the  Sheppard  fellowship  at 
Pembroke  College,  the  holder  of  which  was 
imder  obligation  to  study  either  law  or 
medicine.  Owing  to  his  biological  back- 
ground he  had  already  chosen  medicine 
as  his  career,  having  won  an  open  entrance 
scholarship  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital 
and  entered  upon  his  studies  there  in  1885. 

After  Andrewes  had  qualified  in  medi- 
cine he  spent  a  short  time  in  Vienna  as 
a  preliminary  to  entering  upon  a  career  as 
a  consulting  physician,  graduating  M.B. 
and  becoming  F.R.C.P.  in  1895.  Mean- 
while he  had  become  increasingly  inter- 


ested in  pathology  and  bacteriology.  The 
latter,  undergoing  vigorous  development 
on  the  continent  through  the  schools  of 
Pasteur  and  Robert  Koch,  had  reached 
Great  Britain  rather  late,  one  of  its 
pioneers  in  this  country  being  Edward 
Emanuel  Klein,  who  was  lecturer  on 
physiology  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Medical 
School.  When  Andrewes  first  made  con- 
tact with  the  pathological  laboratory 
there,  in  1885,  Klein  was  already  examin- 
ing material  from  the  wards  for  the 
tubercle  bacillus,  discovered  by  Koch 
some  three  years  earlier.  In  1893  Alfredo 
Auturus  Kanthack  was  appointed  lecturer 
in  pathology  and  pathologist  to  the 
hospital,  and  Andrewes  worked  in  in- 
creasingly close  association  with  him  until, 
on  Kanthack' s  departure  to  Cambridge  in 
1897,  Andrewes  was  appointed  to  succeed 
him. 

During  the  thirty  years  (1897-1927)  in 
which  he  held  the  post  of  lecturer  in 
pathology  (which  was  raised  to  that  of 
professor  by  the  university  of  London 
in  1912)  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital, 
Andrewes  saw  the  department  change 
from  a  single  laboratory  to  a  separate 
building  with  three  floors  of  laboratories 
and  an  additional  one  for  post-mortem 
examinations.  His  tenure  of  office  had 
begun  at  a  time  when  pathology,  and 
especially  the  new  science  of  bacteriology, 
were  developing  an  essential  relation  to 
public  health  and  to  clinical  medicine,  and 
he  was  an  important  agent  of  that  develop- 
ment. His  reputation,  which  grew  steadily 
with  the  years,  depended  more  on  his 
influence  as  a  teacher,  on  his  wide  know- 
ledge and  experience,  and  on  his  care  and 
wisdom  as  an  expert  and  consultant  on 
special  problems,  than  on  such  new  de- 
velopments of  knowledge  as  arose  from 
the  researches  which  he  had  always  in 
hand.  On  the  side  of  pathology  he  added 
something  of  permanent  value  to  the 
differential  histology  of  lymphadenoma 
and  to  a  more  exact  knowledge  of  arterio- 
sclerosis. In  bacteriology  he  took  particu- 
lar interest  in  variations  within  a  bacterial 
species,  as  recognized  by  reactions  with 
specific,  immune  sera.  During  the  war  of 
1914-1918  he  made  a  valuable  classifica- 
tion on  these  lines  of  the  variant  strains 
of  dysentery  bacilli,  and  at  the  time  of  his 
death  in  London,  24  February  1932,  was 
engaged  upon  a  similar  but  more  complex 
problem,  presented  by  the  haemolytic 
streptococci.  At  an  earlier  stage  he  had 
been  one  of  the  first  to  recognize  the 
importance  of  healthy  or  mildly  affected 


14 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Anstey 


persons  as  carriers  of  such  infections  as 
that  of  diphtheria. 

Andrewes  was  a  man  of  quiet,  friendly 
personaUty,  readily  accessible,  generous 
with  his  help,  and  prone  to  flavour  his 
wisdom  with  a  sly  humour.  Throughout 
life,  in  work  and  recreation,  his  instinct 
and  habit  were  those  of  a  born  naturahst ; 
in  his  later  years  especially,  these  tastes 
found  expression  in  the  creation  and  tend- 
ing of  a  rock-garden,  well  known  to  all  his 
friends.  He  had  a  great  gift  for  the  effec- 
tive, though  apparently  free  and  informal, 
exposition  of  intricate  problems,  and  was 
known  as  a  forceful  lecturer  outside  his 
own  department.  To  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  he  delivered  the  Dobell  (1906) 
and  the  Croonian  (1910)  lectures,  as  well 
as  the  Harveian  oration  (1920).  His  deep 
knowledge  and  wide  experience  made  him 
a  valuable  member  of  various  public  com- 
mittees and  of  the  Medical  Research 
Council.  In  1919  he  was  appointed  O.B.E. 
in  recognition  of  his  services  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  and  was  knighted  in 
1920.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1915.  He 
married  in  1895  Phyllis  Mary,  daughter 
of  John  Hamer,  J.P.,  publisher,  and  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter ;  the  son  is  head  of 
the  department  of  bacteriology  and  ex- 
perimental pathology  at  the  National 
Institute  for  Medical  Research,  Hamp- 
stead. 

[The  Times,  25  February  1932;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  1, 
December  1932  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  Patho- 
logy and  Bacteriology,  vol.  xxxv,  1932; 
personal  knowledge.]  H.  H.  Dale. 

ANSTEY,  F.  (pseudonym),  humorous 
writer.   [See  Guthrie,  Thomas  Anstey.] 

ANSTEY,  FRANK  (1865-1940), 
Australian  journalist  and  poUtician,  was 
born  of  English  parents  in  Blackfriars, 
London,  18  August  1865,  the  posthumous 
and  only  child  of  Samuel  Anstey,  a  dock- 
worker  from  Devon,  by  his  wife,  Caroline 
Gamble.  Frank  Anstey  helped  to  support 
his  mother  through  a  great  part  of  her  life. 

The  poverty  of  Anstey's  early  life  left 
a  deep  impression.  At  twelve  he  obtained 
employment  in  the  Blackwall  clipper, 
Melbourne,  running  to  Australia.  He  saw 
something  of '  black-birding '  in  the  Pacific, 
and  became  a  staunch  supporter  of  the 
'White  Australia'  policy.  He  worked  as 
a  labourer,  and  as  a  caretaker,  but  his 
gift  of  oratory  soon  won  him  a  place  in 
the  Melbourne  Trades  Hall  Council,  and 
later  in  parliament.  He  represented  East 


Bourke  borouglis  (1902-1904)  and  Bruns- 
wick (1904-1910)  in  the  Victorian 
assembly.  He  wrote  much  for  the  Tocsin 
(later  Labor  Call),  and  frequently  acted  as 
editor.  In  1907  he  worked  his  passage  to 
England  to  see  his  mother.  As  the  out- 
standing member  of  the  Victorian  labour 
party,  he  seemed  destined  to  become  its 
leader,  but  in  1910  he  won  the  Bourke 
(Victoria)  seat  in  the  Commonwealth 
parliament  and  held  it  for  twenty-four 
years. 

In  Commonwealth  politics  Anstey  be- 
came a  close  friend  of  Mr.  William  Morris 
Hughes.  But  when  the  labour  party  split 
in  1916,  Mr.  Hughes  made  the  strongest 
personal  attacks  on  Anstey  as  one  of  the 
chief  opponents  of  conscription.  Anstey 
objected  to  conscription  of  men  without 
conscription  of  wealth.  He  attacked  the 
'money  power'  in  the  Kingdom  of  Shylock 
(1917),  the  distribution  of  which  was  in- 
effectively prohibited  by  the  Common- 
wealth. This  was  revised,  expanded,  and 
reprinted  in  1921  as  Money  Power.  In 
1918  Anstey  worked  his  passage  to  the 
United  States  of  America  and  London, 
and  joined  an  Australian  press  mission  to 
the  western  front.  After  visits  to  France, 
Switzerland,  and  Scandinavia  he  returned 
to  Australia  in  June  1919 ;  his  book  Red 
Europe  appeared  in  September.  From 
1922  to  1927  he  held  the  position  of 
deputy  leader  of  the  parliamentary  labour 
party,  and  when  labour  came  into  ofiice 
in  1929  he  became  minister  for  health  and 
repatriation.  In  the  depression  (1930)  he 
fought  for  compulsory  reduction  of  inter- 
est and  compulsory  conversion  of  loans. 
When  this  policy  was  rejected  by  his  party 
in  March  1931  he  had  to  leave  the  min- 
istry ;  he  retired  from  politics  in  1934. 

Anstey  married  in  1888  Catherine, 
daughter  of  John  McColl,  police  officer, 
of  Sale,  Victoria,  and  had  two  sons.  He 
died  at  Melbourne  31  October  1940. 

Anstey's  gift  of  oratory  was  unusual; 
during  his  term  in  parliament  no  one 
equalled  his  power  of  holding  the  House. 
He  spoke  with  a  passionate  sincerity, 
lightened  by  wit  and  irony.  His  forceful 
writings  also  had  a  wide  public.  Although 
generally  regarded  as  too  unstable  for  the 
highest  offices,  he  proved  a  most  able 
minister  of  health.  His  attachment  to  his 
principles  earned  him  the  respect  even  of 
political  opponents,  but  brought  him  Uttle 
material  advancement. 

[Melbourne  newspapers,  Argus,  Age,  Labor 
Call,  passim;  E.  O.  G.  Shann  and  D.  B. 
Copland,   The  Crisis  in  Australian  Finance, 


15 


Anstey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1929-1931,  1931 ;  Commonwealth  Parliament- 
ary Handbook,  1901-1930, 1930 ;  private  infor- 
mation.] Hekbert  Burton. 

ARMSTRONG,    HENRY    EDWARD 

(1848-1937),  chemist  and  educationist, 
was  born  6  May  1848  at  Lewisham,  where 
he  resided  during  the  whole  of  his  Ufe. 
He  was  the  eldest  son  of  Richard  Arm- 
strong, a  conamission  agent  and  importer, 
by  his  wife,  Mary  Ann  Biddle. 

Armstrong  went  to  Colfe  Grammar 
School,  Dartmouth  Hill,  and  began  to 
study  chemistry  in  1865  at  the  Royal 
College  of  Chemistry  in  Oxford  Street 
under  (Sir)  Edward  Frankland  [q.v.],  and 
within  a  very  short  time  was  assisting  his 
teacher  in  devising  methods  for  water 
analysis,  particularly  for  detecting  and 
estimating  sewage  contamination.  The 
methods  which  they  devised  were  subse- 
quently used  by  Frankland  in  a  survey  of 
the  whole  British  drinking  water  supply, 
which  put  this  country  ahead  of  all  others 
in  the  provision  of  safe  drinking  water. 
In  1867  Armstrong  went  to  Leipzig  to 
study  chemistry  under  Adolphe  Wilhelm 
Hermann  Kolbe,  returning  in  1870  with 
the  degree  of  Ph.D.  and  a  passion  for 
research  which  never  left  him.  After  hold- 
ing teaching  appointments  at  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital  (1870-1882)  and  at  the 
London  Institution  as  professor  of  chem- 
istry (1871-1884)  he  became  associated  in 
1879  with  the  City  and  Guilds  of  London 
Institute,  first  at  their  Finsbury  School  in 
Cowper  Street  where  he  organized  classes 
in  technical  chemistry,  and  in  1884  as  pro- 
fessor of  chemistry  at  the  new  Central 
Institution  at  South  Kensington  which 
became  in  1893  the  Central  Technical 
CoUege.  Here  he  and  his  colleagues  W.  E. 
Ajrrton  and  W.  C.  Unwin  [qq.v.]  were 
pioneers  in  designing  courses  for  higher 
technical  education  for  engineers  and 
chemists.  The  chemistry  school  was  a 
small  one,  but  it  was  the  first  in  this 
country  to  give  such  a  training  to  chemists 
as  would  equip  them  for  work  in  a  factory, 
and  the  first  to  produce  what  are  now 
called  chemical  engineers. 

Armstrong's  interests  as  a  scientist 
ranged  over  a  wide  field  of  chemistry. 
His  researches  in  the  chemistry  of  naphtha- 
lene were  of  fundamental  importance  when 
this  substance  was  becoming  increasingly 
used  as  a  starting  material  for  the  manu- 
facture of  intermediates  for  dyestuffs.  The 
value  of  this  work  was  especially  appre- 
ciated in  Germany.  Concurrently  he 
carried   out   research   into   the   laws   of 


substitution  in  benzine  derivatives,  sug- 
gesting the  well-known  'centric'  formula 
to  explain  its  chemical  behaviour.  His 
'quinone'  theory  of  the  colour  of  organic 
compounds  was  a  guiding  principle  for 
students  of  dyestuffs  until  it  became 
superseded  in  recent  times  by  more  com- 
prehensive ideas.  The  theory  of  aqueous 
solution  was  another  subject  to  which 
Armstrong  devoted  much  attention,  and 
upon  which  he  carried  out  a  great  deal  of 
experimental  work.  He  contested  hotly 
the  dissociation  theory  of  Svante  August 
Arrhenius  and  Wilhelm  Ostwald  on  the 
justifiable  ground  that  that  theory  took 
insufficient  account  of  the  part  played  by 
the  solvent  and  of  the  complex  character 
of  water.  Armstrong's  mathematical 
equipment  was  inadequate  to  give  his 
alternative  ideas  a  quantitative  basis,  but 
in  its  modern  form  the  dissociation  theory 
has  been  modified  so  far  as  to  justify  his 
criticism.  Other  subjects  of  research  in 
Armstrong's  laboratory  were  the  constitu- 
tion of  camphor  and  its  derivatives,  the 
study  of  plant  enzymes,  and  the  crystal- 
lography of  organic  compounds,  of  wliich 
he  realized  the  fundamental  importance, 
for  as  early  as  1886  he  invited  (Sir)  H.  A. 
Miers  to  give  instruction  in  the  subject. 
In  all  this  research  work  Armstrong  was 
assisted  by  a  succession  of  students,  many 
of  whom  subsequently  made  their  mark 
in  academic  and  industrial  spheres,  carry- 
ing his  influence  with  them.  He  was  also 
an  accomplished  geologist,  and  his  long 
association  with  the  Rothamsted  Research 
Station,  where  he  was  a  member  of  the 
Lawes  Agricultural  Trust  Committee  from 
1889  and  eventually  chairman  in  1937, 
testified  to  his  keen  interest  in  the  develop- 
ment of  agriculture. 

Armstrong  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1876 
and  received  the  Davy  medal  in  1911.  He 
was  a  fellow  of  the  Chemical  Society  for 
nearly  seventy  years,  and  served  as  secre- 
tary for  eighteen  years,  as  president  from 
1893  to  1895,  and  as  councillor  for  over 
sixty  years.  He  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  university  of 
St.  Andrews  and  that  of  D.Sc.  from  the 
universities  of  Melbourne  and  Madrid.  He 
was  awarded  the  Messel  medal  of  the 
Society  of  Chemical  Industry  (1922),  the 
Albert  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts 
(1930),  and  the  Horace  Brown  medal  of 
the  Institute  of  Brewing  (1926).  He  spoke 
and  wrote  much  upon  matters  of  public 
interest  in  which  the  application  of  science 
was  involved,  and  was  a  frequent  con- 
tributor to  The  Times.    After  his  retire- 


16 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Arthur 


ment  on  the  closing  of  the  chemistry 
school  in  1913  he  maintained  his  activity 
as  a  critic,  writer,  and  lecturer  and  came 
to  be  regarded  as  the  doyen  of  British 
chemistry. 

Armstrong  was  a  man  of  forceful  persona- 
lity who,  once  having  formed  an  opinion 
on  a  subject,  held  to  it  strongly  and  advo- 
cated it  vigorously.  He  undoubtedly 
rendered  great  service  by  the  reforms 
which  he  caused  to  be  brought  about  in 
the  teaching  of  science,  at  both  the  ele- 
mentary and  the  advanced  stages.  The 
elementary  teaching  of  science  was  studied 
closely  by  committees  of  the  British 
Association  under  Armstrong's  inspira- 
tion, between  1884  and  1891.  He  believed 
that  children  could  at  an  early  age  be 
made  to  tliink  for  themselves  if  properly 
guided,  and  he  was  one  of  the  strongest 
advocates  of  the  heuristic  method.  He 
rendered  most  valuable  service  to  Christ's 
Hospital  as  the  Royal  Society  representa- 
tive on  the  covmcil  of  almoners.  It  was 
largely  through  his  influence  that  the 
school  was  moved  from  Newgate  Street  to 
West  Horsham  in  1902,  and  under  his 
guidance  it  became  one  of  the  best- 
equipped  schools  in  the  country  for  the 
teaching  of  science.  His  many  reports  and 
essays  on  the  teaching  of  science  are 
collected  in  his  book  The  Teaching  of 
Scientific  Method  (1903,  2nd  ed.  reprinted 
1925).  Other  essays  are  published  in  The 
Art  and  Principles  of  Chemistry  (1927). 

Armstrong  married  in  1877  Frances 
Louisa  (died  1935),  daughter  of  Thomas 
Howard  La  vers,  and  had  four  sons  and 
three  daughters.  He  died  at  Lewisham 
13  July  1937.  His  eldest  son,  Edward 
Frankland,  achieved  a  prominent  posi- 
tion as  an  industrial  chemist  and  died  in 
1945. 

A  portrait  of  Armstrong,  by  T.  C. 
Dugdale  (1927),  is  in  the  possession  of 
the  Royal  Institution,  Albemarle  Street. 

[The  Times,  14  July  1937 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  January 
1941  (portrait);  Journal  of  the  Chemical 
Society,  July  1940  (portrait);  The  Central, 
Armstrong  memorial  number,  1938;  Chem- 
istry and  Industry,  vol.  Ix,  1941 ;  Nature, 
24  July  1937;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  H.  RoDD. 

ARTHUR  FREDERICK  PATRICK 
ALBERT  (1883-1938),  prince  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland ,  the  only  son  and  second 
child  of  Prince  Arthur  William  Patrick 
Albert,  first  Duke  of  Connaught  (1850- 
1942),  the  third  son  of  Queen  Victoria,  by 


his  wife,  Princess  Louise  Margaret  Alex- 
andra Victoria  Agnes,  daughter  of  Prince 
Charles  Frederick  of  Prussia,  was  born  at 
Windsor  Castle  13  January'  1883.  During 
the  absence  of  their  parents  in  India  he 
and  his  two  sisters  were  much  with  Queen 
Victoria,  who  showed  them  great  affection 
and  afterwards  continued  to  invite  them 
to  Osborne  and  Balmoral.  From  1893 
their  home  was  with  their  parents  at 
Bagshot  Park. 

Prince  Arthur  was  educated  at  Farn- 
borough  School,  Hampshire,  at  Eton,  and 
at  the  Royal  Military  College,  Sandhurst. 
In  1899  he  joined  in  his  father's  renuncia- 
tion of  the  succession  to  the  Duchy  ol 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  then  held  by  his 
uncle,  Prince  Alfred,  Duke  of  Edinburgh 
[q.v.]. 

Prince  Arthur  received  his  conunission 
in  the  7th  Hussars  in  1901  and  joined  the 
regiment  in  South  Africa,  where  he  saw 
active  service.  In  1907  he  was  promoted 
captain  in  the  Royal  Scots  Greys,  of  which 
regiment  he  became  colonel-in-chief  in 
1921.  He  also  held  that  rank  in  the  Royal 
Army  Pay  Corps.  In  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  he  was  aide-de-camp  successively  to 
Sir  John  French,  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  and 
Sir  Charles  Monro,  commanding  the  First 
Army,  was  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches, 
was  promoted  major  and  was  appointed 
C.B.  (1915),  and  retired  in  1919  as  brevet 
lieutenant-colonel  after  serving  with  the 
army  of  occupation  on  the  Rhine.  In  1920 
he  became  an  honorary  major-general. 

Prince  Arthur  undertook  state  missions 
on  behalf  of  King  Edward  VII  and  King 
George  V  to  two  successive  Emperors  of 
Japan  in  1906, 1912,  and  1918,  and  repre- 
sented the  King  on  state  occasions  in 
Portugal  (1908)  and  in  Russia,  Bavaria, 
and  Italy  (1911).  During  King  George's 
absence  in  India  (1911-1912)  he  was  one 
of  the  four  counsellors  of  state. 

In  1920  Prince  Arthur  was  appointed 
governor-general  of  the  Union  of  South 
Africa  in  succession  to  S.  C.  Buxton,  first 
Earl  Buxton  [q.v.],  and  arrived  in  Cape 
Town  in  November.  While  no  outstand- 
ing constitutional  issues  arose  during  his 
thiee  years  in  the  Dominion,  several 
notable  events  occurred  which  find  their 
place  in  Union  history.  In  1919  parUa- 
ment  had  authorized  the  government  to 
accept  the  League  of  Nations'  mandate 
for  German  South- West  Africa  and  this 
involved  legislation  to  provide  for  its  ad- 
ministration as  an  integral  part  of  the 
Union.  There  were  negotiations  in  1921 
between  Southern  Rhodesia,  then  under 


17 


Arthur 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


a  chartered  company,  and  the  Union 
government  on  the  possibility  of  the  in- 
corporation of  the  country  in  the  Union, 
but  as  a  result  of  a  referendum  in  Southern 
Rhodesia  in  which  the  majority  voted 
against  the  Union's  offer,  Southern  Rho- 
desia in  1923  received  responsible  govern- 
ment. During  all  these  years  General 
Smuts  was  premier  and  it  was  during  his 
term  of  office  that  the  industrial  unrest 
and  discontent,  which  had  been  manifest 
immediately  before  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
now  made  themselves  felt  on  a  larger  scale 
than  ever  before,  leading  to  an  outbreak 
on  the  Rand  which  was  only  suppressed 
by  the  government  after  the  declaration 
of  martial  law.  General  Smuts  himself 
leaving  Cape  Town  to  take  charge  of  the 
situation.  In  the  matter  of  the  Indian 
problem  in  South  Africa  the  governor- 
general,  on  the  advice  of  the  Union  min- 
isters, withheld  his  assent  to  a  Natal 
ordinance  of  1921  depriving  Indians  of 
the  municipal  franchise;  but  after  the 
Imperial  Conference  of  1923  was  over 
Indians  were  deprived  of  this  franchise 
by  ordinances  passed  subsequent  to  the 
termination  of  his  governorship  in  that 
year.  It  was  during  Prince  Arthur's  term 
of  office  that  the  Union  imdertook  the 
entire  responsibility  for  its  own  defence, 
except  that,  by  an  agreement  of  1921, 
under  which  the  United  Kingdom  trans- 
ferred to  the  Union  government  the  free- 
hold of  the  lands  and  buildings  of  the 
naval  base  of  Simonstown,  a  servitude 
was  registered  against  the  freehold  in 
favour  of  the  Admiralty  as  perpetual  user 
for  naval  purposes.  Accordingly  the  his- 
toric castle  at  Cape  Town  was  handed  over 
to  the  defence  officers  of  the  Union  and 
the  United  Kingdom  command  was  with- 
drawn. 

In  1923  Prince  Arthur  became  chair- 
man of  the  Middlesex  Hospital  and  pre- 
sided regularly  over  its  building  com- 
mittee and  over  the  'appeal  committee' 
formed  to  provide  for  a  great  expansion 
of  its  work.  For  this  he  personally  worked 
so  hard  and  successfully  that  nearly  two 
million  poimds  were  raised  by  and  under 
him,  and  the  Middlesex  became  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  teaching  hospitals  with 
first-rate  laboratories,  a  new  out-patients' 
building,  and  a  new  nurses'  home. 

Prince  Arthur  was  appointed  G.C.V.O. 
(1899),  K.G.  (1902),  K.T.  (1913),  and 
G.C.M.G.  (1918).  He  was  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council  in  1910.  He  was  an  Elder 
Brother  of  the  Trinity  House  (1910)  and 
high    steward    of   Reading    (1935).     He 


married  in  1913  his  first  cousin  once 
removed,  Princess  Alexandra  Victoria 
Alberta  Edwina  Louise,  by  special  re- 
mainder Duchess  of  Fife,  elder  daughter 
of  Alexander  WiUiam  George  Duff,  first 
Duke  of  Fife  (died  1912),  by  his  wife, 
Louise  Victoria  Alexandra  Dagmar,  prin- 
cess royal  [q.v.],  eldest  daughter  of  King 
Edward  VII.  Their  only  child,  Alastair 
Arthur,  Earl  of  Macduff  (born  1914),  suc- 
ceeded his  grandfather  as  second  Duke  of 
Connaught  in  1942,  and  died  26  April 
1943.  Prince  Arthur  died  in  London 
12  September  1938. 

[Dominions  Office  papers :  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]     E.  B.  Phipps. 

ASCHE,  (THOMAS  STANGE  HEISS) 
OSCAR  (1871-1936),  actor,  manager, 
author,  and  producer,  was  born  at  Gee- 
long,  Victoria,  Australia,  24  January  1871, 
the  third  son  of  Thomas  Asche,  by  his 
second  wife,  Harriet  Emma,  daughter 
of  William  Trear,  licensed  victualler,  of 
Sunderland,  co.  Durham.  Thomas  Asche, 
a  Norwegian  from  Christiania,  was  pro- 
prietor of  Mack's  Hotel,  and  was  himself  a 
man  of  remarkable  character  and  physical 
strength,  able  to  squeeze  a  pewter  pot  in 
one  hand.  Oscar  Asche  was  educated  at 
Melbourne  Grammar  School,  which  he  left 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.  Shortly  afterwards 
he  went  with  a  school  friend  on  a  sailing 
trip  to  China.  The  voyage  lasted  six 
months  and  had  an  undoubted  influence 
in  giving  the  boy  a  taste  for  adventure. 
On  his  retiu-n  he  tried  his  hand  as  a  store- 
keeper and  at  other  occupations  without 
much  satisfaction,  and  then  went  on  a 
trip  with  another  friend  to  Fiji.  While 
still  in  his  'teens  he  decided  to  make  his 
way  to  Norway  with  a  view  to  adopting 
the  stage  as  a  profession.  In  Christiania 
he  studied  under  Bjorn  Bjornson,  the 
famous  author's  son.  He  met  Ibsen,  who 
gave  him  an  introduction  to  William 
Archer  [q.v.],  and  told  him  that,  as  an 
English-speaking  actor,  he  should  go  to 
England. 

Asche  made  his  first  appearance  on  the 
stage  in  London  at  the  Opera  Comique  in 
1893,  when  he  played  a  small  part  in  Man 
and  Woman  imder  the  management  of 
Arthur  Dacre.  He  himself  has  left  a 
candid  record  of  his  early  struggles — of 
sleeping  on  the  Embankment  and  calling 
cabs  outside  theatres  in  which  he  after- 
wards appeared.  He  had  the  good  fortune 
in  the  same  year  to  join  the  Benson 
Repertory  Coriipany  on  the  strength  of 
having  played  cricket  and  been  a  wicket- 


18 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ashby 


keeper.  He  was  with  (Sir)  Frank  Benson 
[q.v.J  for  eight  years,  acting  every  kind 
of  part,  from  Biondello  in  The  Taming  of 
the  Shrew  and  Pistol  in  Henry  V  to  the 
King  in  Hamlet.  While  he  was  with 
Benson  he  married,  in  1898,  Lily,  daughter 
of  John  Grindall  Brayton,  physician  and 
surgeon,  of  Hindley,  Lancashire,  who 
joined  the  company  three  years  after. 
Both  were  engaged  after  Benson's  Lyceum 
season  in  1900,  Oscar  Asche  to  appear  as 
Maldonado  in  (Sir)  A.  W.  Pinero's  Iris  at 
the  Garrick  Theatre  in  1901,  and  Lily 
Brayton  as  Viola  in  Twelfth  Night,  but  she 
played  Mariamne  during  Maud  Jeffries's 
illness  in  Stephen  Phillips's  Herod  with 
(Sir)  Herbert  Beerbohm  Tree  [q.v.]  at 
Her  Majesty's  Theatre  (October  1900); 
here  Asche  was  himself  to  arrive  to  play 
Antinous  in  Phillips's  Ulysses  in  1902. 

In  1904  both  Asche  and  Lily  Brayton 
joined  their  old  Bensonian  comrade,  Otho 
Stuart,  in  the  management  of  the  Adelphi 
Theatre,  where  memorable  productions 
were  given  of  J.  B.  Fagan's  The  Prayer 
of  the  Sword,  of  A  Midsummer  NighVs 
Dream,  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  and 
Measure  for  Measure,  with  Asche  as  Bot- 
tom, Christopher  Sly,  Petruchio,  and 
Angelo,  and  of  Mr.  Rudolf  Besier's  first 
play.  The  Virgin  Goddess.  In  1907  Asche 
went  into  management  at  His  Majesty's 
Theatre,  producing  Laurence  Binyon's 
Attila,  with  himself  in  the  title-part,  and 
several  Shakespearian  revivals,  notably 
Othello,  Asche  proving  one  of  the  best 
Othellos  of  his  generation.  It  was  at  the 
Garrick  Theatre  in  1911  that  he  created 
Hajj,  the  philosophic  beggar  in  Edward 
Knoblock's  Kismet,  an  oriental  study 
which  paved  the  way  for  his  own  Chu 
Chin  Chow  at  His  Majesty's  five  years 
later.  The  libretto  of  this  was  written 
in  order  to  fill  up  time  during  a  rainy 
week  in  Manchester.  With  the  help  of 
Mr.  George  Frederic  Norton's  tuneful 
score  it  achieved  what  was  long  the 
record  run  of  2,238  performances  (August 
1916  to  July  1921).  In  1917  Asche  was 
concerned  as  producer  with  Mr.  Frederick 
Lonsdale's  The  Maid  of  the  Mountains, 
which  ran  for  1 ,352  performances  at  Daly's 
Theatre. 

Asche  was  not  destined  to  enjoy  another 
popular  triumph.  The  £200,000  to  which 
his  share  of  the  Chu  Chin  Chow  profits 
amounted  dwindled  in  his  always  lavish 
hands,  and  losses  on  a  Gloucestershire 
farm  were  an  added  trouble  in  his  later 
years.  Some  experiments,  such  as  his 
presentation  of  The  Merry  Wives  of  Wind- 


sor in  modern  dress  in  1920,  were  hardly 
the  result  of  sincere  artistic  conviction. 
Between  1909  and  1922  he  made  three 
extended  tours  of  his  native  Australia, 
meeting  with  an  enthusiastic  welcome, 
and  in  1913  he  visited  South  Africa.  At 
the  Shakespeare  tercentenary  celebration 
at  Drury  Lane  in  1916  he  appeared  as 
Casca  in  Julius  Caesar.  He  died  at  Marlow 
23  March  1936.  He  had  no  children.  LUy 
Brayton  survived  him,  afterwards  marry- 
ing (1938)  Douglas  Chalmers  Watson,  a 
Scottish  physician. 

Although  his  huge  stature  naturally 
limited  the  parts  which  he  could  take, 
Asche  had  a  distinct  creative  imagination 
of  his  own  and  sympathetic  understand- 
ing, both  as  actor  and  as  author.  He  made 
no  literary  pretensions ;  but  he  did  much 
to  break  down  the  artificiality  of  Victorian 
and  Edwardian  'romance'.  In  Chu  Chin 
Chow  he  touched  the  old  pantomime-story 
of  Ali  Baba  and  the  Forty  Thieves  with 
personal  memories  of  the  East.  His 
adaptation,  Mameena,  of  Sir  Henry  Rider 
Haggard's  Child  of  Storm  (Globe  Theatre, 
1913),  strove  to  do  the  like  for  native  life 
in  Africa.  His  appreciation  of  Shakespeare 
was  genuine  and  fruitful.  His  character, 
with  its  curious  blend  of  masterful  shrewd- 
ness on  the  one  hand  and  love  of  sport  and 
readiness  for  any  sort  of  gamble  on  the 
other,  found  full  expression  both  in  his  life 
and  in  his  art.  His  publications  include 
an  autobiography  which  tells  his  story 
with  characteristic  frankness,  and  two 
works  of  fiction.  The  Joss-sticks  of  Chung 
and  The  Saga  of  Hans  Hansen  (1930). 

[The  Times,  24  March  1936;  Oscar  Asche. 
His  Life  by  Himself,  1929 ;  Lady  Benson, 
Mainly  Players:  Bensonian  Memories,  1926; 
personal  knowledge.]      S.  R.  Littlewood. 

ASHBY,  THOMAS  (1874r-1931),  ar- 
chaeologist, was  born  at  Staines  14  Octo- 
ber 1874,  the  only  child  of  Thomas  Ashby, 
a  member  of  the  well-known  Quaker  famUy 
which  owned  Ashby's  brewery  at  Staines, 
by  his  wife.  Rose  Emma,  daughter  of 
Apsley  Smith.  Young  Ashby  was  an  ex- 
hibitioner at  Winchester,  where,  possibly 
by  some  stroke  of  schoolboy  genius,  he 
was  almost  immediately  dubbed  by  the 
lasting  nickname  of '  Titus '.  When  he  was 
sixteen  his  father  settled  in  Rome,  there 
to  become  an  enthusiastic  explorer  of  the 
Campagna  and  an  associate  of  Rodolfo 
Lanciani.  Learning  and  enthusiasm  won 
him  a  scholarship  at  Christ  Church,  Ox- 
ford, where  he  was  a  pupil  of  F.  J.  Haver- 
field  [q.v.]  and  (Sir)  John  Linton  Myres, 


19 


Ashby 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  was  awarded  a  first  class  in  classical 
moderations  (1895)  and  in  liter aehumaniores 
(1897).  In  the  latter  year  he  was  awarded 
a  Craven  fellowship,  thereafter  devoting 
himself  to  studies  of  Roman  antiquities,  on 
which  he  obtained  the  Oxford  degree  of 
D.Litt.  (1905)  and  the  Conington  prize  for 
classical  learning  (1906). 

Ashby  was  the  first  student  of  the  Brit- 
ish School  at  Rome  in  1901,  contributing 
to  its  Papers  detailed  topographical  studies 
of  the  Roman  roads  of  Italy.  He  became 
a  master  of  Rome's  urban  topography, 
and  derived  from  early  literature  and 
prints  a  unique  knowledge  of  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  city's  monuments  and  artistic 
treasures.  While  the  former  mastery  was 
evinced  by  articles  eventually  running 
into  hundreds,  the  latter  was  demon- 
strated by  his  treatment  of  such  varied 
themes  as  Eufrosino  della  Volpaia's  map 
of  the  Campagna  (1547),  the  sixteenth- 
century  architectural  drawings  of  Antonio 
Labacco,  the  topographical  studies  of 
l^tienne  du  Perac  (1581),  Giovanni  Bat- 
tista  de'  Cavalieri's  Antiquae  Statuae  Urbis 
Romae,  and  the  Windsor  Castle,  Soane 
Library,  and  Eton  College  collections  of 
drawings  and  paintings.  To  topographical 
and  bibliographical  lore  was  added  ex- 
cavation, in  the  Romano-British  town  of 
Caerwent  (1899-1910)  and  the  megalithic 
monuments  of  Malta  and  Gozo  (1908- 
1911).  It  is  not  surprising  that  he  became 
assistant  director  (1903)  and  director 
(1906-1925)  of  the  British  School  at 
Rome,  which  he  made  a  centre  of  topo- 
graphical studies  and  of  international 
comity,  and  which,  assisted  by  Mrs. 
Arthur  Strong,  he  saw  embrace  after  1915 
not  only  archaeology  but  art  and  archi- 
tecture in  a  new  building  in  the  Valle 
Giulia.  After  1925  he  set  himself  to  com- 
plete three  standard  works:  a  valuable 
revision  of  the  second  part  of  W.  J.  Ander- 
son and  R.  P.  Spiers,  The  Architecture  of 
Greece  and  Rome  (1927) ;  a  thoroughly  re- 
vised edition  of  S.  B.  Platner's  Topo- 
graphical Dictionary  of  Ancient  Rome 
(1929);  and  his  own  Aqueducts  of  Ancient 
Rome,  published  posthumously  in  1935. 
He  also  published  a  slighter  but  valuable 
work  on  The  Roman  Campagna  in  Classical 
Times  (1927).  In  1915  he  offered  his  ser- 
vices to  the  War  Office,  but  later  in  that 
year  joined  the  Red  Cross  where  for  his 
most  remarkable  intrepidity  on  the  Asiago 
plateau  he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches. 

Ashby  was  a  member  of  the  Accademia 
Pontificia  (1914)  and  of  the  Reale  Societa 
Romana  di  Storia  Patria  (1928),  a  foreign 


member  of  the  Accademia  dei  Lincei 
(1918),  an  honorary  member  of  the  Reale 
Accademia  di  San  Luca  (1925),  an  honor- 
ary A.R.I.B.A.  (1922),  and  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  (1927).  His  figure  was 
stocky,  his  head  tall  and  forceful,  with  a 
neat  beard  first  red  and  later  white.  He 
spoke  equally  brusque  English  and  ItaUan, 
the  latter  with  an  undisguised  British 
accent.  He  was  shy  with  strangers,  blunt 
with  acquaintances,  and  devoted  to  his 
friends.  He  married  in  1921  Caroline  May, 
eldest  daughter  of  Richard  Price-Williams, 
civil  engineer.  There  were  no  children  of 
the  marriage.  He  died  15  May  1931,  acci- 
dentally falling  from  a  train  between  Mai- 
den and  Raynes  Park,  Surrey. 

A  painting  of  Ashby,  by  (Sir)  George 
Clausen  (1925),  and  a  bronze  bust,  by 
David  Evans,  are  in  the  possession  of  the 
British  School  at  Rome.  A  drawing  by 
Clausen  (the  first  study  for  the  painting) 
is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[A.  H.  Smith,  Thomas  Ashby,  1874-1931  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xvii, 
1931 ;  Archivio  della  R.  Societa  Romana  di 
Storia  Patria,  vol.  1,  1927  (bibliography  to 
1 926) ;  personal  knowledge.]  Ian  A.  Richmond  . 

ASHLEY,     WILFRID     WILLIAM, 

Baron  Mount  Temple  (1867-1938),  poh- 
tician,  was  born  in  London  13  September 
1867,  the  only  son  of  (Anthony)  Evelyn 
Melbourne  Ashley  [q.v.],  by  his  first  wife, 
Sybella  Charlotte,  second  daughter  of  Sir 
Walter  Rockcliffe  Farquhar,  third  baronet. 
He  was  a  grandson  of  Anthony  Ashley 
Cooper,  seventh  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  [q.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford,  and  sers^ed  in  the  Ayr- 
shire Militia  (1886-1889),  the  Grenadier 
Guards  (1889-1898),  and  the  Hampshire 
Militia  (1899-1903). 

By  family  tradition,  environment,  and 
temperament  it  was  inevitable  that  Ashley 
should  enter  upon  a  political  career.  In 
addition  to  military  training  and  ex- 
perience he  was  an  extensive  traveller, 
and  had  made  a  particular  study  of  the 
social,  economic,  and  political  life  of  the 
United  States  of  America  and  the  British 
Dominions  and  Colonial  Empire.  Through 
his  great-grandmother,  Lady  Palmerston, 
he  inherited  Broadlands,  and  as  high 
steward  of  Romsey  he  could  claim  the 
town  as  part  of  his  estate.  He  was  par 
excellence  the  county  squire  and  the 
country  gentleman ;  with  a  lofty  sense  of 
public  duty  he  became  justice  of  the  peace, 
deputy  lieutenant,  and  alderman  of  the 
county  of  Hampshire.    He  became  early 


20 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Ashton 


attached  to  the  conservative  party,  but 
always  entertained  broad  and  discriminat- 
ing views  on  imperial  and  foreign  affairs 
during  his  whole  political  life.  He  was 
elected  member  of  parliament  for  Black- 
pool at  the  general  election  in  1906,  and 
sat  for  that  constituency  until  the  general 
election  of  1918,  when  he  became  member 
for  the  Fylde  division  of  Lancashire  until 
1922.  In  that  year  he  transferred  to  the 
New  Forest  division  of  Hampshire ,  which  he 
represented  until  1932,  when  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Mount  Temple, 
of  Lee,  in  the  county  of  Southampton. 

Ashley  served  as  a  conservative  whip  in 
the  years  preceding  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
and  from  1914  to  1915  commanded  the 
20th  battalion  of  the  King's  Liverpool 
Regiment.  In  1915  he  became  parliamen- 
tary private  secretary  to  the  financial  secre- 
tary to  the  War  Office.  He  first  reached 
office  in  1922  when  he  became  parliamen- 
tary secretary  to  the  Ministry  of  Transport, 
and  in  the  following  year  was  appointed 
under-secretary  of  state  for  war.  From 
1924  to  1929  he  was  minister  of  transport, 
and  was  responsible  for  the  reorganization 
and  practical  operative  structure  of  that 
ministry.  He  planned  the  introduction  of 
the  'round-about'  scheme  of  one-way 
traffic  in  London  and  the  larger  provincial 
cities.  He  was  for  several  years  chairman 
of  the  Anti-Socialist  Union  and  president 
of  the  Navy  League,  and  was  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  Comrades  of  the  Great 
War,  from  which  arose  the  national  move- 
ment of  the  British  Legion.  In  1924  he 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 

The  Irish  estate,  Classiebawn,  on  the 
west  coast  of  Ireland,  also  inherited  from 
Palmerston,  received  Ashley's  constant 
attention.  He  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1901  to  Amalia  Mary  Maud  (died  1911), 
only  child  of  Sir  Ernest  Joseph  Cassel 
[q.v.],  and  had  two  daughters,  the  elder 
of  whom,  Edwina,  married  Lord  Louis 
Moimtbatten  (later  Admiral  Earl  Mount- 
batten  of  Burma) ;  secondly,  in  1914  to 
Muriel  Emily,  elder  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
Walter  Spencer,  of  Fownhope  Court,  Here- 
ford, and  formerly  wife  of  Arthur  Lionel 
Ochoncar  Forbes-Sempill,  fifth  son  of  the 
seventeenth  Baron  Sempill.  He  died  at 
Broadlands,  Romsey,  3  July  1939  and  the 
peerage  became  extinct. 

WTiat  has  been  said  of  the  previous 
owner  of  Broadlands  may  be  applied  with 
more  justice  to  Ashley,  that  he  possessed 
'pluck  combined  with  remarkable  tact, 
unfailing  good  temper  associated  with 
firmness  almost  amounting  to  obstinacy'. 


In  addition  to  a  picture  and  a  crayon 
drawing  of  Moxmt  Temple  in  childhood 
by  Edward  Clifford  there  are  also  at 
Broadlands  a  crayon  drawing  by  Eva 
Sawyer,  a  picture  by  Mrs.  Blakeney  Ward, 
and  another  by  Emil  Fuchs. 

[The  Titms,  4  July  19.39;  personal  know- 
ledge] P.  J.  Hannon. 


ASHTON,  THOMAS  GAIR,  first  Baron 
Ashton  of  Hyde  (1855-1933),  industria- 
list, philanthropist,  and  politician,  was 
born  at  Fallowfield,  Manchester,  5  Febru- 
ary 1855,  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas  Ashton, 
of  Hyde,  Cheshire,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Samuel  Stillman  Gair,  who 
belonged  to  Rhode  Island,  U.S.A.,  and 
whose  English  residence  was  Penketh 
Hall,  Liverpool.  Thomas  Ashton's  second 
daughter  became  the  wife  of  James  (after- 
wards Viscount)  Bryce  [q.v.].  The  Ash- 
tons  were  well  known,  during  generations, 
for  singularly  humane  treatment  of  the 
work-people  in  their  cotton  mills,  and, 
after  his  education  at  Rugby  and  Univer- 
sity College,  Oxford  (of  which  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  in  1923), 
Thomas  Gair  Ashton  was  connected  with 
the  family  business  in  Manchester  and 
Hyde  for  forty  years,  carrying  on  this 
tradition,  which  coloured  his  whole  life. 
He  was  liberal  member  of  parliament  for 
the  Hyde  division  from  1885  to  1886 
(losing  the  seat  in  the  latter  year  and  fail- 
ing to  regain  it  in  1892)  and  for  the  Luton 
division  from  1895  to  1911.  During  that 
period  he  sat  on  various  royal  com- 
missions, was  chairman  of  the  House  of 
Commons  Railway  and  Canal  Traffic  Com- 
mittee in  1909  and  of  the  Standing  Orders 
Committee  in  1910,  and  became  notable 
in  the  House  for  his  wide  knowledge  of 
finance. 

Ashton's  care  for  education  was  also 
displayed  by  his  guarantee  to  make  good 
any  losses  sustained  in  its  first  three  years 
by  the  county  secondary  school  at  Hyde, 
and  by  his  support  of  the  Hyde  Technical 
School  and  the  free  library,  so  that  for  a 
time  both  chiefly  depended  upon  him.  He 
was  a  governor  of  Manchester  University, 
the  first  honorary  secretary  of  the  Man- 
chester Technical  School,  and  a  member 
of  the  governing  body  of  the  Whitworth 
Institute.  He  also  took  a  keen  interest  in 
the  history  and  antiquities  of  Sussex, 
where  he  lived  after  1902. 

Ashton  was  raised  to  the  peerage  in  1911 
as  Baron  Ashton  of  Hyde,  and,  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  was  chairman  of  the 


•21 


Ashton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cotton  Exports  Committee,  which  con- 
trolled the  amoimt  of  cotton  allowed  to  pass 
through  the  blockade  to  neutral  nations 
bordering  Germany.  The  work  derived 
importance  from  the  fact  that  cotton  was 
then  a  raw  material  for  munitions. 

Ashton  was  sagacious,  far-sighted, 
widely  read,  and  widely  travelled,  with 
excellent  judgement  of  men  and  affairs, 
and  an  immense  capacity  for  work,  but 
his  extreme  reserve  and  modesty  hid  his 
real  capabilities  from  those  not  closely 
acquainted  with  him.  He  had  a  most 
exacting  sense  of  duty  in  all  public  affairs, 
and  was  entirely  incapable  of  self-adver- 
tisement, never  pushing  his  own  claims 
and  interests.  Nor  for  one  moment  did 
he  support  any  views  merely  because  of 
their  popularity.  For  instance,  he  advo- 
cated home  rule  for  Ireland  before  Glad- 
stone pronounced  in  its  favour.  But, 
owing  to  his  profovmd  shyness,  he  struck 
even  those  knowing  him  well  as  curiously 
impersonal,  a  fact  which  militated  per- 
haps against  due  recognition  of  his  deep 
feeling  for  the  causes  which  he  served  so 
faithfully. 

Ashton  married  in  1886  Eva  Margaret 
(died  1938),  second  daughter  of  John 
Henry  James,  of  Watford,  who  belonged 
to  a  Cumberland  family.  They  had  two 
sons,  the  elder  of  whom  died  as  a  child, 
and  two  daughters.  He  died  at  his  home 
at  Robertsbridge  1  May  1933  and  was 
succeeded  as  second  baron  by  his  younger 
son,  Thomas  Henry  Raymond  (born  1901). 

[Manchester  Guardian,  2  May  1933;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Marion  Wood. 

ASTBURY,  Sir  JOHN  MEIR  (1860- 
1939),  judge,  was  born  at  Broughton, 
nciar  Manchester,  14  June  1860,  the  eldest 
son  of  Frederick  James  Astbury,  J. P., 
chartered  accountant,  of  Hilton  Park, 
Prestwich,  Lancashire,  by  his  wife,  Mar- 
garet, daughter  of  John  Munn,  of  Man- 
chester. He  was  educated  at  Manchester 
Grammar  School  and  at  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  graduated  with  a  second 
class  in  jurisprudence  in  1882:  in  the 
following  year  he  was  the  only  candidate 
placed  in  the  first  class  in  the  B.C.L. 
examination,  and  in  1884  he  won  the 
Vinerian  law  scholarship.  In  the  last- 
named  year  he  was  called  to  the  bar  by 
the  Middle  Temple  (of  which  Inn  he 
became  a  bencher  in  1903  and  treasurer 
in  1926),  and  entered  practice  on  the 
Chancery  side  at  the  local  bar  at  Man- 
chester. He  took  silk  in  1 895  and  migrated 
to  London,  attaching  himself  first  to  the 


court  of  Sir  E.  W.  Byrne  [q.v.]  and  later 
to  that  of  Sir  H.  B.  Buckley  (later  Lord 
Wrenbury,  q.v.)  'going  special'  in  1905, 
with  a  large  business  in  patent  litigation, 
which  increased  greatly  after  John  Fletcher 
Moulton  [q.v.]  became  a  lord  justice  of 
appeal  in  1906.  In  that  year  he  stood  as 
liberal  candidate  for  the  Southport  divi- 
sion and  defeated  (Sir)  E.  Marshall  Hall 
[q.v.],  but  he  was  not  greatly  interested 
in  politics  and  retired  from  parliament  in 
January  1910.  In  1913  Lord  Chancellor 
Haldane  offered  him,  and  he  accepted,  the 
judgeship  in  the  Chancery  division  recently 
vacated  by  the  promotion  of  Sir  Charles 
Swinfen  Eady  [q.v.].  For  the  next  six- 
teen years  he  discharged  the  duties  of  this 
position  with  efficiency  and  firmness, 
though  without  any  great  distinction. 

Astbury  was  best  known  to  the  general 
public  and  will  be  remembered  by  future 
historians  for  the  part  which,  as  judge,  he 
played  during  the  General  Strike  of  1926. 
The  litigation  in  question  is  reported  as 
National  Sailors''  and  Firemen's  Union  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland  v.  Reed  and 
others.  This  union,  composed  of  loyal 
merchant  seamen,  under  the  wise  direction 
of  its  secretary  J.  Havelock  Wilson  [q.v.], 
had  little  sympathy  with  the  attempt  of 
the  strikers  to  subvert  democratic  govern- 
ment, and  when  certain  local  branches 
called  upon  members  to  cease  work  the 
union  immediately  applied  to  the  High 
Court  of  Justice  for  an  injunction  pro- 
hibiting its  subordinate  officials  from 
usurping  the  functions  of  the  union  as  a 
whole.  The  case  was  in  Astbury 's  list  on 
11  May,  and  he  gave  his  decision  at  once, 
not  confining  himself  to  the  technical 
point  as  to  the  relations  between  the  union 
and  its  branches,  but  declaring  in  forcible 
language  that  the  whole  General  Strike 
was  illegal  and  that  the  court  would  use 
its  powers,  by  injunction,  to  prevent  any 
action  which  might  further  its  objective. 
On  the  previous  night  Sir  Henry  Slesser, 
at  that  time  a  leading  lawyer  amongst  the 
labour  members  of  parUament,  had  de- 
clared in  the  House  of  Commons  that  the 
question  of  the  legality  of  the  strike  was 
one  to  be  decided  by  the  courts  of  justice, 
and  that  'whatever  the  decision  of  this 
tribimal,  we  shall  all,  as  law-abiding  citi- 
zens, obey  it'.  When  the  House  met  on 
the  following  evening.  Sir  John  Simon, 
with  a  copy  of  Astbury's  judgement,  given 
earUer  in  the  day,  in  his  hand,  in  a  trench- 
ant speech  charged  the  leaders  of  the  strike 
as  law-breakers.  On  the  following  morn- 
ing Mr.  Baldwin  made  the  announcement 


22 


D.N.E.  1931-1940 


Aston 


that  the  strike  had  been  called  off.  There 
can  be  little  doubt,  in  view  of  this 
sequence  of  events,  that  Astbury's  judge- 
ment played  an  important  part  in  bringing 
about  the  collapse  of  the  whole  movement. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  estimate  the  vali- 
dity of  the  judgement  as  an  exposition  of 
the  law:  at  the  time  it  had  the  general 
approval  of  lawyers,  although  it  was  subse- 
quently attacked  by  Professor  A.  L. 
Goodhart. 

In  1929  Astbury's  eyesight  began  to 
fail  and  in  October  he  resigned  his  judge- 
ship: in  December  he  was  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council.  His  last  years  were  sad- 
dened by  his  blindness  and  by  the  death 
in  a  motor  accident  of  his  only  child,  a 
daughter  by  his  first  marriage.  He  died 
at  Sandwich  21  August  1939.  He  was 
twice  married:  first,  in  1888  to  Evelyn 
(died  January  1923),  daughter  of  Paul  Sus- 
man,  merchant,  of  Manchester ;  secondly, 
in  August  1923  to  Harriet,  daughter  of 
George  William  Holmes,  of  Philadelphia, 
U.S.A.,  and  widow  of  Captain  Morrell 
Andrew  Girdlestone.  By  his  will,  he 
directed  that  the  ultimate  residue  of 
his  estate  should  be  devoted  to  legal 
education. 

Astbury  was  elected  in  1923  an  honor- 
ary fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford, 
which  possesses  a  portrait  of  him  by  the 
Austrian  artist  Kopek. 

[Law  Reports.  National  Sailors'  and  Fire- 
men's Union  of  Great  Britain  v.  Reed  and 
others,  1926,  eh.  536 ;  Law  Quarterly  Review, 
vol.  xliii,  1926;  A.  L.  Goodhart,  Essays  in 
Jurisprudence  and  the  Common  Law,  1931 ; 
Hansard,  Parliamentary  Debates;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Philip  A.  Landon. 

ASTON,  Sir  GEORGE  GREY  (1861- 
1938),  major-general,  was  born  in  Cape 
Colony  2  December  1861,  the  youngest 
son  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Henry  Aston, 
Indian  Army  (retired),  by  his  wife, 
Katherine,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Abraham 
Faure,  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Edu- 
cated at  Westminster  and  at  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Greenwich,  he  joined  the 
Royal  Marine  Artillery  in  1879. 

In  1884,  while  serving  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean flagship,  Aston  landed  at  Suakin 
with  the  Royal  Marine  battalion  and  was 
present  at  the  battles  of  El  Teb  and  Tamai. 
In  1886,  in  recognition  of  his  marked 
ability,  he  was  appointed  to  the  Foreign 
Intelligence  Committee,  Admiralty,  the 
forerunner  of  the  Naval  Intelligence  De- 
partment, and  after  completing  the  course 


at  the  Staff  College,  Camberley,  in  1891, 
he  held  a  succession  of  staff  appointments 
with  conspicuous  success  and  growing 
reputation.  The  more  important  of  these 
were  professor  of  fortification  at  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Greenwich  (1896-1899); 
deputy-assistant-adjutant-general  (Intelli- 
gence) 8th  division  in  South  Africa  (1900) ; 
instructor  at  the  Staff  College  (1904-1907) ; 
brigadier-general  on  the  staff  of  P.  S.,  Lord 
Methuen  [q.v.],  commander-in-chief  in 
South  Africa  (1908-1913).  For  his  services 
in  the  South  African  war  he  was  promoted 
brevet  lieutenant-colonel.  On  relinquish- 
ing his  appointment  in  1913  he  received 
from  the  government  of  the  Union  of 
South  Africa  an  expression  of  thanks  for 
the  zeal  and  ability  displayed  in  carrying 
out  his  duties.  Lord  Methuen,  reporting 
on  him,  said:  'I  have  seldom  served  with 
an  officer  of  such  rare  ability  combined 
with  such  great  zeal.'  He  was  specially 
promoted  to  colonel  2nd  commandant  for 
meritorious  services,  particularly  those  in 
South  Africa. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Aston 
was  appointed  to  command  a  Royal 
Marine  brigade,  landing  with  it  at  Ostend 
and  subsequently  at  Dunkirk.  A  break- 
down in  health  led  to  his  relief  by 
Brigadier-General  (Sir)  Archibald  Paris 
[q.v.]  in  September,  and  from  then  on- 
wards he  served  as  colonel  commandant 
Royal  Marine  Artillery  until  the  termina- 
tion of  the  appointment  in  1917,  when  he 
was  retired  at  his  own  request  and  pro- 
moted major-general. 

Aston  now  devoted  himself  to  writing, 
contributing  articles  to  The  Times  and 
pubUshing  several  books,  including  Memo- 
ries of  a  Marine  (1919),  The  Navy  of 
To-day  (1927),  and  Biography  of  Marshal 
Foch  (1929).  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1902  and  K.C.B.  in  1913.  He  was  ap- 
pointed aide-de-camp  to  the  king  in  1911, 
and  in  1925  he  was  awarded  a  good  service 
pension. 

Aston  was  dark,  of  medium  height  and 
slender  build.  He  had  a  very  quick  brain 
and  great  store  of  nervous  energy  which, 
in  conjunction  with  a  ready  pen,  assured 
his  success  as  a  staff  officer.  He  married 
in  1909  Dorothy  Ellen,  daughter  of  Vice- 
Admiral  William  Wilson,  of  Clyffe  Pypard, 
near  Swindon,  and  had  three  sons  and  two 
daughters.  He  died  at  Woodford,  Salis- 
bury, 2  December  1938. 

[The  Times,  3  December  1938;  Sir  George 
Aston,  Memories  of  a  Marine,  1919 ;  Official 
records  at  the  Royal  Marine  office,  Admiralty  ; 
personal  knowledge.]  R.  C.  Temple. 


28 


Atholstan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


ATHOLSTAN,  Baron  (1848-1938), 
newspaper  proprietor.  [See  Graham, 
Hugh.] 


ATKINSON,  JOHN,  Baron  Atkinson, 
of  Glenwilliam  (1844-1932),  judge,  was 
bom  at  Drogheda,  co.  Louth,  13  December 
1844,  the  elder  son  of  Edward  Atkinson, 
physician,  of  Glenwilliam  Castle,  co. 
Limerick,  and  Skea  House,  Enniskillen, 
by  his  first  wife,  Rosetta,  daughter  of 
John  Shaw  McCuUoch.  From  the  Royal 
Belfast  Academical  Institution  he  entered 
Queen's  College,  Galway  (a  constituent 
college  of  the  old  Royal  University  of  Ire- 
land), where  he  gained  scholarships  in  his 
first  three  years,  in  his  fourth  a  senior 
scholarship  in  mathematics,  and  in  his 
fifth  a  senior  scholarship  in  natural  philo- 
sophy. He  graduated  with  first  class 
honours  in  1861  and  in  1862  he  entered 
as  a  student  both  in  King's  Inns,  Dublin, 
and  at  the  Inner  Temple.  In  1865  he  was 
called  to  the  Irish  bar,  and  in  the  same 
year  took  the  LL.B.  degree  with  honours, 
becoming  a  bencher  of  King's  Inns  in 
1885.  He  joined  the  Munster  circuit,  of 
which  he  remained  a  member  until  his 
appointment  as  a  law  officer.  He  was 
called  to  the  English  bar  by  the  Inner 
Temple  in  1890,  and  was  elected  a  bencher 
in  1906.  Meanwhile  his  practice  in  Ireland 
was  increasing  and  became  large.  In  1880, 
at  an  exceptionally  early  age,  he  took 
silk,  and  after  appointment  in  1889  as 
solicitor-general  for  Ireland  and  in  1892 
as  attorney-general,  he  was  sworn  of  the 
Irish  Privy  Council  that  same  year,  but 
the  fall  of  I^ord  Salisbury's  administration 
put  a  speedy  period  to  his  tenure  of  office. 
It  was  not  imtil  1895  that  he  entered  the 
House  of  Commons  as  conservative  mem- 
ber for  North  Londonderry,  having  earlier 
in  the  year  been  once  more  chosen  to  be 
attorney-general  for  Ireland.  He  con- 
tinued in  that  office  until,  in  1905,  he  was 
appointed  a  lord  of  appeal  in  ordinary 
with  the  title  of  Lord  Atkinson,  of  Glen- 
william, CO.  Limerick,  and  was  sworn  of 
the  English  Privy  Council.  In  office  his 
knowledge  of  land  and  social  problems  in 
Ireland  rendered  him  a  highly  valued 
adviser  to  the  chief  secretary  for  Ireland, 
Gerald  Balfour  (later  second  Earl  of  Bal- 
four) in  the  framing  and  passing  of  the 
Irish  Land  Act  of  1896  and  the  Local 
Government  Act  of  1898. 

Atkinson  was  the  first  Irish  barrister  to 
go  direct  from  his  practice  at  the  bar  to 
the  House  of  Lords.  His  appointment 
called  forth  criticism  on  the  ground  that 

24 


the  room  of  a  great  lawyer  like  Lindley 
should  not  have  been  fiUed  by  one  better 
known  as  a  politician  than  as  a  legist,  but 
the  sequel  did  not  justify  the  doubts  about 
his  competence  as  a  judge.  Not  that  he 
was  a  profound  lawyer — he  was  the  last 
man  to  have  made  such  a  claim ;  but  he 
was  a  ready  speaker,  an  energetic  worker 
possessing  an  instinctive  and  sincere 
passion  for  justice,  and,  above  all,  en- 
dowed with  the  gifts  of  courage  both 
physical  and  moral,  and  an  inflexible 
sense  of  duty,  which  enabled  him  to  steer 
luidaimted  a  straight  course  through  the 
stormy  seas  of  Irish  political  life  during  a 
period  when  navigation  was  by  no  means 
easy,  and  to  resist  the  strong  pressure  put 
upon  him  to  resign  by  the  first  coalition 
government  in  order  to  satisfy  the  require- 
ments of  the  political  party  leaders.  He  re- 
signed his  seat  as  a  lord  of  appeal  in  1928. 

Atkinson  married  in  1873  Rowena  Jane 
(died  1911),  daughter  of  Richard  Chute, 
M.D.,  of  Tralee,  co.  Kerry,  and  had  four 
sons,  the  three  elder  of  whom  predeceased 
their  father.  He  died  in  London  13  March 
1932.  An  excellent  portrait,  by  John  St. 
HeUer  Lander,  hangs  in  the  dining-hall  of 
King's  Inns,  Dublin. 

[The  Times,  14  and  15  March  1932 ;  private 
information.]  Theodoke  C.  Tobias. 


AVORY,  Sir  HORACE  EDMUND 
(1851-1935),  judge,  was  born  in  London 
31  August  1851,  the  second  son  of  Henry 
Avory,  clerk  of  the  court  at  the  Central 
Criminal  Court  (a  post  to  which  Henry 
Kemp  Avory,  Horace's  elder  brother, 
succeeded  in  due  course),  by  his  wife, 
Margaret  Kemp.  Horace  was  educated  at 
Gothic  House  College,  Clapham,  King's 
College,  London,  and  Corpus  Christi  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  where  he  was  a  scholar 
and  was  awarded  a  third  class  in  the  law 
tripos  of  1873:  he  was  captain  of  the 
college  boat  club  in  1872.  He  was  called 
to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1875 
and  read  for  a  time  in  the  chambers  of 
E.  T.  E.  Besley,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
criminal  bar.  He  joined  the  South-Eastern 
circuit  and  regularly  attended  the  Surrey 
sessions  held  at  Newington  in  addition 
to  the  monthly  sessions  of  the  Central 
Criminal  Court  where  he  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  'devilling'  for  such  men  as  (Sir) 
Harry  Poland,  Montagu  Williams,  and 
(Sir)  Edward  Clarke  [qq.v.]  as  well  as 
Beslej'.  He  soon  came  to  be  known  as  a 
sound  lawyer  as  well  as  an  astute  and 
courageous  if  not  eloquent  advocate.  His 
practice  grew  rapidly  and   in   1889  his 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Avory 


name  was  included  with  those  of  (Sir) 
Forrest  Fulton,  (Sir)  C.  W.  Matthews 
[q.v.],  and  (Sir)  C.  F.  Gill,  as  one  of  the 
official  prosecuting  counsel  at  the  Central 
Criminal  Court.  For  the  next  twelve  years 
he  was  engaged  in  most  of  the  important 
criminal  trials  in  London,  and  in  1809  he 
became  senior  prosecuting  counsel  to  the 
Crown  at  the  Central  Criminal  Court. 
When  he  was  not  required  to  act  for  the 
Crown  he  was  frequently  briefed  for  the 
defence  as  junior  to  some  fashionable 
Queen's  Counsel,  his  role  being  to  deal 
with  any  legal  point  which  might  arise. 
He  was  counsel  for  the  prosecution  in  the 
trials  in  1893  of  Jabez  Balfour  and  his  co- 
directors  of  the  Liberator  group  of  com- 
panies, the  failure  of  which  in  1892  with 
liabilities  of  eight  millions  caused  wide- 
spread ruin. 

By  1901  Avory  considered  that  his 
practice  in  the  civil  courts,  particularly 
in  rating  and  licensing  cases,  justified  him 
in  applying  for  silk,  and  he  was  included 
in  the  first  batch  of  King's  Counsel  to  be 
appointed  by  King  Edward  VII.  His  suc- 
cess as  a  leader  was  immediate.  His  argu- 
ments were  always  listened  to  with  close 
attention  by  the  judges,  for  he  never 
indulged  in  irrelevance  or  repetition,  while 
his  direct  and  lucid  method  of  stating  his 
case  appealed  to  a  jury.  He  quickly 
acquired  a  leading  practice  in  'Crown 
paper'  matters  and  had  a  fair  share  of 
briefs  at  nisi  prius.  The  Law  Reports  are 
the  best  evidence  of  his  activities  at  this 
period,  but  it  may  be  mentioned  that  he 
advised  the  prosecution  of  Whitaker 
Wright  [q.v.]  after  the  law  officers  had 
stated  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  in 
their  opinion  Wright  had  committed  no 
criminal  offence.  The  subsequent  con- 
viction of  Wright  (1904)  showed  Avory's 
view  to  be  correct.  In  1902  Avory  was 
appointed  recorder  of  Kingston,  an  office 
involving  no  work  and  carrying  no  salary, 
but,  as  a  compliment,  much  appreciated 
by  the  holder. 

In  the  summer  of  1909  Avory  was  ap- 
pointed commissioner  of  assize  for  the 
South-Eastern  circuit  and  when,  in  Janu- 
ary 1910,  he  was  again  appointed  com- 
missioner, this  time  for  the  Northern 
circuit,  it  was  realized  that  his  elevation 
to  the  bench  was  only  a  matter  of  time. 
The  opportunity  occurred  in  the  same 
year,  and  in  October  he  was  sworn  in  as 
a  judge  of  the  King's  Bench  division.  It 
is  as  a  judge  that  Avory  will  be  best 
remembered.  Always  dignified  and  cour- 
teous, his  control  of  a  case  was  perfect. 


Prolixity,  irrelevance,  and  levity  were  alike 
discouraged  in  his  court.  For  the  most 
part  a  silent  judge,  what  he  did  say  was 
always  to  the  point  and  expressed  in  the 
simplest  language.  His  judgement  on  any 
question  of  law  is  invariably  treated  as 
deserving  the  utmost  respect.  His  sum- 
ming up  to  a  jury  in  a  criminal  trial  was 
usually  a  model  of  lucidity  and  accuracy. 
He  made  mistakes,  as  all  judges  must,  but 
the  accused  who  relied  upon  facts  always 
had  his  defence  fully  and  fairly  put,  while 
he  or  she  who  relied  upon  sentiment  found 
Avory  unsympathetic.  His  manner  was 
cold  and  at  times  stern,  but  if  the  accused 
was  convicted  it  was  by  the  logic  of  facts 
not  as  the  result  of  any  undue  pressure 
from  the  bench,  and  many  convicted  per- 
sons, including  the  two  murderers  of 
Police-Constable  Gutteridge,  in  1927,  Guy 
Frederick  Browne  and  William  Henry 
Kennedy,  went  out  of  their  way  to 
acknowledge  the  fairness  of  their  trials 
before  him.  As  a  member  of  a  divisional 
court  Avory's  knowledge  of  magisterial 
law  was  invaluable,  while  in  the  Court  of 
Criminal  Appeal  his  opinion  usually  pre- 
vailed with  the  other  members  of  the 
court. 

On  the  retirement  of  Sir  Charles  (later 
Lord)  Darling  [q.v.]  in  1923  Avory  became 
senior  judge  of  the  King's  Bench  division. 
During  the  absence  through  ill  health  of 
Lord  Hewart,  the  lord  chief  justice,  he 
discharged  the  official  duties  of  that  office 
and  in  1932  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  He  continued  to  sit  in  court  regu- 
larly until  the  end  of  the  Easter  sittings 
of  1935  when  he  left  London  for  the 
Dormy  House  Club  at  Rye.  There  he  died 
suddenly  13  June.  In  the  previous  Janu- 
ary he  had  celebrated  the  diamond  jubilee 
of  his  call  to  the  bar. 

Avory  was  chairman  of  the  committee 
which  was  responsible  for  the  codification 
of  the  law  to  be  found  in  the  Perjury  Act 
(1911),  the  Forgery  Act  (1913),  and  the 
Larceny  Act  (1916).  The  Indictments  Act 
(1915)  and  its  rules  were  largely  his  work 
and  his  hand  is  clearly  traceable  in  the 
Criminal  Justice  Act  (1925)  and  in  other 
statutes  dealing  with  criminal  law. 

Avory  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  university  of  Cambridge 
in  1911  and  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Corpus  in  1912.  He  also  became  a 
fellow  of  King's  College,  London,  in  1912. 
He  was  elected  a  bencher  of  the  Inner 
Temple  in  1908  and  treasurer  in  1929.  He 
was  fond  of  riding  and  in  his  youth  hunted 
with  the  Surrey  Union  hounds.   Later  he 


2."> 


Avory 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


took  up  golf,  which  he  played  accurately 
and  very  seriously.  He  regularly  attended 
the  meetings  and  dinners  of  the  Pegasus 
Club,  of  which  he  was  an  original  member, 
becoming  president  in  1911.  His  fellow 
members  of  the  Garrick  and  United  Uni- 
versity clubs  found  him  a  pleasant  and, 
when  he  chose,  an  amusing  companion. 
His  life,  however,  was  devoted  to  the  law, 
which  was  his  hobby  as  well  as  his  pro- 
fession. He  did  not  court  publicity  and 
preferred  the  society  of  a  limited  circle  of 
friends.  He  married  in  1877  Maria  Louisa 
(died  1937),  daughter  of  Henry  Castle, 
of  Wandsworth,  and  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter. 

A  cartoon  of  Avory,  by  'Spy',  appeared 
in  Vanity  Fair  2  June  1904. 

[The  Times,  14  June  1935 ;  F.  W.  Ashley, 
My   First  Sixty    Years  in   the  Law,    1936; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Travers  Humphrkys. 

BACKHOUSE,  Sir  ROGER  ROLAND 
CHARLES  (1878-1939),  admiral  of  the 
fleet,  the  fourth  son  (twin  with  his  brother 
Miles)  of  (Sir)  Jonathan  Edmund  Back- 
house, first  baronet,  a  descendant  of  well- 
known  Quaker  forebears,  by  his  wife, 
Florence,  youngest  daughter  of  Sir  John 
Salusbury  Salusbury-Trelawny ,  ninth  baro- 
net, the  head  of  a  famous  and  ancient  Corn- 
ish family,  was  born  at  The  Rookery,  Mid- 
dleton  Tyas,  Yorkshire,  24  November  1878. 
He  entered  the  training-ship  Britannia  at 
Dartmouth  as  a  naval  cadet  in  1892,  and 
passing  out  after  two  years  was  appointed 
to  the  Repulse  battleship  in  the  Channel 
squadron,  being  promoted  midshipman  in 
1894.  A  year  later  he  was  transferred  to 
H.M.S.  Comus,  a  small  third-class  cruiser 
which  was  commissioned  to  join  the  Pacific 
squadron,  an  opportunity  for  seeing  the 
New  World  in  the  days  of  'showing  the 
flag'  all  down  the  American  coast  from 
Alaska  to  Patagonia.  In  her  he  remained 
until  she  returned  to  England  in  1898, 
being  promoted  sub-lieutenant  in  March 
of  that  year.  Exactly  one  year  later  he 
was  promoted  lieutenant  with  a  prize  of 
£10  for  gaining  five  first  class  certificates. 
After  a  year  in  the  battleship  Revenge  in 
the  Mediterranean  he  rapidly  became 
recognized  as  a  gunnery  expert,  winning 
the  Egerton  prize  in  1902.  He  divided  his 
last  remaining  nine  years  as  lieutenant 
equally  between  the  staff  of  the  gunnery- 
school  ship  Excellent  at  Portsmouth  and 
appointments  as  gunnery  officer  of  battle- 
ships afloat,  including  the  new  Dread- 
nought  with   its   great   advance   in   gun 


power.  On  promotion  to  commander  at 
the  end  of  1909  he  left  the  Dreadnought 
to  return  to  the  Excellent  as  experimental 
officer  for  a  year,  and  then  began  a  long 
period  of  staff  work  at  sea.  From  March 
1911  until  August  1914  Backhouse  was 
flag-commander  to  three  successive  Home 
Fleet  commanders-in-chief,  Sir  F.  C.  B. 
Bridgeman,  Sir  G.  A.  Callaghan,  and  Sir 
John  (afterwards  Earl)  Jellicoe  [qq.v.],  in 
their  flagships  Neptune  and  Iron  Duke. 
After  the  outbreak  of  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  he  was  specially  promoted  captain 
(1  September),  and  at  once  reappointed  to 
JeUicoe's  staff  for  special  service.  Jellicoe, 
when  first  sea  lord,  placed  on  record  the 
assistance  of  the  greatest  value  rendered 
by  Backhouse  as  flag-commander  and 
captain  on  the  staff  from  August  1914  to 
October  1915,  both  as  gunnery  expert  and 
in  the  compilation  of  battle  orders,  and 
directed  that  this  notice  was  to  be  treated 
as  a  'mention  in  dispatches'. 

In  November  1915  Backhouse  was  for 
the  first  time  in  command  of  a  ship,  the 
Conquest,  light  cruiser,  in  the  Harwich 
force  under  Commodore  (Sir)  Reginald 
Yorke  Tyrwhitt.  He  had  an  exciting  year 
and  incidents  were  numerous.  When 
German  battle  cruisers  bombarded  Lowes- 
toft on  25  April  1916  the  commodore, 
flying  his  broad  pennant  in  the  Conquest, 
intervened  with  three  light  cruisers  and 
sixteen  destroyers  and  drew  off  the 
enemy's  fire.  In  turning  to  retire  the 
Conquest  was  hit  by  four  or  five  12-inch 
shells;  twenty-three  of  her  crew  were 
killed  and  sixteen  wounded,  and  a  serious 
fire  broke  out.  Backhouse's  conduct  in 
leaving  the  bridge  directly  the  shellfire 
had  ceased  and  taking  personal  charge  of 
the  operation  was  given  official  approba- 
tion by  the  Board  of  Admiralty ;  '  by  his 
personal  efforts  he  saved  his  ship  from 
destruction'. 

In  November  1916  Jellicoe  left  the 
Grand  Fleet  to  become  first  sea  lord.  Sir 
David  (afterwards  Earl)  Beatty  [q.v.] 
succeeded  to  the  chief  command  and  took 
his  staff  and  many  of  the  officers  from  the 
battle -cruiser  Lion  to  the  battleship  Iron 
Duke  which  had  been  Grand  Fleet  flag- 
ship since  March  1914.  Sir  W.  C.  Paken- 
ham  [q.v.]  succeeded  Beatty  in  command 
of  the  battle-cruisers,  and  Backhouse  went 
to  the  Lion  as  his  flag-captain  and  for  gun- 
nery duties  in  the  battle-cruiser  force.  In 
the  summer  of  1918  ill  health  compelled 
him  to  come  ashore,  but  he  recovered 
before  the  armistice  (11  November) 
and  was  able  to  take  up  special  duties 


26 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Bailey,  A. 


at  the  Admiralty.  These  included  mem- 
bership of  several  committees,  including 
the  post-war  problems  committee.  While 
still  on  duty  in  Whitehall  Backhouse  was 
appointed  director  of  naval  ordnance  in 
September  1920,  a  post  for  which  his 
record  clearly  marked  him  out.  He  went 
to  sea  again  in  January  1923  for  twenty 
months'  command  of  the  battleship 
Malaya,  in  the  Atlantic  Fleet,  and  then 
underwent  senior  officers'  courses  at  Ports- 
mouth during  which  he  reached  flag  rank 
in  April  1925.  In  May  1926  he  hoisted  his 
flag  in  the  veteran  Iron  Duke  as  rear- 
admiral  commanding  the  third  battle 
squadron  Atlantic  Fleet  for  the  usual  one 
year  of  command,  and  then  had  a  well- 
earned  rest  at  home  on  half-pay. 

In  November  1928  Backhouse  succeeded 
Vice-Admiral  Sir  Alaric  Ernie  Montacute 
(afterwards  Lord)  Chatfleld  as  third  sea 
lord  and  controller  of  the  navy  in  William 
Clive  (afterwards  Viscount)  Bridgeman's 
Board  and  remained  vmder  Mr.  Albert 
Victor  Alexander  through  the  foUow- 
ing  labour  administration  (1929-1931), 
through  the  financial  and  political  crisis 
of  1931,  and  under  Sir  Bolton  Meredith 
Eyres-Monsell  (afterwards  Viscount  Mon- 
sell)  until  March  1932.  He  had  been  pro- 
moted vice-admiral  in  October  1929.  His 
tenure  of  office  as  controller  was  a  difficult 
time  of  stringent  economy.  Naval  ex- 
penditure fell  by  eight  millions  between 
1917  and  1932,  and  of  this  drop  over  four 
and  a  quarter  miUions  came  from  the 
armament  votes  under  the  controller's 
supervision.  It  was  a  time  when  'dis- 
armament' was  the  international  atmo- 
sphere and  aggression  had  scarcely  begun 
to  show  its  head.  Provision  for  the  navy 
was  not  welcome  to  the  labour  govern- 
ment, and  the  coaUtion  of  1931  was 
pledged  to  a  general  reduction  of  public 
expenditure.  The  Board  of  Admiralty 
had  a  prolonged  struggle  to  maintain  what 
they  considered  to  be  the  minimum  stan- 
dard of  efficiency,  and  in  this  Backhouse's 
sane  judgement  and  unrivalled  knowledge 
of  the  material  needs  of  the  navy  were  a 
tower  of  strength  in  preventing  economy 
from  going  too  far. 

From  his  place  on  the  Board  Backhouse 
went  to  take  command  of  the  first  battle 
squadron,  with  his  flag  in  the  Revenge,  and 
to  be  second-in-command  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean Fleet,  first  under  Admiral  Chat- 
field  and  then  under  Admiral  Sir  W.  W. 
Fisher  [q.v.].  He  was  promoted  admiral 
in  February  1934,  was  relieved  of  his 
command    three    months   later,    and    in 


August  1935  became  commander-in-chief, 
Home  Fleet,  with  his  flag  in  the  Nelson, 
one  of  the  two  newest  and  most  powerful 
ships.  At  the  coronation  review  in  May 
1937  the  whole  assembled  fleet  was  under 
his  command.    He  was  relieved  in  April 

1938,  having  been  selected  to  succeed 
Lord  Chatfleld  as  first  sea  lord  and  chief 
of  the  naval  staff.  This  office  he  took  up 
in  September,  having  in  the  meantime 
been  appointed  first  and  principal  aide-de- 
camp to  the  king.  It  was  a  critical  moment 
in  world  affairs,  and  the  first  sea  lord  was 
immediately  plunged  into  business  of  the 
most  exacting  kind  and  had  to  be  prepared 
to  give  professional  advice  on  issues  of 
major  importance.  But  early  next  year 
his  health  began  to  fail;  he  relinquished 
his  duties  in  May,  was  placed  on  the  retired 
fist  in  June,  and  a  serious  illness  developed 
from  which  he  died  in  London  15  July 

1939.  With  the  King's  approval  he  had 
been  speciaUy  promoted  to  admiral  of  the 
fleet  a  week  previously. 

Backhouse  was  a  man  of  striking  ap- 
pearance, six  feet  four  inches  tall,  with 
charming  manners  and  a  winning  perso- 
nality, of  great  strength  of  character  and 
unswerving  devotion  to  duty.  His  tireless 
love  of  his  work  and  justifiable  confidence 
in  his  own  judgement  led  him  somewhat 
to  overlook  the  advantage  of  devolution 
to  trusted  assistants,  both  in  high  com- 
mand afloat  and  in  office  administration, 
while  keeping  the  control  of  policy  and  the 
ultimate  decision  in  his  own  hands.  He 
was  recognized  throughout  the  service  as 
one  of  the  ablest  and  most  eminent 
sea  officers  of  his  time,  and  his  premature 
death  on  the  eve  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  of  1939-1945  was  regarded  as  a 
national  calamity.  He  was  beloved  by 
all  who  knew  him  well. 

Backhouse  was  appointed  C.B.  (civil)  in 
1914,  C.B.  (military)  in  1928,  C.M.G.  for 
war  service  in  1917,  K.C.B.  in  1933, 
G.C.V.O.  at  the  coronation  review  in  1937, 
and  G.C.B.  in  1938.  He  married  in  1907 
Dora  Louisa,  sixth  daughter  of  John 
Ritchie  Findlay,  of  Aberlour,  Banffshire, 
and  had  two  sons  and  four  daughters.  The 
elder  son,  John  Edward  (bom  1909),  suc- 
ceeded his  uncle  as  third  baronet  in 
January  1944  and  was  killed  in  action  in 
Normandy  the  following  August. 

[Admiralty  records ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

BAILEY,  Sm  ABE,  first  baronet  (1864- 
1940),  South  African  financier  and  states- 
man, was  born  at  Cradock,  Cape  Colony, 


27 


Bailey,  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


6  November  1864,  the  only  son  of  Thomas 
Bailey,  of  Keighley,  Yorkshire,  who 
became  a  general  storekeeper  at  Queen's 
Town,  Cape  Colony,  and  represented  it  in 
the  legislative  assembly.  His  mother  was 
Ann  Drummond,  daughter  of  Peter 
McEwan,  of  Muthill,  Crieff,  Perthshire. 
Bailey  was  sent  to  England  to  be  educated 
at  the  Keighley  Trade  and  Grammar 
School  and  at  Clewer  House,  Windsor. 
Returning  to  the  Cape  in  1881  he  worked 
at  his  father's  business  until  he  left  for  the 
Barberton  gold-fields  in  the  Transvaal, 
arriving  there  in  July  1886.  He  began 
dealing  in  shares  with  a  capital  of  £100. 
Losing  it  he  borrowed  £10  from  a  friend, 
took  out  a  licence,  and  setting  up  as  a 
broker  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  began  to 
make  his  way.  Leaving  Barberton  in 
March  1887,  he  went  to  the  Rand  in  order 
to  continue  his  sharebroking  and  to  become 
secretary  of  the  Gipsey  and  Kleinfontein 
mines.  As  soon  as  his  fortune  warranted  it 
he  abandoned  broking  and  the  secretary- 
ship and  began  acquiring  and  developing 
properties.  In  the  end  his  business  inter- 
ests comprised  the  chairmanship  of  the 
fourteen  subsidiary  companies  in  the 
Abe  Bailey  and  London  and  Rhodesian 
mining  group,  a  directorship  of  the  Central 
Mining  and  Investment  Corporation  con- 
trolling twenty-four  subsidiary  companies, 
and  several  other  company  directorships. 
He  became  one  of  the  largest  breeders  and 
owners  of  race-horses  both  in  England  and 
in  South  Africa.  His  most  famous  horse, 
Son-in-Law,  won  the  Cesarewitch  and  the 
Goodwood  Cup,  was  founder  of  a  line  of 
stayers  including  Foxlaw,  Trimdon,  Fox- 
hunter,  and  Tiberius,  and  was  sire  of 
Straitlace,  winner  of  the  Oaks  in  1924. 
Bailey  himself  won  the  Oaks  in  1936  with 
Lovely  Rosa  and  was  second  in  the  Derby 
of  1935  with  Robin  Goodfellow.  He  also 
carried  on  large  farming  operations  in  the 
Colesberg  district  of  the  Cape. 

Bailey  began  his  public  service  in  the 
Johannesburg  Staatsraad  before  the  Jame- 
son Raid  of  1895.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  'reform  committee'  and  was  sen- 
tenced, for  the  raid,  to  two  j^ears'  im- 
prisonment, afterwards  commuted  to  a 
fine  of  £2,000.  In  the  South  African  war 
he  served  in  the  Intelligence  Division  and 
helped  to  raise  and  equip  Gorringe's  Horse 
and  the  City  Imperial  Volunteers.  In 
1902,  after  the  war,  he  entered  the  Cape 
House  of  Assembly  as  'progressive'  repre- 
sentative of  Barkly  West,  Cecil  Rhodes's 
old  constituency.  This  seat  he  resigned  in 
1905  and,  after  the  grant  of  responsible 


government  to  the  Transvaal  in  1906,  he 
was  elected  in  1907  to  the  legislative 
assembly  at  Pretoria  as  member  for 
Krugersdorp,  holding  the  seat  until  1910 
and  becoming  whip  of  the  opposition  to 
the  administration  of  General  Louis  Botha 
[q.v.].  He  was  an  active  worker  for  South 
African  union,  helping  to  finance  the  State, 
the  organ  of  the  Closer  Union  Society 
which  was  founded  to  popularize  the  cause. 

In  1915  Bailey  re-entered  politics  as 
member  for  his  old  constituency,  Krugers- 
dorp, taking  his  seat  in  the  Union  House 
of  Assembly  as  an  independent,  but  sitting 
with  General  Botha's  South  African  party. 
He  retained  the  seat  until  his  defeat  at  the 
general  election  of  1924.  Party  politics 
and  debate  were  not  the  sources  of  his 
influence.  That  lay  rather  in  the  bound- 
less hospitality  which  he  dispensed  at 
Rust-en- Vrede  at  Muizenberg,  near  Cape 
Town,  and  at  his  London  residence,  38 
Bryanston  Square.  His  dispassionate  per- 
sonality, his  skill  and  tact  as  host,  made 
his  houses  centres  where  men  of  all  shades 
of  opinion  and  experience  intermixed  and 
exchanged  views.  At  times  they  acted  as 
neutral  territories  for  the  settlement  of 
political  difficulties.  The  critical  meeting 
of  3  December  1916  which  led  to  the  super- 
session in  the  premiership  of  Asquith  by 
Lloyd  George  was  held  at  38  Bryanston 
Square.  In  March  1933  General  Smuts 
and  General  James  Barry  Munnik  Hertzog 
met  at  Rust-en-Vrede  to  form  a  national 
government  for  the  Union  of  South  Africa, 
although  Bailey  personally  took  no  part 
in  these  deliberations. 

Bailey  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1911 
for  his  sei^ces  in  promoting  South  African 
union,  and  created  a  baronet  in  1919.  He 
died  at  Rust-en-Vrede  10  August  1940, 
after  having  suffered  the  amputation  of 
both  legs,  the  first  in  July  1937  and  the 
second  in  April  1938.  In  his  will  he  left  a 
quarter  of  his  estate  to  an  Abe  Bailey 
Trust  to  be  applied  by  the  trustees  for  the 
advancement  and  strengthening  of  the 
South  African  people,  and  his  pictures  at 
Bryanston  Square  in  trust  for  them  also. 
He  bequeathed  £100,000  or  £5,000  a  year 
to  the  Royal  Institute  of  International 
Affairs,  for  research. 

Bailey  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1894 
to  Caroline  Mary  (died  1902),  elder 
daughter  of  John  Paddon,  a  Kimberley 
merchant ;  secondly,  in  1911  to  Mary,  only 
daughter  of  Derrick  Warner  William 
Westenra,  fifth  Lord  Rossmore.  By  his 
first  wife  he  had  a  son,  John  MUner 
(bom  1900),  who  succeeded  him  as  second 


28 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Baillie,  J.  B. 


baronet,  and  one  daughter ;  by  his  second 
wife  he  had  two  sons  and  three  daughters. 
There  is  a  portrait  of  Bailey,  by  Oswald 
Birley,  at  the  Royal  Institute  of  Inter- 
national Affairs.  A  cartoon  of  him,  by 
'Spy',  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  9  Sep- 
ember  1908. 

[The  Times,  12  August  1940 ;  African  World 
%nual,  1941 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  A.  Wyndham. 

BAILEY,  JOHN  CANN  (1864  1931), 
itic  and  essayist,  the  third  son  of 
Elijah  Crosier  Bailey,  solicitor,  clerk  of 
the  peace  for  Norwich,  by  his  wife,  Jane 
Sarah,  daughter  of  William  Robert  Cann, 
of  Cavick  House,  Wj'^mondham,  Norfolk, 
was  born  at  Norwich  10  January  1864.  He 
was  educated  at  Haileybury  and  at  New 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  obtained  second 
classes  in  classical  moderations  (1884)  and 
literae  humaniores  (1886),  and  was  called 
to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1892. 
He  came  to  London  with  private  means 
sufficient  to  enable  to  him  stand  for  parlia- 
ment (he  unsuccessfully  contested  the 
Sowerby  division  of  Yorkshire  in  the  con- 
servative interest  in  1895  and  1900),  but 
with  little  in  the  way  of  social  acquain- 
tance, other  than  that  which  he  had  formed 
at.  the  university.  Bailey's  easy,  agree- 
able, and  intelligent  conversation,  how- 
ever, gave  him  a  ready  entrance  into  the 
metropolitan  society  of  the  'nineties ;  and 
his  marriage  in  1900  to  Sarah  Kathleen 
(died  1941),  the  eldest  daughter  by  his 
second  marriage  of  G.  W.  Lyttelton,  fourth 
Lord  Lyttelton  [q.v.],  herself  a  spirited 
conversationalist,  gave  him  not  only  a 
very  happy  home  life  but  the  association 
of  several  brothers-in-law  of  exceptional 
distinction .  These  included  Arthur  Temple 
Lyttelton,  suffragan  bishop  of  South- 
ampton, and  Alfred  Lyttelton  [qq.v.],  the 
lawyer  and  statesman.  He  made  many 
friends,  was  a  constant  and  valued  mem- 
ber of  the  Literary  (dining)  Society,  of 
which  he  eventually  became  president, 
and,  as  might  be  expected  of  so  ardent  a 
Johnsonian,  was  immensely  gratified  by 
his  election  to  'the  Club'. 

Bailey's  intense  pleasure  in  good  talk 
may  possibly  have  restricted  his  literary 
output,  but  his  literary  ambition  was 
always  circumscribed.  He  related  that 
when  people  asked  him  to  write  a  magnum 
opus  he  used  to  counter  by  inquiring:  'If 
I  write  it,  will  you  buy  it  and  will  you 
read  it  ? '  It  is  arguable  that  his  best  work 
was,  in  fact,  slight  in  compass.  He  himself 
may  have  rated  his  little  book  on  Milton 


(1915)  highest,  but  there  are  many  good 
judges  who  would  hold  that  Dr.  Johnson 
and  his  Circle  (1913)  gave  his  particular 
powers  their  fullest  scope.  Bailey's  other 
publications  include  Studies  in  Some 
Famous  Letters  (1899),  An  Anthology  of 
English  Elegies  (1899),  The  Poems  of 
William  Cowper  (edited  with  an  intro- 
duction and  notes,  1905),  The  Claims  of 
French  Poetry  (1907),  Some  Political  Ideas 
and  Persons  (1921),  The  Continuity  of 
Letters  (1923),  The  Diary  of  Lady  Frederick 
Cavendish  (2  vols.,  1927),  and  Shakespeare 
('English  Heritage'  series,  1929).  For  the 
rest,  he  was  a  constant  contributor  to 
The  Times  Literary  Supplement,  for  Avhich 
he  did  much  important  though  anony- 
mous work;  to  the  Quarterly  Review,  of 
which  he  was  deputy-editor  in  1907-1908 
and  again  in  1909-1910 ;  to  the  Edinbugh 
Review  and  the  Fortnightly  Review;  and 
to  the  London  Mercury.  Tributes  in  dis- 
tinguished quarters  attested  his  critical 
powers.  Among  these  an  observation 
attributed  to  A.  J.  Balfour  (first  Earl  of  Bal- 
four, q.v.)  to  the  effect  that  Bailey,  Avhilst 
tending  to  take  traditional  views  in  htera- 
ture  which  were  generally  the  true  views, 
would  invest  them  with  freshness  and  in- 
terest, is  perhaps  worth  preserving  as  an 
estimate  of  his  place  in  literary  criticism. 

As  chairman  (1912-1915)  and  president 
(1925-1926)  of  the  English  Association, 
Bailey  made  a  further  contribution  to  the 
study  of  English  letters,  and  as  chairman 
(1923-1931)  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  National  Trust  for  places  of  historic 
interest  or  natural  beauty  and  also  of  the 
Fulham  branch  of  the  Charity  Organisa- 
tion Society,  he  disclosed  a  practical  inter- 
est in  things  of  beauty  and  in  matters 
of  social  welfare.  Never  a  strong  man 
physically,  Bailey  died  in  London  29  June 
1931  in  the  plenitude  of  his  intellectual 
powers.  He  lies  buried  in  the  churchyard 
of  Wramplingham  near  Wymondham,  as 
befits  one  who  valued  both  his  connexion 
with  the  county  of  Norfolk  and  his  mem- 
bership of  the  Church  of  England.  His 
outlook  was  that  of  a  broad  churchman. 
He  had  three  daughters,  the  youngest  of 
whom  predeceased  him. 

[The  Times,  30  June  1931 ;  John  Bailey, 
1864r-1931,  Letters  and  Diaries,  edited  by  his 
wife  (containing  a  bibliography  of  Bailey's 
writings),  1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  Cecil. 

BAILLIE,  Sir  JAMES  BLACK  (1872- 
1940),  vice-chancellor  of  the  university  of 
Leeds,  was  born  at  Haddington  24  October 


29 


Baillie,  J.  B. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


1872,  the  second  of  the  fouy  sons  of  William 
BaiUie,  of  Haddington,  by  his  wife,  Agnes 
Black.  Educated  at  Haddington  School, 
the  university  of  Edinburgh,  where  he 
obtained  the  Baxter  scholarship  and 
Hamilton  fellowship,  and  the  Ferguson 
scholarship  and  Shaw  fellowship  in  philo- 
sophy, and  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
he  subsequently  studied  at  Halle,  Stras- 
burg,  and  Paris.  For  a  time  he  was  lecturer 
in  philosophy  at  University  College,  Dun- 
dee, until,  in  1902,  he  was  appointed  pro- 
fessor of  moral  philosophy  at  the  vmiversity 
of  Aberdeen.  During  the  war  of  1914-1918 
he  served  for  two  years  in  the  Intelligence 
di\'ision  of  the  Admiralty,  developing  ad- 
ministrative talent  which,  from  1917  to 
1919,  was  exercised  in  the  work  of  arbitra- 
tion and  conciliation  in  industrial  disputes 
at  the  Ministry  of  Labour.  In  1919  he 
was  appointed  to  the  panel  of  chairmen 
of  arbitration  courts,  and  in  1920  became 
chairman  of  the  board  appointed  for  the 
jute,  flax,  hemp,  and  kindred  industries. 
He  resigned  this  post  and  his  professorship 
in  1924,  when  he  was  chosen  to  succeed 
Sir  Michael  Sadler  as  vice-chancellor  of 
the  university  of  Leeds. 

During  the  fotui;een  years  in  which  he 
filled  this  office  Baillie  was  busily  occu- 
pied with  increasing  the  number  of  pro- 
fessorships and  lecturerships  and  with  the 
promotion  of  a  building  scheme,  including 
the  library  given  by  Lord  Brotherton  in 

1930,  and  laboratories  for  the  chemical 
and  other  scientific  departments  which 
were  completed  by  the  time  of  his  retire- 
ment under  the  age-limit  in  1938.  In  1929 
he  became  a  member  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  civil  sei^ice.  He  continued 
his  work  on  arbitration  committees,  and 
after  his  retirement  went  for  a  time  to 
Trinidad  as  chairman  of  the  arbitration 
tribunal  set  up  to  inquire  into  disputes 
in  the  oil-fields.  He  died  at  Wey bridge 
9  Jime  1940. 

BaiUie  married  in  1906  Helena  May, 
youngest  daughter  of  John  Gwynne  Jones, 
of  Aylstone  Hill,  Hereford ;  there  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage.  He  was  knighted 
in  1931,  appointed  O.B.E.  in  1918,  and  in 
1933  was  made  a  knight  commander  of 
the  Order  of  the  Crown  of  Italy.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
firom  the  university  of  Aberdeen,  and  was 
an  honorary  freeman  of  the  Company  of 
Clothworkers  and  a  freeman  of  the  City 
of  London.    He  was  Hibbert  lecturer  in 

1931.  His  chief  published  works  are  The 
Origin  and  Significance  of  HegeVs  Logic 
(1901)  and  a  translation  of  Hegel's  Phdno- 

80 


menologie  des  Geistes  (2  vols.,  1910,  2nd  ed. 
1931),  An  Outline  of  the  Idealistic  Con- 
struction of  Experience  (1906),  and  Studies 
in  Human  Nature  (1921). 

A  portrait  of  Baillie,  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt, 
is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow,  and  will 
eventually  become  the  property  of  Leeds 
University. 

[2'he  Times,  11  June  1940 ;  private  infortna- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  Hamilton  Thompson. 

BAILLIE,  CHARLES  WALLACE 
ALEXANDER  NAPIER  ROSS  COCH- 
RANE-, second  Bakon  Lamington  (1860  - 
1940),  was  born  in  London  29  July  1860, 
the  only  son  of  the  politician  and  author 
Alexander  Dundas  Ross  Wishart  Cochrane- 
Baillie,  first  Baron  Lamington  [q.v.],  by 
his  wife,  Annabella  Mary  Elizabeth,  elder 
daughter  of  Andrew  Robert  Drummond, 
of  Cadland,  Hampshire.  He  was  educated 
at  Eton  and  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  In 
1885  he  became  assistant  private  secretary 
to  Lord  Salisbury,  and  after  an  unsuccess- 
ful candidature  at  North  St.  Pancras  in 
the  same  year,  he  entered  parliament  as 
conservative  member  for  that  constitu- 
ency in  1886.  He  was  only  four  years  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  for  he  succeeded 
his  father  in  1890. 

An  enthusiastic  sportsman,  Lamington 
was  fond  of  travel,  and  made  a  notable 
journey  from  Siam  to  Tongking  in  1890- 
1891.  In  1895  he  was  appointed  governor 
of  Queensland.  There  he  made  substantial 
contributions  to  the  cause  of  Imperial 
unity,  which  bore  fruit  later  in  the  federa- 
tion of  Australia.  When  the  South  African 
war  broke  out,  he  raised  volunteers,  and 
on  their  sailing,  bade  them  farewell  with 
stirring  speeches.  His  state  was  at  the  time 
affhcted  by  a  long  drought  which  lasted 
seven  years  and  caused  much  hardship. 
In  order  to  understand  the  disaster,  and 
to  promote  means  of  alleviation,  Laming- 
ton, as  no  other  governor  had  done, 
traversed  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Queensland. 

Lamington  returned  to  his  Lanarkshire 
estates  in  1901,  and  two  years  later  his 
interest  was  directed  to  the  East  by  his 
selection  as  governor  of  Bombay  in  suc- 
cession to  H.  S.  Northcote,  Lord  North- 
cote  [q.v.].  He  sought  in  western  India 
to  imderstand  the  needs  of  all  classes  and 
to  provide  for  them.  The  viceroy  of  India 
at  the  time  was  his  old  Oxford  friend. 
Lord  Curzon,  whose  love  of  dominance 
might  have  created  difficulties  but  for 
Lamington's    fairness,    moderation,    and 


D.N.B.  1981   1940 


Bain 


good  sense.  The  latter,  however,  was 
obliged  in  1907,  after  three  and  a  half 
years'  service,  to  resign  his  governorship 
on  account  of  the  serious  illness  of  his  wife. 
Lady  Lamington  gave  her  husband  stead- 
fast support  in  all  his  public  activities, 
which  were  numerous.  One  of  them  was 
his  constant  interest  in  the  Territorial 
movement.  He  was  lieutenant-colonel  of 
the  Lanarkshire  Yeomanry,  and  an  honor- 
ary colonel  of  the  6th  battalion  of  the 
Scottish  Rifles  (Cameronians).  He  was 
also  captain  of  the  Royal  Company  of 
Archers,  the  king's  bodyguard  for  Scot- 
land. During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he 
vigorously  encouraged  recruiting,  and  in 
1919  he  went  to  Syria  as  commissioner  of 
the  British  relief  unit. 

In  the  House  of  Lords  Lamington  spoke 
on  many  subjects.  He  was  always  ready 
to  support  the  claims  of  minorities  and 
smaller  nations  struggling  to  be  free.  But 
the  main  interest  of  his  life  was  the  wel- 
fare of  the  British  Empire,  and  the  advo- 
cacy of  a  good  understanding  between  the 
British  government  and  eastern  peoples. 
He  was  a  member  of  many  organizations 
concerned  with  oriental  well-being,  and 
diligent  in  his  attention  to  them,  as  indeed 
he  was  to  all  his  public  work. 

On  13  March  1940  Lord  Lamington  was 
present  at  a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Central 
Asian  Society  at  the  Caxton  Hall.  It  was 
at  this  meeting  that  a  man  in  the  audience 
rose  and  fired  several  shots  at  the  occu- 
pants of  the  platform,  killing  Sir  Michael 
O'Dwyer  [q.v.]  and  wounding  others,  of 
whom  Lord  Lamington  was  one.  In  spite 
of  the  shock,  his  injury,  which  was  in  the 
forearm,  seemed  to  make  him  more  than 
ever  zealous  on  behalf  of  Indian  reform. 

Lamington  was  appointed  G.C.M.G.  in 
1900  and  G.C.I.E.  in  1903.  He  married  in 
1895  Mary  Haughton,  yoimgest  daughter 
of  William  Wallace  Hozier,  first  Baron 
Newlands,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
He  died  at  Lamington  House,  Lanark- 
shire, 16  September  1940,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded as  third  baron  by  his  son,  Victor 
Alexander  Brisbane  William  (born  1896), 
who  was  awarded  the  M.C.  in  the  war  of 
1914r-1918. 

A  portrait  of  Lamington  as  a  boy, 
by  Henry  Richard  Graves  (1868),  and 
another,  as  a  young  man  (1895),  are  in  the 
possession  of  the  family. 

(The  Times,  18  September  1940;  private 
information.]  Alfred  Cochrane. 

BAIN,  FRANCIS  WILLIAM  (1863- 
1940),  scholar  and  writer,  the  third  son 


of  Joseph  Bain,  archivist  and  antiquary, 
of  Sweethope,  Bothwell,  Lanarkshire,  by 
his  wife,  Charlotte,  daughter  of  Edward 
Piper,  of  Alston,  Cumberland,  was  born 
at  Bothwell  2  April  1863.  He  was  elected 
an  exhibitioner  (1877)  and  a  scholar  (1878) 
on  the  foundation  of  Westminster,  and 
went  up  as  a  Westminster  scholar  to 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  in  1882.  He  ob- 
tained a  second  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1884)  and  a  first  class  in  liter ae 
humaniores  (1886),  and  was  also  a  'blue' 
for  association  football  for  four  years  from 
1883  to  1886,  captaining  the  team  in  liis 
fourth  year.  In  1889  he  obtained  a  fellow- 
ship (which  he  held  until  1896)  at  All 
Souls  College;  in  1890  he  married  Helen 
Margarita,  daughter  of  Henry  Blandford, 
of  Blandford,  Dorset ;  and,  in  1892,  to  the 
surprise  of  many  of  his  friends,  he  took  a 
post  in  the  Indian  educational  services  as 
professor  of  history  and  political  economy 
at  the  Deccan  College  at  Poona,  where  he 
remained  until  his  retirement  in  1919, 
after  serving,  in  addition,  as  junior  prin- 
cipal in  1908,  and  as  senior  principal  in 
1911.  He  was  appointed  CLE.  in  1918, 
and  when  he  left  Poona  he  received  an 
address  in  a  silver  casket  expressing  the 
enthusiastic  appreciation  of  many  hun- 
dreds of  former  students  not  only  for  his 
teaching  but  for  his  deep  sympathy  with, 
and  insight  into,  the  higher  elements  in 
Indian  life  and  thought ;  he  was  regarded 
'not  only  as  a  professor  but  also  as  a 
prophet  and  a  philosopher'. 

After  1919  Bain  lived  quietly  in  Lon- 
don, paying  frequent  visits  to  All  Souls, 
where,  as  in  the  years  before  1914,  he  was 
always  an  eagerly  awaited  guest;  but 
deeply  affected  by  the  death  of  his  wife 
(1931)  and  of  his  only  child,  a  daughter 
(1934),  he  retired  into  a  self-imposed 
isolation,  broken  with  difficulty  even  by 
his  most  intimate  friends,  which  con- 
tinued until  his  death.  This  took  place  in 
London  24  February  1940. 

Bain,  as  an  undergraduate,  developed 
the  views  on  life,  philosophy,  politics,  and 
literature  which  he  maintained  with  in- 
creasing tenacity  to  the  end.  Aristotle 
was  for  him  'the  master  of  the  wise' ;  in 
politics  he  was  a  tory  with  a  creed  based 
on  his  interpretation  of  Bolingbroke  and 
Disraeli;  for  whigs,  liberals,  and  modern 
conservatives  he  had  a  profound  con- 
tempt; in  modern  physical  and  natural 
science  he  saw  only  a  perversion  of  judge- 
ment and  the  facts;  the  classical  econo- 
mists and  most  historians  he  regarded  as 
ability  corrupted  by  original  sin  j  but  into 


31 


Bain 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


imaginative  literature  of  all  types  he  had 
a  wonderful  insight.  As  a  teacher  he  could 
expound  with  fascinating  lucidity  views 
which  he  was  convinced  were  fundamen- 
tally wrong,  and  instruct  his  Indian 
students  that  'this  is  what  they  must  say' 
and  then  demonstrate  its  perversity  and 
errors.  Deep  in  Bain's  mind  was  an  inspir- 
ing mystical  element  which  at  Poona  was 
richly  nourished  by  his  study  of  Indian 
life,  religion,  and  the  Sanskrit  classics. 

In  his  early  years  Bain  published  two 
or  three  volumes  of  fiction,  philosophical 
pamphlets,  and  a  remarkable  essay  on 
The  English  Monarchy  and  its  Revolutions 
(1894),  full  of  penetrating  observations, 
all  of  which  attracted  no  attention;  but 
in  1899  he  found  the  right  scope  for  his 
genius  when  he  published  A  Digit  of  The 
Moon,  a  Hindu  love-story,  professing  to 
be  a  translation  from  a  Sanskrit  manu- 
script. Even  experts  were  at  first  taken 
in,  but  its  quality  both  in  imagination  and 
style  captured  a  large  and  critical  public, 
which  rightly  hailed  it  as  unique  in  English 
literature.  It  was  followed  by  twelve  other 
similar  Hindu  love-stories,  the  last  of 
which.  The  Substance  of  a  Dream  (1919), 
was  as  successful  as  its  predecessors.  He 
then  ceased  to  write. 

Bain's  personality  was  even  more  im- 
pressive than  his  best  writing.  Strikingly 
handsome,  when  stirred  by  his  company 
he  exercised  almost  a  witchery  over  his 
friends ;  and  in  the  common  room  at  All 
Souls  his  conversation  in  that  congenial 
atmosphere,  discussing  any  and  every 
topic,  and  soaring  at  times  into  flights  of 
imaginative  eloquence,  was  an  experience 
impossible  to  describe,  but  thrilling  to 
have  shared.  His  loyalty  to  the  college 
and  to  a  limited  circle  of  friends  earned 
from  all  an  affection  as  strong  as  was  the 
admiration  of  his  genius.  Copies  of  most 
of  Bain's  WTitings,  long  out  of  print  and 
never  reprinted,  are  in  the  Codrington 
library  at  All  Souls.  Besides  those  men- 
tioned above  there  may  be  noted  his 
biographical  study  of  Queen  Christina  of 
Sweden  (1890),  On  the  Realisation  of  the 
Possible  and  the  Spirit  of  Aristotle  (1899), 
and  the  essay  De  vi  physica  et  imbecillitate 
Darwiniana  (1903)  which  summarizes  his 
homage  to  Aristotle  and  his  views  on 
'modern  science'. 

[The  Times,  26  February  1940;  personal 
knowledge,]    Charles  Grant  Robertson. 


BAKER,  HERBERT  BRERETON 

(1862-1935),  chemist,  was  born  at  Livesey, 


near  Blackburn,  25  June  1862,  the  second! 
son  of  John  Baker,  curate  in  charge  of  I 
Livesey,  afterwards  vicar  of  St.  John'sf 
church,  Blackburn,  by  his  wife,  Caroline] 
Slater.  Ill  health  developed  in  him  the! 
habits  of  a  student:  he  could  read  before] 
he  was  four  years  old  and  by  the  time  that  | 
he  was  ten  he  had  read  through  most  of] 
his  father's  library.  He  was  educated  first ! 
at  Blackbiu-n  Grammar  School  and  then; 
at  Manchester  Grammar  School,  and, ; 
changing  from  the  classical  to  the  science 
side,  he  came  under  the  influence  of] 
Francis  Jones,  often  referred  to  by  himi 
as  'the  best  of  all  teachers'.  A  Bracken- 
bury  scholarship  at  Balliol  College  and  a! 
school  Brackenbury  award  enabled  him  to : 
go  to  Oxford  where,  with  Harold  Bailyj 
Dixon  as  his  tutor,  he  in  1883  obtained  I 
a  first  class  in  natural  science.  From  1883  ■ 
to  1885  he  was  demonstrator  in  chemistry 
at  BaUiol  and  private  assistant  to  Dixon, ' 
who  communicated  to  him  his  ownj 
enthusiasm  for  investigation  and  led  himj 
into  that  field  of  research  to  which  later  | 
he  contributed  so  notably — the  influence  j 
of  moisture  on  chemical  change.  In  1886  j 
he  went  as  chemistry  master  and  head  of  I 
the  science  side  to  Dulwich  College.  Here  i 
he  built  up  a  most  successful  science  side 
and  many  of  his  pupils  have  testified  to 
the  excellence  of  his  teaching  and  to  the 
interest  in  research  which  the  knowledge! 
that  he  himself  was  engaged  in  important] 
investigations  inspired  in  them.  Baker  is] 
indeed  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  few 
schoolmasters  who  have  become  eminent] 
both  in  scholastic  and  in  scientific  workJ 
Some  of  his  most  remarkable  results  were] 
obtained  while  he  was  at  Dulwich  and  he] 
was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1902  while  there.  Ini 
the  same  year  he  was  appointed  head-l 
master  of  Alleyn's  School,  Dulwich,  a| 
secondary  school  on  the  same  foundation,] 
but  shortly  afterwards  (1904)  he  returned] 
to  Oxford  as  Lee's  reader  in  chemistry  at] 
Christ  Church,  of  which  he  was  elected] 
a  student  and  tutor.  Here  he  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  teaching  of  inorganic] 
chemistry  in  the  university  and  his  experi- 
mentally illustrated  lectures  were  highly! 
popular.  In  1912  he  accepted  the  chief] 
professorship  of  chemistry  at  the  ImperialJ 
College  of  Science  and  Technology,  South] 
Kensington,  in  succession  to  Sir  T.  E.j 
Thorpe  [q.v.],  and  held  this  post  until  his] 
retirement  in  1932. 

In  April  1915  Baker  was  called  uponl 
by  the  rector  of  the  Imperial  College,] 
Sir  Alfred  Keogh  [q.v.],  who  in  thef 
previous   year   had   become    director   o! 


32 


D.N.B.    1981-1040 


Balfour,  A 


medical  services  at  the  War  Office,  to 
advise  on  the  steps  to  be  taken  to  meet 
the  serious  menace  of  the  German  gas 
attacks.  For  his  valuable  services  in  this 
and  other  scientific  duties  undertaken  for 
the  war  departments  he  was  appointed 
C.B.E.  in  1917. 

Baker's  claim  to  fame  rests  on  his 
achievements  as  an  experimentalist  rather 
than  as  a  theoretical  chemist.  His  excep- 
tional skill  in  the  preparation  and  manipu- 
lation of  intensively  dried  substances 
enabled  him  to  achieve  results  which 
others,  with  less  mastery  of  the  tech- 
nique, were  sometimes  at  first  unable  to 
repeat.  Perhaps  his  most  outstanding 
achievements  in  this  field  were  the  demon- 
stration that  dried  ammonium  chloride 
does  not  dissociate  when  volatilized  by 
heat :  that  hydrogen  and  oxygen  prepared 
by  the  electrolysis  of  pure  barium  hydrox- 
ide do  not  combine  on  heating  when  care- 
fully dried ;  and  that  while  very  dry  nitrogen 
trioxide  does  not  break  up  on  vaporiza- 
tion, the  slightest  trace  of  moisture  causes 
the  gas  to  dissociate  completely  into  nitric 
oxide  and  nitrogen  peroxide.  He  demon- 
strated the  slowing  down  or  complete 
stoppage  of  chemical  action  in  numerous 
other  instances  and  his  remarkable  success 
in  demonstrating  this  effect  led  chemists 
to  refer  to  the  relative  dryness  of  things 
as  dry,  very  dry,  or  'Baker  dry'. 

In  1923  Baker  was  awarded  the  Davy 
medal  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  in  1912 
the  Longstaff  medal  of  the  Chemical 
Society,  of  which  he  was  elected  president 
in  1926.  In  1926  the  university  of  Aber- 
deen conferred  upon  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  In  1905  he  married 
Muriel,  only  child  of  Harry  James  Powell, 
partner  in  the  Whitefriars  glass-works. 
She  too  was  a  trained  chemist  and  collabo- 
rated Avith  her  husband  in  a  number  of  his 
researches.  They  had  one  son,  who  pre- 
deceased his  father,  and  one  daughter. 
Baker  died  at  his  home  at  Gerrards  Cross 
27  AprU  1935. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait) ; 
Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society,  1935,  part  ii 
(portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

B.  MouAT  Jones. 

BALDWIN  BROWN,  GERARD  (1849- 
1932),  historian  of  art.  [See  Brown.] 

BALFOUR,  Sir  ANDREW  (1873- 
1931),  expert  in  tropical  medicine  and 
public  health,  and  novelist,  was  born  in 
Edinburgh  21  March  1873,  the  eldest 
son  of  Thomas  Alexander  Goldie  Balfour, 


M.D.,  of  Edinburgh,  by  his  wife,  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Peter  Christall,  of  Elgin.  He 
was  educated  at  George  Watson's  College 
and  at  the  university  of  Edinburgh, 
graduating  M.B.,  CM.  in  1894  and  M.D. 
in  1898  with  a  thesis  on  the  'toxicity  of 
dye-stuffs  and  river  pollution'  for  which 
he  received  a  gold  medal.  After  a  short 
period  of  private  practice  he  entered  Gon- 
ville  and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  as  an 
advanced  student  in  1895.  He  took  the 
D.P.H.  there  in  1897  and  the  B.Sc.  (Edin.), 
in  public  health,  in  1900.  During  the 
South  African  war  he  served  (1900-1901) 
as  a  civil  surgeon  and  gained  the  Queen's 
medal  with  three  clasps.  In  1901  the 
counsel  and  friendship  of  (Sir)  Patrick 
Manson  [q.v.]  interested  him  in  tropical 
medicine,  in  which  he  made  his  reputa- 
tion. In  1902  he  became  director  of  the 
Wellcome  Tropical  Research  Laboratories 
at  Ivhartoum  and  local  medical  officer  of 
health.  His  knowledge  of  Arabic,  his 
popularity  with  the  Sudanese,  and  his 
untiring  energy  resulted  in  the  banishment 
of  malaria  from  Khartoum  and  made  it  a 
modern  and  sanitary  city.  His  work  there 
earned  the  support  and  approbation  of  the 
British  administrative  triiunvirate.  Lord 
Cromer  [q.v.],  I^ord  lOtchener  [q.v.],  and 
Sir  Reginald  Wingate,  and  he  strongly 
advocated  that  the  care  and  health  of 
native  conmiunities  were  essential  features 
of  modern  rule. 

In  addition  to  the  duties  of  organiza- 
tion Balfour  made  several  important  dis- 
coveries in  protozoology.  These  included 
work  on  spirochaetosis  of  birds  and  of 
man,  the  study  of  the  life-history  of  these 
organisms  in  the  tick,  and  the  identffica- 
tion  of  a  leishmanoid  disease  of  the  skin. 
In  order  to  study  protozoa  he  explored 
the  upper  reaches  of  the  White  Nile  in 
a  floating  laboratory.  All  this  scientffic 
work  was  pubUshed  in  the  four  reports 
of  the  WeUcome  Research  Laboratories 
(1904r-1911).  In  1913  he  returned  to 
England  and  became  the  founder  of  the 
Wellcome  Bureau  of  Scientffic  Research. 

Durmg  the  war  of  1914-1918  Balfour, 
with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  Army 
Medical  Service,  rendered  conspicuous 
service.  First,  as  president  of  the  medical 
advisory  committee  of  the  Mediterranean 
Expeditionary  Force  in  Mudros,  Salonika, 
Egypt,  and  Mesopotamia,  and  then  as 
scientific  adviser  in  East  Africa,  he  organ- 
ized sanitary  reforms  throughout  these 
theatres  of  war.  Subsequently  he  was 
asked  to  reorganize  the  health  service  of 
Egypt,  and  later  in  1918,  at  the  request 


33 


Balfour,  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  General  Sir  Edmund  (later  Viscount) 
Allenby  [q.v.],  he  examined  and  reported 
on  anti-malarial  measures  in  Palestine. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  war  Balfour 
resumed  scientific  research  at  the  Well- 
come Bureau,  but  he  was  soon  called  away 
from  his  laboratory.  In  1921  and  again  in 
1923  he  visited  Mauritius  and  Bermuda 
to  advise  the  Colonial  Office  on  health 
reform  in  these  islands.  In  1923  he  was 
appointed  director  of  the  London  School 
of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine  and  for 
seven  years  worked  with  boundless  energy 
towards  the  perfecting  of  the  school  and 
on  government  committees.  The  pre- 
dominant place  which  this  school  has 
taken  in  the  teachiug  of  and  research  into 
preventive  medicine  owes  much  to  Bal- 
four's initial  administration. 

Balfour  contributed  extensively  to 
medical  literature.  The  following  are  of 
permanent  value:  Public  Health  and 
Preventive  Medicine  (with  C.  J.  Lewis, 
1902);  Memoranda  on  Medical  Diseases 
in  Tropical  and  Sub-Tropical  Areas  (1916) ; 
War  Against  Tropical  Disease  (1920); 
Reports  to  the  Health  Committee  of  the 
League  of  Nations  on  Tuberculosis  and 
Sleeping  Sickness  in  Equatorial  Africa 
(1923);  Health  Problems  of  the  Empire 
(with  H.  H.  Scott,  1924). 

Early  in  his  career  Balfour  achieved 
fame  as  a  novelist.  His  novels  of  his- 
torical adventure, '  wild  tales '  as  he  called 
them,  show  the  influence  of  R.  L.  Steven- 
son, but  he  had  a  distinctive  and  vigorous 
style  of  his  own.  He  wrote  By  Stroke  of 
Sword  (1897),  To  Arms  (1898),  Vengeance 
is  Mine  (1899),  Cashiered  and  Other  War 
Stories  (1902),  and  The  Golden  Kingdom 
(1903). 

Balfour  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1912, 
C.B.  in  1918,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1930. 
Honorary  degrees  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  university  of  Edinburgh  and 
by  the  universities  of  Johns  Hopkms  and 
Rochester,  U.S.A.  He  was  elected  F.R.C.P. 
(London  and  Edinburgh).  In  1920  he  was 
awarded  the  Mary  Kingsley  medal  and 
from  1925  to  1927  was  president  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Tropical  Medicine  and 
Hygiene.  He  was  endowed  with  qualities 
which  brought  him  distinction  in  various 
paths  of  Ufe.  He  was  a  fine  athlete,  and 
played  Rugby  football  for  both  Edin- 
burgh and  Cambridge,  obtaining  his  'blue' 
at  the  latter  university.  He  won  his  inter- 
national cap  for  Scotland  (1896,  1897). 
He  was  a  noted  boxer,  a  keen  fisherman, 
and  a  big-game  shot.  He  was  of  a  kindly 
and  modest  disposition.    An  old  friend 


describes  hun  as  '  a  rock  of  a  man,  hand- 
some of  mien  and  fine  of  figure'.  His  con- 
versation and  speeches  were  adorned  with 
wit  and  humour:  his  work  in  tropical 
medicine  and  public  health  was  of  out- 
standing merit. 

Balfour  married  in  1902  Grace,  third 
daughter  of  George  Nutter,  of  Sidcup, 
Kent,  and  had  two  sons.  His  health  broke 
down  in  1929  under  the  strain  of  overwork 
and  he  died  near  Tonbridge  30  January 
1931. 

[The  Times,  2  February  1931;  British 
Medical  Journal,  1931,  vol.  i,  p.  245  (portrait) ; 
Lancet,  1931,  vol.  i,  p,  325 ;  Nature,  21  Febru- 
ary 1931 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Arthur  S.  MacNalty. 

BALFOUR,  Lady  FRANCES  (1858- 
1931),  churchwoman,  suffragist,  and 
author,  was  born  at  Argyll  Lodge,  Ken- 
sington, 22  February  1858,  the  fifth 
daughter  of  George  Douglas  Campbell, 
eighth  Duke  of  Argyll  [q.v.],  by  his  first 
wife.  Lady  Elizabeth  Georgiana,  eldest 
daughter  of  George  GranviUe  Leveson- 
Gower,  second  Duke  of  Sutherland.  Her 
early  days  were  passed  at  Roseneath 
Castle,  Dunbartonshire,  and  Inveraray 
Castle,  Argyll.  In  1879  she  married 
(Colonel)  Eustace  James  Anthony  Balfour 
(died  1911),  youngest  brother  of  A.  J. 
Balfour  (afterwards  first  Earl  of  Balfour, 
q.v.),  of  Gerald  WiUiam  Balfour  (after- 
wards second  earl),  of  F.  M.  Balfour 
[q.v.],  and  of  E.  M.  Sidgwick  [q.v.].  They 
had  two  sons  and  three  daughters.  She 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Durham  (1919)  and  Edinburgh 
(1921).  She  died  in  London  25  February 
1931,  and  was  buried  at  Whittingehame, 
East  Lothian. 

Lady  Frances  Campbell  was  cradled  in 
the  religious  disputes  which  shook  the 
heart  of  the  men  of  those  days.  In  her 
veins  flowed  the  blood  of  Archibald  Camp- 
bell, first  and  only  Marquess  of  Argyll 
[q.v.],  and  in  her  home  she  felt  the 
strength  of  these  controversial  currents. 
For  while  her  father  had  strenuously 
worked  to  prevent  the  disruption  of  the 
Scottish  Church  in  1843,  her  nurse,  Eliza- 
beth King,  a  remarkable  woman,  was 
a  stern  Calvinist  who  harrowed  her  charges 
with  the  tales  of  the  martyrs  on  the  moors 
and  had  'come  out'  at  the  disruption. 
But  R.  H.  Story  [q.v.],  who  was  minister 
of  Roseneath  from  1860  to  1886,  over- 
came the  antagonism  thus  created,  and 
inspired  Lady  Frances  with  a  love  for  the 
Church  of  Scotland  which  was  the  ruling 


34 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Balfour,  H. 


passion  of  her  life ;  but  to  the  end,  when 
Lady  Frances  denounced  innovations  (as 
she  often  did)  and  upheld  the  old  order, 
it  was  Elizabeth  King  and  not  Dr.  Story 
who  spoke.  The  achievement  of  which 
she  may  well  have  been  most  justly  proud 
was  the  rebuilding  of  Crown  Court  church 
(the  church  of  the  Scottish  ambassador 
in  London  prior  to  1603),  for  which  she 
collected  the  money  and  for  which  her 
husband  was  the  architect.  It  was  her 
happiness  to  see  the  Church  reunited  in 
1929,  and  in  spite  of  infirmity  she  came 
to  Edinburgh,  to  'keep  tryst',  as  it  were, 
with  her  father,  with  the  Marquess,  and 
with  all  those  of  her  race  who  had  died 
for  conscience'  sake.  In  this  one  Ufe  was 
focused  the  liistory  of  centuries. 

Lady  Frances  Balfour  was  an  unwearied 
leader  in  the  cause  of  women's  enfranchise- 
ment and  was  a  most  effective  speaker. 
She  worked  with  Dame  Millicent  Fawcett 
[q.v.]  in  the  cause  of  votes  for  women. 
A  mistress  of  invective,  she  wielded  the 
dagger  of  sarcastic  wit  with  the  same  zest 
as  her  ancestors  had  wielded  the  broad- 
sword. She  wrote  much  for  the  periodical 
press  and  published  several  memoirs,  of 
which  the  best  are  Lady  Victoria  Camp- 
hell  (an  account  of  her  third  sister,  1911), 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  the  Reverend  James 
MdcGregor  (1912),  and  Dr.  Elsie  In^lis 
(1918).  The  Life  of  George,  fourth  Earl  of 
Aberdeen  (2  vols.,  1923),  A  Memoir  of 
Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  (1925),  and  two 
volumes  of  reminiscences,  bearing  as  their 
title  the  Argyll  motto,  Ne  Ohliviscaris 
(1930),  also  came  from  her  pen.  The  books 
will  be  of  value  for  historians,  especially 
her  autobiographical  sketches  of  life  at 
Inveraray  and  Whittingehame ;  but  her 
personality  was  far  greater  than  her  books. 

By  her  marriage  Lady  Frances  Balfour 
was  brought  into  close  touch  with  both 
the  great  political  parties.  The  daughter 
of  one  who  for  more  than  twenty  years 
was  a  member  of  Gladstone's  cabinets, 
she  married  the  nephew  of  Lord  Salis- 
bury, and  her  eager  mind  took  full  advan- 
tage of  her  opportunities.  She  became  the 
intimate  friend  of  Gladstone,  the  Cecils, 
the  Asquiths,  of  Randall  Davidson,  and 
Cosmo  Gordon  Lang.  She  was  equally  at 
home  at  Lambeth  and  at  the  General 
Assembly  in  Edinburgh,  and  she  exhorted, 
corrected,  and  reproved  aU,  when  the 
necessity  occurred.  Stories  were  often 
told  against  her,  but  she  had  a  personal 
magnetism  and  a  gift  of  making  friends 
no  less  remarkable  than  her  courage  and 
her  crusading  spirit. 


A  portrait  of  Lady  Frances  Balfour, 
by  (Sir)  Edward  Burne- Jones  (1880),  is 
in  the  possession  of  Lieutenant- Colonel 
Francis  C.  C.  Balfour,  of  The  Cleeve, 
Ross-on-Wye. 

[The  Times,  26  February  1931 ;  Lady 
Frances  Balfour,  iVe  Ohliviscaris,  2  vols., 
1930;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Norman  Maclean. 

BALFOUR,  HENRY  (1863-1939), 
anthropologist,  was  born  at  Croydon 
11  April  1863,  the  only  son  of  Lewis 
Balfour,  silk  broker,  of  Croydon,  by  his 
wife,  Sarah  Walker  Comber.  He  was 
educated  at  Charterhouse  and  at  Trinity 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  earned  a  reputa- 
tion as  an  oarsman  and  as  an  accom- 
plished fencer  and  obtained  a  second  class 
in  natural  science  (biology)  in  1885.  His 
earlier  travels  were  primarily  dictated  by 
his  interest  in  zoology,  and  he  remained 
all  his  life  a  devoted  student  of  birds,  but 
under  the  influence  of  H.  N.  Moseley  and 
of  (Sir)  E.  B.  Tylor  [qq.v.]  he  very  soon 
directed  his  attention  to  anthropology  and 
in  particular  to  the  study  of  material 
culture  both  comparatively  and  in  evolu- 
tion. Even  before  he  took  his  degree  he 
and  his  fellow  student  (Sir)  W.  B.  Spencer 
[q.v.]  were  helping  Tylor  and  Moseley  to 
arrange  the  ethnological  and  archaeologi- 
cal collections  which  General  A.  H.  L.  F. 
Pitt-Rivers  [q.v.]  had  given  to  the  univer- 
sity in  1883.  Spencer  went  to  Melbourne 
in  1887,  but  Balfour  remained  in  Oxford 
and  in  1891  was  appointed  curator  of  the 
Pitt-Rivers  Museum,  a  post  which  he  held 
vmtil  his  death  at  Headington,  Oxford, 
9  February  1939. 

When  the  university  of  Oxford  estab- 
lished its  diploma  course  in  anthropology 
in  1907,  Balfour  undertook  all  the  teaching 
of  technology  and  of  prehistoric  archaeo- 
logy, academic  work  which  brought  him 
into  contact  not  only  with  undergraduates 
but  with  a  long  succession  of  colonial  civil 
service  probationers,  and  of  officers  on 
leave  from  service  overseas.  He  lectured 
in  the  museum,  handling  and  comparing 
specimens  with  characteristic  skill  and 
establishing  a  personal  relationship  with 
his  pupils  which  led  to  a  stream  of  acces- 
sions, documented  as  he  desired.  But  his 
position  as  curator  of  the  Pitt-Rivers 
galleries  did  not  prevent  him  from  travel- 
ling widely.  In  Norway  (which  he  visited 
five  times  between  1905  and  1929)  he 
studied  the  habits  of  whales,  and  of 
whalers ;  in  South  Africa  he  was  probably 
the  first  to  detect  palaeolithic  implements 


85 


Balfour,  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


in  the  gravels  of  the  Zambezi  River  and 
to  correlate  them  to  prehistoric  European 
types;  in  Assam  he  travelled  on  foot 
through  the  Naga  Hills;  he  visited  Lap- 
land early  in  his  career,  returning  later, 
and  his  other  travels  included  a  visit  to 
Australia  and  to  New  Zealand  with  calls 
at  various  islands  in  Indonesia  and  the 
Pacific,  and  a  return  via  Japan  and  the 
United  States  of  America.  In  a  similar 
way  his  visits  to  South  Africa  were  used 
to  help  him  to  direct  knowledge  of  other 
parts  of  that  continent. 

Balfour  was  an  active  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society  and  was  presi- 
dent from  1936  to  1938 ;  he  was  president 
of  the  Folk-Lore  Society  in  1923-1924,  of 
the  Museums  Association  in  1909,  and  of 
the  (Royal)  Anthropological  Institute  in 
1904 ;  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1924.  He 
was  also  president  of  the  Prehistoric  Society 
of  East  Anglia,  and  was  an  honorary 
or  corresponding  member  of  many  foreign 
societies.  He  was  elected  a  research  fellow 
of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  for  seven  years 
in  1904  and  was  again  elected  from  1919 
onwards,  and  in  1935  the  university  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  personal  title  of  pro- 
fessor. In  1887  he  married  Edith  Marie 
Louise  (died  1938),  only  daughter  of 
Robert  Francis  Wilkins,  of  Kingswear, 
South  Devon ;  she  shared  his  many  inter- 
ests, his  work,  and  often  his  travels.  They 
had  one  son. 

Balfour  was  in  many  respects  the  ideal 
curator  for  an  ethnological  museum.  He 
combined  a  useful  knowledge  of  the 
classics  with  a  working  knowledge  of 
German  and  with  fluent  French,  and  his 
natural  inclination  towards  methodical 
classification  was  fortified  by  his  training 
in  zoology.  He  was  a  musician,  had  a 
lively  sense  of  humour,  and  very  great 
personal  charm,  and  made  many  friends, 
enriching  the  collections  in  his  charge  by 
their  contributions  as  well  as  by  his  own. 
For  his  powers  of  observation  were  acute, 
and  made  him  an  admirable  collector  as 
well  as  a  naturalist.  He  was  perhaps  the 
first  to  demonstrate  that  the  'drununing' 
or  'bleating'  of  snipe  is  caused  by  the 
vibration  of  the  outer  tail-feathers.  His 
range  of  knowledge  of  the  material  culture 
of  primitive  peoples  has  probably  never 
been  equalled,  and  he  showed  great  tena- 
city in  solving  problems  of  the  use  and 
provenance  of  any  unfamiliar  object 
brought  to  him.  Besides  being  a  collector 
and  an  observer  he  was  himself  a  crafts- 
man. He  drew  with  great  facility,  and 
enjoyed  drawing,  as  witness  his  illustrated 


programmes  for  the  Oxford  Fencing  Club. 
He  held  that  to  understand  primitive 
or  prehistoric  craftsmanship  it  is  neces- 
sary to  learn  its  methods,  and  examples 
of  his  admirable  handiwork  in  flint  may 
be  seen  in  the  Pitt-Rivers  Museum,  which,; 
arranged  typologically  instead  of  geo- 
graphically and  with  so  many  of  its 
exhibits  labelled  in  his  firm  and  clear 
handwriting,  is  his  chief  contribution  to^ 
human  knowledge,  and  was  his  chosen 
means  of  imparting  his  own  learning  to 
others. 

As  a  writer  Balfour  left  all  too  little, 
for  his  work  as  a  curator  engrossed  his 
time,  but  what  he  did  write  he  wrote 
extremely  well.  The  Evolution  of  Decora- 
tive Art  (1893)  was  his  first  important 
publication,  and  perhaps  the  only  one  in 
book  form,  but  among  his  many  other 
pubUcations  the  following  are  possibly  the 
most  significant:  his  presidential  address 
to  section  H  (anthropology)  of  the  British 
Association  at  Cambridge  in  1904,  re- 
modelled later  as  an  introduction  to  Pitt- 
Rivers's  The  Evolution  of  Culture  (1906) ; 
'The  Goura''  {Journal  of  the  (Royal) 
Anthropological  Institute,  vol.  xxxii, 
1902);  'The  Relationship  of  Museums  to 
the  Study  of  Anthropology'  (presidential 
address  to  the  (Royal)  Anthropological 
Institute,  1904);  'Musical  Instruments 
from  the  Malay  Peninsula'  (Fasciculi, 
Malayenses,  1904);  'The  Friction-Drum' 
(Journal  of  the  Royal  Anthropological 
Institute,  vol.  xxxvii,  1907);  'The  Fire- 
piston'  (Anthropological  Essays  presented 
to  Edward  Burnett  Tylor,  1907,  reprinted 
in  the  Report  of  the  .  .  .  Smithsonian 
Institution  for  1907,  Washington,  1910); 
'The  Origin  of  West  African  Cross- 
bows' (Journal  of  the  (Royal)  Africaii 
Society,  1909,  similarly  reprinted,  1911); 
'Kite-Fishing'  (Essays  and  Studies  pre- 
sented  to  William  Ridgeway,  1913); 
'Frictional  Fire-making  with  a  Flexible 
Sawing-thong'  (Journal  of  the  Royal 
Anthropological  Institute,  vol.  xliv,  1914) ; 
'  Some  Ethnological  Suggestions  in  regard 
to  Easter  Island'  (Folk-Lore,  December 
1917);  The  Archer's  Bow  in  the  Homeric 
Poems  (Huxley  memorial  lecture  foi 
1921);  'Earth  Smoking-pipes  from  South 
Africa  and  Central  Asia'  (Man,  May 
1922);  'The  Origin  of  StenciUing  in  the 
Fiji  Islands'  (Journal  of  the  Royal 
Anthropological  Institute,  vol.  liv,  1924) ; 
'  The  Status  of  the  Tasmanians  among  the 
Stone-Age  Peoples'  (presidential  address 
to  the  Prehistoric  Society  of  East  Anglia, 
1924,  in  which  Balfour  called  attention  to 
86 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Ballance 


the  similarity  of  Tasmanian  to  Aurigna- 
cian  and  Mousterian  forms,  which  he  had 
noticed  at  a  time  when  others  spoke  of  the 
Tasmanians  as  being  in  an  'eoHthic' 
stage);  'South  Africa's  Contribution  to 
Prehistoric  Archaeology '  (presidential  ad- 
dress to  section  H  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion, 1929);  'The  Tandu  Industry  in 
Northern  Nigeria  and  its  Affinities  Else- 
where' {Essays  presented  to  C.  G.  Seligman, 
1934);  and  Spinners  and  Weavers  in 
Anthropological  Research  (Frazer  lecture 
for  1937,  1938). 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  8,  January  1940  (portrait) ;  Man, 
May  1939 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  H.  HUTTON. 

BALL,  JOHN  (1861-1940),  golfer,  was 
born  24  December  1861  at  Hoylake, 
Cheshire,  the  second  son  of  John  Ball,  by 
his  wife,  Margaret  Parry.  The  father  was 
of  yeoman-farmer  stock  and  the  owner  of 
the  Royal  Hotel  at  Hoylake,  which  became 
the  headquarters  of  the  Royal  Liverpool 
Golf  Club  when  the  course  was  laid  out 
in  1869.  The  boy  was  therefore  brought 
up  with  golf  on  his  doorstep,  and  his  early 
promise  was  such  that  at  the  age  of  six- 
teen he  entered  for  the  open  champion- 
ship in  1878  and  finished  sixth.  His  career 
in  big  matches  began  in  1883,  and  he 
became  widely  known  when  the  amateur 
championship  was  founded  in  1885;  but 
it  was  not  until  1888  that  he  came  into 
his  own  by  beating  J.  E.  Laidlay  at  Prest- 
wick  by  5  and  4  in  the  final  of  the  amateur 
championship.  After  winning  it  again  at 
Hoylake  in  1890,  in  that  same  year,  on 
what  Dr.  Laidlaw  Purves  called  'a  great 
day  for  golf,  he  won  the  open  champion- 
ship at  Prestwick  with  a  score  of  164, 
beating  all  the  professionals,  a  feat  hither- 
to deemed  impossible  for  an  amateur.  In 
1892  he  tied  for  second  place  in  the  open 
championship  at  Muirfield  which  was  won 
by  another  Hoylake  amateur,  Harold 
Hilton;  and  he  also  won  the  amateur 
championship  for  the  third  time  at  Sand- 
wich. In  1894  he  won  it  for  the  foiirth 
time  at  Hoylake,  and  again  in  1899  at 
Prestwick.  After  the  South  African  war, 
when  he  served  with  the  Denbighshire 
Yeomanry,  his  play  showed  no  perceptible 
falling  off;  but  it  was  not  until  1907  that 
he  won  the  amateur  championship  again, 
this  time  at  St.  Andrews.  In  1910  at 
Hoylake  he  won  it  for  the  seventh  time, 
and  in  1912  at  Westward  Ho!  for  the 
eighth  time,  a  record  wholly  without 
parallel.     Of  these   matches,   the    most 


memorable  were  that  of  1894  at  Hoylake 
with  S.  Mure  Fergusson,  in  which  he 
played  a  famous  brassy  shot  over  the 
cross  bunkers  to  the  Dun  (then  the  17th) 
hole  and  won  by  a  hole,  and  that  of  1899 
against  his  great  Scottish  competitor  F.  G. 
Tait,  when  he  won  at  the  37th  hole.  Having 
been  at  one  time  in  the  morning  round  five 
down,  he  gradually  retrieved  himself  and 
was  one  up  with  two  to  play.  Both  played 
historic  shots  from  the  bunker  at  the  Alps 
(the  17th),  Tait  from  water.  Ball  from  hard 
wet  sand  close  to  the  boarded  edge  of  the 
bunker.  Tait  saved  the  match  with  a 
three  at  the  home  hole,  but  at  the  37th 
Ball  laid  an  iron  shot  about  eight  feet  from 
the  hole  and  holed  the  putt  for  three.  In 
1912  he  beat  Abe  Mitchell,  later  a  famous 
professional,  at  the  38th  hole,  but  perhaps 
the  finest  golf  he  ever  played  in  his  later 
years  was  in  the  final  of  1910,  when  he  beat 
CoUinson  Charleton  Aylmer  by  10  and  9. 
His  lesser  successes  were  innumerable: 
he  was  three  times  Irish  open  amateur 
champion  (1893,  1894,  and  1899);  he  won 
the  St.  George's  Cup  at  Sandwich  four 
years  running  (1888  to  1891);  and  he 
regularly  played  for  England  against  Scot- 
land from  the  first  international  match  in 
1902  until  1911. 

Ball's  style  was  eminently  character- 
istic, with  a  peculiar  vmderhand  grip  of 
the  right  hand,  but  the  swing  was  a  perfect 
model  of  grace  and  rhythm.  He  was  a 
magnificent  iron  player  and  he  set  up  a 
new  standard  of  accuracy  in  long  iron  shots 
hit  right  up  to  the  flag.  If  he  had  a  com- 
paratively weak  spot,  it  was  on  the  green ; 
he  was  inclined  to  miss  short  putts.  As  a 
match  player  he  had  the  most  indomitable 
spirit  and  seemed  to  revel  in  a  close  finish. 
A  quiet,  reserved  man,  he  had  a  great 
dislike  of  publicity,  but  withal  a  remark- 
able power  for  inspiring  hero-worship, 
especially  at  Hoylake.  In  his  later  years 
he  parted  with  his  interest  in  the  Royal 
Hotel  there,  and  went  to  live  at  Lygan-y- 
wern  in  Flintshire,  where  he  died  2  Decem- 
ber 1940.  Late  in  life  he  married  Nellie 
Williams. 

A  portrait  of  Ball  by  R.  E.  Morrison 
hangs  in  the  club-house  of  the  Royal 
Liverpool  Golf  Club  at  Hoylake. 

[Golf  (Badminton  Library),  1890;  G.  B. 
Farrar,  The  Royal  Liverpool  Golf  Club,  1869— 
1932,  1933;  The  Golfing  Annual  and  The 
Golfer's  Year  Book  (passim) ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Bernakd  Darwin. 


BALLANCE,     Sm     CHARLES     AL- 
FRED  (1856-1936),   surgeon,  was  bom 


87 


Ballance 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


at  Taunton  30  August  1856,  the  eldest 
son  and  second  child  of  Charles  Alfred 
Ballance,  silk-throwster,  later  of  Stanley 
House,  Lower  Clapton,  by  his  wife,  Caro- 
line Hendebourck,  daughter  of  Samuel 
Hendebourck  Pollard,  of  Taunton.  Sir 
Hamilton  Ballance  was  his  youngest 
brother.  He  was  educated  at  Taunton 
College,  in  Germany,  and  at  St.  Thomas's 
Hospital,  where  he  graduated  M.B.  (Lond.) 
with  first  class  honours  in  every  subject. 
He  became  aural  surgeon  at  St.  Thomas's 
in  1885,  as  weU  as  assistant  surgeon  to  the 
West  London  Hospital,  and  was  among 
the  first  to  succeed  in  radical  mastoid 
operation.  In  1882  he  proceeded  M.S. 
with  a  gold  medal.  He  was  elected  assis- 
tant surgeon  in  1891,  surgeon  in  1900,  and 
consulting  surgeon  in  1919;  and  was 
surgeon  with  (Sir)  Victor  Horsley  [q.v.] 
at  the  National  Hospital  for  the  Paralysed 
and  Epileptic,  Queen  Square  (1891-1908). 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was  a 
consultant  with  rank  of  colonel.  Army 
Medical  Service,  in  Malta  and  was  ap- 
pointed C.B.  in  1916  and  K.C.M.G.  in 
1918.  He  was  president  of  the  Medical 
Society  of  London  in  1906,  a  member  of 
the  council  (1910)  and  vice-president 
(1920-1921)  of  the  Royal  CoUege  of 
Surgeons,  and  the  first  president  of  the 
Society  of  British  Neurological  Surgeons 
in  1927.  He  was  chief  surgeon  to  the 
Metropolitan  Police  from  1912  to  1926. 

Ballance  approached  surgical  problems 
through  experiment  on  the  living  animal, 
in  the  tradition  of  John  Hunter  [q.v.], 
seeking  physiological  authority  for  new 
operations.  All  his  research  related  to 
urgent  questions.  His  methods  were  in 
some  cases  superseded  in  his  lifetime,  for 
instance  his  technique  for  ligation  of  large 
arteries,  which  had  marked  a  distinct 
advance.  His  work  with  (Sir)  Charles 
Sherrington,  in  the  Journal  of  Physiology, 
on  the  formation  of  scar-tissue  (1889), 
made  a  real  addition  to  knowledge.  Bal- 
lance was  a  general  surgeon  who  favoured 
the  'splendid  branches'  of  aural  and 
neurological  surgery.  His  Some  Points  in 
the  Surgery  of  the  Brain  and  its  Membranes 
(1907)  surveys  a  field  where  he  had  been 
an  early  worker,  and  his  scholarly  Essays 
on  the  Surgery  of  the  Temporal  Bone  (2 
vols.,  1919)  records  his  valuable  con- 
tributions over  thirty  years.  But  the 
repair  of  nerves  was  his  chief  interest. 
With  (Sir)  James  Purves-Stewart  he  wrote 
The  Healing  of  Nerves  (1901)  and  applied 
their  findings  in  successful  treatment  of 
facial  palsy.    In  1919  he  gave  the  Brad- 


shaw  lecture  to  the  Royal  College  o| 
Surgeons  on  'The  Surgery  of  the  Heart 'w 
When  age  precluded  him  from  practice^ 
he  made  experimental  nerve-anastomosf 
in  monkeys,  with  results  of  great  help  tc 
surgery.  In  the  United  States  of  America; 
in  1932,  he  studied  the  development  of 
nerve-grafts,  and  finally  in  London  he 
worked  at  delicate  and  complicated  cross- 
suture  of  divided  nerves.  In  1933  he  gav€ 
the  Lister  memorial  lecture  and  wa 
awarded  the  Lister  memorial  medal.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  imi- 
versities  of  Glasgow  and  Malta. 

Ballance  was  large  and  imposing, 
slow,  deliberate  manner  hid  his  cultiva- 
tion and  charm.  He  married  in  188? 
Sophie  Annie  (died  1926),  only  daughtei 
of  Alfred  Smart,  of  Blackheath,  and  hac 
one  son,  a  doctor,  who  predeceased  hi 
father,  and  five  daughters.  Ballance  dice 
in  London  8  February  1936. 

[The    Times,    10   February   1936;    British 
Medical  Journal,  1 936,  vol.  1,  p.  339 ;  LancetA 
1936,  vol.  i,  pp.  396  and  450  (portrait);  StA 
Thomas''s  Hospital  Gazette,  vol.  xxxv,  p.  337,j 
1936  (photograph) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  R.  LE  Fanu. 

BANBURY,  FREDERICK  GEORGE,] 
first     Baron     Banbury     of     Southab 
(1850-1936),     politician,     was     born     ii 
London    2    December    1850,    the    eldest 
son   of   Frederick    Banbury,    of    Shirlej 
House,  Surrey,  by  his  wife,  Cecilia  Laura,! 
daughter  of  William  Cox,  of  Woodfordj 
Hall,  Essex.    He  was  educated  at  Win- 
chester and  afterwards  abroad.    In  1872| 
he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Stocl 
Exchange  and  was  head  of  the  firm  of 
Frederick  Banbury  &  Sons,  stockbrokers, 
from  1879  until  his  retirement  in  1906. 
At  the  general  election  of  1892  he  entered 
the  House  of  Commons  as  conservative 
member    for    the    Peckham    division    of 
Camberwell  and  retained  that  seat  until 
the  liberal  triumph  of  1906:  within  six 
months  of  his  defeat  he  was  returned  at 
a  by-election  for  the  City  of  London  and 
retained  his   seat   until  he   entered  the 
House  of  Lords  in  January  1924  as  Baron 
Banbury  of  Southam  in  Warwickshire.  In 
1903  he  was  created  a  baronet  and  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1916. 

Although  Banbury  never  held  office,  he 
made  for  himself  a  unique  position  as  an 
opponent  of  legislation  which  appeared 
to  him  unnecessary  and  of  change  which 
he  did  not  regard  as  progress.  This  was 
facilitated  by  his  ability  to  talk  at  any 
length  at  any  moment  on  any  subject. 


88 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Barger 


He  declared  that  in  his  opinion  there  was 
too  much  legislation  and  he  generally 
opposed  bills  proposed  by  private  mem- 
bers. His  long  experience  in  the  City  made 
hira  an  able  critic  of  finance  bills,  on  which 
he  was  an  undoubted  authority,  and  he 
also  did  much  useful  work  for  the  Public 
Accounts  Committee  by  carefully  scrutiniz- 
ing estimates.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
Select  Committee  on  National  Expenditure. 
He  earned  esteem  by  his  technical  know- 
ledge, and  his  criticism  of  his  own  party 
was  seldom  resented.  A  master  of  House 
of  Commons  procedure,  he  was  dexterous 
in  raising  points  of  order.  'Punctual  in 
his  attendance,  he  came  to  be  regarded  in 
his  corner  of  a  back  bench  as  the  uncom- 
promising champion  of  the  old  order.  .  .  . 
He  was  always  most  carefully  dressed,  and 
with  his  formal  frock-coat  and  tall  hat, 
and  his  slow  dignified  carriage  he  would 
walk  to  his  seat  and  look  round  at  the 
increasingly  slipshod  attire  of  his  col- 
leagues with  sad  disapproval.  The  advent 
of  women  members  into  the  House  he 
regarded  as  nothing  short  of  an  outrage. 
Banbury,  in  fact,  became  an  institution.' 

Banbury  was  for  many  years  a  member, 
and  sometime  chairman,  of  the  council 
of  the  Royal  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Cruelty  to  Animals;  was  sometime  a 
director  and  chairman  of  the  Great  North- 
ern Railway,  and  a  director  of  the  London 
and  Provincial  Bank.  He  married  in  1873 
Elizabeth  Rosa  (died  1930),  daughter  and 
co-heir  of  Thomas  Barbot  Beale,  of  Bret- 
tenham  Park,  Suffolk,  and  had  one  son, 
who  was  killed  in  action  in  1914,  and  one 
daughter.  He  died  at  Wameford  Place, 
Highworth,  Wiltshire,  13  August  1936, 
and  was  succeeded  as  second  baron  by 
his  grandson,  Charles  William  (born  post- 
humously 1915). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Banbury,  by  John 
Collier,  in  the  board-room  of  the  old  Lon- 
don and  North  Eastern  Railway  Company, 
and  a  replica  at  Warneford  Place,  Wilt- 
shire, in  private  possession. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1936.] 

E.  I.  CARLYT.E. 

BARGER,  GEORGE  (1878-1939), 
chemist,  was  born  at  Manchester  4  April 
1878,  the  elder  son  of  Gerrit  Barger,  a 
Dutch  engineer,  by  his  wife,  Eleanor 
Higginbotham.  He  received  his  school 
education  at  Utrecht,  and  at  the  age  of 
sixteen  obtained  a  scholarship  to  Univer- 
sity College,  London,  which  he  entered  in 
1896.  After  two  years'  study  in  London 
he  proceeded  in  1898  to  King's  College, 


Cambridge,  with  an  entrance  scholarship, 
and  in  1901  he  was  placed  in  the  first  class 
in  part  ii  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  in 
both  chemistry  and  botany.  On  leaving 
Cambridge  he  was  appointed  demonstrator 
in  botany  under  Leo  Errera,  of  Brussels, 
and  in  1903  he  returned  to  England  to 
join  the  staff  of  the  Wellcome  Physio- 
logical Research  Laboratories.  In  1909  he 
was  appointed  head  of  the  department  of 
chemistry  at  the  Goldsmiths'  College,  New 
Cross,  and  in  1913  became  professor  of 
chemistry  at  the  Royal  HoUoway  College, 
Englefield  Green.  In  1914  he  joined  the 
staff  of  the  Medical  Research  Committee 
(later  Medical  Research  Council),  and  in 
1919  he  was  appointed  the  first  professor 
of  chemistry  in  relation  to  medicine  in 
the  university  of  Edinburgh,  where  he  re- 
mained until,  in  1937,  he  accepted  the 
regius  chair  of  chemistry  in  the  university 
of  Glasgow,  an  appointment  which  he  held 
for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Barger's  scientific  work  followed  two 
main  lines,  namely,  studies  of  alkaloids 
and  investigations  of  simpler  nitrogenous 
compounds  of  biological  importance :  both 
arose  from  his  studies  of  ergot  initiated 
in  the  Wellcome  Physiological  Research 
Laboratories.  His  main  achievements  in 
alkaloid  chemistry  were  the  isolation  of 
ergotoxine  from  ergot,  the  elucidation  of 
the  constitutions  of  carpaine,  physostig- 
mine,  and  of  a  group  of  aporphine  alka- 
loids, and  an  important  contribution  to 
the  chemistry  of  yohimbine. 

Barger's  identification  of  tyramine,  as 
one  of  the  compounds  responsible  for  the 
biological  activity  of  ergot  extracts,  led  to 
a  series  of  studies  of  bases  similarly  derived 
from  naturally  occurring  amino-acids; 
among  such  bases  isolated  both  from  ergot 
and  from  mammalian  tissues  was  hista- 
mine, a  compound  which  later  proved  to 
be  of  the  greatest  physiological  signifi- 
cance. Barger's  close  association  in  this 
field  with  (Sir)  H.  H.  Dale  led  to  the  joint 
development  of  the  important  conception 
of  the  sympathomimetic  amines. 

In  the  early  part  of  work  by  others 
leading  to  the  synthesis  of  thyroxine  and 
of  vitamin  B^,  Barger's  contribution  was 
considerable.  His  lifelong  interest  in  ergot 
found  expression  in  Ergot  and  Ergotism 
(1931),  a  masterly  monograph  covering  all 
aspects  of  the  subject ;  this  was  based  on 
his  Dohme  lectures  delivered  in  1928  at 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore.  In 
addition  to  many  scientific  papers  he  pub- 
lished three  other  books:  The  Simpler 
Natural  Bases  (1914);  Some  Applications 


39 


Barger 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  Organic  Chemistry  to  Biology  and  Medi- 
cine (1930);  and  Organic  Chemistry  for 
Medical  Students  (1932;  2nd  ed.  1936; 
Spanish  translation  1935). 

An  expert  linguist  and  enthusiastic 
traveller,  Barger  had  close  scientific  con- 
tacts in  many  countries,  which  he  used 
with  all  his  power  to  promote  his  ideal 
of  free  intercourse  between  scientists  of 
different  nations.  In  his  own  work  he  was 
essentially  an  experimentalist  and  his 
scientific  outlook  was  mechanistic.  He 
was  uncompromisingly  honest  and  out- 
spoken, not  over-patient,  but  most 
generous  of  himself  to  his  friends  and 
pupils. 

Barger  was  a  fellow  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  from  1904  to  1910  and  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1919,  receiving  the 
society's  Davy  medal  in  1938.  He  was 
vice-president  of  the  Chemical  Society  in 
the  year  in  which  he  died,  and  had  been 
Longstaff  medallist  in  1936 ;  he  was  Han- 
bury  medallist  of  the  Pharmaceutical 
Society  (1934)  and  president  of  section  B 
of  the  British  Association  (1929).  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Liverpool,  Padua,  Heidelberg, 
Utrecht,  Michigan,  and  Lausanne. 

Barger  married  in  1904  Florence  Emily, 
daughter  of  Alfred  William  Thomas,  and 
had  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  He  died 
at  Aeschi,  Switzerland,  6  January  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Barger,  by  Frank  Morley 
Fletcher  (1923),  belongs  to  Mrs.  Barger. 

[The  Times,  7  January  1939;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (bibliography  and  portrait); 
Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society,  April  1939; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 
C.  R.  Harington. 

BARLING,  Sir  (HARRY)  GILBERT, 
baronet  (1855-1940),  surgeon  and  aca- 
demic administrator,  was  born  at  Newn- 
ham-on-Severn  30  April  1855,  the  fourth 
son  of  William  Barling,  farmer  and  veter- 
inary surgeon,  of  Newnham-on-Severn,  by 
his  wife,  Eliza  Sharpe.  He  was  educated 
at  a  boarding-school  at  Weston,  near 
Bath.  The  agricultural  depression  pre- 
cluded his  succeeding  liis  father  as  a 
farmer,  and  lack  of  funds  his  adoption  of 
a  medical  career.  He  was  therefore  ap- 
prenticed when  almost  sixteen  years  of 
age  to  a  chemist  in  Manchester,  where  h6 
learnt  little  of  value  and  was  used  by  his 
principal  as  a  drudge  and  errand-boy; 
nevertheless,  he  qualified  as  a  chemist  and 
passed  the  matriculation  examination  of 
London  University. 


In  1874  Barling  became  a  student  at  St. 
Bartholomew's  Hospital,  where  poverty 
compelled  him  to  take  part-time  employ- 
ment. Finding  that  this  occupied  too 
much  of  his  time,  he  decided  to  act  as 
coach  to  his  more  junior  colleagues.  One 
of  his  pupils  chanced  to  be  the  son  of  a 
Birmingham  surgeon  who  so  much  appre- 
ciated the  kindness  shown  to  his  son  that 
he  promised  to  help  Barling  if  the  oppor- 
tunity ever  occurred .  Shortly  after  graduat- 
ing M.B.  (Lond.)  in  1879,  the  opportunity 
did  occur,  and  Barling  obtained  the  ap- 
pointment of  resident  pathologist  at  the 
General  Hospital,  Birmingham.  Five  years 
later  (1885),  having  in  the  meantime  been 
elected  F.R.C.S.  (1881),  he  was  appointed 
assistant  surgeon  and  in  1891  full  surgeon, 
a  position  which  he  occupied  until  his  re- 
tirement from  the  active  staff  at  the  age  of 
sixty,  in  1915,  when  he  was  appointed  con- 
sulting surgeon.  Whilst  he  was  an  assistant 
surgeon  he  drew  up  a  scheme  for  rebuilding 
the  hospital  which  was  accepted,  and  the 
present  General  Hospital  was  opened  in 
1897. 

Barling's  surgical  career  began  in  the 
early  Listerian  days  and  covered  a  revolu- 
tionary period  in  surgery ;  he  was  the  first 
surgeon  on  the  staff  of  his  hospital  to 
remove  the  appendix,  the  kidney,  the  gall- 
bladder, and  tumours  from  the  brain  and 
spinal  cord.  Although  he  was  not  a  bril- 
liant surgical  genius  like  his  contemporaries 
R.  L.  Tait  fq.v.]  and  Jordan  Lloyd,  yet 
by  his  knowledge  and  skill  he  probably 
contributed  more  than  any  other  man  to 
the  reputation  of  Birmingham  as  a  surgical 
centre. 

Barling's  association  with  the  university 
of  Birmingham  was  as  important  as  that 
with  the  General  Hospital.  In  1885  he 
was  appointed  demonstrator  of  anatomy 
at  Queen's  College,  where  [the  medical 
school  was  housed  until  its  transfer  to 
Mason  College,  the  precursor  of  the  uni- 
versity. He  was  the  first  holder  of  the 
chair  of  pathology,  to  which  he  was 
appointed  in  1886,  and  in  1893  he  was- 
made  professor  of  surgery.  After  seveni 
years'  tenure  of  the  deanship  of  the  medi- 
cal faculty,  he  resigned  it  in  1912  in  order 
to  have  more  time  for  surgical  research 
and  for  writing.  The  leisure  period  was, 
however,  a  brief  one,  since  in  1913  he  was 
elected  vice-chancellor,  a  title  changed  to 
pro-chancellor  in  1927,  and  held  that  office 
for  twenty  years,  during  which  time  under 
his  stimulus  the  university  research  de- 
partments in  mental  diseases  and  cancer 
were  foimded.  As  a  result  of  his  financial 


40 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Barnes,  G.  N. 


skill  and  ability  to  influence  generous 
donors,  the  university,  when  he  retired, 
IS  free  from  debt,  and  had  a  greatly  in- 
eased  income  despite  the  great  develop- 
ents  in  staffing  and  in  buildings  which 
id  taken  place  during  his  tenure  of  office. 
During  the  greater  part  of  the  war  of 
1914-1918,  except  from  October  1916  until 
August  1917,  when  he  was  consulting 
surgeon  in  France,  Barling  was  consult- 
ing surgeon  to  the  Southern  Command  of 
the  British  army.  For  these  services  he 
was  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches,  was 
appointed  C.B.  in  1917  and  C.B.E.  in 
1919,  and  in  the  latter  year  was  created 
a  baronet. 

Barling  took  a  leading  part  in  the  early 
negotiations  for  the  union  of  the  two 
voluntary  teaching  hospitals  in  Birming- 
ham (the  Queen's  and  the  General  Hos- 
pitals) into  one  body,  the  United  Hospital, 
and  he  was  also  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittee which  launched  the  Hospitals 
Centre  Scheme.  This  scheme  planned  the 
building  of  a  hospital  teaching  centre  and 
a  new  medical  school  in  close  proximity 
to  the  main  university  buildings  at  Edg- 
baston.  Unfortunately  in  1926  a  serious 
illness  compelled  his  retirement  from  this 
committee,  but  he  lived  to  see  the  first 
part  of  the  scheme  fulfilled  and  the 
opening  of  a  large  new  general  hospital, 
the  Queen  Elizabeth  Hospital,  and  a  well- 
equipped  medical  school.  Although  he 
retired  from  the  active  staff  in  1915  his 
interest  in  the  General  Hospital  never 
flagged,  and  for  four  years  (1924-1927)  he 
was  its  president.  His  last  appearance  at 
any  public  function,  five  days  before  his 
death  at  Edgbaston  27  April  1940,  was  at 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  United  Hospital, 
when  he  was  presented  with  an  address  of 
congratulation  on  his  completion  of  sixty 
years'  active  service  with  the  hospital. 

Barling  was  a  talented  administrator, 
teacher,  and  speaker;  he  was  a  loyal 
friend,  and  a  methodical  and  hard  worker. 
He  expected  hard  work  from  his  assistants 
but  always  acknowledged  their  help.  His 
record  of  hospital,  university,  and  other 
public  service  was  recognized  in  1935  by 
the  presentation  of  the  gold  medal  of  the 
Birmingham  Civic  Society ;  the  university 
conferred  upon  him  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  in  1937. 

Barling  married  in  1884  Katharin 
Jaflray  (died  1920),  second  daughter  of 
Henry  Edmunds,  bank  manager,  of  Edg- 
baston, and  had  two  daughters. 

A  portrait  of  Barling,  by  Edward  F. 
Harper  (1915),  hangs  in  the  board-room 


of  the  General  Hospital,  Birmingham; 
another,  in  oils,  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt  (1924), 
was  presented  to  him  by  the  university 
in  1925  and  hangs  in  the  great  hall  of  the 
university. 

[The  Times,  29  April  1940 ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1940,  vol,  1,  p.  748;  Lancet,  1940, 
vol.  1,  p.  947 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Leonard  G.  Parsons. 

BARNES,  GEORGE  NICOLL  (1859- 
1040),  statesman,  was  born  at  Lochee, 
Dundee,  2  January  1859,  the  second  of  the 
five  sons  of  James  Barnes,  a  Yorkshire- 
man,  then  a  journeyman  machine-maker 
at  Lochee,  by  his  wife,  Catherine  Adam 
Langlands,  a  native  of  Kirriemuir,  Angus. 
In  1866  the  family  moved  to  Tranmere  on 
the  Mersey  and  thence  in  the  following 
year  to  Ponders  End,  Middlesex.  Edu- 
cated at  a  Church  school  at  Enfield  High- 
way, when  eleven  years  old  George  became 
a  clerk  in  a  jute  mill  at  seven  shillings  a 
week.  At  thirteen  he  was  apprenticed  to 
engineering  at  a  Lambeth  factory  for 
woodwork-machinery  and  completed  his 
time  in  Dundee.  As  an  imemployed 
journeyman  he  found  work  at  the  shipyard 
at  Barrow-in-FiuTness  and  later  on  the 
construction  of  the  Royal  Albert  Dock  on 
the  Thames.  He  studied  drawing  and 
machine  construction  and  subsequently 
worked  for  eight  years  with  a  firm  in 
Fulham.  He  finished  his  period  in  the 
workshops  with  a  year  or  two  at  Wool- 
wich Arsenal.  Joining  the  Amalgamated 
Society  of  Engineers,  he  associated  with 
John  Burns  and  Tom  Mann,  and  in  1887 
took  part  in  the  Trafalgar  Square  demon- 
stration that  led  to  the  historic  riot.  He 
was  greatly  influenced  by  the  dock  strike 
of  1889,  which  marked  the  inauguration 
of  the  'New  Unionism',  giving  similar 
status  to  skilled  and  unskilled  labour  in 
the  trade  union  world.  He  was  elected  to 
the  executive  of  the  Amalgamated  Society 
of  Engineers  in  1889  and  became  assistant 
secretary  in  1892. 

Barnes  was  drawn  to  socialism  by 
William  Morris  [q.v.],  whose  meetings  he 
attended  at  Kelmscott  House  and  else- 
where in  Hanunersmith.  Joining  the 
independent  labour  party,  he  was  an 
active  colleague  of  J.  Keir  Hardie  [q.v.], 
and  in  1 895  stood  imsuccessfully  for  Roch- 
dale under  the  auspices  of  that  party.  In 
1896  he  was  elected  general  secretary  of 
the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Engineers, 
a  post  which  he  held  imtil  1908,  when  he 
resigned  owing  to  differences  with  his 
executive.    His  first  year  of  office  was 


41 


Barnes,  G.  N. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


notable  for  the  dispute  that  arose  from 
the  Engineering  Employers'  Federation 
locking  out  the  London  members  of  the 
union  over  the  eight  hours  controversy. 
The  remaining  75  per  cent,  of  the  union 
members,  in  the  provinces,  struck  work 
from  July  1897  to  January  1898.  While 
the  strike  failed  in  its  immediate  objective, 
it  was  followed  by  the  adoption  of  collective 
bargaining  on  conditions  of  employment. 

Barnes  visited  Germany  in  1898,  Den- 
mark and  Sweden  in  1899,  and  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Mosley  industrial  commission 
he  travelled  widely  in  the  United  States 
of  America  in  1902.  He  was  a  delegate 
when  the  labour  representation  committee 
(afterwards  the  labour  party)  was  formed 
in  1900,  and  throughout  his  career  was  an 
active  propagandist  for  trade  unionism, 
socialism,  and  co-operation.  He  was  chair- 
man of  the  national  committee  of  organ- 
ized labour  for  old-age  pensions,  which 
pioneered  that  social  reform  prior  to  the 
passing  of  the  Act  in  1908.  In  1906  he 
won  the  Blackfriars  division  (Glasgow) 
from  A.  Bonar  Law  [q.v.],  and  was  one 
of  the  original  twenty-nine  members  of 
the  parliamentary  labour  party,  of  which 
he  was  chairman  in  1910.  He  held  Black- 
friars at  the  general  elections  in  January 
and  December  1910,  and  in  1918  when, 
following  redistribution,  it  became  the 
Gorbals  division.  He  served  on  the  King's 
civil  list  committee  (1910)  and  proposed 
the  nationalization  of  the  duchies  of  Lan- 
caster and  Cornwall.  He  was  also  active 
in  the  promotion  of  labour  exchanges  and 
legislation  for  the  provision  of  work  or 
maintenance  for  the  unemployed. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Barnes 
recruited  many  men  for  the  services  and 
afterwards  visited  Canada  and  Flanders 
in  order  to  withdraw  mechanics  for  the 
munition  industries.  He  served  on  the 
appeal  board  for  conscientious  objectors, 
and  was  an  effective  member  of  the  statu- 
tory conmiittee  on  service  pensions. 
Appointed  first  minister  of  pensions  in 
Lloyd  George's  coalition  government  in 
December  1916,  he  was  largely  responsible 
for  the  more  enlightened  policy  that 
characterized  that  ministry. 

In  1917  Barnes  succeeded  Arthur 
Henderson  [q.v.]  upon  the  latter's  resigna- 
tion from  the  War  Cabinet,  and  assisted 
in  promoting  measures  for  miners'  wel- 
fare, women's  suffrage,  and  educational 
advance.  When  the  labour  party  with- 
drew support  from  the  coalition  before  the 
general  election  of  December  1918,  Barnes 
resigned  from  the  party  and  remained  in 


office  with  the  avowed  object  of  influenc- 
ing the  peace  terms.  He  attended  the 
Peace  Conference  in  Paris  as  minister 
plenipotentiary,  and,  while  protesting 
against  the  reparation  clauses  of  the 
Treaty  of  Versailles,  was  chiefly  respon- 
sible for  the  institution  of  the  International 
Labour  Organization  as  an  integral  section 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  He  represented 
Great  Britain  at  the  first  International 
Labour  Organization  conference,  held  at 
Washington  in  October  1919,  when  dele- 
gates attended  from  forty-one  countries, 
including  Germany  and  Austria,  and  he 
considered  that  the  greatest  achievement 
of  his  career  was  the  inauguration  of  the 
organization's  headquarters  at  Geneva, 
with  Albert  Thomas  as  director.  After 
signing  the  Treaty  of  St.  Germain  with 
Austria  on  10  September  1919,  Barnes 
resigned  from  the  government  in  January 
1920,  but,  in  company  with  A.  J.  Balfour 
and  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  [qq.v.],  he  attended 
the  first  Assembly  of  the  League  of 
Nations  at  Geneva  later  in  that  year, 
when  he  pleaded  unsuccessfully  for  the 
admission  of  Germany.  He  retired  from 
parUament  in  1922.  He  had  been  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council  upon  attaining 
cabinet  rank  in  1916,  and  was  appointed 
C.H.  in  1920.  He  afterwards  visited 
Egypt,  Palestine,  and  South  Africa  and 
pursued  literary  and  peace  interests  during 
his  retirement,  almost  up  to  his  death, 
which  took  place  at  his  home  in  London 
21  April  1940. 

In  addition  to  his  autobiography.  From 
Workshop  to  War  Cabinet  (1923),  Barnes 
wrote,  besides  pamphlets,  The  History 
of  the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Engineers 
(1901),  An  Eastern  Tour  (1921),  Industrial 
Conflict:  The  Way  Out  (1924),  and  The 
History  of  the  International  Labour  Office 
(1926). 

Barnes  married  in  1882  Jessie,  daughter 
of  Thomas  Langlands,  of  Dundee,  and  had 
two  sons  and  one  daughter.  The  elder  son 
was  killed  in  action  in  1915. 

A  portrait  of  Barnes,  by  Murray  Ur- 
quhart,  was  presented  to  the  Internation 
al  Labour  Office,  Geneva,  by  a  committee 
of  public  men.  Another  portrait,  by  Sir 
William  Orpen,  is  in  the  City  Art  Gallery, 
Bradford. 

[G.  N.  Barnes,  From  Workshop  to  War 
Cabinet,  1923;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  S.  Middleton. 


BARNES,  WILLIAM  EMERY  (1859- 
1939),  divine,  was  born  in  London  26  May 


42 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Barnes,  W.  E. 


1859,  the  younger  son  of  Samuel  Emery 
Barnes,  a  linen  draper,  of  London,  by  his 
wife,  Charlotte  Ann  Noss.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Islington  Proprietary  School  and 
from  there  in  1877  went  up  to  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge.  He  was  placed  in  the  first 
class  of  the  theological  tripos  of  1881  and 
he  won  the  Jeremie  prize  (septuagint), 
the  Crosse  scholarship  (divinity),  and  the 
Tyrwhitt  scholarship  (Hebrew).  In  1883 
he  was  ordained  to  a  curacy  at  St.  John's 
church,  Lambeth,  returning  to  Cambridge 
in  1885  as  lecturer  in  Hebrew  at  Clare 
College  and  afterwards  in  Hebrew  and 
divinity  at  his  own  college,  Peterhouse, 
of  which  he  was  elected  a  fellow  in  1889. 
He  was  Hulsean  professor  of  divinity  at 
Cambridge  from  1901  to  1934,  when  he 
resigned  and  retired  to  live  at  Canterbury, 
continuing,  however,  as  warden  of  the 
Central  Society  of  Sacred  Study  for  the 
diocese  of  Canterbury,  to  promote  this 
study  by  taking  classes  and  giving  occa- 
sional lectures.  While  doing  this  at  Exeter 
he  was  seized  with  illness  and  died  there 
17  August  1939.  He  had  married  in  1890 
Georgina  de  Home,  daughter  of  Alex- 
ander Bevington,  of  Lloyd's.  She  died, 
without  children,  in  1917. 

Barnes  was  a  fine  scholar  in  Hebrew, 
Rabbinic  (in  which  he  had  read  exten- 
sively), and  Syriac,  and  he  had  a  working 
knowledge  of  several  other  languages. 
When  pressed  in  his  latter  years  to  begin 
the  study  of  Persian,  he  replied  that  he 
already  kept  seven  languages  going  and 
could  not  add  another.  His  most  substan- 
tial contributions  to  scholarship  were  in 
Syriac.  After  the  death  of  R.  L.  Bensly 
[q.v.]  Barnes  edited  his  unfinished  work 
on  The  Fourth  Book  of  Maccabees  and 
Kindred  Documents  in  Syriac  (1895),  him- 
self writing  the  general  introduction  and 
making  the  translation  of  four  of  the  six 
documents  included.  He  published  a  use- 
ful apparatus  criticus  to  the  Peshitta  text 
of  Chronicles  (1897)  and  an  edition  of 
Samuel  Lee's  Syriac  Pentateuch  (in  col- 
laboration, 1914),  and  in  1904  a  fine 
edition  of  the  Peshitta  text  of  the  Psalms. 
What  was  wanted  for  younger  students 
he  gave  at  its  best  in  his  editions  of 
Chronicles  (1899)  and  Kings  (1908),  and 
of  Haggai,  Zechariah,  and  Malachi  (1917) 
in  the  'Cambridge  Bible'. 

As  joint-editor  with  C.  H.  Turner  [q.v.] 
of  the  Journal  of  Theological  Studies  at  its 
inception  in  1899  Barnes  helped  to  set  the 
high  standard  of  method  and  style  of  that 
journal  and  ever  after  contributed  to  it 
articles,  notes,  and  reviews  which  were 


often  of  high  value.  He  remained  joint- 
editor  (from  1902  with  Henry  Austin 
Wilson)  until  1903. 

Always  averse  from  controversy  and 
unwilling  to  commit  himself,  Barnes 
accepted  the  new  learning  of  his  time  and 
the  new  approach  to  the  literary  and  his- 
torical study  of  the  Old  Testament,  but 
used  it  very  cautiously  in  his  own  work. 
Much  of  the  new  literature  of  the  subject 
he  regarded  as  'wild'  and  he  disliked 
intensely  the  way  in  which  some  scholars 
cut  texts  about;  but  he  took  full  notice 
of  their  arguments  and  reasons  and 
weighed  them  before  he  put  them  aside. 
With  his  strong  conservative  and  devo- 
tional tendencies  and  his  respect  for  time- 
honoured  tradition  he  was  happiest  in 
drawing  out  the  moral  and  spiritual  values 
of  the  books  on  which  he  commented,  as 
he  did  in  his  edition  of  the  Psalms  for 
the  'Westminster  Commentaries',  pub- 
lished, with  an  admirable  introduction, 
in  1931. 

Bishop  Arthur  Mesac  Knight,  who  was 
a  yoiuiger  contemporary  of  his  at  school, 
remembered  Barnes  as  at  that  time  'a 
trim  and  somewhat  prim  little  figure, 
precise,  careful,  but  with  strength  of  char- 
acter .  .  .  and  he  had  his  own  opinions'. 
That  description  was  true  of  him  all 
through  his  later  life.  Gentle  and  quiet, 
with  entire  sincerity  and  integrity,  kindly 
disposed  and  mildly  humorous,  he  was  a 
good  friend  to  different  tj^es  of  people 
whom  he  liked  to  gather  together  to 
luxurious  lunches  in  Peterhouse.  As  a 
teacher  he  was  painstaking  and  simple, 
anxious  not  to  be  above  the  heads  of  his 
pupils. 

In  rather  quaint  contrast  with  Barnes's 
small  stature  and  slight  physique  was  his 
eager  interest  in  warfare.  In  his  early  days 
he  joined  the  University  Volunteers  when 
they  had  very  little  support,  and  almost 
to  the  end  of  his  time  in  Cambridge  he 
would  go  up  to  the  butts  to  fire  off  his 
rounds.  Military  history,  strategy  and 
tactics,  were  his  hobby,  and  in  discus- 
sions of  them  in  combination  room  he 
would  sometimes  correct  the  master  of 
his  college,  that  master  being  Lord  Bird- 
wood.  Another  subject  which  attracted 
him  was  the  revision  of  English  spelling, 
and  he  wrote  letters  to  The  Times  and 
other  papers  to  promote  the  common- 
sense  reformation  which  he  desired,  but 
he  objected  to  having  his  own  name  spelt 
without  the  e.  He  also  liked  to  make 
excursions  into  fields  of  study  other  than 
those  with  which  he  was  most  familiar, 


43 


Barnes,  W.  E. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


with  something  of  his  own  to  illustrate 
the  subject. 

A  drawing  of  Barnes,  by  Sir  William 
Rothenstein  (1933),  hangs  in  the  Ward 
Library  at  Peterhouse. 

[The  Times,  19  August  1939;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  F.  Bethxjne-Bakee. 


BARNETT,  Dame  HENRIETTA 
OCTAVIA  WESTON  (1851-1936),  social 
reformer,  was  born  at  Clapham  4  May 
1851,  the  daughter  of  Alexander  William 
Rowland,  of  Clapham,  by  his  wife,  Hen- 
rietta Monica  Margaretta  Ditges.  Fond  of 
country  pursuits  and  a  keen  horsewoman, 
she  early  showed  for  the  poor  and  needy 
an  eager  concern  which  became  the  guid- 
ing passion  of  her  long  and  active  life  and 
gave  purpose  to  the  organizing  ability  and 
tireless  energy  which  were  the  outstanding 
traits  of  her  character.  In  1873,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  after  some  experience  of 
work  with  Octavia  Hill  [q.v.]  in  the  parish 
of  St.  Mary's  church,  Bryanston  Square, 
she  married  S.  A.  Barnett  [q.v.],  at  that 
time  a  young  curate  of  St.  Mary's.  By 
their  marriage  his  rare  spiritual  gifts,  fine 
mind,  and  sensitive  nature  were  joined 
with  Mrs.  Barnett's  robust  energy  and 
assertive  personality.  It  is  impossible  to 
measure  what  she  owed  to  her  husband's 
influence,  and  the  story  of  their  work 
together  is  best  sought  in  the  account  of 
his  life ;  but  Mrs.  Barnett's  personal  activi- 
ties were  noteworthy.  She  was  the  first 
nominated  woman  guardian,  in  1875,  and 
was  manager  of  Forest  Gate  district  school 
from  1875  to  1897.  Her  further  experience 
as  a  member  of  a  departmental  committee 
appointed  to  inquire  into  'the  condition 
of  Poor  Law  children'  led  to  the  forma- 
tion in  1896  of  the  State  Children's 
Association  with  Mrs.  Barnett  as  honorary 
secretary.  Twelve  years  later  Asquith 
spoke  of  her  as  'the  unofficial  custodian  of 
the  children  of  the  State'.  From  1876  to 
1898  she  was  honorary  secretary  of  the 
W^hitechapel  branch  of  the  MetropoUtan 
Association  for  Befriending  Young  Ser- 
vants. In  1877  she  arranged  country  holi- 
days for  nine  ailing  children,  and  out  of 
that  experience  developed  the  Children's 
Country  Holidays  Fund,  of  which  she  was 
a  co-founder  in  1884,  and  through  which 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  London  children 
have  benefited.  In  1884  also  she  founded 
the  London  Pupil  Teachers'  Association, 
of  which  she  was  president  from  1891  to 
1907.   In  1901  she  was  closely  associated 


with  Barnett  in  the  foundation  of  the 
Whitechapel  Art  Gallery,  of  which  she 
remained  a  trustee  until  her  death. 

Throughout  this  time,  whUe  she  ardently 
supported  her  husband  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Toynbee  Hall,  Mrs.  Barnett  was 
an  active  advocate  of  the  settlement  ideal 
in  the  United  States  of  America.  There 
it  took  root  quickly  and  it  has  borne  much 
fruit.  In  1920  the  480  American  settle- 
ments which  were  already  established  paid 
her  a  remarkable  tribute  by  electing  her, 
an  Englishwoman  living  in  England,  to 
be  honorary  president  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Settlements.  Toynbee  Hall 
had  been  conceived  as  a  bridge  between 
learning  and  labour  and  between  'the 
East  End'  and  'the  West  End'  at  a  time 
when  the  former  term  connoted  toil  and 
poverty  and  the  latter  leisure  and  riches. 
It  expressed  a  protest  against  class  separa- 
tion and  the  ugliness  of  ignorance.  Much 
of  its  activity  marked  the  Barnetts'  faith 
in  the  uplifting  nature  of  art  and  beauty, 
and  the  same  philosophy  inspired  Mrs. 
Barnett's  subsequent  work  at  Hampstead. 
First  she  raised  £43,000  to  save  eighty 
acres  of  the  heath  for  public  enjoyment. 
Then,  in  1903,  she  formed  the  Hampstead 
Garden  Suburb  Trust  which  raised  funds 
for  the  purchase  of  a  further  240  acres  on 
which  to  lay  out  the  houses  and  grounds, 
and  in  1907  work  was  begun.  Mrs. 
Barnett  had  experienced  in  Whitechapel 
the  evils  of  class  segregation  and  unregu- 
lated urban  development.  The  new  garden 
suburb  was  designed  to  provide  homes  for 
all  classes,  and  these  ranged  from  cottages 
vidth  small  weekly  rents  to  houses  with  an 
annual  rent  of  several  hundred  pounds. 
Development  was  to  be  carefully  con- 
trolled and  facilities  for  worship,  for  educa- 
tion, and  for  recreation  were  to  be  open  to 
all  alike.  It  was  a  pioneer  venture,  and  it 
has  influenced  town  planning  in  this  and 
other  countries.  The  Dame  Henrietta 
Barnett  School,  which  she  founded  at 
Hampstead,  and  Barnett  House,  Oxford, 
both  owed  much  to  her,  as  did  the  National 
Association  for  Promoting  the  Welfare  of 
the  Feeble  Minded,  the  National  Union 
of  Women  Workers,  and  the  Play  and 
Pageant  Union. 

In  1918  Mrs.  Barnett,  who  had  already 
written  a  good  deal,  both  alone  and  in 
collaboration  with  her  husband,  published 
Canon  Barnett,  His  Life,  Work  and  Friends 
in  two  volumes;  in  1923,  at  the  age  of 
nearly  seventy -two,  she  began  painting 
and  had  a  picture  hung  in  the  Royal 
Academy.    She  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in 


44 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Baroda 


1917  and  D.B.E.  in  1924.  She  died,  child- 
less, at  Hampstead  10  June  1936. 

[Dame  Henrietta  Barnett,  Canon  Barnett, 
2  vols.,  1918,  and  Matters  that  Matter,  1930; 
The  Times,  11  June  1936.]       L.  F.  Ellis. 

BARODA,  Sir  SAYAJI  RAO,  MAHA- 
RAJA GAEKWAR  OF  (1863-1939),  was 
born  at  Kavlana  in  the  Nasik  district  of 
Bombay  17  March  1863,  and  originally 
named  Gopalrao,  the  second  son  of  a 
village  headman,  belonging  to  the  Gaek- 
war  family  which  founded  a  dynasty  in 
Guzerat.  In  1875  the  ruling  Maharaja  was 
deposed  for  continued  misconduct.  The 
widow  of  his  brother  and  predecessor, 
being  allowed  to  adopt  an  heir  to  the 
chief  ship,  chose  the  boy,  who  was  placed 
on  the  gadi  in  May  1875,  with  the  name 
of  Sayaji  Rao  III.  He  was  at  this  time 
entirely  iUiterate,  but,  with  an  English 
tutor,  he  was  carefully  educated  so  that 
it  was  possible  to  invest  him  with  govern- 
ing powers  in  December  1881  when  he 
was  not  yet  nineteen  years  of  age.  The 
state  had  a  sad  record  of  misgovernment, 
but  its  soil  was  rich  and  its  commercial 
situation  excellent,  with  very  favourable 
arrangements  with  the  government  of 
India  for  the  receipt  of  customs  duties  at 
its  ports.  These  elements  only  needed  the 
good  government  which  the  young  ruler 
supplied.  As  he  later  said  of  himself: 
'Work  was  his  hobby  and  administration 
his  passion.'  His  attention  to  detail,  in- 
deed, led  to  a  great  degree  of  centraliza- 
tion and,  on  the  part  of  his  officials,  a 
fear  of  responsibility,  while  his  excessive 
caution  was  liable  to  approach  suspicious- 
ness. In  1887  he  wrote  to  the  viceroy: 
'  I  hate  the  idea  of  an  absentee  maharaja ' : 
yet  his  travels  and  residence  overseas 
became  prolonged.  They  were  originally 
due  in  large  part  to  the  insomnia  and  ner- 
vous irritability  from  wliich  he  believed 
himself  unable  to  obtain  relief  in  India, 
but  were  extended  by  his  restlessness  and 
intellectual  curiosity.  He  was  a  close  ob- 
server of  systems  and  institutions  in  the 
countries  which  he  visited  and  sought  to 
introduce  such  as  seemed  desirable  into 
his  state.  His  close  touch  with  the  affairs 
of  his  state  was  maintained,  but  the  unwil- 
lingness of  his  officials  to  make  decisions 
on  their  own  motion  was  thereby  in- 
creased. The  frequency  of  his  journeys 
led  the  viceroy.  Lord  Curzon,  to  issue  in 
1900  a  circular  on  the  absence  of  rulers 
from  their  states  wliich  was  directed  at  the 
Gaekwar,  and  was  deeply  resented  by  him. 

The  fact  that  the  Baroda  territory  was 


interspersed  with  lands  under  the  Bom- 
bay government  and  with  small  states 
over  which  Baroda  had  originally  claimed 
suzerainty  afforded  other  grounds  for 
friction.  The  Maharaja  objected  in  par- 
ticular to  any  appearance  of  interference 
with  his  administration.  This  accounted 
for  his  attitude  on  the  question  of  imperial 
service  troops  which  the  other  leading 
states  were  glad  to  maintain,  while  the 
Gaekwar  rejected  them  because  of  the 
necessary  technical  inspection  by  British 
officers.  His  state  was  thus  unable  to  play 
so  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  as  the  other  Indian  states,  although 
in  every  other  way  the  Maharaja  gave  all 
the  help  in  his  power.  Before  the  end  of 
his  reign  he  agreed  to  the  maintenance  of 
such  troops,  afterwards  called  the  Indian 
State  Forces,  in  his  state.  Another  source 
of  friction  was  the  Maharaja's  somewhat 
detached  attitude  to  complaints  that  sedi- 
tious movements  against  the  British 
Indian  administration  were  hatched,  and 
were  insufficiently  checked,  in  his  terri- 
tory. This  had  the  result  of  making  him 
popular  with  the  nationalist  elements  in 
British  India  which  regarded  him  as 
sympathizing  with  their  aims.  This  doubt- 
less lessened  their  criticism  of  his  con- 
stant attacks  on  weaknesses  in  the  Indian 
social  system  such  as  general  illiteracy, 
infant  marriages,  prohibition  of  widow 
re-marriage,  and  the  disabilities  of  out- 
castes  and  backward  tribes.  The  fact  that 
the  penalties  enacted  for  breaches  of  his 
social  legislation  were  imperfectly  enforced 
led  to  a  belief  that  the  reforms  were  not 
very  real.  The  Maharaja,  however,  held 
that  reforms  could  not  far  outstrip  public 
opinion,  and  that  reliance  should  be  placed 
upon  a  widening  of  outlook  rather  than 
upon  penalties. 

An  unfortunate  incident  at  the  Delhi 
Durbar  of  1911  affected  for  a  time  the 
pubhc  estimation  of  the  Gaekwar.  His 
apparent  disrespect  to  the  IQng-Emperor, 
attributed  by  his  own  friends  to  nervous- 
ness and  gaucherie,  may  have  been  also 
partly  due  to  the  irritabUity  already 
noted.  The  surroundings  of  the  incident 
gave  it  greater  notoriety  than  it  deserved. 

With  increasing  age  the  Maharaja's 
character  mellowed,  and  he  became  a 
force  as  an  elder  statesman.  At  his 
jubilee  in  1925  it  could  be  truly  claimed 
that  he  had  raised  Baroda  from  chaos 
to  the  position  of  a  model  state.  He 
took  a  prominent  part  in  the  first  and 
second  Round  Table  Conferences,  with 
an  increasingly  conservative  outlook.  His 


45 


Baroda 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


foreign  absences  continued,  but  he  became 
more  willing  to  leave  details  of  admini- 
stration to  his  dewan  and  coimcil.  Al- 
though he  returned  to  India  in  November 
1938,  he  was  unable  to  reach  Baroda,  and 
died  in  Bombay  6  February  1939,  after 
a  reign  of  nearly  sixty-four  years. 

The  Maharaja  was  appointed  G.C.S.I. 
in  1887  and  G.C.I.E.  in  1919.  He  was 
twice  married :  first,  in  1881  to  Lakshimi- 
bai  (died  May  1885),  of  the  Tanjore  family, 
by  whom  he  had  one  son,  who  predeceased 
his  father,  and  a  daughter;  secondly,  in 
December  1885,  to  Gajnabai,  later  styled 
Chinmabai  II,  of  a  branch  of  the  Ghatge 
family  settled  in  the  Dewas  state,  and  had 
three  sons,  the  two  elder  of  whom  pre- 
deceased their  father,  and  one  daughter. 
He  was  succeeded  by  his  grandson,  the  son 
of  his  eldest  son,  Pratapsingh. 

A  cartoon  of  the  Maharaja,  by  'M.  R.', 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  3  January  1901. 

[The  Times,  7  February  1939;  P.  W. 
Sergeant,  Ruler  of  Baroda,  1928 ;  P.  Stanley 
Rice,  Life  of  Sayaji  Rao  III,  Maharaja  of 
Baroda,  2  vols.,  1931.]      Patrick  Cadell. 


BARR,  ARCHIBALD  (1855-1931),  in- 
ventor of  range-finders,  was  born  at 
Glenfield  House,  Abbey,  near  Paisley, 
Renfrewshire,  18  November  1855,  the 
third  son  of  Archibald  Barr,  yarn  mer- 
chant, by  his  wife,  Jeanie  Stirrat,  of 
Paisley.  From  Paisley  Grammar  School 
he  entered  the  works  of  Messrs.  A.  F. 
Craig  &  company,  manufacturers  of 
spinning  and  weaving  machinery,  of  that 
town,  as  an  engineering  apprentice  under 
the  Scottish  'sandwich'  system,  which 
enabled  him  to  attend  the  winter  sessions 
of  Glasgow  University,  from  which  he 
graduated  in  1876. 

During  the  following  eight  years  Barr 
remained  there  as  assistant  to  James 
Thomson  [q.v.]  until  in  1884,  having 
graduated  D.Sc,  he  was  called  to  the 
chair  of  civil  and  mechanical  engineering 
at  the  Yorkshire  College,  later  Leeds 
University,  where  he  founded  the  first 
engineering  laboratories  of  Great  Britain. 
Glasgow  Universitj'^  recalled  him  in  1889, 
in  succession  to  Thomson,  as  regius  pro- 
fessor of  civil  engineering  and  mechanics, 
the  oldest  chair  of  engineering  science  in 
the  world ;  this  gave  him  the  privilege  of 
continuing  his  important  consultative 
business.  As  he  found  no  facilities  for 
research  at  the  university,  he  set  himself 
to  build  and  equip  the  James  Watt 
laboratories,  which  were  opened  in  1900 


and,  at  that  time,  were  recognized  as  being 
the  most  complete  in  Britain. 

At  Leeds  Barr  met  the  colleague  of  his 
lifetime,  William  Stroud,  the  young  regius 
professor  of  physics,  with  whom  his  name 
is  widely  associated  as  the  pioneer  of  naval 
range-finding  and  gunnery  and  as  the 
founder  of  the  firm  of  manufacturers  of 
optical  and  mechanical  instruments  of 
precision  which  bears  their  name.  Under 
his  chairmanship  the  firm  did  great  service 
to  the  country  in  its  designs  for  naval 
range-finders,  which  were  adopted  by  the 
Admiralty  and  by  nearly  all  foreign 
powers.  His  great  knowledge  of  mechanics 
also  led  to  inventions  of  height-finders  in 
anti-aircraft  services  and  for  fire-control 
instruments,  as  well  as  aerial  survey 
apparatus.  Owing  to  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  factory  established  at  Anniesland, 
Glasgow,  he  found  it  necessary  to  resign 
from  his  chair  in  1913,  becoming  emeritus 
professor. 

Barr  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1923,  and 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
(1914)  from  the  university  of  Glasgow. 
He  was  president  of  several  learned 
societies.  He  married  in  1885  Isabella 
(died  1928),  eldest  daughter  of  John 
Young,  wood  merchant,  of  Priory  Park, 
Castlehead,  Paisley ;  they  had  three  sons, 
the  second  of  whom  was  killed  in  action 
in  France  in  1915,  and  a  daughter.  He 
died  at  his  home,  Westerton  of  Mugdock, 
Milngavie,  near  Glasgow,  5  August  1931. 

In  1913  Barr  was  presented  with  two 
portraits,  painted  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt,  one 
of  which  hangs  in  the  engineering  depart- 
ment of  the  university  of  Glasgow,  the 
other  being  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 
They  represent  the  professor  in  a  mood  of 
seriousness  which  was  rarely  evident  to 
his  students. 

[The  Times,  7  August  1931 ;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  1, 
December  1932  (portrait) ;  Nature,  22  August 
1931 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Jaivies  Weir  French. 

BARRIE,  Sir  JAMES  MATTHEW, 
baronet  (1860-1937),  playwright  and 
novelist,  was  born  at  Kirriemuir,  Forfar- 
shire, 9  May  1860,  the  ninth  child  and 
third  and  youngest  son  of  David  Barrie, 
hand-loom  weaver,  of  Kirriemuir,  by  his 
wife,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Alexander 
Ogilvy,  stonemason.  He  was  educated 
first  at  Glasgow  Academy,  where  his 
brother  Alexander  was  a  teacher,  and, 
from  1873,  when  Alexander  was  appointed 
inspector  of  schools  of  the  district,   at 


46 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Barrie 


Dumfries  Academy.  He  matriculated  at 
Edinburgh  University  in  1878,  and  gradu- 
ated M.A.  in  1882.  From  his  boyhood  he 
had  determined  to  write,  and  in  January 
1883  he  was  appointed  leader-writer  and 
sub -editor  on  the  Nottingham  Journal. 
His  ari;icles  were  thorough  and  complete 
within  the  required  length  and  he  had 
enough  spare  time  for  sketches  and  stories 
which  he  dispatched  at  a  venture.  Some, 
in  which  Kirriemuir  was  disguised  as 
'Thrums',  were  published  anonymously 
in  the  St.  James's  Gazette,  of  which 
Frederick  Greenwood  [q.v.]  was  editor. 

Against  Greenwood's  advice  Barrie 
moved  to  London  in  March  1885  and 
again  Uved  without  struggling.  He  WTote 
for  many  magazines  and  now  (Sir)  W. 
Robertson  NicoU  [q.v.]  began  his  staunch 
support  of  his  brother  Scot  by  publishing 
serially  (1887-1888)  over  the  signature 
of  'Gavin  Ogilvy'  in  the  British  Weekly 
Barrie's  'When  A  Man's  Single,  A  Tale 
of  Literary  Life'.  Barrie  published  his 
first  book,  Better  Dead,  in  November  1887 
at  his  own  expense.  It  was  an  immature 
joke,  cost  one  shilling,  but  almost  paid  its 
expenses.  The  years  1888  and  1889  were 
memorable  ones  in  the  author's  life.  In 
1888  Messrs.  Hodder  and  Stoughton 
published  Auld  Licht  Idylls,  sketches  of 
Thrums,  and  When  A  Man 's  Single  under 
Barrie's  own  signature.  'Gavin  Ogilvy' 
was  expiring.  He  died  in  December  after 
signing  his  name  to  An  Edinburgh  Eleven, 
a  skit  on  his  professors,  published  by 
Nicoll  in  paper  covers  as  a  Christmas  extra 
to  the  British  Weekly.  In  1889  Hodder 
and  Stoughton  published  A  Window  in 
Thrums,  a  companion  volume  of  Scottish 
episodes,  and  Donald  Macleod  accepted 
'The  Little  Minister'  for  serial  publica- 
tion in  Good  Words.  In  1890  My  Lady 
Nicotine  was  published.  It  aroused  com- 
ment because  of  its  pleasant  humour  and 
a  growing  curiosity  to  know  what,  if  any, 
brand  of  smoking  mixture  was  disguised 
as  Arcadia. 

In  1891  Barrie's  bent  towards  the  stage 
began  to  unfold.  In  April  a  play  by  him- 
self and  Henry  Brereton  Marriott  Wat- 
son, Richard  Savage,  was  produced  at  a 
matinee.  In  May  Ibsen's  Ghost  was  put 
on  as  a  front  piece  by  J.  L.  Toole  [q.v.] 
at  the  suggestion  of  (Sir)  Henry  Irving 
[q.v.],  and  in  July  the  British  Weekly 
brought  out  a  sixteen-page  illustrated 
supplement,  J.  M.  Barrie,  a  Literary  and 
Biograi)hical  Portrait.  It  was  early,  per- 
haps, for  so  recently  fledged  an  author  to 
achieve  a  recognition  from  the  press  so 


noticeable.  At  the  year's  end,  Toole  paid 
£200  for  a  three-act  farce,  Walker,  London, 
which  ran  for  511  consecutive  perfor- 
mances from  25  February  1892.  But  more 
profitable  was  Barrie's  first  novel.  The 
Little  Minister.  Its  publication  in  book 
form  in  October  1891  was  secured  for 
Messrs.  Cassell  by  (Sir)  T.  W.  Reid  [q.v.], 
who,  always  alert  to  fresh  talent,  had 
attached  Barrie  to  the  staflf  of  his  new 
weekly  paper  the  Speaker  with  (Sir)  Arthur 
Thomas  Quiller-Couch,  H.  W.  Massing- 
hara  [q.v.]  and  Augustine  Birrell  [q.v.]. 
The  Little  Minister  was  an  instantaneous 
success. 

But  Barrie  was  looking  to  the  stage  as 
a  means  of  expression.  He  collaborated 
with  (Sir)  A.  Conan  Doyle  [q.v.]  in  a 
libretto  for  Richard  D'Oyly  Carte's  opera 
company  at  the  Savoy  Theatre,  Jane 
Annie;  or.  The  Good  Conduct  Prize  (May 
1893),  without  success ;  and,  commissioned 
by  Irving,  he  completed  The  Professor's 
Love  Story  in  the  autiunn  of  1892.  Irving 
was  not  satisfied  and  the  play  went  the 
round  of  West  End  managers.  The  Ameri- 
can rights  were  secured  by  Edward  Smith 
Willard  for  £50  and  he  played  in  it  in  the 
United  States  with  marked  success.  Under 
new  arrangements,  for  Barrie  now  had 
Arthur  Addison  Bright  as  his  agent, 
Willard  produced  The  Professor's  Love 
Story  at  the  Comedy  Theatre,  London,  in 
June  1894  and  transferred  it  to  the  Garrick 
Theatre.  It  had  a  combined  run  of  144 
performances. 

In  that  year  (1894)  Barrie  married 
Mary,  daughter  of  George  Ansell,  a 
licensed  victualler  in  Bayswater.  She  was 
a  young  actress  who  had  played  Nanny 
O'Brien  in  Walker,  Ijondon.  After  a 
honeymoon  in  Switzerland  they  settled 
in  1895  in  Gloucester  Road,  South  Ken- 
sington, where  they  remained  for  seven 
years.  There  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage. 

Meanwhile  Barrie  was  working  upon  a 
tribute  to  his  mother,  Margaret  Ogilvy 
(1896),  written  with  a  frankness  of  affec- 
tion from  which  a  good  many  authors 
would  have  shied  and  which  took  and 
held  the  favour  of  his  more  tender  ad- 
mirers ;  and  upon  two  novels  of  Scottish 
fife.  Sentimental  Tommy  (1896)  and  its 
sequel,  Tommy  and  Grizel  (1900).  The 
two  books  make  an  odd  story  and  contain 
an  analysis  of  a  tortured  literary  mind 
and  the  tragical  consequences  to  which  it 
might  lead,  with  a  glimpse,  by  the  way, 
of  the  Peter  Pan  who  was  to  be.  A  fanci- 
ful description  of  a  Scottish  boy.  Tommy, 


47 


Barrie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


in  a  slum  of  south  London,  his  mother's 
renunciation  of  Aaron  Latta,  the  coward 
to  whom  she  had  been  betrothed,  and 
her  flight  from  Thrums  to  London  with 
Sandys,  her  braggart  husband,  her  struggle 
to  bring  up  her  two  children.  Tommy  and 
Elspeth,  Tommy's  inventions  and  stories 
of  a  Scottish  village  which  he  had  never 
seen,  and  the  rescue  of  himself  and  Elspeth 
by  Latta  on  their  mother's  death  are  the 
bare  bones  of  the  first  book.  But  it  is  in 
the  analysis  of  the  boy  dramatizing  him- 
self and  in  his  invented  stories  of  the 
unknown  but  wonderful  small  town  in 
which  the  interest  lies.  From  London 
the  two  children  are  transplanted  to 
Thrums,  where  Tommy  becomes  the  leader 
of  the  village  boyhood,  always  playing  a 
part,  now  Elspeth's  protector,  now  the 
champion  of  Griselda,  the  Painted  Lady's 
daughter,  now  Charles  Stuart  on  the  run 
in  the  heather,  now  the  antagonist  of 
Cathro  the  schoolmaster,  but  sometimes 
with  a  laugh  as  he  catches  a  glimpse  of 
what  he  really  is  and  contrasts  it  with  the 
heroic  figure  which  he  cannot  but  make 
himself  out  to  be.  Tommy  and  Grizel 
carries  on  the  account.  These  were  the 
last  novels  which  Barrie  wrote.  The  Little 
White  Bird  (1902),  Peter  Pan  in  Kensing- 
ton Gardens  (1906),  and  Peter  and  Wendy 
(1911)  are  all  variations  upon  the  theme 
of  Peter  Pan. 

At  this  time  Charles  Frohman,  the 
American  impresario,  was  seeking  a  play 
which  would  give  an  opportunity  to 
Maude  Adams,  a  young  actress  in  whom 
he  had  great  faith.  A  dramatized  version 
by  Barrie  of  The  Little  Minister  followed 
the  book  too  closely  to  appeal  to  Froh- 
man; but  Barrie  changed  the  character 
and. origin  of  the  heroine,  and  The  Little 
Minister  appeared  successfully  at  Wash- 
ington in  September  1897.  Mr.  Cyril 
Maude  and  Frederick  Harrison  produced 
it  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre  (November 
1897)  with  Maude  as  the  Little  Minister 
and  Winifred  Emery,  his  wife,  as  Lady 
Babbie.  It  ran  for  a  year  and  Barrie 
acknowledged  afterwards  that  between 
England  and  America  this  play  brought 
him  £80,000. 

A  cricket -match  arranged  by  Barrie  at 
Shere  in  1887  with  players  who  mostly 
had  played  Uttle  cricket  before  included 
Joseph  Thomson  [q.v.],  the  explorer  of 
Morocco.  He  invented  for  the  team  the 
name  of  AUahakbarrie.  For  four  or  five 
summers  the  Allahakbarries  played  not 
too  strenuous  cricket  at  Broadway,  Shere, 
and  other  places.  Later,  county  cricketers 


and  really  fast  bowlers  were  admitted, 
two-day  matches  were  played,  and  the 
team  foundered.  The  summer  months 
were  spent  at  Black  Lake  Cottage,  a  small 
house  opposite  to  Moor  Park  by  Farnham 
which  Barrie,  in  1900,  had  given  to  his 
wife,  and,  cricketing  being  over,  Barrie 
gave  himself  to  the  writing  of  plays  and 
the  building  up,  among  the  pine-trees 
above  the  garden  in  company  with  the 
five  little  boys  of  Arthur  Llewelyn  Da  vies, 
of  the  story  of  Peter  Pan.  But  other  work 
was  completed  first.  The  Wedding  Guest, 
produced  by  Arthxir  Bourchier  [q.v.]  at 
the  Garrick  Theatre  in  September  1900, 
was  hardly  a  success  and  certainly  not  a 
failure.  It  ran  for  100  performances — a 
play  in  the  fashionable  mould,  a  problem 
play,  as  the  saying  went.  An  artist 
marries  the  daughter  of  the  great  house 
in  the  great  house  and  a  witness  is  brought 
in  from  outside  according  to  Scottish 
custom,  a  woman  who  a  year  ago  was  the 
mistress  of  the  artist.  She  now  carries  a 
baby.  The  disclosure,  the  intolerant  ignor- 
ance of  the  girl-wife,  the  gradual  com- 
promise by  which  the  crisis  is  smoothed 
over  are  all  in  the  fashion  of  the  day. 
The  wise  old  spinster  is  the  kindly  Felice 
of  The  Little  Minister  and  a  family  rela- 
tionship exists  between  the  Earl  of  Rin- 
toul  and  Mr.  Fairbairn,  but  there  is  more 
of  Barrie  in  Sentimental  Tommy  than  in 
either  of  these  plays. 

Quality  Street  was  first  performed  at 
Toledo,  Ohio,  in  October  1901  and  was 
transferred  to  the  Knickerbocker  Theatre, 
New  York,  with  Maude  Adams  as  Phoebe 
Throssel.  Barrie  was  now  established  as 
a  successful  dramatist  in  both  England 
and  America,  and  Quality  Street,  a  senti- 
mental comedy  set  in  a  small  English 
town  during  Napoleonic  days,  had  an 
equal  success  in  both  countries.  In  Lon- 
don at  the  Vaudeville  Theatre  (September 
1902)  Phoebe  Throssel  was  played  by 
Miss  EUaline  Terriss  and  Valentine  Brown, 
the  dashing  young  doctor,  by  her  husband, 
(Sir)  Seymour  Hicks.  The  comedy  was 
not  for  everyone.  There  were  playgoers 
who  felt  moments  of  embarrassment  at 
the  more  cloying  passages,  but  the  play 
with  its  twists  of  plot  and  humour  kept 
the  stage  for  459  performances,  was  re- 
vived at  the  Haymarket  Theatre  in 
August  1921,  and,  translated  into  German 
as  Qualitdt  Strasse,  ran  for  months  in 
Berlin  during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

Three  months  before  Quality  Street 
was  produced  in  London,  Barrie  moved 
to  a  small  regency  house,  Leinster  Corner, 


48 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Barrie 


lacing  the  Bayswater  Road,  with  a  stable 
behind  which  he  turned  into  a  study. 
Across  the  road  were  Kensington  Gardens 
to  which  Barrie  obtained  a  much-treasured 
private  key  from  the  first  commissioner 
of  Works.  There,  with  Luath,  his  New- 
foundland, almost  as  big  as  himself,  he 
might  be  seen  on  any  day  dreaming  over 
Peter  Pan. 

A  more  ambitious  play,  The  Admirable 
Crichton,  was  presented  by  Frohman  in 
November  1902  at  the  Duke  of  York's 
Theatre.  Here  was  that  valuable  touch 
of  acidity  which  keeps  plays  alive.  It  is 
the  story  of  a  radical  peer  with  a  tory  soul, 
the  Earl  of  Loam,  who  believes  at  5  o'clock 
once  a  month  in  the  equality  of  the  classes, 
and  a  butler,  Crichton,  who  believes  that 
rank  is  the  order  of  nature.  The  first  act 
shows  Lord  Loam  and  his  daughters 
having  tea  in  the  drawing-room  with  their 
servants.  In  the  second  act  they  have 
been  wrecked  upon  a  deserted  Pacific 
island  and  nature  begins  to  put  Crichton, 
the  ingenious  butler,  in  his  rightful  place. 
In  the  third  act  he  is  king  of  the  island. 
The  house  which  he  has  built  is  lit  with 
electricity,  a  chain  of  bonfires  round  the 
coast  awaits  only  the  movement  of  a 
switch  to  burst  into  flames,  and  the 
daughters,  great  himters  and  good  cooks, 
with  the  invaluable  Cockney  Tweeny,  all 
aspire  to  Crichton's  hand.  Crichton's 
choice  is  Lady  Mary,  the  eldest  daughter, 
but  as  he  is  on  the  point  of  annoimcing 
his  choice  a  ship  is  seen  on  the  horizon 
and  its  hooter  is  heard.  Crichton  is  faced 
with  a  problem :  do  nothing,  and  the  ship 
will  go :  reply,  and  once  more  he  is  a  butler. 
With  a  pull  of  the  lever  he  sets  the  bon- 
fires burning,  and  as  the  officers  of  the 
rescue  ship  enter  the  house  he  replies  to 
a  timid  word  from  Lady  Mary,  'Milady'. 
In  the  fourth  act  the  old  order  has  uncom- 
fortably retiu-ned.  A  book  has  been  writ- 
ten about  the  family  experiences  in  which 
Crichton  is  hardly  mentioned.  He  gives 
notice  of  his  intention  to  marry  Tweeny 
and  take  a  public-house,  'The  Case  Is 
Altered'.  After  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
Barrie  changed  the  last  act  to  the  play's 
disadvantage  by  leaving  Crichton's  fate 
imcertain.  A  pity,  for  the  reader  may  be 
quite  sure  that  within  two  years  '  The  Case 
Is  Altered'  would  have  become  a  Grand 
Hotel.  No  doubt  both  Lord  Loam  and 
Crichton  are  larger  than  life,  just  as  are 
so  many  of  the  characters  of  Dickens,  but 
it  does  not  follow,  any  more  than  in  the 
case  of  Dickens's  characters,  that  they 
are  untrue.    This  play,  with  an  admir- 

88M 


able  cast — (Dame)  Irene  Vanbrugh,  (Sir) 
Gerald  du  Maurier  [q.v.],  Henry  Brodribb 
Irving,  and  Henry  Kemble  [q.v.] — ran  for 
328  performances  and  was  followed,  in 
September  1903,  by  an  odd  comedy,  LittU 
Mary.  The  creche  boxes  of  children  (to 
reappear,  children  and  all,  in  A  Kiss  For 
Cinderella)  at  the  back  of  the  parlour  of  a 
chemist's  shop,  and  the  dialogue  between 
the  twelve-year-old  granddaughter  of  the 
chemist  and  the  Earl  of  Carlton  open 
the  play  in  the  true  Barrie  fashion.  It 
owed  its  success  to  some  excellent  scenes 
between  the  Earl  of  Carlton  and  his  son 
Cecil  and  the  alacrity  with  which  the 
public  took  up  the  phrase  'Little  Mary' 
as  a  euphemism  for  'stomach'. 

Peter  Pan  had  grown  to  full  stature  in 
the  pinewoods  behind  Black  Lake  Cot- 
tage and  now  sought  for  his  shadow  in  the 
nursery  of  the  Darlings  at  the  Duke  of 
York's  Theatre  on  27  December  1904. 
Nana,  the  dog-nurse,  Tinker  Bell,  Wendy, 
the  Never  Never  Land,  the  kindly  Red 
Indians,  the  furious  pirates,  Smee,  Starkey» 
with  Captain  Hook  at  their  head,  and, 
above  all,  the  crocodile  with  the  eight-day 
clock  ticking  away  inside  of  him  are  house- 
hold words  to-day,  but  in  1904  no  one  but 
Barrie  had  any  faith  in  them.  (Sir)  H.  Beer- 
bohm  Tree  [q.v.]  thought  that  Barrie  had 
gone  mad.  Frohman  wanted  to  defer  the 
production.  Barrie  himself  from  the  begin- 
ning was  confident  that  Peter  Pan  would 
not  only  attract  but  would  be  produced 
at  Christmas-time  year  after  year.  For  a 
fortnight  it  looked  as  if  Tree  and  Frohman 
were  going  to  be  justified.  Then  children 
of  all  ages  flocked  to  the  play  until  it 
closed  on  1  April  1905,  to  be  revived  at 
nearly  every  Christmas  season  afterwards. 
The  lagoon  scene  was  added  for  the  first 
revival.  It  explains  why  the  Red  Indians 
protected  the  children  from  the  pirates. 
Was  not  Tiger  Lily  rescued  by  Peter  Pan 
at  the  risk  of  his  life?  'To  die',  he  said 
with  a  shaking  voice,  'will  be  an  awfully 
big  adventure.'  The  line  is  to  be  remem- 
bered if  only  because  it  was  quoted  by 
Barrie's  great  friend  Frohman  as  he 
plunged  to  his  death  in  the  Lusitania. 

Four  days  after  Peter  Pan  was  shelved 
for  the  sununer  Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire  was 
produced  at  the  same  theatre.  It  was 
written  for  Ellen  Terry  [q.v.],  but  the 
theme  had  Uttle  life  in  it  and  she  never 
felt  easy  in  her  part.  Nevertheless,  it  ran 
for  115  performances,  a  satire  upon  the 
social  play  of  the  times  which  has  not 
been  revived.  The  year  1906  was  the 
cause  of  another  satire  still  less  successful. 


49 


Barrie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


A  friend  of  Barrie  was  standing  for  the 
liberal  party  in  the  heart  of  the  tariff 
reform  area  and  won  the  seat.  Barrie  was 
present  at  the  final  meetings  and  on  his 
return  to  London  wrote  with  considerable 
enjoyment  Josephine.  It  is  a  political 
burlesque  and  Barrie  admitted  that  he 
had  been  so  careful  to  baffle  the  censor, 
who  banned  political  plays,  that  he  had 
made  it  quite  unintelligible  to  any 
audience.  Frederick  Harrison  of  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre  nibbled  at  it  and  re- 
frained. Gerald  du  Maurier,  cast  for 
Josephine,  refused  to  act  the  part.  Froh- 
man  the  faithful  came  to  the  rescue  and 
with  two  one-act  plays  put  on  the  first 
triple  bill  at  the  Comedy  Theatre  in  April. 
It  failed  completely  and  all  three  plays 
have  ceased  to  exist  in  any  form. 

None  the  less,  the  idea  of  a  play  with  a 
political  environment  clung,  and  two 
words  spoken  by  his  friend  from  a  balcony 
out  of  an  expiring  throat  after  his  election 
were  an  inspiration.  What  Every  Woman 
Knows  opens  with  a  flawless  first  act. 
John  Shand,  the  young  ticket-collector- 
student,  enters  into  a  contract  with  the 
father,  Alick  Wylie,  to  marry  Maggie, 
sister  of  David  and  James  Wylie,  the  girl 
without  charm,  in  five  years  if  called  upon 
to  do  so,  in  return  for  £300.  In  the  second 
act  Shand  is  returned  to  parliament.  He 
has  the  support  of  two  aristocratic  friends, 
the  Comtesse  de  la  Briere  and  her  niece, 
Lady  Sybil  Tenterden  (originally  Lazen- 
by).  Maggie  proposes  to  cancel  their  con- 
tract. This  he  declines  to  do.  In  the  third 
act  he  is  married  but  is  caught  by  Maggie 
in  an  avowal  of  passion  to  Lady  Sybil. 
Maggie  determines  to  fight  for  her  man. 
Her  method  is  to  send  him  for  a  holiday 
to  the  country  house  of  the  Comtesse 
de  la  Briere  where  Lady  Sybil  is  staying. 
In  the  fourth  act  the  cards  have  been 
stacked  in  favour  of  Maggie.  Lady  Sybil 
and  John  Shand  thrown  together  are  un- 
utterably bored.  The  Cabinet  minister, 
responsible  for  a  speech  to  be  made  by 
Shand  at  a  big  poUtical  rally,  finds  the 
draft  shown  to  him  unworthy  of  the 
occasion:  and  then  'all's  well'  is  reached 
by  the  emergence  of  Maggie  with  a  new 
draft  containing  the  quips  which  had 
made  Shand  famous,  the  delight  of  the 
Cabinet  minister,  and  the  reconciliation 
of  husband  and  wife.  The  play  was  one 
of  Barrie's  greatest  successes  in  London. 
It  opened  in  September  1908  at  the  Duke 
of  York's  Theatre. 

Barrie's  enthusiasm  for  the  stage  then 
dwindled  for  a  time.   In  October  1909  he 


obtained  a  divorce  from  his  wife  and  in 
November  moved  to  a  flat  in  Adelphi 
Terrace  overlooking  the  river.  In  March 
1910  he  was  responsible  for  a  triple  bill 
at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre  consisting 
of  his  own  Old  Friends  and  The  Twelve- 
Pound  Look,  and  The  Sentimentalists  by 
George  Meredith  [q.v.].  Meredith's  one- 
act  play  failed  and  was  replaced  by 
Barrie's  A  Slice  of  Life.  Repertory  seasons 
were  in  the  air  and  with  this  triple  bill 
Justice  by  John  Galsworthy  [q.v.].  The 
Madras  House  by  Harley  G.  Granville- 
Barker,  and  Misalliance  by  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  were  alternatively  staged.  The 
season  was  unsuccessful.  Again  there  was 
an  interval. 

In  May  1912  occurred  something  which, 
on  account  of  its  astuteness,  no  survey  of 
Barrie's  life  can  disregard.  There  appeared 
by  the  water  in  Kensington  Gardens  a 
bronze  statue  of  Peter  Pan  blowing  his 
pipes.  There  was  no  im veiling  ceremony. 
Barrie  had  thought  of  it,  had  commissioned 
Sir  George  Frampton  [q.v.]  to  make  it, 
had  paid  for  it,  and  had  arranged  with  the 
first  commissioner  of  Works  to  have  it 
privately  erected.  A  question  was  asked 
about  it  in  parliament  when  it  was  dis- 
covered; but  the  statue  was  so  appro- 
priate and  so  clearly  an  embellishment 
that  authority  did  not  disturb  it. 

In  the  autumn  of  1912  came  another 
triple  bill  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre 
of  which  Barrie's  play  Rosalind  alone 
found  favour.  Next  year  (1913)  the  King 
created  him  a  baronet,  and  in  the  autumn 
he  finished  at  last  a  play  in  three  acts.  The 
Adored  One,  A  Legend  of  the  Old  Bailey. 
It  treated  a  trial  for  murder  as  a  lark. 
Some,  like  Sir  John  Hare  [q.v.]  who 
played  the  judge,  had  doubts  of  its  suc- 
cess, but  if  Barrie  could  get  away  with 
Idttle  Mary,  why  not  with  The  Adored 
One?  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  [q.v.],  a 
tower  of  strength,  was  the  murderess,  but 
even  during  the  first  act  the  author  felt 
the  temperature  of  the  house  falling  and 
knew  that  the  play  had  failed.  It  was 
altered  in  vain  and  languished  for  ten 
weeks  from  4  September  1913,  before  it 
died.  All  that  remains  of  it  now  is  a  one- 
act  play.  Seven  Women.  On  the  outbreak 
of  war  in  1914,  Barrie's  help  was  called 
upon  and  given.  For  special  charity  per- 
formances he  wrote  one-act  plays  of  which 
many  have  disappeared  for  ever.  In  1915 
soldiers  returning  for  forty-eight  hours' 
leave  from  the  squalor  of  the  trenches 
wanted  music,  gaiety,  bright  lights,  faces, 
and   frocks — revues,   not   Ibsen.    Barrie 


50 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Barrie 


wrote  Rosy  Rapture,  The  Pride  of  the 
Beauty  Chorus.  Gaby  Deslys,  a  French 
actress,  famous  for  her  acrobatic  dancing, 
played  Rosy,  but  the  revue,  which  in- 
cluded some  cinematography,  wobbled. 
Frohman  in  New  York  was  sent  for  to 
pull  it  together,  but  he  went  down  in  the 
Lusitania  and  once  more  a  Barrie  play 
had  a  short  run. 

In  1916,  however,  he  took  new  life  with 
Gerald  du  Maurier.  A  Kiss  For  Cinderella, 
produced  at  Wyndham's  Theatre  in  March, 
ran  to  full  houses  for  156  performances 
and  was  revived  that  Christmas  at  the 
Kings  way  Theatre.  The  babies  in  boxes 
had  crept  in  from  Little  Mary  and  the 
'slavey'  from  Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire,  but 
du  Maurier,  as  Robert  the  policeman  one 
moment  and  Prince  Charming  of  the 
pantomime  the  next,  was  new,  and  Cinder- 
ella's dream  of  a  state  ball  at  Buckingham 
Palace  was  as  brilliantly  funny  a  scene  as 
its  author  ever  wrote. 

For  a  good  many  years  Barrie  had  had 
in  his  mind  the  theme  that  if  people  had 
a  second  chance  they  would  in  their  new 
environment  make  the  same  mistakes 
which  they  had  made  before.  The  idea 
was  taken  out  and  dusted,  as  it  were,  and 
put  back  again.  But  in  the  spring  of  1917 
tie  set  to  work  upon  it  and  in  October 
Dear  Brutus  was  produced — again  by 
iu  Maurier — at  Wyndham's  Theatre. 
Barrie  had  added  the  poetry  of  a  mid- 
summer night,  the  mystery  of  a  magic 
wood,  and  Lob  from  old  English  folk-lore 
as  a  host.  In  the  first  act  the  drawing- 
room  curtains  are  torn  aside  to  reveal  the 
magic  wood  and  one  by  one  the  ill-assorted 
guests  wander  out  through  the  French 
windows  into  their  other  life.  In  the  third 
act  they  gradually  come  to  themselves, 
except  in  the  case  of  Dearth,  the  artist,  to 
whom  must  be  attributed  the  triumph  of 
the  play.  In  the  first  act  his  wife,  Alice, 
who  was  his  model,  and  Dearth,  who 
drinks,  are  estranged.  During  the  imagi- 
Qary  other  life  he  is  shown  painting  with 
a  daughter  to  keep  him  company  and  the 
long  scene  between  these  two  charmed 
everyone  who  saw  it.  In  the  last  act 
Dearth  and  his  wife  are  reconciled  and,  in 
I  subtle  piece  of  theatre,  are  seen  crossing 
the  window  arm  in  arm  with  the  dream 
2hild  following  them.  The  play  ran  for 
J65  performances. 

Mary  Rose,  with  a  fantastic  sub-title, 
rhe  Island  That  Wants  To  Be  Visited, 
bllowed  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre  in 
Vpril  1920.  It  is  a  romantic  theme  with 
mbarrassing    moments    for    those    too 


fastidious  for  the  emotional  frankness 
with  which  Barrie  could  always  write 
but  never  speak,  some  admirably  drawn 
characters,  and  one  or  two  vital  scenes 
which  brought  people  again  and  again  to 
the  theatre:  that  scene,  for  instance, 
where  the  elderly  husband  and  wife 
admit  to  each  other  that,  although 
they  had  believed  themselves  heart- 
broken, happiness  would  keep  breaking 
through. 

During  the  past  ten  years  Barrie  had 
written  a  great  number  of  one-act  plays, 
many  of  which,  like  The  Twelve- Pound 
Look  (1910),  The  Old  Lady  Shows  Her 
Medals  (1917),  and  Shall  We  Join  the 
Ladies?,  were  masterpieces  of  construc- 
tion. Shall  We  Join  the  Ladies?  was  first 
performed  with  a  star  cast  at  the  opening 
of  the  new  theatre  of  the  Dramatic 
Academy  (May  1921).  A  simpleton,  as 
his  twelve  guests  think,  announces  that 
his  brother  has  been  murdered  and  that 
the  murderer  is  among  his  guests.  One 
after  another  they  fall  into  traps  which 
the  simpleton  has  laid  for  them,  and  at 
the  end  it  seems  that  any  one  of  them 
might  be  guilty.  Possibly  the  author  him- 
self was  no  more  aware  which  one  than 
the  audience. 

There  remains  of  his  plays  The  Boy 
David,  a  dramatization  of  the  biblical 
story.  It  opened  in  London  in  December 
1936  in  a  theatre  probably  too  large 
(His  Majesty's),  was  long  enough  delayed 
to  outlive  expectation,  and  was  too  thin 
in  characterization.  It  ran  for  only  55 
performances,  a  pity,  since  it  was  the  last 
work  which  Barrie  did. 

In  this  tale  of  rare  failure  and  much 
achievement,  Barrie  only  thrice  owed  his 
inspiration  to  the  circumstances  of  the 
day:  Josephine,  the  political  skit,  The 
Wedding  Guest,  the  problem  play,  and 
The  Well-Remembered  Voice  (1918),  the 
war  hunger  for  lost  sons.  In  two  other 
one-act  plays.  The  Old  Lady  Shows  Her 
Medals  and  The  New  Word  (1915),  he  was 
merely  using  the  war  as  a  background  for 
his  own  ideas.  Few  authors  have  been 
more  individual. 

Barrie  died  in  London  19  June  1937. 
He  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  St.  Andrews  (1898),  Edin- 
burgh (1909),  Oxford  (1926),  and  Cam- 
bridge (1930);  was  elected  lord  rector  of 
St.  Andrews  University  in  1919  and  chan- 
cellor of  Edinburgh  University  in  1930; 
and  was  appointed  to  the  Otder  of  Merit 
in  1922. 

There    is    a    drawing    of    Barrie,    by 


51 


Barrie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


W.    T.    Monnington,    which    has    been 
placed  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Denis  Mackail,  The  Story  of  J.  M.  B.,  1941 ; 
The  Plays  of  J.  M.  Barrie,  edited  by  A.  E. 
Wilson,  1942;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  E.  W.  Mason. 

BARTLET,  JAMES  VERNON  (186a- 
1940),  ecclesiastical  historian,  was  born  at 
Scarborough  15  August  1863,  the  only  son 
of  George  Donald  Bartlet,  an  English 
Presbyterian  minister  who  had  a  private 
school  at  Scarborough  from  1862  to  1864 
and  was  headmaster  of  Mill  Hill  from  1864 
to  1868,  by  his  wife,  Susan  Robe  McNellan, 
of  Alloa,  near  Stirling.  Vernon  Bartlet  was 
educated  at  his  father's  private  school  in 
Highgate  and  at  Highgate  School,  whence 
he  proceeded  in  1882  with  a  scholarship 
to  Exeter  College,  Oxford.  He  obtained  a 
first  class  in  classical  moderations  (1883), 
a  second  class  in  literae  humaniores  (1886), 
and  a  first  class  in  theology  (1887).  He 
won  the  senior  Hall-Houghton  Greek 
Testament  prize  in  1889.  In  that  year 
he  became  a  tutor  and  the  first  librarian 
at  the  newly  established  Mansfield  College, 
Oxford,  which  he  had  entered  in  1887  and 
where  he  studied  under  A.  M.  Fairbairn 
[q.v.];  and  at  Mansfield  College  he  re- 
mained until  his  retirement  in  1928,  being 
senior  tutor  from  1890  to  1900  and  there- 
after professor  of  church  history.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.D.  from 
St.  Andrews  University  in  1904.  He  was 
twice  married:  first,  in  1900  to  Mary 
Elizabeth  (died  1904),  daughter  of  Robert 
Edward  Gibson,  surgeon,  of  Norwich; 
secondly,  in  1906  to  Sarah,  daughter  of 
James  Burgess,  Congregational  minister, 
of  Little  Baddow,  Essex.  By  the  first 
marriage  there  were  two  sons,  the  younger 
of  whom  died  in  infancy.  Bartlet  died  at 
Oxford  5  August  1940. 

In  1900  Bartlet  published  The  Apostolic 
Age:  its  Life,  Doctrine,  Worship  and  Polity. 
He  contributed  commentaries  on  The  Acts 
(1901)  and  on  St.  Mark  (1922)  to  the 
'Century  Bible'  series.  His  Birkbeck 
lectures,  delivered  at  Trinity  CoUege, 
Cambridge,  in  1924,  were  edited  by 
Dr.  Cecil  John  Cadoux  and  published 
posthumously  (1943)  as  Church-Life  and 
Church-Order  During  the  First  Four  Cen- 
turies. He  was  a  frequent  contributor  to 
symposia,  encyclopaedias,  and  theological 
journals,  his  work  being  marked  by  care- 
ful learning  and  his  own  emphasis.  For 
Bartlet  the  prophetic  character  of  original 
Christianity,  expressed  in  terms  of  the 
Holy   Spirit  on  the  divine  side,  and  of 


moral  personality  on  the  human,  was 
definitive;  and  he  was  always  sensitive 
to  manifestations  of  this  character  in  later 
piety,  whether  in  orthodox  or  in  heretical 
circles.  His  presentation  was  strictly  his- 
torical in  its  perspectives :  neither  to  terms 
nor  to  the  thought-forms  which  they  repre- 
sent did  he  allow  finality.  This  presenta- 
tion the  Oxford  Society  of  Historical 
Theology,  of  which  Bartlet  was  secretary 
from  1894  until  1936,  did  much  to  nurture. 
Its  applications  are  shown  with  penetra- 
tion in  the  chapters  contributed  by  Bart- 
let to  Christianity  in  History.  A  Study  of 
Religious  Developtnent  (1917),  in  which  he 
collaborated  with  Alexander  James  Carlyle . 
Keenly  interested  in  Christian  reunion, 
Bartlet  took  a  prominent  part  in  the 
World  Conference  on  Faith  and  Order 
held  at  Lausanne  in  1927.  Although  never 
ordained,  he  was  regarded  as  a  recognized 
leader  in  the  Congregational  churches. 
Tall,  dignified  in  bearing,  delicate,  and  of 
valetudinarian  habits,  he  was  a  vehement 
teetotaller ;  tobacco  was  abhorrent  to  him. 
Yet  his  personal  influence  on  generations 
of  students  was  incalculable.  The  length 
of  his  words  and  sentences  bewildered, 
even  offended,  the  less  patient  and  re- 
flective ;  his  gentleness,  sincerity,  and  deep 
devotion  won  the  affection  of  all. 

[C.  J.  Cadoux,  Biographical  Memoir  pre- 
fixed to  J.  V.  Bartlet,  Church-Life  and  Church- 
Order  During  the  First  Four  Centuries,  1943 
(bibliography  and  portrait) ;  Mansfield  College 
Magazine,  January  1941 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Geoffrey  F.  Nuttai^l. 

BATESON,  Sir  ALEXANDER  DING- 
WALL (1866-1935),  judge,  was  born  at 
AUerton,  near  Liverpool,  30  April  1866, 
the  youngest  of  the  six  sons  of  William 
Gandy  Bateson,  a  partner  in  a  well-known 
firm  of  shipping  solicitors  in  Liverpool, 
by  his  wife,  Agnes  Dingwall,  daughter  of 
Sir  Thomas  Blaikie,  of  Aberdeen.  He  was 
educated  at  Rugby  and  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  being  in  his  youth  both  a  foot- 
baller and  a  cricketer.  Called  to  the  bar 
by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1891,  he  began  his 
professional  career  in  the  chambers  of 
(Sir)  Joseph  Walton  [q.v.].  With  such 
backing  and  under  such  a  mentor  he  had 
no  long  wait  for  practice:  he  quickly 
specialized  in  shipping  work,  mainly  in 
salvage  and  collision  cases  in  the  Admiralty 
division,  occasionally  in  the  Commercial 
Court.  His  progress  was  steady  rather 
than  eventful,  but  before  long  he  had 
secured  the  confidence  of  the  maritime 
business  conununity  more  by  his  accuracy 


52 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Baylis 


in  every  detail  of  his  cases  and  by  his 
capacity  for  decision  than  through  any 
profound  legal  learning.  With  a  pleasing 
voice,  incisive  in  manner  and  speech,  his 
advocacy  was  lucid  and  businesslike. 

In  1909  Bateson  was  appointed  junior 
counsel  to  the  Admiralty  for  Admiralty 
division  work :  in  1910,  with  his  friend  and 
principal  rival  in  the  Admiralty  Court, 
(Sir)  E.  M.  Hill  [q.v.],  he  took  silk,  and 
thereafter  there  were  few  cases  in  the 
Admiralty  division  in  which  he  was  not 
on  one  side  or  the  other.  He  was  elected 
a  bencher  of  his  Inn  in  1920.  Under  the 
Administration  of  Justice  Act  (1925) 
power  was  given  to  appoint  an  additional 
judge  of  the  Probate,  Divorce,  and  Ad- 
miralty division,  and  with  the  universal 
approbation  of  the  bar,  in  a  wide  circle  of 
which  Bateson  had  great  personal  popu- 
larity, the  lord  chancellor  (Viscount  Cave) 
in  the  May  of  that  year  selected  him  for 
appointment  to  the  office.  Entirely  con- 
versant as  Bateson  was  with  maritime  law 
and  practice,  the  probate  and  matrimonial 
jurisdiction  in  which  he  was  thus  also 
launched  was  an  uncharted  sea  for  him, 
but,  although  perhaps  he  never  quite 
mastered  all  the  historical  principles  of 
the  earlier  ecclesiastical  law,  his  very 
sound  common  sense  stood  him  in  good 
stead,  and  his  innate  modesty  enabled 
him  to  take  full  advantage  of  assistance 
proffered  by  the  bar.  Dignified,  courteous 
to  all,  and  probing  carefiilly  into  the  facts 
of  each  case,  Bateson  was  rarely  misled  by 
any  witness,  and  he  continued  to  show  that 
supreme  judicial  qualification,  the  capacity 
for  decision.  In  the  result  he  gave  full 
satisfaction  not  only  to  the  shipping  com- 
munity but  also  to  other  litigants  and  to 
the  bar.  He  seldom  reserved  a  judgement, 
and  he  disliked  anything  which  attracted 
public  attention  to  himself. 

Bateson's  outside  interests  included 
agriculture,  forestry,  and  shooting,  and 
for  many  years  he  farmed  in  the  county 
of  Kirkcudbright.  He  married  in  1893 
Isabel  Mary  (died  1919),  fourth  daughter 
of  William  Latham,  Q.C.,  and  had  four 
sons  and  two  daughters.  He  died  in  Lon- 
don, while  still  upon  the  bench,  11  Janu- 
ary 1935. 

[The  Times,  12  January  1935;  private 
information.]  Noel  Middleton. 

BAYLIS,  LILIAN  MARY  (1874-1937), 
theatrical  manager,  was  born  in  London 
9  May  1874,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Edward 
William  Baylis,  singer,  by  his  wife,  Eliza- 
beth Cons,  singer  and  pianist.    She  was 


educated  at  home  and  trained  at  an  early 
age  as  a  violinist  under  J.  T.  Carrodus 
[q.v.],  appearing  in  public  when  only  seven 
years  old  at  the  entertainments  organized 
by  her  aunt  Enuna  Cons  in  the  'Royal 
Victoria  Coffee  Music  Hall',  as  it  was  then 
called.  Miss  Cons  had  secured  a  lease  of 
the  theatre  in  Lambeth  originally  (1818) 
called  the  Royal  Cobourg  Theatre  and 
renamed  (1833)  the  Victoria  Theatre, 
familiarly  known  as  the  'Old  Vic':  she 
reopened  it  as  the  Royal  Victoria  Coffee 
Music  Hall  on  27  December  1880.  Miss 
Cons,  a  social  worker  closely  associated 
with  Charles  Kingsley,  John  Ruskin,  and 
Octavia  Hill  [qq.v.],  seems  to  have  been 
led  to  take  this  step  by  John  HoUingshead 
[q.v.],  the  famous  manager  of  the  Gaiety 
Theatre :  their  idea  was  to  open  a  popular 
music-hall  for  the  working  classes  in  which 
no  alcohoUc  liquor  should  be  obtainable. 
In  1890  the  Baylis  family  emigrated  to 
South  Africa,  where  they  toured  the 
country  giving  musical  entertainments 
under  great  difficulties  of  transport.  Lilian 
Baylis  eventually  settled  in  Johannesburg, 
where  she  taught  music  and  trained  a 
ladies'  orchestra;  but  in  1898  Miss  Cons 
persuaded  her  niece  to  return  to  England 
to  assist  her  in  the  management  of  the 
Royal  Victoria  Hall.  Hitherto  the  enter- 
tainments had  consisted  of  oratorio  and 
ballad  concerts  interspersed  with  variety 
and  scientific  lectures,  as  well  as  temper- 
ance meetings.  Plays  and  operas  could 
not  be  given  under  the  lord  chamberlain's 
regulations,  but  in  the  case  of  opera  these 
were  evaded  by  presenting  selections  from 
operas  with  tableaux  vivants  in  costume. 
Lilian  Baylis  became  acting  manager  in 
1898  and  in  1899  engaged  Charles  Corri  as 
musical  director.  This  partnership  lasted 
for  over  thirty  years,  during  which  time 
the  musical  activities  of  the  hall  were  con- 
siderably developed,  although  symphony 
concerts  were  financially  unsuccessful. 
Miss  Baylis  was  one  of  the  first  to  seize 
on  the  cinematograph  as  a  popular  enter- 
tainment, especially  for  children,  but 
dropped  it  after  a  few  years  when  it 
became  a  general  commercial  enterprise 
which  presented  films  which  she  con- 
sidered unsuitable  for  the  young. 

Miss  Cons  died  in  1912  and  Lilian  Baylis 
became  sole  manager  of  the  hall.  Miss 
Cons's  interests  had  been  primarily  social 
and  religious ;  her  niece  shared  these  inter- 
ests but  was  now  free  to  raise  the  whole 
artistic  standard  of  her  theatre,  which  she 
advertised  as  'The  People's  Opera  House'. 
William  Poel  [q.v.],  who  had  been  manager 


53 


Baylis 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


from  1881  to  1883,  had  offered  to  bring 
his  own  dramatic  company  in  1906,  but 
this  offer  had  had  to  be  refused  owing  to 
the  lord  chamberlain's  regulations;  an 
offer  of  Shakespeare  recitals  in  costume 
made  by  Mr.  George  Owen  and  Mr. 
William  Bridges-Adams  in  1911  came  to 
nothing.  After  1912  the  restrictions  seem 
to  have  been  lifted ;  a  few  plays  of  a  popu- 
lar type  were  performed,  but  with  little 
success.  In  April  1914  Miss  Rosina  Filippi 
presented  Shakespeare  for  the  first  time, 
and  also  The  School  for  Scandal.  She  had 
wished  to  perform  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's 
Candida,  but  this  play  was  abandoned, 
probably  because  no  suitable  actress  was 
available  for  the  name  part. 

The  development  of  the  Old  Vic  as  the 
'home  of  Shakespeare'  was  first  made 
possible  by  the  war  of  1914-1918,  which 
rendered  all  theatrical  enterprise  so  pre- 
carious that  actors  of  distinction  were  glad 
to  join  a  Shakespeare  company  at  the 
Old  Vic  at  very  modest  salaries  for  the 
sake  of  a  secure  engagement.  Between 
1914  and  1923  all  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
were  performed  there  under  various  pro- 
ducers; Miss  Baylis  took  no  part  in  pro- 
duction but  hmited  herself  to  general 
management.  By  the  end  of  the  war  the 
Old  Vic  had  become  one  of  London's  lead- 
ing theatres,  drawing  audiences  from  all 
parts  of  the  capital,  and  Miss  Baylis  began 
to  be  aware  that  she  was  now  doing  what 
should  have  been  the  work  of  a  national 
theatre.  Sadler's  Wells  Theatre  in  Isling- 
ton was  acquired  and  rebuilt,  mainly 
through  the  energy  of  (Sir)  Reginald 
Rowe,  and  reopened  in  1931  as  an  'Old 
Vic'  for  north  London ;  after  a  short  time 
it  was  found  more  practicable  to  confine 
performances  there  to  opera  and  ballet, 
drama  being  given  at  the  Old  Vic.  Miss 
Baylis  found  herself  obliged  to  delegate 
much  of  the  management  to  others,  but 
controlled  the  two  theatres  to  the  end  of 
her  life.  She  died  at  Stockwell  25  Novem- 
ber 1937. 

Lilian  Baylis's  achievement  was  the 
creation  of  a  true  people's  theatre  and 
opera-house  out  of  what  had  begun  as  a 
philanthropic  temperance  institution.  She 
had  the  reputation  of  being  a  hard  woman, 
because  she  was  always  struggling  with 
inadequate  resources :  she  herself  admitted 
that  she  was  ill-educated,  but  she  had  a 
sure  instinct  for  finding  the  right  col- 
laborators. She  was  devoutly  religious, 
full  of  broad-minded  humanity,  and  she 
kept  her  theatres  going  mainly  by  the 
intense  personal  affection  and  idealism 


which  she  inspired  in  all  who  worked 
with  her. 

Miss  Baylis  was  appointed  C.H.  in  1929| 
and  received  honorary  degrees  from  the| 
universities  of  Oxford  (1924)  and  Birming- 
ham (1934). 

A  chalk  drawing  of  Miss  Baylis,  by| 
(Sir)  William  Rothenstein  (1922),  and  an] 
oU  painting,   by  Ethel   Gabain,   are   at 
Sadler's  Wells  Theatre.   A  third  portrait,' 
by  Charles  E.  Butler,  hangs  in  the  Old 
Vic  Theatre. 

[The  Times,  26,  29,  and  30  November  1937 ; 
Sybil  and  Russell  Thorndike,  Lilian  Baylis, 
1938 ;  Lilian  Baylis  and  Cicely  Hamilton,  The 
Old  Vic,  1926 ;  E.  G.  Harcourt  Williams,  Four 
Years  at  the  Old  Vic,  1929-1933,  1935;  Vic- 
Wells.  The  Work  of  Lilian  Baylis,  edited  by 
E.  G.  Harcourt  Williams,  1938 ;  E.  J.  Dent, 
A  Theatre  for  Everybody,  1945 ;  Norman 
Marshall,  Ttie  Other  Theatre,  1947 ;  Who's  Who 
in  the  Theatre,  1936.]       Edwakd  J.  Dent. 


BAYLY,  Sir  LEWIS  (1857-1938),  ad- 
miral, was  born  at  Woolwich,  28  September 
1857,  the  third  son  of  Captain  Neville 
Bayly,  of  the  Royal  Horse  Artillery,  by  his 
wife,  Henrietta  Charlotte,  fourth  daughter 
of  General  Charles  George  Gordon,  of 
the  Royal  Artillery,  and  great-nephew  of 
Admiral  Sir  Richard  Keats  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  in  the  Britannia,  passing 
out  in  1872  as  a  navigating  cadet,  but 
he  was  promoted  to  sub-lieutenant  for 
navigating  duties  in  1876,  when  the  navi- 
gating branch'  was  abolished  and  changed 
over  to  the  executive  branch ;  he  became 
lieutenant  in  1881.  He  served  in  the 
Ashanti  campaign  (1873)  and  in  the  Congo 
expedition  (1875)  in  the  Encounter,  and 
in  the  Egyptian  war  of  1882.  In  1883  he 
specialized  in  torpedo,  but  his  first  impor- 
tant appointment  was  as  naval  attache  to 
the  United  States  of  America  in  June 
1900;  in  the  two  years  there  he  gained 
experience  which  was  to  stand  him  in  good 
stead  in  his  last  appointment. 

In  1907,  after  having  commanded  the 
cruiser  Talbot  on  the  China  station  and 
the  battleship  Queen  in  the  Mediterranean, 
Bayly  was  selected  for  the  command  of 
the  destroyer  flotillas  in  the  Home  Fleet, 
with  the  rank  of  commodore,  in  the  Atten- 
tive. In  Bayly's  own  words,  'destroyers 
were  then  a  comparatively  new  arm,  and 
their  capabilities  when  working  in  flotillas 
were  not  very  well  understood'.  A  fine 
seaman  and  a  hard  taskmaster,  he  com- 
pleted an  inmiense  programme  of  exercises 
during  the  next  two  years  and  laid  solid 
foundations  for  the  future  handling  and 


54 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Beardmore 


administration  of  flotillas.  In  1908  he  was  war  was  over,  he  was  as  well  known  in  the 


appointed  president  of  the  War  College, 
at  Portsmouth,  and  promoted  to  flagrante ; 
he  held  the  presidency  until  1911  when 
he  was  given  the  command  of  the  first 
battle-cruiser  squadron  (flag  in  the 
Indomitable  and  later  in  the  Lion) ;  this 
was  followed  by  the  command  of  the 
third  battle  squadron  (1913-1914,  flag 
in  the  King  Edward  VII),  and,  in  1914, 
by  that  of  the  first  battle  squadron  (flag 
in  the  Marlborough).  This  squadron  was 
part  of  the  Grand  Fleet  assembled  at 
Scapa  P'low  on  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
August  1914.  In  September  Bayly  was 
promoted  vice-admiral  and  in  December 
he  was  appointed  to  command  the  recently 
strengthened  Channel  Fleet  (flag  in  the 
Lord  Nelson),  but  a  few  days  later  was 
relieved  of  his  command  because,  during 
exercises,  one  of  his  battleships,  the  For- 
midable, was  sunk  by  torpedo.  He  asked 
for  a  court  martial,  but  this  was  refused, 
and  he  was  appointed  president  of  the 
Royal  Naval  CoUege,  Greenwich.  With 
that  appointment  his  active  career  ap- 
peared to  have  ended,  but  his  greatest 
work  still  lay  ahead  of  him.  In  July  1915 
he  was  appointed  to  command  the  West- 
ern Approaches  with  base  at  Queenstown 
and  in  the  beginning  of  1916  was  raised 
to  the  position  of  commander-in-chief. 
The  German  submarine  campaign  was  at 
its  height  and  the  frequent  sinkings  in 
the  Western  Approaches  could  only  be 
checked  by  extremely  vigorous  defence 
measures  and  by  exploiting  new  methods 
of  attacking  the  submarines.  Bayly  had 
all  the  qualities  for  conducting  the  anti- 
submarine campaign,  but  for  the  first  two 
years  he  never  had  sufficient  ships  for  the 
large  area  for  which  he  was  responsible, 
until,  in  1917,  welcome  reinforcements 
from  the  United  States  began  to  arrive. 

Bayly,  who  had  been  promoted  admiral 
in  1917,  proved  the  ideal  commander  of 
a  mixed  Anglo-American  force.  He  made 
the  senior  United  States  officer  (Captain 
Joel  Roberts  Poinsett  Pringle,  afterwards 
vice-admiral)  his  chief  of  staff,  the 
first  foreign  naval  officer  to  hold  such  an 
appointment,  and  he  mixed  the  ships  of 
the  two  navies  in  his  flotillas  and  squad- 
rons so  that  after  a  few  months  they  were 
all  one  navy.  Although  in  his  own  service 
his  reputation  was  that  of  a  hard  task- 
master with  a  brusque,  intolerant  manner, 
the  American  navy  discovered  a  human 
side  which  led  him  to  be  known  to  all 
American  sailors  as '  Uncle  Lewis ' .  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  by  the  time  the 


United  States  as  in  his  own  country.  It 
was  the  joint  practice  of  naval  warfare 
that  broadened  and  deepened  into  a  sym- 
pathetic understanding  between  Bayly 
and  Pringle  and  all  those  who  served 
vmder  them,  and  this  understanding 
spread  to  wider  reaches  and  helped 
materially  to  cement  friendship  between 
the  two  English-speaking  countries. 

In  1921  Bayly,  who  had  retired  in  July 
1919,  visited  the  United  States  as  the 
guest  of  the  Queenstown  Association,  a 
club  formed  by  officers  who  had  served 
under  him  from  1915  to  1918,  and  of 
which  he  was  vice-president.  In  1934  he 
was  again  the  guest  of  the  American  navy 
when,  at  the  Naval  Academy  at  Anna- 
polis, he  unveiled  a  memorial,  which  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  had  granted  him 
permission  to  erect,  to  his  American  chief 
of  staff.  Vice- Admiral  Pringle. 

Bayly  was  appointed  C.V.O.  in  1907, 
C.B.  in  1912,  K.C.B.  in  1914,  and  K.C.M.G. 
in  1918.  He  received  the  Grand  Cross  of 
the  Dannebrog  in  1912  and  the  American 
D.S.O.  He  married  in  1892  Yves  Henrietta 
Stella,  daughter  of  Henry  Annesley  Voy- 
sey ;  there  was  no  issue  of  the  marriage. 
He  died  in  London  16  May  1938. 

[The  Times,  17  May  1938 ;  Sir  Lewis  Bayly, 
Pull  Together!,  1939  (portraits) ;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  M.  James. 

BEARDMORE,  WILLIAM,  Baron 
Invernairn  (1856-1936),  shipbuilder,  was 
bom  at  Greenwich  16  October  1856,  the 
eldest  son  of  William  Beardmore,  of  Park- 
head,  Glasgow,  by  his  wife,  Sophie  Louisa 
Holfman.  He  was  educated  at  Glasgow 
High  School  and  Ayr  Academy  and  com- 
pleted his  studies  at  the  Royal  Technical 
College,  Glasgow,  and  at  the  Royal  School 
of  Mines,  South  Kensington.  He  served 
his  apprenticeship  at  Parkhead  Forge, 
which,  founded  by  David  Napier  [q.v.], 
had  passed  under  the  control  of  his  father 
eleven  years  before.  Working  for  long 
hours  by  day,  he  attended  evening  classes 
at  Anderson's  College,  specializing  in 
chemistry  and  mathematics.  On  the  death 
of  his  father  he  became  in  1879  a  partner 
with  his  uncle,  Isaac  Beardmore,  and  on 
the  latter's  retirement  foimded  the  firm  of 
William  Beardmore  &  company,  which 
gained  world-wide  fame,  not  only  for  the 
building  of  men-of-war  and  merchant 
ships,  but  for  the  construction  of  the  R.  34, 
which  was  the  first  airship  to  make  the 
double  crossing  of  the  Atlantic.  During 
the   war  of   1914-1918    the    Beardmore 


56 


Beardmore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


shipyard,  engine  shops,  and  foundries 
rendered  great  service  to  the  nation,  for 
it  was  recognized  as  the  best-equipped 
and  most  efficient  estabhshment  in  the 
world.  Some  conception  of  its  activities 
may  be  formed  when  it  is  stated  that  in 
the  years  1906  to  1919  the  firm  built  four 
battleships,  seven  cruisers,  twenty-one 
destroyers,  thirteen  submarines,  twenty- 
four  hospital  ships,  and  one  seaplane- 
carrier.  For  some  years  after  the  war  the 
firm  continued  its  activities  successfully, 
being  responsible  for  such  notable  ships 
as  the  Empress  of  France,  Lancastria, 
Cameronia,  Conte  Rosso,  Conte  Verde, 
Largs  Bay,  Esperance  Bay,  and  Duchess 
of  Atholl,  and  in  April  1925  the  largest 
vessel  ever  to  leave  the  Beardmore  slip- 
ways was  floated,  the  first-class  passenger 
and  cargo  steamer  Conte  Biancamano, 
23,121  tons,  for  the  Lloyd  Sabaudo.  The 
firm  also  built  the  9,730-ton  cruiser  Shrop- 
shire and  two  submarines. 

Soon  after  the  launching  of  this  large 
man-of-war,  the  most  serious  depression 
affecting  both  warship  and  merchant  ship 
construction  began  and  the  huge  establish- 
ment which  Beardmore  had  created  and 
managed  so  successfully  suffered  in  com- 
mion  with  other  firms.  Shipping,  as  well 
as  ship-building,  was  affected  by  the 
depression.  The  Admiralty  had  ceased 
to  place  contracts  for  men-of-war  and 
Beardmore  could  not  secure  sufficient 
mercantile  work  to  keep  the  large  body 
of  technicians,  draughtsmen,  and  work- 
men employed.  The  firm  entered  the  field 
of  locomotive  construction  and  made 
motor-cars  and  commercial  vehicles.  But 
these  experiments  were  not  a  success.  It 
was  one  of  the  tragedies  of  the  after-war 
period  that  the  splendidly  equipped  ship- 
yards, engine  shops,  and  foundries  were 
without  work.  Eventually,  in  1930,  the 
shipyard  was  acquired  by  National  Ship- 
builders' Security  Limited,  under  an  agree- 
ment which  laid  down  that  it  might  not 
be  used  for  a  period  of  forty  years.  One 
year  before  this  development  Beardmore 
had  severed  his  connexion  with  the  firm. 
He  was  an  autocrat  in  his  relations  with 
his  employees,  but  was  regarded  as  a  fair 
and  just  employer. 

For  many  years  Beardmore  was  chair- 
man of  the  Industrial  Welfare  Society  in 
the  activities  of  which  he  took  a  keen 
interest.  In  1917  he  was  president  of  the 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute.  He  encouraged 
Antarctic  exploration,  his  name  being 
given  by  Sir  Ernest  Shackleton  [q.v.]  to 
a  glacier  discovered  on  one  of  his  voyages 


to  the  Antarctic  regions.  He  was  also  a 
keen  sportsman.  In  1914  he  was  created 
a  baronet  and  in  1921  raised  to  the  peer- 
age as  Baron  Invernairn,  of  Strathnairn, 
Inverness-shire.  He  married  in  1902 
Elspeth  Stiven,  eldest  daughter  of  David 
Tullis,  of  Glencairn,  Rutherglen,  Lanark- 
shire; there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Flichity,  Inverness- 
shire,  9  April  1936. 

[The  Times,  10  April  1936;  David  Kirk- 
wood,  My  Life  of  Revolt,  1935.] 

Archibald  Hxjrd. 

BEATTY,  DAVID,  first  Earl  Beatty 
(1871-1936),  admiral  of  the  fleet,  was  born 
at  Howbeck  Lodge,  Stapeley,  near  Nant- 
wich,  Cheshire,  17  January  1871,  the 
second  son  in  a  family  of  four  sons  and 
one  daughter  of  Captain  David  Longfield 
Beatty,  of  the  4th  Hussars,  by  his  first  wife, 
Katherine  Edith,  daughter  of  Nicholas 
Sadleir,  of  Dunboyne  Castle,  co.  Meath,  a 
remarkable  woman  who  more  than  once 
prophesied  that  England  would  ring  with 
David's  name.  The  Beattys  were  of  old 
Irish  stock ;  the  admiral's  grandfather  was 
long  master  of  the  Wexford  hoimds,  and 
his  parents,  when  they  settled  in  Cheshire, 
devoted  themselves  to  hunting  and  train- 
ing the  horses  sent  over  from  the  family 
estates  at  Borodale  in  coimty  Wexford. 
It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  Beatty's 
favourite  sport  was  hunting,  or  that  he 
wrote  to  his  sister  about  the  battle  of 
Jutland  as  if  it  had  been  a  hunt.  'I 
describe  the  battle  to  you  thus  because 
only  in  this  way  would  you  understand  it.' 

Sea  and  ships  had  always  greatly  fasci- 
nated young  Beatty,  and  there  was  never 
any  doubt  that  he  was  destined  for  the 
navy.  At  thirteen  years  of  age  he  passed 
into  the  Britannia,  and  on  passing  out 
two  years  later  he  was  posted  to  the 
Alexandra,  flagship  of  Prince  Alfred,  Duke 
of  Edinburgh  [q.v.],  conunander-in-chief 
of  the  Mediterranean  Fleet,  and  he  served 
practically  the  whole  of  his  time  as  mid- 
shipman in  this  ship.  During  the  period 
from  1890  to  1892  he  was  under  training 
ashore  at  Portsmouth  and  at  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Greenwich,  as  acting  sub- 
lieutenant, emerging  with  a  first-class 
certificate  in  torpedo,  a  second  class  in 
seamanship,  gunnery,  and  pilotage,  and 
a  third  class  in  navigation.  He  was  pro- 
moted Ueutenant  in  August  1892,  and 
spent  his  watch-keeping  days  in  the  train- 
ing corvette  Ruby,  and  the  battleships 
Camperdown  and  Trafalgar,  for  the  most 
part  in  the  Mediterranean. 


56 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Beatty 


Beatty's  early  enthusiasm  for  the  navy 
was  damped  at  this  time  by  the  monotony 
of  service  routine;  but  his  opportunity 
came  in  1896,  when  Kitchener  asked  for 
a  small  force  of  gunboats  to  operate  on 
the  Nile  in  support  of  his  expedition  for 
the  recovery  of  the  Sudan.  (Sir)  Stanley 
Colville  [q.v.],  commander  of  the  Trafalgar, 
chose  his  shipmate  Beatty  as  second-in- 
command  of  this  little  expedition  in  stern- 
wheel  gunboats.  Only  three  of  these  boats, 
one  of  which  was  Beatty's,  passed  the 
Third  Cataract,  and  immediately  above 
it  they  were  hotly  engaged  by  the  Der- 
vishes, not  without  artillery.  Colville, 
severely  wounded,  handed  over  the  com- 
mand to  Beatty  who  immediately  decided 
to  attempt  the  daring  manoeuvre  of  lead- 
ing the  flotilla  upstream  beyond  the  Arab 
position.  He  was  assisted  in  this  by  the 
army,  which,  thanks  to  the  action  of  the 
gunboats,  had  been  able  to  establish 
artillery  and  infantry  within  close  range. 
Beatty,  however,  pressed  on  at  full  speed 
to  Dongola,  and  after  another  stiff  fight 
won  for  the  navy  the  honour  of  being  the 
first  to  occupy  the  town.  The  enemy  were 
by  now  in  full  retreat,  but  Beatty  con- 
tinued to  harass  them  and  did  not  give 
up  the  pursuit  vmtU  he  reached  the  Fourth 
Cataract.  This  gallant  piece  of  leadership 
was  highly  praised  by  Kitchener,  Beatty 
was  appointed  to  the  D.S.O.,  and  his  name 
was  noted  for  early  promotion. 

After  a  brief  speU  at  home,  Beatty,  at 
Kitchener's  special  request,  was  again  lent, 
in  1897,  to  the  Egyptian  government  for 
operations  on  the  Nile  in  a  flotilla  rein- 
forced by  specially  designed  gunboats.  He 
had  a  narrow  escape  when,  on  4  August, 
his  ship,  the  Hafir,  capsized  at  the  Fourth 
Cataract.  During  the  advance  on  Omdur- 
man  in  1898  he  was  constantly  in  action, 
and  commanded  a  rocket  battery  ashore 
at  the  battle  of  the  Atbara  (8  April).  After 
the  battle  of  Omdurman  (2  September) 
Beatty  was  in  one  of  the  gunboats  that 
escorted  the  sirdar  to  Fashoda,  on  his 
return  from  whence  he  received  special 
promotion  to  commander  (November)  at 
the  early  age  of  twenty-seven,  over  the 
heads  of  395  senior  officers  on  the  lieu- 
tenants' Ust. 

After  a  winter  spent  at  home  in  the 
hunting  field,  Beatty  was  appointed  (April 
1899)  to  the  China  station  as  commander 
of  the  battleship  Barfleur,  commanded  by 
Colville.  In  spite  of  his  youth,  Beatty  won 
the  respect  of  both  officers  and  men.  After 
twelve  months  of  normal  duty  he  found 
himself  again  on  active  service  in  the 


Boxer  rebelUon.  Sir  Edward  Seymour 
[q.v.],  the  British  naval  commander-in- 
chief,  made  a  gallant  attempt  to  reach 
Pekin  with  an  international  force  but  was 
compelled  to  return  to  Hsiku,  where  he 
was  completely  surrounded.  The  foreign 
settlement  at  Tientsin,  six  miles  to  the 
south,  was  also  besieged,  and  Beatty 
landed  from  the  Barfleur  to  reinforce  the 
garrison.  In  this  he  succeeded  and  was 
continuously  employed  in  sorties;  in  one 
across  the  river  he  was  ambushed. 
Wounded  and  in  severe  pain,  he  neverthe- 
less brought  his  men  back  in  good  order, 
remaining  with  the  rearguard  until  all  the 
wounded  had  been  embarked.  Whfle  still 
suffering  from  his  wounds,  he  accepted  the 
command  of  a  naval  detachment  which 
eventually  assisted  in  extricating  Seymour 
from  Hsiku.  For  his  services  in  this  cam- 
paign he  was  promoted  captain  (November 
1900).  The  average  age  of  a  captain  being 
then  forty -three,  his  promotion  at  twenty- 
nine  caused  considerable  stir. 

As  captain,  Beatty  commanded  (1902- 
1910)  the  cruisers  Juno,  Arrogant,  Diana, 
and  Suffolk,  and  the  battleship  Queen, 
His  marriage  had  made  him  independent 
of  the  service  and  his  rapid  promotion 
brought  him  to  the  head  of  the  list  of 
captains  before  he  had  completed  the  six 
years'  service  at  sea  required  for  promo- 
tion to  flag  rank.  Nevertheless,  in  view 
of  the  time  lost  on  account  of  the  wounds 
which  he  had  received  in  China  and  his 
war  services,  he  was  promoted  rear- 
admiral  by  order  in  coimcil  on  1  January 
1910,  the  yoxmgest  flag-officer  for  over  a 
himdred  years,  being  just  imder  thirty- 
nine  years  of  age,  whereas  Nelson  on  his 
promotion  was  a  few  months  over  thirty- 
eight.  This  promotion  created  even  greater 
stir  than  the  previous  one,  and  with  per- 
haps more  justification  in  view  of  the 
length  of  time  during  which  he  had  been 
on  half -pay. 

Beatty  was  far  more  interested  in  the 
proper  employment  of  the  fleet  in  war 
than  in  its  technicalities,  and  soon  after 
Mr.  Churchill,  with  his  'mind  full  of  the 
dangers  of  war',  became  first  lord  of  the 
Admiralty  in  October  1911,  he  chose 
Beatty,  in  spite  of  naval  advice  to  the 
contrary,  for  his  naval  secretary  (1912). 
They  were  admirably  suited  to  each  other ; 
and,  probably  in  order  to  confound  the 
critics  of  Beatty  and  to  test  his  capacity 
as  a  flag-officer,  the  first  lord  gave  him 
the  conunand  of  a  cruiser  squadron 
in  the  important  manoeuvres  of  1912. 
Clearly  Beatty  fulfilled  Mr.   Churchill's 


57 


Beatty 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


expectations,  for  in  the  spring  of  1913  he 
appointed  Beatty  'over  the  heads  of  all' 
to  command  the  battle-cruiser  squadron. 
Beatty  hoisted  his  flag  in  the  Lion  in 
March  1913,  and  when  war  broke  out  on 
4  August  1914  he  was  in  northern  waters 
in  command  of  the  scouting  forces  of  the 
Grand  Fleet  based  at  Seapa  Flow  under 
Sir  John  (later  Earl)  Jellicoe  [q.v.]. 

When,  on  22  September  1914,  the  three 
cruisers  Cressy,  Hague,  and  Aboukir  were 
torpedoed  with  great  loss  of  Ufe  off  the 
Dutch  coast,  the  shock  to  a  fleet  which 
had  not  wholly  appreciated  the  potentiali- 
ties of  the  submarine  was  such  that  the 
commander-in-chief,  apprehensive  about 
the  security  of  the  Grand  Fleet  at  Scapa 
Flow,  decided  to  take  the  fleet  to  ports 
on  the  west  coast  of  Scotland  and  Ireland 
until  Scapa  could  be  properly  defended. 
Although  Beatty  recognized  the  need  for 
this  decision,  the  result  of  government 
improvidence  was  more  than  he  could 
bear,  and  he  lost  no  time  in  pressing  his 
views  in  the  strongest  terms  by  private 
letter  to  Mr.  Churchill.  Believing  Scapa 
to  be  too  distant  from  the  enemy,  he 
urged  that  Cromarty  and  Rosyth  should 
also  be  equipped  and  defended  as  opera- 
tional bases,  and  these  defences  were  com- 
pleted by  the  end  of  the  year. 

It  has  been  a  matter  for  wonder  why 
the  Germans  did  not  take  fuUer  advan- 
tage of  the  awkward  predicament  in  which 
the  Grand  Fleet  foimd  itself  at  this  time. 
The  answer  is  supplied  by  the  success  of 
the  offensive  movement  into  the  Heligo- 
land Bight,  carried  out  by  Beatty,  (Sir) 
Reginald  Yorke  Tyrwhitt,  and  Roger 
John  Brownlow  (later  Lord)  Keyes,  during 
the  first  month  of  the  war.  The  plan 
designed  by  the  Admiralty  was,  briefly, 
that  Tyrwhitt  with  his  destroyers  should 
penetrate  deeply  into  the  Bight  under 
cover  of  darkness  and  sweep  out  at  dawn 
from  east  to  west  with  the  object  of 
destroying  all  enemy  ships  encountered, 
while  Keyes  with  his  submarines  lay  off 
the  mouths  of  the  German  rivers  in  suit- 
able positions  to  attack  enemy  heavy 
ships  if  they  came  out.  Two  older  battle- 
cruisers  from  the  Humber  under  Rear- 
Admiral  Sir  Archibald  Gordon  Henry 
Wilson  Moore  were  to  act  in  support. 
Jellicoe,  uneasy  as  to  the  adequacy  of  this 
support,  directed  Beatty  to  proceed  to 
Heligoland  with  the  battle-cruisers  Lion, 
Queen  Mary,  Princess  Royal,  and  Commo- 
dore (Sir)  WiUiam  Edmund  Goodenough's 
six  light  cruisers.  The  weather  was  calm, 
hnt   visibility   was   bad.     Beatty's   first 


move  was  to  make  contact  with  the 
Humber  battle-cruiser  force,  which  he  did 
at  daylight  on  28  August,  and  he  was  thus 
able  to  obtain  detailed  information  of  the 
movements  of  the  other  units.  The 
presence  of  British  forces  in  the  Bight 
having  become  known,  the  enemy  sent 
out  cruisers  and  destroyers  to  reinforce 
their  patrols.  In  the  thick  weather,  the 
British  flotiUas  lost  touch  with  one 
another,  the  situation  became  confused, 
and  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  friend 
from  foe.  In  several  fleeting  actions,  the 
German  cruiser  Mainz  and  a  destroyer 
were  sunk.  Just  before  noon,  Tyrwhitt's 
flagship  Arethusa,  which  had  been  badly 
damaged  a  short  time  previously,  was 
attacked  by  four  enemy  cruisers.  Captain 
W.  F.  Blunt  in  the  Fearless,  with  a  division 
of  destroyers,  came  to  her  support,  but 
could  do  little  against  such  a  superior 
force.  At  this  critical  moment,  to  the 
north-westward  out  of  the  mist,  Beatty 
appeared  with  his  battle-cruisers  steaming 
at  high  speed  to  the  rescue.  Sundry  other 
British  forces  rallied  towards  the  battle- 
cruisers,  and  in  a  hot  pursuit  of  the  enemy 
into  the  Bight,  the  Koln  and  Ariadne 
were  sunk.  The  two  remaining  German 
cruisers,  Strassburg  and  Stralsund,  made 
their  escape.  At  1.10  p.m.  Beatty  made 
the  general  signal  'Retire'. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  by  his  prompt 
action  Beatty  turned  what  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  a  disaster  into  an  impor- 
tant success.  It  is  interesting  to  note  how 
he  arrived  at  his  decision,  which  was  no 
easy  one  in  view  of  the  risks  involved  in 
the  face  of  mines,  submarines,  and  enemy 
heavy  ships.  At  10  a.m.,  realizing  that  the 
whole  position  was  confused,  Beatty  broke 
wireless  silence  and  informed  all  concerned 
where  he  was  and  what  he  was  doing.  He 
became  very  uneasy,  and  on  receipt  of 
various  signals  for  assistance  he  decided 
to  disregard  the  dangers  and  proceed  at 
high  speed  in  support  of  the  Arethusa. 
His  reasons  for  this  are  given  in  his  own 
dispatch:  'The  situation  appeared  to  me 
to  be  extremely  critical  .  .  .  there  was  the 
possibility  of  a  grave  disaster.  At  11.30 
I  therefore  decided  that  the  only  course 
possible  was  to  take  the  battle-cruiser 
squadron  at  full  speed  to  the  eastward  .  . . 
I  had  not  lost  sight  of  the  danger  to  my 
squadron.'  Here  he  enumerates  the  risks 
and  discounts  them  methodically  one  by 
one,  a  good  example  of  Beatty's  power  of 
tempering  boldness  with  caution  but,  once 
the  situation  had  been  weighed,  acting 
with  vigour  and  determination.  No  Brit- 


58 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Beatty 


ish  ship  was  lost  in  an  action  which, 
although  a  marked  success,  disclosed  grave 
deficiencies  in  staff  work  and  system  of 
command.  Nevertheless,  the  moral  effect 
was  profound:  the  German  navy  in  par- 
ticular was  severely  shaken,  and  the  in- 
activity of  the  enemy  from  August  to 
September  enabled  the  defences  of  the 
British  bases  to  be  completed  and  the 
position  of  the  Grand  Fleet  in  the  North 
Sea  was  consolidated. 

December  1914  was  an  anxious  month 
for  the  British  command.  Owing  to  the 
commitments  in  other  seas,  only  three 
battle-cruisers  were  available.  There  were 
signs  of  German  naval  activity  and  on 
14  December  the  Admiralty  reported  that 
the  enemy  battle-cruisers  were  about  to 
carry  out  a  'tip  and  run'  raid  on  the  east 
coast  of  England.  As  it  was  impossible  to 
ascertain  where  the  enemy  would  choose 
to  attack,  a  strong  British  force,  including 
the  second  battle  squadron  under  Admiral 
Sir  George  Warrender  [q.v.]  and  the  first 
battle-cruiser  squadron  under  Beatty, 
were  dispatched  to  a  point  between  Heli- 
goland and  Flamborough  Head,  where 
they  would  be  in  a  good  position  to  inter- 
cept the  enemy  on  his  return. 

At  dawn  on  16  December,  when  the 
British  forces  were  in  process  of  concen- 
trating, news  was  received  that  Scar- 
borough, Whitby,  and  Hartlepool  were 
being  bombarded.  The  weather  was  thick 
and  the  situation  was  complicated  by  the 
fact  that  a  German  mine-field  lay  between 
the  British  fleet  and  the  five  bombarding 
battle-cruisers.  Aided  by  mist  and  the 
mine-field,  the  enemy  slipped  through  the 
British  forces  and  escaped.  It  was  an 
exasperating  day  for  the  British  admirals 
who  were  frustrated  because  there  was  no 
scientific  means  of  locating  the  enemy  or 
of  synchronizing  the  movements  of  the 
four  British  squadrons  groping  blindly 
for  their  prey.  The  success  of  the  raid 
emphasized  the  need  for  basing  strong 
British  forces  farther  south.  Accordingly 
Beatty's  battle-cruisers  were  stationed  at 
Rosyth,  and  they  had  not  long  been  there 
before  Beatty  found  himself  speeding 
across  the  North  Sea  to  intercept  Admiral 
Hipper,  who,  according  to  Admiralty 
intelligence,  was  expected  to  be  near  the 
Dogger  Bank  with  four  battle-cruisers, 
accompanied  by  cruisers  and  destroyers, 
on  the  morning  of  24  January.  So  accu- 
rate was  this  intelligence  that  the  British 
scouting  forces  sighted  the  enemy,  as  if 
at  a  pre-arranged  rendezvous,  at  7.30  a.m. 
on  that  day. 


Beatty  pressed  forward  at  full  speed  to 
attack  with  the  Lion,  Tiger,  and  Princess 
Royal.  Rear-Admiral  Moore  with  the 
older  and  slower  Indomitable  and  the  New 
Zealand  began  to  fall  astern.  Hipper 
turned  to  run  for  home  but  Beatty  was 
overhauling  him  and  had  a  good  chance 
to  destroy  the  enemy  ships  before  they 
could  reach  their  base.  But  it  was  not  to 
be.  At  9  a.m.  the  British  ships  opened 
fire,  the  Seydlitz  was  severely  damaged, 
and  the  BlUcher,  the  rear  ship  of  the 
enemy,  very  soon  fell  out  of  line  and  was 
abandoned  to  her  fate.  On  the  other  hand, 
Beatty's  flagship  Lion  became  the  target 
for  the  concentrated  fire  of  the  German 
squadron  and  after  two  hours'  fighting 
received  a  blow  which  stopped  one  engine 
and  caused  her  to  list  heavily  to  port. 
The  other  ships  swept  past  her,  and 
Beatty,  who  could  no  longer  lead  his 
squadron,  was  obliged  to  issue  instructions 
by  flag  signals. 

The  British  squadron  had  now  lost  some 
distance  on  accoimt  of  a  turn  to  avoid  a 
reported  submarine.  Beatty  has  been 
criticized  for  having  ordered  this  turn, 
but  he  was  no  doubt  influenced  by  the 
fate  which  had  befallen  the  three  cruisers 
in  September.  In  order  to  continue  the 
pursuit  and  get  his  guns  to  bear  on  the 
fleeing  enemy,  Beatty  gave  the  order  to 
his  signal  officer:  'Course  north-east — 
attack  the  rear  of  the  enemy.'  But  the 
Lion  had  only  two  signal  halyards  left, 
and  the  arrangement  of  the  signals  as 
hoisted  conveyed  the  meaning  'Attack  the 
rear  of  the  enemy  bearing  north-east ',  and 
so  it-was  interpreted  by  Moore,  the  second- 
in-command.  The  effect  was  tragic,  for 
by  coincidence  the  BlUcher,  now  well 
separated  from  her  consorts,  bore  north- 
east :  consequently  the  whole  of  the  British 
squadron  attacked  and  destroyed  her. 
The  Lion  by  now  had  dropped  well  astern, 
and  Beatty  was  at  a  loss  to  know  why  his 
squadron  was  not  continuing  the  pursuit 
of  the  main  German  force.  He  accordingly 
gave  the  order  to  use  Nelson's  signal 
'  Engage  the  enemy  more  closely ',  but  was 
told  that  it  had  been  omitted  from  the 
signal  book.  The  modern  substitute  '  Keep 
nearer  to  the  enemy'  was  then  hoisted, 
but  by  this  time  the  Lion  was  so  far  away 
that  the  signal  could  not  be  read.  He 
transferred  to  a  destroyer  and  gave  chase ; 
but  it  was  too  late :  the  enemy  had  escaped. 
So  ended  an  action,  which,  although 
acclaimed  as  a  British  victory,  was  not 
so  satisfactory  as  it  might  have  been  had 
Beatty  been  able  to  retain  his  leadership. 


59 


Beatty 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


In  December  1915  Beatty,  now  promoted 
to  vice-admiral,  had  under  his  command 
ten  battle-cruisers  organized  into  three 
squadrons,  three  light  cruiser  squadrons, 
and  the  thirteenth  destroyer  flotiUa,  with 
the  Lion  as  fleet  flagship.  As  that  year 
wore  on  it  was  clear  that  the  Germans 
had  no  intention  of  challenging  British 
sea  power  in  the  North  Sea,  and  no  major 
action  took  place,  but  in  January  1916 
Admiral  Scheer,  the  new  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  German  fleet,  announced  his 
intention  of  coming  to  'close  grips  with 
England'.  He  implemented  his  threat  by 
carrying  out  some  ineffective  '  tip  and  run ' 
raids  at  scattered  points  on  the  east  coast, 
hoping  that  public  indignation  would 
cause  dispersal  of  the  British  fleet.  He 
was  disappointed;  so  he  planned  a  more 
ambitious  operation  in  which  his  light 
forces  were  to  attack  trade  off  the  Nor- 
wegian coast  and  in  the  Skagerrak  while 
the  High  Sea  Fleet  remained  fifty  miles 
to  the  south  ready  to  poimce  on  any  Brit- 
ish detaclunent  which  might  be  sent  to 
deal  with  the  raiders.  Before  putting  this 
plan  into  action,  he  placed  strong  forces  of 
submarines  in  positions  where  they  could 
intercept  British  imits  coming  out  from 
Rosyth,  Cromarty,  and  Scapa. 

The  date  selected  was  31  May,  and  by 
an  extraordinary  coincidence  Jellicoe  had 
also  prepared  for  2  June  an  operation 
which  was  in  essence  the  same  as  Scheer's, 
namely,  to  draw  the  German  forces  into 
the  Skagerrak  and  destroy  them  with  the 
Grand  Fleet.  Towards  the  end  of  May 
the  fleet  had  taken  up  its  disposition 
for  the  impending  operation,  and  as  the 
third  battle-cruiser  squadron  under  Rear- 
Admiral  (Sir)  H.  L.  A.  Hood  [q.v.]  hap- 
pened to  be  at  Scapa  for  routine  gunnery 
practice,  Jellicoe  sent  Rear- Admiral  (Sir) 
H.  Evan-Thomas  [q.v.]  with  the  fifth 
battle  squadron  to  replace  it  in  Beatty's 
fleet  at  Rosyth. 

On  30  May  the  Admiralty  warned 
JeUicoe  that  the  enemy  intended  to  go 
to  sea  by  way  of  Horn's  Reef  on  31  May ; 
on  the  evening  of  the  30th  the  Grand 
Fleet  sailed  from  Scapa,  and  Beatty  left 
Rosyth  with  six  battle-cruisers  and  the 
fifth  battle  squadron.  Jellicoe's  plan  was 
that  the  Grand  Fleet  should  pass  through 
a  position  200  miles  east  of  Kinnaird 
Head  on  a  southerly  course.  Beatty  was 
to  take  his  force  to  a  point  seventy  mUes 
south  of  this,  and,  if  nothing  was  sighted, 
to  turn  north  and  take  up  his  position 
ahead  of  the  Grand  Fleet.  The  whole  fleet 
would  then  sweep  south  towards  Horn's 


Reef  with  the  cruiser  screen  ahead  cover- 
ing a  wide  front. 

Scheer  left  the  Jade  the  same  night,  but 
neither  Beatty  nor  Jellicoe  had  any  definite 
information  that  the  enemy  was  at  sea. 
About  noon  on  the  31st,  the  Admiralty 
incorrectly  informed  JeUicoe  and  Beatty 
that  the  German  flagship  was  stiU  in  the 
Jade.  Beatty  reached  his  rendezvous  at 
2  p.m.,  and  having  sighted  nothing  he 
turned  his  whole  force  to  the  north  to 
meet  Jellicoe.  He  stationed  the  fifth  battle 
squadron  five  miles  to  the  northward  of 
him  so  that  it  could  be  conveniently  situ- 
ated to  drop  into  its  normal  position  ten 
miles  north  of  the  battle-cruisers  when 
the  whole  fleet  had  finally  concentrated, 
and  was  proceeding  to  the  southward  in 
accordance  with  Jellicoe's  plan.  A  few 
minutes  later  Commodore  (Sir)  Hugh 
Francis  Paget  Sinclair  in  the  Galatea, 
scouting  to  the  eastward,  reported  the 
presence  of  enemy  cruisers  and  destroyers. 
Beatty  immediately  turned  to  south- 
south-east  to  place  himself  between  the 
enemy  and  his  base.  Evan-Thomas  with 
the  fifth  battle  squadron  did  not  turn  to 
follow  Beatty  until  six  minutes  later, 
partly  because  he  had  not  at  the  moment 
received  the  report  of  the  enemy,  and 
partly  because  smoke  had  prevented  him 
from  seeing  the  turning  signal.  This, 
opening  the  distance  between  the  two 
squadrons,  caused  Beatty  to  go  into  action 
without  the  support  of  the  four  battle- 
ships. It  has  been  suggested  that  he  should 
have  waited  for  Evan-Thomas,  but  his 
primary  duty  was  to  locate  the  enemy, 
and,  if  in  superior  force,  to  destroy  him. 
In  view  of  the  Admiralty  intelligence 
received  two  hours  previously,  he  had 
every  reason  to  beheve  that  he  would  be 
in  superior  force,  and  he  had  six  battle- 
cruisers  against  Hipper's  five. 

At  3.25  p.m.  Beatty  sighted  the  German 
battle-cruisers  and  reported  their  position 
to  JeUicoe,  at  this  time  about  sixty  miles 
to  the  northward.  The  two  squadrons 
closed,  and  at  3.48  p.m.  a  fierce  battle 
began  on  a  southerly  course  at  high  speed. 
The  British  were  unfavourably  placed  for 
wind  and  light,  and  the  Germans  quickly 
foxmd  the  range.  The  Lion  was  repeatedly 
hit,  and  twenty  minutes  after  the  battle 
was  joined  the  Indefatigable,  which  was 
struck  by  two  plunging  salvoes,  blew  up. 
Twenty  minutes  later  the  Queen  Mary 
blew  up,  which  caused  Beatty  to  remark 
to  his  flag-captain:  'There  seems  to  be 
something  wrong  with  our  bloody  ships 
to-day,  Chatfield.'    In  spite  of  these  two 


60 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Beatty 


disasters,  Beatty  kept  at  close  action 
range ;  meanwhile  Evan -Thomas,  by  cut- 
ting corners  and  cramming  on  maximum 
speed,  had  skilfully  managed  to  bring  his 
squadron  into  action  against  the  rear  of 
the  enemy.  At  this  critical  moment, 
Beatty  threw  his  destroyers  into  the 
attack.  Hipper  did  the  same,  and  a  brisk 
destroyer  battle  took  place  between  the 
lines  in  which  the  British  attack  was  the 
more  successful,  for  a  torpedo  struck  the 
Seydlitz  and  Hipper  was  forced  to  turn 
away.  The  German  attack  failed  com- 
pletely, and  this  gave  the  British  a  slight 
breathing  space  and  from  now  onwards 
their  fire  began  to  tell.  'Nothing',  re- 
ported Hipper,  'but  the  poor  quality  of 
the  British  bursting  charges  saved  us  from 
disaster.' 

At  4.40  p.m.  with  dramatic  suddenness 
the  scene  changed.  A  forest  of  masts 
appeared  on  the  southern  horizon  where 
for  the  moment  visibility  was  good.  This 
was  the  High  Sea  Fleet,  reported  for  the 
first  time  seven  minutes  previously  by 
Commodore  Goodenough,  who  had  been 
scouting  ahead  of  the  battle-cruisers. 
Beatty's  duty  was  clear.  He  must  retire 
to  the  northward  at  once  and  endeavour 
to  lead  Scheer  into  Jellicoe's  clutches. 
Accordingly  he  reversed  his  course  and 
after  another  hour  and  a  half  of  dogged 
fighting,  in  which  the  fifth  battle  squadron 
bore  the  brunt,  he  sighted  the  Grand 
Fleet.  During  this  time  the  two  British 
squadrons  inflicted  very  heavy  damage 
on  the  German  battle-cruisers,  all  the 
turrets  of  the  Von  der  Tann  being  put  out 
of  action. 

At  5.35  p.m.  Beatty,  realizing  that 
Jellicoe  was  not  far  off,  turned  sharply 
to  the  eastward  in  order  to  bend  back 
Hipper' s  van  and  prevent  him  from  sight- 
ing the  main  British  battle-fleet.  This 
manoeuvre  gave  Beatty  improved  visi- 
bility and  after  a  sharp  encounter  the 
enemy  withdrew  from  the  action  behind 
a  smoke  screen.  Of  this  action,  the  Ger- 
man official  account  says:  'Hard  pressed 
and  unable  to  return  the  fire,  the  position 
of  the  German  battle-cruisers  soon  became 
unbearable.' 

And  now  the  battleships  of  the  Grand 
Fleet  appeared  out  of  the  mist  in  six 
columns  to  the  noilhward,  and  Beatty 
foimd  himself  streaking  across  their  front. 
In  spite  of  conflicting  reports  as  to  the 
position  of  the  enemy  battle  fleet,  Jellicoe 
deployed  into  line  of  battle  in  the  nick  of 
time  on  an  easterly  course,  with  the  object 
of  getting  between  the  enemy  and  his 


base,  and  Beatty  was  able  to  take  up  his 
position  in  the  van  while  Evan-Thomas 
proceeded  to  his  alternative  battle-station 
in  the  rear.  By  6.30  p.m.  the  main  battle 
fleets  were  in  action,  and  Beatty  was 
joined  a  little  later  by  the  two  remaining 
battle-cruisers  out  of  the  three  that  com- 
posed the  third  battle  squadron  vmder 
Hood,  who  at  6.34  had  been  lost  in  the 
Invincible.  At  8.25  p.m.,  Beatty,  who  was 
conforming  as  arranged  with  the  move- 
ments of  the  Grand  Fleet,  got  a  sight  of 
the  German  battle-cruisers  and  one  of 
their  battle  squadrons.  He  inunediately 
closed  and  opened  fire ;  but  the  Germans, 
having  no  spirit  for  further  fighting, 
turned  away  and  were  lost  in  the  mist. 

Although  Beatty's  force  had  sustained 
heavy  losses,  he  had  by  nightfall  under 
his  command,  ready  for  action  next  day, 
six  battle-cruisers,  whereas  Hipper  had 
only  one.  To  Evan-Thomas  Beatty  gave 
full  credit  in  his  dispatch  for  the  part 
played  by  the  fifth  battle  squadron  in 
achieving  this  result. 

Professional  investigations  at  the  Royal 
Naval  War  College  and  Staff  College  over 
many  years  confirm  the  view  expressed  in 
Jellicoe's  dispatch  that  Beatty  carried  out 
the  duties  assigned  to  him  with  con- 
spicuous success.  Despite  heavy  losses, 
he  located  the  enemy  battle  fleet  and  led 
it  to  a  position  where  the  Grand  Fleet 
could  engage  it.  He  also,  at  the  critical 
moment,  prevented  Hipper  from  sighting 
the  British  main  fleet  and  so  enabled 
Jellicoe  to  complete  his  deployment  un- 
observed in  the  right  direction  while 
Beatty  himself  took  up  his  position  in  the 
van  of  the  British  line  of  battle  in  accor- 
dance with  the  commander-in-chief's  plan. 
It  is  true  that  reports  of  the  enemy's 
positions  coming  in  from  Beatty  and  his 
cruisers  were  misleading  to  Jellicoe.  The 
main  reason  for  this  (apart  from  bad 
visibility)  was  that  each  ship's  position 
was  based  upon  her  own  individual  calcu- 
lations, and  no  means  then  existed  for 
synchronizing  these  estimates  on  a  com- 
mon basis.  Errors  of  omission  can  be 
accoimted  for  by  the  fact  that  Beatty  was 
hotly  engaged  most  of  the  time,  and  the 
Lion's  wireless  was  inoperative.  It  was 
only  natural,  therefore,  that  there  should 
have  been  recriminations,  arising  mainly 
from  the  fact  that  in  the  conditions  of  visi- 
bility prevailing,  no  two  commanders  got 
the  same  view  of  the  action,  and  that,  al- 
though 250  ships  took  part,  there  were 
never  more  than  three  or  four  enemy 
ships  in  sight  at  the  same  time  from  any 


61 


Beatty 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


point  in  our  line  of  battle.  It  must  always 
be  remembered  that  a  complete  bird's-eye 
view  of  the  battle  was  denied  to  those  who 
took  part,  and  particularly  to  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, who  that  day  bore  on  his 
shoulders  the  responsibility  for  possibly 
losing  the  war  in  an  afternoon. 

At  the  end  of  1916  Jellicoe  became  first 
sea  lord,  and  Beatty,  at  the  age  of  forty- 
five,  when  most  of  his  contemporaries 
were  still  on  the  captains'  list,  was  ap- 
pointed with  the  acting  rank  of  admiral 
to  command  the  most  powerful  fleet  in 
history.  Early  in  1917  he  chose  the  Queen 
Elizabeth  as  his  flagship  because  she  had 
the  speed  to  enable  him  to  get  to  the  most 
favourable  position  for  exercising  supreme 
command  in  battle.  He  immediately  set 
to  work  to  enforce  the  lessons  of  Jutland. 
To  make  his  system  of  leadership  clear  to 
all,  he  changed  the  title  'Battle  Orders' 
to  'Battle  Instructions',  thereby  implying 
that  senior  officers  could  use  their  own 
initiative  to  the  fullest  extent  in  trans- 
lating into  action  the  general  intentions 
of  the  commander-in-chief.  Being  deter- 
mined that  the  confusion  in  information 
experienced  at  Jutland  should  not  recur, 
he  introduced  a  system  of  plotting  the 
positions  of  British  and  enemy  units  upon 
a  synchronized  basis.  He  always  believed 
in  aircraft  and  arranged  for  kite  balloons 
to  be  flown  by  various  selected  imits. 
Ships  were  taken  in  hand  by  the  dock- 
yards to  improve  their  magazine  pro- 
tection, and  meanwhile  the  Admiralty 
had  designed  a  really  effective  projectile 
and  was  hastening  its  supply  to  the  fleet. 

The  anti-submarine  campaign  of  1917 
aroused  Beatty's  hunting  instincts.  While 
keeping  a  sharp  look-out  for  a  sortie  by 
the  German  fleet — there  was  indeed  one 
abortive  attempt — he  used  every  means 
in  his  power  to  combat  the  menace.  He 
was  a  firm  believer  in  the  convoy  system, 
and,  growing  impatient  with  the  Admiralty 
slowness  in  organizing  it,  asked  and  ob- 
tained permission  to  nm  convoys  under 
his  own  direction  to  and  from  Norway. 
Over  4,000  ships  sailed  in  convoy  in  the 
North  Sea  without  loss  in  six  months. 
But  it  was  only  a  question  of  time  before 
one  of  the  Norwegian  convoys  would  be 
located  by  fast  enemy  surface  ships,  using 
the  hours  of  darkness  to  evade  the  British 
patrols.  This  happened  on  two  occasions 
in  the  autumn  of  1917  and  the  following 
winter.  Fortunately  neither  convoy  was 
large  and  the  total  loss  was  sixteen  mer- 
chant ships,  four  destroyers,  and  four 
armed  trawlers.  It  was,  nevertheless,  only 


to  be  expected  that  the  enemy  would  trj 
again,  so  Beatty  decided  to  send  largei 
convoys  at  longer  intervals,  but  escortec 
by  a  division  of  battleships.  The  inheren 
hope  that  this  would  entice  the  enemy  t< 
send  out  still  stronger  forces  to  attack  th< 
convoys  was  nearly  fulfilled,  for  Scheer,  ir 
April  1918,  did  make  one  more  sortie,  bul 
he  miscalculated  the  date  and  dared  nol 
prolong  his  stay  in  waters  where  Beatt5 
might  be  met. 

The  advent  of  a  squadron  of  Unite( 
States  battleships  under  Admiral  Hugl 
Rodman  diminished  the  strain  on  th< 
Grand  Fleet.  Beatty  and  Rodman  workec 
in  perfect  harmony  and  in  a  very  shot 
time  the  American  squadron  became 
integral  part  of  Beatty's  battle  fleet.  Ii 
1918  the  added  strength  of  the  Unitec 
States  navy  enabled  more  effective 
measures  to  be  brought  against  enemy 
submarines,  and  the  patrols  round  the 
coasts  of  Great  Britain  became  so  effective 
that  the  enemy  was  compeUed  to  look  foi 
targets  far  out  at  sea,  only  to  be  frustratec" 
by  the  convoy  system.  By  midsummei 
the  submarine  danger  was  definitely 
mastered,  but  in  October  there  were 
indications  that  Scheer  might  take 
'death-ride'  with  his  fleet.  Beatty  coun 
tered  the  German  move  of  concentratinj 
all  their  submarines  in  the  North  Se 
in  positions  where  they  could  attack  the 
Grand  Fleet  on  its  way  to  battle,  by 
massing  all  available  anti-submarin< 
vessels  at  the  threatened  points.  Ther 
he  dispatched  Rear- Admiral  (Sir)  Artht 
Cavenagh  Leveson  with  the  third  battle 
cruiser  squadron  and  a  strong  destroyei 
force  on  a  high-speed  sweep  through  th< 
submarine-infested  waters  towards  th< 
Skagerrak.  When  Leveson  reported  oi 
his  return  that  only  one  torpedo  had  beei 
fired  at  his  force,  it  was  evident  that 
the  morale  of  the  German  navy  was 
broken,  and  this  opinion  was  confirmee 
by  the  news  that  the  High  Sea  Fleet  hac 
mutinied  and  refused  to  obey  orders  tc 
sail. 

Two  days  after  the  signing  of  th< 
armistice  on  11  November,  the  Germai 
cruiser  Konigsberg  arrived  at  Rosyth^ 
having  on  board  Rear-Admiral  Meurei 
and  a  'soldiers'  and  workmen's  council" 
which  claimed  to  have  plenipotentiary 
powers.  Beatty  made  it  clear  that  he 
would  only  negotiate  with  a  naval  office! 
of  flag  rank.  The  delegates  could  not  but 
agree,  and  Meurer,  while  thanking  Beatty 
at  the  conference  table,  stated  that  this 
was  the  first  time  that  his  rank  had  been 


62 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Beatty 


recognized  during  the  last  two  months. 
The  necessary  arrangements  were  made 
on  15  and  16  November,  and  on  21  Novem- 
ber the  Grand  Fleet  escorted  the  High  Sea 
Fleet  to  its  anchorage  in  the  Firth  of 
Forth.  A  service  of  thanksgiving  was 
held  in  every  ship,  and  that  evening 
Beatty  made  the  famous  signal:  'The 
German  flag  will  be  hauled  down  at  sun- 
set, and  will  not  be  hoisted  again  without 
permission.'  On  1  January  1919  Beatty 
was  promoted  admiral  and  on  3  April 
admiral  of  the  fleet:  four  days  later  he 
hauled  down  his  union  flag  and  the  Grand 
Fleet  ceased  to  exist. 

On  1  November  1919  Beatty  succeeded 
Admiral  of  the  Fleet  Sir  R.  Wemyss  (later 
Lord  Wester  Wemyss,  q.v.)  as  first  sea 
lord,  and  was  immediately  confronted 
with  the  problem  of  reducing  the  navy  in 
order  to  reconcile  the  demands  of  economy 
with  the  maintenance  of  sea  power  ade- 
quate for  national  security.  The  presenta- 
tion of  the  freedom  of  many  cities  gave 
him  a  fine  opportunity  of  impressing  on 
the  public  the  need  for  a  strong  navy. 
At  the  Washington  Conference,  which 
assembled  in  November  1921,  although 
he  agreed  generally  with  the  principle  of 
parity  with  the  United  States,  he  insisted 
upon  Great  Britain  retaining  the  right  to 
have  the  number  of  cruisers  necessary  for 
her  own  peculiar  needs.  He  succeeded  in 
getting  the  British  case  accepted,  and  it 
was  not  until  he  had  left  the  Admiralty 
that  the  minimum  of  seventy  cruisers  for 
Britain  was  abandoned.  Wrapped  up  with 
this  problem  was  that  of  overseas  bases, 
and  Beatty,  with  his  eye  on  Japan,  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  the  Cabinet  that  if 
the  fleet  was  to  operate  in  Far  Eastern 
waters  a  strongly  defended  base  with  full 
docking  facilities  must  be  established  at 
Singapore.  There  were  some  warm  con- 
troversies with  the  Air  Ministry  over  this 
and  other  problems,  including  that  of  the 
status  of  the  Fleet  Air  Arm  which  the  Air 
Ministry  considered  should  be  retained 
within  its  own  organization,  including 
responsibility  for  providing  material  and 
training  air  personnel,  but  which  the 
Admiralty  maintained  must  be  an  integral 
part  of  the  navy.  The  dispute  was  ended 
by  the  government  decision  of  1937  by 
which  the  administration,  operating,  and 
training  of  the  Fleet  Air  Arm  were  put 
almost  wholly  under  naval  control.  Ex- 
perience in  the  war  of  1939-1945  proved 
that  Beatty's  view  was  correct. 

Beatty's  experience  of  naval  warfare 
convinced  him  of  the  value,  which  he  had 


learned  under  Mr.  Churchill,  of  a  trained 
body  of  staff  officers  to  assist  admirals  in 
all  the  ramifications  of  war.  He  approved 
and  encouraged  the  Naval  Staff  CoUege, 
and  re-established  the  war  course  for 
senior  officers  only.  To  ensure  common 
doctrine  both  were  established  at  Green- 
wich. At  the  Admiralty  he  made  the  naval 
staff  responsible  for  seeing  that  construc- 
tion and  armaments  were  designed  to 
meet  fighting  requirements,  in  which  he 
was  ably  assisted  by  Rear-Admiral  (Lord) 
Chatfield.  He  confirmed  the  creation  of 
the  Department  of  Scientific  Research 
advocated  by  Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  William 
Coldingham  Masters  Nicholson  and  estab- 
lished the  Admiralty  experimental  labora- 
tory at  Teddington.  He  played  a  leading 
part  in  the  inauguration  of  the  Chiefs  of 
Staffs  Conunittee  which  has  since  proved 
to  be  a  most  eificient  instrument  for  the 
conduct  of  war  under  the  prime  minister. 
He  was  first  sea  lord  for  seven  and  a  half 
years,  a  longer  period  than  any  of  his 
predecessors,  and  all  the  time  he  had  to 
resist  continual  assaults  aimed  at  re- 
ducing British  naval  strength.  Yet  he 
left  the  Admiralty  in  July  1927,  not  only 
with  the  goodwill  and  admiration  of  the 
navy,  but  with  the  thanks  of  the  govern- 
ment for  invaluable  assistance  'during  a 
period  of  exceptional  difficulty'. 

On  retirement  Beatty  went  back  to  the 
hunting  field,  where  he  had  a  serious  acci- 
dent which  necessitated  his  lying  for  three 
months  with  a  broken  jaw  tightly  screwed. 
Some  years  afterwards,  while  suffering 
from  a  severe  attack  of  influenza,  he  rose 
from  a  sick  bed  against  all  medical  advice, 
to  attend  JeUicoe's  funeral  in  November 
1935.  During  a  halt  in  Fleet  Street  a 
member  of  the  staff  of  a  newspaper  office, 
noticing  how  ill  he  looked,  kindly  revived 
him  with  a  glass  of  brandy,  and  he 
marched  on  with  the  procession.  Barely 
four  months  later  he  died  in  London 
11  March  1936,  and  was  buried  in  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral  on  the  16th. 

Beatty  took  a  deep  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare and  recreation  of  the  ships'  com- 
panies and  devoted  much  time  and  energy 
to  improving  their  domestic  and  service 
conditions.  An  increase  of  pay  being  long 
overdue,  he  created  two  committees  under 
Rear-Admiral  Sir  Lionel  Halsey  and 
Admiral  Sir  T.  H.  M.  Jerram  [q.v.]  to 
investigate  the  question,  and  as  a  result 
of  their  report  the  pay  of  officers  and  men 
was  substantially  raised  in  1919  for  the 
first  time  for  many  years.  This  well- 
timed   measure    did    much   to    alleviate 


63 


Beatty 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


distress  and  successfully  checked  any  dis- 
content which  might  have  arisen  during 
the  dangerous  period  of  transition  from 
war  to  peace.  Of  the  many  honours  done 
to  him  none  pleased  him  more  than  the 
invitation  issued  to  him  in  1919  by  the 
men  of  the  fleet  to  be  their  guest  at  a 
banquet  at  Portsmouth,  where  amid  a 
vociferous  reception,  gun  teams  dragged 
his  car  through  the  streets.  Ordinary 
honours  were  legion.  He  was  appointed 
M.V.O.  in  1905,  C.B.  in  1911,  K.C.B.  in 
1914,  K.C.V.O.  and  G.C.B.  in  1916,  and 
G.C.V.O.  in  1917.  In  1919  he  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  Order  of  Merit  and  later  in 
that  year  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Earl  Beatty,  at  the  same  time  receiving 
the  thanks  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament 
and  a  grant  of  £100,000.  In  1927  he  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Covmcil.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  tmiversities  of 
Oxford  and  Aberdeen  and  was  lord  rector 
of  Edinburgh  University  from  1917  xmtil 
his  death.  His  numerous  foreign  decora- 
tions included  that  of  grand  officer  of  the 
Legion  of  Honour. 

Beatty  married  in  1901  Ethel  (died 
1932),  only  daughter  of  Marshall  Field, 
of  Chicago,  and  formerly  wife  of  Arthur 
Magic  Tree,  of  the  United  States  of 
America.  They  had  two  sons,  the  elder 
of  whom,  David  Field  (born  1905),  suc- 
ceeded as  second  earl. 

In  the  course  of  his  naval  career,  Beatty 
was  sometimes  the  target  of  iU-informed 
criticism,  but  he  never  spoke  a  word  in 
reply,  being  content  to  abide  by  the  ver- 
dict of  his  coimtrymen  and  of  history. 
He  was  neither  impetuous  nor  rash;  his 
judgement  was  sound  and  his  decisions 
were  the  result  of  careful  reflection  and 
forethought.  During  the  war  he  never 
took  any  leave,  and,  although  his  wife  and 
family  lived  close  to  Rosyth,  he  slept  in 
his  flagship  every  night.  He  landed  every 
afternoon  while  in  harbour  for  physical 
exercise  and  maintained  perfect  health 
throughout,  nor  did  he  ever  show  the 
slightest  sign  of  the  strain  imposed  upon 
him.  In  moments  of  crisis  his  brain 
worked  with  absolute  clarity  and  he  never 
had  cause  to  reverse  an  important  decision. 
Above  all  was  his  dauntless  courage,  both 
moral  and  physical. 

A  portrait  of  Beatty  is  included  in 
Sir  A.  S.  Cope's  picture  '  Some  Sea  Officers 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1921,  in  the 
National  Portrait  GaUery.  Another  por- 
trait is  that  in  Sir  John  Lavery's  'Sur- 
render of  the  German  Fleet'  in  the 
Imperial  War  Museum.    Other  portraits 


include  a  full-length  in  captain's  imiform, 
by  Hugh  Riviere  (1909),  a  full-length  in 
evening  dress,  by  Cowan  Dobson  (1930), 
and  a  head  (black  and  white),  by  J.  S. 
Sargent  (1919),  all  in  the  possession  of  the 
second  Earl  Beatty;  a  head,  by  P.  A. 
de  Laszlo,  belonging  to  the  Hon.  Peter 
Beatty ;  and  a  painting  in  admiral's  uni- 
form, by  an  unknown  artist,  at  the  Naval 
and  Military  Club,  Pall  Mall.  There  is  a 
bust,  by  Feredah  Forbes,  at  Brooksby 
Hall,  near  Leicester. 

[Official  dispatches;  Staff  College  records; 
Admiralty  office  memoranda,  The  German 
official  account  of  the  Battle  of  Jutland; 
Winston  Churchill,  The  World  Crisis,  1923; 
Sir  E.  H.  Seymour,  My  Naval  Career  and 
Travels,  1911 ;  Geoffrey  Rawson,  Beatty,  1930 ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
W.  S.  Chalmers. 

BEAUCHAMP,  seventh  Earl  (1872- 
1938),  politician.   [See  Lygon,  William,] 

BEDFORD,  eleventh  Duke  of  (1858- 
1940)  and  BEDFORD,  Duchess  of 
(1865-1937).  [See  Russell,  Herbrand 
Arthur.] 

BELL,  Sir  FRANCIS  HENRY  DIL- 
LON (1851-1936),  New  Zealand  lawyer 
and  statesman,  was  born  at  the  residency 
of  the  New  Zealand  Company  at  Nelson 
31  March  1851.  He  was  the  eldest  of  the 
six  sons  of  (Sir)  Francis  Dillon  Bell,  by 
his  wife,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Abraham 
Hort,  a  leading  member  of  the  Jewish 
community  in  Wellington.  The  Bell  family 
was  descended  from  Robert  Barclay,  of 
Ury  [q.v.],  the  Quaker  apologist,  and  its 
members  were  thus  collateral  relations  of 
Edward  Gibbon  Wakefield  [q.v.]  and 
Elizabeth  Fry  [q.v.].  Bell's  father  was  a 
member  of  the  Bell-Sewell  ministry  (1856) 
which  was  the  first  New  Zealand  ministry 
under  responsible  government.  He  held 
many  high  public  positions  in  New  Zea- 
land and  was  decorated  for  distinguished 
services  by  Great  Britain  and  France. 

Bell  was  educated  at  the  Auckland 
Grammar  School  and  the  Otago  Boys'  High 
School  at  Dimedin  (1864-1869),  being  dux 
of  the  latter  for  five  years.  In  1869  he 
entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge ;  he 
was  a  college  prizeman  (1871)  and  a  senior 
optime  in  the  mathematical  tripos  of  1873. 
He  read  law  in  the  chambers  of  (Sir)  John 
Gorst  [q.v.]  and  (Sir)  John  Holker  [q.v.], 
and  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Middle 
Temple  in  Jime  1874.  He  spent  his  vaca- 
tions at  the  home  of  Lord  Kitchener's 


64 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bell 


father  at  Dinan,  in  company  with  the  to  criticize  pubhcly  the  administration  of 


future  field-marshal 

Returning  to  New  Zealand  at  the  end 
of  1874,  Bell  began  practice  at  Wellington 
in  partnership  with  C.  B.  Izard.  He  rose 
rapidly  in  his  profession,  and  was  crown 
solicitor  in  Wellington  from  1879  to  1911 
(except  for  the  years  1893  to  1896  when 
he  was  in  parliament).  His  conduct  of 
many  important  appeals  to  the  Privy 
Council  won  high  praise  from  Lord 
Haldane  and  Lord  Macnaghten.  For 
nearly  forty  of  his  sixty  years  of  practice 
he  was  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the 
New  Zealand  bar,  and  in  his  first  year  he 
initiated  the  Colonial  Law  Journal  and 
later  other  law  reports.  He  took  silk  in 
1907.  He  declined  a  judgeship  offered  him 
by  the  Atkinson  government  of  1887-1891 . 
As  mayor  of  Wellington  (1891-1893  and 
1896-1897)  he  carried  out  important 
municipal  reforms. 

In  1893,  after  two  unsuccessful  attempts 
(1890  and  1892)  to  enter  parliament,  Bell 
was  elected  one  of  the  three  members  for 
Wellington  as  an  opponent  of  the  Seddon 
liberal-labour  government,  but  he  did  not 
seek  re-election  in  1896.  When  W.  F. 
Massey  [q.v.]  became  prime  minister  in 
July  1912  he  was  made  leader  of  the 
legislative  council  and  minister  of  internal 
affairs  and  immigration.  He  soon  raised 
the  council  to  its  proper  place  as  a  revising 
chamber,  and  his  reforming  zeal  found 
ample  scope.  After  three  years'  effort 
(1911-1914)  he  carried  a  measure  making 
the  council  elective  on  a  basis  of  propor- 
tional representation,  but,  owing  to  the 
outbreak  of  war,  this  Act  was  suspended 
and  is  still  in  abeyance.  Bell  continued 
as  a  minister  during  the  national  govern- 
ment (1915-1919),  the  new  Massey  minis- 
try (1919-1925),  and  the  Coates  ministry 
(1925-1928).  From  1918  to  1926  he  was 
attorney-general.  Among  his  notable 
reforms  were  a  system  of  state  forestry 
(1919-1922),  which  earned  for  him  the 
title  of  'the  Father  of  Forestry'  in  New 
Zealand,  and  the  extension  of  the  land 
transfer  system  to  bring  aU  lands  imder 
state  control  (1924).  As  minister  for 
external  affairs  (1923-1926),  he  enacted 
important  health  and  education  reforms 
for  the  natives  under  the  mandate.  With 
the  solicitor-general.  Sir  John  Salmond, 
he  drafted  much  intricate  war  legislation 
which  served  as  a  model  for  some  other 
countries.  At  his  first  visit  to  Geneva  as 
representative  of  New  Zealand  at  the 
League  of  Nations  (1922)  he  challenged 
the  right  of  the  Mandates   Commission 


the  Samoan  mandate,  claiming  that  the 
Assembly  alone  could  do  so,  and  that  New 
Zealand  had  the  right  to  be  heard  in  her 
own  defence.  In  1921  and  1923  he  acted 
as  prime  minister  during  Massey's  absence 
at  Imperial  Conferences. 

On  the  death  of  Massey  in  1925  Bell 
became  prime  minister,  but  held  office  for 
only  a  brief  period  (i4-30  May)  pending 
the  election  by  the  'reform  party'  of  a 
new  leader.  He  remained  leader  of  the 
legislative  council  until  the  defeat  of  the 
Coates  ministry  in  1928.  In  1926  he 
attended  an  Imperial  Conference  with  Mr. 
Coates,  and  also  (at  the  request  of  the 
Foreign  and  Colonial  Offices)  a  conference 
at  Geneva  called  to  deal  with  the  question 
of  the  International  Court  of  Justice  at 
The  Hague.  He  was  a  vice-president  and 
a  member  of  the  drafting  committee,  and 
he  sought  to  persuade  the  United  States 
of  America  to  participate  in  the  work  of 
the  court,  but,  on  the  ground  that  they 
were  purely  domestic  issues,  he  strongly 
objected  to  disputes  between  different 
parts  of  the  British  Empire  being  subject 
to  the  court.  At  the  1926  Assembly  of  the 
League  of  Nations  Bell  viewed  with  alarm 
the  claim  of  some  Dominions  to  a  seat  on 
the  Coimcil  of  the  League,  fearing  that 
this  practice  would  enable  a  Dominion  (e.g. 
Ireland)  to  veto  British  proposals.  Colour 
was  lent  to  his  view  in  1937  when  a  clash 
threatened  between  Mr.  Anthony  Eden 
and  the  New  Zealand  representative  on 
the  Council.  In  like  spirit,  at  the  Imperial 
Conference  of  1926,  with  Mr.  Coates  he 
reluctantly  acquiesced  in  the  Balfour  for- 
mula for  the  sake  of  uniformity.  Bell 
thought  that  the  formula  and  the  Statute 
of  Westminster  (1931)  were  a  grave 
danger  to  imperial  unity.  He  was  equally 
hostile  to  the  formation  of  an  Empire 
Consultative  Council,  and  regarded  con- 
ferences of  prime  ministers  as  the  true 
Imperial  Council  and  'much  superior  to 
any  conclave  or  cabal  of  Ministers  of 
second  rank  in  London'.  He  remained  a 
member  of  the  legislative  council  until  his 
death,  which  took  place  at  his  home  at 
Lowxy  Bay,  near  Wellington,  13  March 
1936. 

During  his  public  life  Bell's  influence  in 
politics  was  so  great  that  a  labour  member 
once  described  him  as  'the  uncrowned  king 
of  New  Zealand  and  one  of  the  ablest  men 
in  the  southern  hemisphere'.  On  all  legal 
and  constitutional  questions  he  was  re- 
cognized as  a  consummate  authority,  and 
he  was  confidential  adviser  to  successive 


05 


Bell 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


governors-general.  Sometimes  he  appeared 
brusque  when  deputations  proved  long- 
winded,  but  he  had  a  kindly  and  generous 
disposition.  He  was  one  of  the  ablest 
administrators  that  New  Zealand  has  ever 
had,  and  he  served  the  British  Empire 
with  passionate  devotion. 

Bell  married  in  1878  Caroline  (died 
1935),  third  daughter  of  William  Robinson, 
of  Cheviot,  Runholder,  a  member  of  the 
legislative  council,  and  had  four  sons,  of 
whom  only  the  youngest  survived  him, 
and  four  daughters.  The  second  son  was 
killed  in  action  in  France  in  1917.  He  was 
appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1915  and  G.C.M.G. 
in  1923,  and  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1926. 

There  are  portraits  of  Bell  by  A.  F. 
NicoU  in  the  National  Gallery,  Wellington, 
in  the  Parliament  House,  and  at  the 
Wellington  Club. 

[W.  Downie  Stewart,  The  Right  Honourable 
Sir  Francis  H.  D.  Bell,  His  Life  and  Times, 
1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Wm.  Downie  Stewart. 

BENNETT,  (ENOCH)  ARNOLD  (1867- 
1931),  novelist,  playwright,  and  man  of 
letters,  was  born  at  Hanley,  Staffordshire, 
27  May  1867,  the  eldest  child  in  a  family 
of  three  sons  and  three  daughters  of  Enoch 
Bennett,  solicitor,  of  Hanley,  by  his  wife, 
Sarah  Ann,  elder  daughter  of  Robert 
Longson,  a  Derbyshire  weaver  who  after- 
wards settled  as  a  draper  in  the  Potteries. 
His  father,  before  becoming  a  solicitor, 
had  been  potter  and  schoolmaster;  while 
in  a  part  of  the  house  in  Hope  Street  there 
was  carried  on  for  a  time  a  pawnbroking 
business.  The  Bennetts,  although  rigid 
Wesley  an  Methodists,  were  uncommonly 
musical,  artistic,  and  bookish  for  the 
Potteries  of  that  day,  and  had  the  habit 
attributed  to  the  Orgreaves,  in  Clayhanger, 
of  playing  classical  music  arranged  as 
pianoforte  duets.  Arnold  and  his  brother 
Frank,  the  most  ardent  musician  of  them 
all,  likewise  acquired  a  good  working 
knowledge  of  French  which  in  Arnold's 
case  proved  of  cardinal  importance.  He 
was  educated  at  the  Burslem  Endowed 
School,  and  the  Middle  School,  Newcastle- 
under-Lyme,  attended  a  local  art  school 
(he  painted  charming,  rather  pale  water- 
colours  to  the  end  of  his  life),  and  in  1885 
entered  his  father's  office  in  order  to  finish 
preparing  for  matriculation  at  London 
University  and  to  study  for  a  law  degree 
which  he  never  took. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one  (1888)  Bennett 
left    Staffordshire    to    become    clerk    to 


Messrs.  Le  Brasseur  &  Oakley,  a  firm  of 
London  solicitors,  at  a  salary  of  twenty- 
five  shillings  a  week.  He  had  already  made 
precocious  experiments  in  local  journalism 
and,  without  success,  in  sensational  fiction 
combining  the  grimness  of  Zola  with  the 
airy  romance  of  Ouida;  and  in  London, 
where  he  enjoyed  the  society  of  young 
artists,  he  was  encouraged  by  their  belief 
in  his  talent  to  become  a  writer.  Some 
unambitious  trifles  for  the  press  were 
followed  by  a  short  story  entitled  'A 
Letter  Home',  which,  rejected  by  a  popu- 
lar weekly  as  below  its  literary  standard, 
was  published  in  The  Yellow  Book  (July 
1895).  Bennett  thereupon  resolved  to 
write  a  novel,  which  'was  to  be  unlike  all 
English  novels  except  those  of  one  author' 
(George  Moore) ;  and,  'life  being  grey, 
sinister,  and  melancholy,  the  novel  must 
be  grey,  sinister,  and  melancholy'.  His 
own  life,  he  subsequently  remarked,  was 
at  this  time  not  at  all  grey  or  sinister  or 
melancholy.  The  book  was  at  first  called 
'In  the  Shadow' :  but  when  accepted  and 
published,  in  1898,  by  John  Lane  [q.v.], 
upon  the  recommendation  of  his  reader, 
John  Buchan  [q.v.],  it  had  become,  much 
less  greyly,  A  Man  from  the  North.  Mean- 
while Bennett,  forsaking  the  tedium  of  a 
solicitor's  office,  and  the  belatedly  con- 
fessed humiliations  of  free-lance  journal- 
ism, had  in  1893  become  assistant  editor, 
later  (1896)  editor,  of  the  weekly  journal 
Woman,  thereby  founding  an  assurance 
about  feminine  clothes  and  psychology 
which  he  retained  throughout  life. 

Bennett  possessed  immense  confidence 
in  his  own  judgement,  and  from  reviews 
and  dramatic  criticism  for  Woman  passed 
to  reviews  and  critical  articles  for  the 
Academy,  at  that  time  the  second  critical 
journal  in  the  country,  which  regularly 
employed,  among  others,  E.  V.  Lucas 
[q.v.],  Wilfred  Whitten,  Francis  Thompson 
[q.v.],  Thomas  William  Hodgson  Crosland, 
and  (Sir)  Edmund  Kerchever  Chambers. 
Then,  having  as  editor  to  buy  serial  fiction 
at  low  prices,  he  offered  boastfully  to 
write  for  Tillotsons'  Newspaper  Syndicate, 
which  sold  him  such  fiction,  a  sensational 
serial  story  which  should  surpass  all  rivals. 
This  story,  which  he  called  'For  Love  and 
Life',  was  sold  outright  for  £75,  and,  with 
a  later  performance  of  the  same  order,  but 
of  lower  quality,  'Teresa  of  Watling  Street', 
greatly  embarrassed  the  author  when, 
after  the  great  serial  success  of  'The 
Grand  Babylon  Hotel'  (also  sold  outright 
to  Tillotsons),  he  failed  to  prevent  publica- 
tion in  book  form.    'For  Love  and  Life' 


60 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bennett 


appeared  in  1907  as  The  Ghost;  and,  again 
to  Bennett's  embarrassment,  was  long 
afterwards  made  the  first  volume  in  a 
French  translation  of  his  novels  published 
by  La  Nouvelle  Revue  Frangaise. 

In  1900  Bennett  resigned  the  editorship 
of  Woman,  and  went  to  live  at  Trinity 
Hall  P^arm,  on  Watling  Street,  near  the 
village  of  Hockliffe  in  Bedfordshire,  with 
his  parents  and  his  youngest  sister.  He 
had  shown  facility  in  two  slight  books, 
Journalism  for  Women  (1898)  and  Polite 
Farces  for  the  Drawing  Room  (1899),  and, 
besides  doing  much  journalistic  work  and 
'reading'  for  the  firm  of  Pearson,  was 
writing  plays,  alone  and  in  collaboration 
with  Arthur  Hooley,  short  stories,  and 
the  first  of  those  serious  novels  about  life 
in  the  Potteries  upon  which  his  fame  as 
an  author  rests.  Anna  of  the  Five  Towns, 
begun  in  1896,  was  finished  in  1901  and 
published  almost  simultaneously  with  The 
Grand  Babylon  Hotel  in  1902.  By  this 
simultaneous  publication  Bennett  showed, 
either  modestly  or  in  bravado,  or  perhaps 
by  mere  chance,  that  the  opposed  styles 
in  which  he  had  experimented  as  a  youth, 
the  styles  of  Zola  and  of  Ouida  (now,  more 
accurately,  those  of  George  Moore  and 
Eugene  Sue),  still  irresistibly  attracted 
him.  He  was  to  be  at  the  same  time  an 
artist  and  a  professional  writer.  And,  as 
Moore  and  Sue  had  both  been  distin- 
guished Parisians,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
by  the  end  of  1902  Bennett  himself  was 
in  Paris.  There,  and  at  Fontainebleau,  he 
lived  for  ten  happy,  supremely  influential 
years.  Having  been  briefly  engaged  to  an 
American  girl,  he  married  in  Paris  in  1907 
a  P'rench woman,  Marie  Marguerite  Soulie. 
They  had  no  children. 

Bennett  maintained  in  France  his  habit 
of  regular  industry.  Writing  steadily, 
continuing  dramatic  collaborations  with 
Mr.  Eden  Phillpotts,  with  whom  he  also 
wrote  two  romances,  he  contributed 
shrewd  advisory  self-help  articles  to  T.P.'s 
Weekly  (a  periodical  founded  by  T.  P. 
O'Connor  [q.v.],  but  edited  by  Bennett's 
old  colleague  on  the  Academy,  Wilfred 
Whitten)  which  were  afterwards  (1908) 
printed  in  book  form  under  such  signifi- 
cant titles  as  Hmv  to  Live  on  Twenty-four 
Hours  a  Day  and  Mental  Efficiency.  He 
continued  to  release  his  natural  sense  of 
fun  in  such  works  as  The  Truth  About  an 
Author  (1903)  and  A  Great  Man  (1904) ; 
and  at  this  time  was  perhaps  doing  too 
many  things  not  quite  well  enough  to 
consolidate  a  single  reputation.  Although 
it  was  in  1903  that  he  saw  in  a  restaurant 


in  Paris  the  ungainly  elderly  woman  who 
first  inspired  his  best  novel.  The  Old  Wives' 
Tale,  he  did  not  begin  writing  that  book 
until  four  years  later,  and  meanwhile  all 
his  industry  made  little  public  impression, 
so  that  his  earnings  from  novels  remained 
small,  usually  under  £100  apiece. 

But  7'he  Old  Wives'  Tale  (1908)  changed 
everything.  Whereas  liis  former  tales  of 
Staffordshire  types  had  lacked  attractive 
characters  and  Bennett's  characteristic 
humour,  this  book  represented  all  his  gifts. 
It  was  both  generous  and  minute ;  it  was 
thoroughly  English ;  and  it  brimmed  over 
with  the  author's  compassionate  merri- 
ment. Although  the  publishers  were  at 
first  rueful  at  its  length,  and  although  its 
first  sales,  by  present-day  standards, 
would  be  considered  small.  The  Old  Wives' 
Tale  caused  Bennett  to  be  accepted,  with 
H.  G.  Wells  and  John  Galsworthy  [q.v.], 
as  one  of  a  dominating  triumvirate  of 
novelists.  It  made  him  an  influence  in 
British  letters,  and  potentially  a  rich  man. 
And  while  the  first  volume  of  the  Clay- 
hanger  trilogy,  published  in  1910,  con- 
firmed his  rank  as  a  serious  novelist.  The 
Card,  the  best  sustained  of  his  comic 
inventions,  written  in  two  months  in  1909 
during  a  Swiss  holiday,  but  not  published 
until  1911,  endeared  him  to  those  who 
may  have  found  Clayhanger  a  little  slow. 
'Meticulous'  was  the  word  most  used  of 
his  method  at  this  time  by  reviewers  who 
thus  met  objectors  half-way.  Bennett, 
however,  was  not  at  the  end  of  his  danger- 
ous versatility;  and  some  pungent  and 
adventurous  brevities  about  books  which, 
as '  Jacob  Tonson ',  he  contributed  between 
1908  and  191 1  to  the  Neiv  Age,  the  briUiant 
weekly  edited  by  A.  R.  Orage  [q.v.],  gave 
him  still  another  fame.  A  visit  paid  to  the 
United  States  of  America  in  1911  had  a 
success  unequalled  by  that  of  any  English 
author  since  Dickens,  and  inevitably  pro- 
duced a  lively  book,  Those  United  States 
(1912).  Finally,  his  plays,  What  the  Public 
Wants  (1909),  Milestones  (written  in  col- 
laboration with  Edward  Knoblock,  1912), 
and  The  Great  Adventure  (1913),  a  drama- 
tization of  his  own  novel.  Buried  Alive 
(1908),  brought  him  for  a  time  almost 
unlimited  theatrical  popularity.  In  1912 
he  left  France  and  returned  to  England 
for  good,  buying,  restoring,  and  lavishly 
furnishing  in  the  Empire  style  an  oldish 
house  at  Thorpe-le-Soken  in  Essex.  He 
was  an  outstandingly  successful  man ;  criti- 
cally, his  prestige  was  at  its  zenith. 

When  the  war  of  1914-1918  began, 
Bennett    became    less    a    novelist   and 


67 


Bennett 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


dramatist  than  a  public  servant  and  a  pub- 
lic figure.  He  at  once  engaged  in  power- 
ful journalism,  the  object  of  which  was 
to  instruct  and  hearten  the  nation  and  to 
carry  assurance  of  British  effort  to  allied 
and  neutral  countries,  and  served  on 
various  committees  such  as  those  for  War 
Memorials  and  Woxmded  Allies  Relief. 
His  home  at  Thorpe-le-Soken,  which,  as  a 
yachtsman,  he  had  bought  because  of  its 
nearness  to  the  Essex  waterways,  became 
a  military  and  political  centre  for  the 
district.  He  was  sent  to  France  in  1915 
to  describe,  very  discreetly,  conditions  at 
the  front,  and  the  collected  impressions 
appeared  in  a  little  book  called  Over  There 
(1915).  When  Lord  Beaverbrook  became 
minister  of  information  in  1918,  Bennett 
was  given  charge  of  propaganda  in  France, 
and  he  later  succeeded  Lord  Beaverbrook 
for  a  few  weeks  as  head  of  the  organization. 
His  associates  were  no  longer  only  the 
stimulating  writers  and  artists  of  former 
years,  but,  in  addition  to  the  large  number 
of  those  with  whom  he  was  in  natural 
sympathy,  the  wealthy  men  and  women 
of  social  and  political  power  whom  he 
satirized  in  The  Pretty  Lady  (1918)  and 
Lord  Raingo  (1926).  Such  men  and  women 
offended  the  rigid  Wesleyan  Methodist 
(the  supremely  'decent'  man  of  Mr.  Aldous 
Huxley's  sketch  in  The  Times,  31  March 
1931)  who  lived  at  the  core  of  Bennett's 
nature ;  but  the  more  superficial  Bennett 
was  flattered  and  impressed  by  them. 
Much  of  his  later  work  suffered  from  a  loss, 
not  of  the  craftsman's  integrity,  but  of 
certainty  in  the  author's  mind  that  it  had 
ultimate  importance.  The  Pretty  Lady 
showed  the  conflict  in  progress;  Lord 
Raingo  a  restoration  of  values ;  but  neither 
equalled  These  Twain  (1916),  that  stub- 
born completion  of  a  task  confidently 
undertaken  after  the  success  of  The  Old 
Wives'*  Tale,  when,  at  the  age  of  forty-one, 
Bennett  planned  with  lighthearted  ambi- 
tion to  tell  in  three  volumes  the  whole  life- 
stories  of  Edwin  Clayhanger  and  Hilda 
Less  ways,  his  wife. 

After  the  war  Bennett  became  still 
further  involved  in  large  affairs.  He  lived 
entirely  in  London,  and  between  1919  and 
1930  successively  rented  the  upper  portion 
of  a  house  in  George  Street,  Hanover 
Square,  and  a  house  in  Cadogan  Square, 
where  he  entertained  in  the  grand  style. 
He  began  an  intimate  association  with  the 
stage  by  partnering  (Sir)  Nigel  Play  fair 
[q.v.]  and  Alistair  Tayler  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  new  enterprise  at  the  Lyric 
Theatre,  Hammersmith,  where  Abraham 


Lincoln  by  John  Drinkwater  [q.v.]  and  a 
production  of  The  Beggar'' s  Opera  decorated 
by  C.  L.  Eraser  [q.v.]  caught  different 
moods  of  the  post-war  spirit.  Endless 
social  engagements ;  inexhaustible  patron- 
age of  musicians,  actors,  poets,  and 
painters ;  the  maximum  of  benevolence  to 
friends  and  strangers  alike,  marked  the 
last  ten  years  of  his  life.  He  wrote  the 
best,  and  worst,  of  his  later  novels  amid 
this  hurly-burly,  and  a  number  of  plays, 
some  of  which  were  not  even  produced, 
while  the  rest  were  received  with  critical 
hostility  and  public  indifference;  and  he 
contributed  week  by  week  to  the  Evening 
Standard  the  most  readable  and  most 
highly  priced  literary  causerie  of  the  time. 
In  1921  he  was  legally  separated  from  his 
wife ;  and  in  the  following  year  he  met  and 
fell  in  love  with  an  English  actress.  Miss 
Dorothy  Cheston,  by  whom,  in  1926,  he 
had  one  daughter.  At  the  end  of  1930 
he  visited  France,  returned  to  London  in 
January  1931,  ill  with  what,  at  first  diag- 
nosed as  influenza,  proved  to  be  typhoid 
fever,  and,  after  a  long  struggle  for  life, 
died  in  his  flat  at  Chiltern  Court,  Maryle- 
bone,  at  night,  27  March  1931. 

Any  assessment  of  Bennett's  work  is 
complicated  by  the  problems  of  his  versa- 
tility and  capacity  to  perform  at  different 
levels  of  seriousness.  In  part  this  versa- 
tility was  due  to  conflict  between  his 
temperament,  his  early  training,  his  later 
artistic  enthusiasms,  and  his  unlimited 
sense  of  fun.  Temperamentally,  he  was  a 
puritan ;  intellectually,  he  was  a  liberal ; 
personally,  he  was  a  humorist.  In  addition, 
he  was  naturally  diffident ;  from  childhood 
he  was  handicapped  by  an  impediment 
which  was  not  so  much  a  stanuner  as  a 
total  inability  to  utter  the  word  which  he 
proposed  to  use,  which  word,  nevertheless, 
owing  to  pride  and  determination,  he 
would  never  abandon.  As  a  child  he  had 
suffered  from  the  rigours  of  a  strict  reli- 
gious upbringing  in  a  denomination  which 
he  several  times  harshly  derided ;  and, 
although  a  fine  swimmer  and  a  formidable 
opponent  at  lawn  tennis,  he  had  little 
taste,  as  child,  boy,  and  man,  for  violent 
physical  activity.  He  claimed  to  be  in- 
capable of  moral  indignation;  his  work 
suggests  that  he  was  either  incapable  of 
passion  or  incapable  of  allowing  it  to 
master  him.  He  might  be  grim,  or  sar- 
donic ;  he  was  always  restrained ;  and  the 
fun  to  be  seen  in  his  happiest  works 
lightened  all  that  close  observation  upon 
which  reaUsts  depend  for  the  effect  of 
veracity,  and  overflowed  into  the  wit  of 


68 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Bennett 


his  abrupt  speech  and  careless  plays  and 
'frolics'.  He  was  as  scrupulously  a  realist 
as  humour  and  kindness  of  vision  allowed 
in  such  novels  as  A  Man  from  the  North, 
Anna  of  the  Five  Towns,  Leonora  (1903), 
Whom  God  Hath  Joined  (1906),  The  Old 
Wives'  Tale,  Clayhanger,  Hilda  Lessways 
(1911),  The  Price  of  Love  (1914),  These 
Twain,  Riceyman  Steps  (1923),  Lord 
Raingo,  and  Imperial  Palace  (1930).  He 
was  a  farceur  in  A  Great  Man,  Buried 
Alive,  The  Card,  The  Regent  (1913),  and 
Mr.  Prohack  (1922).  His  plays  suffered  as 
a  rule  from  the  lack  of  a  strong  central 
idea,  and,  having  entertained  for  an  even- 
ing by  verbal  adroitness,  were  quickly 
scorned.  His  criticism  startled,  amused, 
and  annoyed,  as  it  was  meant  to  do.  His 
short  stories  ranged  from  the  trivial  to 
rich  and  delightful  cameos  of  provincial 
life.  His  utilitarian  homilies  were  as 
natural  to  him  as  his  fun.  His  sensational 
tales,  such  as  The  Grand  Babylon  Hotel 
and  Hugo  (1906),  enjoying  great  ingenui- 
ties of  incidental  invention,  were  robbed 
of  vehemence  and  suspense  by  that  same 
fun.  He  passed  from  one  type  of  writing 
to  another,  without  warning,  without  pro- 
gress; and  critics  coming  to  such  varied 
activities  have  found  it  hard  to  draw  lines 
between  the  good,  the  bad,  and  the  in- 
different, Bennett  could  not  have  helped 
them.  His  pride  never  allowed  him  to 
admit  a  failure. 

For  this  reason  there  were  always  books 
or  plays  or  articles  or  short  stories  from 
Bennett's  industrious  pen  which  offered 
excellent  targets  for  detractors.  There 
were  always  books,  and  in  particular  the 
most  ambitious  of  all  his  later  novels, 
Imperial  Palace,  which  could  be  repre- 
sented as  illustrating  a  legendary  Bennett, 
a  vulgar,  gaping  provincial  with  a  passion 
for  money  and  gilded  luxury.  It  did  not 
matter  that  his  sensitiveness  to  beauty  in 
character  and  all  the  arts  was  beyond 
question.  It  did  not  matter  that  the 
foundation  of  Imperial  Palace  was  his 
delight  in  microcosms  and  his  enthusiasm 
at  the  emergence  of  servants  to  any  micro- 
cosm as  mysterious  individual  human 
beings  whose  soids  were  free.  The  fact 
remained  that  there  were  writings  by 
Arnold  Bennett  which  had  been  produced 
at  different  levels  of  seriousness ;  and  it  is 
undeniable  that  his  reputation  suffered 
fronx  their  existence. 

It  is  therefore  necessary  to  remember 
that,  at  his  very  best,  in  Whom  God  Hath 
Joined,  The  Old  Wives''  Tale,  Clayhanger, 
These  Twain,  and  the  directly  personal 


parts  of  Lord  Raingo,  Bennett  was  a  highly 
scrupulous  artist  and  a  profoundly  wise 
and  resolute  truth-teller.  No  novelist  of 
his  day  had  a  greater,  or  perhaps  an  equal, 
integrity.  The  kind  of  life  described  in 
these  books  came  perfectly  within  the 
range  of  his  comprehension,  and  his  por- 
trayal of  it  was  warmed  and  made  beauti- 
ful by  exceptional  understanding.  He  did 
not  at  any  time  surpass  The  Old  Wives' 
Tale,  because  that  book,  alone  among  his 
novels,  had  an  inspired  and  inspiring 
design,  which  was  to  show  the  moulding 
of  character  by  experience,  and  the  tragic 
inevitability  of  old  age.  Clayhanger  was 
in  a  sense  to  repeat  that  design,  the  middle 
portion  of  the  book,  Hilda  Lessways, 
approximating  to  the  Paris  chapters  about 
Sophia,  and  the  third.  These  Twain,  to 
that  reunion  of  the  sisters  in  which  The 
Old  Wives'*  Tale  rises  to  its  height.  But 
the  design  of  the  Clayhanger  trilogy  re- 
mains mechanical ;  and  for  the  poignancy 
of  the  reunion  is  substituted,  first  Edwin's 
'terrible  gloom  which  questioned  the 
justification  of  all  life',  and  secondly 
Edwin's  realization  that  'the  conflict 
between  his  individuality  and  Hilda's 
would  never  cease'.  Nevertheless,  while 
the  other  books  are  fragmentary,  or  are 
based,  as  Imperial  Palace  is  based,  upon  a 
conception  of  material  rather  than  spiritual 
coherence,  they  hold  innumerable  scenes 
in  which  the  author's  ruthless  vision  is 
courageously  expressed.  If  the  Clayhanger 
trilogy  had  been  written  continuously, 
without  knowledge  of  the  expectations 
formed  by  readers  of  The  Old  Wives''  Tale, 
the  mechanical  nature  of  its  design  would 
have  been  redressed,  and  its  execution 
exactly  proportioned  to  the  design.  Events 
intervened;  the  first  enthusiasm  for  its 
plan  was  lost ;  and  the  strain  of  imagina- 
tively living  and  writing  These  Twain  in 
the  first  years  of  a  terrible  war  was  even 
physically  too  much  for  Bennett.  It  is 
all  the  more  to  his  credit  that  this  third 
volume  contains  superb  scenes  from  pro- 
vincial life  and  the  most  powerfvd  and 
truthful  picture  ever  painted  in  England 
of  the  conflict  of  wills  in  inharmonious 
marriage. 

The  defect  in  the  Clayhanger  trilogy,  as 
in  all  Bermett's  novels  and  plays,  excepting 
The  Old  Wives'*  Tale,  arises  from  meagre  or 
insufficiently  considered  design.  He  had 
great  resource  in  arrangement  and  inci- 
dental invention;  he  would  never  shirk 
the  truth  of  his  perceptions,  and  so  was 
never  sentimental;  but  he  could  not  con- 
ceive life  as  tragedy,  and  modesty  forbade 


69 


Bennett 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


him  to  plan  any  work  as  epic.  His  strength 
lay  in  the  unique  degree  of  his  love  for 
simple  people,  and  in  his  ability  to  see 
interest  and  beauty  in  much  that  to  the 
superficial  eye  is  squalid  or  tedious.  That 
love  and  perception  were  best  informed 
when  he  described  life  in  the  Five  Towns, 
and  accordingly  it  is  as  the  profound  and 
comic  dramatist  and  historian  of  life  in 
the  Potteries  that  Bennett,  for  all  his 
versatility,  his  brilliance,  and  his  position 
between  1914  and  1930  as  an  adored 
English  figure,  will  live  as  long  as  English 
novels  are  read. 

A  drawing  of  Bennett,  by  (Sir)  William 
Rothenstein  (1920),  is  in  the  City  Art 
Gallery,  Stoke-on-Trent ;  another  drawing, 
by  W.  E.  Tittle  (1923),  and  a  plasticine 
medallion,  by  Theodore  Spicer-Simson, 
are  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Arnold  Bennett,  The  Truth  about  an 
Author,  1903 ;  The  Journals  of  Arnold  Bennett, 
1896-1928  (edited  by  Newman  Flower), 
3  vols.,  1932-1933;  Margaret  Locherbie-Goff, 
La  Jeunesse  (T Arnold  Bennett  (1867—1904), 
1939 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Frank  Swinnerton. 

BENSON,     EDWARD     FREDERIC 

(1867-1940),  author,  was  born  at  Welling- 
ton College  24  July  1867,  the  third  son  of 
Edward  White  Benson,  afterwards  arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  [q.v.],  by  his  wife, 
Mary  Sidgwick,  He  was  a  younger  brother 
of  A.  C.  Benson  and  an  elder  brother  of 
R,  H.  Benson  [qq.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Marlborough  and  at  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  was  exhibitioner  (1888) 
and  scholar  (1890) ;  after  taking  his  degree 
with  first  classes  in  both  parts  of  the 
classical  tripos  (1890,  1891)  he  worked  in 
Athens  for  the  British  School  of  Archaeo- 
logy (1892-1895)  and  in  Egypt  for  the 
Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Hellenic 
Studies  (1895).  Latterly  he  lived  for  the 
greater  part  of  each  year  at  Lamb  House, 
Rye,  which  had  been  the  home  of  Henry 
James  [q.v.].  He  was  mayor  of  Rye  from 
1934  to  1937.  He  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1938.  As  a  young  man  he  was  a  con- 
siderable athlete,  particularly  as  a  skater 
and  winter  sportsman.  He  never  married ; 
and  many  of  his  novels  suggest  that  he 
had  a  generalized  dislike  of  women.  He 
died  in  London  29  February  1940. 

As  a  writer  Benson  was  uncontrollably 
prolific :  he  published  at  least  ninety -three 
books  (not  counting  collaborations),  of 
which  about  twenty  are  plays,  biogra- 
phies, sporting  or  political,  and  the  rest 


fiction  and  reminiscences.  This  was  his 
first  misfortune.  The  second  was  that  his 
first  story,  Dodo  (1893),  had  a  great  suc- 
cess. In  consequence — because  he  wrote 
too  much  and  too  quickly,  and  because 
the  adolescent  thrill  of  being  in  '  society ' 
matured  into  a  witty  and  malicious  de- 
light in  mocking  fools  and  climbers — his 
genuine  talents  as  a  novelist  seldom 
achieved  the  perfection  of  form  or  the 
permanence  of  interest  of  which  they  were 
certainly  capable.  A  few  of  his  books 
are  so  nearly  first  rate  that  the  reader 
becomes  regretfully  aware  that  none  quite 
reaches  that  level.  A  further  result  of 
his  easy,  careless  writing,  added  to  his 
obsession  with  the  artificialities  of  socially 
ambitious  women,  was  that  he  became 
repetitive.  He  would  re-use  one  of  his 
series  of  groupings,  embellishing  it  with 
new  and  amusing  dialogue,  with  new  and 
crushing  incidental  detail,  yet  in  fact  writ- 
ing the  same  story  two,  three,  or  even  four 
times  over. 

In  one  of  his  books  of  family  recollec- 
tions Benson  claims  for  himself  a  retentive, 
observational  memory,  even  of  things 
hardly  noted  at  the  time;  and  this  is 
perhaps  his  most  remarkable  quality.  In 
non-fiction  and  fiction  alike,  he  shows  an 
extraordinary  power  of  recalling  scenes 
and  individuals  over  the  whole  period  of 
his  adult  life.  This  capacity  gives  to  his 
works  of  reminiscence  (e.g.  Account  Ren- 
dered, 1911 ;  Our  Family  Affairs,  1867- 
1897, 1920 ;  As  We  Were,  1930 ;  As  We  Are, 
1932 ;  Final  Edition,  1940)  real  value  as 
sources  for  social  history  and  personal 
anecdote,  even  though  the  student  may 
hesitate  to  take  them  literally.  Those  of 
his  novels — and  they  are  the  majority — 
which  applaud  or  scarify  smart  London, 
or  literary,  or  provincial  society,  give  so 
strong  an  impression  of  carefully  distorted 
portraiture  that,  just  as  the  'Dodo'  series 
{Dodo,  Dodo  the  Second,  1914,  Dodo  Won- 
ders, 1921)  is  generally  assumed  to  centre 
on  Margot  Tennant,  who  became  Lady 
Oxford;  just  as  Secret  Lives  (1932),  one 
of  his  best  novels,  can  hardly  have  been 
based  on  anyone  but  Marie  Corelli;  just 
as  the  'Lucia'  series  (the  first  two.  Queen 
Lucia,  1920,  and  Lucia  in  London,  1927, 
are  the  best)  are  said  to  be  romans  a  cle, 
so  it  is  natural  to  suspect  real  people 
everywhere.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
wonder  on  whom  are  based  the  chattering 
West  End  exhibitionists  in  such  remem- 
bered but  inferior  books  as  Scarlet  and 
Hyssop  (1902),  Sheaves,  and  The  Climber 
(1908) ;  but  the  reader  might  well  like  to 


70 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Benson,  F.  R. 


know  from  whom  are  derived  the  more 
modest  provincial  intrigantes  in  such  far 
superior  stories  as  Mrs.  Ames  (1912)  and 
Miss  Mapp  (1922). 

Apart  from  social  satire  Benson  made 
repeated  experiments  in  two  other  fictional 
directions.  The  first  comprises  stories  of 
public  school,  university,  and  immediately 
post-university  life.  These  are  so  over- 
sweetened  as  to  be  almost  intolerable. 
From  the  tedious  sparkle  of  The  Babe, 
B.A.  (1897),  an  early  product  of '  dodoism' 
in  undergraduate  terms,  through  the 
'Blaize'  books  to  Colin  II  (1925),  the 
tales  pile  wholesome  fun  on  saccharine 
sentimentalism,  until  the  reader  sickens 
of  the  clean-limbed  young  Apollos,  for  all 
the  frequent  wit  with  which  they  are 
presented.  The  second  group,  that  of 
stories  of  horror  and  of  the  supernatural, 
contains  much  excellent  work.  The  Luck 
of  the  Vails  (1901)  perhaps  hardly  quali- 
fies, as  nearly  half  of  it  is  a  lavish  picture 
of  rich,  selfish  folk,  painted  with  the 
admiring  relish  which  Benson  at  this 
early  period  undoubtedly  felt  for  persons 
of  the  kind ;  but  the  second  portion  of  the 
story  is  at  once  dramatic  and  brilliant, 
terror  and  wit  being  perfectly  fused.  The 
Room  in  the  Tower  (1912)  shows  him 
mastering  the  technique  of  macabre  writ- 
ing, although  he  still  overdoes  the  details 
of  spendthrift  luxury  and  too  often  lets 
the  climax  of  his  tale  dissolve  in  senti- 
ment. Visible  and  Invisible  (1923)  is 
'horror'  in  perfect  training,  proficient, 
inventive,  but,  save  in  the  final  story, 
queerly  devoid  of  feeling.  Spook  Stories 
(1928)  and  More  Spook  Stories  (1934)  mark 
the  closing  stages  of  a  highly  efficient, 
coldly  unemotional  excursion  into  the 
realm  of  ghosts  and  marvels. 

[The  Times,  1  March  1940;  The  Times 
Literary  Supplement,  9  March  1940;  Final 
Edition:  Informal  Autobiography,  1940; 
private  information.]       Michael  Sadleir. 


BENSON,  Sir  FRANCIS  ROBERT 
('FRANK')  (1858-1939),  actor-manager, 
was  born  at  Tunbridge  Wells  4  November 
1858,  the  third  son  and  fourth  child  of 
William  Benson,  barrister,  of  Alresford, 
Hampshire,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Soulsby, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Smith,  of  Colebrooke 
Park,  Tonbridge.  He  was  educated  at 
Winchester  and  New  College,  Oxford,  but 
gained  no  academic  honours.  He  became 
famous  at  the  university  as  an  all-round 
athlete,  devoting  himself  to  football, 
cricket,  rowing,  and  running,  his  greatest 


achievement  being  the  winning  of  the 
three-mile  race  against  Cambridge. 

Always  attracted  to  the  theatre,  Benson 
became  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  move- 
ment which  led  in  1884  to  the  foundation 
of  the  Oxford  University  Dramatic  Society. 
In  the  hall  of  Balliol  College,  in  June  1880, 
he  took  part  in  a  performance  of  the 
Agamemnon  of  Aeschylus,  in  which  he 
played  the  part  of  Clytemnestra  with  con- 
siderable success.  This  performance  was 
repeated  at  the  St.  George's  Hall,  London, 
in  September  of  the  same  year,  and  his 
success  turned  Benson's  thoughts  to  the 
adoption  of  the  stage  as  his  profession.  In 
July  1881  he  took  the  Imperial  Theatre, 
London,  for  a  single  performance  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  and  appeared  as  Romeo.  He 
then  studied  voice  production  under  Emil 
Bencke  and  Hermann  Vezin  [q.v.],  and  at 
the  invitation  of  Ellen  Terry  [q.v.],  who 
had  witnessed  his  performance  of  Clytem- 
nestra, he  was  invited  in  July  1882  to 
take  part  in  a  private  Shakespearian  read- 
ing of  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  at  the 
house  of  Sir  Theodore  Martin  [q.v.], 
appearing  as  Don  Pedro,  with  (Sir)  Henry 
Irving  [q.v.]  as  Benedick  and  Lady 
Martin  (Helen  Faucit,  q.v.)  as  Beatrice. 

Benson  made  his  first  appearance  on  the 
professional  stage  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre 
in  September  1882,  when  he  played  Paris 
in  Irving's  production  of  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
with  Ellen  Terry  as  Juliet.  On  her  advice, 
he  then  joined  the  Shakespearian  company 
of  Miss  AUeyn  and  Charles  Bernard,  in 
order  to  gain  experience,  and  a  few  months 
later  he  was  a  member  of  a  company  under 
the  management  of  Walter  Bentley,  a 
well-known  Shakespearian  actor.  This 
manager  became  involved  in  financial 
difficulties,  and  Benson,  with  monetary 
aid  from  his  father,  promptly  acquired 
the  company.  He  opened  under  his  own 
management  in  a  hall  at  Airdrie,  Lanark- 
shire, in  May  1883,  with  The  Corsican 
Brothers  and  Cramond  Brig,  and  in  this 
modest  way  the  famous  Benson  repertory 
company  came  into  being. 

It  was  not  long  before  Benson  had 
established  a  sound  reputation  and  the 
Benson  company  became  an  important 
factor  in  the  provincial  theatre.  He 
gathered  together  a  very  capable  band  of 
actors,  and  by  1886  his  company  was  of 
sufficient  importance  to  be  invited  to  pro- 
vide the  Shakespearian  festival  at  the 
Memorial  Theatre,  Stratford-on-Avon, 
where  he  appeared  for  the  first  time,  in 
April  of  that  year,  playing  Richard  III. 
During  the   next  thirty-three   years   he 


71 


Benson,  F.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


provided  the  plays  for  twenty-eight  spring 
festivals  and  some  half-dozen  summer 
festivals  at  the  theatre,  in  the  course  of 
which  period  he  presented  all  Shake- 
speare's plays  except  Titus  Andronicus 
and  Troilus  and  Cressida.  In  addition  he 
presented  many  old  comedies  and  one  or 
two  modern  plays.  In  recognition  of  his 
services  to  Stratford-on-Avon,  Benson 
received  the  freedom  of  the  borough  in 
1910,  an  honour  only  once  previously  con- 
ferred on  an  actor,  namely,  David  Garrick, 
in  1769.  He  appeared  as  director  of  the 
Stratford  festival  for  the  last  time  in  1919, 
and  at  the  birthday  celebrations  that  year 
he  was  presented  with  a  handsome  gift 
by  Stratfordonians  and  festival  patrons. 

Benson's  first  London  season  was  given 
at  the  Globe  Theatre,  where,  in  December 
1889,  he  opened  with  a  revival  of  A  Mid- 
summer NighVs  Dream,  which  was  per- 
formed 110  times,  a  record  at  that  date. 
Revivals  of  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew, 
Hamlet,  and  Othello  were  also  presented. 
His  next  London  season,  the  most  impor- 
tant of  his  eight  London  ventures,  began 
at  the  Lyceum  Theatre  in  February  1900, 
with  a  revival  of  Henry  the  Fifth.  Sub- 
sequent seasons  were  given  at  the  Comedy 
(1901),  Adelphi  (1905),  St.  James's  (1910), 
Shaftesbury  (1914),  Court  (1915),  and  St. 
Martin's  (1920)  theatres.  At  the  height  of 
his  success  there  were  no  fewer  than  three 
of  his  companies  touring  the  country.  In 
addition,  he  toured  in  Canada  and  the 
United  States  of  America,  in  1913-1914, 
and  in  South  Africa,  in  1921.  During  his 
Canadian  tour  Montreal  University  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D. 

At  the  Shakespeare  tercentenary  perfor- 
mance, given  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  on  2 
May  1916,  Benson  appeared  in  the  title- 
role  of  Julius  Caesar,  and  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  performance  was  knighted  by  King 
George  V,  in  the  stage-box,  the  only 
occasion  on  which  an  actor  had  been 
knighted  in  a  theatre.  The  ceremony  was 
performed  with  a  'property'  sword,  no 
other  being  available. 

Although  he  was  nearing  the  age  of 
sixty,  from  1916  to  1918  Benson  served  in 
France  as  an  ambulance-driver,  and  re- 
ceived the  French  croix  de  guerre.  In  Jvme 
1925,  in  the  picture-gallery  of  the  Stratford 
Memorial  Theatre,  Dame  Ellen  Terry  un- 
veiled the  stained-glass  windows  to  Old 
Bensonians,  including  one  in  memory  of 
the  ten  players  of  the  company  who  had 
fallen  in  the  war. 

Benson  was  never  a  great  actor,  and  he 


was  handicapped  somewhat  by  defects  of 
voice  and  gait.  Richard  II  and  Petruchio 
in  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  were  among 
his  best  performances.  His  Richard  had 
much  grace  and  dignity  and  his  Petruchio 
was  full  of  excellent  touches.  He  also  gave 
a  notable  performance  as  Caliban  in  The 
Tempest.  Many  of  the  numerous  parts 
which  he  undertook,  including  Hamlet, 
Othello,  Shylock,  and  Henry  V,  were  quite 
uninspired.  It  was  not  his  acting  which 
made  Benson  great,  nor  his  teaching.  His 
genius  lay  in  the  opportunities  which  he 
afforded  to  the  many  capable  yoimg  artists 
whom  he  gathered  round  him,  many  of 
whom  achieved  greater  fame  than  Benson 
himself.  His  company  became  the  nursery 
for  the  English  stage.  It  is  truly  said  of 
him  that  he  gave  the  best  years  of  his  life 
to  spreading  the  love  of  Shakespeare 
throughout  the  world.  In  his  efforts  he 
exhausted  the  whole  of  his  considerable 
personal  fortune,  and  in  July  1933  he  was 
granted  a  civil  list  pension  of  £100. 

Benson  made  his  last  appearance  in 
London  in  1933;  this  was  at  the  Winter 
Garden  Theatre,  as  Dr.  Caius  in  The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor.  He  published  his  remini- 
scences, My  Memoirs  (1930),  and  a  short 
work  entitled  I  Want  to  Go  on  the  Stage 
(1931).  In  July  1886  he  married  Gertrude 
Constance,  daughter  of  Captain  Morshead 
Fetherstonhaugh  Samwell,  of  the  Indian 
army,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Lady 
Benson  was  a  capable  actress,  and  played 
leading  parts  in  his  company  for  many  years. 
Their  son  was  killed  in  action  in  France  in 
1916.  Benson  died  in  London  31  December 
1939. 

An  early  portrait  of  Benson,  by  Hugh 
Riviere,  hangs  in  the  picture  gallery  of 
the  Shakespeare  Memorial  Theatre.  Of  a 
drawing  of  him  as  Mark  Antony,  by  Will 
Ledbury,  and  of  another  by  R.  G.  Eves 
(1927),  the  whereabouts  are  imcertain. 

[The  Times,  1  January  1940;  Who's  Who 
in  the  Theatre,  1939;  Sir  F.  Benson,  My 
Memoirs,  1930;  Lady  Benson,  Mainly 
Players,  1926 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Parker. 

BENSON,  STELLA  (1892-1933), 
novelist.  [See  Anderson,  Stella.] 


BESANT,  ANNIE  (1847-1933),  theoso- 
phist,  educationist,  and  Indian  politician, 
was  born  in  London  1  October  1847,  the 
only  daughter  of  William  Persse  Wood, 
man  of  business,  of  London,  by  his  wife, 
Emily  Mary  Roche,  daughter  of  James 


72 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Besant 


Morris,  of  Clapham.  Her  father,  who  was 
Irish  on  his  mother's  side,  belonged  to 
an  elder  branch  of  the  Woods  of  Tiver- 
ton, which  included  Sir  Matthew  Wood, 
W.  P.  Wood,  Lord  Hatherley,  Sir  Henry 
Evelyn  Wood  [qq.v.],  and  Mrs.  O'Shea 
nde  Wood,  later  the  wife  of  C.  S.  Parnell. 
Her  mother's  family  was  Irish.  She  was 
educated  by  Miss  Marry  at,  a  sister  of  the 
novelist,  and  in  1867  married  Frank 
Besant,  later  vicar  of  Sibsey  in  Lincoln- 
shire until  his  death  in  1917,  and  a 
younger  brother  of  Sir  Walter  Besant 
[q.v.].  They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  The 
mother  lost  her  religious  faith,  left  Sibsey 
in  1873,  and  was  legally  separated  from 
her  husband. 

In  1874  Mrs.  Besant  joined  the  National 
Secular  Society,  of  which  she  became  vice- 
president,  and  formed  a  close  friendship 
with  Charles  Bradlaugh  [q.v.],  to  whose 
paper  she  contributed,  acting  some  time 
as  co-editor.  In  1878,  as  authoress  of  the 
Gospel  of  Atheism  (1877)  and  a  champion 
of  nco-Malthusianism,  she  was  deprived  by 
the  courts  of  the  custody  of  her  daughter 
who,  like  her  son,  returned  to  her  later.  In 
1885  she  joined  the  Fabian  Society  and 
the  Social  Democratic  Federation.  She 
was  present  at  the  famous  meeting  in 
Trafalgar  Square  (1886),  organized  the 
matchmakers'  strike  (1888),  and  formed 
their  union.  But  drifting  apart  from 
Bradlaugh  she  announced  her  conversion 
to  theosophy  as  taught  by  Madame 
Blavatsky,  who  with  Colonel  H.  S.  Olcott 
had  founded  an  association  in  the  United 
States  for  'the  study  and  elucidation  of  oc- 
cultism, the  Kabbala,  etc.',  with  branches 
in  London,  India,  and  Ceylon.  After 
Madame  Blavatsky's  death  Mrs.  Besant 
visited  India  in  1893,  and  speedily  dis- 
covered that  she  had  often  been  incarnated 
in  that  sacred  land.  She  announced  that 
she  had  received  'phenomenally'  letters 
from  the  mahatmas,  but  on  this  point  she 
quarrelled  with  W.  Q.  Judge  who  with  her 
was  one  of  the  two  '  heads '  of  the  Esoteric 
section,  and  the  quarrel  led  to  the  secession 
from  the  Theosophical  Society  of  the  major 
part  of  the  American  members.  In  1895 
she  became  absolute  head  of  the  inner 
organization,  being  elected  president  of 
the  society  in  1907. 

F'rom  1895  onwards  India  was  the  scene 
of  Mrs.  Besant's  activities.  She  devoted 
herself  to  representing  theosophy  as  com- 
patible with  the  ancient  Hindu  religion, 
philosophy,  and  morality.  These,  she  said, 
were  on  a  higher  plane  than  the  West  had 
ever  reached,  and  she  urged  the  Hindus  to 


sympathize  with  the  cause  of  the  '  Indian 
National  Congress',  first  convoked  in  1885 
under  the  guidance  of  A.  O.  Hume  [q.v.]. 
In  1899  she  persuaded  the  Maharaja  of 
Benares  to  give  her  foundation,  the  Central 
Hindu  College,  a  fine  site  and  buildings, 
and  by  her  energy,  zeal,  eloquence,  and 
powers  of  organization  the  college,  with  a 
girls'  school  founded  at  Benares  in  1904, 
became  the  nucleus  of  a  Hindu  university 
in  1916.  But  in  1909  she  put  forward  the 
strange  claim  that  her  adopted  son,  a 
young  Madrasi,  named  Krishnamurti,  had 
been  revealed  to  her  as  the  vehicle  of  the 
world  teacher  or  Messiah.  The  claim  (only 
renounced  by  the  yoimg  man  in  1932)  led 
to  Mrs.  Besant's  resignation  of  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Central  Hindu  College,  and 
she  shifted  her  headquarters  to  the  Theo- 
sophical Institution  at  Adyar  near  Madras. 
In  September  1916,  when  Lord  Chelms- 
ford had  succeeded  Lord  Hardinge  of 
Penshurst  as  viceroy,  and  the  British 
Empire  was  fighting  for  its  life,  Mrs.  Besant 
thought  fit  to  initiate  a  Home  Rule  for 
India  League.  From  Adyar  she  proclaimed 
herself  '  an  Indian  tomtom  waking  all  the 
sleepers  so  that  they  may  work  for  their 
Motherland'.  As  some  of  her  pamphlets 
and  speeches  were  considered  by  the 
Madras  government  likely  to  inflame  racial 
feeling,  she  was  called  on  under  the  Press 
Act  to  give  pecuniary  security  for  her 
better  conduct.  She  deposited,  but  soon 
forfeited,  the  large  sum.  At  least  one 
governor  refused  her  admission  to  his 
province,  and  in  1917  the  governor  of 
Madras  interned  her,  but  allowed  her  to 
direct  her  home  rule  campaign.  But  on 
20  August  1917  the  famous  declaration 
had  been  issued,  and  India  was  to  be 
placed  on  the  path  to  responsible  govern- 
ment by  stages.  In  order  to  create  the 
calm  atmosphere  requisite  for  the  investi- 
gations of  E.  S.  Montagu  [q.v.],  the  secre- 
tary of  state,  and  the  viceroy,  Mrs.  Besant 
was  released  from  internment.  Politically 
minded  Hindus  caused  her  to  be  elected 
president  of  the  Indian  National  Congress 
which  met  at  Bombay  in  December  1918. 
Although  the  year  1919  began  with  the 
end  of  the  war  and  ended  in  December 
with  the  Government  of  India  Act,  it  also 
saw  the  rise  of  Gandhi's '  civil  disobedience ' 
and  '  passive  resistance '  movement  against 
the  Rowlatt  legislation,  the  consequent 
riots,  and  the  Amritsar  tragedy.  The  riots 
of  April  1919  shocked  Mrs.  Besant  into 
sober  reflection.  Before  Gandhi  began 
to  move  she  had  found  it  desirable  to 
point  out  in  the  press  that  India  depended 


78 


Besant 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


on  England  for  safety :  that  was  the  plain 
brutal  truth,  and  no  amount  of  shouting 
could  alter  it.  When  after  order  had  been 
restored  and  some  moderates  of  the  central 
legislature  did  not  condemn  the  doings 
of  Gandhi's  followers  with  downright 
emphasis,  she  declared  herself  vigorously: 
'  None,  I  presume,  will  contend  that  govern- 
ment should  look  on  while  mobs  murdered, 
wrecked  banks,  fired  railway  stations.  Do 
[the  critics]  then  think  that  it  is  more 
merciful  to  give  a  mob  its  head  than  to 
attack  it  at  the  very  outset  of  violence, 
at  the  cost  of  a  score  of  lives,  or  will  the 
critics  say  at  what  stage  the  government 
should  interfere?  Let  us  in  the  time  of 
danger  drop  all  criticism  of  government 
action  and  stand  firmly  against  revolution, 
which  means  bloodshed  at  home  and 
invasion  from  abroad.'  Such  doctrine 
alienated  the  extremist  Congress  politi- 
cians: even  her  own  Home  Rule  League 
rejected  her  as  president  in  favour  of 
Gandhi,  and  for  a  time  she  seemed  to  have 
tired,  for  she  took  no  action  against  an 
outspoken  exposure  (The  Evolution  of  Mrs. 
Besant)  published  in  1918  by  Dr.  T.  M. 
Nair,  the  leader  of  the  non-Brahmans  of 
Madras.  In  1925  she  brought  a  Common- 
wealth of  India  bill  to  England  where  it 
was  twice  introduced  into  the  House  of 
Commons  and  obtained  the  active  support 
of  the  labour  party,  which  she  joined. 
Late  in  life  she  travelled  by  air,  and  often 
kept  her  intellectual  powers  long  on  the 
stretch,  but  in  1931  her  health  failed,  and 
she  lived  in  retirement  at  Adyar  where  she 
died  20  September  1933  and  was  cremated 
on  the  sea-shore. 

The  influence  of  Mrs.  Besant  on  the 
growth  of  nationalist  feeling  in  India  was 
at  one  time  considerable,  largely  because 
she  painted  the  India  of  the  fabled  past 
in  attractive  colours,  and  associated  theo- 
sophy  with  Hinduism  in  a  manner  flatter- 
ing to  the  beliefs  of  intellectual  Hindus, 
while  her  prestige  was  increased  by  her 
successful  effort  to  found  the  Hindu  College 
and  University.  When,  moreover,  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
Indian  politicians  generally  agreed  to 
suspend  such  agitation  as  might  impede 
the  war  effort,  Mrs.  Besant  put  no  such 
restriction  on  her  activities,  and  thereby 
gained  an  advantage  which  she  fully  ex- 
ploited. Her  facile  but  somewhat  shallow 
eloquence  also  increased  her  following. 
She  thus  influenced  both  in  Upper  India 
and  in  Madras  several  rising  politicians 
who  afterwards  reached  prominence.  But 
her  influence,  at  least  in  political  life,  was 


short-lived:  the  courageous  stand  which 
she  made  after  the  riots  of  1919  turned 
even  the  students  of  Madras  against  her. 
Her  share  in  the  foundation  and  control 
of  the  Hindu  University  was  regarded  with 
jealousy  by  a  section  of  the  orthodox 
Hindus ;  her  position  in  the  theosophical 
world  was  prejudiced  by  a  scandal  that 
was  attached  to  the  principal  of  the  in- 
stitution near  Madras,  by  the  sponsoring 
of  Krishnamurti,  and  by  the  lengthy 
proceedings  by  which  the  boy's  relatives 
sought  to  recover  his  custody.  Her  name 
will  be  remembered  among  Indian  theoso- 
phists,  but  these  are  no  longer  a  political 
body  and  tend  to  become  one  more  among 
the  sects  of  Hinduism. 

{The  Times,  21  September  1933;  H.  V. 
Lovett,  History  of  the  Indian  Nationalist 
Movement,  1920 ;  private  information.] 

H.  V.  Lovett. 

Patrick  Cadell. 

BEVAN,  ANTHONY  ASHLEY  (1859- 
1933),  orientalist  and  biblical  scholar,  was 
born  at  Trent  Park,  Barnet,  19  May  1859, 
the  eldest  of  the  three  sons  of  Robert 
Cooper  Lee  Bevan,  of  Fosbury  House, 
Wiltshire,  and  Trent  Park,  head  of  the 
great  banking-house  later  known  as  Bar- 
clay &  company,  by  his  second  wife,  Emma 
Frances,  daughter  of  P.  N.  Shuttleworth, 
bishop  of  Chichester  [q.v.].  The  youngest 
son  was  the  archaeologist  and  Hellenist 
Edwyn  Robert  Bevan.  Ashley  Bevan  was 
educated  at  Cheam,  Surrey,  the  Gymnase 
Litteraire,  Lausanne,  and  the  university 
of  Strasburg,  where  he  studied  under 
Theodor  Noeldeke,  the  greatest  of  scholars 
in  the  field  of  oriental  studies.  He  entered 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1884,  and 
obtained  a  first  class  in  the  Semitic  lan- 
guages tripos  of  1887.  In  1888  he  gained 
a  Tyrwhitt  Hebrew  scholarship  and  the 
Mason  prize  for  biblical  Hebrew,  and  two 
years  later  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his  college 
and  appointed  lecturer  in  oriental  lan- 
guages. In  1893  he  became  lord  almoner's 
professor  of  Arabic  at  Cambridge,  a  post 
previously  held  by  his  brother-in-law 
I.  G.  N.  Keith-Falconer  and  by  R.  L.  Bensly 
[qq.v.].  The  post  was  abolished  after  his 
death.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1916,  resigning  in 
1928. 

Bevan  was  'one  of  the  dozen  most 
learned  Arabists,  not  of  England  and 
Europe  only,  but  of  the  whole  world.  He 
was  almost  equally  distinguished  for  his 
knowledge  of  Hebrew  and  Old  Testament 
literature.    He  knew  Syriac  thoroughly 


74 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bhownaggree 


and  other  Semitic  languages  well,  and  he 
had  an  excellent  acquaintance  with  Per- 
sian language  and  literature '  (F.  C.  Burkitt 
in  Cambridge  Review,  27  October  1933). 
He  also  had  a  knowledge  of  Sanskrit,  and 
was  fluent  in  P>ench,  Italian,  and  German. 
His  published  work  was  relatively  small, 
but  what  there  is  of  it  is  of  the  highest 
scholarship.  His  edition  of  the  satirical 
poems  the  NdlfaHd  ofJarir  and  al-Farazdak 
(Arabic  text,  3  vols.,  1905-1912),  was  a 
tribute  to  his  teacher,  the  famous  orien- 
talist William  Wright  [q.v.] ;  and  in  an 
exhaustive  volume  of  indexes  and  addenda 
to  the  Mufaddaliyat  (1924)  he  completed 
the  edition  of  the  poems  edited  by  Sir  C. 
J.  Lyall  [q.v.].  He  was  interested  in  classi- 
cal Arabic  rather  than  later  Mohammedan 
literature,  in  a  knowledge  of  which  his 
more  enthusiastic  colleague  E.  G.  Browne 
[q.v.]  excelled.  But  among  various  articles 
contributed  to  the  Journal  of  Theological 
Studies  he  wrote  one  on  'The  Beliefs  of 
Early  Mohammedans  respecting  a  Future 
Existence'  (October  1904).  He  was  also 
interested  in  Manichaeism,  and  besides 
contributing  an  article  on  the  subject  to 
Hastings's  Encyclopaedia  of  Religion  and 
Ethics,  completed,  with  F.  C.  Burkitt 
[q.v.]  in  1912,  under  the  title  St.  Ephraim's 
Refutations,  the  collections  of  St.  Ephraim's 
writings  on  that  and  allied  sects  which 
C.  W.  Mitchell  had  prepared  before  his 
death.  Mention  must  also  be  made  of  his 
edition  of  the  Gnostic  Syriac  Hymn  of  the 
Soul  Contained  in  the  Syriac  Acts  of  St. 
Thomas  ('Cambridge  Texts  and  Studies', 
vol.  V,  No.  3,  1897). 

Bevan's  Short  Commentary  on  the  Book 
of  Daniel  (1892)  was  the  first  work  in 
English  to  demonstrate  the  Maccabean 
date  of  this  perplexing  document,  and  was 
regarded  as  a  masterpiece.  Besides  articles 
in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  he  contribu- 
ted an  important  'Essay  on  Historical 
Methods  in  the  Old  Testament '  to  Essays 
on  Some  Biblical  Questions  of  the  Day 
(edited  by  H.  B.  Swete,  1909).  These  and 
various  reviews  exhibit  his  keen  critical 
faculty  and  incisive  judgement.  Classical 
Hebrew  was  his  interest,  and  although 
he  was  an  enthusiastic  pupil  of  Solomon 
Marcus  Schiller-Szinessy,  the  university 
reader  in  Talmudic  and  rabbinic  literature 
and  a  remarkable  figure  in  his  day,  Bevan's 
attitude  to  medieval  New  Hebrew  litera- 
ture was  not  sympathetic.  Throughout  he 
was  fastidious  and  scrupulously  careful: 
as  he  observed  in  the  course  of  one  of  his 
typically  uncompromising  reviews,  'even 
slight  inaccuracies  are  liable  to  become 


sources  of  confusion'.  His  friends  and 
pupils  could  well  believe  the  story  that  he 
was  almost  reduced  to  tears  on  discovering 
a  misprint  in  one  of  his  own  works. 

If  Bevan's  output  was  slight  he  spared 
himself  no  pains  in  assisting  his  colleagues, 
among  other  ways  by  reading  their  proofs : 
many,  including  his  brother  Edwyn,  were 
indebted  to  his  scholarship.  Even  the 
inner  circle  stood  a  little  in  awe  of  his 
immense  erudition  and  the  authority 
which  it  gave  him.  He  did  much  teaching, 
and  as  a  teacher  surprised  his  pupils  by 
his  methods  and  by  his  readiness  to  confess 
his  inability  to  translate  some  Hebrew 
passage  which  they  thought  that  they  had 
mastered  from  their  knowledge  of  the 
Authorized  Version .  But  he  was  hospitable 
and  at  his  ease  with  undergraduates,  with 
soldiers  and  policemen,  and  especially 
with  humbler  folk.  A  hater  of  tobacco,  he 
freely  provided  excellent  cigars;  witty, 
with  a  characteristic  laugh  and  with  a 
tongue  like  a  rapier,  he  was  a  man  of 
unbounded  kindness  and  sympathy.  Un- 
ostentatious, no  one  was  ever  more  deter- 
mined to  prevent  his  left  hand  from 
knowing  what  his  right  hand  was  doing. 

Bevan  had  had  an  extremely  evangelical 
upbringing,  which  led  to  later  reaction; 
he  was  liberal  and  outspoken  in  his 
opinions.  Slightly  built  and  of  middle 
height,  he  was  scrupulously  neat  and  tidy 
in  dress  and  demeanour,  and  his  politeness 
was  almost  a  byword.  He  was  over-parti- 
cular about  his  food  and  over-anxious 
as  to  his  health.  He  died,  unmarried,  at 
Cambridge  16  October  1933. 

[The  Times,  17  and  20  October  1933; 
Cambridge  Review,  27  October  1933;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

S.  A.  Cook. 

BHOWNAGGREE,  Sir  MANCHER- 
JEE  MERWANJEE  (1851-1933),  Indian 
lawyer  and  politician,  was  born  at  Bombay 
15  August  1851,  the  son  of  Merwanjee  N. 
Bhownaggree,  a  Parsee  merchant  of  that 
city,  who  belonged  to  a  family  of  Persian 
origin,  by  his  wife,  Coo  verbal.  He  was 
educated  at  Elphinstone  College,  Bombay, 
and  Bombay  University.  After  a  brief 
apprenticeship  to  j  ournalism ,  he  succeeded , 
on  the  death  of  his  father  in  1875  to  the 
agency  in  Bombay  for  the  Kathiawar 
State  of  Bhavanagar.  At  this  time  he 
published  a  translation  into  Gujerati  of 
Queen  Victoria's  Leaves  from  the  Journal 
of  our  Life  in  the  Highlands.  In  1881  he 
came  to  London  in  order  to  study  law,  and 
in  1885  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's 


75 


Bhownaggree 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Inn.  Thereafter  as  judicial  counsellor  in 
Bhavanagar,  he  introduced  far-reaching 
reforms  in  law  administration.  Appointed 
CLE.  in  1886,  he  was  advanced  to  K.C.I.E. 
in  1897.  He  had  settled  in  London,  and 
at  the  general  election  of  1895  was  returned 
to  parliament  for  North-East  Bethnal 
Green,  in  the  conservative  interest.  His 
only  Indian  predecessor  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  elected  in  1892  as  a  radical 
reformer  and  now  defeated,  was  Dadabhai 
Naorojij  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Indian 
National  Congress  and  a  severe  critic  of 
British  rule.  Bhownaggree,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  a  sound  and  practical  imperi- 
alist. His  resourceful  advocacy  of  the 
removal  of  disabilities  suffered  by  Indians 
in  South  Africa  and  other  parts  of  the 
British  Empire  deeply  impressed  the 
House.  After  ten  years  in  parliament  he 
was  among  the  unionists  who  were  swept 
away  by  the  tide  of  liberal  victories  in  the 
general  election  of  January  1906.  Yet 
another  Parsee,  Shapurji  Saklatvala  [q.v.], 
was  a  third — and  so  far  the  last — Indian 
to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

Over  a  long  period  of  years  Bhownag- 
gree was  the  leading  Indian  permanently 
resident  in  Great  Britain.  Among  many 
other  institutions  which  he  served  he  was 
dominant  as  chairman  of  the  Parsee 
Association  of  Europe,  the  Northbrook 
Society,  and  the  Indian  Social  Club.  Under 
the  title  of  Verdict  of  India  he  published 
in  1916  a  booklet  repelling  German  false- 
hoods as  to  British  rule  in  his  native  land. 
In  memory  of  his  only  sister,  Ave  Bhow- 
naggree, he  founded  a  nurses'  home  in 
Bombay  and  provided  the  Bhownaggree 
corridor  to  the  east  whig  of  the  Imperial 
Institute  in  London.  He  married  in  1872, 
and  his  wife  ordinarily  resided  in  Bombay 
as  she  could  not  keep  well  in  the  variable 
English  climate.  He  was  predeceased  by 
the  elder  of  his  two  sons,  and  his  daughter 
married  a  distinguished  Bombay  physician. 
Dr.  J.  N.  Bahadurjee.  He  died  at  his 
London  house  14  November  1933. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Bhownaggree,  by 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  Beresford,  was  presented 
to  him  in  1927  by  the  Parsee  Association 
of  Europe,  and  is  now  in  the  possession  of 
his  daughter  in  Bombay. 

[The  Times,  15  November  1933  and  27  July 
1928;  Hansard,  Parliamentary  Debates;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  F.  H.  Brown. 

BIGGE,  ARTHUR  JOHN,  Baron 
Stamfordham  (1849-1931),  private  sec- 
retary to  King  George  V,  was  born  at 
Linden  Hall,  near  Morpeth,  Northumber- 


land, 18  June  1849,  the  fourth  of  the  five 
sons  of  John  Frederick  Bigge,  vicar  of 
Stamfordham  in  the  same  county,  by  his 
wife,  Caroline  Mary,  only  daughter  of 
Nathaniel  Ellison,  barrister  and  commis- 
sioner in  bankruptcy,  of  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne.  He  was  educated  at  Rossall  School 
and  at  the  Royal  Military  Academy,  where 
he  was  a  fellow  cadet  with  Prince  Arthur, 
later  Duke  of  Connaught.  In  1869  he 
obtained  a  commission  in  the  Royal  Artil- 
lery, from  which  he  retired  as  lieutenant- 
colonel  (1892)  in  1898.  A  few  years  after 
he  entered  the  army  there  was  attached 
to  his  battery  the  Prince  Imperial,  the  only 
son  of  Napoleon  III,  and  the  close  friend- 
ship which  sprang  up  between  the  two 
young  men  determined  Bigge's  career. 

Serving  in  the  Kaffir  and  Zulu  wars  of 
1878-1879,  Bigge  was  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches after  the  battle  of  Kambula  on 
29  March  1879:  the  part  played  by  the 
Horse  Artillery  battery  in  which  he  was 
serving  is  thus  commended  by  Sir  (Henry) 
Evelyn  Wood  [q.v.]  (From  Midshipman  to 
Field-Marshal,  vol.  ii,  p.  59):  'I  have 
never  known  a  battery  so  exceptionally 
fortunate  in  its  subalterns. . . .  Both  Bigge 
and  Slade  were  unsurpassable ;  they  with 
their  gunners  stood  up  in  the  open  from 
1.30  p.m.  till  the  Zulus  retreated  at  5.30 
p.m.'  Later  in  that  year  the  Prince  Imperial 
was  killed  in  South  Africa  and  Bigge  had 
the  melancholy  task  of  escorting  the  body 
of  his  friend  back  to  England.  He  went 
to  Abergeldie  to  tell  the  Empress  Eugenie 
of  the  circumstances  in  which  the  Prince 
had  been  killed,  and  while  staying  there 
he  had  several  interviews  at  Balmoral 
with  Queen  Victoria,  who  wrote  of  him  to 
her  eldest  daughter  (24  October):  'He  is 
a  charming  person,  of  the  very  highest 
character,  clever,  amiable  and  agreeable, 
as  well  as  good  looking.'  Three  days  later 
the  Queen  recorded  in  her  diary:  'After 
tea  saw  Lieut.  Bigge,  with  whom  I  had 
a  long  talk.  He  was  at  Inhlobane  and 
Kambula,  his  horse  being  killed  under  him 
at  the  latter.  .  .  .  After  Kambula  Lieut. 
Bigge  became  very  ill  indeed  and  the 
Prince  Imperial  came  to  see  him  in  hos- 
pital, when  he  said  he  hoped  they  would 
meet  again  soon.  This  was  only  a  week 
before  the  Prince  was  killed,  and  humanly 
speaking  it  seemed  more  likely  that  Lieut. 
Bigge  should  die  than  that  the  other 
should  happen.  He  cautioned  and  begged 
the  Prince  to  be  very  careful,  which  he 
promised  he  would.  .  .  .  We  spoke  of  the 
Empress'  wish,  indeed  determination,  to 
go  to  South  Africa  to  visit  the  spot  where 


76 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bigge 


her  dear  son  fell,  which  will  be  difficult  to  two  sovereigns  he  revealed  qualities  of  tact 


carry  out,  but  not  impossible.' 

On  1  January  1880  the  Queen  appointed 
Bigge  a  groom-in-waiting  to  herself,  giving 
him  leave  first  to  accompany  Wood,  to 
whom  he  was  at  that  time  aide-de-camp, 
and  who  had  undertaken  to  conduct  the 
Empress  to  the  scene  of  the  tragedy.  Bigge 
went  ahead,  on  1 1  March,  to  make  arrange- 
ments. On  their  return  from  South  Africa 
at  the  end  of  July  he  went  for  two  nights 
to  Osborne  to  report  to  the  Queen,  who 
immediately  appointed  him  assistant 
private  secretary  and  assistant  privy 
purse,  'as  both  Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  and 
I  think  no-one  better  fitted  than  him' 
(Diary,  2  August).  This  association  with 
Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  [q.v.]  proved  most 
happy  on  both  sides,  and  Bigge  carried 
with  him  to  the  grave  an  unstinted  ad- 
miration for  his  former  chief.  He  resigned 
as  groom  in  May  1881,  having  been 
appointed  equeiTy  in  the  previous  month. 
He  was  made  C.B.  in  1885  and  C.M.G.  in 
1887.  In  May  1895  he  was  advanced  to 
K.C.B.  upon  succeeding  Ponsonby  as 
private  secretary  to  the  Queen,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  the  close  of  her  reign. 

King  Edward  VII  came  to  the  throne 
already  provided  with  a  private  secretary 
in  the  person  of  Sir  Francis  (later  Viscount) 
Knollys  [q.v.].  But  when  the  heir  to  the 
throne.  Prince  George,  Duke  of  Cornwall 
and  York,  made  his  famous  tour  through 
the  British  Dominions  in  1901,  Bigge 
accompanied  him  as  private  secretary.  At 
the  close  of  the  tour  Bigge  was  appointed 
G.C.V.O.  and  K.C.M.G.  He  retained  the 
post  of  private  secretary  to  the  Prince  of 
Wales  throughout  King  Edward's  reign 
and  accompanied  him  to  India  in  1905. 
He  was  appointed  K.C.S.I.  in  1906. 

On  his  accession  in  1910  King  George  V 
at  first  made  use  of  the  services  and 
experience  of  both  Knollys  and  Bigge  as 
joint  private  secretaries.  Knollys  retired 
in  1913,  and  Bigge,  who  had  been  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Stamfordham  in 
1911,  remained  until  his  death  eighteen 
years  later  principal  private  secretary.  He 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1910, 
attended  the  King  to  India  in  1911,  and 
was  appointed  G.C.I.E.  in  1911  andG.C.B. 
in  1916,  He  also  received  several  foreign 
decorations,  including  the  I^egion  of 
Honour,  and  in  1906  the  university  of 
Durham  conferred  upon  him  the  honorary' 
degree  of  D.C.L. 

Among  Starafordham's  few  but  distin- 
guished predecessors  in  his  office  his  place 
is  deservedly  high.  As  private  secretary  to 


and  wisdom,  a  sure  grasp  of  affairs,  and 
an  imswerving  rectitude.  Politically  he 
was  at  once  less  eager  and  less  radical  than 
either  of  his  immediate  forenmners.  The 
affinity  between  Ponsonby  and  Gladstone, 
or  that  between  Knollys  and  Asquith, 
found  its  natural  parallel  in  the  intimacy 
which  for  nearly  fifty  years  linked  Stam- 
fordham with  Randall  Davidson  [q.v.]. 
His  impartiality  was  never  questioned. 
Upon  vacating  office  in  December  1910 
Asquith  wrote  to  him:  'Our  intercourse, 
official  and  personal,  during  all  these 
years,  is  one  of  the  pleasantest  memories 
of  my  public  life.  The  times  have  not 
been  easy,  and  of  late  more  than  difficult, 
but  our  task  has  been  lightened  by  com- 
plete mutual  confidence  and  ever-growing 
friendship.' 

Stamfordham  was  a  man  of  persistent 
industry,  making  it  his  practice  to  finish 
the  day's  work  within  the  day,  whatever 
the  cost  in  leisure  or  the  physical  burden. 
This  towards  the  close  of  Queen  Victoria's 
life  became  heavy,  for  her  eyes  began  to 
fail,  and  by  1895  the  task  of  writing  to  her 
legibly  had  become  so  exacting  that  the 
prime  minister  permitted  himself  to  com- 
municate with  her  through  Bigge,  dictating 
his  letters  to  an  amanuensis  with  a  clear 
handwriting  (Lord  Crewe,  Lord  Rosehery, 
vol.  i,  p.  508).  For  his  part,  Bigge  used  to 
dry  his  submissions  in  a  stove  of  ingenious 
design  instead  of  blotting  them ;  and  he 
taught  himself  afresh  to  write.  It  was 
thus  that  he  acquired  the  bold  script 
which  remained  to  the  end  the  joy  and 
envy  of  his  correspondents.  His  letters 
were  largely  handwritten ;  if  they  lack  the 
astringency  and  sparkle  of  Ponsonby's 
they  are  marked  by  a  like  economy  of 
phrase. 

Against  the  wiles  of  the  importimate 
he  knew  well  how  to  guard  himself,  and 
fashionable  company  he  resolutely  es- 
chewed. A  certain  austerity  which  he  had 
imbibed  in  the  north-country  vicarage 
mellowed  in  later  years  to  a  gentler  toler- 
ance, and  he  came  to  be  regarded  by  his 
colleagues  with  a  love  which  perhaps 
never  whoUy  cast  out  fear.  But  the  young, 
the  shy,  and  the  inexperienced  were  drawn 
towards  him  by  the  candour  and  the 
simplicity  of  his  bearing.  'I  shall  never 
forget',  wrote  Ramsay  MacDonald  after 
his  death,  'the  kindness  he  shewed  to 
my  colleagues  and  myself  when  we  were 
but  prentices  in  1924.  The  country  has 
lost  a  devoted  servant  who  for  many 
years  bore  delicate  responsibilities  with 


77 


Bigge 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


a  sagacity  and  resourcefulness  which 
smoothed  many  a  difficult  road  and  enabled 
change  to  come  gently  and  be  accepted 
without  misgiving  as  a  thing  belonging  to 
the  natural  flow  of  time.' 

Stamfordham  had  learnt  his  trade  in 
the  service  of  an  aged  queen,  of  towering 
personal  ascendancy,  unrivalled  experi- 
ence, and  marked  political  capacity.  It 
was  to  a  different  scene  that  he  returned 
a  decade  later,  at  a  period  of  strong  civil 
ferment,  the  intermediary  this  time  be- 
tween a  reticent  and  untried  sovereign 
and  a  resourceful  prime  minister.  It  was 
Stamfordham's  solicitude  which  brought 
confidence  to  the  new  king  at  the  same 
time  as  his  experience  brought  counsel  in 
statecraft.  There  was  in  him  an  absence 
of  self-esteem  which  responded  to  a  like 
quality  in  his  master,  establishing  between 
them  more  than  a  merely  professional 
relationship  throughout  the  thirty  years 
of  their  association.  On  the  day  of  his 
death  at  St.  James's  Palace  31  March 
1931,  the  King  wrote  in  his  diary:  'Dear 
Bigge  passed  peacefully  away  at  4.30 
to-day.  I  shall  miss  him  terribly.  His  loss 
is  irreparable.' 

Stamfordham  married  in  1881  Constance 
(died  1922),  second  daughter  of  William 
Frederick  Neville,  vicar  of  Butleigh, 
Somerset,  and  had  one  son,  who  was 
killed  in  action  in  1915,  and  two  daughters. 
He  had  but  one  grandchild.  Major  Michael 
Adeane. 

A  portrait  of  Stamfordham,  by  H.  A. 
Olivier  (1927),  is  in  the  possession  of  the 
family,  and  a  charcoal  drawing,  by  Francis 
Dodd  (1931),  is  in  the  Royal  Library, 
Windsor  Castle.  A  poor  cartoon  of  him, 
by  'Spy',  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  6 
September  1900. 

[The  Times,  1  April  1931 ;  published  LeHers, 
and  unpublished  diary,  of  Queen  Victoria; 
P.    H.    Emden,    Behind   the    Throne,    1934; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Owen  Morshead. 

BILES,  Sir  JOHN  HARVARD  (1854- 
1933),  naval  architect,  was  born  at  Ports- 
mouth 6  January  1854,  the  third  son  of 
John  Biles,  an  official  at  Portsmouth 
dockyard,  by  his  wife,  Margaret,  second 
daughter  of  William  Groombridge,  of 
ErnehiU,  Kent.  His  childhood  was  spent 
at  Portsmouth,  where  in  his  early  years 
his  interest  in  ships  was  quickened  and  his 
natural  bent  for  mechanics  encouraged  by 
the  very  nature  of  his  surroundings.  He 
was  educated  at  G.  L.  Oliver's  school  (now 
the  Mile  End  House  School),  Portsmouth, 


from  which  he  passed  to  serve  his  appren- 
ticeship at  Portsmouth  dockyard,  at  a 
period  during  which  the  use  of  wood  in 
warship  construction  was  being  largely 
superseded  by  steel,  and  sails  were  giving 
place  to  mechanical  power.  The  Devasta- 
tion, on  which  he  was  chiefly  engaged,  was 
the  first  of  the  modern  ships  built  entirely 
by  the  new  methods. 

In  1872,  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  Biles 
was  placed  first  on  the  list  of  candidates 
for  a  scholarship  at  the  Royal  School  of 
Naval  Architecture  and  Marine  Engineer- 
ing, moving  in  1873  to  the  Royal  Naval 
College,  Greenwich,  where  he  finished  his 
three-year  course  in  1875.  As  was  custo- 
mary with  all  students  of  the  school,  at 
the  end  of  his  course  he  returned  to  the 
dockyards  for  practical  experience,  mainly 
at  Pembroke,  until  in  1876  he  was  ap- 
pointed Admiralty  overseer  at  the  Landore 
ironworks  in  South  Wales,  where  he  gained 
intimate  knowledge  of  steel  manufacture. 
Biles's  ability  was  soon  recognized,  and 
on  joining  the  Admiralty  in  1877  he  was 
given  full  opportunity  to  use  his  growing 
skill  and  knowledge.  At  this  time  no 
great  importance  was  attached  to  the 
investigations  of  William  Froude  [q.v.]  in 
estimating  resistance  of  ships'  models,  but 
Biles,  with  his  quick  perception  and  vision, 
rightly  judged  the  value  of  Froude's  work, 
and  studied  its  possibilities  whilst  he  was 
stiU  at  the  Admiralty.  In  1880  he  was 
offered  the  post  of  chief  designer  to  Messrs. 
J.  and  G.  Thomson,  of  Clydebank  (later 
Messrs.  John  Brown  &  company),  where 
his  reputation  as  a  naval  architect  was 
soon  established.  Under  his  guidance  the 
firm  became  famous  for  the  building  of 
both  naval  and  mercantile  ships,  and  his 
study  of  Froude's  work  led  to  improve- 
ments in  hull  form  which  resulted  in 
increasing  speed  in  passenger  vessels.  The 
City  of  Paris  and  City  of  New  York,  built 
in  1887,  were  revolutionary  in  design  and 
construction,  demonstrating  the  advan- 
tages of  lighter  construction  coupled  with 
adequate  strength,  made  possible  by 
scientific  design. 

In  1891  Biles  was  appointed  to  the  chair 
of  naval  architecture  in  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity, a  post  which  he  held  for  thirty  years. 
Here  he  was  extremely  popular,  not  only 
for  his  talent  for  teaching  but  for  his 
sympathetic  understanding  of  his  students, 
many  of  whom  became  distinguished 
naval  architects  in  later  life.  During  this 
period  Biles  combined  lecturing  at  the 
university  with  practical  work  on  designs 
for  various  firms,  and  gave  his  students 


78 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Birch 


practical  experience  by  allowing  them  to 
help  in  the  working  out  of  the  plans.  In 
1907  he  opened  offices  in  Broadway,  West- 
minster, as  a  consulting  naval  architect 
and  engineer.  His  reputation  was  almost 
world-wide:  he  travelled  widely,  particu- 
larly in  North  and  South  America  and 
in  India,  where  his  work  was  so  highly 
thought  of  that  on  the  death  of  Sir  E.  J. 
Reed  [q.v.],  in  1906,  he  was  appointed 
consulting  naval  architect  to  the  India 
Office.  The  British  Admiralty  called  him 
in  as  a  consultant  on  many  occasions,  and 
he  was  associated  with  the  development 
of  river  and  shallow-draft  vessels  for  use 
in  Mesopotamia  during  the  war  of  1914- 
1918. 

Among  the  many  government  com- 
mittees on  which  Biles  served  were  the 
dry-dock  experiments  on  the  Wolf  (1901- 
1903)  to  test  for  the  first  time  by  actual 
measurements  the  stresses  on  the  hull  of 
a  destroyer,  a  highly  successful  piece  of 
experimental  work;  the  Board  of  Trade 
departmental  committee  on  boats  and 
davits  (1912)  after  the  disaster  of  the 
Titanic;  the  ship  designs  conrnnittee 
(1904-1905)  appointed  by  Lord  Fisher 
[q.v.],  from  which  there  emerged  the  design 
of  the  Dreadnought,  completed  under  Sir 
Philip  Watts  [q.v.],  director  of  naval  con- 
struction at  the  Admiralty.  For  his  services 
on  these  and  other  committees  he  was 
knighted  in  1913  and  appointed  K.C.I.E. 
in  1922.  He  was  elected  a  member  of 
council  of  the  Institution  of  Naval  Archi- 
tects in  1889,  vice-president  in  1905,  and 
honorary  vice-president  in  1919.  His  first 
paper,  '  Some  Results  of  Curves  of  Resis- 
tance and  Progressive  Measured  Mile  Speed 
Curves',  was  read  to  the  institution  in 
1881,  and  his  last,  'Draught  and  Dimen- 
sions of  the  Most  Economical  Ship',  in 
1931.  For  many  years  he  served  on  the 
court  of  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Ship- 
wrights and  was  master  of  the  company  in 
1904.  He  published  The  Marine  Steam 
Turbine  in  1906  and  The  Design  and  Con- 
struction of  Ships  in  1908.  The  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  was  conferred  upon  him 
by  the  universities  of  Yale  (1901)  and 
Glasgow  (1922),  and  of  D.Sc.  by  Harvard 
(1908).  He  was  an  honorary  member  of 
the  Japanese  Society  of  Naval  Architects, 
and  was  decorated  with  the  Egyptian 
order  of  Osmanieh  in  1906. 

Biles  was  a  man  of  remarkable  vitality, 
genial  disposition,  and  possessed  of  a 
physical  stamina  which  enabled  him  to 
use  his  mental  powers  to  the  full  in  his 
professional  capacity.   That  his  work  did 


not  absorb  the  whole  of  his  energy  is 
shown  by  his  filling  in  his  spare  time  when 
working  on  the  Devastation  reading  the 
whole  of  Alison's  History  of  Europe  while 
seated  in  the  double  bottom  of  the  ship. 
A  keen  yachtsman,  he  won  many  prizes 
at  Cowes,  Dublin,  and  the  Clyde  regattas 
with  his  yawls  Caress  and  Lais,  and  he 
presented  one  of  these  trophies  to  the 
Shipwrights'  Company. 

Biles  married  in  1876  Emma  Jane  (died 
June  1933),  only  child  of  Richard  Hoskyn 
Lloyd,  of  Pembroke,  and  had  one  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  at  Virginia  Water, 
Surrey,  27  October  1933. 

A  portrait  of  Biles,  by  Maurice  Greiffen- 
hagen,  is  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 

[The  Times,  28  October  1933;  Nature, 
4  November  1933;  private  information.] 

E.  H.  T.  D'Eyncourt. 

BIRCH,  Sir  (JAMES  FREDERICK) 
NOEL  (1865-1939),  general,  was  born  at 
Llanrhaiadr,  Denbighshire,  29  December 
1865,  the  second  son  of  Major  Richard 
Frederick  Birch,  J.P.,  of  Maes  Elwy,  St. 
Asaph,  by  his  wife,  Euphemia  Mercer, 
eldest  daughter  of  James  Somerville,  of 
Edinburgh.  Educated  at  Giggles  wick, 
Marlborough,  and  the  Royal  Military 
Academy,  he  was  commissioned  in  the 
Royal  Artillery  in  1885.  An  exceptionally 
fine  horseman  and  whip,  he  quickly  gained 
his  Royal  Horse  Artillery  'jacket'  and  in 
1894  became  aide-de-camp  to  the  general 
commanding  the  Woolwich  district.  In 
1895-1896  he  took  part  in  the  Ashanti 
expedition,  and  in  South  Africa  he  served 
with  his  Royal  Horse  Artillery  battery  in 
the  Cavalry  division  under  the  command 
of  Sir  John  French  [q.v.],  taking  part  in 
the  relief  of  Kimberley,  the  operations  in 
the  Orange  Free  State  and  the  Transvaal, 
and  being  present  at  the  battle  of  Diamond 
Hill.  He  was  promoted  major  in  Jime 
1900,  and  in  1901  was  given  command  of 
a  battalion  of  Imperial  Yeomanry,  which 
he  led  in  the  operations  in  Cape  Colony 
from  December  1901  to  the  conclusion  of 
hostilities.  He  was  in  command  of  the 
Riding  Establishment  at  Woolwich  from 
1905  to  1907. 

Promoted  lieutenant-colonel  in  1912, 
Birch  commanded  the  7th  brigade.  Royal 
Horse  Artillery^  and  took  it  to  France  in 
August  1914,  serving  with  the  Cavalry 
division  under  the  command  of  Sir 
Edmimd  (later  Viscount)  Allenby  [q.v.], 
in  the  retreat  from  Mons  and  in  the  battles 
of  the  Aisne  andof  Ypres-Armentieres.  In 
January  1915  he  was  appointed  brigadier- 


79 


Birch 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


eff 


general  on  the  general  staff  of  the  Cavalry 
Corps,  and  a  few  months  later  C.R.A.  of 
the  7th  division,  going  in  the  same  position 
in  July  to  the  I  Corps,  then  commanded 
by  Sir  Douglas  Haig  [q.v,].  In  May  1916 
Haig  brought  him  to  general  headquarters 
as  artillery  adviser,  and  he  held  that  post 
until  the  end  of  the  war.  He  was  promoted 
major-general  in  1917  and  lieutenant- 
general  in  1919.  In  1920  he  became 
director  of  remounts  at  the  War  Office  and 
had  regretfully  to  supervise  the  changes 
required  by  the  development  of  mechanical 
transport.  In  the  following  year  he  was 
appointed  director-general  of  the  Terri- 
torial Army  and  concerned  himself  actively 
with  the  development  of  cadet  corps.  In 
1923  he  was  appointed  master-general  of 
the  Ordnance  and  fourth  military  member 
of  the  Army  Council.  He  held  this  position 
until  1927,  during  a  period  when  important 
experiments,  followed  by  equally  impor- 
tant developments  in  artillery,  were  in 
progress,  and  his  long  experience  of 
artillery  in  war,  from  the  fighting  front 
to  general  headquarters,  was  of  great 
value.  He  was  promoted  general  in  1926 
and  retired  from  the  army  in  the  following 
year  in  order  to  become  a  director  of 
Vickers-Armstrong. 

Birch  was  made  a  colonel  commandant 
of  the  Royal  Artillery  in  1919  and  in  1923 
a  colonel  commandant  of  the  Royal  Horse 
Artillery.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1916, 
K.C.M.G.  in  1918,  K.C.B.  in  1922,  and 
G.B.E.  in  1927,  and  received  numerous 
foreign  honours.  He  published  two  books. 
Modern  Riding  (1909)  and  Modern  Riding 
and  Horse  Education  (1912).  He  married 
in  1903  Florence  Hyacinthe  (died  1938), 
youngest  daughter  of  Sir  George  Chetwode, 
sixth  baronet,  of  Oakley,  Staffordshire, 
and  Chetwode,  Buckinghamshire,  and  had 
two  sons.  He  died  at  his  home  in  London 
3  February  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Birch,  by  Oswald  Birley, 
is  now  in  the  possession  of  his  son, 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Nigel  Birch,  M.P. 

[The  Times,  4  February  1939 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  F.  Maurice. 

BIRRELL,  AUGUSTINE  (1850-1933), 
author  and  statesman,  born  at  Wavertree, 
near  Liverpool,  19  January  1850,  was  the 
yovmger  son  of  Charles  Morton  Birrell, 
minister  of  Pembroke  Baptist  chapel  there, 
by  his  wife,  Harriet  Jane,  daughter  of 
Henry  Grey  [q.v.],  Free  Church  minister, 
of  Edinburgh.  Thus  he  was  reared  in  the 
tradition  of  liberal  nonconformity  which 
reckons  education  to  be  one  of  the  orna- 


ments of  a  good  life.  On  leaving  AmefP 
ham  Hall  School,  Caversham,  in  1866,  he 
became  an  articled  clerk  in  a  solicitor's 
office  in  Liverpool ;  but  a  fortunate  legacy 
enabled  his  father  to  send  him  to  Trinity 
Hall,  Cambridge,  and  it  seemed  as  though 
he  had  burned  his  last  boat  on  Merseyside, 
and  would  qualify  for  a  profession  else- 
where. He  began  university  life  in  dingy 
lodgings  near  the  Hall,  and  his  preference 
for  retaining  them  throughout  his  whole 
career  at  Cambridge  indicates  the  quiet 
studious  life  which  he  led  in  the  company 
of  a  few  special  friends,  not  engaging  in 
college  competitions  on  field  or  river,  but 
carrying  on  a  modest  existence,  varied  by 
occasional  rides  on  the  broad  grass  verges 
of  roads  ending  on  Newmarket  Heath,  and 
working  hard  enough  to  obtain  the  good 
second  class  in  the  law  tripos  of  1872 
which  he  thought  represented  his  merits 
and  his  prospects,  for  without  affectation 
of  humility  he  was  never  ambitious,  or 
believed  that  the  glittering  prizes  of  life 
were  there  for  him  to  grasp.  He  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity  Hall 
in  1899. 

At  the  age  of  twenty -five  Birrell  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple. 
The  excitements  of  the  Common  Law  bar 
and  going  on  circuit  had  no  attractions 
for  him,  and  with  some  advantages  at  the 
start,  he  settled  down  to  quiet  Chancery 
business,  securing  before  long  enough  work 
to  enable  him  in  1878  to  marry  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Archibald  Mirrielees,  of  St. 
Petersburg,  to  whom  he  had  long  been 
attached.  This  happy  union  was  broken 
up  by  her  death  after  thirteen  months, 
and  his  younger  sister  came  to  live  with 
him  for  the  next  nine  years,  during  which 
his  practice  grew  steadily  but  not  on  a 
great  scale,  and  he  was  able  to  devote 
his  leisure  to  reading,  of  infinite  variety, 
but  not  in  the  direction  of  an  increased 
study  of  the  classics,  or  the  acquisition  of 
modern  languages,  although  he  was  able 
to  enjoy  not  a  few  expeditions  to  European 
countries. 

In  time  Birrell  became  known  as  a 
capable  and  versatile  reviewer.  A  per- 
sistent exception  to  the  catholicity  of  his 
reading  was  his  inability  to  enjoy  a  novel: 
he  read  but  few,  and  never  reviewed  one 
until  the  persuasion  of  a  younger  esteemed 
critic  induced  him  to  crown  the  popular 
admiration  already  given  to  Miss  Margaret 
Keimedy's  The  Constant  Nymph  (1924). 
In  1884  he  became  a  public  character  by 
the  appearance  of  a  collection  of  essays  on 
various  subjects,  including  one  'On  the 


80 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Birrell 


Alleged  Obscurity  of  Mr.  Browning's 
Poetry ',  'A  Rogue's  Memoirs'  (Benvenuto 
Cellini),  a  note  on  Carlyle,  and  another  on 
Falstaff,  thus  covering  a  wide  field.  Obiter 
Dicta  was  published  at  a  time  when  an 
influential  section  of  fashionable  society 
had  become  ashamed  of  appearing  only 
to  frequent  Melton  and  Newmarket,  and 
the  book's  fascinating  style  and  its  small 
bulk  made  it  easy  to  carry  about  from 
country  house  to  country  house  and  dis- 
cuss under  the  trees  on  a  fine  afternoon. 
A  second  series  was  published  in  1887  and 
many  years  later  More  Obiter  Dicta  (1924). 
His  literary  reputation  was  further  en- 
hanced by  the  publication  in  1887  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  which  he  describes  as  a 
biographical  sketch,  in  no  way  intended 
to  supersede  Mrs.  Gaskell's  authoritative 
memoir,  but  so  to  be  called  because  it  is 
impossible  to  criticize  her  work  without 
telling  something  of  the  story  of  her  life. 

Some  critics  were  disposed  to  regard 
Birrell's  literary  judgements  as  somewhat 
superficial.  The  term  'Birrelling'  was 
devised  to  describe  a  sort  of  literary  flute- 
playing,  agreeable  to  listen  to,  but  not  to 
be  compared  with  mastery  of  the  violin 
or  pianoforte.  This  was  luifair:  during 
his  Liverpool  years  he  had  absorbed  a  vast 
quantity  of  sixteenth-  and  seventeenth- 
century  literature,  including  the  arcana  of 
long-forgotten  divinity  and  social  history. 
This  enabled  him  to  write  entertainingly 
on  a  dull  subject,  the  reverse  practice  to 
that  of  some  of  his  critics,  who  did  not 
contribute  anything  fresh  or  novel  to  a 
subject  known  to  be  exciting  in  itself.  He 
made  no  claim  to  the  profound  erudition 
of  his  friend  W.  P.  Ker  [q.v.],  but  neither 
that  scholar  nor  others  who  enjoyed 
Birrell's  essays  expected  it  of  him.  Among 
British  essayists  probably  none  found  it 
so  needless  to  follow  a  single  path  for 
information  or  study. 

In  1888  Birrell  married  Eleanor  Mary 
Bertha,  widow  of  Lionel  Tennyson, 
younger  son  of  the  poet  laureate.  This 
alliance  encouraged  fresh  intimacies  in  the 
region  governed  by  the  Muses,  for  she  was 
the  daughter  of  Frederick  Locker,  later 
Locker-Lampson  [q.v.].  She  was  a  woman 
of  much  charm  and  mental  capacity,  with 
a  sense  of  humour  that  chimed  in  happily 
with  Birrell's,  and  she  became  a  favourite 
in  many  political  and  social  circles.  She 
died  in  1915  after  a  happy  married  life  of 
twenty-seven  years.  Two  sons  were  born 
of  this  marriage. 

In  1885  and  again  in  1886  the  liberal 
barrister  had  been  an  unsuccessful  cajidi- 


dateforthe  Walton  division  of  Liverpool, 
and  it  was  not  until  1889  that  a  by-election 
for  the  West  Fife  division  offered  the 
chance  which  one  or  two  fortunate  acci- 
dents enabled  Birrell  to  grasp.  He  became 
a  loyal  follower  of  Gladstone's  government 
in  1892  and  afterwards  of  Rosebery's 
briefer  leadership  (1894-1896),  and  in  the 
following  years  shared  the  political  views 
of  Campbell-Bannerman.  In  1895  he  took 
silk,  and  from  1898  to  1899  he  held  the 
Quain  professorship  of  law  at  University 
College,  London.  In  1900  he  was  unfor- 
tunately persuaded  to  abandon  West  Fife 
and  fight  a  losing  battle  for  the  North-East 
division  of  Manchester,  so  that  he  was 
absent  from  parliament  during  the  later 
stages  of  the  South  African  war  and  took  no 
part  in  the  acrimonious  discussions  on  the 
education  bill  of  1902,  in  which  he  was 
destined  to  be  so  deeply  interested.  The 
resignation  of  the  Balfour  government  in 
1905  brought  about  the  formation  of 
Campbell-Bannerman's  administration,  in 
which  Birrell,  who  was  to  be  elected 
member  for  North  Bristol  at  the  general 
election  of  1906,  accepted  the  presidency 
of  the  Board  of  Education.  It  was  a  par- 
ticularly important  post  at  the  moment, 
for  the  Education  Act  of  1902  had  not 
only  infuriated  the  great  nonconformist 
bodies,  but  had  convinced  liberals  of  all 
shades  that  the  legislation  of  1870  was 
being  tampered  with  in  a  spirit  of  undue 
favouritism  towards  Church  of  England 
elementary  schools.  Birrell's  upbringing 
pointed  him  out  as  being  especially  quali- 
fied to  redress  the  balance,  while  his 
broad  sympathies  and  a  sense  of  humour 
which  pervaded  all  his  speeches  and 
writings  saved  him  from  being  identified 
with  the  extreme  section  of  dissenting 
spokesmen,  of  whom  Dr.  John  Clifford  [q.v.] 
was  the  most  conspicuous.  The  education 
bill  of  1906  was  accordingly  framed  on 
lines  designed  to  restore  equality  of 
treatment,  notably  in  single-school  areas. 
The  fight  in  the  House  of  Commons  was 
long  and  bitter;  Birrell  did  not  enjoy  the 
support  of  the  Irish  members,  many  of 
whom  were  Roman  Catholics,  while  all 
were  irritated  at  finding  that  their  griev- 
ance was  not  set  in  the  forefront  of 
reforms  to  be  dealt  with.  But  the  measure 
passed  on  to  the  House  of  Lords,  and  there 
its  doom  was  sealed  in  spite  of  the  qualified 
support  of  some  members  of  the  opposition, 
of  whom  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  was  the 
most  notable,  and  the  efforts  of  the  arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  to  state  the  Church 
case  moderately.     After  long  conferences 


81 


Birrell 


D.N.B.  1031-1940 


between  the  Houses  the  bill  was  lost  by  a 
large  majority. 

Birrell  was  only  thirteen  months  at  the 
Board  of  Education,  and  in  1907  was 
nominated  chief  secretary  for  Ireland,  in 
succession  to  James  (afterwards  Viscount) 
Bryce  [q.v.].  It  was  felt  that  Birrell's 
qualities  were  predominantly  fitted  to  the 
task,  as  minister  in  charge  of  Ireland. 
Thus  three  eminent  men  of  letters,  Morley, 
Bryce,  and  Birrell  were  nominated  by 
liberal  prime  ministers  to  the  chief  secre- 
taryship: it  may  be  held  by  some  that 
experienced  administrators  in  India  or 
Africa  might  have  been  able  to  cope  more 
appropriately  with  the  situation  in  Dublin, 
since  they  would  begin  by  recognizing  the 
deep-seated  and  sometimes  unplumbed 
divergencies  between  the  two  races.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  Birrell  accepted  the  chief 
secretaryship  with  little  hope  of  scoring 
a  triumphant  success  during  his  term  of 
office,  but  he  was  stimulated  by  the  hope 
of  doing  something  to  set  education  in 
Ireland,  particularly  religious  education, 
on  a  sounder  footing  than  it  had  enjoyed 
since  the  Act  of  Union,  most  of  all  in  its 
higher  branches.  The  creation  of  a  really 
representative  Roman  Catholic  university, 
facing  on  equal  terms  Trinity  CoUege,  the 
great  and  honoured  foundation  emblema- 
tic of  Protestant  ascendancy,  would  mean 
triumph  for  the  liberal  administration  of 
Ireland  such  as  it  had  not  achieved  for 
many  years.  He  set  to  work  at  once  on 
the  complicated  details  of  this  measure, 
and  amid  much  criticism  and  some  dis- 
appointments became  responsible  for  the 
new  National  University  of  Ireland,  with 
three  constituent  colleges  in  Dublin,  Cork, 
and  Gal  way,  established  in  1908.  Trinity 
College  was  of  course  not  included,  but 
submitted  to  a  vague  connexion  of  affilia- 
tion, while  the  university  of  Belfast 
satisfied  the  amour  propre  of  Northern 
Ireland. 

The  old  landlord  and  tenant  system  had 
broken  down,  and  both  English  parties, 
especially  the  conservatives,  had  engaged 
in  vast  purchase  schemes  for  the  benefit 
of  occupying  ownership.  Reviewing  his 
Irish  experiences  in  later  years,  Birrell  was 
able  to  claim  that  he  had  completed  this 
task. 

Birrell  remained  chief  secretary  for  over 
nine  years,  but  he  never  became  a  leading 
member  of  the  Cabinet,  even  for  Irish 
affairs.  The  home  rule  bill  of  1912  was 
not  his  work,  but  that  of  the  prime 
minister,  Asquith;  and  it  was  Asquith 


the  two  years  of  its  stormy  career  was 
responsible  for  the  negotiations  carried  on 
from  time  to  time  with  Carson  and  John 
Redmond  [qq.  v .] .  It  is  significant  that  when 
on  the  eve  of  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  a 
supreme  effort  was  made  to  settle  the  home 
rule  problem  by  a  four-day  conference  at 
Buckingham  Palace,  the  Irish  chief  secre- 
tary was  not  one  of  the  eight  statesmen 
who  composed  it.  His  position,  well  under- 
stood, was  different.  He  was  not  respon- 
sible for  high  policy  as  Forster,  Morley, 
Balfour,  and  Wyndham  had  been  in  their 
times,  but  merely  for  the  day-to-day 
administration  of  Dublin  Castle.  Even 
that  was  slackly  performed,  and  on  terms 
which  (as  the  Larne  gtm-running  in  1914 
showed)  impaired  the  efficiency  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Constabulary.  His  qualities 
for  his  task  were  good  nature  and  humour ; 
his  defect  was  indolence. 

As  time  went  on,  Birrell  saved  himself 
much  trouble  by  following  a  single  pre- 
scription— to  act  on  the  advice  of  the 
Irish  leader  John  Redmond.  There  was 
much  to  be  said  for  it ;  Redmond  was  not 
only  a  great  Irish  patriot,  but  a  good 
friend  to  England  and  a  loyal  ally  of  the 
liberal  government ;  and  since  he  was  cast 
for  the  part  of  Ireland's  future  ruler,  why 
not  leave  it  to  him  to  prepare  the  ground  ? 
Unfortunately  he  was  not  a  reliable 
mentor.  Living  mainly  in  England  he  had 
no  longer  an  inside  knowledge  of  Irish 
movements,  and  especially  after  August 
1914  failed  to  realize  either  the  shock  to 
nationalist  sentiment  through  the  shelving 
of  home  rule  or  the  power  of  Sinn  Fein  to 
overthrow  his  own  position.  John  Dillon 
[q.v.]  was  much  better  informed  on  these 
subjects,  but  he  had  not  Birrell's  ear. 
Despite  warnings  the  chief  secretary  did 
nothing  whatever  to  counter  the  plotting 
of  the  Sinn  Feiners,  luitil  at  Easter  1916 
they  launched  in  collusion  with  Germany 
their  open,  armed  rebellion.  The  long-term 
effects  which  that  famous  rising  would 
leave  on  the  history  of  Irish  separatism 
could  hardly  be  foreseen  at  the  moment. 
But  what  was  obvious  to  everybody  was 
the  military  danger  of  an  Irish  revolt  at 
the  height  of  a  great  European  war,  and 
Birrell's  complete  blindness  to  its  coming 
until  it  came.  The  condemnation  passed 
on  him  was  universal.  He  did  not  challenge 
it ;  his  resignation  speech  in  the  House  of 
Commons  was  a  frank  and  penitent 
admission  of  the  facts.  As  such  it  evoked 
respect  and  sympathy  on  all  sides;  but 
his  political  career  was  ended.  There  could 


who  introduced  it,  piloted  it,  and  dvu-ing  I  be  no  question  of  public  responsibilities 

82 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Blackett 


being  entrusted  to  him  again,  and  he  did 
not  seek  re-election  to  parliament  at  the 
general  election  of  1918. 

Birrell  survived  this  catastrophe  by 
over  seventeen  years.  He  settled  quietly 
in  Chelsea,  surrounded  by  the  care  of  the 
Locker-Lampson  brothers  and  of  his  wife's 
sons  by  her  first  marriage.  He  resumed 
writing;  a  sketch  of  his  father-in-law, 
Frederick  Locker-Lampson,  appeared  in 
1920,  followed  by  two  volumes  of  collected 
essays  and  one  of  reminiscences,  the  last 
published  posthumously  in  1937.  These 
neither  raised  nor  lowered  his  literary 
reputation,  which  rests  essentially  on  the 
two  earlier  volumes  of  Obiter  Dicta. 

Birrell  died  in  London  20  November 
1933.  He  was  not  a  great  nor  even  a 
fortunate  statesman.  But  as  a  writer  he 
has  stronger  claims,  being  one  of  that 
happy  fellowship  who,  by  recording  good 
hves  of  the  past  and  adorning  their  tale 
with  scintillant  wit  and  kindly  humour, 
have  helped  to  make  goodness  attractive 
to  the  less  gifted  of  their  own  and  future 
generations. 

A  portrait  of  Birrell,  which  hangs  in  the 
National  Gallery  of  Ireland,  Dublin,  was 
painted  by  Sir  William  Orpen  who  also 
executed  a  chalk  drawing  of  him  (1909) 
which  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
London;  a  portrait  by  Roger  Fry  (1928) 
was  sold  when  Birrell' s  effects  were  dis- 
persed. A  small  version  is  in  the  possession 
of  Mr.  Charles  Tennyson.  A  cartoon  by 
'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  18  January 
1906. 

[The  Times,  21  November  1933 ;  Augustine 
Birrell,  Things  Past  Redress,  1937.] 
Crewe. 
R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 


BLACKETT,  Sir  BASIL  PHILLOTT 

(1882-1935),  financial  administrator,  was 
born  8  January  1882  in  Calcutta,  where 
both  his  parents  (the  Rev.  William  Russell 
Blackett,  at  that  time  principal  of  a 
theological  training  college,  and  later  of 
another  in  London,  and  his  wife,  Grace 
A.nne  Phillott),  were  missionaries.  They 
returned  to  England  shortly  afterwards 
and  in  1893  the  father  died,  leaving  his 
widow  in  straitened  circumstances,  with 
five  children  of  whom  Basil  was  the  eldest 
ion.  He  went  to  Marlborough  as  a  founda- 
:ion  scholar  and  was  elected  to  a  classical 
scholarship  at  University  College,  Oxford, 
ivhere  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  literae 
lumaniores  in  1904.  In  the  same  year  he 
mtered  for  the  civil  service  examination, 
ntending  to  go  to  India,  but  being  placed 


first  he  chose  the  Treasury.  On  the  out- 
break of  war  ten  years  later  he  was  in  the 
financial  division,  and  had  been  secretary 
to  the  royal  commission  on  Indian  finance 
and  currency  (1913-1914).  Foreign  ex- 
change problems  took  him  to  America  for 
the  first  time  in  October  1914  and  he  went 
again  a  year  later  as  a  member  of  the 
Anglo-French  financial  commission,  so 
that  when  the  United  States  entered  the 
war  he  was  the  natural  choice  for  the  post 
of  representative  of  the  British  Treasury 
hi  Washington;  this  he  held  from  1917 
to  1919.  On  his  return  he  became  the 
first  controller  of  finance  at  the  Treasury, 
and  in  1922  he  went  to  India  as  finance 
member  of  the  viceroy's  council. 

Blackett's  work  in  India  during  the  next 
five  years  showed  him  to  be  not  only  an 
exceptional  but  an  outstanding  financial 
administrator.  Within  a  twelvemonth  he 
had  initiated  and  put  through  three  major 
financial  reforms.  The  Indian  railways 
were  ripped  out  of  the  central  budget  and 
placed  on  an  independent  footing;  the 
charges  for  the  repayment  or  avoidance 
of  public  debt  were  concentrated  into  a 
statutory  sinking  fund;  and  the  eight 
provincial  finance  members  were  brought 
together  for  the  first  time  in  a  conference, 
which  has  been  repeated  annually,  to 
compare  and  co-ordinate  their  problems 
and  to  discover  means  of  reducing,  if  not 
abolishing,  the  provincial  contributions  to 
the  central  revenues.  The  same  principles 
of  conference  and  co-ordination  were 
applied  by  the  finance  member  to  the 
vexed  poUtical  questions  with  which,  more 
and  more,  he  came  to  be  concerned  in 
virtue  of  his  personal  prestige.  That 
prestige  was  enhanced  by  the  fact  that, 
although  he  lacked  both  talent  and  experi- 
ence as  a  debater,  he  taught  himself  the 
art  and  became  leader  of  the  legislative 
assembly,  in  which  he  introduced  six 
successive  budgets  and  fixed  the  value  of 
the  rupee  at  eighteen  pence. 

When  Blackett  returned  to  England  in 
1928,  by  way  of  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
China,  Japan,  and  North  America,  he  was 
a  marked  man  for  whom  a  future  had  been 
prepared  outside  the  civil  service.  His 
friend  Mr.  Montagu  (later  Lord)  Norman, 
then  governor,  sponsored  his  election  to 
the  court  of  directors  of  the  Bank  of 
England  in  1929 ;  a  merger  of  cable  and 
wireless  services  provided  an  opportunity 
for  placing  him  in  charge  of  the  new 
Imperial  and  International  Communica- 
tions Company ;  and  a  place  was  waiting 
for  him  in  London  from  which  his  influence 


83 


Blackett 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


could  be  brought  to  bear  on  colonial 
currency  problems.  In  order  to  undertake 
this  triple  task  he  left  the  Treasury  for 
the  City.  But  within  three  years  the 
crisis  of  1931  and  the  devaluation  of 
sterling  created  a  breach  of  continuity  in 
which  he  found  himself  on  the  side  of  the 
future  rather  than  of  the  past.  His 
attention  was  increasingly  engaged  by 
national  problems  and  he  became  a  convert 
to  planned  money  (on  which  he  published 
a  book  imder  that  title  in  1932)  and  to 
budgeting  for  a  deficit.  He  was  a  prophet 
of  the  '  sterling  area ' — a  phrase  which  he 
popularized  if  he  did  not  invent  it.  He 
also  stood  for  parliament  as  an  unofficial 
conservative  candidate  for  the  St.  Maryle- 
bone  division  in  1932,  but  was  not  elected. 
In  the  same  year  he  resigned  the  chairman- 
ship of  the  Imperial  and  International 
Communications  Company  and  joined  the 
board  of  De  Beers  Consolidated  Mines. 
He  also  took  a  keen  interest  in  the  British 
Social  Hygiene  Council,  of  which  he  was 
president. 

Blackett  died  in  hospital  at  Marburg, 
Germany,  as  the  result  of  a  motor  accident 
15  August  1935.  While  he  was  still  at 
Marlborough  an  injury  to  his  leg  had 
caused  him  to  spend  a  period  of  enforced 
idleness  in  a  visit  to  Germany  which 
roused  an  interest  that  did  not  end  with 
his  membership  of  the  international  com- 
mittee on  reparations  which  produced  the 
Young  Plan  in  1929,  and  when  he  died  he 
was  on  his  way  to  lecture  at  Heidelberg 
University.  A  volume  of  translations 
published  posthumously  in  1937  bears 
witness  to  his  abiding  scholarship  and 
particular  interest  in  Byzantine  Greek, 
acquired  from  his  father.  A  window  in 
Durham  Cathedral — the  Blacketts  are  a 
Durham  family — and  the  school  observa- 
tory at  Marlborough  preserve  his  memory. 

Blackett  was  twice  married :  first  in  1905 
to  Marion  Enid,  daughter  of  David  Provan 
Graham,  of  Glasgow;  secondly,  in  1920 
to  Beatrice,  daughter  of  Edward  Henry 
Bonner,  of  New  York.  He  had  no  children. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1915,  K.C.B.  in 
1921,  and  K.C.S.I.  in  1926. 

[The  Times,  16  August  1935;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  A.  SlEPMANN. 

BLAND-SUTTON,  Sm  JOHN,  baronet 
(1855-1936),  surgeon.  [See  Sutton.] 

BLOOD,  Sir  BINDON  (1842-1940), 
general,  was  born  near  Jedburgh  7 
November  1842,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
Bindon   Blood,   of  Cranaher,   co.   Clare, 


civil  engineer,  by  his  first  wife,  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Robert  Stewart,  of  Hawick. 
He  was  a  descendant  of  Colonel  Thomas 
Blood  [q.v.]  who  attempted  to  seize  the 
crown  jewels  in  1671.  He  was  educated  at 
the  Royal  School,  Banagher,  and  Queen's 
College,  Galway,  whence  he  went  to  the 
Indian  Military  Seminary  at  Addiscombe, 
near  Croydon,  and  in  1860  received  his 
first  commission  as  temporary  lieutenant 
in  the  Royal  Engineers.  For  the  next  ten 
years  he  specialized  in  signalling  and 
pontoon  bridge  construction.  He  was 
responsible  for  the  design  of  the  boats 
which  replaced  the  old  sausage  system  of 
pontoons,  and  he  became  the  first 
commander  of  the  R.E.  Telegraph  Troop 
formed  in  1870.  He  embarked  for  India  in 
1871 ,  and,  except  for  short  periods  of  active 
service  in  Zululand  and  South  Africa, 
served  there  for  thirty-five  years.  On 
arrival  in  India  he  was  posted  to  the  Bengal 
Sappers  and  Miners  at  Roorkee  where  he 
remained  for  the  next  few  years  enjoying 
much  sport  and  big-game  shooting. 

In  1873  Blood  was  promoted  captain, 
and  served  on  the  committee  under  Sir  F. 
(later  Earl)  Roberts  [q.v.]  which  arranged 
for  the  ceremony  to  proclaim  Queen 
Victoria  Empress  of  India  in  1877.  To- 
wards the  end  of  that  year  he  commanded 
on  the  North-West  Frontier  part  of  a 
punitive  expedition  against  the  Jowaki 
Afridis  (1877-1878)  for  which  he  received 
the  medal  and  clasp.  In  August  1878  he 
came  home  on  leave,  but  on  the  outbreak 
of  the  Zulu  war  he  was  drafted  to  Africa 
early  in  1879  as  commanding  royal 
engineer,  1st  division  Zulu  Field  Force. 
He  was  made  brevet  major  and  received 
the  medal  and  clasp  for  his  services  in  the 
campaign.  On  his  return  to  England  at 
the  end  of  1879  he  found  orders  awaiting 
him  to  proceed  to  Kabul,  where  he  arrived 
in  1880  a  few  months  after  the  outbreak 
of  the  second  Afghan  war.  He  took  very 
httle  part  in  the  actual  fighting  and  re- 
tvimed  to  Roorkee  towards  the  end  of  the 
year  with  the  medal  of  the  campaign.  He 
left  India  in  1882  and  was  posted  to 
command  the  26th  Field  Company,  Royal 
Engineers,  at  Shorncliffe,  but  after  only  a 
few  months  was  ordered  on  active  service 
to  Egypt,  where  his  sappers  took  part  in 
the  battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir.  This  cam- 
paign brought  him  promotion  to  brevet 
lieutenant-colonel  (1882),  the  medal  and 
clasp,  and  the  Osmanieh  Egyptian  medal. 

Blood  returned  to  England  in  1883  but 
soon  succeeded  in  getting  himself  posted 
once  more  to  India,  rejoining  the  Sappers 


84 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bone 


and  Miners  as  commandant  in  Simla  in 
1885.  Seven  years  later  he  was  promoted 
brigadier-general  and  in  1 894  colonel  on  the 
staff  in  command  of  the  garrison  at  Rawal- 
pindi. In  the  following  year  he  was  made 
chief  staff  oflicer  of  the  Chitral  relief  force. 
For  these  services  he  received  the  medal 
and  clasp  and  was  appointed  K.C.B.  He 
came  home  in  1896  but  returned  before 
the  end  of  the  year  to  command  the 
Malakand  Field  Force  and  the  Buner 
Field  Force  (1897-1898).  He  was  promoted 
major-general  in  1898.  Owing  to  Blood's 
skilful  handling  the  campaign  was  speedily 
brought  to  an  end.  Returning  to  India 
from  short  leave,  he  commanded  the 
Meerut  division  for  the  next  two  years, 
but  early  in  1901  Lord  Kitchener  [q.v.] 
asked  for  his  services  in  South  Africa,  and 
as  lieutenant-general  he  commanded  the 
troops  in  the  Eastern  Transvaal  with 
headquarters  at  Middelburg  and  for  some 
months  was  engaged  on  various  '  rounding- 
up'  operations.  Late  in  the  year  he 
returned  in  order  to  take  up  the  important 
military  command  of  the  Punjab.  This 
appointment  he  held,  having  been  pro- 
moted full  general  in  1906,  imtil  he  retired 
in  November  1907  when  he  settled  in 
London,  continuing  to  lead  a  very  active 
hfe. 

Iri  1909  Blood  was  appointed  G.C.B. 
and  in  1914  colonel-commandant,  Royal 
Engineers.  For  the  next  sixteen  years  his 
activities  were  largely  concerned  with  the 
interests  of  the  corps,  but  he  found  time 
for  recruiting  work  in  connexion  with  the 
war  of  1914-1918.  \Vhen  he  was  ninety 
years  of  age  (1932)  he  was  appointed 
G.C.V.O.,  and  four  years  later  he  was  the 
first  officer  to  fill  the  re-created  post  of 
chief  royal  engineer. 

Blood's  great  popularity  earned  him 
many  friends.  His  successes  were  due  to 
his  brilliant  staff  work  and  strategy  and  his 
carefully  acquired  knowledge  of  the  habits 
and  temperament  of  opposing  forces. 

Blood  married  in  1883  Charlotte  Eliza- 
beth, second  daughter  of  Sir  Auckland 
Colvin  [q.v.],  a  distinguished  Indian  and 
Egyptian  administrator,  and  had  one 
daughter.  He  died  in  London  16  May 
1940,  at  the  great  age  of  ninety-seven,  his 
name  having  appeared  in  the  Army  List 
for  eighty  years. 

[The  Times,  17  May  1940;  Sir  Bindon 
Blood,  Four  Score  Years  and  Ten,  1933; 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Engineers,  vol.  liv, 
1940;  Sir  J.  F.  Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant, 
(Official)  History  of  the  War  in  South  Africa, 
1899-1902,  1906-1910.]  C.  V.  Owkn. 


BONE,  WILLIAM  ARTHLTR  (1871- 
1938),  chemist  and  fuel  technologist,  was 
born  at  Stockton-on-Tees  19  March  1871, 
the  eldest  son  of  Christopher  Bone,  tea 
merchant,  of  Stockton,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Elizabeth  Hutchinson.  He  was  educated 
at  Middlesbrough  High  School,  and  then 
at  the  Friends'  School  at  Ackworth 
whence  he  entered  Stockton  High  School ; 
there  the  science  master  was  a  particularly 
inspiring  teacher.  Bone's  uncle,  T.  C. 
Hutchinson,  was  manager  of  the  Skinnin- 
grove  iron- works,  in  which  the  boy  spent 
much  of  his  spare  time.  These  two 
influences  led  him  towards  a  scientific 
career.  Before  entering  the  Owens  College, 
Manchester,  in  1888,  he  spent  a  year  at 
the  Leys  School,  Cambridge.  After  gradua- 
tion in  chemistry  three  years  later,  he 
continued  to  work  in  Henry  Baily  Dixon's 
laboratory  at  the  Owens  College  and  his 
first  paper,  entitled  'The  behaviour  of 
ethylene  on  explosion  with  less  than  its 
volume  of  oxygen',  was  published  in  1892. 
In  1896  he  went  to  study  for  a  year  in 
Victor  Meyer's  laboratory  at  Heidelberg 
and  worked  there  on  the  Indoxazen  deriva- 
tives. Returning  to  England,  he  was  head 
of  the  chemistry  department  at  the 
Battersea  Polytechnic  for  two  years.  In 
1898  he  went  back  to  the  Owens  College 
as  lecturer  in  chemistry  and  metallurgy 
and  worked  along  with  W.  H.  Perkin  [q.v.] 
on  various  carboxylic  acids.  During  the 
next  ten  years  Bone  continued  researches 
in  organic  chemistry  and  published  a 
number  of  papers  with  collaborators. 
Whatever  Bone  undertook,  he  pursued 
with  relentless  vigour;  nevertheless  his 
early  interests  were  at  this  time  drawing 
him  back  to  study  the  chemistry  of 
combustion,  which  became  his  life's  work. 

In  1906  Bone  was  appointed  professor 
of  fuel  and  metallurgy,  and  in  1910  first 
Livesey  professor  of  coal,  gas,  and  fuel 
industries  at  the  university  of  Leeds. 
After  six  years  of  activity,  he  was  called 
to  London  in  1912  to  estabhsh  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Science,  South  Kensing- 
ton, a  department  of  fuel  technology,  and 
became  professor  of  chemical  technology 
in  the  university  of  London ;  he  retired  in 
1936.  He  was  a  fine  experimentalist  and 
the  founder  of  a  flourishing  school  of  fuel 
technology  at  the  Imperial  College  of 
Science  and  Technology.  Bone  continued 
the  supervision  of  researches  on  blast 
furnace  reactions  there  after  his  retire- 
ment, but  a  serious  illness  ended  his  life's 
work  and  he  died  in  London  11  June  1938. 
He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1905,  received 


85 


Bone 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  Davy  medal  in  1936,  and  delivered 
the  Bakerian  lecture  in  1932.  He  received 
the  Melchett  medal  of  the  Institute  of 
Fuel  in  1931,  and  the  medal  of  the  Society 
of  Chemical  Industry  in  1933. 

Most  of  Bone's  work  was  published 
along  with  collaborators  in  the  Philoso- 
phical Transactions  and  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society  and  the  Journal  of  the 
Chemical  Society.  He  summarized  the 
main  content  of  his  life's  work  in  a  lecture 
delivered  to  the  Society  of  Chemical 
Industry  in  1933:  his  early  interests  in 
iron  smelting  combined  with  the  influence 
of  Dixon  at  the  Owens  College  enabled 
him  to  envisage  combustion  from  both 
the  technical  and  the  scientific  points  of 
view.  His  early  work  on  combustion  was 
in  support  of  some  long  neglected  experi- 
ments of  John  Dalton  [q.v.],  which  showed 
that  in  hydrocarbon  combustion  the 
hydrogen  was  not  burnt  preferentially: 
during  this  work  he  investigated  the 
explosive  combustion  of  ethylene,  acety- 
lene, cyanogen,  hydrogen,  and  pentane. 
Perhaps  the  most  important  section  of  his 
whole  work  was  that  on  the  slow  combus- 
tion of  the  hydrocarbons  which  began  in 
1902  and  continued  until  the  end  of  his 
career.  As  a  result  of  these  researches. 
Bone  formulated  an  hypothesis,  known  as 
the  hydroxylation  theory  of  hydrocarbon 
combustion.  Although  more  recent  work 
on  the  reactions  of  hydrocarbons  and 
oxygen  shows  that  the  'hydroxylation 
theory'  does  not  truly  represent  all  that 
happens,  nevertheless  the  hypothesis  was 
a  useful  guide  in  the  pioneer  work  which 
he  carried  out  in  this  field,  and  he  staunchly 
defended  it. 

While  he  Avas  at  Leeds,  Bone  carried 
his  researches  on  gaseous  combustion  to 
high  pressures  and  he  continued  this  work 
at  South  Kensington  in  collaboration  with 
Dr.  Dudley  Maurice  Newitt  and  Dr.  Donald 
Thomas  Alfred  Townend,  and  they  eventu- 
ally reached  initial  pressures  of  750  atmo- 
spheres and  explosion  pressures  as  high 
as  7,000  atmospheres.  The  combustion 
of  carbon  monoxide  and  the  influence  of 
water  on  its  combustion  became  the  subject 
of  an  elaborate  series  of  investigations 
which  illustrate  the  exceptional  pertinacity 
possessed  by  Bone.  He  eventually  proved 
that  carbon  monoxide  could  be  btu'nt 
without  the  intervention  of  any  water 
vapour.  Quite  early  in  his  career  he  set 
about  studying  the  catalytic  combustion 
at  surfaces  of  various  kinds.  At  one  period 
of  this  work  (1908-1912),  along  with  C.  D. 
McCourt,  he  developed  the  incandescent 


surface  combustion  process  (to  which  the 
name  Bonecourt  was  given).  The  process 
was  adapted  to  crucible  and  muffle 
furnaces,  to  steam-raising  in  multi-tubular 
boilers,  etc.  He  was  also  known  for  the 
improvements  which  he  introduced  in 
methods  for  the  accurate  analysis  of  gases. 

Bone  and  his  collaborator,  R.  P.  Fraser, 
from  about  1930  onwards  carried  out  the 
most  remarkable  series  of  photographic 
investigations  of  flame  propagation  which 
had  been  made  up  to  that  date. 

Bone  had  a  very  wide  knowledge  of  coal 
and  its  treatment  and  his  advice  was 
widely  sought  by  industry.  In  1919  he 
began  to  publish  his  researches  on  the 
constitution  of  coal.  He  proved  that 
the  benzenoid  constituents  increase  with 
the  maturity  of  the  coal.  Of  his  other 
books,  the  last,  written  jointly  with  G.  W. 
Himus  and  entitled  Coal,  its  Constitution 
and  Uses,  was  published  in  1936. 

Bone's  early  interest  in  blast  furnace 
technology  culminated  in  studies  with  his 
assistant,  H.  L.  Saunders,  on  the  chemical 
reactions  within  the  blast  furnace;  the 
importance  of  the  direct  reduction  of  ore 
by  carbon  was  established. 

Bone  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1893 
to  Kate  (died  1914),  daughter  of  Richard 
Hind,  J.P.,  who  was  twice  mayor  of  Stock- 
ton, and  had  one  son  and  two  daughters ; 
secondly,  in  1916  to  Mabel  Isabel  (died 
1922),  daughter  of  John  Edward  Liddiard, 
civil  engineer,  of  Swindon.  Like  his  father, 
Bone  was  fiercely  independent,  and  force- 
ful in  expression.  Rugged  in  appearance 
and  above  the  average  in  stature,  he  had 
a  positive  and  dominant  personality  which 
inevitably  led  him  into  controversies; 
nevertheless  many  of  those  who  disagreed 
with  him  admired  his  character.  He 
had  wide  interests  and  a  memory  richly 
stocked  with  Icnowledge.  He  was  a 
staunch  supporter  of  the  policy  of  free 
trade. 

[The  Times,  13  June  1938 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7,  January 
1939  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  C.  Egerton. 

BOOT,  JESSE,  first  Baron  Trent 
(1850-1931),  man  of  business  and  philan- 
thropist, was  born  in  Nottingham  2  June 
1850,  of  humble  origin.  His  lineage  has 
been  traced  back  to  one  Richard  Boote  of 
Diseworth,  Leicestershire,  who  died  in 
1577.  But  he  himself  liked  to  recall  that 
he  was  the  grandson  of  an  agricultural 
labourer:  his  family  had  lived  for  over  150 
years  in  various  Nottinghamshire  villages. 


86 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Borden 


He  was  the  only  son  of  John  Boot,  by  his 
second  wife,  Mary,  daughter  of  Benjamin 
Wills,  of  Nottingham.  His  father  traded 
as  a  herbalist  in  Nottingham,  and  died 
when  his  son  was  ten  years  old.  Three 
years  later  Jesse  left  school  and  took 
complete  control  of  the  shop.  He  devoted 
all  his  spare  time  to  the  study  of  pharmacy, 
but  it  was  not  until  he  was  twenty-seven 
that  he  opened  his  first  chemist's  shop  in 
an  adjoining  street.  His  untiring  energy 
made  this  venture  a  success,  and  after 
turning  his  business  into  a  limited  liability 
company  in  1888,  he  went  on  opening  new 
shops  until  he  had  built  up  the  largest 
retail  chemists '  undertaking  in  the  world. 

In  middle  age  Boot  had  a  complete 
breakdown  in  health.  A  description  which 
he  gave  of  his  early  days,  of  the  work 
which  he  did,  and  of  the  hours  which  he 
kept,  makes  it  no  surprise  that  his  health 
gave  way,  but  remarkable  that  he  lived 
at  aU.  He  says  that  after  being  busy  all 
day  in  the  shop,  he  had  usually  hours  of 
writing  to  do.  Later  on  when  there  were 
branches  to  manage,  he  would  work  at 
stocktaking  all  through  the  night  for  a 
fortnight  on  end.  He  was  so  worn  out  that 
when  he  was  thirty-six,  anyone  could  have 
bought  his  business  very  cheap.  When  he 
was -fifty  an  insidious  disease,  ossification 
of  the  muscles,  set  in,  crippling  him  so 
hopelessly  that  he  had  to  be  carried  about 
like  a  child.  But  this  disability  did  not 
affect  his  working  powers:  his  business 
and  philanthropic  labours  increased  with 
his  malady.  He  owed  much  to  his  wife, 
for  she  was  a  woman  of  remarkable  judge- 
ment and  business  capacity,  and  her 
assistance  was  of  the  greatest  value  to  him. 

In  1892  Boot's  company  began  the 
manufacture  of  its  own  drugs  and  other 
commodities.  Large  modern  factories  were 
built  at  Nottingham,  and  the  business, 
both  retail  and  wholesale,  grew  rapidly.  A 
new  idea  was  the  opening  in  his  shops  of 
other  'lines',  circulating  libraries,  restau- 
rants, jewelry,  silver,  and  art  departments. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  the  company 
rendered  notable  service  by  supplying  the 
troops  with  effective  respirators  for  resist- 
ing poison  gas,  and  millions  of  tablets  for 
sterilizing  water.  In  1920  Boot  sold  the 
controlling  interest  in  his  Pure  Drug 
Company  to  the  United  Drug  Company  of 
America,  and  a  few  years  later  he  retired 
from  business,  to  be  succeeded  as  chairman 
of  all  his  companies  by  his  only  son. 

Boot's  benefactions  to  Nottingham  were 
on  the  most  munificent  scale,  and  cannot 
have  fallen  far  short  of  £2,000,000.    His 


greatest  gift  was  the  new  University 
College  at  Highfields,  together  with  the 
park  of  several  hundred  acres  in  which  it 
stands.  Part  of  this  park  was  devoted  to 
the  public,  and  used  for  sports  and  games. 
He  made  other  gifts  to  the  city,  and  con- 
tributed handsomely  to  other  good  causes. 
In  recognition  he  received  the  freedom  of 
Nottingham  in  1920.  He  was  a  man  of 
plain,  straightforward  character,  and  his 
wealth  afforded  him  welcome  opportunities 
of  extended  social  service. 

Boot  was  knighted  in  1909  and  created 
a  baronet  in  1917.  In  1929  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Trent,  of  Notting- 
ham. He  married  in  1886  Florence  Anne, 
daughter  of  William  Rowe,  of  St.  Heliers, 
Jersey,  and  had  one  son  and  two  daughters. 
He  died  at  Millbrook,  Jersey,  13  June 
1931,  and  was  succeeded  as  second  baron 
by  his  son,  John  Campbell  (born  1889). 

Portraits  of  Boot,  by  Denholm  Davis, 
at  the  ages  of  sixty  and  seventy,  are 
respectively  in  the  possession  of  the 
second  Lord  Trent  and  of  the  Dowager 
Lady  Trent.  A  bust,  by  C.  L.  J.  Doman, 
stands  outside  the  Nottingham  University 
College  gates. 

[The  Times,  15  June  1931.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

BORDEN,     Sir     ROBERT     LAIRD 

(1854-1937),  Canadian  statesman,  was 
born  on  a  farm  near  Grand  Pre  in  Nova 
Scotia  26  June  1854,  the  eldest  surviving 
son  of  Andrew  Borden,  by  his  wife, 
Eunice  Jane,  daughter  of  John  Laird, 
schoolmaster,  of  Grand  Pre,  who  was  of 
Scottish  descent.  His  father,  a  farmer  at 
the  time  of  Robert's  birth,  was  later 
station-master  on  the  railway  at  Grand 
Pre.  His  great-grandfather.  Perry  Borden , 
of  Kentish  descent,  emigrated  from  Massa- 
chusetts to  Nova  Scotia  about  1763.  His 
mother's  father  was  a  classical  scholar  and 
mathematician.  Robert  Borden  was  edu- 
cated at  Acacia  Villa  Academy,  Horton, 
and  taught  classics  and  mathematics  in 
Nova  Scotia  and  New  Jersey  at  an  early 
age.  At  nineteen  he  was  apprenticed  to  the 
law  in  Halifax,  where  he  later  practised. 
He  was  called  to  the  bar  in  1878  and 
took  silk  in  1891.  At  twenty-eight  his 
income  was  large  and,  despite  his  political 
preoccupations,  he  remained  a  practising 
lawyer  until  his  fifties. 

An  industrious  and  able  lawyer,  Borden 
hoped  for  a  judicial  position.  He  entered 
parliament  reluctantly  (as  conservative 
member  for  the  city  and  county  of  Halifax 
in  1896),  and  never  found  it  congenial,  but 


87 


Borden 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


he  soon  became  a  front-bencher,  and,  in 
1901  at  the  age  of  forty-seven,  on  the 
resignation  of  Sir  Charles  Tupper  [q.v.], 
leader  of  the  conservative  party,  then  in 
opposition.  He  always  called  himself  a 
liberal  conservative,  being  at  heart  a 
reformer.  He  was  fascinated  by  the  long 
constitutional  development  towards 
Canadian  nationhood,  a  process  which 
accelerated  diu-ing  his  lifetime.  He  wanted 
a  civil  service  free  from  patronage  and 
doubted  whether  any  real  advance  could 
have  been  made  except  under  his  so-called 
vmion  government,  which  showed  little 
'enthusiasm'.  He  wanted  railways  and 
water-powers  nationahzed.  Even  in  oppor^ 
sition  he  secured  the  initiation  of  free 
rural  mails,  and  curbed  corruption  in 
elections.  His  Halifax  manifesto  (1907) 
called  for  other  reforms:  reform  of  the 
Senate ;  closer  supervision  of  immigration ; 
nationalization  of  telephones  and  tele- 
graphs ;  a  public  utilities  commission  close- 
ly controlling  corporations  with  national 
franchises;  control  of  their  natural  re- 
sources by  the  western  provinces;  a 
protective  tariff.  Except  that  last  named, 
such  ideas  did  not  attract  conservatives ; 
Borden  had  to  face  mutinies  in  his  own 
party.  Besides,  the  great  prosperity  of  Can- 
ada since  1896  had  made  the  liberals,  under 
Sir  Wilfrid  Laurier  [q.v.],  very  strong. 

Two  clouds  now  appeared  in  the  political 
sky:  the  threat  of  national  bankruptcy 
through  extravagant  railway  building  and 
the  threat  of  war  in  Europe.  The  election 
of  1908  revealed  an  ebb  in  liberal  fortvmes. 
In  the  1909  session  a  further  loan  to  the 
Grand  Trunk  Pacific  Railway  was  keenly 
debated,  Borden  maintaining  that  since 
the  taxpayers  had  put  about  $250,000,000 
into  the  enterprise — nine-tenths  of  the 
cost — the  government  should  expropriate. 
But  the  question  of  naval  defence  over- 
shadowed all  others.  To  a  conservative 
resolution  Laurier  proposed  a  less  definite 
amendment  which,  however,  gave  assur- 
ance that  Canada,  in  emergency,  would 
make  any  sacrifice  required.  Borden, 
urging  a  Canadian  navy,  feared  that  a 
crisis  might  come  before  it  could  be  built. 
Laurier  accordingly  modified  his  amend- 
ment, which  was  passed  unanimously.  From 
the  Imperial  Conference  of  July  1909  two 
plans  for  a  Canadian  fleet  unit  emerged, 
one  to  cost  £400,000  annually,  the  other 
£600,000.  It  soon  appeared  that  Quebec 
conservatives  were  taking  the  same  stand 
as  Quebec  nationalists  in  opposing  any 
immediate  action.  This  hardly  justified 
the  charge  that  'the  conservative  party  of 


Canada  allied  with  Quebec  isolationists 
to  oust  Laurier'.  Borden  had  as  much 
difficulty  with  conservatives  elsewhere  as 
with  Quebec  conservatives.  The  latter 
wanted  him  to  do  nothing;  the  former 
denounced  his  support,  for  unanimity's 
sake,  of  the  resolution  put  forward  by 
Laurier,  who  was  experiencing  the  same 
division  between  Quebec  liberals  and 
liberals  elsewhere.  The  double  aspect  of 
the  case,  the  political  necessity  that  the 
fleet  unit,  however  smaU,  be  Canadian, 
preferably  built  in  Canada,  and  the 
possibility  of  the  outbreak  of  war  before 
this  unit  could  be  ready,  lent  plausibility 
to  the  'die-hards'  of  all  parties.  Few 
could  be  so  isolated  as  to  escape  the  din 
of  Germany's  naval  preparations,  but  the 
government,  in  touch  with  the  Admiralty, 
could  best  judge  the  risks. 

The  naval  defence  bill  of  1910,  providing 
for  eleven  ships,  to  cost  $11,000,000, 
passed  by  a  majority  of  forty -one.  During 
the  same  session  a  conservative  cabal, 
outside  Quebec,  made  Borden  consider 
resignation.  Meanwhile  Laurier,  touring 
the  western  provinces,  was  being  heckled 
on  his  failure  to  redeem  his  promise  of  free  ' 
trade.  Now,  it  happened  that  in  March 
1910  the  United  States  of  America  had 
offered  the  Canadian  government  better 
tariff  relations .  Early  in  1 9 11  the  Canadian 
minister  of  finance  divulged  the  famous 
reciprocity  proposals.  These  were  so  close 
to  what  both  parties  had  long  sought  that 
they  seemed  an  overwhelming  triumph  for 
Laurier.  But  presently  the  banks,  manu- 
facturers, and  railways  began  a  crusade 
against  them;  indiscreet  utterances  of 
American  pubhc  men  set  the  Canadian 
heather  afire;  although  the  cabal  against 
Borden  was  broken,  there  was  a  strong 
defection  of  liberals  from  the  government. 
At  the  general  election  in  September  the 
conservatives  won  by  a  large  majority,  and 
Borden  became  prime  minister:  he  held 
this  position  until  his  resignation,  owing 
to  ill  health,  in  July  1920.  The  naval  bill 
of  1912-1913,  providing  for  an  emergency 
contribution  of  capital  ships  to  the  British 
navy,  was  rejected  by  the  Senate,  still 
strongly  Uberal. 

Borden  has  frequently  been  blamed  for 
'splitting'  Canada,  especially  by  his  con- 
scription measure  during  the  war  of  191 4- 
1918.  The  wisdom  of  conscription  in  1917 
was  certainly  debatable  in  view  of  Canada's 
sudden  industrialization,  added  to  her 
great  agricultural  output.  In  the  more 
perilous  war  of  1939-1945  a  liberal  govern- 
ment avoided  it;  but  it  may  be  doubted 


88 


D.N.B.  1931-1040 


Borden 


whether  this  latter  course  allayed  sectional 
odium:  certainly  rioting  in  Quebec  itself 
was  not  diminished.  From  Laurier's  point 
of  view  it  was  an  invitation  to  political 
suicide  to  decide  upon  conscription  and 
then  ask  him  to  join  a  union  government 
to  enforce  it.  Nevertheless,  Borden  ran 
risks  in  forming  in  October  a  government 
equally  divided,  except  for  the  premier- 
ship, between  both  parties.  This  govern- 
ment was  given  a  mandate,  in  a  general 
election,  to  proceed  with  conscription.  If 
Borden  erred,  he  erred  with  the  large 
majority. 

In  view  of  the  frequent  unqualified 
statement  that  it  was  Borden  who  'split' 
Canada  it  may  be  best  to  set  forth  here 
his  own  considered  statement,  made  at 
the  close  of  his  days,  and  before  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1939 :  'The  comparative 
failure  of  recruiting  in  Quebec  was  due, 
like  most  human  events,  to  a  variety  of 
causes,  and  it  would  be  difficult,  in  fact 
impossible,  to  assign  to  each  cause  its 
proportionate  influence. 

'The  Canadian  of  French  descent  is 
essentially  a  most  desirable  and  useful 
citizen.  He  is  devout,  industrious,  hard- 
working and  frugal,  thoroughly  devoted 
to  his  people  and  his  province  and  deeply 
attached  to  his  family,  his  friends  and  his 
neighbours.  To  leave  them  for  military 
service  beyond  the  seas,  to  cross  the  ocean 
in  unknown  adventure  made  no  appeal 
and  seemed  undesirable  and  indeed  des- 
perate. Naturally  his  vision  was  not  very 
wide  and  sometimes  it  did  not  extend  far 
beyond  the  boimdaries  of  his  parish.  He 
had  an  unbounded  belief  in  the  invincible 
power  of  Great  Britain  and  regarded  the 
co-operation  of  Canada  as  useless  and 
futile  as  well  as  burdensome.  It  was  no 
lack  of  courage  that  held  back  these  people 
from  enlistment.  Those  who  went  overseas 
proved  themselves  worthy  of  their  descent 
from  a  fighting  and  heroic  race. 

'One  might  suppose  that  the  savagery 
of  German  warfare  against  the  French 
people  would  have  aroused  her  kindred  in 
Quebec,  but  the  clergy  had  been  alienated 
from  their  natural  sympathy  by  confisca- 
tion of  religious  houses  and  property  and 
by  the  growth  of  atheistic  outlook  and 
tendency  in  France.  The  Quebec  peasant 
was  sometimes  told  that  the  sufferings  of 
the  French  people  were  just  retribution 
for  the  imholy  spoliation  and  humiliation 
of  the  Church  in  France.'  [Memoirs, 
pp.  612-613.] 

From  1763  onward  the  'split'  has  been 
there.  It  was  not  just  chance  that  Borden, 


a  native  of  Grand  Pre,  whence  the  French 
settlers,  or  Acadians,  were  expelled,  failed, 
despite  great  efforts,  to  bridge  the  rift 
between  Quebec  and  the  rest  of  Canada. 
Quebec  has  dominated  all  Canadian  life  in 
war  and  peace.  The  French-Canadians — 
Laurier  was  a  notable  exception,  and  there 
have  been  thousands  of  other  exceptions, 
among  the  less  eminent — have  adopted  all 
the  liberties  and  constitutional  privileges 
won  in  the  secular  development  in  Great 
Britain,  but  have  adopted  them  to  their 
own  purposes,  showing  little  consciousness 
of  the  responsibility  entailed.  The  legacy 
of  modern  France  they  have  never  acknow- 
ledged. Few  patriotic  men  have  been  so 
little  tainted  with  bigotry,  religious  or 
racial,  as  Borden,  who  loved  the  French, 
read  their  Uterature  from  an  early  age, 
and  finally  spoke  their  language  fluently. 
He  and  Laurier  respected  one  another 
highly. 

It  was  Laurier's  fortune,  early  in  his 
premiership,  to  experience  an  'Imperial' 
war  in  the  southern  hemisphere.  The 
expediency  and  morality  of  that  war  were 
debated  far  more  in  Great  Britain  itself 
than  in  Canada.  But  it  was  not  a  war 
requiring  a  levy  en  masse,  nor  did  it  bring 
Britain's  naval  supremacy  into  question. 
It  was  Borden's  fortune  to  be  premier 
when  a  long  expected  war  broke  out,  a 
war  which  threatened  Britain's  very 
existence,  but  which  was  fought  largely  on 
French  soil,  on  behalf  of  the  French  people. 
If  any  war,  short  of  the  invasion  of  Quebec 
itself,  could  have  united  Canada  it  was 
the  war  of  1914-1918.  Its  failure  to  do  so 
does  not  reflect  on  Borden's  statesmanship. 
Indeed,  few  Canadians  have  so  richly 
deserved  the  title  of  'statesman'  as  did 
he;  few  Canadians  have  played  so  large 
a  part  in  making  Canada  a  nation, 
and  for  the  consummation  of  unity  in 
Canada  no  idle  word  of  his  will  have  to  be 
forgotten,  no  mistaken  action  to  be 
forgiven. 

One  marked  characteristic  merits  an 
added  word.  Steady  judgement  and 
critical  power  are  not  common  virtues, 
especiaUy  in  public  men.  Borden  was  a 
critic  and  a  courageous  one.  No  one 
described  more  trenchantly  than  he  the 
withering  away  of  interest  in  education  in 
his  native  province,  or  the  general  phleg- 
matic unconcern  of  Canadians  about 
the  evils  of  corruption,  and  the  spoliation 
of  the  public  domain.  Generous  with 
praise,  putting  the  best  construction  on 
the  motives  of  others,  ready  to  work  with 
men  of  every  type  for  the  conmion  good. 


80 


Borden 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


he  yet  recorded,  even  of  men  still  living 
while  he  wrote,  faults  which  made  them 
dangerous.  Sometimes  he  did  not  mince 
words,  but  the  wickedest  Canadian  he  met 
in  high  places  was  blasted  with  an 
understatement :  '  untrustworthy ' . 

Borden  attended  the  Imperial  Confer- 
ence of  1917.  He  was  chief  Canadian  pleni- 
potentiary at  the  Paris  Peace  Conference 
in  1919  and  he  represented  Canada  at  the 
Washington  Conference  of  1921-1922  and 
Great  Britain  in  the  arbitration  with  Peru 
conducted  in  Paris  in  1922.  He  also 
represented  Canada  on  the  Council  of  the 
League  of  Nations,  and  was  chief  Canadian 
delegate  at  the  Assembly  in  1930.  He  was 
the  author  of  several  books,  including 
Canadian  Constitutional  Studies  (1921), 
Canada  in  the  Commonwealth  (1929),  and 
his  Memoirs  up  to  the  year  1920  (published 
posthumously  in  1938).  He  was  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council  in  1912  and  appointed 
G.C.M.G.  in  1914.  His  many  academic 
and  other  distinctions  included  the  chan- 
cellorship of  McGill  University  (1918- 
1920)  and  of  Queen's  University,  Kingston 
(1924-1929),  and  honorary  degrees  from 
numerous  British  and  Canadian  univer- 
sities. He  married  in  1889  Laura  (died 
1940),  yoimgest  daughter  of  Thomas 
Henry  Bond,  of  Halifax,  and  had  no 
children.  He  died  at  Ottawa  10  June  1937. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Borden  by  Dorothy 
Vicagi  (1925)  in  the  Law  Courts,  Halifax, 
Nova  Scotia,  and  another,  by  John 
MacgiUivray,  is  at  Acadia  University, 
Wolfville,  Nova  Scotia. 

[The  Times,  11  June  1937;  Robert  Laird 
Borden,  his  Memoirs,  edited  by  H.  Borden, 
2  vols.,  1938 ;  O.  D.  Skelton,  Life  and  Letters 
of  Sir  Wilfrid  Laurier  (New  York),  1922 ; 
R.  M.  Dawson,  The  Civil  Service  of  Canada, 
1929;  'Borden  and  Canadian  Nationhood'  in 
Canadian  Forum,  July  1937 ;  Hansard,  Parlia- 
mentary Debates ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Carleton  Stanley. 

BOSANQUET,       ROBERT       CARR 

(1871-1935),  archaeologist,  was  born  7 
June  1871  in  London  where  his  father, 
Charles  Bertie  Pulleine  Bosanquet,  of  Rock 
Hall,  near  Alnwick,  the  eldest  brother  of 
Bernard  Bosanquet  [q.v.],  was  then  acting 
as  honorary  secretary  to  the  recently 
formed  Charity  Organisation  Society.  His 
mother,  Eliza  Isabella,  eldest  daughter  of 
Ralph  Carr  (afterwards  Carr-EUison), 
belonged  to  a  well-known  Northumbrian 
family,  the  Carrs  of  Dunston  Hill,  co. 
Durham,  and  Hedgeley,  Northumberland. 
Robert  was  the  elder  son  in  a  family  of 
eight  children. 


After  a  brilliant  career  as  a  king's  scholar 
at  Eton,  where  he  won  the  Newcastle 
scholarship,  Bosanquet,  as  a  scholar  of 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  attracted  at- 
tention by  his  light  verse,  the  felicities  of 
which  lived  long  in  the  memories  of  his  con- 
temporaries, and  was  awarded  a  first  class 
in  both  parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1882  and 
1884).  As  Craven  student  (1895-1897)  he 
went  to  Greece  and  visited  museums  on  the 
continent,  following  this  with  the  excava- 
tion of  Housesteads  on  the  Roman  Wall  in 
1898,  the  results  of  which  he  published  in 
'The  Roman  Camp  at  Housesteads' 
{Archaeologia  ^liana,  vol.  xxv,  1904). 
These  activities  led  to  his  being  offered 
the  post  of  assistant  to  Ernest  Gardner 
[q.v.],  then  director  of  the  British  School 
of  Archaeology  in  Athens,  and  in  1900  he 
himself  became  director.  The  next  six 
years  were  spent  almost  entirely  in  Greek 
lands,  developing  the  activities  of  the 
school  in  Athens  and  supervising  its  ex- 
cavations on  the  islands  of  Melos  (Phyla- 
kopi),  Crete  (PraesosandPalaikastro),  and 
on  the  mainland  of  Greece  (Sparta). 

In  1905  the  death  of  his  father  made  it 
advisable  for  Bosanquet  to  live  within 
reach  of  the  Northumbrian  estate  to  which 
he  now  succeeded.  He  therefore  resigned 
the  post  at  Athens  and  in  1906  he  was 
appointed  to  the  newly  established  chair 
of  classical  archaeology  in  the  university 
of  Liverpool.  With  congenial  colleagues 
and  generous  financial  backing  an  Institute 
of  Archaeology  was  soon  built  up .  Although 
Egypt,  Greece,  and  Crete  were  the  chief 
fields  of  research,  a  beginning  was  also 
made  on  the  excavation  of  Roman  sites 
in  Wales,  his  appointment  enabling  him 
to  spend  one  term  in  travel  or  excavation. 

When,  therefore,  war  broke  out  in  1914, 
Bosanquet  was  involved  in  a  variety  of 
interests,  domestic  and  professional,  and 
he  had  gained  a  European  reputation.  He 
at  once  put  his  knowledge  of  the  Near 
East  at  the  disposal  of  the  War  Office,  but 
met  with  no  response,  and  he  was  glad  to 
be  attached  to  that  part  of  the  Friends ' 
Emergency  Committee  which  was  working 
for  the  defeated  Serbs  in  Albania  and 
Corfu.  In  July  1916  he  was  sent  to 
Salonika  as  agent  of  the  Serbian  Relief 
Fund  and  remained  there  until  his  health 
broke  down  after  attacks  of  malaria  and 
enteric.  For  this  mission  and  for  his  work 
in  Greece  he  received  the  Serbian  order  of 
St.  Sava  and  the  Greek  order  of  the 
Redeemer. 

In  1920  Bosanquet  resigned  his  chair  at 
Liverpool  and  thenceforth  until  his  death, 


90 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bottomley 


which  took  place  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
21  April  1935,  he  lived  at  his  Northum- 
brian home,  Rock  Moor,  an  adapted  farm- 
house on  the  estate,  in  a  'retirement' 
which  never  gave  him  the  leisure  which  he 
needed  to  write  the  books  on  Roman  trade 
routes  and  on  the  Covenanters  in  Nor- 
thumberland for  which  he  had  collected 
material. 

Bosanquet  married  in  1902  Ellen  Sophia, 
third  and  youngest  daughter  of  Thomas 
Hodgkin,  the  historian  [q.v.],  and  had 
two  sons  and  four  daughters. 

[Personal  knowledge.] 

E.  S.  Bosanquet. 

BOTTOMLEY,  HORATIO  WILLIAM 

(1860-1933),  journalist  and  financier,  the 
only  son  of  William  King  Bottomley,  a 
tailor's  foreman,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  George  Holyoake,  engineer, 
of  Birmingham,  and  sister  of  George  Jacob 
Holyoake  [q.v.],  was  born  in  his  father's 
house  in  Bethnal  Green  23  March  1860. 
Sidney  Theodore  Felstead  writes  that  some 
little  time  before  he  died,  Bottomley  told 
James  Douglas  that  he  was  in  fact  though 
not  in  law  the  son  of  Charles  Bradlaugh 
[q.v.]  whom  he  strikingly  resembled,  but 
his  birth  certificate  is  reproduced  by 
Henry  James  Houston,  who  describes  him 
as  deeply  attached  in  earlier  years  to  the 
memory  of  his  father  W.  K.  Bottomley. 
He  lost  both  parents  before  he  was  five 
years  old  and  was  placed  by  his  uncle 
G.  J.  Holyoake  in  the  Sir  Josiah  Mason 
Orphanage  at  Erdington.  He  ran  away 
at  the  age  of  fourteen,  and  after  a  year  or 
two  as  an  errand  boy  served  in  a  London 
solicitor's  office  for  five  years  and  as  a 
shorthand  writer  in  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Judicature  for  three  further  years;  this, 
supplemented  by  Bradlaugh,  who  intro- 
duced him  to  the  world  of  books,  was  the 
effective  part  of  his  education. 

In  1880  Bottomley  married  Eliza, 
daughter  of  Samuel  Norton,  a  debt- 
collector,  of  Battersea  (where  Bottomley 
was  then  living),  whence  they  moved  to 
the  City,  and  then  to  Clapham  where  he 
was  '  a  pillar  of  the  Methodist  Church '  and 
in  private  a  virulent  atheist.  He  entered 
the  printing  business  and  in  1884  started 
a  small  suburban  weekly,  the  Hackney 
Hansard.  Its  success  encouraged  him  to 
establish  others  of  the  same  nature,  and 
in  1889  he  promoted  the  Hansard  Publish- 
ing Union  with  a  capital  of  £500,000.  It 
failed  in  1891  and  left  him  bankrupt.  He 
was  charged  with  conspiracy  to  defraud 
and,  stimulated  by  Bradlaugh' s  example, 


he  defended  himself  and  was  acquitted. 
Mr.  Justice  Hawkins  (afterwards  Lord 
Brampton,  q.v.)  who  tried  the  case  (Janu- 
ary-April 1893)  was  so  much  impressed 
by  Bottomley 's  conduct  of  it  that  he  urged 
him  to  study  law,  but  not  obtaining 
admission  to  any  Inn  of  Court,  he  plunged 
with  surprising  audacity  into  finance.  He 
founded  the  Joint  Stock  Trust  and  Insti- 
tute and  floated  a  number  of  gold-mining 
companies  (Associated  Gold  Mines  of  West 
Australia,  Great  Boulders  Proprietary 
Gold  Mines,  West  Australian  Loan  and 
Finance  Corporation,  etc.)  and  other  enter- 
prises (one  appropriately  called  Nil  Des- 
perandum  Mines)  few  of  which  paid  the 
shareholders.  In  little  over  ten  years  he 
promoted  nearly  flifty  companies  with  a 
total  capital  of  over  £20,000,000,  and  he 
says  that  his  name  '  constantly  cropped  up 
in  the  Courts',  rarely  with  reverence.  In 
five  years  (1901-1905)  sixty-seven  bank- 
ruptcy petitions  and  writs  were  filed 
against  him.  In  1897  his  photograph 
appeared  in  a  series  of  'Men  of  Millions' 
in  the  Financial  Times.  It  was  estimated 
that  he  made  £3,000,000  by  promoting 
companies. 

Bottomley' s  astonishing  success  made 
him  equally  reckless  in  venture  and 
expenditure.  He  started  a  racing  stable 
in  1898  and  although  he  won  the  Cesare- 
witch,  the  Stewards '  Cup,  and  other  prizes 
of  the  turf,  squandered  very  large  sums 
on  racing  and  gambling,  theatrical  adven- 
tures, newspaper  enterprises,  lawsuits,  a 
very  costly  country  house.  The  Dicker,  at 
Hailsham  in  Sussex,  a  luxurious  flat  in 
Pall  Mall,  and  a  villa  in  France,  all  of 
which,  together  with  lavish  expenditure  on 
travelling,  entertaining,  and  gifts ,  absorbed 
most  of  his  income.  According  to  his 
secretary,  their  joint  expenses  on  the 
journey  to  Brighton  and  back  would 
amount  to  £25.  Apart  from  finance, 
Bottomley  was  a  journalist  and  speaker 
of  great  ability,  and  by  these  gifts  alone 
could  have  made  a  very  large  income.  He 
bought  the  Sun  in  1898  and  he  founded 
John  Bull  with  an  expenditure  of  £96,000 
(a  large  part  of  which  was  supplied  by 
Ernest  Terah  Hooley)  in  1906.  When  the 
Sunday  Pictorial  was  established  in  1915 
he  was  engaged  at  £100  an  article.  He  got 
this  increased  later,  though  he  now 
employed  others  to  write  articles  for  him 
at  one-fourth  of  his  fee,  and  he  sacrificed 
his  position  to  foimd  an  illustrated  weekly 
of  his  own  which  failed.  He  had  no  apti- 
tude for  the  business  management  of  a 
newspaper.  He  was  elected  liberal  member 


91 


Bottomley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


for  South  Hackney  in  1906;  but  his 
financial  methods  were  now  being  gravely 
questioned,  and  in  1907  the  shareholders 
of  the  Joint  Stock  Trust  petitioned  for  the 
liquidation  of  the  concern.  The  officials 
spent  eighteen  months  in  examining  his 
books,  the  more  important  of  which  were 
missing,  but  when  he  was  charged  with 
fraud  at  the  Guildhall  in  1909  he  secured 
an  acquittal.  His  skill  and  wit  in  court 
drew  crowds  at  all  his  cases  and  generally 
baffled  leading  coimsel,  but  he  lost  a  case 
in  which  Mrs.  Cvui;is  sued  him  for  £50,000 
which  he  had  got  from  her  aged  father 
and  lost  his  appeal. 

By  1911  Bottomley 's  financial  position 
was  so  desperate  that  he  presented  a 
petition  in  bankruptcy  disclosing  liabilities 
to  the  extent  of  £233,000  and  £50,000 
assets  and  in  1912  he  applied  for  the 
Chiltern  Hundreds.  His  country  house 
and  French  viUa  were  foimd  to  be  in  his 
wife's  name,  and  he  made  large  sums  by 
organizing  lotteries  and  sweepstakes  on 
sporting  events.  The  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  gave  him  a  new  opportunity.  He 
told  friends  that  he  would  break  with  his 
'  sordid  past '  and  his  inmunerable  patriotic 
speeches  (for  each  of  which  he  got  at 
least  £50)  and  the  articles  in  the  Sunday 
Pictorial  gave  him  a  national  reputation. 
His  popularity  stimulated  again  his 
financial  audacity  and  in  1915  he  began  to 
organize  the  enterprises  which  eventually 
ruined  him.  He  received  subscriptions  to 
the  extent  of  nearly  £900,000  and  in  1918 
he  paid  off  his  old  creditors,  was  relieved 
from  his  bankruptcy,  and  again  won  his 
seat  at  South  Hackney,  this  time  as  an 
independent,  with  a  huge  majority.  But 
the  very  complicated  affairs  of  his  new 
enterprises  were  already  arousingsuspicion, 
and  demands  for  repayment  began  to  pour 
in.  An  associate  with  whom  he  quarrelled 
issued  a  very  defamatory  pamphlet  and 
in  the  course  of  his  action  for  criminal 
libel,  in  which  he  did  not  succeed,  there 
were  ominous  revelations.  When  friends 
warned  him  he  said  that  if  there  were  any 
proposal  to  prosecute  him,  fifty  thousand 
ex-servicemen  would  march  on  West- 
minster. Chancery  appointed  a  receiver 
to  examine  his  enterprises  and  in  March 
1922  he  was  charged  at  Bow  Street  with 
fraudulent  conversion  and  was  committed 
for  trial.  In  May  he  was  found  guilty  on 
twenty-three  counts  out  of  twenty-four 
and  sentenced  to  seven  years'  penal 
servitude.  On  his  appeal  being  rejected, 
he  was  formally  expelled  from  the  House 
of  Commons  in  August.   He  was  released 


in  1927,  but  all  his  confident  efforts  at 
rehabilitation,  which  included  founding  a 
new  weekly,  John  Blunt  (1928),  failed,  and 
his  wife,  who  had  always  loyally  supported 
him,  died  in  1930.  He  passed  into  want 
and  obscurity,  and  died  in  London  26  May 
1933.  He  had  one  daughter. 

{The  Times,  27  May  1933 ;  Bottoinley's  Book 
(his  autobiography),  1909;  H.  J.  Houston, 
The  Real  Horatio  Bottomley,  1923;  S.  T. 
Felstead,  Horatio  Bottomley,  1936 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  E.  S.  P.  Haynes. 

BOURNE,  FRANCIS  ALPHONSUS 

(1861-1935),  cardinal,  was  born  at  Clap- 
ham  23  March  1861,  the  younger  child  and 
son  of  Henry  Bourne,  a  principal  clerk 
in  the  Post  Office,  by  his  wife,  Ellen, 
daughter  of  John  Byrne,  a  Dublin  mer- 
chant. Religious  interests  dominated  in 
their  home.  St.  Cuthbert's  College,  Ushaw, 
near  Durham,  was  the  school  chosen  for 
the  two  brothers,  but  after  the  death  in 
1874  of  the  elder  boy,  Francis  was  removed 
in  the  following  year  to  St.  Edmund's 
College,  Ware.  After  reading  philosophy 
he  went,  in  1880,  to  St.  Thomas's  seminary 
at  Hammersmith  to  begin  his  theological 
course,  and  thence  to  St.  Sulpice  in  Paris. 
The  training  there  had  a  marked  influence 
on  his  spiritual  development.  He  was  a 
painstaking  student  though  not  marked 
by  great  depth  of  learning.  In  Paris  he  was 
ordained  deacon  by  (Cardinal)  Richard, 
archbishop  of  Paris,  in  1883,  and  after 
some  months  spent  at  Lou  vain  University, 
he  received  the  priesthood  at  St.  Mary's 
church,  Clapham,  in  1884. 

After  several  brief  curacies.  Bourne 
went,  in  1887,  to  West  Grinstead,  Sussex, 
where  his  work  included  some  responsi- 
bility for  the  boys  of  an  orphanage.  He 
took  a  personal  interest  in  his  charges  and 
gave  Latin  lessons  to  some  who  seemed 
likely  to  be  suitable  candidates  for  the 
priesthood.  The  bishop  of  Southwark, 
John  Butt,  had  decided  to  found  a  college 
for  the  training  of  his  future  clergy,  but 
had  difficulty  in  finding  suitable  teachers. 
Bourne  was  recommended  to  him  as  one 
interested  in  fostering  vocations  among 
boys,  and  the  bishop  opened  a  house  of 
studies  at  Henfield  Place,  Sussex,  in  1889 
and  put  Bourne  in  charge.  He  took  with 
him  a  few  of  the  boys  whom  he  had  begun 
to  teach  at  West  Grinstead.  Meanwhile  a 
permanent  college  was  being  built  at 
Wonersh,  near  Guildford.  In  1891  the 
Henfield  school  was  transferred  there  and 
Bourne  became  the  first  rector  of  the  new 
diocesan  seminary.    He  was  appointed  a 


92 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bourne,  G.  C. 


domestic  prelate  to  Pope  Leo  XIII  at 
Easter  1895. 

Bishop  Butt  was  in  failing  health  and 
petitioned  the  Holy  See  for  a  coadjutor 
with  the  right  of  succession  to  the  bishopric 
of  South wark.  Bourne,  his  nominee,  was 
consecrated  titular  bishop  of  Epiphania 
by  Herbert  Cardinal  Vaughan  [q.v.]  in 
1896.  He  was  thirty -five  years  of  age  and 
quite  unknown  to  the  diocesan  clergy.  He 
remained  at  Wonersh  as  rector  while 
assisting  in  the  episcopal  oversight  of  the 
diocese.  Within  a  year  Butt  resigned  and 
Bourne  succeeded  him.  This  necessitated 
his  residence  in  south  London  where  the 
work  of  the  large  parishes  was  new  to  him. 
Although  shy  and  resers'cd,  he  gave  himself 
entirely  to  his  many  new  tasks  with  much 
success. 

In  August  1903,  while  still  the  youngest 
bishop  on  the  bench,  Bourne  was  translated 
to  the  archiepiscopal  see  of  Westminster 
in  succession  to  Cardinal  Vaughan.  There 
he  had  to  deal  with  larger  problems,  for 
he  was  now  leader  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
bishops  of  England  and  Wales,  West- 
minster until  1911  being  the  only  archi- 
episcopal see  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  this  country.  His  new  duties 
brought  him  into  contact  with  various 
government  departments  and  he  had  to 
represent  the  Holy  See  in  its  relations 
with  the  British  government  when  Roman 
Catholic  interests  within  the  Empire  were 
at  issue.  Westminster  Cathedral  was  not 
yet  open  for  divine  service  and  Bourne 
was  not  enthroned  until  December  1903. 

The  education  question  loomed  large 
throughout  Bourne's  episcopate  and  caused 
him  much  anxiety.  Some  measure  of 
justice  had  been  done  to  the  voluntary 
schools  by  the  Balfour  Act  of  1902,  but  the 
liberal  government  of  1906  was  pledged 
to  important  changes.  Bourne's  steady 
leadership  saved  the  volvmtary  schools  for 
forty  years. 

In  September  1908  the  International 
Eucharistic  Congress  was  held  at  West- 
minster and  its  great  success  was  due  to 
the  organizing  ability  of  the  archbishop. 
June  1910  saw  the  consecration  of 
Westminster  Cathedral. 

Bourne  was  created  cardinal  priest  with 
the  titular  church  of  Santa  Pudenziana  at 
the  consistory  of  November  1911 .  He  was 
twice  legate  of  the  pope,  in  May  1931  at 
Rouen  for  the  Joan  of  Arc  celebrations, 
and  at  the  consecration  of  Buckfast  Abbey 
church  in  August  1932. 

A  man  of  prayer  and  of  deep  spirituality. 
Bourne's  conception  of  the  episcopal  office 


was  very  high.  He  was  a  great  pastor.  No 
orator,  his  straightforward  utterances  were 
everywhere  received  with  respect.  His 
only  published  work,  apart  from  sermons 
and  pastoral  letters,  was  his  book  Eccle- 
siastical Training  (1926).  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Lou  vain  and  Oxford. 

After  occupying  the  see  for  over  thirty- 
one  years  Bourne  died  at  Westminster 
1  January  1935  and  was  buried  at  St. 
Edmtind's  College,  Ware.  He  had  a  great 
love  for  the  college,  where  part  of  his 
studies  had  been  made  and  where  the 
Westminster  clergy  are  trained.  His  bene- 
factions to  it  were  of  princely  munificence 
and  he  may  well  be  called  its  second 
founder. 

A  portrait  of  Bourne,  by  A.  Chevallier 
Tayler  (1934),  is  at  Archbishop's  House, 
Westminster. 

[Ernest  Oldmeadow,  Francis,  Cardinal 
Bourne,  2  vols.,  1940-1944;  personal  know- 
ledge.] W.  J.  Wood. 


BOURNE,      GILBERT      CHARLES 

(1861-1933),  zoologist  and  oarsman,  was 
born  at  Grafton  Manor,  Worcestershire, 
5  July  1861,  the  second  son  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Robert  Bourne,  54th  Regiment, 
of  Cowarne  Court,  near  Ledbury,  by  his 
wife,  Anna  Eliza,  youngest  daughter  of 
Samuel  Baker,  of  Lypiatt  Park,  Glouces- 
tershire. He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  at 
New  College,  Oxford,  where  he  gained  an 
exhibition  in  natural  science.  He  rowed  in 
the  winning  university  crews  of  1881  and 
1882.  While  still  an  luidergraduate  he 
studied  at  Freiburg-im-Breisgau  imder 
August  Weismann.  On  his  return  to 
Oxford  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  natural 
science  in  1885.  After  making  a  scientific 
study  of  the  atoll  of  Diego  Garcia,  in  the 
Indian  Ocean,  he  was  elected  to  a  fellow- 
ship at  New  College  in  1887.  Shortly 
afterwards  he  acted  for  two  years  as  the 
first  director  of  the  Marine  Biological 
Laboratory  at  Plymouth.  He  returned  to 
Oxford  and  in  1906  was  elected  to  the 
Linacre  chair  of  zoology  and  comparative 
anatomy  with  a  fellowship  at  Merton 
College,  both  of  which  he  held  until  1921, 
when  he  succeeded  to  his  father's  property 
in  Herefordshire. 

Bourne's  early  researches  in  Diego 
Garcia  were  concerned  with  the  origin  of 
coral  reefs.  He  attributed  the  formation 
of  atolls  in  the  Indian  Ocean  to  the  rapid 
growth  of  corals  round  the  edges  of  sub- 
merged banks.  He  denied  Darwin's  theory 
of    reef-formation    by    subsidence,    and 

93 


Bourne,  G.  C. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


considered  that  the  lagoon  within  an  atoll 
was  present  from  the  time  when  the  grow- 
ing coral  first  reached  the  surface  in  a  ring. 
Bourne's  later  zoological  interests  were 
largely  determined  by  his  visit  to  Diego 
Garcia.  He  made  important  studies  on 
the  structure,  development,  and  classifica- 
tion of  corals  and  related  animals,  and 
much  of  his  work  in  this  field  has  passed 
into  the  text-books.  He  also  made  detailed 
morphological  studies  of  certain  groups  of 
mollusca.  Although  in  later  years  his 
researches  were  mainly  in  morphology, 
yet  his  interests  remained  wide.  He 
entered  into  the  preformation-epigenesis 
controversy  and  wrote  two  articles  of 
lasting  value  in  defence  of  the  cell-theory 
against  the  attack  of  Adam  Sedgwick 
[q.v.].  His  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the 
Comparative  Anatomy  of  Animals  (1900- 
1902)  provided  a  fresh  and  readable 
approach  to  a  subject  that  is  often  drily 
presented.  He  was  a  contributor  to  the 
Treatise  on  Zoology  (1900-1909)  by  (Sir) 
E.  R.  Lankester  [q.v.].  His  writing  was 
crisp,  vigorous,  and  scholarly,  and  the 
illustrations  to  his  morphological  papers 
show  considerable  artistic  ability.  He  was 
a  stimulating  teacher,  and  some  of  those 
who  studied  under  him  passed  on  to 
particularly  successful  careers  in  zoology. 
He  served  as  a  member  of  the  advisory 
committee  on  fisheries  of  the  development 
commission,  and  in  1931  was  appointed 
chairman.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1910. 
Apart  from  his  scientific  pursuits, 
Bourne  devoted  much  time  to  boats  and 
oarsmanship.  He  was  an  outstanding 
figxire  in  the  rowing  world  as  an  oarsman 
and  subsequently  as  an  expounder  of  the 
theory  and  practice  both  of  oarsmanship 
and  the  design  of  racing  boats.  He  had 
imbibed  at  Eton  the  principles  of  Edmond 
Warre  [q.v.],  the  founder  of  the  orthodox 
style  of  rowing,  but  it  is  as  a  coach  that  he 
achieved  renown.  To  his  teaching  of  the 
correct  method  of  applying  muscular  power 
is  to  be  attributed  the  high  position  held  by 
his  college  on  the  river  for  some  fifty  years, 
and  many  university  crews  owed  much  to 
his  coaching  in  the  early  days  of  their 
training.  His  Text  Book  on  Oarsmanship 
(1925),  a  masterpiece  of  careful  detail,  was 
compiled  with  the  help  of  mechanical 
experts  and  mathematicians  who  worked 
out  innumerable  experiments  for  him.  By 
developing  Warre's  theories  on  the  lines  of 
racing  eights,  and  from  his  own  observa- 
tions of  the  streamlines  of  fish,  he  con- 
sidered that  the  racing  boat  should  have 
its    greatest    beam    and    draught    much 


farther  forward  than  was  usual,  so  that  the 
waves  thrown  off  by  the  boat's  entry  into 
the  water  met  exactly  at  the  stern.  This 
would  eliminate  any  suction  to  impede 
the  boat's  progress,  and  undue  friction  on 
its  sides.  The  main  features  of  his  design 
are  now  adopted  by  several  designers  of 
racing  eights. 

Always  a  keen  soldier,  Bourne  rose  to 
be  second  in  command  of  the  4th  battalion 
of  the  King's  Shropshire  Light  Infantry 
during  the  South  African  war.  He  repre- 
sented the  university  of  Oxford  on  the 
committee  appointed  by  the  War  Office  in 
1906  to  consider  the  provision  of  an 
Officers'  Training  Corps,  which  proved  of 
the  greatest  value  on  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  1914.  In  that  war  he  was  appointed 
superintending  officer  of  the  young  officers' 
company  of  the  12th  Reserve  Infantry 
Brigade. 

Bourne  married  in  1887  Constance 
Margaret  Graham,  eldest  daughter  of  Sir 
John  Frederick  Croft,  second  baronet,  of 
Dodington  Place,  Kent,  and  had  a  son, 
Robert  Croft  Bourne  [q.v.],  and  a  daugh- 
ter. He  died  at  Tubney  Warren  House, 
near  Abingdon,  9  March  1933. 

[The  Times,  10  March  1933 ;  G.  C.  Bourne, 
Memories  of  an  Eton  Wet  Bob  of  the  Seventies, 
1933 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  2,  December  1933  (portrait); 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  R.  Baker. 

C.  M.  Pitman. 

BOURNE,  ROBERT  CROFT  (1888- 
1938),  poUtician  and  oarsman,  was  born 
at  Dodington  Place,  Kent,  15  July  1888, 
the  only  son  of  Gilbert  Charles  Bourne 
[q.v.].  At  Eton  he  rowed  in  the  eights  of 
1906  and  1907;  at  New  CoUege,  Oxford, 
where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in 
modern  history  (1911),  his  chief  renown 
was  gained  on  the  river,  as  he  was  the  first 
stroke  of  a  university  crew  to  win  the  boat 
race  in  four  successive  years.  In  April 
1909,  at  the  end  of  his  third  term.  Bourne 
confounded  the  riverside  critics  by  win- 
ning the  race  with  a  spurt  which  revealed  at 
once  his  powers  of  leadership,  his  immense 
reach,  and  his  nice  sense  of  rhythm.  His 
last  university  race  (1912)  became  famous 
by  both  boats  being  swamped  in  the  pre- 
vailing hurricane,  and  was  called  off  when 
Oxford,  who  at  the  Meadows  were  over- 
come by  the  fate  that  had  befaUen  Cam- 
bridge at  Harrod's,  were  given  unsolicited 
help  by  over-zealous  spectators.  The  race 
was  decided  two  days  later.  At  Henley 
Bourne  won  the  Stewards '  Cup  three  times 


94 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Boycott 


(1912-1914)  and  in  1912  stroked  his  college 
crew  in  the  final  of  the  Olympic  regatta  at 
Stockholm, 

After  being  called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's 
Inn  (1913),  Bourne  went  in  1915  with  his 
territorial  battalion  of  the  Herefordshire 
regiment  to  the  Mediterranean  and  had 
one  hand  crippled  and  a  lung  seriously 
injured  at  Suvla  Bay  in  August.  Further 
active  service  being  impossible  (he  had 
also  while  at  school  lost  the  sight  of  one 
eye  when  playing  rounders  during  the 
summer  holidays)  Bourne,  now  a  captain, 
served  on  the  Claims  Commission  (1917) 
and  on  the  Herefordshire  County  Council 
(1922).  In  1923  he  contested  Oxford  City 
as  a  conservative,  and,  on  his  opponent 
being  unseated  on  petition,  was  returned 
at  the  resultant  by-election  (1924).  He 
retained  the  seat  vmtil  his  death.  In  the 
House  of  Commons,  where  he  rose  to  be 
deputy  chairman  of  ways  and  means 
(1931),  Bourne's  name  was  canvassed  as  a 
possible  Speaker,  for,  although  on  the 
platform  he  filled  his  speeches  with  too 
much  information  for  a  popular  audience, 
he  earned  the  respect  of  all  parties  by  his 
mastery  of  the  rules  of  procedure,  the 
clearness  and  quickness  of  his  rulings,  his 
skill  as  a  draftsman,  and,  above  all,  by 
that  same  strict  impartiality  which  had 
secured  for  him  as  president  of  the  Oxford 
University  Boat  Club  the  complete  con- 
fidence of  his  fellow  oarsmen  in  the  justice 
of  his  choices  when  making  up  his  crews. 
He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1935. 
On  7  August  1938,  while  walking  on  the 
moors  near  Strontian,  Argyll,  he  suddenly 
fell  dead. 

Bourne  married  in  1917  Lady  Hester 
Margaret,  eldest  daughter  of  Wilfrid 
Dallas  Cairns,  fourth  Earl  Cairns,  and  had 
two  sons  and  one  daughter  who  all 
survived  him. 

A  cartoon  of  Bourne  by  'Ape  Junior' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  29  March  1911. 

[The  Times,  9  August  1938 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

L.  G.  WiCKHAM  Legg. 

BOYCOTT,  ARTHUR  EDWIN  (1877- 
1938),  pathologist  and  naturalist,  was 
born  at  Hereford  6  April  1877,  the  third 
son  of  William  Boycott,  solicitor,  by  his 
wife,  Eliza  Mellard.  He  was  educated  at 
Hereford  Cathedral  School,  and  gained  a 
classical  scholarship  at  Oriel  College, 
Oxford,  where,  however,  he  read  natural 
science,  being  awarded  a  first  class  in 
physiology  in  1898.  After  election  to  a 
senior  demyship  at  Magdalen  in  A900,  he 


completed  his  medical  training  at  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital  in  1902.  In  the  last- 
named  year  he  was  elected  to  one  of  the 
last  prize  fellowships  at  Brasenose.  The 
influence  of  three  of  his  Oxford  teachers, 
Sir  J.  S.  Burdon-Sanderson  [q.v.],  J.  S. 
Haldane  [q.v.],  and  James  Ritchie,  fellow 
of  New  College,  later  first  professor  of 
bacteriology  at  Edinburgh  University, 
never  left  him. 

Shortly  after  qualifying  B.M.  in  1902 
Boycott  assisted  Haldane  in  an  inquiry 
into  hookworm  disease  among  Cornish 
miners  (the  subject  of  his  Milroy  lectures 
to  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  in  1 91 1 ) , 
and  later  joined  him  in  his  investigations 
into  the  physiological  effects  of  compressed 
and  rarefied  atmospheres.  Between  1904, 
when  he  graduated  D.M.,  and  1907  he  was 
on  the  staff  of  the  Lister  Institute  and 
published  papers  on  the  bacteriology  of 
diphtheria  and  of  the  paratyphoid  fevers. 
In  1907  he  returned  to  Guy's  Hospital 
(where  he  had  been  for  a  short  time  in 
1 903-1904)  as  Gordon  lecturer  in  pathology 
and  there  began  a  series  of  investigations 
on  the  physiology  and  pathology  of  the 
blood  which  continued  intermittently 
luitil  his  retirement.  Independently,  and 
with  Dr.  Claude  Gordon  Douglas,  he 
studied  the  blood  volume  and  its  response 
to  changes  in  environment  and  to  disease. 
In  later  life  he  used  to  say  that  the  experi- 
ment which  had  pleased  him  most  was  the 
demonstration  that  the  rate  of  blood  re- 
generation after  haemorrhage  was  in  in- 
verse proportion  to  the  size  of  the  animal. 
He  returned  to  this  subject  many  years 
later  and  showed  that  oxygen  tension  was 
the  factor  controlling  haematopoiesis.  It 
was  on  the  basis  of  these  and  related  obser- 
vations that  he  postulated  the  'erythron', 
the  circulating  blood  and  haematopoietic 
tissues  considered  as  a  single  organ.  In 
1912  he  was  appointed  professor  of  patho- 
logy in  the  luiiversity  of  Manchester  and 
there  he  continued  the  work  begun  earlier 
on  the  function  of  the  kidney  in  controlling 
the  volume  and  composition  of  the  blood . 
The  war  of  1914-1918  coincided  with  his 
appointment,  in  1915,  to  the  Graham  chair 
of  pathology  in  the  university  of  London, 
which  is  held  at  University  College  Hospital . 
After  serving  on  the  Health  of  Munition 
Workers  Committee  he  was  commissioned 
in  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  to  work 
at  the  Chemical  Warfare  Experimental 
Station  at  Porton.  He  co-operated  with 
(Sir)  Joseph  Barcroft  and  others  in  exten- 
sive experiments  on  the  physiological 
action  of  toxic  gases,  but  it  was  for  him,  a 


95 


Boycott 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


pacificist  by  conviction,  a  mof^t  unhappy 
time.  After  the  war  he  returned  to 
University  College  Hospital  where  he  spent 
the  remainder  of  his  working  life;  he 
retired,  owing  to  ill  health,  in  1935.  In  his 
later  years  he  published  some  addresses  of 
a  speculative  nature  which  gave  an 
accurate  picture  of  his  width  of  interest 
and  originality  of  inquiry. 

Pathology  was  half  of  Boycott's  life; 
natural  history,  conchology  in  particular, 
was  the  other.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  he 
published  a  catalogue  of  Herefordshire 
moUusca  and  until  his  death  his  chief 
recreation  was  the  oecology  of  British 
land  and  freshwater  snails,  on  which  he 
published  numerous  papers.  An  offshoot 
of  this  interest  was  an  inquiry  into  the 
genetics  of  left-handed  twist  in  the  shell  of 
Lymnaea  peregra  which  occupied  several 
years  and  involved  breeding  over  one 
million  snails. 

Boycott  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1914  and 
F.R.C.P.  in  1926.  In  1924  McGill  Univer- 
sity conferred  upon  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  For  fifteen  years  he  was 
assistant  editor  and  for  eleven  editor  of 
the  Journal  of  Pathology  and  Bacteriology. 
He  was  fluent  and  lucid  as  a  writer  and 
speaker  but  he  was  not  a  magnetic  teacher 
of  imdergraduates  and  had  little  influence 
on  current  medical  practice.  Apart  from 
his  contributions  to  knowledge  his  desire 
that  pathology  should  be  recognized  as  a 
science  in  its  own  right  found  expression 
in  the  Journal  which  he  edited  for  so  long 
and  in  the  work  of  his  pupils  and  close 
associates.  He  enjoyed  well-mannered 
controversy  but  was  a  man  of  firm 
convictions  and  some  odd  prejudices. 

Boycott  married  in  1904  Constance 
Louisa,  daughter  of  Colonel  William  Agg, 
of  the  (51st)  King's  Own  Yorkshire  Light 
Infantry,  of  Prestbury,  near  Cheltenham, 
and  had  two  sons.  He  died  at  Ewen, 
Cirencester,  12  May  1938. 

[The  Times,  18  May  1938 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7,  January 
1939  (portrait);  British  Medical  Journal, 
1938,  vol.  1,  p.  1133  (portrait);  Journal  of 
Pathology  and  Bacteriology,  vol.  xlvli,  1938 
(bibliography) ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  A.  Boycott. 


BRADFORD,  Sm  JOHN  ROSE, 
baronet,  of  Mawddwy  (1863-1935),  physi- 
cian and  physiologist,  was  born  in  London 
7  May  1863,  the  only  son  of  Abraham  Rose 
Bradford,  by  his  wife,  Ellen,  daughter  of 
Nicholas  Littleton.    Both  parents  came 


from  Saltash,  near  Plymouth,  where 
Littletons  had  for  generations  been  general 
practitioners  in  the  neighbourhood ;  Abra- 
ham Bradford  was  a  surgeon  in  the  navy, 
finally  attaining  the  rank  of  deputy  . 
inspector-general  of  hospitals.  I 

Bradford  was  educated  at  University  * 
College  School,  London,  and  after  a  year 
spent  at  Bruges  in  learning  French,  he 
entered  University  College  in  1881  as  a 
medical  student  with  an  exhil)ition  and 
began  the  close  association  with  the  college 
and  hospital  which  lasted  unbroken  until 
his  death.  Here  he  met  the  inspiring 
teaching  of  (Sir)  E.  R.  Lankester  [q.v.], 
in  zoology,  in  which  he  gained  a  first  class 
in  1883  when  he  graduated  B.Sc.  The 
subject  fascinated  him ;  to  the  end  of  his 
life  he  was  a  nature  lover,  and  he  would 
have  preferred  to  continue  that  study  had 
not  lack  of  means  compelled  him  to  adhere 
to  his  original  choice  of  medicine  as  a 
securer  way  to  livelihood.  Gold  medals  in 
anatomy  and  physiology  in  1884  were 
followed  in  1889  by  the  gold  medal  in 
medicine  when  he  proceeded  M.D.  (Lond.). 
But  time  was  also  seized  for  laboratory 
research,  and  in  1885  (Sir)  WiUiam 
Bayliss  [q.v.]  and  he,  yornig  men  of  twenty- 
five  and  twenty-two  respectively,  pub- 
lished in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society  the  first  of  a  series  of  excellent 
papers  on  the  electrical  changes  accom- 
panying nervous  stimulation  of  the 
salivary  glands. 

Allowing  for  a  brief  period  of  residence 
in  1886  as  house  physician,  teaching  in 
anatomy  and  research  in  physiology  con- 
tinued to  be  Bradford's  main  occupation 
until  1889  when  he  was  appointed  to  the 
staff  of  University  College  Hospital  as 
assistant  physician,  with  (Sir)  Henry  Head 
[q.v.]  as  his  first  clinical  clerk.  Thence- 
forward he  gave  first  place  to  his  clinical 
duties,  and  even  sought  special  acquain- 
tance with  nervous  diseases  by  joining  the 
staff  of  the  National  Hospital  for  Diseases 
of  the  Nervous  System,  Queen  Square,  as 
assistant  physician  from  1893  to  1896. 
But  still  he  continued  to  press  forward 
eagerly  with  fundamental  researches  in 
physiology  that  had  no  immediate  refer- 
ence to  clinical  problems,  and  freedom  to 
do  so  was  given  him  by  his  success  in 
obtaining  certain  research  studentships, 
rareties  at  that  time  in  London.  Starting 
from  the  great  scheme  of  the  anatomical 
distribution  of  spinal  nerves  to  viscera 
that  had  been  unfolded  in  the  illuminating 
paper  of  W.  H.  Gaskell  [q.v.],  in  1886, 
Bradford   sought  to   analyse   in   precise 


96 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bradford 


detail  the  physiology  of  this  nervous 
supply.  He  began  with  the  innervation  of 
the  blood-vessels  of  the  lungs,  and  then 
passed  to  those  of  the  kidneys.  But  he 
was  soon  outpaced  by  J.  N.  Langley  [q.v.], 
who  had  also  taken  Gaskell's  field  for 
experimental  study  and,  in  advance  on 
the  routine  methods  of  nerve  stimulation, 
could  also  use  his  own  discovery  of  the 
power  of  nicotine  to  paralyse  and  thus 
identify  ganglion  cells  on  the  paths  of  the 
visceral  nerves. 

Bradford  now  moved  towards  pathology 
and  began  a  laborious  study  on  dogs  of 
the  general  changes  caused  by  removal  of 
a  portion  of  the  kidney  substance.  This 
was  designed  to  answer  some  of  the 
questions  arising  from  clinical  experience 
in  man ;  it  focused  his  attention  on  kidney 
diseases,  and  in  that  branch  of  medicine 
he  was  thenceforward  recognized  as  an 
authority.  As  professor-superintendent  of 
the  Brown  Animal  Institution  from  1895 
to  1903  he  carried  on  the  great  tradition  of 
Sir  Victor  Horsley  [q.v.]  and  (Sir)  Charles 
Sherrington.  The  high  quality  of  Brad- 
ford's physiological  studies  led  to  his 
election  in  1894  as  F.R.S.  at  the  early  age 
of  thirty-one.  He  was  elected  F.R.C.P.  in 
1897,  and  delivered  the  Goulstonian  lecture 
in  1898,  the  Croonian  lectures  in  1904,  and 
the  Harveian  oration  in  192G. 

In  1900  Bradford  became  full  physician 

with  charge  of  wards  at  University  College 

Hospital,  and  soon  afterwards  he  ceased 

all  sustained  research.  It  was  not  that  he 

sought  time  to   secure  the   rewards   of 

consulting  practice,  for  after  his  marriage 

e  no  longer  needed  them,  but  he  now 

eemed  to  prefer  to  devote  himself  to 

caching    duties    and    especially    to    the 

dvance  of  scientific  thought  in  medicine 

hrough  work  by  other  hands  than  his  own. 

n  both  of  these  directions  his  influence 

as  of  high  importance  for  British  medi- 

me.  He  served  on  his  hospital  staff  until 

923,  and  was  one  of  the  greatest  clinical 

eachers  in  the  history  of  that  distinguished 

ichool.  His  formal  lectures,  delivered  with 

ever  a  note  or  illustrative  diagram,  had 

.hat  perfection  of  clarity  and  emphasis 

vhich  makes  an  audience  understand  as 

veil  as  remember.   He  always  sought  to 

nake  men  think,  and  think  with  scientific 

exactitude  resting  on  observed  facts.    In 

he  wards  there  was  no  overbearing  dogma, 

►ut  rather  an  encouraging  comradeship  in 

he  way  in  which  he  would  seek  to  help 

is  students.    On  one  principle  he  stood 

rmly,  that  while  medicine  needed  all 

ossible  aid  from  such  ancillary  sciences 


as  physiology  or  pathology,  notliing  could 
be  accepted  from  animal  experiments 
except  by  analogy:  in  the  last  resort 
clinical  science  could  only  rest  on  what 
was  proved  to  occur  in  man  himself.  That 
point  of  view  was  not  commonly  held 
either  by  clinicians  or  scientific  workers  of 
his  period  in  medicine. 

Friendship  with  (Sir)  David  Bruce 
[q.v.]  aroused  Bradford's  interest  in 
tropical  medicine,  and  he  sought  clinical 
experience  in  that  direction  by  serving  as 
physician  at  the  Seamen's  Hospital  at 
Greenwich  from  1905  to  1919.  In  1907  he 
became  a  member  of  the  tropical  diseases 
conunittee  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  in 
1908  he  was  foremost  in  planning  the 
Sleeping  Sickness  Bureau  which  developed 
into  the  Tropical  Diseases  Bureau  of  the 
London  School  of  Tropical  Medicine.  He 
was  senior  medical  adviser  to  the  Colonial 
Office  from  1912  to  1924. 

In  the  Royal  Society  itself  Bradford 
had  the  rare  distinction  of  serving  from 
1908  to  1915  as  secretary  on  the  biological 
side,  a  post  that  had  not  been  entrusted  to 
a  practising  physician  for  over  eighty 
years.  This  enabled  him  to  advance  still 
further  the  relationship  of  the  society 
with  government  departments,  especially 
with  regard  to  the  study  of  tropical 
diseases.  He  was  on  the  governing  body 
of  the  Lister  Institute  from  1899  to  1918 
and  chairman  from  1912  to  1914,  and  the 
creation  of  the  Beit  Trust  for  fellowships 
in  medical  research  in  1909  was  entirely 
due  to  the  guidance  of  Bradford  and  (Sir) 
James  Kingston  Fowler  [q.v.]. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  Bradford  reUn- 
quished  all  his  interests  in  London  and 
served  in  France  from  1914  to  1919  as 
consulting  physician  to  the  British  Expedi- 
tionary Force,  with  the  rank  of  major- 
general,  Army  Medical  Service,  being 
appointed  C.B.  in  1915  and  C.B.E.  in  1919. 
Towards  the  end  of  that  time  he  attempted 
a  bacteriological  study  of  some  of  the 
non-suppurative  diseases  prevalent  in  the 
army,  and  published  his  belief  that  his 
laboratory  colleagues  and  he  had  di  scovered 
the  viruses  of  trench  fever,  nephritis,  and 
influenza.  Faulty  technique  was  soon 
proved  to  have  spofled  the  observations. 
This  was  the  only  error  in  aU  Bradford's 
scientific  work ;  he  felt  it  deeply. 

Returning  to  London,  Bradford  no 
longer  took  a  chief  part  in  the  projects  for 
the  advancement  of  medical  research.  But 
his  authority  among  clinicians  was  con- 
firmed by  his  election  as  president  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  (1926-1931) 


97 


Bradford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  it  was  a  happy  turn  of  fortune  that 
in  1928  one  with  his  true  reverence  for 
science  conducted  the  College  celebrations 
of  the  tercentenary  of  the  publication  of 
Harvey's  De  Motu  Cordis.  He  was  vice- 
chairman  of  the  governing  body  of 
University  College,  London,  from  1922 
to  1932,  and  chairman  in  1932.  He  was 
appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1911  and  created 
a  baronet  in  1931.  The  universities  of 
Cambridge,  Edinburgh,  Durham,  Dublin, 
and  Christiania  conferred  honorary  degrees 
upon  him.  In  1924  he  unsuccessfully 
contested  the  parliamentary  seat  of  the 
university  of  London. 

Tall  and  austerely  erect,  with  an  air  of 
authority  in  his  approach,  Bradford  was 
surprisingly  found  to  be  a  man  of  the 
warmest  human  feelings  and  ready  acces- 
sibility. Organization  was  easy  to  him, 
for  he  united  a  most  retentive  memory 
with  a  clear  judgement,  and  was  not 
lightly  swayed  when  once  his  resolution 
was  formed. 

In  1899  Bradford  married  Mary  (died 
1937),  daughter  of  Thomas  Ffoulkes 
Roberts,  of  Llanidloes,  Montgomeryshire, 
sometime  mayor  of  Manchester,  and  niece 
of  the  physician  Sir  William  Roberts 
[q.v.] ;  there  was  no  issue  of  the  marriage. 
He  died  in  London  7  April  1935. 

A  posthumous  portrait  of  Bradford,  by 
Randolph  Schwabe,  is  in  the  library  of 
University  College  Hospital  medical 
school. 

[The  Times,  8  April  1935 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society ,  No.  4,  December 
1935  (portrait) ;  British  Medical  Journal,  1935, 
vol.  i,  p.  805;  Lancet,  1935,  vol.  i,  p.  906; 
personal  knowledge.]  T.  R.  Elliott.  • 

BRADLEY,  ANDREW  CECIL  (1851- 
1935),  literary  critic,  was  born  at  Chelten- 
ham 26  March  1851,  the  fourth  and 
youngest  son  of  Charles  Bradley  [q.v.], 
vicar  of  Glasbury,  Brecknockshire,  and 
incumbentof  St.  James's  chapel,  Clapham, 
by  his  second  wife,  Emma,  daughter  of 
John  Linton,  stockbroker,  of  Clapham. 
His  father,  of  Yorkshire  stock  on  both 
sides,  was  a  distinguished  cleric  and  notable 
preacher.  Andrew  Bradley  was  a  younger 
brother  of  F.  H.  Bradley  [q.v.],  and  a 
half-brother  of  G.  G.  Bradley  [q.v.],  who 
was  in  succession  (head)  master  of  Marl- 
borough, master  of  University  College, 
Oxford,  and  dean  of  Westminster. 

Bradley  was  educated  at  Cheltenham 
College,  and  in  1869  went  up  to  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  as  a  classical  exhibitioner. 
He  was  awarded  a  second  class  in  classical 


moderations  in  1871,  but  he  followed  this 
up  with  an  excellent  first  class  in  literae 
humaniores  in  1873.  In  1874  he  was 
elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Balliol,  and  in 
1875  won  the  chancellor's  English  essay 
prize  for  an  essay  on  'Utopias,  Ancient 
and  Modern ' .  Next  year  he  was  appointed 
a  lecturer  of  the  college,  at  first  in  English, 
and  then,  vmtil  1881,  in  philosophy.  In 
this  work  he  was  in  close  contact  with 
T.  H.  Green  [q.v.],  and,  like  all  who  came 
within  the  orbit  of  that  wise  and  selfless 
teacher  and  had  the  temper  to  estimate 
him  rightly,  Bradley  was  deeply  influenced. 
The  Balliol  of  those  days,  under  Jowett  in 
his  prime,  was  a  brilliant  and  stimulating 
college,  but  the  stimulus  was  perhaps  at 
times  a  little  feverish,  and  the  atmosphere 
not  wholly  congenial  to  all,  even  among 
the  ablest,  of  its  members. 

In  1882  Bradley  became  the  first  occu- 
pant of  the  chair  of  literature  and  history 
at  University  College,  Liverpool,  and 
threw  himself  with  ardour  into  a  new  and 
very  busy  life,  grasping  eagerly  the  rich 
opportunities  which  it  offered,  especially 
those  of  sharing  with  men  and  women 
whose  lines  had  been  cast  in  less  pleasant 
places  all  that  his  own  life  and  education 
had  given  him.  On  his  evening  classes 
and  everything  that  had  to  do  with  adult 
education  he  spent  himself  unsparingly, 
and  his  lectures,  on  the  testimony  of  many 
who  heard  them,  were  a  revelation.  To 
this  period  of  his  life  belong  his  edition  of 
T.  H.  Green's  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  (1883), 
with  an  analysis,  and  his  Commentary 
on  Tennyson's  ^  In  Memoriam\  which, 
although  not  pubhshed  until  1901,  was  an 
expansion  of  lectures  delivered  to  one  of 
his  evening  classes  at  Liverpool. 

After  eight  strenuous  years  at  Liverpool 
Bradley  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  English 
language  and  literature  at  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity, where,  as  a  Glasgow  student  wrote, 
his  'brilliant  dark  eyes  lighting  up  his 
pale  black-bearded  face  and  a  voice  that 
matched  it  in  gentle  sweetness,  not  less 
than  his  great  intellectual  gifts,  gave  him 
quite  an  unusual  sway  over  the  minds  of 
his  students'.  In  1897  he  edited,  with  a 
biographical  sketch,  the  first  volume  of 
the  Philosophical  Lectures  and  Remains  of 
R.  L.  Nettleship  [q.v.].  In  1900  he  retired 
to  London,  proposing  to  devote  himself  to 
his  critical  work  in  a  leisure  which  his  two 
professorships  had  precluded.  But  in  1901 
he  was  elected  to  the  professorship  of 
poetry  at  Oxford,  and  to  that  election  we 
owe,  at  least  in  part,  one  of  the  great  works 
of  English  criticism .  Bradley  was  in  the  full 


98 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Bradley 


maturity  of  his  powers,  and  doubtless 
Shakespearean  Tragedy  (1904)  would  have 
been  a  notable  work  under  whatever  con- 
ditions it  had  been  written.  But  the 
professorship  of  poetry,  light  though  its 
duties  are  if  computed  by  the  number  of 
lectures  that  must  be  delivered,  none  the 
less  imposes  the  duty  of  lecturing,  and 
Shakespearean  Tragedy,  if  written  purely 
to  be  read,  would  have  been  a  different 
work.  Bradley  needed  precisely  the 
stimulus  of  exposition  before  a  living 
audience  to  put  the  last  fine  edge  on  his 
work.  He  was  always  a  philosopher  as 
well  as  a  literary  critic,  and  subtle  intellec- 
tual distinctions  were  to  him  a  delight, 
sometimes  a  temptation .  But  the  challenge 
of  an  audience  which  was  to  be  convinced 
by  the  spoken,  not  the  written,  word 
evoked  from  him  the  subtle  persuasiveness 
of  the  orator,  and  enforced  that  limpid, 
relentless  clarity  of  presentation  in  which 
he  had  no  rival. 

Re-election  to  the  chair  of  poetry  in 
1906  was,  to  the  general  regret,  statutorily 
impossible.  He  was  offered  the  new  King 
Edward  VII  chair  of  English  literature  at 
Cambridge,  but  declined  it,  and  devoted 
the  rest  of  his  life  to  quiet  work  in  London, 
with  holidays  spent  among  his  beloved 
Alps^  which  were  one  of  the  passions  of 
his  life.  In  1907  and  1908  he  delivered 
two  courses  of  Gifford  lectures  at  Glas- 
gow University,  the  former  of  which  was 
published  posthumously  in  1940  as  Ideals 
of  Religion.  In  1929  he  published  his 
Miscellany,  from  which,  in  spite  of  one 
brilliant  paper  on  Tennyson,  the  fire  had 
noticeably  departed.  He  died,  unmarried, 
in  London  2  September  1935.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Glasgow,  Edinburgh,  Liverpool,  and 
Durham,  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1907.  At  BaUiol 
College,  of  which  he  was  elected  an  hono- 
jrary  fellow  in  1912,  he  foimded  by  his  will 
la  research  fellowship,  the  aim  of  which  is 
characteristic  of  his  wisdom  and  his 
humanity.  Looking  back  at  his  own 
career,  he  determined  to  secure  for  at 
least  a  few  young  men,  who  might  later 
have  some  contribution  to  make  to  English 
letters,  two  or  three  unhurried  years 
immediately  after  graduation  in  which  to 
Rnd  themselves,  and  not  be  rushed  by 
economic  pressure  into  posts  which  might 
be  unsuitable,  and  which,  even  if  academic, 
were  likely,  through  pressure  of  admini- 
strative and  tutorial  routine,  to  cramp 
their  development.  He  took  a  prominent 
part  in  the  creation  in  1906  of  the  English 


Association,  of  which  he  was  president  in 
1911. 

Bradley  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
English  critics  of  Shakespeare,  possibly 
the  greatest.  Even  those  who  disapprove 
alike  of  his  aims  and  of  his  methods 
reluctantly  admit  his  stature,  and  his 
position  is  secure,  above  the  shifting  cur- 
rents of  critical  fashion .  But  it  was  criticism 
of  Shakespeare  alone  that  showed  him  at 
his  best.  As  a  critic  of  other  writers  he 
was  workmanlike,  penetrating,  and  often 
illuminating.  It  needed  an  outstanding 
artist  and  a  full  man  to  elicit  the  deepest 
powers  of  his  keen  mind  and  human  heart. 
It  is  significant  that  in  Oxford  Lectures  on 
Poetry  (1909),  together  with  a  number  of 
other  pieces  of  able  criticism,  there  are 
three  lectures  on  Shakespeare  which  are 
of  a  different  calibre  and  temper  from  the 
rest.  One  of  them  indeed,  that  on  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,  is  perhaps  his  croAvning 
achievement. 

Bradley  never  forgot  that  Shakespeare 
was  a  brilliantly  successful  Ehzabethan 
playwright.  But  he  also  never  forgot,  as 
some  modern  criticism  is  apt  to  forget, 
that  he  was  a  man  of  the  most  compre- 
hensive soul  who  put  into  his  plays  far 
more  than  was  needed  for  his  'fellows' 
and  Burbage  to  make  a  resounding  box- 
office  success.  To  censure  Bradley  for 
'finding  in  Shakespeare  what  Shakespeare 
never  meant'  is  to  mistake  the  way  in 
which  a  great  creative  artist  works.  Of 
course  Shakespeare  put  into  his  greater 
plays  more  than  was  needed  for  the  two 
hours'  traffic  of  the  stage  and  the  suffrages 
of  the  contemporary  public.  He  put  it 
there  because  he  was  Shakespeare,  creating 
men  and  women,  not  marionettes.  And  it 
was  with  this  overplus  that  Bradley  was 
largely  concerned.  In  the  perhaps  un- 
expected company  of  Johnson  he  felt 
Shakespeare's  characters  to  be  human 
beings  with  an  existence  of  their  own,  and 
was  eager  to  show  Hamlet  or  Macbeth  or 
Othello  in  his  habit  as  he  lived,  not  merely 
as  he  postured  for  the  groundlings.  The 
test  of  Bradley's  method  is  the  purely 
pragmatical  test  that  it  works,  as  with  a 
more  mechanical  artist  than  Shakespeare 
it  would  not  work.  Of  all  English  critics 
of  Shakespeare  he  is  the  surest  expositor 
of  the  'supererogatory'  Shakespeare,  of  all 
that  makes  Shakespeare  one  of  the  supreme 
interpreters  of  the  human  soul. 

Bradley  always  based  his  criticism  on  a 
precise  and  exhaustive  knowledge  of  the 
text,  so  that  even  when  a  reader  disagrees 
with  the  conclusions  he  cannot  deny  the 


99 


Bradley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


premisses.  His  method  is  the  Socratic 
method,  'let  us  see  where  the  logos  leads 
us'.  The  manner  in  which  he  presented 
his  conclusions  was,  it  may  be  supposed, 
inherited  from  his  father.  Like  his  father's 
sermons,  Bradley's  lectures  are  marked  by 
'singular  simplicity  and  force,  and  sus- 
tained dignity  and  purity  of  language'. 
Every  now  and  then  he  rises  to  greater 
heights.  The  last  paragraph  of  his  lecture 
on  Antony  and  Cleopatra  (even  though  it 
contains  an  odd  geographical  blunder)  has 
a  fire  and  a  secure  complication  of  cadence 
that  should  ensure  its  inclusion  in  any 
anthology  of  English  prose. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Bradley,  by  George 
Henry,  in  Glasgow  University. 

[The  Times,  4  September  1935;  J.  W. 
Mackail,  Andrew  Cecil  Bradley,  1851-1935  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxi, 
1935 ;  J.  W.  Mackail  in  Oxford  Magazine,  17 
October  1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

M.  Roy  Ridley. 

BRAMWELL,  Sir  BYROM  (1847- 
1931),  physician,  was  born  at  North 
Shields  18  December  1847,  the  eldest  son 
of  John  Byrom  Bramwell,  M.D.,  by  his 
wife,  Mary  Young.  At  the  age  of  eleven 
he  was  sent  to  Cheltenham  College,  where 
he  spent  seven  years.  On  leaving  school  in 
1865  he  went  to  Edinburgh  University,  in 
order  to  study  medicine,  and  there  boarded 
for  some  time  with  William  Stewart,  the 
author  of  The  Practical  Angler,  whose 
name  has  become  even  more  familiar  as 
the  inventor  of  Stewart  tackle .  To  Stewart, 
no  doubt,  he  owed  some  of  his  skill  as  a 
fisherman.  This  hobby  was  destined  to 
become  his  chief  recreation  during  the  busy 
years  of  his  professional  life.  At  Edinburgh 
he  graduated  with  honours  in  1869,  and 
captained  the  university  cricket  eleven. 

After  serving  his  time  as  house  surgeon 
to  James  Spence  [q.v.],  in  1870  Bramwell 
refused  the  appointment  of  assistant  to  the 
professor  of  medicine  as  he  felt  it  his  duty 
to  return  to  North  Shields  to  assist  his 
father,  who  was  in  poor  health,  in  a  busy 
general  practice. 

When  only  twenty-five  years  of  age 
Bramwell  was  appointed  lecturer  in  medi- 
cal jurisprudence  at  University  College, 
Durham,  and  in  1877  was  awarded  a  gold 
medal  for  his  thesis  for  the  degree  of  M.D. 
In  1874  he  went  to  live  in  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne,  having  been  appointed  physician  and 
pathologist  to  the  Newcastle  Royal  In- 
firmary, and  having  started  practice  as  a 
consulting  physician.  Five  years  later  he 
resigned  his  appointments  in  Newcastle 
on  going  to  Edinburgh,  where  he  was 


the  first  physician  to  start  practice  as  a 
pure  consultant.  These  early  years  in 
Edinburgh  were  an  uphill  struggle.  Edin- 
burgh was  then  very  conservative,  and  it 
was  quite  contrary  to  tradition  for  an 
Englishman  to  migrate  and  settle  in  prac- 
tice north  of  the  Tweed.  In  his  first  twelve 
months  his  total  income  from  consulting 
practice  amounted  to  but  five  guineas, 
but  this  very  fact  was  partly  responsible 
for  his  subsequent  success,  since  it  gave 
him  ample  time  for  study  and  writing.  In 
1879  he  gave  his  first  course  of  lectures  on 
medicine  at  the  Extra-mural  School.  In 
1882  he  was  appointed  pathologist,  in 
1885  assistant  physician,  and  in  1897 
physician,  to  the  Edinburgh  Royal  In- 
firmary, where  his  clinic  became  one  of  the 
most  popular  in  the  medical  school.  He  re- 
tired in  1912.  Amongst  therapeutic  experi- 
ments for  which  he  was  responsible  were 
the  use  of  arsenic  in  pernicious  anaemia, 
massive  doses  of  iron  in  anaemia,  and  thy- 
roid in  psoriasis. 

During  these  strenuous  years  Bramwell's 
pen  was  never  idle.  In  addition  to  some 
160  scientific  papers  he  wrote  several 
books  on  different  branches  of  medicine, 
of  which  that  on  Diseases  of  the  Spinal 
Cord  (1881)  was  translated  into  German, 
French,  and  Russian,  while  several  editions 
were  published  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  His  books  on  Diseases  of  the  ji 
Heart  and  Thoracic  Aorta  {1884<),  Intracran- 
ial Tumours  (1888),  and  Anaemia  and  some 
of  the  Diseases  of  the  Blood-forming  Organs 
and  Ductless  Glands  (1899)  were  widely' 
read  at  the  time,  and  his  Atlas  of  Clinical- 
Medicine  (3  vols.,  1892-1896)  contains 
many  beautiful  coloured  lithographic 
illustrations.  Clinical  Studies,  published 
in  eight  volumes  from  1903  to  1910, 
approached  the  subject  from  an  original 
aspect,  and  their  vitality  gained  for  them 
a  wide  popularity  throughout  the  English- 
speaking  world. 

The  universities  of  Edinburgh,  St. 
Andrews,  Birmingham,  and  Durham  con- 
ferred honorary  degrees  upon  Bramwell. 
He  was  elected  F.R.S.  (Edin.)  in  1886.  In 
1910  he  was  elected  president  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Physicians  of  Edinburgh,  of 
which  he  had  been  a  fellow  since  1880,  and , 
in  1923  president  of  the  Association  of 
Physicians  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
He  was  elected  F.R.C.P.  (London)  in  1923 
and  was  knighted  in  1924  for  his  services 
to  medicine.  He  was  a  foreign  correspond- 
ing member  of  the  Neurological  Society  of 
Paris  and  of  the  German  and  Philadelphia 
Neurological  clubs. 


100 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Brentford 


Bramwell  was  a  man  of  robust  physique 
and  boundless  energy,  a  clear  thinker  with 
a  flair  for  sifting  evidence,  picking  out  the 
important  facts,  and  discarding  those 
which  were  irrelevant.  These  gifts  ren- 
dered him  a  born  diagnostician  and  a 
brilliant  clinical  teacher,  one  who  be- 
came outstanding  even  in  the  Edinburgh 
school.  A  keen  athlete  in  his  youth,  and 
an  expert  trout  fisherman,  in  the  autumn 
of  his  life  he  enjoyed  nothing  better  than 
watching  cricket  at  Lords  or  an  inter- 
national Rugby  match  at  Murrayfield. 
Although  he  did  not  suffer  fools  gladly,  he 
inspired  admiration  and  affection  in  his 
subordinates,  some  of  whom  later  attained 
considerable  eminence  in  the  profession. 
Their  visits  to  his  home  in  Edinburgh  were 
always  a  joy  to  him. 

In  1872  Bramwell  married  his  second 
cousin,  Martha  (died  1919),  only  child  of 
Edwin  Crighton,  of  North  Shields,  to 
whose  lifelong  unselfish  devotion  and  able 
support  he  owed  much  of  his  success  in 
the  years  to  come.  They  had  three  sons 
and  two  daughters,  the  younger  of  whom 
predeceased  her  father.  Clear  in  mind  to 
the  very  end,  the  closing  years  of  a  full 
and  happy  life  were  absorbed  by  interest 
in  his  children  and  grandchildren,  to  whom 
he  was  intensely  devoted.  He  died  in 
Edinburgh  27  April  1931. 

Bramwell  was  presented  in  1923  with 
his  portrait,  by  David  Alison,  which  hangs 
in  the  hall  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  of  Edinburgh. 

[The  Times,  28  April  1931 ;  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  1930-1931, 
vol.  11,  p.  224;  British  Medical  Journal,  1931, 
vol.  i,  p.  823  (portrait) ;  Lancet,  1931,  vol.  i, 
pp.  1057  and  1108  (portrait) ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  Crighton  Bramwell. 

BRENNAN,  LOUIS  (1852-1932), 
mechanical  engineer,  the  son  of  Thomas 
Brennan,  by  his  wife,  Bridget  McDonnell, 
was  born  (according  to  his  own  statement) 
at  Castlebar,  co.  Mayo,  28  January  1852 
where  he  was  christened  Luis  2  April 
1852.  While  still  a  boy  he  was  taken  to 
Australia,  and  it  was  when  he  was  living 
in  Melbourne  as  a  watchmaker  that  he 
devised  the  dirigible  torpedo  for  coast  de- 
fence for  which  his  name  is  chiefly  known. 

The  invention  was  brought  to  the 
notice  of  the  British  government  in  1880 
by  Commodore  J.  C.  Wilson,  and  Brennan 
was  invited  to  come  to  England.  He  was 
provided  with  facilities  on  the  Medway 
for  the  development  of  the  weapon,  re- 


ceiving an  annual  grant  of  £1,000  with  a 
preliminary  award  of  £5,000.  In  1885  the 
torpedo  was  adopted  by  the  government, 
which  a  year  or  two  later  purchased  the 
exclusive  rights  for  over  £100,000.  This 
figure  was  criticized  as  being  excessive, 
but  the  commission  which  reconmiended 
the  payment  justified  it  on  the  groiuid 
that  it  was  important  not  to  allow  the 
device  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  other 
coimtries.  In  1887  Brennan  was  appointed 
superintendent  of  the  government  factory 
at  Gillingham,  Kent,  established  for  the 
manufacture  of  the  torpedo,  and  held  that 
position  until  1896,  subsequently  acting, 
imtil  1907,  as  consulting  engineer.  His 
torpedo  had  two  screws,  revolving  in 
opposite  directions,  and  drums  mounted 
on  each  propeller  shaft  were  wound  with 
wires  the  ends  of  which  were  connected 
with  a  high-speed  engine  on  shore.  Steering 
was  effected  by  varying  the  rate  at  which 
the  wires  were  unwound  from  one  or  other 
of  the  drums  by  the  engine,  so  varying  the 
relative  speed  of  rotation  of  the  screws. 

After  the  torpedo  Brennan  turned  his 
attention  to  a  monorail  system  of  transport 
which  depended  on  the  use  of  self-propelled 
vehicles  travelling  on  a  single  rail,  or  even 
a  tightly  stretched  cable,  and  maintained 
upright  by  a  high-speed  gyrostat  rotating 
in  a  vacuiun.  He  showed  a  model  of  this 
arrangement  at  a  conversazione  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  1907  and  later  carried 
out  trials  with  full-scale  equipment,  but 
the  system  did  not  come  into  practical  use. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Brennan 
was  employed  in  the  munitions  inventions 
department  of  the  Ministry  of  Munitions, 
and  from  1919  to  1926  he  worked  for  the 
Air  Ministry  at  the  Royal  Aircraft  Estab- 
lishment, Farnborough,  on  the  develop- 
ment of  heUcopter  flying  machines.  He 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1892  and  elected  an 
honorary  member  of  the  Royal  Engineers ' 
Institute  in  1906,  and  he  was  a  foimder 
member  of  the  National  Academy  of 
Ireland  (1922).  He  married  in  1892  Anna 
Mary  (died  1931),  daughter  of  Michael 
Quinn,  of  Castlebar,  and  had  one  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  suddenly  at 
Montreux  17  January  1932. 

[The  Times,  21  and  26  January  1932; 
Engineering  and  Engineer,  29  January  1932 ; 
Nature,  13  February  1932;  G.  E.  Armstrong, 
Torpedoes  and  Torpedo-Vessels,  2nded.,  1901.] 

H.  M.  Ross. 

BRENTFORD,  first  Viscount  (1865- 
1932),  statesman.    [See  Hicks,  William 

JOYNSON-.] 


101 


Bridges 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


BRIDGES,  Sir  (GEORGE)  TOM 
(MOLESWORTH)  (1871-1939),  lieu- 
tenant-general, was  born  at  Park  Farm, 
Eltham,  Kent,  20  August  1871,  the  third 
son  of  Major  Thomas  Walker  Bridges, 
R.A.,  who  was  an  elder  brother  of  Robert 
Bridges,  the  poet  laureate  [q.v.].  His 
mother  was  Mary  Anne,  daughter  of 
Frederick  Theodore  Philippi,  of  Belfield 
HaU,  near  Rochdale,  Lancashire,  a  natura- 
lized Englishman  whose  family  came  from 
Usingen  in  Germany.  Tom  Bridges,  as  he 
was  commonly  called,  was  educated  at 
Newton  Abbot  College  and  the  Royal 
Military  Academy,  was  gazetted  second 
lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Artillery  in  1892, 
and  spent  the  early  part  of  his  service  in 
India.  In  August  1898  he  was  posted  to 
the  new  formation  of  the  armed  forces  of 
Central  Africa  at  Zomba,  Nyasaland,  where 
he  was  when  the  South  African  war  broke 
out.  Between  1899  and  1901  he  served 
with  the  Imperial  Light  Horse,  taking 
part  in  the  relief  of  Ladysmith,  and  being 
severely  wounded.  He  was  promoted 
captain  in  April  1900.  Between  May  and 
July  1901  he  commanded  the  5th  and  6th 
West  Australian  Mounted  Infantry.  Sub- 
sequently he  took  part  in  the  operations 
in  the  Orange  River  Colony,  on  the  Zulu- 
land  frontier  of  Natal,  and  in  Cape  Colony. 
He  was  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches, 
and  was  given  a  brevet  majority  in 
August  1902. 

Between  1902  and  1904  Bridges  served 
in  East  Africa  and  took  part  in  operations 
in  Somaliland,  being  in  command  of  the 
Tribal  Horse  (which  he  raised),  and  being 
again  severely  wounded.  He  was  again 
mentioned  in  dispatches  and  he  received 
the  D.S.O.  During  1905  and  1906  he 
passed  through  the  Staff  College  and  was 
employed  in  the  Military  Intelligence 
Directorate  at  the  War  Office  in  1907  and 
subsequently  as  chief  instructor  at  the 
Cavalry  School  at  Netheravon.  In  1908  he 
transferred  to  the  4th  Dragoon  Guards  as 
a  major.  Between  1910  and  1914  he  was 
military  attache  at  Brussels,  The  Hague, 
Copenhagen,  and  Christiania. 

In  August  1914  Bridges  went  out  to 
France  with  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  in  command  of  a  squadron  of  his 
regiment.  On  22  August  his  squadron  was 
the  first  unit  of  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  to  meet  the  Germans,  near  the 
village  of  Soignies.  On  27  August  there 
occurred  at  St.  Quentin  the  incident  for 
which  he  is  perhaps  best  known.  He  found 
in  the  town  two  British  battalions  the 
commanding  officers  of  which  had  given 


written  assurances  to  the  mayor  that  they 
would  surrender  with  their  units  in  order 
to  save  the  town  from  bombardment. 
Bridges  rallied  the  men  of  these  battalions 
with  a  tin  whistle  and  a  toy  drum  purchased 
at  the  local  toy-shop  and  led  them  back 
into  contact  with  the  remainder  of  the 
British  forces. 

On  3  September  Bridges  was  given 
command  of  the  4th  Hussars,  but  a  month 
later  was  appointed  head  of  the  British 
military  mission  at  the  headquarters  of 
the  Belgian  army,  where  he  remained  until 
December  1915,  being  wounded  on  the 
Yser.  He  then  commanded  the  19th 
division  until  April  1917,  when  he  was 
sent  on  a  mission  to  the  United  States  of 
America  for  two  months,  after  which  he 
resumed  command  of  the  19th  division 
until  he  lost  a  leg  at  Passchendaele  in 
September  1917.  He  had  been  promoted 
major-general  in  the  previous  January. 

In  the  spring  of  1918  Bridges  headed 
another  mission  to  the  United  States. 
Between  January  and  November  1919  he 
was  employed,  with  the  rank  of  temporary 
lieutenant-general,  as  chief  of  the  British 
military  mission  to  the  army  of  the  Orient 
with  headquarters  at  Salonika  and  sub- 
sequently at  Constantinople.  In  1920  he 
was  sent  to  Novorossisk,  where  he  arranged 
the  evacuation  of  the  remnants  of  General 
Denikin's  White  Russian  army.  Sub- 
sequently he  was  at  Smyrna  with  the 
Greeks  when  they  were  driven  out  of 
Asia  Minor  by  the  Turks.  He  retired  from 
the  army  in  1922,  with  the  rank  of  hono- 
rary lieutenant-general,  and  was  governor 
of  South  Australia  from  that  year  until 
1927.  From  1920  to  the  time  of  his  death 
he  was  colonel  of  the  5th  Inniskilling 
Dragoon  Guards  and  was  also  colonel  of 
the  9th  Australian  Light  Horse  and  the 
43rd  Australian  Infantry. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Bridges 
was  nine  times  mentioned  in  dispatches, 
and  was  appointed  C.M.G.  (1915),  C.B. 
(1918),  and  K.C.M.G.  (1919),  besides  re- 
ceiving numerous  foreign  decorations.  In 
1925  he  was  appointed  K.C.B.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  imiversities  of 
McGill  and  Adelaide. 

In  1907  Bridges  married  Janet  Florence 
(died  1937),  second  daughter  of  Graham 
Menzies,  of  Hallyburton  House,  Cupar 
Angus,  Forfarshire,  and  widow  of  Major 
Wilfred  George  Howard  Marshall,  Grena- 
dier Guards.  There  was  one  daughter  of 
the  marriage.  In  1938  he  published  a  book 
of  reminiscences  entitled  Alarms  and 
Excursions.  In  1939  he  was  compiling,  for 


102 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Brooke 


the  use  of  the  fighting  forces,  an  anthology 
entitled  Word  from  England,  which  was 
published  posthumously  in  1940.  In  1939, 
also,  some  of  his  paintings  were  exhibited 
in  London.  He  died  at  Brighton  26 
November  1939. 

[The  Times,  27  November  1939 ;  Sir  G.T.M. 
Bridges,  Alarms  and  Excursions,  1938; 
Official  records ;  private  information.] 

E.  H.  Wyndham. 

BRIGHTMAN,    FRANK    EDWARD 

(1856-1932),  liturgiologist,  was  born  at 
Bristol  18  June  1856,  the  second  of  the 
three  sons  of  Charles  Brightman,  a  Bristol 
business  man,  by  his  wife,  Emma,  daughter 
of  Isaac  Brown.  From  Bristol  Grammar 
School  he  obtained  a  scholarship  at  Univer- 
sity College,  Oxford,  in  1875,  and  after 
being  awarded  a  first  class  in  mathematical 
moderations  (1876)  and  a  second  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1877),  liierae 
humaniores  (1879),  and  theology  (1880), 
he  won  in  1882  both  a  Denyer  and  John- 
son theological  scholarship  and  the  Hall- 
Houghton  Senior  Septuagint  prize.  He  was 
ordained  deacon  in  1884,  and  priest  in 
1885,  after  having  been  admitted  in  1884 
an  original  librarian  of  Pusey  House, 
Oxford,  an  office  which  he  held  until  the 
year  after  his  election  to  a  fellowship  at 
Magdalen  in  1902.  There  he  continued  to 
live  luitil  his  sudden  death  in  college  31 
March  1932.  He  was  immarried. 

Brightman  was  one  of  the  most  learned 
of  the  band  of  liturgical  scholars  who 
flourished  in  England  at  the  turn  of  the 
century ;  but  whereas  the  majority  devoted 
themselves  to  the  study  of  Latin  liturgies, 
Brightman' s  name  was  generally  associated 
among  them  with  oriental  rites,  and  it  is 
significant  that  his  amplification  of  C.  E. 
Hammond's  Liturgies,  Eastern  and  Western 
did  not  go  beyond  the  first  volume  on 
Eastern  liturgies  (1896).  But  his  know- 
ledge was  extremely  wide  and,  if  his  output 
was  disappointingly  small,  one  cause  was 
the  unboimded  generosity  with  which  he 
gave  help  to  students,  and  another  the 
exactness  and  labour  which  he  devoted  to 
nearly  thirty  years'  (1904-1932)  joint  edit- 
ing of  the  Journal  of  Theological  Studies. 
His  learning  did  not  go  tmrecognized,  for  he 
was  an  adviser  to  the  leaders  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  in  the  controversy  over 
Anglican  orders  he  was  consulted  in  the 
compilation  (1897)  of  the  reply  to  the 
bull  Apostolicae  Curae.  On  a  kindred 
subject,  but  away  from  mere  controversy, 
his  essay  on  'The  Terms  of  Communion 
and  the  Ministration  of  the  Sacraments  in 


Early  Times'  (published  in  Essays  on  the 
Early  History  of  the  Church  and  the  Ministry, 
edited  by  H.  B.  Swete,  1918)  was  such  as 
no  other  liturgical  scholar  then  alive  could 
have  written.  In  the  narrower  sphere  of 
the  Church  of  England,  Brightman's  con- 
tributions to  learning  were  his  editions  of 
the  Preces  Privatae  (1903)  and  the  Manual 
of  the  Sick  (1909)  of  Lancelot  Andrewes 
[q.v.]  and  a  monumental  work  in  two 
volumes,  The  English  Rite  (1915),  a 
synopsis  in  which  he  set  out  the  sources 
of  the  Book  of  Conunon  Prayer  and  the 
changes  made  from  1549  to  1662.  On  the 
question  of  the  revision  of  the  Prayer 
Book  in  1927  a  devastating  article  from 
his  pen  in  the  Church  Quarterly  Review 
influenced  church  opinion  against  the  new 
book. 

Brightman  was  little  of  stature  and 
walked  with  his  head  bent  as  if  avoiding 
notice ;  but  his  finely  domed  head,  ascetic 
face,  and  grave  but  kind  eyes  marked  him 
out  from  other  men.  He  was  very  shrewd, 
and  his  rare  sermons  were  made  deeply 
arresting  by  their  moral  earnestness.  He 
detested  publicity,  but  honours  came  to 
him  nevertheless.  Bishop  Edward  King 
[q.v.]  collated  him  in  1902  to  a  prebend 
in  Lincoln  Minster;  the  university  of 
Louvain  conferred  upon  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  Doct.  Phil,  in  1909,  and  the 
university  of  Durham  that  of  D.D.  in  1914. 
In  1926  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy.  Shy  and  reticent  with 
strangers,  he  attracted  undergraduates  of 
the  most  varied  types,  who  soon  forgot 
in  his  rooms  the  disorder  of  the  books  as 
they  listened  to  his  conversation  with  its 
touches  of  irony  and  keen  sense  of  humour. 

[The  Times,  1  April  1932 ;  H.  N.  Bate,  Frank 
Edward  Brightman,  1856-1932  in  Proceedings 
of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xix,  1933 ; 
Journal  of  Theological  Studies,  July  1932; 
Oxford  Magazine,  5  May  1932;  personal 
knowledge.]  S.  L.  Ollard. 

BRISE,  SiB  EVELYN  (JOHN)  RUG- 
GLES-  (1857-1935),  prison  reformer.  [See 
Ruggues-Bbise  .] 

BROOKE,  ALAN  ENGLAND  (1863- 
1939), biblical  scholar  and  provost  of  King's 
College,  Cambridge,  was  born  at  Spring 
Grove,  Middlesex,  1  September  1863,  the 
youngest  of  the  four  sons  of  Richard 
England  Brooke,  perpetual  curate  of  St. 
Mary's  church,  Spring  Grove,  and  honorary 
canon  of  Manchester  Cathedral,  afterwards 
successively  vicar  of  Hull  and  rector  of 
Bath,  by  his  wife,  Harriet,  daughter  of 


103 


Brooke 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


William  Bonner  Hopkins,  of  Limber 
Grange,  Lincolnshire.  A  scholar  first  of 
Eton  and  then  of  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, Alan  Brooke  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  part  i  of  the  classical  tripos  of 
1885,  a  second  class  in  pari;  ii  (1886),  a 
first  class  in  part  ii  of  the  theological 
tripos  of  1888,  and  several  university 
prizes.  In  1889  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
his  college,  at  a  time  when  Brooke  Foss 
Westcott  [q.v.]  was  at  the  height  of  his 
influence  at  Cambridge.  It  was  Westcott's 
influence,  with  that  of  Joseph  Armitage 
Robinson  [q.v.],  which  largely  determined 
the  direction  of  his  life's  work.  Ordained 
deacon  in  1891  he  served  for  a  few  months 
as  curate  at  Gayton,  Northamptonshire; 
his  scholarly  interests,  however,  soon  drew 
him  back  to  Cambridge.  His  first  pub- 
lished work  was  an  edition  of  The  Frag- 
ments of  Heracleon  (1891),  which  was 
followed  by  an  edition  of  The  Commentary 
of  Origen  on  St.  John's  Gospel  (2  vols., 
1896).  But  he  had  already  been  chosen, 
with  (Dr.)  Norman  M'Lean,  to  edit  the 
larger  Cambridge  edition  of  the  Septua- 
gint,  and  this  vast  and  self-denying  task, 
calling  for  discriminating  judgement  and 
close  attention  to  detail,  occupied  him  for 
the  rest  of  his  life,  and  remained  unfinished 
at  his  death.  The  first  volume  of  The  Old 
Testament  in  Greek,  of  which  the  first  part 
was  published  in  1906,  was  completed  in 
1917 ;  the  second  in  1935 ;  the  final  volume, 
of  which  the  first  part  appeared  in  1940, 
shortly  after  Brooke's  death,  is  still  in- 
complete, although  much  work  had  been 
done  upon  it. 

Meanwhile  Brooke  was  for  twenty -four 
years  (1894-1918)  dean  of  his  college  and 
lecturer  in  divinity.  The  claims  of  the 
Septuagint  precluded  much  independent 
authorship,  but  his  Critical  and  Exegetical 
Commentary  on  the  Johannine  Epistles 
(1912)  is  a  distinguished  work  which  illu- 
strates not  only  his  thoroughness  and  fine 
critical  judgement  but  something  too  of 
his  spiritual  insight  which  appears  also  in 
his  sermons.  He  was  ordained  priest  in 
1904.  In  1916  he  was  elected  Ely  professor 
of  divinity  at  Cambridge.  This  meant  also 
a  stall  in  Ely  Cathedral,  and  he  valued  the 
opportunity  which  his  canonry  afforded 
of  taking  part  in  the  wider  life  of  the 
Church,  especially  of  visiting  the  village 
churches  in  the  Fens.  He  was  appointed 
a  chaplain  to  the  king  in  1918.  In  1926  he 
was  elected  provost  of  King's  (whereupon 
he  became  an  honorary  canon  of  Ely)  and 
for  seven  years  during  the  transitional 
period  after  the  royal  commission  on  the 


university  he  was  head  of  the  college, 
which  owed  much  to  his  wise  counsel  and 
shrewd  judgement,  as  also  to  his  gene- 
rosity. After  his  retirement  in  1933  he 
continued  to  work  at  the  Septuagint  vmtil 
his  death  at  Cambridge  29  October  1939. 
Elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1934,  he  was  in  1939  awarded  the 
Burkitt  medal  for  biblical  studies.  His 
marriage  in  1901  to  Frances  Rachel 
(died  1919),  daughter  of  Nicholas  John 
Dunn,  J.P.,  D.L.,  of  St.  Florence,  near 
Tenby,  Pembrokeshire,  brought  him  much 
happiness.  There  was  one  son.  Rupert 
Brooke  [q.v.]  was  his  nephew. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Brooke,  by  Henry 
Lamb,  at  King's  College,  Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  31  October  1939;  Cambridge 
Review,  18  November  1939;  J.  F.  Bethune- 
Baker,  Alan  England  Brooke,  1863-1939  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi, 
1940  (portrait) ;  private  information.] 

A.  R.  Graham-Campbell. 


BROWN,  ERNEST  WILLIAM  (1866- 
1938),  mathematician  and  astronomer, 
was  born  at  Hull  29  November  1866,  the 
second  child  and  elder  son  of  William 
Brown,  farmer,  and  later  a  lumber  mer- 
chant of  Hull,  by  his  wife,  Emma  Martin. 
Educated  at  the  Hull  and  East  Riding 
College,  he  entered  Christ's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, as  a  scholar  in  1884.  He  was  sixth 
wrangler  in  the  mathematical  tripos  of 
1887  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Christ's 
in  1889.  At  the  suggestion  of  (Sir)  George 
Darwin  [q.v.],  he  took  up  in  1888  the 
study  of  G.  W.  Hill's  papers  on  the  lunar 
theory. 

This  led  Brown  to  what  was  to  prove 
his  lifework :  for  the  next  twenty  years  he 
gave  little  thought  to  other  research  and 
during  the  thirty  years  that  followed  it 
remained  his  favourite  subject.  In  1891 
he  went  to  the  United  States  of  America 
as  professor  of  applied  mathematics  at 
Haverford  College,  Pennsylvania ;  in  1907 
he  was  appointed  professor  of  mathe- 
matics at  Yale  University,  retiring  in  1932, 
on  account  of  ill  health,  with  the  title  of 
emeritus  professor.  But  he  retained  his 
connexion  with  Cambridge  and  with 
Christ's  College,  spending  a  part  of  almost 
every  summer  there.  He  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Christ's  in  1911. 

In  1896  Brown  published  An  Intro- 
ductory Treatise  on  the  Lunar  Theory,  con- 
taining a  critical  examination  of  the  various 
methods.  His  own  theory  of  the  motion 
of  the  moon  was  a  development  of  Hill's 


104 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Brown,  G.  B. 


method.  The  main  results  were  published 
in  five  parts  in  the  Memoirs  of  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society  between  1897  and 
1908.  For  an  essay  on  the  direct  planetary 
perturbations  of  the  moon  he  was  awarded 
in  1907  the  Adams  prize  in  the  university 
of  Cambridge.  The  heavy  task  of  reducing 
the  theory  to  tables  was  begun  in  1908, 
the  numerical  values  of  the  constants  used 
in  the  tables  being  obtained  from  com- 
parison of  the  theory  with  the  Greenwich 
observations  of  the  moon  (some  20,000  in 
number)  from  1750  to  1900.  His  monu- 
mental Tables  of  the  Motion  of  the  Moon 
in  three  volumes  were  published  in  1919. 
These  tables  have  been  used  for  the 
calculation  of  the  moon's  place  in  the 
Nautical  Almanac  since  1923. 

The  completeness  and  accuracy  of 
Brown's  theory  enabled  one  of  the  most 
pressing  problems  in  graAdtational  astro- 
nomy to  be  decided.  Comparison  between 
the  moon's  observed  positions  and  the 
earlier  theory  of  Petrus  Andreas  Hansen 
had  shown  large  fluctuations,  which  could 
not  be  explained  by  any  known  gravita- 
tional cause  but  which  might  have  arisen 
from  errors  or  incompleteness  in  the 
theory.  Comparison  with  Brown's  Tables 
soon  showed  that  the  moon's  observed 
positions  were  not  accurately  represented 
by  the  theory.  Brown  suggested  that  the 
cause  was  a  variable  rate  of  rotation  of 
the  earth  and  obtained  evidence  in  support 
of  this  view,  which  has  since  been  con- 
clusively established.  In  order  to  improve 
the  observed  positions  of  the  moon,  he 
organized  a  world-wide  programme  for  the 
observation  [and  reduction  of  occupations 
of  stars  by  the  moon.  In  his  later  years 
he  made  significant  contributions  to 
various  problems  in  celestial  mechanics, 
mainly  concerned  with  planetary  theory. 

Brown  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1897.  He 
was  awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society  in  1907 ;  the  Ponte- 
coulant  prize  of  the  Paris  Academy  of 
Sciences  inl909 ;  a  Royal  medal  of  the  Roy- 
al Society  in  1914 ;  the  Bruce  medal  of  the 
Astronomical  Society  of  the  Pacific  in 
1920 ;  and  the  Watson  medal  of  the  Nation- 
al Academy  of  Sciences,  Washington,  in 
1937.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Adelaide  (1914),  Yale 
1933),  Columbia  (1 934) ,  and  McGiU  ( 1 936) . 
He  was  never  married.  He  died  at  New 
Haven,  Connecticut,  22  July  1938. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,    No.    8,    January    1940    (portrait) ; 
)rivate  information  ;  personal  knowledge.] 
H.  Spencer  Jones. 


BROWN,  GERARD  BALDWIN  (1849- 
1932),  historian  of  art,  was  bom  in  London 
31  October  1849,  the  only  son  of  James 
Baldwin  Brown,  a  leading  nonconformist 
divine,  who  was  at  the  time  minister  of 
Brixton  Independent  chapel,  by  his  wife, 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  William  Gerard 
Leif child,  of  Moorgate  Street  and  Wan- 
stead,  and  a  sister  of  the  sculptor  H.  S. 
Leifchild  [q.v.].  Gerard  was  educated  at 
Uppingham  under  Edward  Thring  [q.v.] 
and  at  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
graduated  in  1873  with  a  first  class  in 
literae  humaniores.  In  1874  he  was 
awarded  the  chancellor's  prize  for  an 
English  essay  and  was  elected  to  a  fellow- 
ship, which  he  held  until  1877,  at  Brase- 
nose.  In  his  thirty-first  year  (1880)  he 
went  to  Edinburgh  University  to  fill  the 
newly  established  Watson  Gordon  chair 
of  fine  art.  He  held  it  for  fifty  years, 
resigning  in  1930,  two  years  before  his 
death  at  Edinburgh  12  July  1932.  In  1882 
he  married  Maude  Annie  (died  1931), 
daughter  of  Robert  Hull  Terrell,  of  Exeter ; 
they  had  no  children. 

Although  his  earliest  lectures  at  Edin- 
burgh had  Greek  art  as  their  main  topic, 
and  although,  throughout  his  career, 
Baldwin  Brown  maintained  a  close  associa- 
tion with  the  school  of  classical  studies, 
his  first  book.  From  Schola  to  Cathedral 
(1886),  deals  with  a  subject  which  was 
subsequently  to  serve  as  the  theme  for  his 
main  life's  work.  Its  sub-title,  A  Study  of 
Early  Christian  Architecture  and  its  Rela- 
tion to  the  Life  of  the  Church,  indicates  the 
line  of  his  approach,  in  which  art  is  con- 
sidered as  a  manifestation  of  the  life  and 
culture  of  its  age,  and  where  great  impor- 
tance is  always  given  to  the  connexion 
between  art  and  its  social  background. 
The  same  method  of  approach  charac- 
terizes a  later  book,  The  Arts  and  Crafts  of 
Our  Teutonic  Forefathers  (1910),  wherein 
Baldwin  Brown  made  public  studies  which 
must  have  formed  the  basis  for  parts  of 
his  great  work  on  the  dark  ages  in  this 
country.  The  Arts  in  Early  England,  the 
first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  1903 
and  the  second  part  of  the  sixth  and  last, 
completed  by  Eric  Hyde  Lord  Sexton,  in 
1937.  Some  of  Baldwin  Brown's  opinions 
as  expressed  in  this,  his  most  important, 
work  wiU  no  doubt  be  questioned  as 
knowledge  advances,  but  the  groimd 
covered  is  so  extensive  and  the  research  so 
thorough  that  the  book  should  always 
retain  its  place  as  the  standard  work  on 
the  subject.  It  may  be  supplemented  by 
articles    and    monographs,    but    it    can 


105 


Brown,  G.  B. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


hardly  be  replaced  by  a  similar  general 
study. 

Other  of  Baldwin  Brown's  publications, 
The  Fine  Arts  (1891,  4th  ed.  1916), 
William  Hogarth  (1905),  Rembrandt  (1907), 
and  The  Art  of  the  Cave  Dweller  (1928),  all 
bear  witness  to  his  method  of  approach. 
But,  more  than  that,  they  illustrate  the 
author's  habit  of  making  himself  familiar 
at  first  hand  with  the  subjects  of  his  study, 
whether  pots,  pictures,  or  buildings.  His 
abiUties  as  a  draughtsman  and  photo- 
grapher helped  him  in  this,  and  his  imder- 
standing  of  the  nature  and  value  of 
craftsmanship,  learnt  in  his  uncle's  studio 
and  at  the  South  Kensington  School  of 
Art  before  going  to  Edinburgh,  enabled 
him  to  maintain  a  contact  with  the  object, 
the  absence  of  which  often  constitutes  a 
serious  blemish  in  the  more  purely  theore- 
tical studies  of  the  fashionable  modern 
German  school  of  historians  of  art. 

From  his  appointment  to  the  Watson 
Gordon  chair  until  his  death,  Baldwin 
Brown  made  Edinburgh  his  home,  but  he 
travelled  extensively  in  Great  Britain  and 
western  Europe  and  attended  numerous 
congresses  at  home  and  abroad.  Personal 
memories  and  written  records  attest  the 
enhanced  value  that  his  presence  lent  to 
such  gatherings .  It  was ,  however,  probably 
as  professor  that  the  fullest  scope  was 
given  for  the  expression  of  his  shy  though 
deUghtful  personality.  His  energy,  en- 
thusiasm, and  kindliness  were  proverbial ; 
he  was  always  ready  to  make  his  wide 
knowledge  available  to  others. 

The  titles  of  Baldwin  Brown's  publica- 
tions, which  also  include  The  Care  of 
Ancient  Monuments  (1905)  and  The  Glas- 
gow School  of  Painters  (1908),  denote  the 
catholic  nature  of  his  interests  and  the 
titles  of  the  books  in  his  library,  which  he 
bequeathed  to  the  department  of  fine  art 
at  Edinburgh  University,  further  illustrate 
the  breadth  and  freshness  of  his  tastes. 
This  breadth  of  outlook  influenced  the  lives 
of  many  generations  of  Edinburgh  gradu- 
ates, and,  through  them  and  similar 
contacts,  did  much  to  encourage  the 
spread  of  liberal  tastes  in  the  city. 

Baldwin  Brown  contributed  a  number 
of  papers  to  learned  journals:  'The  Origin 
of  Roman  Imperial  Architecture',  read 
before  the  Royal  Institute  of  British 
Architects  in  1889,  is  among  the  more 
important  of  them.  He  was  elected  a 
corresponding  fellow  of  a  large  number  of 
learned  societies,  and  received  honours 
from  numerous  bodies  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  including  two  honorary  degrees 


from  Edinburgh  University.  These  honours 
were  crowned  by  his  election  to  an  hono- 
rary fellowship  at  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  in 
1923  and  to  a  fellowship  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1924. 

A  bronze  bust  of  Baldwin  Brown,  by 
C.  d'O.  Pilkington  Jackson,  presented  to 
him  in  1930,  belongs  to  Edinburgh 
University. 

[The  Times,  14  July  1932 ;  Sir  George  Mac- 
donald,  Gerard  Baldwin  Brown,  1849-1932  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxi, 
1935;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] D.  Talbot  Rice. 

BROWNE,  Sir  JAMES  CRICHTON- 
(1840-1938),  physician  and  psychologist, 
was  born  in  Edinburgh  29  November  1840, 
the  eldest  son  of  William  Alexander  Francis 
Browne,  the  first  medical  superintendent 
of  the  Crichton  Royal  Institute  at  Dum- 
fries, by  his  wife,  Magdalene  Howden, 
daughter  of  Andrew  Balfour,  a  highly 
cultured  woman  and  a  Shakespearian 
scholar.  James's  second  Christian  name, 
which  he  afterwards  adopted  as  part  of 
his  surname,  was  derived  from  Dr.  James 
Crichton,  of  Crichtons'  Carse,  who  left  a 
sum  of  about  £100,000  for  the  foundation 
of  the  institute.  Like  David  Skae  [q.v.], 
of  the  celebrated  Edinburgh  asylum  at 
Morningside,  Dr.  Crichton  was  one  of  the 
pioneers  of  the  early  treatment  of  mental 
breakdown. 

Crichton-Browne  was  educated  at  Dum- 
fries Academy,  Trinity  College,  Glenal- 
mond,  and  Edinburgh  University  where 
his  teachers  were  Joseph  (later  Lord) 
Lister,  Lyon  (later  Lord)  Playfair,  Sir 
Robert  Christison,  James  Syme,  John 
Goodsir,  and  Thomas  Laycock  [qq.v.]. 
From  an  early  stage  of  his  career  he 
showed  an  interest  in  medical  psychology. 
In  his  third  year  of  student  life  he  pre- 
sented a  paper  to  the  Royal  Medical 
Society  of  Edinburgh  on  'The  Psychical 
Diseases  of  Early  Life',  and  in  his  fourth 
year  delivered  his  valedictory  address  to 
the  society  on  'The  Clinical  Teaching  of 
Psychology'.  He  qualified L.R.C.S.  (Edin- 
burgh) in  1861  and  graduated  M.D.  with 
a  thesis  on '  Hallucinations '  in  the  following 
year.  He  began  practice  in  1865  by  serving 
as  assistant  medical  officer  of  the  Devon, 
Derby,  and  Warwick  county  asylums, 
and  subsequently  was  appointed  medical 
superintendent  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
City  Asylum,  where  he  lectured  on  mental 
disease  at  the  Newcastle  College  of  Science. 
In  1866  he  became  medical  director  of  the 
West  Riding  Asylum  at  Wakefield  and 


106 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Bruce,  C.  G. 


gave  a  similar  course  of  lectures  at  the 
Leeds  School  of  Medicine  and  also  founded 
and  edited  the  annual  West  Riding  Lunatic 
Asylum  Medical  Reports.  These  reports, 
which  were  the  first  of  their  kind  in  this 
country,  contain  contributions  from 
J.  Hughlings  Jackson,  (Sir)  T.  C.  Allbutt, 
(Sir)  T.  L.  Brunton  [qq.v.],  and  Crichton- 
Browne  himself  among  others.  He  was  also 
co-editor  of  Brain  from  1878  to  1885. 

In  1875  Crichton-Browne  was  appointed 
lord  chancellor's  visitor  in  Ivmacy  and  held 
that  post  until  he  retired  in  1922.  During 
these  years  he  was  concerned  with  the 
supervision  of  the  wards  and  the  proper 
administration  of  their  estates.  In  1883  he 
was  elected  F.R.S.,  and  six  years  later  he 
became  treasurer  of  the  Royal  Institution. 

Crichton-Browne  was  one  of  the  first  to 
emphasize  the  importance  of  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  prodromal  symptoms  of  mental 
disease.  Besides  work  of  this  kind  he  was 
particularly  interested  in  public  health 
and  education,  and  published  a  large 
number  of  addresses,  reports,  and  letters 
to  the  press  on  these  subjects,  of  which 
the  most  interesting  is  a  parliamentary 
paper  on  'Elementary  Schools'.  Subse- 
quently he  supported  the  campaign  for  the 
open-air  treatment  of  tuberculosis,  the 
control  of  venereal  disease,  and  the  better 
housing  of  the  working  classes.  During 
his  last  years  he  published  a  number  of 
popular  and  humorous  reminiscences  such 
as  Victorian  Jottings  (1926),  What  the 
Doctor  Thought  (1930),  The  Doctor's  Second 
Thoughts  (1931),  The  Doctor's  Afterthoughts 
(1932). 

Crichton-Browne  received  many  dis- 
tinctions at  home  and  abroad.  He  was 
knighted  in  1886  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Aberdeen, 
St.  Andrews,  Edinburgh,  and  Leeds,  as 
well  as  being  president  of  the  following 
learned  societies:  the  Medico -Psychologi- 
cal Association,  the  Neurological  Society, 
the  Medical  Society  of  London,  and  the 
National  Health  Society.  He  was  also  a 
fellow  of  the  New  York  Academy  of 
Medicine.  He  was  granted  the  freedom  of 
Dumfries.  Apart  from  considerable  deaf- 
ness and  gi'adual  impairment  of  vision,  he 
retained  his  faculties  until  his  death  at 
Dumfries  31  January  1938. 

Crichton-Browne  was  twice  married: 
first,  in  1865  to  Emily  (died  1903),  youngest 
daughter  of  John  Halliday,  surgeon,  of 
Seacombe,  Cheshire,  and  had  a  son,  who 
predeceased  him,  and  a  daughter ;  secondly, 
in  1912  to  Audrey  Emily,  eldest  daughter 
of  General  Sir  Edward  Bulwer  [q.v.]  and 


great-niece  of  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton 
[q.v.];  there  were  no  children  of  the 
second  marriage. 

[The    Times,   1   February   1938;   Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7, 
January  1939 ;  British  Medical  Journal,  1938, 
vol.  i,  p.  331 ;  Lancet,  1938,  vol.  i,  p.  906.] 
J.  D.  ROLLESTON. 

BRUCE,  CHARLES  GRANVILLE 

(1866-1939),  soldier,  mountaineer,  and 
traveller,  was  bom  in  London  7  April 
1866,  the  younger  son  of  Henry  Austin 
Bruce,  afterwards  first  Baron  Aberdare 
[q.v.],  by  his  second  wife,  Norah  Creina 
Blanche,  youngest  daughter  of  Lieu- 
tenant-General  Sir  William  Napier  [q.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  Repton, 
and  was  commissioned,  through  the 
militia,  in  the  Oxfordshire  and  Bucking- 
hamshire Light  Infantry  in  1887.  He  first 
saw  active  service  with  the  Military  Police 
in  Burma  and  in  1889  transferred  to 
the  5th  Gurkha  Rifles,  the  regiment  with 
which  he  served  for  most  of  his  career. 
Stationed  with  it  at  Abbottabad,  he  saw 
much  service  on  the  North-West  Frontier 
of  India:  in  Black  Mountain  (Hazara), 
1891,  Miranzai,  1 891 ,  Chitral,  1893,  Waziri- 
stan,  1894^1895,  and  Tirah,  1897-1898, 
receiving  in  all  six  clasps  to  his  two 
frontier  medals,  three  mentions  in  dis- 
patches, and  a  brevet-majority  in  1898. 
After  being  adjutant  and  second-in-com- 
mand of  the  5th  Gurkha  Rifles  he  was 
promoted  lieutenant-colonel  in  May  1913, 
and  appointed  in  May  1914  to  command 
the  6th,  the  friendly  rivals  of  his  old 
regiment ;  it  was  with  the  6th  that  he  went 
to  Egypt  for  the  defence  of  the  Suez  Canal 
on  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914.  For  his 
services  there  and  later  in  Gallipoli,  where 
he  commanded  the  depleted  battalions  of 
the  29th  Indian  brigade,  including  the  5th 
and  6th  Gtu"khas  at  Gurkha  Bluff,  he  was 
thrice  mentioned  in  dispatches  and  pro- 
moted brevet-colonel  in  November  1915. 
Severely  woimded  in  the  leg,  he  was  evacu- 
ated before  the  withdrawal,  and  on  dis- 
charge from  hospital  was  appointed  general 
officer  commanding  the  Independent 
Frontier  brigade  at  Bannu  (1916-1919). 
He  commanded  the  North  Waziristan 
Field  Force  in  1917,  and  served  in  the 
Afghan  war  of  1919.  In  these  operations 
he  was  mentioned  twice  in  dispatches.  No 
longer  young,  his  health  was  at  last  under- 
mined by  strenuous  work  during  these  hot- 
weather  seasons  on  the  frontier,  and  he 
was  invalided  out  of  the  sei^ce  with  the 
honorary   rank   of    brigadier-general    in 


107 


Bruce,  C.  G. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


1920,afterthirty -two  yearsof  distinguished 
service. 

Bruce  had  all  the  qualities  of  a  great 
traveller  and  fine  soldier.  From  the 
moment  he  joined  the  Gurkhas  he  studied 
their  language  and  became  the  foremost 
authority  on  their  customs  and  ways  of 
life.  Having  learnt  to  get  behind  their 
thoughts,  he  taught  them  how  to  make 
the  best  of  their  qualities  and  personally 
evolved  their  system  of  training  for  moun- 
tain warfare.  It  was  Bruce  who  originated 
and  trained  the  Frontier  Scouts,  and 
incidentally  it  was  largely  due  to  him 
that  'shorts'  were  introduced  into  the 
Indian  army,  after  he  had  tried  them  and 
proved  them  useful  with  the  Scouts. 
Bruce's  mountaineering  travels  covered 
the  whole  extent  of  the  Himalaya  from 
end  to  end.  On  all  his  journeys  he  took 
and  trained  Gurkhas  from  his  own  regi- 
ment, and  on  all  he  studied  and  made 
friends  with  the  natives  of  the  districts 
through  which  he  travelled.  He  was  on 
the  expedition  of  Martin  Conway  (later 
Lord  Conway  of  Allington,  q.v.)  to  the 
Hispar  and  Biafo  glaciers  in  the  Kara- 
koram  in  1892,  and  with  A.  F.  Mummery 
[q.v.]  and  John  Norman  Collie  on  the  first 
ill-fated  attempt  to  climb  Nanga  Parbat 
in  1895  when  Mummery  was  killed.  He 
explored  and  climbed  many  lesser  known 
summits  in  Khagan,  Kashmir,  Kulu,  and 
Lahoul,  and  prepared  plans  for  the  explora- 
tion of  Mount  Everest  in  both  1907  and 
1910,  although  both  projects  had  to  be 
abandoned  for  poUtical  reasons.  It  was 
not  until  after  the  war  of  1914-1918,  when 
he  had  been  invalided  out  of  the  army, 
that,  at  the  age  of  nearly  fifty-six,  he  was 
able  to  carry  out  this  ambition.  He  was 
the  organizer  and  leader  of  both  the  1922 
and  1924  Mount  Everest  expeditions,  and 
although  he  was  then  too  old  to  attempt 
the  final  assaults,  his  remarkable  know- 
ledge of  Gurkhas,  Sherpas,  and  Tibetans, 
and  his  own  qualities  of  cheerfulness  and 
joviality,  were  assets  that  contributed 
much  to  the  success  of  these  expeditions. 
This  love  of  adventure  and  fun  and  his 
command  of  Himalayan  lore  were  the 
secret  of  his  success  among  Himalayan 
folk,  for  his  hearty  laugh  was  known  and 
mimicked  in  many  parts.  Many  stories 
will  be  handed  down  of  his  phenomenal 
strength  and  endurance,  and  of  the  vast 
appetite  of  his  early  days ;  not  all  will  be 
far  from  the  truth.  It  is,  for  instance,  a 
fact  that  he  often  wrestled  with  two 
Indian  wrestlers  at  a  time  and  on  one 
occasion  threw  three   opponents   simul- 


taneously ;  it  is  also  true  that  in  his  early 
days,  in  order  to  keep  fit,  he  would  daily 
carry  his  orderly  up  the  hills  of  the  Khyber 
on  his  back. 

Bruce  married  in  1894  Finetta  Madeline 
Julia  (died  1932),  third  daughter  of 
Colonel  Sir  Edward  Fitzgerald  Campbell, 
second  baronet;  their  only  child,  a  son, 
died  in  infancy.  Mrs.  Bruce  accompanied 
her  husband  on  his  mountain  expeditions 
and  was  the  author  of  Kashmir  (1911). 
Bruce  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  1903,  and 
C.B.  in  1918.  The  Royal  Geographical 
Society  awarded  him  the  Gill  memorial 
prize  in  1915  and  the  Founder's  gold 
medal  in  1925.  He  was  president  of  the 
Alpine  Club  in  1923,  an  honorary  member 
of  the  leading  continental  climbing  clubs, 
and  an  enthusiastic  founder  member  of 
the  Himalayan  Club.  He  was  the  author 
of  four  books  relating  his  Himalayan  ex- 
periences :  Twenty  Years  in  the  Himalaya 
(1910);  Kulu  and  Lahoul  (1914);  The 
Assault  on  Mount  Everest,  1922  (1923); 
and  Himalayan  Wanderer  (1934).  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.Sc. 
from  the  universities  of  Oxford  and  Wales, 
of  D.C.L.  from  Edinburgh,  and  of  LL.D. 
from  St.  Andrews.  In  1931  he  was  ap- 
pointed colonel  of  the  5th  Gurkha  Rifles, 
to  the  delight  of  all  ranks  of  his  old 
regiment.  Thereafter,  almost  until  his 
death  in  London  12  July  1939,  he  regu- 
larly revisited  India  and  his  regiment 
and  was  always  greeted  with  enthusiasm. 

A  portrait  of  Bruce,  by  G.  P.  Jacomb- 
Hood,  belongs  to  the  Hon.  Alice  Bruce. 

[The  Times,  13  July  1939;  C.  G.  Bruce, 
Himalayan  Wanderer,  1934;  Geographical 
Journal,  October  1940 ;  Alpine  Journal,  May 
1940 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Kenneth  Mason. 


BRUCE,  Sir  DAVID  (1855-1931),  dis- 
coverer of  the  causes  of  Malta  fever  and 
sleeping  sickness,  was  born  in  Melbourne, 
Australia,  29  May  1855,  the  only  son  of 
David  Bruce,  who  came  from  Edinburgh, 
by  his  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of  Alexander 
Hamilton,  of  Stirhng.  The  father  was 
presumably  an  engineer  as  he  went  to 
Australia  during  the  gold-rush  in  order  to 
instal  a  crushing  plant  in  a  gold-field  near 
Sandhurst,  some  hundred  miles  distant 
from  Melbourne.  When  he  was  five  years 
old  David's  parents  returned  to  Scotland 
and  settled  in  Stirling,  David  being  sent 
to  the  Stirling  High  School  where  he  con- 
tinued until  he  was  fourteen.  As  a  boy 
and  young  man  he  was  a  keen  naturalist. 


108 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bruce,  D. 


roaming  the  country  of  the  Scottish  High- 
lands and  being  especially  interested  in 
observing  the  habits  of  wild  birds.  On 
leaving  school  he  was  placed  with  a  busi- 
ness firm  in  Manchester,  but  in  1876,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-one,  he  entered  the 
university  of  Edinburgh  with  the  intention 
of  studying  zoology.  However,  on  the 
advice  of  a  friend,  he  decided  to  read 
medicine  and  he  graduated  M.B.,  CM.  in 
1881.  After  qualifying  he  became  assistant 
to  Dr.  Herbert  Stanley  Stone,  a  practi- 
tioner in  Reigate.  It  was  here  that  he  met 
his  wife,  Mary  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  John 
Sisson  Steele, M.R.C.S.,Stone'spredecessor 
in  the  Reigate  practice,  and  he  married 
her  in  1883. 

Shortly  after  his  marriage  Bruce  obtained 
a  commission  in  the  Army  Medical  Service, 
being  first  on  the  passing-out  list.  In  the 
following  year  he  was  ordered  to  Malta. 
At  this  time  the  naval  and  military  hospi- 
tals at  Malta  contained  large  numbers  of 
cases  of  an  obscure  continued  fever  with 
a  high  mortality  rate  and  even  in  the 
milder  cases  associated  with  prolonged 
ill  health  and  disability.  So  seriously  was 
the  incidence  of  this  disease  regarded  that 
the  naval  and  military  medical  officers 
were  at  the  time  engaged  in  collecting  all 
available  information  on  the  clinical 
nature  and  epidemiology  of  the  disease. 
Bruce  worked  on  the  pathological  and 
bacteriological  aspects.  Bacteriology  was 
then  in  its  infancy  and  the  introduction 
by  Robert  Koch  in  1880  of  solid  media 
and  other  technical  methods  of  isolating 
organisms  and  the  recent  discoveries  of 
the  organisms  of  enteric  fever,  tubercle, 
and  cholera  had  stimulated  Bruce  to  attack 
the  problem  of  Malta  fever  by  these  new 
methods.  Within  two  years  he  had  found 
in  the  spleen  of  fatal  cases  an  organism  to 
which  he  gave  the  name  of  Micrococcus 
melitensis  now  known  as  Brucella  meliten- 
sis.  Bruce  proved  conclusively  as  a  result 
of  his  researches  that  this  organism  was 
the  cause  of  Malta  fever. 
I  In  1888  Bruce  left  Malta  on  leave  which 
he  spent  working  with  his  wife  in  Koch's 
laboratory  in  Berlin.  On  his  return  to 
England  he  was  appointed  assistant  pro- 
fessor of  pathology  in  the  Army  Medical 
School  at  Netley.  In  this  post,  which  he 
held  from  1889  to  1894,  he  did  much  to 
introduce  modern  methods  in  pathology. 
In  1894,  again  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
military  duty,  Bruce  received  orders  to 
proceed  abroad,  this  time  to  South  Africa, 
where  he  was  posted  to  the  garrison  at 
Pietermaritzburg  in  Natal.    In  Zululand 


at  this  time  a  fatal  disease  was  devastating 
the  domestic  animals  of  the  native  popula- 
tion and  settlers,  and  the  governor  of  the 
Colony,  Sir  Walter  Hely -Hutchinson,  who 
had  been  lieutenant-governor  of  Malta  at 
the  time  of  Bruce's  successful  researches 
on  Malta  fever,  requested  that  Bruce 
might  be  seconded  to  investigate  the  cause 
of  the  mortality.  Two  months  later  Bruce 
was  able  to  report  the  discovery  of  an 
organism,  later  named  Trypanosoma  brucei, 
in  the  blood  of  infected  animals  and  that 
this  was  the  cause  of  both  tsetse-fly  disease 
and  nagana,  then  thought  to  be  two  dis- 
tinct diseases.  This  led  to  Bruce  being 
seconded  in  December  1896  for  a  further 
period,  and  he  and  his  wife  returned  for 
two  years  to  a  wild  and  isolated  camp  life 
in  the  bush  in  Zululand,  where  they  lived 
like  pioneers  in  wattle  and  daub  huts  and 
on  wild  game  which  they  themselves  shot. 
The  result  was  the  complete  working  out 
of  the  main  facts  as  they  are  now  known 
regarding  trypanosomiasis  in  domestic 
and  wild  animals  and  the  tsetse-fly  which 
transmits  the  organism.  Bruce's  reputa- 
tion as  a  scientific  worker  of  remarkable 
capacity  was  now  established  and  whilst 
still  absent  in  South  Africa  he  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  (1899).  In 
the  South  African  war  in  1899  the  Bruces 
were  shut  up  in  Ladysmith  where  Bruce, 
among  other  experiences  in  active  service, 
was  in  command  of  a  large  military  hos- 
pital and  acted  as  an  operating  surgeon, 
whilst  his  wife  was  sister-in-charge  of  the 
operating  theatre. 

In  1901  Bruce  returned  to  England,  but 
in  February  1903  he  was  seconded  by  the 
War  Office  at  the  request  of  the  Royal 
Society  to  undertake  the  supervision  and 
control  of  the  commission  which  the 
society  in  1902  had  dispatched  to  Uganda 
to  investigate  a  serious  outbreak  of  sleep- 
ing sickness  that  was  decimating  the  lake 
shore  population.  Success  in  determining 
the  nature  and  cause  of  this  disease 
quickly  followed. 

As  so  often  happens,  the  actual  dis- 
covery of  the  cause  of  sleeping  sickness 
was  not  wholly  attributable  to  any  one 
individual,  although  it  was  Bruce  who, 
with  his  extraordinary  power  of  systematic 
research,  first  established  the  nature  and 
cause  of  this  deadly  disease.  Trypanoso- 
miasis due  to  T.  brucei  very  fortimately  did 
not  affect  man.  But  while  J.  E.  Dutton 
[q.v.]  was  working  in  West  Africa  he  was 
shown  by  Dr.  Robert  Michael  Forde  para- 
sites in  the  blood  of  a  case  of  sleeping  sick- 
ness which  he  recognized  as  a  trypanosome 


109 


Bruce,  D. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


and  which  in  1902  he  named  T.  gambiense. 
In  1903  Aldo  Castellani,  a  member  of  the 
commission  originally  sent  out  by  the 
Royal  Society  to  Uganda  in  1902,  had 
found  shortly  before  Bruce's  arrival  from 
England  trypanosomes  in  the  cerebro- 
spinal fluid  of  five  out  of  fifteen  cases  of 
sleeping  sickness.  Castellani  informed 
Bruce  of  this  fact  and  in  the  three  weeks 
before  leaving  for  England  found  these 
organisms  in  twenty  out  of  twenty-nine 
further  cases.  Bruce  at  once  recognized 
the  implications  of  Castellani's  observa- 
tions and  grasping  the  resemblance  of  the 
conditions  to  those  with  which  he  was  so 
familiar  in  Zululand,  immediately  began 
collecting  all  available  information  about 
the  distribution  of  the  disease  and  of 
tsetse-fly  and  setting  up,  as  in  Zululand, 
fly -feeding  experiments.  By  August  1903, 
when  Bruce  and  his  wife  returned  to 
England,  he  had  proved  that  sleeping 
sickness  was  a  trypanosome  disease  carried 
by  tsetse  and  that  it  could  be  transmitted 
from  sick  to  healthy  individuals  by  the 
bite  of  this  insect. 

Bruce,  assisted  always  by  his  wife,  made 
other  successful  investigations.  In  1904 
he  revisited  Malta  as  head  of  the  Royal 
Society's  Malta  Fever  Commission,  proving 
this  time  that  the  source  of  infection  in 
Malta  fever  was  the  goat,  infection  in  man 
being  contracted  by  drinking  goat's  milk. 
In  1908  Bruce  again  visited  Uganda  and 
in  1911  carried  out  investigations  on 
trypanosomal  disease  in  Nyasaland.  He 
was  specially  promoted  surgeon-general 
in  1912  for  his  eminent  scientific  services. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was 
commandant  of  the  Royal  Army  Medical 
College,  Millbank,  and  rendered  great 
service  to  the  army  by  directing  research 
on  the  aetiology  and  control  of  trench  fever 
and  tetanus.  Bruce  retired  in  1919  and  for 
reasons  of  health  spent  the  winters  in 
Madeira.  He  continued,  however,  to  keep 
in  touch  with  research  at  home  and  to 
give  to  workers  the  benefit  of  his  experi- 
ence and  advice. 

In  all  his  work  Bruce  was  assisted  by 
his  wife  who  accompanied  him  throughout 
his  foreign  service,  working  in  the  labora- 
tory and  taldng  charge  of  camp  arrange- 
ments and  much  else.  Bruce  on  his 
deathbed  laid  stress  on  the  great  service 
which  she  had  rendered  him  and  expressed 
the  wish  that  her  part  in  his  scientific  work 
should  be  recognized.  She  received  the 
Royal  Red  Cross  for  her  work  with  the 
wounded  in  the  siege  of  Ladysmith,  and 
was  appointed  O.B.E.  for  her  work  for  the 


committees  on  trench  fever  and  tetanus 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

Of  the  many  honours  which  Bruce  B 
received  only  some  can  be  mentioned  here.  " 
In  1904  he  was  awarded  by  the  Royal 
Society  a  Royal  medal  and  in  1922  the 
Buchanan  medal.  He  was  the  recipient  of 
the  Mary  Kingsley  medal  of  the  Liverpool 
School  of  Tropical  Medicine  in  1905,  of 
the  Leeuwenhoek  medal  of  the  Dutch 
Academy  of  Sciences  in  1915,  of  the 
Manson  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Tropical  Medicine  and  Hygiene  (of  which 
he  was  president  from  1917  to  1919),  and 
of  the  Albert  medal  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Arts  in  1923,  besides  honorary  degrees 
from  four  universities  and  honorary 
memberships  of  several  foreign  academies 
and  societies.  He  was  Croonian  lecturer 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  in  1915 
and  president  of  the  British  Association 
in  1924.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1905, 
and,  having  been  knighted  in  1908,  K.C.B. 
in  1918.  He  died  in  London  27  November 
1931  during  the  funeral  of  Lady  Bruce 
four  days  after  her  death.  He  had  no 
children. 

Bruce  was  a  man  of  strong  physique 
and  forceful  mind.  He  was  one  of  the 
great  pioneers  in  medical  research,  a 
highly  trained  investigator  exploring  new 
fields  in  the  causation  of  disease.  Few 
investigators  have  had  such  a  record  of 
successes  to  their  name.  His  approach  to 
the  problems  which  he  undertook  to  solve 
was  extraordinarily  simple,  logical,  vigor- 
ous, and  direct,  and  this  was  backed  by  a 
remarkable,  seemingly  intuitive,  perception 
of  the  essential  point  for  attack.  In  his 
personal  relations,  whilst  he  is  said  to  have 
been  somewhat  reserved  and  self-con- 
tained, aU  agree  as  to  his  loyalty  and  in- 
tegrity of  mind  and  purpose. 

[The  Times,  28  November  1931 ;  Transac- 
tions ofthe  Royal  Society  of  Tropical  Medicine 
and  Hygiene,  vol.  xxv,  1931— 1932  (portrait); 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  1,  December  1932  (portrait).] 

S.  R.  Christophers. 

BUCHAN,  JOHN,  first  Baron  Tweeds- 
MUiR  (1875-1940),  author,  and  governor- 
general  of  Canada,  born  at  Perth  26 
August  1875,  came  of  mainly  Border 
lowland  stock,  being  the  eldest  child  in 
the  family  of  four  sons  and  one  surviving 
daughter  (the  novelist  'O.  Douglas')  of 
John  Buchan,  minister  of  the  Free  Church 
of  Scotland,  by  his  wife,  Helen,  daughter 
of  John  Masterton,  farmer,  at  Broughton 
Green,  Peebles-shire.  Buchan's  father,  who 


110 


D.N.B.  1031-1940 


Buchan 


lad  been  brought  up  in  the  atmosphere  of 
;he  Disruption,  served  congregations  at 
Xirkcaldy  and  at  John  Knox's  church,  in 
;he  Gorbals  district  of  Glasgow,  and  the 
mpression  made  by  these  rather  different 
)laces  can  be  easily  traced  in  his  son's 
vritings .  Perhaps  an  even  greater  influence 
)n  Buchan  was  wielded  by  his  mother,  a 
Yoman  sentimental  yet  shrewd,  contem- 
jlative  but  alert,  able  to  hold  her  own  in 
my  company,  who  lived  to  see  her  son 
iurrounded  by  the  pomp  of  Holyrood  and 
;he  splendour  of  Ottawa.  In  1895,  after 
attendance  at  Hutcheson's  Boys'  Gram- 
nar  School  at  Glasgow  and  at  lectures  at 
Glasgow  University,  he  was  awarded  a 
scholarship  at  Brasenose  College,  Oxford, 
md  thenceforth  his  life  was  bound  up  with 
England,  South  Africa,  and  Canada. 
Mevertheless,  Scotland  always  'haunted 
tiim  like  a  passion',  and  he  never  lost  the 
impress  of  his  home  and  native  land ;  he  re- 
mained throughout  his  life  a  Christian  who 
said  his  prayers,  read  his  Bible,  and  knew 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress  almost  by  heart. 

At  Oxford,  Buchan  won  in  1897  the 
Stanhope  historical  essay  prize  on  the 
subject  of  'Sir  Walter  Raleigh'  and  in  1898 
the  Newdigate  prize  for  English  verse  with 
the  'Pilgrim  Fathers'  as  its  theme.  He  was 
president  of  the  Union  in  1899  and  was 
awarded  a  first  class  in  literae  hiimaniores 
that  same  year.  Having  one  or  two  books 
already  to  his  credit,  he  was  commissioned 
by  his  college  to  write  its  history  for  the 
Robinson  series  of  'College  Histories'.  It 
appeared  in  1898  while  he  was  yet  an 
undergraduate,  and  called  forth  severe 
criticism  from  antiquarian  reviewers  un- 
accustomed to  so  unconventional  a  style 
of  historical  writing.  Disappointed  of  a 
prize  fellowship,  Buchan  went  to  London, 
where  he  widened  the  large  circle  of  his 
friends  and  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1901,  earning  his  living 
by  journalism,  and  reading  with  J.  A. 
Hamilton  (later  Lord  Sumner,  q.v.)  and 
(Sir)  Sidney  Rowlatt.  But  his  legal  career 
was  cut  short  when,  after  his  call  to  the 
bar.  Lord  Milner  [q.v.]  summoned  him  to 
South  Africa  as  one  of  his  assistant  private 
secretaries. 

Although  Buchan  spent  only  two  years 
(1901-1903)  in  South  Africa,  the  appoint- 
ment was  the  most  important  step  in  his 
career.  He  gained  enormously  from  daily 
association  with  Milner  and  from  his 
modest  tasks  in  the  resettlement  of  the 
country,  where  his  warm  human  desire  to 
make  friends  with  the  Boers  and  bury  the 
hatchet  gave  him  horizon  and  a  sense  of 


size,  and  his  imperialism,  cleansed  of 
vulgar  jingoism,  became  elevated  above 
the  patronizing  'trust'  conception  into  an 
association  of  free  peoples  in  loyalty  to 
a  common  throne.  So  Pieter  Pienaar,  re- 
sourceful and  true,  becomes  one  of  the 
heroes  of  his  adventure  novels.  Indeed  he 
was  eager  for  a  career  in  Egypt  under 
Lord  Cromer  [q.v.]  when  his  work  in 
South  Africa  was  over.  For  the  second 
time  and  again  for  the  good  he  was  dis- 
appointed. Yet  it  may  be  affirmed  with 
confidence  that,  without  apprenticeship 
in  Africa,  there  would  have  been  no 
governor-generalship  of  Canada,  for 
Buchan  had  there  learned  to  think  as 
statesmen  tliink. 

In  1903  Buchan  returned  to  the  bar  in 
London,  'devilling'  for  Rowlatt  and 'not- 
ing' for  Sir  R.  B.  (later  Viscount)  Finlay 
[q.v.]  who,  while  assessing  his  mind  as  not 
exact  enough  for  supremacy  at  the  bar, 
admired  his  abilities  and  character.    He 
wrote  'opinions',  one,  for  instance,  on  the 
legality  of  Chinese  labour  (after  the  liberal 
victory  of  1906)  in  which  his  seniors  were 
Arthur  Cohen,  Finlay,  and  Rufus  Isaacs 
(later  Marquess  of  Reading)  [qq.v.].  But 
this  episode  was  a  backwater.  In  1907  T.  A. 
Nelson  the  publisher,  a  friend  from  Oxford 
days,  invited  him  to  j  oin  the  firm  as '  Uterary 
adviser '  and  as  a  limited  partner.  He  was 
to  reside  in  London  and  superintend  the 
issue  of,  inter  alia,  the  sevenpenny  edition 
of  The  Best  Literature.  He  accepted  and 
was  in  his  element.  He  could  never  have 
mortified  the  flesh  as  he  describes  Milner 
doing,  nor  could  he  have  given  himself 
body  and  soul  to  the  bar.  His  admirable, 
but  ephemeral,  Law  relating  to  the  Taxa- 
tion of  Foreign  Income  (1905),  written  at 
the  instance  of  R.  B.   (later  Viscoimt) 
Haldane  [q.v.],  remains  as  his  testament 
to  the  Middle  Temple,  w^hich  elected  him 
a  bencher  in  1935.   He  was  also  engaged 
to  be  married  to  one  of  that  world  which 
had  fascinated  him  since  his  Oxford  days 
by  its  ease  and  grace.  With  her  he  enjoyed 
tmclouded  happiness  for  thirty -three  years . 
Being  free  from  drudgery  he  could,  as  a 
man  of  letters,  give  scope  to  the  dominat- 
ing activity  of  his  life.  Hitherto  his  books, 
some   written   before   he   ever   came   to 
Oxford  {Sir  Quixote  of  the  Moors,  1895, 
Scholar  Gipsies,  1896,  Grey  Weather,  1899, 
The  Half -Hearted,  1900,  and  The  Watcher 
by  the  Threshold,  1902),  had  contained  the 
freshness  of  youth  and  were  charming 
harbingers  of  even  better  to  come.  These 
had  been  followed  by  the  African  books, 
The  African  Colony  (1903)  and  A  Lodge  in 


111 


Buchan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  Wilderness  (1906),  more  interesting 
perhaps  as  autobiography  than  as  litera- 
ture, while  Prester  John  (1910)  begins  the 
long  series  of  his  books  of  adventure. 
Except  for  the  Stanhope  essay,  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  in  dramatic  form  (1911)  is  the 
first  sign  of  his  turn  towards  history,  and 
then,  after  two  more  adventure  stories, 
came  The  Marquis  of  Montrose  (1913),  now 
out  of  print  and  not  included  in  his 
collected  works.  This  was  Buchan's  first 
serious  attempt  at  writing  history  and  a 
good  deal  of  it  was  history,  and  very  good 
history,  the  most  impressive  feature  being 
the  power  which  he  exhibited  of  describing 
marches  and  battles  and  their  wild  natural 
settings.  But  zeal  for  his  idolized  'dis- 
covery' (although  the  tragedy  of  the 
'great  Marquess'  had  pointed  many  a 
moral  and  adorned  many  a  tale)  led  him 
to  commit  so  many  elementary  blunders, 
all  of  which  invariably  told  in  favour  of 
Montrose  and  against  Argyle  and  the 
Estates,  tinged  with  a  certain  'acerbity' 
and  an  air  of  omniscience,  that  he  was 
severely  taken  to  task  by  D.  H.  Fleming 
[q.v.]  in  a  review  printed  in  The  British 
Weekly  of  12  February  1914.  No  reply 
was  or  could  be  made.  Montrose  (1928)  is 
the  sequel:  the  blemishes  complained  of 
are  gone,  but  whether  we  have  the  final 
Marquess  'in  his  faults  and  failings,  in  his 
virtues  and  valour'  (Hay  Fleming)  is  open 
to  question  among  those  for  whom  historic 
truth  is  all  in  all,  and  brilliant  writing  no 
more  than  decoration. 

The  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  found 
Buchan,  on  the  eve  of  his  thirty-ninth 
birthday,  seriously  ill  for  the  first  time 
since  his  childhood,  when  at  the  age  of 
five  he  had  fallen  out  of  a  carriage  and  a 
wheel  passing  over  the  side  of  his  skull  had 
left  its  mark  for  life.  He  had  then  lain  for 
a  year  in  bed  and  had  to  learn  once  more 
how  to  walk.  He  grew  to  be  about  5  feet 
8  inches  in  height,  lean,  sinewy,  well  knit, 
and  active  as  a  chamois.  A  daring  and 
expert  cragsman,  he  had  sampled  many 
rock  climbs  in  Skye  and  Austria,  and  he 
had  literally  climbed  into  the  Alpine  Club. 
He  was  a  keen  fisherman  but  an  indifferent 
shot,  and  his  riding  was  purely  utilitarian, 
preferring  as  he  did  Shanks 's  mare,  a 
nimble,  sure  steed  which  never  tired. 
Games,  accomplishments,  and  parlour 
tricks  were  outside  his  activities. 

Compelled  to  keep  his  bed,  Buchan 
wrote.  He  made  a  start  with  his  well- 
known  History  of  the  Great  War,  which 
occupied  twenty-four  volumes  of  the 
'Nelson  Library'  series;  but  he  also  wrote 


The  Thirty-Nine  Steps  (1915)  which  fairly 
stormed  the  reading  world  with  its  com- 
bination of  excitement  and  sensation, 
written  as  only  a  master  of  English  can 
write.  He  was  well  enough  by  1915  to  be 
on  the  staff  of  The  Times  on  the  western 
front,  and  by  1916  he  had  joined  the  army 
as  a  major  in  the  Intelligence  Corps  and 
enjoyed  confidential  innominate  duties  at 
general  headquarters  at  Montreuil-sur- 
Mer,  which  brought  him  into  personal 
touch  with  another  Borderer  by  extraction, 
Sir  Douglas  Haig,  whom  he  admired  as  a 
great  man  and  soldier.  Summoned  to 
London  in  1917,  he  made  such  a  personal 
success  of  the  new  Department  of  In- 
formation that  it  became  a  ministry  with 
Buchan  as  subordinate  director  until  the 
armistice.  With  renewed  successes  his  pen 
consoled  him  for  irritating  drudgery  and 
unreasonable  people:  GreenmanUe  (1916) 
and  Mr.  Standfast  (1919)  completed  the 
trilogy  on  the  war  opened  by  The  Thirty- 
Nine  Steps.  In  Poems,  Scots  and  English 
(1917)  some  of  the  poems  are  topical  of 
the  front,  but  the  book  is  at  once  a  monu- 
ment of  detachment  from  ugly  actuality 
and  a  source  of  regret  that  he  did  not 
write  more  verse.  Buchan  loved  poetry 
and  had  it  in  his  bones. 

Private  life  resulted  in  settlement  at 
Elsfield  Manor,  near  Oxford,  purchased  in 
1919  after  deliberation  of  several  years. 
That  'ivory  tower'  was  so  unlike  Buchan's 
native  land  that  nostalgia  was  not  aroused, 
and  in  this  phase  of  his  life  there  was  a 
copious  output  of  books.  The  History 
of  the  South  African  Forces  in  France 
and  the  memoir  of  Francis  and  Riversdale 
Grenfell  (1920)  were  the  aftermath  of  the 
war,  together  with  the  History  of  the  Great 
War  which  was  revised,  compressed,  and 
republished  in  1921-1922  and  the  complete 
regimental  History  of  the  Royal  Scots 
Fusiliers  (1925),  a  valuable  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  his  youngest  brother,  Alastair, 
killed  in  1917. 

The  excellence  of  the  tribute  to  the 
Grenfells  may  have  led  to  his  life  of  Lord 
Minto  (1924)  which  proved  to  be  the  fore- 
runner of  the  historical  biographies,  on 
which  he  imdoubtedly  intended  that  his 
future  fame  should  rest.  By  an  interesting 
chance  it  familiarized  him  with  a  stage  on 
which,  as  a  successor  to  Minto,  he  was 
destined  to  play  his  part.  Meantime  novel 
after  novel  poured  from  his  pen.  Hunting- 
tower  (1922)  opened  a  new  series  based  on 
Glasgow  memories  and  the  scout  move- 
ment, with  a  coy  candidature  of  Peebles- 
shire. Midwinter  (1923)  was  an  historical 


112 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Buchan 


lovel  linking  Elsfield  with  Samuel  Johnson 
ust  as  Elsfield  and  Henry  VIII  were 
Irawn  together  in  The  Blanket  of  the  Dark 
1931).  Witch  Wood  (1927)  links  Tweed- 
iale  with  Montrose  and  PhOiphaugh  and 
3  a  by-product  of  the  preparation  for 
yiontrose.  But  the  majority  were  the 
arns  (as  he  called  them)  spun  easily  for 
is  own  and  an  eager  public's  enjoyment. 

It  is  remarkable  that  he  went  on  writing 
a  the  last  phase  of  his  life,  when  he  was  a 
(ublic  man.  The  almost  inspired  literary 
riticism  of  his  Sir  Walter  Scott  (1932)  and 
he  sympathetic  understanding  of  the 
piritual  side  of  the  Protector  in  Oliver 
Cromwell  (1934)  show  Buchan  at  his  best, 
^t  a  by-election  in  1927  he  was  elected 
lonservative  member  of  parliament  for  the 
Scottish  Universities,  and  held  the  seat 
mtil  his  elevation  to  the  peerage  in  1935. 
le  fitted  the  constituency  like  a  glove.  He 
oved  the  House  of  Commons  and  the 
louse  listened  to  him.  Moreover  he  had 
ichieved  fame  in  America  chiefly  as  an 
listorian  and  a  novelist.  He  was  a 
nember  of  the  Pilgrim  Trust  and  in  that 
sapacity  he  did  good  service  to  Oxford 
;)ity  and  Oxford  University.  And  then, 
n  1933  and  1934  the  elder  of  St.  Columba's 
ihurch  at  Oxford  was  appointed  lord  high 
somniissioner  to  the  General  Assembly  of 
ihe  Church  of  Scotland.  In  that  illustrious 
)ffice,  eloquent  of  the  history  of  the 
itruggles  between  church  and  state  since 
;he  Reformation,  Buchan  was  supremely 
lappy  both  in  his  manner  and  in  his 
itterances,  as  befitted  the  joint  author 
with  Sir  George  Adam  Smith)  of  the 
nasterly  little  treatise  The  Kirk  in  Scot- 
and,  1560-1929  (1930).  And  it  was  again 
ilamsay  MacDonald  who  in  1935  advised 
;he  appointment  of  Buchan  to  the  gover- 
lor-generalship  of  Canada,  the  supreme 
)pportunity  of  Buchan's  life,  to  show  of 
vhat  mettle  he  was  made. 

That  Lord  Tweedsmuir  (the  appropriate 
itle  conferred  upon  Buchan)  had  qualities 
vhich  fitted  him  in  no  common  degree 
or  the  office  was  shown  by  The  King's 
irace:  1910-1935  (1935).  The  auspices, 
ave  in  the  matter  of  his  health,  were  good. 
le  was  a  Scot,  a  Presbyterian,  and  his 
(rife  was  descended  from  the  two  noble 
lOuses  of  Grosvenor  and  Stuart-Wortley, 
nd  in  her  ancestry  she  could  count  more 
tatesmen  than  most  people.  His  vigour 
ras  undiminished  and  in  1937  Augustics 
rought  to  a  close  his  studies  in  ancient 
istory  and  the  humanities. 

As  governor-general  Tweedsmuir  had  to 
ice  the  change  in  the  position  of  the 


representative  of  the  crown  made  by  the 
Statute  of  Westminster  (1931).  He  there- 
fore requited  a  warm  welcome  with  un- 
wearied devotion  to  duty  on  ceremonial 
occasions,  courts,  reviews,  the  delivery  of 
addresses  and  lectures,  not  only  in  English 
but  in  French,  for  he  took  a  special  in- 
terest in  Lower  Canada  and  the  French- 
Canadian  culture.  Moreover,  he  was 
discreet  and  tactful,  and  he  possessed 
charm  in  both  its  forms,  sympathy  with 
the  interlocutor  or  audience,  and  sympathy 
of  bearing.  He  was  made  a  Red  Indian 
chief.  The  author  of  The  Last  Secrets 
(1923)  never  neglected  a  chance  of  explora- 
tion and  he  travelled  to  visit  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men  throughout  the 
Dominion. 

But  Tweedsmuir  overtaxed  his  strength, 
and  the  anxiety  inseparable  from  the  visit 
of  the  King  and  Queen  in  1939  strained  it 
in  spite  of  the  excellence  of  the  arrange- 
ments. Any  chance  of  a  needed  rest  was 
lost  by  the  outbreak  of  war  in  September. 
His  death,  which  took  place  at  Montreal 
11  February  1940,  was  followed  by  a 
spontaneous  outburst  of  sorrow  from  all 
quarters  of  the  free  world.  It  was  felt  in 
Canada  that  his  pubUc  services  in  voicing 
the  spirit  of  Canadian  loyalty,  in  promot- 
ing recruiting,  and  showing  a  gallant 
front  had,  as  Cardinal  Villeneuve  said, 
been  a  factor  in  cementing  national  unity 
in  Canada.  Nor  was  his  influence  confined 
to  Canada.  Since  1937  at  least  he  had  been 
on  terms  of  real  friendship  with  President 
Roosevelt,  and,  with  Lord  Lothian  [q.v.] 
at  Washington,  another  member  of 
Milner's  South  African  'kindergarten',  he 
played  his  part  in  maintaining  relations 
with  the  United  States  on  the  right  plane. 

Tweedsmuir  married  in  1907  Susan 
Charlotte,  elder  daughter  of  Captain  Nor- 
man de  r Aigle  Grosvenor,  third  son  of  the 
first  Lord  Ebury  [q.v.],  and  had  three  sons 
and  one  daughter.  He  was  succeeded  as 
second  baron  by  his  eldest  son,  John 
Norman  Stuart  (born  1911).  His  honours, 
pubUc  and  academic,  came  freely.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1937,  and 
was  appointed  C.H.  in  1932,  G.C.M.G.  in 
1935,  and  G.C.V.O.  in  1939.  He  was 
elected  chancellor  of  Edinburgh  University 
in  1937  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Brase- 
nose  College  in  1934,  and  he  received 
honorary  degrees  from  three  of  the  four 
Scottish  universities,  and  from  Oxford, 
Harvard,  Yale,  and  most  of  the  Canadian 
universities. 

A  portrait  of  Lord  Tweedsmuir,  by 
Shoito  Johnstone-Douglas   (1900),   is   in 


113 


Buchan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  possession  of  Mr,  J.  W.  Buchan,  Bank 
House,  Peebles,  who  also  owns  a  bust  by 
T.  J.  Clapperton.  A  posthumous  portrait, 
by  Alphonse  Jongers,  was  presented  to 
Lady  Tweedsmuir  by  the  women  of 
Canada. 

[Manchester  Guardian,  12  February  1940; 
The  Times,  12  and  15  February  1940;  John 
Buchan,  A  Lost  Lady  of  Old  Years,  1899,  and 
Memory  Hold-the-Door,  1940;  Hon.  A,  C. 
Murray,  Master  and  Brother,  1945;  Anna 
Buchan  (O.  Douglas),  Ann  and  her  Mother, 
1922;  Unforgettable:  Unforgotten  (1945);  John 
Buchan,  by  his  wife  and  friends,  1947 ;  personal 
knowledge.] 

S.  A.  GlLLON. 

BUCHANAN,  Sir  GEORGE  CUN- 
NINGHAM (1865-1940),  civil  engineer, 
was  born  at  Islington  20  April  1865,  the 
eldest  son  of  George  Buchanan,  of  West- 
minster, also  a  civil  engineer,  by  his  wife, 
Emily,  youngest  daughter  of  Thomas 
Boosey ,  of  London.  He  was  trained  on  the 
Tyne  from  1882  until  1886,  first  under 
J.  Watt  Sandeman  and  then  under  P.  J. 
Messent,  chief  engineer  to  the  Tyne 
Improvement  Commission.  From  1886  he 
was  associated  for  ten  years  with  railway 
and  other  works  in  many  parts  of  the 
world,  Venezuela,  Nova  Scotia,  Argentina, 
Spain,  and  Jamaica.  On  his  return  to 
England  in  1895  he  became  resident 
engineer  for  the  construction  of  a  graving 
dock  at  Blyth,  and  in  the  following  year 
he  was  appointed  chief  engineer  to  the 
Dundee  Harbour  Trust. 

In  1901  Buchanan  left  Dundee  to  become 
chairman  and  chief  engineer  of  the  Ran- 
goon Port  Trust,  and  during  the  fourteen 
years  for  which  he  held  that  position 
designed  new  port  works  and  carried  out 
extensive  training  works  on  the  river  (for 
which  he  received  the  Watt  gold  medal 
from  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers 
in  1916).  At  the  end  of  1915  he  went  to 
Basra  as  adviser  to  Sir  John  Nixon  [q.v.], 
the  commander-in-chief  of  the  Mesopota- 
mian  campaign,  on  all  matters  connected 
with  the  port,  its  administration,  engineer- 
ing works,  and  river  conservancy,  and  in 
1917  attained  the  rank  of  brigadier-general. 
For  his  work  at  Basra,  which  he  described 
in  his  book  The  Tragedy  of  Mesopotamia 
(1988),  he  was  twice  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches, and  his  services  and  powers  of 
organization  were  acknowledged  by  the 
government  of  India  to  have  'sensibly 
promoted'  the  ultimate  success  of  British 
arms  in  Mesopotamia.  His  war  services 
also  included  membership  of  the  Indian 
Munitions  Board  (1917-1919). 


After  the  war  Buchanan  entered  into 
partnership  with  C.  S.  Meik  and  was 
appointed  consulting  engineer  for  the  Back 
Bay  reclamation  scheme  at  Bombay, 
which  provided  for  the  reclamation  of  over 
1,100  acres  of  land  by  the  construction  of  a 
sea  wall  four  miles  long,  the  area  within  it 
being  filled  with  silt  dredged  from  the  sea 
bed  outside.  In  this  undertaking  he  had 
less  than  his  usual  success,  for  his  estimates 
proved  faulty  and  his  plans  miscarried. 

In  1922  Buchanan  visited  South  Africa 
at  the  request  of  the  Union  government 
to  report  on  the  transport  problems  of  the 
country,  particularly  in  connexion  with 
ports  and  harbours,  and  in  1925  he  under- 
took a  similar  mission  in  Australia  for  the 
Commonwealth  government,  preparing  a 
report  on  the  development  and  administra- 
tion of  Northern  Australia. 

Buchanan  was  appointed  CLE.  in  1911, 
and  after  having  been  knighted  in  1915, 
K.C.I.E.  in  1917.  He  was  twice  married: 
first,  in  1894  to  Elizabeth  Isabelle  (died 
1926),  younger  daughter  of  WiUiam  Mead, 
of  Plymouth,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter ; 
secondly,  in  1930  to  Joan,  second  daughter 
of  Lieutenant  John  George  Haggard,  R.N., 
later  consul  at  Malaga.  He  died  at 
Ditchingham,  Norfolk,  14  April  1940. 

[The  Times,  15  April  1940;  Engineer  and 
Engineering,  19  April  1940.] 

H.  M.  Ross. 


BUCHANAN,  Sm  GEORGE  SEATON 
(1869-1936),  expert  in  public  health,  was 
born  in  London  19  February  1869,  the 
elder  son  of  Sir  George  Buchanan  [q.v.], 
by  his  second  wife,  Alice  Mary  Asmar, 
daughter  of  E.  C.  Seaton,  M.D.  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  University  College  School, 
University  College,  London,  and  St. 
Bartholomew's  Hospital,  graduating M.B., 
with  a  gold  medal  in  1891  and  proceeding 
to  M.D.  in  1893. 

After  holding  hospital  appointments, 
Buchanan  became  in  1895  a  medical 
inspector  of  the  Local  Government  Board 
where  his  early  work  was  directed  to  the 
investigation  of  food-poisoning  epidemics. 
He  was  chief  inspector  of  foods  from  1906 
until  1911  and  chief  assistant  medical 
officer  from  1911  until  1919.  During  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  was  attached  to  the 
Army  Sanitary  Committee  with  the  hono- 
rary rank  of  lieutenant-colonel  and  was  a 
member  of  the  Medical  Advisory  Com- 
mittee, both  to  the  British  Mediterranean 
Expeditionary  Force  (1915-1916)  and  to 
the  Mesopotamian  Expeditionary  Force 


114 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Buchanan,  J. 


(1916-1917).  This  work  entailed  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  service  abroad.  He 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1918. 

Buchanan  became  a  senior  medical 
officer  of  the  new  Ministry  of  Health  in 
1919.  He  dedicated  the  rest  of  his  active 
life  to  the  promotion  of  co-operation  in 
international  health,  and  in  1934  he  gave 
the  Milroy  lectures  on  International  Co- 
operation in  Public  Health,  Its  Achievement 
and  Prospects  (published  in  the  same  year) 
to  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians,  He 
was  vice-president  of  the  international 
health  organization  of  the  League  of 
Nations,  president  of  the  League's  cancer 
commission,  and  in  1929  a  member  of  the 
commission  for  the  reorganization  of  the 
public  health  services  of  Greece.  In  1932  he 
received  the  signal  honour  of  being  elected 
president  of  the  Office  International 
d'Hygiene  Publique,  of  which  he  had  been 
a  member  since  1914. 

Buchanan  was  knighted  in  1922,  elected 
F.R.C.P.  in  1925,  and  was  master  of  the 
j  Society  of  Apothecaries  in  1934f-1935.  He 
married  in  1896  Rhoda  Agnes,  fifth 
daughter  of  Thomas  Atkinson,  of  Plum- 
garths,  Westmorland,  and  had  one  son, 
who  predeceased  him,  and  one  daughter. 
He  retired  from  office  in  1934  and  died  in 
London  11  October  1936. 

Buchanan  was  an  indefatigable  worker 
and  had  few  interests  outside  his  official 
duties.  He  effected  much  abroad  through 
the  respect  evoked  by  his  high  qualities 
lud  personality,  and  he  had  considerable 
50cial  gifts  which  aided  him  in  making 
?Iear  the  British  point  of  view  on  inter- 
lational  health  matters  to  foreign  col- 
eagues.  His  minutes  and  reports  in  their 
inished  form  were  models  of  clarity  and 
excellence. 

Buchanan  had  been  brought  up  in  the 
itmosphere  of  public  health  and  learned 
nuch  from  his  father.  His  mind,  therefore, 
vas  a  storehouse  of  precedents  and  epi- 
lemiological  knowledge.  He  asked  much 
rom  those  who  worked  under  him,  but 
vas  ever  ready  to  acknowledge  their 
ontributions,  to  promote  their  interests, 
nd  to  delight  them  by  his  wit  and 
ovirtesy. 

Save  for  the  Milroy  lectures  and  certain 
pecial  reports  and  addresses,  Buchanan 
lade  few  contributions  to  medical  litera- 
Lire.  His  vast  knowledge  and  administra- 
ive  ability  are  either  buried  in  office  files 
r  are  to  be  found  in  blue-books  and  in  the 
feports  of  the  health  organization  of  the 
league  of  Nations.  Inheriting  and  main- 
iiining  great  traditions,  Buchanan  was 


the  last  of  a  famous  generation  of  public 
servants. 

[The  Times,  12  October  1936 ;  British  Medi- 
cal Journal,  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  788  ;  Lancet,  1934, 
vol.  i,  p.  142,  and  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  947  (por- 
trait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Arthur  S.  MacNalty. 

BUCHANAN,  JAMES,  Baron  Woolav- 
INGTON  (1849-1935),  philanthropist  and 
racehorse  owner,  was  the  youngest  son  of 
Alexander  Buchanan,  of  Glasgow,  by  his 
wife,  Catharine,  daughter  of  William 
Mclean.  He  was  born  at  Brockville,  West 
Canada,  16  August  1849  and  was  brought 
to  Scotland  when  he  was  a  year  old.  Of 
delicate  health,  he  was  educated  privately, 
and  he  was  still  quite  a  young  man  when 
he  went  to  London  to  sell  whisky  for  a 
Scottish  firm  of  distillers.  The  turning- 
point  in  his  life  came  when  a  friend,  struck 
by  his  grit  and  perseverance,  offered  him 
some  capital  to  open  business  on  his  own 
accoxmt,  and  in  1880  he  established  the 
firm  of  James  Buchanan  «fe  company  in 
a  small  office  in  Bucklersbury.  After  a 
hard  struggle  he  managed  to  repay  all  that 
had  been  lent  to  him,  and,  as  soon  as  he 
was  master  of  his  own  business,  he  arranged 
various  combinations  and  amalgamations 
which  assisted  him  to  build  up  a  consider- 
able fortune.  An  unusual  feature  of  his 
career  was  that,  although  he  lived  to  a 
great  age,  he  was  always  a  delicate  man, 
constantly  obliged  to  nurse  his  health.  He 
made  many  friends  wherever  he  went,  and 
not  one  had  anjrthing  but  good  to  say  of 
him.  They  described  him  as  never  having 
taken  an  unfair  advantage  of  anybody, 
and  as  always  ready  to  help  those  in 
trouble  or  difficulty. 

Buchanan's  experiences  on  the  turf 
covered  nearly  forty  years.  He  began  to 
race  about  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  owned  horses  that  won  him 
many  good  races.  His  first  classic  victory 
was  in  the  St.  Leger  of  1916,  when,  owing 
to  the  war,  the  race  was  run  at  Newmarket 
instead  of  at  Doncaster.  Buchanan  was 
training  with  F.  Darling  at  Beckhampton 
at  the  time,  and  it  was  to  him  that  he  sent 
Hurry  On,  a  yearling  which  he  had  bought 
for  500  guineas.  As  a  two-year-old  Hurry 
On  could  not  be  trained  owing  to  unsound- 
ness, but  as  a  three-year-old  he  ran  in  six 
races  and  won  them  all.  Not  only  was  he 
Buchanan's  first  classic  winner,  but  he 
sired  for  him  the  Derby  winners  of  1922 
and  1926,  Captain  Cuttle  and  Coronach. 
The  last-named  was  probably  the  best 
horse  that  Lord  Woolavington,  as  he  had 


115 


Buchanan,  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


then  become,  ever  owned.  Although  his 
debut  as  a  two-year-old  was  only  modest, 
the  trimnphs  of  Coronach  as  a  three-year- 
old  in  the  Derby,  the  Eclipse  Stakes,  and 
the  St.  Leger  were  resounding.  In  1927 
Woolavington  was  elected  a  member  of 
the  Jockey  Club,  and  the  last  time  that  his 
colours  were  carried  to  victory  was  in  a 
race  at  Worcester  a  few  days  before  his 
death. 

Much  of  the  wealth  which  he  derived 
from  his  business  was  devoted  by  Woolav- 
ington to  philanthropy.  He  gave  away 
large  sums  both  to  public  objects  and  to 
charity.  He  bought  the  log-book  of  the 
Victory,  written  in  the  sailingmaster's  own 
hand,  and  presented  it  to  the  British 
Museum,  and  when  an  appeal  was  made 
for  funds  to  fit  out  the  old  Implacable  as  a 
training  ship,  he  sent  a  cheque  for  the 
£4,000  needed  for  the  purpose.  He  showed 
his  love  of  animals  when,  in  1926,  he  gave 
£10,000  to  Edinburgh  University  for  its 
animal  breeding  research  department :  the 
university  conferred  upon  him  the  honor- 
ary degree  of  LL.D.  In  1928  he  gave 
£125,000  to  the  Middlesex  Hospital  in 
memory  of  his  wife,  and  at  the  same  time 
placed  £50,000  at  the  disposal  of  the  King 
for  the  restoration  of  the  nave  of  St. 
George's  Chapel,  Windsor.  Not  only  did 
he  give  many  other  sums  to  good  causes, 
but  his  private  life  was  full  of  kind  and 
generous  actions  known  only  to  those  who 
benefited  by  them. 

Buchanan  was  created  a  baronet  in 
1920,  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron 
Woolavington,  of  Lavington,  Sussex,  in 
1922,  and  was  appointed  G.C.V.O.  in  1931. 
In  1891  he  married  Annie  Eliza  Bardolph, 
widow,  daughter  of  Thomas  Povmder, 
upholsterer.  She  was  a  hospital  nurse, 
and  he  met  her  on  one  of  the  voyages 
undertaken  for  the  sake  of  his  health.  Her 
sudden  death  in  1918  was  due  perhaps  to 
overwork  in  nursing  the  wounded  in 
London  hospitals.  The  only  child  of  the 
marriage  was  a  daughter.  Woolavington 
died  at  Lavington  Park,  Petworth,  Sussex, 
9  August  1935. 

A  portrait  of  Woolavington,  by  (Sir)  J.J. 
Shannon,  was  exhibited  at  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy in  1918.  A  cartoon  of  him,  by  '  Spy ', 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  20  November  1907. 

[The  Times,  10  August  1935.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

BUCKLE,  GEORGE  EARLE  (1854^ 
1935),  editor  of  The  Times  newspaper  and 
man  of  letters,  was  born  at  Twerton-on- 
Avon,  near  Bath,  10  June  1854,  the  eldest 


of  the  four  sons  of  George  Buckle,  suc- 
cessively fellow  of  Oriel  College,  Oxford,] 
vicar    of    Twerton-on-Avon,    rector    of] 
Weston-super-Mare,  and  canon  and  pre- 
centor of  Wells  Cathedral,  by  his  wife, 
Mary  Hamlyn  Earle,  sister  of  the  philolo- 
gist John  Earle  [q.v.].   He  was  educated 
at  Honiton  Grammar  School,  whence  he 
gained  a  scholarship  at  Winchester  and 
afterwards  was  elected  a  scholar  of  New 
College,  Oxford.    There  he  read  classical 
and  mathematical  moderations,  won  the 
Newdigate  prize  (1875),  and  was  awarded 
a  first  class  in  literae  humaniores  (1876) 
and  in  modern  history  (1877).  From  1877 
to  1885  he  was  a  fellow  of  All  Souls.   At 
Lincoln's  Inn  he  read  in  the  chambers  of 
(Sir)  John  Rigby  [q.v.].  Jom-nalism,  how- 
ever, to  which  he  was  no  stranger,  in  that^ 
his  father  had  been  a  regular  contributor] 
to  the  Guardian,  offered  him  an  oppor- 
tunity almost  at  once,  for  he  was  recom- 
mended for  the  post  of  assistant  editor  tol 
the    Manchester    Guardian    by    Mandell] 
Creighton  [q.v.],  but  the  offer  was  de- 
clined.   Five  months  before  being  called  1 
to  the  bar  in  November  1880,  his  name 
had  been  put  before  John  Walter  III 
[q.v.]  by  Sir  William  Anson  [q.v.]  for  the^ 
post  of  assistant  to  the  editor  of  The  TimeSt 
Thomas  Chenery  [q.v.],  on  whose  death^ 
in   February    1884,   Buckle,   still   under 
thirty,  was  appointed  editor. 

Buckle's  predominant  interest  was  ii 
home  politics,  and  he  carried  on  readilj 
the  tradition  of  The  Times  to  give  support  J 
general  but  critical,  to  the  government  of 
the  day ;  but  this  tradition  was  soon  broken] 
by  the  home  rule  controversy,  which  led  up] 
to  the  Parnell  commission.  The  responsi- 
bility for  accepting  the  forged  letters  layj 
with  the  proprietor  and  the  manager,  anc 
the  true  source  of  the  letters  was  not 
known  to  Buckle  imtil  shortly  before  the 
appearance  of  Richard  Pigott  [q.v.]  in  the 
witness-box.    After  the   proceedings  he 
offered  to  assume  responsibility  for  the 
publication  and  tendered  his  resignation^ 
This  was  declined;   and  Buckle,  whose 
instincts  lay  in  carrying  on  the  paper  oi 
the  lines  on  which  he  had  found  it,  ws 
confronted  with  the  necessity  of  man5 
administrative  changes.  His  general  atti- 
tude towards  innovations  was  that  they_ 
were  probably  dangerous;   but  he  wa 
prompt  and  generous  in  adopting  anj 
innovation  (except  the  telephone)  when  he 
saw  that  it  would  work.  But  the  prosperitj 
of  the  paper  had  to  be  restored,  and^ 
the  establishment  of  a  foreign  department 
tended  to  withdraw  a  large  portion  of  the 


116 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Buckle 


paper  from  his  immediate  supervision, 
though  not  from  his  control.  In  other 
directions  also  the  increasing  size  of  the 
daily  paper  made  for  decentralization; 
and  so  when  the  change  in  proprietorship 
came  (1908),  with  the  new  ideas  of  separate 
departments  under  separate  directors  and 
of  the  editor  being  limited  to  leading 
articles  and  general  political  direction. 
Buckle,  who  considered  himself  personally 
responsible  for  all  that  appeared  in  the 
paper,  found  his  position  increasingly 
difficult.  Nevertheless  he  loyally  set  him- 
self to  make  new  arrangements  work, 
until,  to  his  surprise,  it  was  informally 
conveyed  to  him  that  his  resignation 
would  be  welcomed.  He  accordingly  re- 
signed at  once  (August  1912).  To  his 
efforts  to  hold  to  the  inherited  idea  of 
general  support  for  the  government  of  the 
day  and  keeping  open  the  correspondence 
columns  to  both  sides  of  controversy,  many 
tributes  reached  Buckle  from  political 
opponents  and  notably  from  Haldane, 
Grey,  and  Morley. 

What  might  then  have  seemed  to  be  the 
end  of  a  career  proved  to  be  the  prelude  to 
two  others.  On  the  death  in  1912  of  W. 
F.  Monypenny  [q.v.]  the  Beaconsfield 
trustees  commissioned  Buckle  to  continue 
the  Life  of  Benjamin  Disraeli ;  and  the 
labours  of  the  next  eight  years  were 
devoted  to  the  last  four  of  its  six  volumes 
(pubhshed  1914-1920).  For  one  who 
followed  the  vicissitudes  of  home  politics 
and  public  life  with  something  of  a  sports- 
man's zest,  the  career  of  Disraeli  could  not 
but  be  engrossing ;  and  the  book  has  be- 
come a  classic,  and  a  quarry.  Many  years 
later  Lord  Morley  wrote  to  him : '  We  have 
each  of  us  done  his  best  to  keep  public  life 
and  public  opinion  on  a  wholesome  and 
self-respecting  level:  and  we  have  done 
our  best  to  make  the  two  great  political 
rivals  immortal.' 

A  few  months  after  the  completion  of 
the  Life  of  Disraeli,  King  George  V  chose 
Buckle  to  continue  the  selection  and  edit- 
ing of  the  Letters  of  Queen  Victoria  which 
liad  been  carried  to  1861  by  A.  C.  Benson 
and  Viscount  Esher  [qq.v.]  in  1907.  Two 
series,  each  of  three  volumes,  appeared 
between  1926  and  1932.  Of  the  first  series 
(1862-1885)  perhaps  the  most  salutary 
(effect  was  the  dispelling  of  legends  and 
misunderstandings  that  had  grown  up 
during  the  years  of  the  Queen's  self- 
imposed  seclusion,  and  the  tracing  of  the 
gradual  recovery  of  public  trust,  culminat- 
ing in  the  jubilees  of  1887  and  1897. 
I  Buckle  showed  in  this  work  a  reassuring 


quietness  of  judgement  combined  with  a 
spirit  of  discriminating  hero-worship.  He 
did  not  shrink  from  revealing  the  limita- 
tions of  the  Queen,  her  cloistered  upbring- 
ing, her  self-centredness  and  vehemence, 
but  he  brought  out  clearly  her  shrewd 
political  interest,  devotion  to  duty,  and 
wide  sympathy  with  all  classes.  Buckle's 
editing  was  a  triumph  of  self-suppression, 
and  an  eminent  judge  declared  the  six 
volumes  to  be  'a  masterpiece  by  a  dumb 
historian'.  But  the  editor's  guidance  to 
the  reader  is  always  there. 

The  remaining  three  years  of  Buckle's 
life  were  passed  quietly  in  London  with 
occasional  visits  to  his  former  haunts 
where  he  helped  in  the  preparation  of  the 
first  volume  of  the  History  of  The  Times 
(1935).  He  died  in  London,  after  a  very 
short  illness,  13  March  1935. 

When  Buckle  retired  from  the  editor- 
ship of  The  Times,  a  journal  politically 
opposed  to  it  used  words  that  might  well 
have  come  from  any  member  of  his  large 
and  devoted  staff.  '  In  appearance  he  is  a 
typical  Englishman  of  the  upper  classes, 
intellectualized  and  refined.  In  character, 
too,  he  is  thoroughly  English,  sound  and 
wholesome  to  the  core,  not  too  idealistic, 
inflexibly  just,  moderate  and  judicious  in 
his  views  and  spirit,  honest  as  the  day,  and 
with  serious  and  lofty  views  of  life  and 
duty.'  With  these  qualities  were  combined 
a  robust  body,  a  robust  voice,  a  hearty 
boyish  manner  (concealing  a  certain  shy- 
ness), and  a  natural  buoyancy  which 
carried  him  through  laborious  nighti^  and 
days.  An  enduring  taste  for  an  Eiiglish 
holiday  (golf  or  exploratory  walks)  enabled 
him  to  pass  at  once  from  work  to  complete 
relaxation  and,  in  middle  life,  to  treat  a 
serious  operation  almost  with  contumely. 
His  tastes  were  those  naturally  formed  by 
a  boy  of  his  upbringing,  and  they  remained 
those  of  the  man:  a  preference  for  the 
well-established  and  a  cautious  welcome 
to  the  new. 

Buckle  was  offered  a  baronetcy  by  A.  J. 
Balfour,  but  declined  it :  he  received  honor- 
ary degrees  from  the  universities  of  St. 
Andrews  (1899)  and  Oxford  (1932).  He 
was  twice  married:  first,  in  1885  to  Alicia 
Isobel  (died  1898),  third  daughter  of  the 
novelist  James  Payn  [q.v.] ;  secondly,  in 
1905  to  his  first  cousin  Beatrice  Anne 
(died  1938),  second  daughter  of  John 
Earle.  A  son  and  a  daughter  were  born 
of  the  first  marriage. 

[The  Times,  13  March  1935 ;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Bruce  L.  Richmond. 


117 


Buckley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


BUCKLEY,  HENRY  BURTON,  first 
Baron  Wrenbuby  (1845-1935),  judge, 
was  born  in  London  15  September  1845, 
the  fourth  of  the  six  sons  of  John  Wall 
Buckley,  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  church,  Pad- 
dington  Green,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Burton.  He  went  in 
1854  to  Merchant  Taylors  School,  from 
which  he  obtained  a  scholarship  at  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge.  He  was  ninth  wrangler 
in  the  mathematical  tripos  of  1868,  having 
won,  in  1866,  the  Tancred  law  studentship 
at  Lincoln's  Inn.  From  1868  to  1882  he 
was  a  fellow  of  Christ's.  He  was  called  to 
the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1869,  and 
became  a  bencher  in  1891.  He  took  silk  in 
1886,  and  in  1900  was  appointed  a  judge 
of  the  Chancery  division.  In  1906  he  was 
promoted  to  the  Court  of  Appeal,  where 
he  sat  assiduously  until  his  retirement,  and 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  On  his 
retirement  in  1915  he  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Wrenbury,  of  Old  Castle, 
Surrey.  He  soon  showed  that  he  by  no 
means  intended  to  retire  from  the  active 
life  of  the  law,  for  he  continued  for  many 
years  to  sit,  as  a  peer  who  had  held  high 
judicial  office,  on  appeals  before  both  the 
House  of  Lords  and  the  Judicial  Committee 
of  the  Privy  Council.  He  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  his  college  in  1901. 

Some  years  before  he  obtained  forensic 
success,  he  had  become  well  known  to  the 
legal  profession  as  the  author  of  the  classic 
'  Buckley  on  Companies '.  The  first  edition 
of  The  Law  and  Practice  under  the  Com- 
panies Acts  appeared  in  1873,  and  the  most 
recent  (eleventh)  edition,  the  compilation 
of  which  was  necessitated  by  the  passage 
of  the  Act  of  1929,  in  1930.  Although  (Sir) 
Francis  Beaufort  Palmer's  work  on  Com- 
pany Law,  which  first  appeared  in  1898, 
was  to  prove  a  formidable  and  more 
popular  rival,  nevertheless  Wrenbury's 
book  has  retained  its  authority  undimmed. 
Its  character  differs  from  that  of  Palmer's 
in  that  it  takes  the  form  of  a  commentary 
on  the  Act,  section  by  section,  and  in 
showing  continuity  of  authorship  through- 
out the  editions  it  has  one  definite  ad- 
vantage over  the  later  work,  for  in  the 
preparation  even  of  the  eleventh  edition 
Wrenbury  himself,  then  in  his  eighty- 
fifth  year,  was  able  to  render  personal 
assistance. 

Although  his  forte  naturally  lay  in 
company  law,  Wrenbury  had  a  very  firm 
grasp  of  every  side  of  equity.  In  the  field 
of  Common  Law,  with  which  in  the  higher 
courts  he  was  not  infrequently  called  upon 
to  deal,  he  was  perhaps  less  generally 


happy,  but  here  too  his  alert  mind,  his 
sound  common  sense,  and  his  capacity  for 
the  absorption  of  the  details  of  a  problem, 
were  great  assets,  both  to  himself  and  to 
his  colleagues  on  the  bench. 

In  the  course  of  a  thirty-five  years' 
tenure  of  judicial  office,  Wrenbury's  output 
of  judgements  was  of  course  enormous, 
and  the  choice  of  a  few  for  especial  mention 
is  a  task  of  more  than  ordinary  difficulty. 
In  1915  he  was  one  of  the  majority  of 
a  divided  Court  of  Appeal  which  decided 
Hurst  V.  Picture  Theatres,  the  case  which 
has  perhaps  given  rise  to  more  comment 
and  controversy  than  has  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  any  other  decision  of  this  century.  The 
court  laid  down  that  one  who  has  paid  for 
his  seat  and  taken  it  in  a  theatre,  and  has 
been  ejected  from  it  although  his  behaviour 
has  in  no  way  called  for  blame,  is,  as  the 
result  of  the  Judicature  Act  (1873),  en- 
titled, not  only  to  nominal  damages  for 
breach  of  contract,  but  to  substantial 
damages  for  assault.  Opinion,  both  pro- 
fessional and  academic,  has  on  the  whole 
been  unfavourable  to  the  decision  in  that, 
by  a  spurious  use  of  equitable  principle,  it 
in  effect  elevates  a  mere  licence  to  the 
status  of  a  licence  coupled  with  interest,  or 
of  an  easement.  But  Buckley's  judgement, 
although  it  has  failed  to  command  agree- 
ment, is  everywhere  recognized  as  a 
monument  of  learning.  When  he  went  to 
the  House  of  Lords  it  was  noticeable  that 
Lord  Wrenbury  showed  an  independence 
of  judgement  that  had  hardly  been  a 
characteristic  of  Lord  Justice  Buckley. 
Although  no  man  was  ever  less  cantanker- 
ous or  less  prone  to  dissent  for  the  mere 
sake  of  dissent,  he  was  never  reluctant  to 
utter  a  strong  dissenting  speech  when  he 
was  convinced  that  his  colleagues  were 
in  the  wrong.  Perhaps  the  two  most 
famous  cases  in  which  he  was  in  a  minority 
of  one  were  Bourne  v.  Keane  (1919)  and 
Stopes  V.  Sutherland  (1925).  The  former 
laid  down  that  bequests  for  masses  for  the 
souls  of  the  dead  are  not  now  void  as 
directed  to  superstitious  uses.  The  latter 
was  an  action  for  libel,  brought  by  Dr. 
Marie  Stopes  against  the  defendant,  who 
had  published  strong  disapproval  of  her 
campaign  for  instruction  in  birth  control. 
The  jury  negatived  fair  comment,  and  the 
Court  of  Appeal  upheld  that  verdict. 
In  the  House  of  Lords  Wrenbury  took  the 
isolated  view  that  the  order  of  the  Court 
of  Appeal  should  be  upheld  or,  alterna- 
tively, that  there  should  be  a  new  trial. 

Wrenbury  interested  himself  not  only 
in  the  judicial  but  also  in  the  legislative 


118 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Buckmaster 


work  of  the  House  of  Lords.  He  was  a 
very  valuable  member  of  the  Joint  Com- 
mittee of  Lords  and  Commons  on  the  bill 
for  consolidating  the  various  statutory 
provisions  relating  to  income  tax,  which 
ultimately  passed  into  law  as  the  Income 
Tax  Act  (1918).  He  was  greatly  interested 
in  political  economy,  and  in  1904  founded 
a  scholarship  in  that  subject,  tenable  at 
Cambridge.  The  same  interest  led  him  to 
contribute  in  April  1924  an  article  to  The 
Times  on  the  important  subject  of  trade 
unions,  in  which  he  advanced  the  eminently 
practical  proposition  that  every  class 
should  be  educated  to  understand  the 
difficulties  of  every  other  class.  His  was 
a  life  packed  throughout  its  long  duration 
with  painstaking  and  useful  work  for 
humanity. 

Wrenbury  married  in  1887  Bertha 
Margaretta,  third  daughter  of  Charles 
Edward  Jones,  of  South  Kensington,  and 
had  four  sons,  the  second  of  whom  died  in 
infancy,  and  four  daughters.  He  died  in 
London  27  October  1935,  at  the  age  of 
ninety,  and  was  succeeded  as  second  baron 
by  his  eldest  son,  Bryan  Burton  (1890- 
1940). 

Two  portraits  of  Wrenbury,  by  John 
Collier  (1897  and  1907),  are  in  the  posses- 
sion of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  28  October  1935.] 

H.  G.  Hanbury. 

BUCKMASTER,   STANLEY  OWEN, 

first  Viscount  Buckiviaster  (1861-1934), 
lord  chancellor  and  statesman,  was  born 
at  Slapton,  Cheddington,  Buckingham- 
shire, 9  January  1861,  the  third  of  the 
four  sons  of  John  Charles  Buckmaster,  of 
Slapton,  afterwards  of  Wandsworth,  by 
his  wife,  Emily  Anne,  eldest  daughter  of 
George  Goodliffe,  of  Trumpington,  near 
Cambridge.  John  Buckmaster  was  a 
remarkable  man  who,  beginning  life  as  an 
agricultural  labourer,  became  successively 
a  joiner,  a  well-known  platform  speaker  in 
the  cause  of  free  trade,  and,  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Prince  Consort  whom  he 
had  advised  and  helped  in  the  matter  of 
the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851,  an  inspector 
in  the  Department  of  Science  and  Art  at 
South  Kensington,  which  has  since  de- 
veloped into  the  Imperial  College  of 
Science  and  Technology. 

Stanley  Buckmaster  was  sent  to  Alden- 
ham  School  where  he  remained  until  1879, 
living  a  life  so  hard  that  he  never  forgot 
its  hardships.  He  then  went,  with  a  jiuiior 
studentship,  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
where   he  obtained    a  second    class    in 


mathematical  moderations  (1881)  and  in 
the  final  mathematical  school  (1882). 

Buckmaster  was  a  devoted  liberal  and, 
as  his  father  had  been,  an  ardent  free 
trader.  In  1906  he  was  returned  to  parlia- 
ment for  the  borough  of  Cambridge:  in 
.January  1910  he  lost  that  seat,  which, 
in  the  following  December,  he  again  un- 
successfully contested ;  but  at  a  by-election 
in  October  1911  he  was  returned  for  the 
Keighley  division  of  the  West  Riding  of 
Yorkshire.  Under  the  leadership  first 
of  Campbell-Bannerman  and  afterwards  of 
Asquith,  Buckmaster  was  a  supporter 
of  the  government.  But  often  he  would 
speak,  albeit  from  the  government  benches, 
from  the  experience  of  a  practising  lawyer 
rather  than  as  a  party  man,  and  such 
speeches  as  the  defence  of  Sir  William 
Grantham  [q.v.],  a  strong  conservative,  in 
connexion  with  a  petition  in  respect  of  the 
election  at  Yarmouth  in  1906,  and  his 
criticisms  of  the  criminal  appeal  bill 
(1907)  came  from  him  as  a  lawyer's 
guidance  of  the  House. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  he  reached 
the  House  of  Lords  in  1915  that  Buck- 
master's  powers  as  a  parliamentary 
debater,  and  as  a  parliamentary  orator, 
reached  their  height  and  that  he  became  a 
leader  of  debate.  While  he  was  on  the 
woolsack  he  took  the  ordinary  part  of  a 
lord  chancellor  in  debate  and  was  some- 
times the  most  prominent  speaker  for  the 
government;  and  afterwards  he  often 
availed  himself  of  the  benefit  of  the  custom 
by  which  an  ex-lord  chancellor,  as  distinct 
from  the  other  law  lords,  is  granted  by  the 
House  full  liberty  to  take  part,  and  even 
a  leading  part,  in  general  political  debate. 
He  spoke  thus  on  many  subjects,  including 
finance,  industrial  unrest,  disarmament, 
the  treatment  of  Germans  after  the  war  of 
1914-1918,  the  government's  Irish  policy, 
the  reform  of  the  House  of  Lords,  many 
times  on  the  reform  of  the  divorce  laws 
(a  subject  always  much  in  his  mind),  birth 
control,  and  women's  suffrage:  what  he 
said  always  compelled  the  respect  of  the 
House  and  the  manner  of  his  saying  it  its 
admiration.  During  the  same  years  he 
made  many  important  speeches  outside 
parliament,  a  number  of  which,  especially 
the  speeches  which  he  made  in  1925  to 
lawyers  in  Canada  and  the  United  States 
of  America,  will  be  remembered.  As  a 
platform  orator  he  was  regarded  by  many 
as  supreme  in  his  time. 

In  1884  Buckmaster  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  and  in  1902 
became  a  member  of  Lincoln's  Inn.   He 


119 


Buckmaster 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


was  made  a  bencher  of  Lincoln's  Inn  in 
1910  and  was  treasurer  in  1934.  He 
practised  first  on  the  Common  Law  side, 
largely  on  the  Oxford  circuit  and  in 
county  courts,  and  it  was  because  he  did 
there,  as  a  young  man,  so  much  litigation 
work,  unled,  that  he  learnt  to  lean  on  his 
own  judgement  about  a  case  as  a  whole, 
and  so,  when  he  went  over  into  Chancery 
and  as  a  junior  was  soon  engaged  in  cases 
involving  different  questions  and  more 
important  amounts,  he  was  competent 
from  experience,  and  bold  from  having 
known  responsibility,  to  determine,  and 
to  advise  without  waiting  for  a  leader,  not 
only  on  the  law  and  the  form  of  the 
pleadings,  but  on  the  merits  of  the  case 
and  the  strategy  and  tactics  for  the  court. 
On  the  Chancery  side  he  had  a  large 
practice  as  a  junior  and  in  1902  he  took 
silk.  In  those  days  the  King's  Counsel 
practising  on  the  Chancery  side  were 
'attached'  to  the  courts  of  particular 
judges  of  that  division  and  he  went  to 
Sir  H.  B.  Buckley  (afterwards  Lord  Wren- 
bury,  q.v.).  In  1907  he  'went  special'  and 
so  for  a  special  fee  could,  and  did,  practise 
before  any  Chancery  judge.  Like  every 
great  success  at  the  bar,  Buckmaster's  was 
gained  by  hard  work  and  thoroughness: 
he  was  by  nature  and  training  a  good 
lawyer;  he  learnt  and  understood  what 
equity  might  be  necessary ;  he  was  quick 
enough  and  industrious  enough  to  scruti- 
nize the  facts  put  before  him,  and  had 
skill  and  judgement  in  the  selection  and 
presentation  of  what  among  those  facts 
was  material.  He  never  sought  to  evade 
a  difficulty  by  pretending  that  it  was  not 
there ;  it  was  a  precept  of  his  that  before 
you  put  together  the  stones  of  which  a 
house  is  to  be  built  you  must  look  aU 
round  each  stone  to  see  whether  there  is 
a  beetle  underneath  it. 

In  1913  Buckmaster  was  appointed 
solicitor-general  in  succession  to  Sir  John 
Simon.  His  work  as  a  law  oflRcer  earned 
much  commendation  from  the  bench,  the 
bar,  and  the  departments,  but  soon  after 
the  outbreak  of  war  he  was  given  addi- 
tional duties  as  director  of  the  Press 
Bureau.  To  a  press  accustomed  to  free- 
dom and  a  public  whose  curiosity  was  insa- 
tiable, his  methods  appeared  too  drastic, 
nor  did  his  explanations  always  command 
satisfaction  in  the  House  of  Commons  or 
in  the  coimtry. 

On  the  reconstruction  of  Asquith's 
government  into  a  coalition  ministry  in 
May  1915,  and  the  retirement  of  Haldane 
as   lord   chancellor,   the  great  seal   was 


given  to  Buckmaster,  who  the  same  day 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  He  took 
the  title  of  Baron  Buckmaster,  of  Ched- 
dington,  in  Buckinghamshire.  When  the 
coalition  ministry  fell  in  December  1916, 
Buckmaster,  who  had  been  lord  chancellor 
for  only  eighteen  months,  was  succeeded  by 
R .  B . ,  Lord  Finlay  [q.v.]  With  the  exception 
of  some  time  passed  in  the  City,  in  1925- 
1926,  in  a  crusade  against  what  he  re- 
garded as  an  injustice  (for  which  time  he 
relinquished  his  pension)  he  spent  the  rest 
of  his  life  as  an  appellate  judge  in  the 
House  of  Lords  and  the  Judicial  Committee 
of  the  Privy  Council  and  often  presided 
in  those  tribunals. 

Buckmaster  was  probably  best  known 
as  an  orator,  but  the  work  which  he  did  as 
a  judge  is  the  work  that  will  be  remembered 
longest.  It  was  not  the  work  which  he 
most  enjoyed,  but  it  was  done  under  the 
compulsion  of  a  stern  sense  of  duty  and 
the  recognition,  when  sitting  as  a  judge 
in  the  highest  tribunals  of  the  Empire, 
that  justice,  which  had  always  been  the 
ruling  motive  of  his  life,  was  now  best 
served  by  statement  of  the  law  as  it  was. 
Any  temptation  to  find  a  construction  of 
the  law  which  would  'right  a  wrong'  in 
the  particular  case  or  would  mitigate  a 
hardship  caused  by  the  law  itself  was 
resolutely  resisted.  No  one  ever  saw  more 
clearly  that  hard  cases  make  bad  law, 
and  that  the  cure  in  such  cases  was  for 
parliament.  Lord  Birkenhead  said  of  him 
that  he  was  'a  consummately  equipped 
judge';  and  when  Lord  Dunedin  was 
asked:  'Whom  do  you  regard  as  the 
greatest  colleague  you  have  had?',  he 
answered:  'You  will  be  surprised  when  I 
tell  you — Buckmaster;  I  have  not  and 
I  never  have  had  any  sympathy  with 
Buckmaster's  political  ideas  and  perfor- 
mances and  I  think  him  to  be  a  senti- 
mentalist— unless  he  is  sitting  on  his  arse 
on  the  bench ;  there  he  is  one  of  the  most 
learned,  one  of  the  most  acute,  and  the 
fairest  judge  I  ever  sat  with ;  and  he  will 
leave  much  in  the  books.' 

Buckmaster  was  appointed  G.C.V.O.  in 
1930  and  advanced  to  a  viscountcy  in 
1933:  the  step  in  the  peerage  was  made, 
certainly  in  the  opinion  of  the  profession, 
particularly  in  order  to  enable  him,  after 
he  had  ceased  to  be  lord  chancellor,  to 
preside  in  appeals  in  which  some  other  law 
lord  or  member  of  the  Judicial  Committee, 
junior  to  him  but  a  viscount,  might  be 
sitting:  it  was  a  legal,  not  a  political,  nor 
a  social,  advancement.  He  was  counsel  to 
Oxford  University  from  1910  to  1913 ;  was 


120 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Budge 


elected  an  honorary  student  of  Christ 
Church  in  1917;  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  vmiversities  of  Toronto 
(1925)  and  Oxford  and  Edinburgh  (1933). 
He  held  a  very  special  position  in  regard 
to  the  boot  and  shoe  trade  as  umpire  for 
determining  wages  and  disputes  about 
conditions.  He  had  held  this  position  for 
three  years  before  his  appointment  as  a 
law  officer,  and  in  1925  was  re-appointed 
and  held  the  office  until  his  death.  In  1923 
he  became  chairman  of  the  governing  body 
of  the  Imperial  College  of  Science  and 
Technology,  an  appointment  of  which,  for 
the  sake  of  his  father's  memory,  he  was 
most  proud. 

Buckmaster  was  much  beloved  by  his 
friends  and  particularly  at  the  Garrick 
Club  of  which  he  was  a  member  from  1909 
until  his  death.  He  seldom  said  a  witty 
thing  and  seldom  told  a  good  story,  but 
his  speeches  at  the  famous  Svmday  dinners 
of  the  club  were  delightful  in  their  always 
kindly  humour.  Perhaps  the  best  of  his 
talk  was  when,  on  a  fishing  holiday  beside 
the  Spey,  he  would  be  lying  on  the  bank 
with  a  friend,  often  his  faithful  and  much- 
loved  gillie,  waiting  for  the  sun  to  go  off 
the  pool. 

Buckmaster  married  in  1889  Edith 
Augusta  (died  1935),  fourth  daughter  of 
Spencer  Robert  Lewin,  of  Widford,  Hert- 
fordshire; they  had  one  son  and  two 
daughters,  the  elder  of  whom  predeceased 
her  father.  He  died  in  London  5  December 
1934,  and  was  succeeded  as  second  viscount 
by  his  son,  Owen  Stanley  (bom  1890). 

A  portrait  of  Buckmaster,  by  Thomas 
McKegger,  is  in  the  possession  of  Dr. 
Dorothy  Tasker.  Another  (posthumous) 
portrait,  in  his  lord  chancellor's  robes,  by 
Reginald  Eves,  hangs  in  the  hall  of  Christ 
Church,  Oxford. 

[The  Times,  6  and  7  December  1934;  A 
Village  Politician.  The  Life-Story  of  John 
Buckley  (edited  by  J.  C.  Buckmaster  whose 
autobiography  it  is),  1897 ;  James  Johnston, 
An  Orator  of  Justice.  A  Speech  Biography  of 
Viscount  Buckmaster,  1932;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Geoffrey  Russell. 


BUDGE,  Sir  (ERNEST  ALFRED 
THOMPSON)  WALLIS  (1857-1934),  As- 
syriologist  and  Egyptologist,  came  of 
Cornish  Quaker  stock  engaged  in  Indian 
and  Chinese  trade.  He  was  born  27  July 
1857.  While  still  a  child  at  an  elementary 
school  run  by  a  relative,  he  became  in- 
terested in  Hebrew ;  employed  at  an  early 
age  by  W.  H.  Smith  &  Son,  in  his  scanty 


leisure  he  studied  Hebrew  and  Syriac 
with  Charles  Seager  [q.v.].  The  intense 
interest  aroused  by  the  Assyrian  dis- 
coveries of  George  Smith  [q.v.]  led  to 
an  introduction  to  Samuel  Birch  [q.v.]  at 
the  British  Museum,  and  to  opportunities 
for  study  which  he  generously  provided. 
Gladstone,  appealed  to  by  Seager  in  1874, 
arranged  for  funds  to  send  the  boy  to 
Cambridge  as  a  non-collegiate  student 
under  William  Wright  [q.v.]  in  1878.  In 
1879,  following  John  Peile's  sugges- 
tion, Budge  won  the  Otway  exhibition 
at  Christ's  College  where  he  was  elected 
scholar  in  1881.  Wright,  an  unsparing 
critic  of  decipherers  of  cimeiform,  was 
much  incensed  by  the  appearance  of  two 
books  on  Assyrian  texts,  destined  to 
remain  useful  for  forty  years,  from  the 
pen  of  an  undergraduate,  but  later  he 
became  a  firm  friend,  whose  counsel  was 
sought  and  followed  until  his  death  in 
1889.  After  taking  the  Semitic  languages 
tripos  in  1882,  Budge  won  the  Tyrwhitt 
Hebrew  scholarship,  and  a  year  later 
(1883),  in  accordance  with  Gladstone's 
desire,  accepted  appointment  as  assistant 
in  Birch's  department  (oriental  antiqui- 
ties) at  the  British  Museum. 

This  appointment  led  to  Budge's  aban- 
donment of  Assyxiology  owing  to  the 
jealousy  of  a  colleague.  This  was  a  bitter 
blow,  but  his  training  proved  constantly 
useful.  At  the  request  of  Sir  H.  C.  Rawlin- 
son  [q.v.]  the  trustees  sent  Budge  on  three 
missions  to  Mesopotamia,  partly  to  con- 
duct excavations  strictly  limited  in  scope, 
but  chiefly  to  clear  up  unsatisfactory 
arrangements  made  by  Hormuzd  Rassam 
[q.v.],  involving  payment  of  guards  on 
sites  where  pillage  was  rife.  Budge's 
reports,  leading  to  the  dismissal  of  the 
guards,  were  displeasing  to  Sir  A.  H. 
Layard  [q.v.],  who  had  recommended 
Rassam,  and  two  interviews  led  to  an 
action  for  slander  by  Rassam  against 
Budge,  tried  before  Mr.  Justice  Cave  in 
1893.  The  award  of  £50  damages  and  the 
consequent  costs  were  only  met  with  the 
assistance  of  colleagues,  indignant  that 
official  reports  should  ultimately  have 
become  the  subject  of  a  private  action.  In 
1897,  when  in  Egypt,  Budge  had  an 
opportunity  to  purchase  tablets  from 
Amarna,  and  his  knowledge  enabled  him 
to  form  a  more  correct  opinion  of  this 
surprising  find  than  did  others.  His  long 
acquaintance  with  Assyriologists  is  re- 
corded in  The  Rise  and  Progress  of 
Assyriology  (1925). 

Before  Birch's  death  in  1885  Budge  was 


121 


Budge 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


competent  to  read  Egyptian  texts.  In 
1886  he  dug  at  Assuan,  and  between  1897 
and  1905  he  went  five  times  for  short 
periods  to  examine  sites  in  the  Sudan.  It 
was  there  that  he  contracted  glaucoma; 
one  eye  was  rendered  useless  for  reading. 
In  sixteen  official  visits  to  Egypt,  from 
1886,  his  purchases  greatly  extended  the 
range  and  representative  character  of  the 
collections  not  only  of  his  own,  but  also  of 
other  departments  of  the  Museum ;  among 
them  were 'celebrated  Greek  papyri,  the 
*  AOiqvaiwv  TToXneia,  the  mimes  of  Herodas, 
and  the  odes  of  Bacchylides.  In  1892, 
while  still  an  assistant.  Budge  was  put  in 
charge  of  the  department,  now  re-named 
Egyptian  and  Assyrian  Antiquities,  and  in 
1894  he  was  appointed  keeper,  remaining 
so  until  his  retirement  in  1924,  Owing  to 
structural  alterations  and  the  war  of  1914- 
1918,  the  heavy  task  of  rearranging  the 
collections  had  to  be  carried  out  three 
times.  The  toil  of  introducing  order  into 
chaotic  disorder,  and  of  maintaining  it  in 
spite  of  such  adverse  conditions,  and  of 
extensive  acquisitions,  not  easily  appre- 
ciated by  those  not  concerned,  did  not 
prevent  necessary  and  extensive  publica- 
tion. Catalogue-guides,  essential  for 
students  and  visitors,  came  from  Budge's 
own  pen.  Official  publications  of  copies  of 
cuneiform  and  hieroglyphic  texts  were 
devised  by  him  as  a  result  of  his  practical 
knowledge  of  printing.  He  himself  edited 
two  volumes  of  reproductions  of  hieratic 
papyri  with  explanatory  introductions  and 
translations,  and  numerous  ancient  copies 
of  the  Book  of  the  Dead.  He  created  a 
thoroughly  efficient  department  and  left  it 
in  good  working  order. 

Wright  had  impressed  upon  Budge  the 
duty  of  speedy  publication  of  texts,  and 
the  desirability  of  publishing  translations 
with  the  texts,  even  if  imperfect,  to  assist 
others,  and  Budge  accomplished  a  remark- 
able voliune  of  work  in  following  these 
precepts.  In  Syriac  a  long  series  begins 
with  the  Book  of  the  Bee  in  1886  and  ends 
with  the  Syrian  Chronicle  of  Bar  Hebraeus 
in  1932.  The  first  Coptic  text  which  he 
published  was  the  History  of  Isaac  of 
Tiphre  (1884) ;  the  last  were  the  Miscel- 
laneous Texts  (1915).  His  work  in  Ethiopic 
began  with  the  Contendings  of  the  Apostles 
(1898)  and  ended  with  the  Bandlet  of 
Righteousness  (1929).  There  were  also 
translations  for  the  first  time  into  English 
of  texts  published  by  others.  Time  and 
trouble  were  freely  spent  in  finding  money ; 
during  his  later  years  he  paid  for  publica- 
tion himself.    Editions  and  translations 


produced  under  such  pressure  called  for, 
and  received,  considerable  criticism ;  in  so 
far  as  the  criticism  promoted  knowledge 
more  quickly  than  would  otherwise  have 
been  possible.  Budge's  purpose  was  served. 

Among  Egyptologists  Budge  was  the 
best  Semitic  scholar  of  his  generation.  He 
sturdily  refused  to  accept  two  theories 
which  became  fashionable,  namely,  the 
grammatical  interpretation  of  certain 
forms  of  the  Egyptian  verb  by  analogy 
with  the  Semitic  verb,  and  transliteration 
based  upon  the  unprovable  phonetic 
theory  that  the  hieroglyphic  writing  repre- 
sents always  only  consonants  as  in  Semitic 
languages.  His  work  accordingly  found 
no  favour  in  contemporary  academic 
schools,  but  it  has  been  of  great  assistance 
to  the  self-taught.  His  most  important 
original  work  lay  in  the  deciphering  of  the 
hieratic  papyri  in  the  Museum,  above  all 
the  remarkable  Teaching  of  Amenemapt 
(1924),  and  in  the  edition  of  a  standard  text 
of  the  Book  of  the  Dead  (1898).  His  reading 
books,  devised  to  enable  private  students 
to  read,  were  the  best  introductions  to 
hieroglyphs inEnglishforthirty years.  The 
Egyptian  Hieroglyphic  Dictionary  (1920), 
a  remarkable  achievement  for  one  man,  is 
still  useful,  even  after  the  appearance  of 
the  Berlin  Worterbuch.  His  ephemeral 
books,  intended  to  place  general  informa- 
tion on  his  subjects  before  the  reading 
public,  were  numerous  and  useful  in  their 
time;  some  still  retain  their  value,  for 
instance  The  Mummy  (edition  of  1925), 
The  Egyptian  Sudan,  Its  History  and 
Monuments  (1907),  A  History  of  Ethiopia, 
Nubia,  and  Abyssinia  (1928). 

Budge  had  great  physical  energy  and 
zest  for  life.  He  was  a  notable  raconteur, 
and  his  company  was  appreciated  by 
excellent  judges.  Impatient  of  idleness, 
pretentiousness,  and  humbug,  he  made 
many  enemies  and  rejoiced  in  sincere 
friendships,  sympathizing  rather  with  the 
soldier  than  with  the  diplomat.  A  man  of 
wide  learning,  he  was  critical  of  most  of 
the  'critical'  methods  of  modern  scholar- 
ship ;  intensely  interested  in  the  main  lines 
of  development  in  his  subjects,  he  was  less 
impressed  by  insistence  on  accuracy  in 
minutiae  than  by  sound  judgement  and 
real  discoveries  due  to  pioneer  work.  His 
private  life  was  exceptionally  happy;  he 
married  in  1888  Dora  Helen,  daughter 
of  Titus  Emerson,  rector  of  Allendale, 
Northumberland,  and  he  tended  and 
obeyed  her  with  great  gentleness  until  her 
death  in  1926.  They  had  no  children.  On 
his  death  his  estate  provided  for  a  memorial 


122 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Bulfin 


to  her  in  the  form  of  two  foundations  for 
the  encouragement  of  Egyptology,  the  one 
at  his  own  college,  the  other  at  University 
College,  Oxford,  to  which  he  belonged 
owing  to  the  friendship  of  Reginald 
Walter  Macan.  He  was  knighted  in  1920. 
He  died  in  London  23  November  1934. 

[Autobiographical  material  in  By  Nile  and 
Tigris,  1920 ;  bibliography  in  Who  was  Who, 
1929-1940,  1941 ;  private  information ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Sidney  Smith. 

I  BULFIN,  Sib  EDWARD  STANIS- 
LAUS (1862-1939),  general,  was  born  in 
Dublin  6  November  1862,  the  second  son 
of  Patrick  Bulfin,  of  Woodtown  Park, 
Rathfarnham,  co.  Dublin,  by  his  wife, 
Teresa  Clare,  daughter  of  John  Carroll,  of 
Dublin.  He  was  educated  at  Stony  hurst 
and  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  entered 
the  army  through  the  militia  in  which  he 
served  in  the  3rd  battalion,  the  Royal 
Irish  Fusiliers.  In  1884  he  joined  the 
Yorkshire  Regiment  (the  Green  Howards). 
He  was  promoted  captain  in  1895  and  held 
the  appointment  of  assistant  military 
secretary  and  aide-de-camp  to  the  general 
officer  commanding  in  South  Africa  from 
November  1898  until  November  1899. 
The  South  African  war  broke  out  in 
October  1899  and  he  continued  to  serve  on 
the  staff  until  1901,  taking  part  in  the 
advance  on  Kimberley  and  the  battles  at 
Belmont,  Enslin,  Modder  River,  and 
Magersfontein.  In  December  1901  he  was 
given  command  of  a  mobile  column  with 
which  he  served  until  the  conclusion  of 
the  campaign  in  1902.  He  was  three  times 
mentioned  in  dispatches,  and  received  the 
brevets  of  major  and  lieutenant-colonel, 
the  Queen's  medal  with  four  clasps,  and 
the  King's  medal  with  two  clasps. 

In  November  1903  Bulfin  was  given  a 
majority  in  the  Manchester  Regiment,  but 
he  never  served  with  that  regiment  as  he 
held  the  appointment  of  deputy-assistant- 
adjutant-general,  the  I  Army  Corps,  from 
October  1902  until  October  1904,  when  he 
transferred  to  the  Royal  Welch  Fusiliers. 
In  1906  he  returned  to  South  Africa  as 
assistant-adjutant  and  quartermaster- 
general,  Cape  Colony  district.  In  this  same 
year  he  was  made  a  brevet  colonel,  reach- 
ing the  substantive  rank  in  1908,  He 
remained  in  South  Africa  until  1910. 
Between  1911  and  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  he  commanded  successively  the 
Essex  Infantry  brigade  of  the  Territorial 
Force  and  the  2nd  brigade  at  Aldershot, 
which  he  took  out  with  the  British  Expe- 
ditionary Force  to  France.    On  14  Sep- 


tember, during  the  battle  of  the  Aisne,  he 
fought  a  successful  action  with  his  brigade 
near  Troy  on.  On  26  October  he  was 
promoted  major-general  and,  in  command 
of  a  number  of  units  temporarily  put 
together  under  the  title  of  'Bulfin's  force', 
he  played  a  prominent  part  in  repelling 
the  German  attacks  during  the  first  battle 
of  Ypres,  being  wounded  on  1  November. 

In  December  Bulfin  was  given  command 
of  the  28th  division,  which  he  took  out  to 
France  in  January  1915.  His  division  was 
on  the  flank  of  the  Canadian  division  when 
the  latter  met  the  full  force  of  the  first 
German  gas  attack  at  Ypres  in  April. 
Under  Bulfin's  resolute  leadership  the  28th 
division  bore  a  very  heavy  burden  through- 
out the  second  battle  of  Ypres  and 
suffered  very  heavily.  He  remained  in 
command  of  this  division  until  October 
1915,  when  he  took  over  the  60th  division 
and  served  with  it  in  France,  at  Salonika, 
and  with  the  Egyptian  Expeditionary 
Force  imtil  August  1917,  when  he  received 
command  of  the  XXI  Army  Corps,  which 
also  formed  part  of  the  Egyptian  Expedi- 
tionary Force.  He  thus  took  part  as 
a  corps  commander  in  the  successful 
campaign  in  Palestine  of  Sir  Edmund 
(later  Viscount)  AUenby  [q.v.],  whereby 
Turkey  was  put  out  of  the  war.  He 
retained  command  of  the  XXI  Army 
Corps  until  November  1919  and  was 
subsequently  employed  as  commissioner 
for  the  disposal  of  surplus  stores  in  India 
and  Iraq  from  the  end  of  1921  until  August 
1923.  He  was  promoted  lieutenant- 
general  in  1919  and  full  general  in  1925. 
He  retired  in  1926. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Bulfin  was 
seven  times  mentioned  in  dispatches  and 
was  promoted  both  to  major-general  and 
to  lieutenant-general  for  distinguished 
conduct  in  the  field.  He  was  appointed 
C.V.O.  in  1910,  K.C.B.  in  1918,  and 
received  numerous  foreign  decorations, 
and  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  in  1920.  He  was 
colonel  of  the  Green  Howards  from  1914 
until  his  death. 

Bulfin  married  in  1898  Frances  Mary 
(died  1947),  only  daughter  of  Francis 
William  Lonergan,  of  London,  and  had 
one  son  and  one  daughter;  his  son. 
Captain  James  Joseph  Bulfin,  M.C.,  died 
in  Palestine  in  1929  while  serving  with  the 
2nd  battalion,  the  Green  Howards.  Bul- 
fin died  at  Boscombe,  Bournemouth,  20 
August  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Bulfin,  by  St.  Helen 
Lauder,  is  in  the  officers'  mess  of  the 


123 


Bulfin 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


depot  of  the  Green  Howards  at  Richmond, 
Yorkshire. 

[The  Times,  22  August  1939;  Official 
records ;  private  information.] 

E.  H.  Wyndham. 

BUNSEN,  SiK  MAURICE  WILLIAM 
ERNEST  DE,  baronet  (1852-1932),  diplo- 
matist. [See  DK  BuNSEN.] 

BURKITT,   FRANCIS    CRAWFORD 

(1864-1935),  professor  of  divinity,  was 
born  in  London  3  September  1864,  the 
only  child  of  Crawford  Burkitt,  who  was 
in  business  there.  Francis  Burkitt's  grand- 
father had  migrated  to  London  from 
Sudbury  in  Suffolk,  and  founded  the 
business  which  his  father  carried  on  so 
successfully  that  the  son  had  no  need 
to  make  a  living  for  himself.  This  grand- 
father married  a  sister  of  the  philanthropist 
William  Crawford  [q.v.]  whose  unworldli- 
ness  and  reforming  spirit  were  seen  again 
in  some  measure  in  his  great-nephew.  His 
mother  was  Fanny  Elizabeth  Coward,  of  a 
Somerset  family  connected  with  Chil- 
compton. 

Being  supposed  to  need  special  care 
Burkitt  was  sent  to  a  day  school  near  his 
home.  In  1878  he  went  to  Harrow,  on  the 
modern  side,  and  in  1883  entered  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  of  which  he  was 
elected  a  scholar  in  1885.  He  graduated 
as  a  wrangler  in  part  i  of  the  mathema- 
tical tripos  of  1886,  but  he  turned  at  once 
from  mathematics  to  the  study  of  Hebrew. 
The  natural  way  of  doing  this  in  the 
Cambridge  of  that  time  was  to  read  for 
the  theological  tripos.  This  involved  a 
course  of  scientific  study  of  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testament  and  the  early  history 
of  Christian  thought  and  institutions, 
which  gave  him  a  good  foundation  for  his 
later  work  in  the  domain  of  the  beginnings 
of  Christianity.  He  won  several  university 
prizes  and  the  second  Tyrwhitt  scholar- 
ship (1889)  and  was  placed  in  the  first  class 
in  part  ii  of  the  tripos  of  1888. 

In  the  last-named  year  Burkitt  married 
Amy  Persis,  daughter  of  William  Parry, 
rector  of  Fitz,  Shropshire,  and  grand- 
daughter of  Sir  Edward  Barnes  [q.v.]. 
They  settled  down  in  Cambridge  and  had 
one  son,  the  archaeologist,  Mr.  Miles  Bur- 
kitt. It  was  not  until  1903  that  he  held  any 
academic  oifice — a  vmiversity  lecturership 
in  palaeography  previously  held  by  James 
Rendel  Harris — and  not  until  after  the 
promulgation  of  the  vmiversity  statutes  of 
1926  that  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his 
college,  although  he  had  been  Norrisian 


professor  of  divinity  (combined  with  the 
Hulsean  professorship  in  1934)  since  1905. 
So  he  had  his  whole  time  at  his  own  dis- 
posal and  he  set  to  work  to  study  other 
oriental  languages,  Syriac  in  particular. 
It  was  as  a  Syriac  scholar  that  he  first 
became  widely  known,  especially  in  con- 
nexion with  the  textual  criticism  of  the 
Gospels.  He  was  the  first  to  recognize  the 
importance  of  the  Syriac  palimpsest  of 
the  four  Gospels  in  the  convent  of  St. 
Catherine  on  Mount  Sinai  and  was  one  of 
the  party  that  transcribed  it  in  1893  [see 
Lewis,  Agnes].  The  two-volume  edition 
of  the  old  Syriac  Gospels  which  he  pub- 
lished in  1904  with  the  title  Evangelion 
da-Mepharreshe :  the  Curetonian  Version 
of  the  Four  Gospels,  with  the  Readings  of  the 
Sinai  Palimpsest  and  the  Early  Syriac 
Patristic  Evidence  edited,  collected  and 
arranged  will  always  be  indispensable  to 
the  student  of  the  Syriac  versions  of  the 
New  Testament. 

Similarly  as  regards  the  Old  Testament, 
although  the  conditions  are  different, 
Burkitt's  article  'Text  and  Versions'  in 
the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica  (1903)  is  a 
masterly  survey  which  remains  without  an 
equal.  He  lived  through  the  years  when 
the  new  literary  and  historical  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament  was  fighting  its  way, 
and  he  took  an  active  part  in  expounding 
its  main  results.  But  it  was  in  the  field  of 
critical  study  of  the  New  Testament  that  his 
own  chief  contributions  were  made .  In  this 
sphere  Burkitt  was,  for  English  students 
at  least,  one  of  the  pioneers,  especially  by 
his  book  The  Gospel  History  and  its  Trans- 
mission (1906),  but  scarcely  less  so  by  his 
acceptance  of  the  teaching  of  Johannes 
Weiss  as  to  the  meaning  of  'the  kingdom 
of  God'  in  the  message  of  Jesus.  Burkitt 
made  himself  at  once  the  champion  in 
England  of  the  'eschatological',  'apoca- 
lyptic', interpretation  of  the  aims  and 
teaching  of  Jesus.  It  was  mainly  at  his 
instigation  also  that  Albert  Schweitzer's 
great  book  Von  Reimarus  zu  Wrede  (1906) 
was  translated  by  William  Montgomery 
and  made  known  to  English  readers  under 
the  title  The  Quest  of  the  Historical  Jesus 
(1910).  It  must  be  counted  as  one  of  his 
chief  services  to  the  history  of  Christianity 
that  he  took  a  lead  in  showing  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  Liberal  Protestant  ideas 
of  the  nineteenth  century  as  regards  Jesus 
and  His  Gospel  and  recalled  students  to 
the  fact  that  Jesus  shared  the  apocalyptic 
conceptions  current  in  some  circles  of 
religious  Jews  of  His  time  and  in  His 
teaching   never   envisaged   a   future   for 


124 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Burnet 


human  society  in  the  world  as  it  has 
actually  been.  Burkitt's  mastery  of  the 
conditions  of  the  transition  from  the  re- 
formed religion  of  Israel  to  the  Jewish- 
Christian  conditions  of  the  first  century 
A.D.  was  shown  in  his  Schweich  lectures 
for  1913,  Jezvish  and  Christian  Apocalypses 
(1914). 

In  common  with  other  students  Burkitt 
held  that  the  Christ  of  the  Catholic  creeds 
and  institutions  was  the  product  of  epi- 
genesis,  in  the  course  of  which  the  histori- 
cal Figure  had  been  transformed.  But 
he  was  convinced  that  really  scientific 
criticism  applied  to  the  Gospels  revealed 
an  historical  Person  with  a  substratum  of 
His  actual  doings  and  sayings  adequate  to 
account  for  the  origin  and  the  later 
developments  of  the  Christian  Church.  So 
he  found  the  new  school  of  formgeschicht- 
lich  criticism  unacceptable  as  leaving  one 
of  the  greatest  of  historical  phenomena — 
the  rise  of  Christianity — in  the  air,  without 
foundation  in  events  and  happenings  in 
actual  human  experience  (Jesus  Christ:  an 
Historical  Outline,  1932).  He  made 
valuable  contributions  also  to  Franciscan 
studies  (notably  in  an  essay  on  '  The  Study 
of  the  Sources  of  the  Life  of  St.  Francis' 
in  the  volume  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  edited 
by  Walter  Seton  in  1926),  and  to  the 
history  and  significance  of  Christian  wor- 
ship in  Eucharist  and  Sacrifice  (1921)  and 
in  vol.  iii  (1930)  of  The  Christian  Religion: 
its  Origin  and  Progress,  edited  by  J.  F. 
Bethune-Baker,  as  well  as  in  numerous 
articles  on  special  points.  His  books  on 
Manichaeism  and  Gnosticism,  The  Religion 
of  the  Manichees  (1925)  and  Church  and 
Gnosis  (1932),  are  fresh  and  original 
surveys  of  well-worn  themes. 

A  list  of  Burkitt's  published  writings 
(books  and  pamphlets  and  articles  in 
various  magazines)  occupies  ten  pages  of 
small  print  in  the  Journal  of  Theological 
Studies  for  October  1935,  arranged  under 
the  headings  Syriac  Studies,  Textual 
Criticism,  The  Latin  Bible  (Old  Latin  and 
The  Latin  Vulgate),  Hebrew  and  Old 
Testament  Studies ,  New  Testament  Studies 
(The  Gospels  and  Acts  and  Epistles), 
Early  Christian  Literature  and  Life,  On 
Gnosticism,  On  Mandaeism,  on  Mani- 
chaeism, Liturgical  Studies  {General  and 
Hymns),  Franciscan  Studies,  Archaeologi- 
cal Studies,  Philological,  The  Past  and  The 
Present,  Biographical. 

Such  a  list  shows  the  wide  range  of 
Burkitt's  learning.  All  his  writings  bear 
the  mark  of  a  mind  of  vmusual  acumen  as 
well  as  equipment.   He  was  a  vivid  and 


attractive  personality,  full  of  interests 
other  than  those  of  the  mere  scholar — an 
eager  fisherman  and  occasional  gardener, 
a  skilled  pianist  and  musician  (with  Bach 
as  his  standard  of  perfection),  a  player  of 
patience  and  other  such  games,  a  rapid 
solver  of  the  crossword  puzzles  in  The 
Times  (he  'knew  the  way  the  man's  mind 
worked') — no  great  reader  of  poetry  or 
novels.  Poetry  and  philosophy  were 
scarcely  in  his  orbit,  although  he  could 
make  truly  poetical  versions  (Ecclesiastes. 
Rendered  into  English  Verse,  1922,  The 
Song  of  Brother  Sun  in  English  Rime, 
1926)  and  he  sometimes  threw  light  on 
philosophical  'questions'  by  reference  to 
facts  which  had  escaped  the  philosophers' 
attention.  'Facts'  always  came  first  with 
him  and  he  had  an  vmfailing  memory  for 
detail. 

A  practising  member  of  the  Church  of 
England  of  the  modernist  school  (regularly 
reading  the  lessons  at  a  church  of  the 
'liberal  evangelical'  type  near  his  home) 
he  had  members  of  most  of  the  great 
Christian  denominations,  and  Jews  and 
other  non- Christians,  among  his  intimate 
friends,  and  would  take  endless  pains  with 
students — younger  or  older — who  con- 
sulted him.  He  conducted  a  seminar  of 
his  own  and  was  a  constant  attendant  and 
speaker  at  congresses  and  meetings  of 
various  kinds. 

Always  on  the  track  of  something, 
always  alert,  Burkitt's  gifts  of  spirit  and 
mind  were  kept  in  fruitful  exercise  all  his 
life.  While  he  was  still  apparently  as 
alert  and  active  as  ever,  in  his  seventy- 
first  year,  after  a  full  day's  work,  as  he 
was  about  to  go  to  sleep,  at  his  home  at 
Cambridge,  a  blood  vessel  in  the  brain 
gave  way  and  without  recovering  con- 
sciousness he  died  in  the  early  morning  of 
11  May  1935. 

Burkitt  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Edinburgh  and  Dublin 
(1907),  St.  Andrews  and  Breslau  (1911), 
Oxford  (1927),  and  Durham  (1934).  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1905. 

A  portrait  of  Burkitt,  by  Mrs.  Proffit,  is 
in  the  possession  of  his  son. 

[J.  F.  Bethune-Baker,  Francis  Crawford 
Burkitt,  1864r-1935,  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxii,  1936 ;  Journal  of 
Theological  Studies,  July  and  October  1935; 
personal  knowledge.] 

J.  F.  Bethxjne-Baker. 

BURNET,  Sib  JOHN  JAMES  (1857- 
1938),  architect,  was  born  at  Glasgow  31 
May    1857,   the   yoimgest   son   of  John 


125 


Burnet 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Burnet,  architect,  of  Glasgow,  by  his  wife, 
Eliza  Hay  Bennet.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Western  Academy,  Glasgow.  In  his 
eighteenth  year  he  went  to  Paris  to  study 
architecture  at  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts, 
joining  the  atelier  of  Jean  Louis  Pascal 
where  he  qualified  for  the  dipldme  du 
gouvernement  in  the  unusually  short  period 
of  three  years.  On  his  return  his  father 
took  him  into  partnership  and  he  im- 
mediately distinguished  himself  by  win- 
ning the  competition  for  the  galleries  of 
the  (Royal)  Glasgow  Institute  of  Fine 
Arts.  In  this  design  Burnet,  at  the  early 
age  of  twenty-one,  showed  the  mastery  in 
handling  plan,  elevation,  material,  and 
detail  as  a  coherent  whole  which  was  to 
characterize  all  his  subsequent  work. 
Commissions  came  to  him  quickly,  in 
great  number  and  variety.  Public  build- 
ings (Glasgow  Athenaeum  and  Edinburgh 
International  Exhibition,  1886),  business 
premises  (Clyde  Navigation  Trust,  Glas- 
gow, 1883-1886,  and  many  others  in 
GlasgowandEdinburgh),churches(Barony 
church,  Glasgow,  1886-1889,  Arbroath 
parish  church,  1894-1896,  etc.),  hospitals, 
railway  stations,  and  private  houses  en- 
gaged him  during  his  thirty  years'  practice 
in  Glasgow  and  gained  him  his  immense 
reputation  in  Scotland.  He  had  succeeded 
in  investing  commercial  architecture  with 
a  new  vigour  and  rationale  and  in  hospital 
planning  he  laid  the  foundation  for  the 
modern  advance  that  has  revolutionized 
hospital  design.  Burnet's  strongly  de- 
veloped sense  of  composition  explains  his 
lifelong  interest  in  sculpture,  and  in  the 
Glasgow  Savings  Bank  (1895)  he  gave 
(Sir)  George  Frampton  [q.v.]  his  first 
important  architectural  commission. 

In  1904  the  trustees  of  the  British 
Museum  commissioned  Burnet  to  erect 
the  King  Edward  VII  galleries  in  Monta- 
gue Place.  The  result  is  by  common 
consent  one  of  the  most  important  con- 
tributions to  the  architecture  of  this 
century.  The  great  single  order  of  twenty 
Ionic  columns,  between  their  flanking 
pylons,  achieves  the  maximum  of  dignity 
and  repose.  The  composition  is  much 
more  than  a  brilliant  exercise  on  a  classic 
theme ;  every  subtlety  of  varying  diameter, 
intercolumniation,  and  inclination  of 
verticals  was  employed  to  secure  grace  and 
homogeneity  and  it  is  justly  acclaimed 
for  its  modern  vigour  and  originality.  On 
its  completion  in  1914  Burnet  was  knighted 
and  the  Paris  Salon  conferred  upon  him 
its  bronze  medal.  The  gold  medal  fol- 
lowed in  1922  and  the  Royal  Institute  of 


British  Architects,  of  which  he  had  been 
elected  a  fellow  in  1897,  awarded  him  its 
Royal  gold  medal  in  1923.  He  was 
elected  A.R.A.  in  1921  and  R.A.  in  1925. 
In  1910  the  university  of  Glasgow  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D. 

After  1905  Burnet  moved  to  London, 
the  Glasgow  office  being  carried  on  sepa- 
rately in  partnership  with  Mr.  Norman 
Dick.  Important  commissions  multiplied 
in  England  and  Scotland  and  notable  works 
in  London  were  the  offices  of  the  General 
Accident  Fire  and  Life  Assurance  Company 
in  Aldwych  (sculptor,  Albert  Hodge),  the 
Institute  of  Chemistry,  Russell  Square,  and 
(in  association  with  Mr.  T.  S.  Tait)  the 
Kodak  building,  Kingsway,  Adelaide 
House,  London  Bridge,  Vigo  House, 
Regent  Street,  and  Unilever  House,  Black- 
friars.  He  assisted  the  War  Graves  Com- 
mission, Palestine,  and  designed  the  Indian 
war  memorials  (Gulf  of  Suez  and  Cape 
Helles),  the  Cavalry  War  Memorial,  Hyde 
Park,  and  the  Glasgow  cenotaph. 

Burnet  married  in  1886  Jean  Watt, 
daughter  of  the  legal  and  historical  writer 
(Sir)  James  David  Marwick  [q.v.],  and  died 
without  issue,  at  Colinton,  Edinburgh,  2 
July  1938.  A  portrait  bust  by  Sir  William 
Reid  Dick  is  in  the  possession  of  Lady 
Burnet. 

[The  Times,  4  July  1938 ;  Journal  of  the 
Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects,  18  July 
and  15  August  1938 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Waltek  H.  Godfrey. 

BURNHAM,  first  Viscount  (1862- 
1933),  newspaper  proprietor.  [See  Law- 
son,  Sir  Hakry  Lawson  Webster  Levy-.] 

BUTLER,  EDWARD  JOSEPH 
ALOYSIUS  (in  religion  Dom  Cuthbert) 
(1858-1934),  Benedictine  abbot  and, 
scholar,  was  born  in  Dublin  6  May  1858, 
the  only  child  of  Edward  Butler,  barris- 
ter, by  his  wife,  Mary,  sister  of  the  well- 
known  Dublin  physician  Sir  Francis 
Cruise.  His  father  was  professor  of 
mathematics  in  the  recently  established 
Roman  Catholic  university  in  Dublin  of 
which  Cardinal  Newman  was  rector  from 
1854  to  1858.  Educated  at  Downside 
from  1869  to  1875,  Butler  entered  the 
Benedictine  novitiate  at  Belmont  Priory, 
Hereford,  in  1876,  taking  in  religion  the 
name  of  Cuthbert.  Returning  in  1880  to 
Downside,  where  the  young  Dom  Aidan 
Gasquet  [q.vrj  was  prior,  and  the  scholar 
Edmund  Bishop  [q.v.]  a  frequent  visitor, 
he  was  ordained  priest  in  1884  and  taught 


126 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Butler,  E.  S. 


in  the  school,  of  which  he  was  first  prefect 
from  1888  to  1892.  But  his  principal  in- 
terest was  the  contemporary  movement 
to  win  for  Downside  and  the  other  monas- 
teries of  the  English  Benedictine  Congrega- 
tion autonomy  and  full  monastic  discipline 
and  observance.  This  end  was  in  large 
part  achieved  in  1900,  when  DoAvnside 
became  an  abbey  and  the  Congregation  was 
organized  on  traditional  Benedictine  lines. 

Meanwhile,  Butler  was  sent  in  1896  to 
Cambridge  as  superior  of  Benet  House, 
where  he  edited  the  Lausiac  History  of 
Palladius  (1898, 1904) ;  during  these  years 
he  owed  much  in  different  ways  to  friend- 
ships with  J.  A.  Robinson  [q.v.]  and 
Friedrich  von  Hiigel  [q.v.].  Returning  to 
Downside  as  subprior  in  1904,  he  was 
elected  abbot  in  1906,  and  was  re-elected 
in  1914.  He  did  much  to  develop  the 
monastic  life  of  the  house,  and  was  abbot 
president  of  the  English  Benedictine 
Congregation  from  1914  to  1921.  While 
in  office  at  Downside  he  published  a 
critical  edition  of  the  Rule  of  St.  Benedict 
(1912),  and  wrote  Benedictine  Monachism 
(1919),  the  fruit  of  a  life's  experience  and 
thought,  and  Western  Mysticism  (1922). 
In  this  last  year  he  resigned  the  abbacy, 
and  thenceforward  lived  at  Ealing  Priory, 
writing  The  Life  and  Times  of  Bishop 
Ullathorne  (2  vols.,  1926),  The  Vatican 
Council  (1930),  and  other  books.  He  died 
suddenly  of  heart  failure  at  Clapham  on 
Easter  Day,  1  April  1934,  and  was  buried 
at  Downside. 

TaU  and  of  striking  appearance,  Butler 
conveyed  an  instantaneous  impression, 
which  further  acquaintance  did  not  belie, 
of  intellectual  distinction  and  unaffected 
benevolence.  By  temperament  a  scholar 
rather  than  a  ruler,  he  failed  on  occasion 
both  in  judgement  and  in  decision,  without 
ever  forfeiting  the  respect  which  his 
sincerity  and  genuine  piety  inspired. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  life  his  work  won 
wide  recognition  as  that  of  a  candid  and 
judicious  scholar;  his  real  monument, 
however,  must  be  sought  in  the  liturgical 
and  intellectual  life  of  Downside  in  his  day. 

Butler  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
doctor  of  letters  from  Trinity  CoUege, 
Dublin,  in  1908.  A  portrait  of  him,  by 
W.  C.  Symons,  is  at  Downside. 

[Datenside  Review,  July  1934;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

M.  D.  Knowles. 

BUTLER,  ELIZABETH  SOUTHER- 
DEN,  Lady  (1846-1933),  painter,  was 
born  at  the  Villa  Claremont,  Lausanne, 


3  November  1846,  the  elder  daughter  of 
Thomas  James  Thompson,  by  his  second 
wife,  Christiana,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Edward  Weller.  The  younger  daughter 
was  Alice  Meynell,  the  poet  and  essayist 
[q.v.].  Thompson  undertook  entirely  the 
early  education  of  these  two  daughters ; 
and  as  he  believed  that  travel  and  lan- 
guages are  the  sovereign  means  for 
acquiring  an  historical  sense,  the  family 
lived  at  that  time  nearly  as  much  abroad, 
particularly  in  Italy,  as  in  England.  The 
daughters  derived  their  sensitive  response 
to  beauty  not  only  from  him  but  also  from 
their  mother,  an  accompUshed  pianist  and 
a  sketcher  in  water-colour.  Between  the 
ages  of  nineteen  and  twenty-one  Elizabeth 
Thompson  studied  at  the  South  Kensing- 
ton School  of  Art,  which  she  entered  early 
in  1866,  distinguishing  herself  in  water- 
colour.  In  1869  she  became  a  pupil  of 
Giuseppe  BeUucci  in  Florence,  and  she 
also  studied  in  Rome.  On  her  return  to 
England  she  continued  zealously  painting 
in  oils  and  in  1872  made  an  inspiring 
contact  with  the  army  through  watching 
some  mancEuvres.  About  1873  she  was 
received  into  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
whither  her  mother  and  her  sister  Alice 
had  preceded  her.  In  1874  fame  came  to 
her  suddenly  when  she  exhibited  'The 
Roll  Call'  at  the  Royal  Academy.  The 
picture  had  to  be  specially  protected  from 
the  pressure  of  the  'sight-seeing'  crowds  and 
it  was  reproduced  in  numberless  engrav- 
ings. It  was  bought  from  the  original 
purchaser  by  Queen  Victoria  and  is  now 
in  St.  James's  Palace.  Thenceforward  the 
painter  of  'The  Roll  Call'  was  held,  some- 
times against  her  will,  almost  exclusively 
to  military  subjects.  Among  her  best- 
known  pictures  may  be  mentioned '  Quatre 
Bras'  (1875,  now  in  the  National  Gallery, 
Melbourne),  'The  Remnants  of  an  Army 
(1879,  Tate  Gallery),  'The  Defence  of 
Rorke's  Drift'  (1880,  Windsor  Castle), 
'Scotland  for  Ever!'  (1881,  Leeds  Art 
GaUery),  'The  Dawn  of  Waterloo'  (1896, 
in  private  hands),  and  'Steady  the 
Drums  and  Fifes'  (1896,  Depot  of  the 
Middlesex  Regiment).  Ruskin  described 
'Quatre  Bras'  as  'Amazon's  work'  and  as 
'the  first  fine  pre-Raphaelite  picture  of 
battle  that  we  have  had'.  The  precision 
of  her  painting  was  prized  by  the  army  for 
its  faithful  recording  of  regimental  deeds 
and  dress,  but  a  later  generation  has  pre- 
ferred to  find  her  real  merit  in  her  masterly 
draughtsmanship  with  its  unfailing  sense 
of  movement.  Few  artists  have  equalled 
her  drawing  of  horses.  Her  water-colours 


127 


Butler,  E.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


have  a  softness  that  suggests  a  reaction 
from  the  clash  of  arms. 

In  1877  EHzabeth  Thompson  married 
Major  (afterwards  Lieutenant-General  Sir) 
William  Francis  Butler  [q.v.].  They  had 
three  sons  and  three  daughters,  the  eldest 
of  whom  died  in  infancy.  In  person  Lady 
Butler  was  notable  for  a  combination  of 
dignity  and  humility ;  she  was  always  re- 
ticent in  the  presence  of  public  curiosity. 
Her  friends  were  gratefully  familiar  with 
the  droll  inventiveness  of  her  conversation. 
After  her  husband's  death  in  1910  she 
continued  to  live  for  a  time  at  Bansha,  co. 
Tipperary,  where  they  had  settled  on  his 
retirement,  but  her  last  years  were  spent 
at  Gormanston  Castle,  co.  Meath,  the  home 
of  her  yoimgest  daughter,  where  she  died 
2  October  1933. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Lady  Butler,  by 
Louis  Desanges,  in  the  possession  of  her 
eldest  son. 

[Lady  Butler,  Letters  from  the  Holy  Land, 
1903,  From  Sketch-book  and  Diary,  1909,  and 
An  Autobiography,  1922 ;  Viola  Meynell,  Alice 
Meynell,  1929 ;  Wilfrid  Meynell,  The  Life  and 
Work  of  Lady  Butler  (Christmas  number  of 
the  Art  Journal),  1898 ;  private  information.] 

J.  B.  Atkins. 

BUTLER,  Sir  RICHARD  HARTE 
KEATINGE  (1870-1935),  lieutenant- 
general,  was  born,  possibly  abroad,  28 
August  1870,  the  son  of  Colonel  E.  R. 
Butler,  Army  Medical  Service.  He  was 
educated  at  Harrow  and  the  Royal  Mili- 
tary College,  Sandhurst.  He  was  com- 
missioned in  the  Dorsetshire  Regiment  in 
1890,  becoming  lieutenant  in  1892  and 
captain  in  1894.  He  became  adjutant  of 
the  2nd  battalion  in  1896  and  held  that 
post  most  efficiently  during  the  operations 
of  January  and  February  1900  for  the 
relief  of  Lady  smith.  During  the  with- 
drawal from  Spion  Kop  he  went  back 
across  the  Tugela  to  rescue  a  wounded 
man  and  was  actually  the  last  man  to 
recross  the  river.  He  again  distinguished 
himself  the  following  June  when  the  Boers 
were  cleared  out  of  northern  Natal,  the 
2nd  Dorsets  storming  the  key  of  the 
Boer  position  at  Alleman's  Nek.  Trans- 
ferrmg  in  August  to  the  5th  division's 
Moxmted  Infantry,  he  saw  much  service 
in  Natal,  the  south-east  Transvaal,  and 
the  Zululand  border.  He  played  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  successful  defence  of 
Fort  Itala  (September  1901)  against  Louis 
Botha  [q.v.],  being  severely  wounded.  His 
services  brought  him  a  brevet  as  major 
(1900)  and  two  mentions  in  dispatches. 


After  passing  the  Staff  College  in  1906, 
Butler  was  a  brigade-major  at  Aldershot, 
obtaining  his  regimental  majority  in  1910 ; 
a  year  later  he  returned  to  Aldershot  as 
G.S.O.  2  and  received  a  brevet  as  lieu- 
tenant-colonel in  1913.  He  was  selected 
in  Jime  1914  for  the  command  of  the  2nd 
Lancashire  Fusiliers  but  was  to  be  retained 
at  Aldershot  until  the  end  of  the  training 
season.  He  therefore  did  not  take  his 
battalion  to  France,  only  joining  it  in 
September  1914  for  the  fighting  on  the 
Lys  in  October  and  November,  where  he 
acquitted  himself  so  well  that  he  was 
given  the  3rd  brigade  (1st  division)  in 
November.  Here  again  he  made  his  mark 
as  a  fighting  soldier  in  the  winter  opera- 
tions round  Givenchy  but  was  appointed 
in  February  1915  to  succeed  Brigadier- 
General  J.  E.  Gough  [q.v.]  as  brigadier- 
general.  General  Staff,  I  Corps,  becoming 
in  June  major-general.  General  Staff, 
First  Army.  This  brought  him  again  under 
Sir  Douglas  Haig  [q.v.],  who  had  known 
him  at  Aldershot  and  wished  to  have  him 
as  chief  of  staff  when  he  himself  succeeded 
Sir  John  French  (later  Earl  of  Ypres,  q.v.) 
in  December.  Butler  was  considered  too 
junior  for  this  post  but  was  appointed 
deputy  chief  of  the  staff  in  1915,  a  post 
which  he  retained  until  February  1918. 
His  long  tenure  of  this  important  post 
testified  to  Haig's  confidence  in  him,  but 
the  qualities  of  vigour,  resolution,  and 
drive  which  made  him  so  successful  in 
command  of  troops  and  in  fighting  were 
less  calculated  to  ensure  his  success  at 
general  headquarters.  His  energy  made 
him  apt  to  be  impatient  and  not  always 
very  helpful  with  subordinates  and  their 
problems.  He  himself  would  have  gladly 
relinquished  his  post  for  an  active  com- 
mand, but  Haig  would  not  part  with  him 
and  wished  him  to  become  chief  of  staff 
when  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Launcelot 
Kiggell  relinquished  that  post.  However, 
in  1918  Butler  was  at  last  given  a  corps, 
the  III  Corps. 

In  the  attack  of  March  1918  the  III 
Corps  (on  the  right  of  the  Fifth  Army's 
long  hne  and  astride  the  Oise,  south  of 
St.  Quentin)  had  a  longer  front  than  any 
other,  31,000  yards  to  hold  with  only 
thirty  battalions,  but  it  was  not  on  this 
front  that  the  chief  German  successes 
were  achieved.  Thanks  largely  to  Butler's 
dispositions  and  handling  of  his  forces  the 
III  Corps  did  remarkably  well,  and  though 
events  on  its  left  forced  it  back  over  the 
Crozat  canal  and  towards  Noyon,  still 
more  groimd  was  lost  after  the  French 


128 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Butler,  S.  H. 


had  replaced  the  depleted  units.  After- 
wards Butler  and  his  staff  temporarily 
relieved  that  of  the  XIX  Corps  (5  April) 
and  he  was  in  command  in  front  of 
Amiens  when  the  final  German  offensive 
in  this  quarter  was  checked  at  Villers- 
Bretonneux  (24-25  April).  Reverting  to 
liis  own  corps  but  continuing  in  this  area, 
Butler  took  part  in  the  opening  of  Haig's 
offensive  on  8  August,  his  corps  attacking 
north  of  the  Somme  and  playing  a  big 
part  in  the  advance  past  Peronne  to  Epehy 
and  Vendhuile:  before  it  was  relieved  at 
the  end  of  September  it  had  sustained 
30,000  casualties  and  taken  10,000 
prisoners.  It  was  then  transferred  to  the 
Fifth  Army  in  the  Douai  region.  During 
the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was  mentioned 
in  dispatches  nine  times,  received  a  brevet 
as  colonel,  and  special  promotion  to 
major-general  (June  1916).  He  was  ap- 
pointed C.B.  in  1917,  K.C.M.G.  in  1918, 
and  K.C.B.  in  1919. 

Butler  subsequently  commanded  the 
Lowland  division  on  the  Rhine  and  the 
1st  division  at  Aldershot  (November  1919 
-February  1923).  He  was  promoted 
lieutenant-general  in  1923  and  was  general 
officer  commander-in-chief,  Western  Com- 
mand, from  June  1 924  to  June  1 928 ,  retiring 
at  his  own  request  in  1929.  He  married  in 
1894  Helen  Frances,  second  daughter  of 
Major  William  Benjamin  Battiscombe, 
of  the  Argyll  and  Sutherland  Highlanders, 
and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at 
Shrewsbury  22  April  1935. 

[The  Times,  23  April  1935 ;  Army  Quarterly, 
July  1935 ;  Sir  J.  F.  Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant, 
(Official)  History  of  the  War  in  South  Africa, 
1899-1902,  1906-1910;  Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds 
(Official)  History  of  the  Great  War.  Military 
Operations.  France  and  Belgium,  1914r-1918, 
1922-1940;  regimental  information.] 

C.  T.  Atkinson. 

BUTLER,  Sir  (SPENCER)  HAR- 
COURT  (1869-1938),  Indian  administra- 
tor, born  in  London  1  August  1869,  was 
the  second  of  the  nine  sons  of  Spencer 
Perceval  Butler,  barrister,  of  Lincoln's 
Inn,  conveyancing  counsel  to  the  .Office  of 
Works,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  only  child  of  the 
Kev.  Nicholas  Kendall,  of  Bodmin.  He 
was  elder  brother  of  Sir  G.  G.  G.  Butler 
[q.v.].  Butler  was  educated  at  Harrow, 
then  under  the  headmastership  of  his 
uncle,  H.  M.  Butler  [q.v.],  and  after 
passing  the  Indian  civil  service  examina- 
tion of  1888  spent  his  probation  at  BaUiol 
College,  Oxford.  In  October  1890  he 
entered  upon  his  Indian  career  in  the 


North-West  Provinces  (renahied  in  1902 
the  United  Provinces  of  Agra  and  Oudh). 
He  first  came  into  notice  as  secretary  in 
1901  of  the  famine  commission  presided 
over  by  Sir  Antony  (afterwards  Lord) 
MacDonnell  [q.v.].  The  report  which  he 
drafted  remains  the  standard  authority  on 
Indian  famine  prevention  and  relief.  For 
this  work  he  was  appointed  CLE.,  and 
later  C.S.I.  (1909),  K.C.S.I.  (1911), 
G.C.I.E.  (1923),  and  G.C.S.I.  (1928). 

As  deputy  commissioner  of  Lucknow 
district  (1906-1908)  Butler  enhanced  the 
beauty  and  amenities  of  the  capital  of 
Oudh.  At  the  close  of  1907  the  viceroy, 
Lord  Minto  [q.v.],  took  him  from  this  post 
to  be  secretary  of  the  Foreign  Department, 
which  then  had  charge  both  of  external 
relations  and  those  with  the  Indian  states. 
Three  years  later  (1910)  he  was  appointed 
to  the  viceroy's  executive  coiuicil  in 
charge  of  the  new  department  of  educa- 
tion, which  included  within  its  scope  public 
health,  local  self-government,  archaeology, 
and  several  minor  branches.  In  1913  he 
formulated  a  memorable  government 
resolution  which  reviewed  and  reshaped 
educational  policy. 

In  1915  Butler  went  to  Rangoon  as 
heutenant-governor  of  Burma.  By  his 
development  for  the  use  of  the  Allies  of 
the  output  of  wolfram  concentrates  from 
the  Tavoy  fields  he  broke  the  virtual 
monopoly  which  the  Germans  had  ac- 
quired in  the  manufacture  of  tungsten,  a 
valuable  agent  in  the  production  of 
munitions.  Butler  also  did  much  to 
awaken  a  new  spirit  in  Burma,  notably 
by  raising  a  large  sum  by  public  subscrip- 
tion for  the  foundation  of  the  teaching 
Rangoon  University,  thereby  ending  the 
inconvenient  and  unsatisfactory  affiliation 
of  the  colleges  of  Burma  to  the  Calcutta 
University,  across  the  Bay  of  Bengal. 

Early  in  1918,  when  his  term  in  Burma 
had  run  only  half  its  course,  Butler  went 
as  heutenant-governor  to  that  part  of 
India  where  he  was  best  known  and  most 
highly  esteemed — ^the  United  Provinces. 
Serious  agrarian  unrest  in  Oudh  was 
allayed  by  his  abihty  to  reconcile  the 
landowning  taliiqdars  to  a  policy  of  tenancy 
reform.  The  Montagu-Chelmsford  reforms, 
coming  into  force  under  the  1919  Govern- 
ment of  India  Act  on  1  January  1921,  ini- 
tiated the  system  of  provincial  'dyarchy ', 
and  the  heads  of  provinces  became  gover- 
nors. Like  Lord  WiUingdon  in  IM&dras, 
Butler  encouraged  joint  consultations  be- 
tween the  two  halves  of  his  government — 
the  'reserved',  with  executive  councillors, 


129 


Butler,  S.  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  the  'transferred',  with  ministers 
responsible  to  the  legislature. 

Butler  had  the  unique  experience  of 
introducing  the  'dyarchical'  system  into 
two  great  provinces.  The  second  of  these 
was  Burma,  where  the  reforms  took  effect 
two  years  later  than  in  peninsular  India. 
As  governor  from  the  beginning  of  1923, 
he  nursed  the  country  into  a  measure  of 
adolescence,  but  never  concealed  from 
higher  authority  the  dangers  of  instability 
and  the  need  for  less  exiguous  defence 
measures.  He  took  prompt  steps  to  bring 
to  an  end  slavery  and  human  sacrifice 
practised  by  the  Nagas  in  the  wild  un- 
administered  territory  bordering  on  the 
Hukwang  Valley,  which  he  himself  visited 
in  1925. 

On  leaving  Rangoon  at  the  end  of  1927 
Butler  accepted  the  chairmanship  of  the 
Indian  States  Committee.  Reporting  in 
1929  it  reaffirmed  the  doctrine  of  para- 
mountcy,  but  laid  down  guiding  principles 
on  its  application  and  on  equitable  finan- 
cial relations.  In  1931  he  accepted  the 
chairmanship  of  the  governing  body  of  the 
School  of  Oriental  and  African  Studies, 
London  University.  He  joined  the  boards 
of  the  Peninsular  and  Oriental  Steamship 
Company,  the  National  Provincial  Bank, 
and  other  concerns.  His  occasional  writ- 
ings include  his  concise  and  fascinating 
description  of  India  Insistent  (1931). 

Butler  married  in  1894  Florence, 
daughter  of  Francis  Nelson  Wright,  I.C.S., 
and  had  one  son.  He  died  in  London  2 
March  1938.  There  are  statues  of  him 
raised  by  public  subscription  at  Lucknow 
and  Rangoon,  the  former  equestrian,  both 
by  George  Harvard  Thomas. 

Butler's  gifted  personality  was  well 
summed  up  by  Sir  John  Hewett,  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  of  his  predecessors 
in  the  headship  of  the  United  Provinces : 
'He  had  a  brilliant  intellect,  boundless 
energy,  and  wonderful  capacity  for  getting 
at  the  root  of  a  matter,  ability  to  express 
his  conclusions  so  as  to  be  clear  to  all,  and 
a  very  practical  head  in  carrying  them  out. 
Butler  was  a  wonderful  host.  His  fondness 
for  music  added  greatly  to  the  charm  of 
his  entertainments.' 

[The  Times,  3  and  7  March  1938 ;  Journal  of 
the  Royal  Central  Asian  Society,  April  1938 ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
F.  H.  Brown. 

BUTT,  Dame  CLARA  (1873-1936), 
singer,  whose  married  name  was  Claka 
Ellen  Kennerley  Rumford,  was  born 
at  Southwick,  near  Brighton,  1  February 


1873,  the  eldest  daughter  and  eldest  sur- 
viving child  of  Henry  Butt,  a  captain  in 
the  Mercantile  Marine,  by  his  wife,  Clara 
Hook,  great-granddaughter  of  Theodore 
Hook  [q.v.].  Both  her  parents  sang,  and 
Clara,  beginning  with  piano  lessons,  was 
encouraged  by  them  also  to  take  advan- 
tage of  some  minor  opportunities  to 
cultivate  her  voice,  which  was  soon 
discovered  to  be  of  remarkable  richness 
and  great  compass.  Miss  Cook,  the  head- 
mistress of  the  South  Bristol  High  School 
at  which  Clara  was  educated  (her  parents 
having  settled  in  Bristol  in  1880),  acciden- 
tally hearing  some  of  Clara's  already 
splendid  low  notes,  got  Daniel  Rootham, 
a  fine  bass  singer,  conductor  of  the  Bristol 
Festival  Choir,  to  hear  her,  and  he  began 
her  training,  although  she  was  still  in  her 
early  'teens.  Soon  she  was  singing  in  the 
Bristol  Festival  Choir  and  hearing  famous 
soloists.  In  January  1890,  when  sixteen 
years  old,  she  won  a  valuable  scholarship, 
which  was  also  open  to  instrumentalists, 
at  the  Royal  CoUege  of  Music,  but  she  had 
to  wait  until  she  had  attained  the  regula- 
tion age  of  seventeen  before  she  could 
take  up  residence  and  begin  her  studies, 
which  were  directed  by  John  Henry 
Blower.  The  college  authorities  extended 
her  scholarship  for  a  fourth  year  and  then 
sent  her  for  a  three  months'  course  to 
Duvernoy  in  Paris,  Queen  Victoria  de- 
fraying the  cost.  Later  in  her  career  Clara 
Butt  studied  with  Bouhy  in  Paris,  and 
with  Etelka  Gerster  in  Berlin,  and  in  Italy. 
She  made  her  debut  at  the  Royal  Albert 
Hall  in  the  comparatively  small  contralto 
part  of  Ursula  in  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan's 
cantata  The  Golden  Legend  on  7  December 
1892,  and  three  days  later  sang  the  name 
part  in  Gluck's  Orfeo  at  a  performance 
given  by  pupils  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Music  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre, 

On  both  occasions  Clara  Butt's  success 
was  complete,  her  magnificent  voice  and 
splendid  appearance  (she  was  six  feet  two 
inches  in  height)  laimching  her  on  a  career 
of  almost  unexampled  popularity.  Con- 
fining herself  to  the  concert  platform  (with 
the  exception  of  some  appearances  as 
Orfeo  at  Covent  Garden  under  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham  in  1920),  she  sang  at  all  the 
principal  festivals  in  England  and  at 
concerts  (many  of  them  her  own,  with  her 
husband,  Robert  Kennerley  Rumford, 
baritone,  whom  she  married  in  1900)  at 
home,  all  over  the  British  Empire,  and  in 
America,  with  striking  success .  Sir  Edward 
Elgar  [q.v.]  composed  'Sea  Pictures',  his 
cycle   of  five    songs    for    contralto    solo 


130 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Buxton 


with  orchestral  accompaniment,  for  Clara 
Butt,  and  she  produced  them  at  the 
Norwich  festival  in  1899.  Elgar  also  wrote 
the  music  of  the  Angel  in  The  Dream  of 
Gerontius  with  Clara  Butt  in  mind ;  and  it 
was  a  suggestion  from  her  that  brought 
from  the  future  master  of  the  king's 
musick  the  patriotic  song  'Land  of  Hope 
and  Glory'.  What  has  become  a  classic 
of  its  kind,  the  setting  of  'Abide  with  Me', 
was  composed  by  Samuel  Liddle,  her 
fellow  student  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Music,  for  Clara  Butt,  who  sang  it  with  an 
appeal  of  great  poignancy.  Her  singing 
was  remarkable  for  its  broad  effect  rather 
than  for  its  artistic  finesse,  and  there 
could  not  be  a  greater  contrast  in  style  than 
between  her  and  Patti  when  they  appeared 
on  the  same  concert  platform.  Her 
activity  and  generosity  in  organizing  and 
singing  at  concerts  during  the  war  of 
1914-1918  for  charities — ^the  Red  Cross, 
Three  Arts  Club  women's  unemployment 
fund,  etc. — ^knew  no  bounds:  a  week  of 
Elgar's  music  at  the  Queen's  Hall  was 
notable  as  an  artistic  as  well  as  a  charitable 
achievement;  and  for  these  services  she 
was  appointed  D.B.E.  in  1920.  She  died 
at  North  Stoke,  Oxfordshire,  as  the  result 
of  an  accident  in  1931,  after  a  long  and 
paihful  illness,  23  January  1936.  Both 
her  sons  predeceased  her,  but  she  was 
survived  by  her  husband  and  her  daughter. 

[Winifred  Ponder,  Clara  Butt.  Her  Life- 
Story,  1928 ;  Grovels  Dictionary  of  Music  and 
MuMcians,  4th  ed.,  vol.  i,  edited  by  H.  C. 
Colles;  H.  Saxe  Wyndham  and  Geoffrey 
L'Epine,  Who^s  Who  in  Music,  1913 ;  Musical 
Times,  March  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
J.  Mewbukn  Levien. 

BUXTON,  SYDNEY  CHARLES,  Earl 
BxjxTON  (1853-1934),  statesman,  was  born 
in  London  25  October  1853,  the  younger 
son  of  the  liberal  politician  Charles  Buxton 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Emily  Mary,  eldest 
daughter  of  the  physician  Sir  Henry 
Holland  [q.v.].  He  was  grandson  of  the 
philanthropist  Sir  T.  F.  Buxton  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  Clifton  and  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.  He  served  on  the 
London  School  Board  from  1876  to 
1882,  and  after  unsuccessfully  contesting 
'  Boston  as  a  liberal  in  1880  was  returned 
for  Peterborough  at  a  by-election  in  1883. 
He  was  defeated  at  the  general  election 
of  1885,  but  sat  for  the  Poplar  division  of 
the  Tower  Hamlets  from  1886  to  1914.  In 
1880  he  made  his  first  mark  in  politics  by 
publishing  his  Handbook  to  Political 
Questions  of  the  Day  which  passed  through 


eleven  editions.  He  was  under-secretary 
of  state  for  the  Colonies  from  1892  to  1895 
and  the  first  Matabele  war  brought  him 
into  contact  with  native  problems  in 
Africa.  In  1905  he  was  appointed  post- 
master-general, with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet, 
and  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  He 
introduced  penny  postage  to  the  United 
States  of  America,  the  Canadian  magazine 
post,  and  cheap  postage  for  the  blind. 
Appointed  president  of  the  Board  of  Trade 
in  1910,  he  introduced  and  passed  the 
Copyright  Act  of  1911,  the  unemployment 
section  of  the  National  Insurance  Act  of 
1912,  the  Miners'  Minimum  Wage  Act 
of  1912,  and  the  Bankruptcy  Act  of  1913, 
and,  in  the  last-named  year,  extended  the 
Trade  Boards  Act  to  other  trades.  After 
the  loss  of  the  Titanic  in  1912  he  issued 
stringent  regulations  for  the  preservation 
of  life  at  sea. 

In  February  1914,  on  appointment  as 
governor-general  of  the  Union  of  South 
Africa,  Buxton  was  appointed  G.C.M.G., 
and  in  May  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Viscount  Buxton,  of  Newtimber,  in  Sussex. 
He  arrived  at  the  moment  of  the  outbreak 
of  war  and  was  at  once  faced  with  the  very 
serious  crisis  of  the  rebellion,  which  for  a 
moment  threatened  to  cut  him  off  in 
Pretoria  from  the  rest  of  the  Union.  But 
General  Louis  Botha  [q.v.]  had  taken  the 
momentous  decision  to  side  with  Great 
Britain  in  the  struggle.  Buxton  and  Botha 
worked  together  most  cordially.  They 
saw  harmony  restored  within  the  Union, 
carried  through  the  campaign  in  South- 
west Africa,  and  supported  both  the  long 
campaign  in  East  Africa  and  the  valuable 
contribution  made  by  South  Africa  on  the 
western  front  in  France.  Although  Bux- 
ton's presence  was  needed  at  Cape  Town 
and  Pretoria,  he  travelled  frequently  and 
acquired  great  influence  with  the  Dutch 
backveld  farmers,  who  found  him  acces- 
sible and  sympathetic,  and  appreciated 
his  receptions  of  their  synods  and  as- 
semblies; while  Lady  Buxton  took  an 
active  part  in  the  work  of  adapting  social 
conditions,  especially  in  Cape  Town,  to 
the  conditions  of  war.  Buxton's  term  of 
office  was  extended  until  1920,  and  at  his 
retirement  there  were  striking  demonstra- 
tions of  the  feeling  of  affection  which  he 
and  Lady  Buxton  had  inspired.  The 
University  of  Cape  Town  conferred  an 
honorary  degree  upon  him,  and  on  his 
return  to  England  he  was  raised  to  an 
earldom.  Of  his  work  as  governor-general, 
General  Smuts  has  said : '  His  close  personal 
friendship  with  General  Botha  gave  him 


181 


Buxton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


a  special  position,  and  I  know  how  much 
General  Botha  was  influenced  by  his  wise 
counsel  and  ripe  experience.  .  .  .  Self- 
government  in  Rhodesia  was  largely  due 
to  his  favourable  report,  and  time  has 
justified  his  wise  advice.'  After  his  return 
he  continued  to  work  for  South  Africa, 
largely  through  the  Africa  Society,  of 
which  he  was  president  from  1920  to  1933 
and  the  gold  medal  of  which  was  awarded 
to  him  in  1930. 

Although  his  sympathy  with  the  work- 
ing classes  led  him  to  modify  his  earlier 
strictly  Gladstonian  views,  Buxton  sup- 
ported the  liberal  party,  and  remained  in 
full  sympathy  with  his  old  friend  and 
colleague  Lord  Grey  of  Fallodon.  In  1924 
he  spoke  against  the  labour  scheme  for 
nationalizing  the  Bank  of  England.  His 
publications  include  Mr.  Gladstone's  Irish 
Bills  (1886),  Finance  and  Politics:  an 
historical  study  1783-1885  (2  vols.,  1888), 
Mr.  Gladstone  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
(1901),  Fishing  and  Shooting  (1902),  The 
Arguments  on  either  side  of  the  Fiscal 
Question  (1903),  and  General  Botha  (1924). 

Owing  to  an  injury  to  his  knee  as  a 
schoolboy,  Buxton,  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
seven,  had  to  suffer  the  amputation  of  his 
leg.  He  died  at  Newtimber  Place  15 
October  1934  and  was  buried  at  New- 
timber.  He  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1882  to  Constance  Mary  (died  1892), 
second  daughter  of  John  Lubbock,  first 
Lord  Avebury  [q.v.],  and  had  two  sons, 
who  both  predeceased  their  father,  the 
younger  in  childhood,  and  one  daughter ; 
secondly,  in  1896  to  Mildred  Anne,  elder 
daughter  of  Hugh  Colin  Smith,  governor 
of  the  Bank  of  England,  of  Mount  Clare, 
Roehampton,  and  had  one  son,  who  was 
killed  in  action  in  1917,  and  two  daughters, 
the  elder  of  whom  predeceased  her  father. 

A  portrait  of  Buxton,  by  Edward 
Roworth,  is  in  the  House  of  Assembly  at 
Cape  Town.  A  cartoon,  by '  Spy ' ,  appeared 
in  Vanity  Fair  2  January  1907. 

[The  Times,  16  and  17  October  1934;  Lord 
Buxton,  General  Botha,  1924;  private  in- 
formation.] E.  I.  Carlyle. 

BYNG,  JULIAN  HEDWORTH 
GEORGE,  Viscount  Byng  of  Vimy 
(1862-1935),  field-marshal,  was  born  at 
Wrotham  Park,  Barnet,  11  September 
1862,  the  yoxmgest  of  the  four  sons  of 
George  Stevens  Byng,  second  Earl  of 
Strafford,  by  his  second  wife,  Harriet 
Elizabeth,  younger  daughter  of  Charles 
Compton  Cavendish,  first  Lord  Chesham. 
His  grandfather,  John  Byng,  first  Earl 


of  Strafford  [q.v.],  had  commanded  a 
brigade  at  Waterloo  and  ended  his  career 
as  a  field-marshal.  Julian  Byng  was 
educated  at  Eton,  entered  the  army 
through  the  militia  (7th  battalion,  the 
King's  Royal  Rifle  Corps),  and  was 
gazetted  to  the  10th  Hussars  in  January 
1883.  The  10th  Hussars  was  an  expensive 
regiment,  and  Byng  had  a  very  small 
allowance,  so  that  for  many  years  he 
could  afford  no  social  gaieties.  As,  how- 
ever, he  had  no  taste  for  them,  this  was 
not  a  deprivation,  and,  the  regiment  being 
stationed  in  India,  he  was  able  to  enjoy 
aU  the  polo  that  he  could  desire.  Being  a 
good  horseman  and  player,  ponies  bought 
cheaply  became  speedily  of  increased  value 
after  being  acquired  by  him.  Since  he  was 
extremely  popular,  he  also  had  at  his 
disposal  good  mounts  lent  by  friends.  The 
10th  Hussars  was  on  its  way  home  in  1884 
when  it  was  landed  at  Suakin  for  the 
campaign  in  the  eastern  Sudan  against 
Osman  Digna ;  so  that  by  unexpected  good 
fortune  Byng,  at  an  early  stage  in  his 
career,  saw  active  service  and  took  part 
both  in  the  historic  charge  at  El  Teb  (29 
February)  and  in  the  fierce  struggle  at 
Tamai  (13  March).  In  1886  he  became 
adjutant  to  his  regiment.  In  1894  he 
passed  the  Staff  College  and  in  1897 
was  appointed  deputy-assistant-adjutant- 
general  at  Aldershot.  He  was  promoted 
captain  in  1889  and  major  in  1898. 

On  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African 
war  in  1899  Byng  was  sent  out  to  serve 
in  the  first  instance  in  a  provost  marshal's 
appointment.  In  November  1900  he 
raised  the  South  African  Light  Horse 
which  he  commanded  until  April  1901.  A 
strict  disciplinarian  by  instinct  and  coming 
from  a  British  regiment  where  discipline 
was  of  the  strictest,  he  none  the  less 
readily  adapted  himself  to  the  unconven- 
tional and  free-and-easy  atmosphere  of  his 
new  command.  He  was  soon  on  as  good 
terms  with  it  as  he  had  been  with  his  own 
regiment.  His  sense  of  humour  helped 
him  when  he  was  confronted  with  eccen- 
tricities, and  he  became  a  leader  of  ir- 
regular light  horse  of  the  highest  quality. 
He  was  employed  in  command  of  a 
column,  and  later  on  of  more  than  one, 
throughout  the  period  when  this  form  of 
warfare  was  practised.  At  one  period  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill  acted  as  his  galloper. 
Byng  received  successively  the  brevet 
rank  of  lieutenant-colonel  and  of  colonel, 
and  was  on  five  occasions  mentioned  in 
dispatches. 

After  the  war  had  come  to  an  end  Byng 


182 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Byng 


was  appointed  to  command  his  regiment, 
the  10th  Hussars,  and  remained  at  its  head 
for  the  next  two  years.  In  1902  he  married 
Marie  Evelyn,  only  child  of  (Sir)  Richard 
Charles  Moreton,  of  Crookham  House, 
near  Fleet,  Hampshire,  ninth  son  of  H.  G. 
F.  Moreton,  second  Earl  of  Ducie  [q.v.], 
and  thus  gained  an  ideal  partner  who  was 
to  give  him  invaluable  support  in  the 
years  of  his  public  life.  From  1904  to  1905 
he  was  commandant  of  the  Cavalry  School 
at  Netheravon.  From  1905  to  1907  he 
commanded  the  2nd  Cavalry  brigade  in 
the  Eastern  Command,  and  was  appointed 
C.B.  in  1906.  From  1907  to  1909  he  com- 
manded the  1st  Cavalry  brigade  at 
Aldershot,  but  in  April  of  the  last-named 
year  he  was  promoted  major-general  and 
in  October  1910  returned  to  the  Eastern 
Command  to  command  the  Territorial 
East  Anglian  division.  Now  for  the  first 
time  he  had  a  home,  near  Dunmow,  which 
was  then  something  of  a  literary  centre. 
Byng  took  pleasure  in  the  society  of  the 
London  editors  and  novelists  who  were 
his  neighbours.  He  was  an  intense  reader 
himself,  but  for  the  most  part  of  utilitarian 
subjects  connected  with  his  profession. 

In  October  1912  Byng  was  appointed 
to  the  command  in  Egypt,  and  was  there 
when  war  broke  out  in  August  1914.  He 
was  soon  recalled,  and  late  in  September 
appointed  to  the  command  of  the  3rd 
Cavalry  division.  In  the  first  battle  of 
Ypres  he  proved  himself  as  sound  and  as 
determined  a  commander  as  the  best 
judges  had  foretold,  and  this  in  adverse 
circumstances,  the  hardest  test  of  a 
general.  His  division  gave  brilliant  sup- 
port to  the  I  Corps  and  was  repeatedly 
called  upon  to  restore  ugly  situations  at 
the  shortest  notice  and  in  the  most 
unfavourable  conditions.  In  March  1915 
he  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  and  in  May 
took  over  command  of  the  Cavalry  Corps 
with  the  temporary  rank  of  lieutenant- 
general.  In  the  following  August  he  was 
sent  out  to  the  Gallipoli  Peninsula  to 
command  the  IX  Corps  at  Suvla,  where 
the  opportunities  of  a  new  landing  had 
been  frittered  away.  It  was  a  thousand 
pities  that  General  Sir  Ian  Hamilton's 
request  for  Byng's  services  to  conduct 
that  landing  had  been  refused,  since  now 
he  came  too  late.  No  senior  officer  was 
more  strongly  in  favour  of  evacuation  than 
he.  He  began,  in  fact,  to  study  the  problem 
almost  immediately  after  his  arrival,  proof 
of  remarkable  detkchment  in  a  commander 
who  had  been  summoned  in  the  hope  that 
he  would  redeem  a  failure.  He  considered, 


too,  contrary  to  the  general  belief,  that 
withdrawal  need  not  be  costly,  provided 
that  it  was  carried  out  before  more 
German  forces  and  material  arrived  on  the 
scene  and  before  the  weather  broke.  He 
drew  up  the  plan,  but  left  the  detail  to 
two  reliable  divisional  commanders,  Major- 
Generals  (Sir)  E.  A.  Fanshawe  and  (Sir) 
F.  S.  Maude  [q.v.].  The  withdrawal  was 
completely  successful,  and  Byng  was 
appointed  K.C.B.  (1916). 

After  a  brief  spell  in  Egypt  in  the  Suez 
Canal  defences  and  in  command  of  the 
XVII  Corps  in  France  from  February  to 
May  1916,  Byng  took  over  command  of 
the  Canadian  Corps  in  the  latter  month. 
This  was  a  fine  appointment,  since, 
whereas  other  army  corps  were  simply 
headquarters  to  which  divisions  were 
attached  as  required,  the  commander  of 
the  Canadian  Corps  could  always  count 
on  having  the  Canadian  divisions  under 
his  command.  Within  a  week,  on  2  June, 
he  had  to  deal  with  an  ugly  situation, 
when  the  Germans  attacked  at  Mount 
Sorrel,  Hill  62,  and  Sanctuary  Wood,  in 
the  Ypres  sector,  and  captured  some 
valuable  groimd.  Local  counter-attacks 
failed,  but  on  the  11th  the  situation  was 
righted  by  a  successful  counter-offensive, 
which  was,  however,  unpleasantly  expen- 
sive. Byng  had  an  extraordinary  gift  for 
impressing  his  gay  and  friendly  personality 
upon  the  troops  under  his  orders,  and  he 
gained  not  only  the  confidence  but  also 
the  affection  of  the  Canadian  Corps.  It  is 
hardly  too  much  to  say  that  nowhere  in 
the  world  at  war  was  there  a  formation 
so  large  in  which  the  links  between  the 
commander  and  the  troops  were  so  strong. 
The  Canadian  Corps  distinguished  itself 
on  the  Somme  in  the  battle  of  Flers- 
Courcelette  in  mid-September,  and  again 
at  the  end  of  the  month  in  the  Thiepval 
ridge  operations,  but  its  greatest  feat, 
which  will  ever  be  inseparably  connected 
with  its  name,  was  the  capture  of  Vimy 
ridge  in  April  1917. 

In  Jvme  of  that  year,  Byng,  although 
loth  to  leave  his  Canadians,  was  appointed 
to  command  the  Third  Army  in  succession 
to  General  Sir  Edmund  (later  Viscount) 
Allenby  [q.v.]  who  went  to  command  the 
Egyptian  Expeditionary  Force.  Byng 
passed  straight  to  preparation  for  the 
most  daring  and  original  operation  yet 
undertaken  by  the  British  on  the  western 
front,  the  Cambrai  offensive.  This  de- 
pended on  two  factors,  the  use  of  tanks 
operating  independently  and  in  unprece- 
dented  strength   to   open   gaps   in   the 


183 


Byng 


D,N.B.  1931-1940 


enemy's  wire  without  the  need  for  a 
preliminary  bombardment  such  as  had 
hitherto  rendered  surprise  impossible,  and 
— as  a  further  element  in  surprise — ^the 
employment  of  'predicted'  fire  from  the 
massed  artillery,  without  preliminary 
registration.  The  objects  were  to  capture 
the  wooded  height  of  Bourlon  and  to  roU 
up  the  German  front  towards  the  Sensee 
marshes  to  the  north,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  thrust  eastwards,  capture  Cam- 
brai,  and  exploit  in  the  direction  of 
Valenciennes.  The  first  stage  of  the 
assault,  laimched  on  20  November,  was 
brilliantly  successful;  but  serious  hitches 
occurred,  and  the  available  reserves  could 
not  maintain  the  momentiun.  At  the  end 
of  the  month  the  Germans  counter- 
attacked the  salient  created  by  the 
British  advance.  On  the  north  they  were 
generally  held,  but  they  broke  the  southern 
flank,  and  the  situation  was  not  stabilized 
luitil  after  hard  touch-and-go  fighting.  As 
an  operation  Cambrai  was  a  disappoint- 
ment, but  it  pointed  to  the  road  to 
victory. 

That,  however,  was  stiU  some  way  ahead. 
The  German  offensive  of  March  1918  fell 
heavily  upon  the  Third  Army,  though  less 
heavily  than  upon  the  Fifth  on  its  right. 
The  Third  put  up  a  splendid  resistance, 
lost  relatively  little  ground,  and  smashed 
the  offensive  round  Arras.  Byng  had, 
however,  to  make  a  rapid  withdrawal, 
which  got  temporarily  out  of  hand,  from 
the  remains  of  the  Cambrai  salient.  That 
autumn  the  Third  Army  played  a  great 
part  in  the  offensive  which  decided  the 
issue  of  the  war.  Its  first  attack  was 
launched  on  21  August.  By  a  series  of 
heavy  blows,  in  conjunction  with  the 
Fourth  Army  on  its  right  and  the  First 
Army  on  its  left,  it  drove  the  enemy  back 
to  the  Hindenburg  Line  and  on  27 
September  broke  that  position.  In  the 
space  of  eighty  days  it  advanced  sixty 
miles — a  fast  pace  for  that  war — and 
took  67,000  prisoners  and  800  guns. 
Byng's  qualities  of  leadership  were  un- 
questionably high,  and  the  only  two 
episodes  which  can  possibly  create  con- 
troversy on  this  subject  are  his  aims  in  the 
battle  of  Cambrai  and  his  delay  in 
evacuating  the  Cambrai  salient  in  March 
1918.  It  has  been  suggested  that  in  the 
former  instance  he  was  imduly  optimistic, 
refusing  to  modify  an  ambitious  plan  when 
it  was  found  impossible  to  put  at  his 
disposal  resources  as  large  as  originally 
intended  because  they  had  been  used  up 
at  Passchendaele  and  in  Italy.  It  may  be 


so,  but  it  should  be  recalled  that  plans 
were  carefully  scrutinized  by  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, Field-Marshal  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  [q.v.],  who  was  not  the  man  to  give 
army  commanders  their  heads  if  he  con- 
sidered them  rash.  It  is  probable  that 
Byng's  judgement  was  more  questionable 
in  the  second  case  than  in  the  first,  but  his 
conduct  of  the  final  offensive  showed  him 
to  be  as  capable  in  command  of  a  big  army 
as  he  had  been  in  command  of  a  column, 
a  division,  and  an  army  corps. 

In  1919  Byng,  who  had  been  gazetted  to 
the  full  rank  of  general  in  1917,  was 
appointed  G.C.B.,  raised  to  the  peerage 
(October)  as  Baron  Byng  of  Vimy,  of 
Thorpe-le-Soken,  in  Essex,  and  received 
the  thanks  of  parliament  and  a  grant  of 
£30,000.  He  received,  on  various  occasions, 
a  number  of  other  honours,  British  and 
foreign,  including  honorary  doctorates  from 
Cambridge  (1919)  and  Oxford  (1931).  In 
1919,  also,  he  was  offered  the  Southern 
Command,  but  asked  leave  to  retire  and 
make  way  for  a  younger  man.  While  he 
was  in  Egypt  before  the  war  his  wife  had 
bought  Thorpe  Hall,  Thorpe-le-Soken. 
This  old  house  she  restored  and  enlarged, 
making  it  into  a  beautiful  home  with  a 
widely  famed  garden.  There  was  good 
shooting,  and  shooting  was  now  his 
favourite  sport.  But  he  was  far  from  idle, 
and  took  over  the  trying  and  delicate  task 
of  administering  the  United  Service  Fund. 

In  June  1921  Byng  was  appointed 
governor-general  of  Canada.  Needless  to 
say,  the  choice  was  largely  dictated  by  his 
prestige  and  popularity  in  the  Dominion, 
where  his  name  was  known  to  everyone. 
Yet  even  those  who  had  hoped  most  from 
it  were  astonished  by  the  success  which  he 
made  of  his  mission.  Well  supported  by 
Lady  Byng,  he  kept  up  the  requisite  state 
and  entertained  on  a  large  scale,  but  was 
otherwise  tmconventional,  mixing  with 
people  as  had  none  of  his  predecessors.  He 
travelled  widely  and  developed  a  talent 
for  making  brief  and  telling  speeches  which 
did  not  contain  the  platitudes  too  common 
on  official  occasions.  The  theme  to  which 
he  constantly  returned,  in  terms  some- 
times approaching  admonition,  was  the 
need  for  unity  in  the  Dominion  and  for 
eliminating  the  bitterness  of  political 
strife.  His  popularity,  great  from  the  first, 
never  ceased  to  grow.  In  his  last  year  there 
was  a  widespread  desire  that  he  should 
serve  a  second  term,  but  this  he  would  not 
consider. 

Just  before  he  was  due  to  return  to 
England,   in  June   1926,   Byng  became 


184 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Byng 


involved,  by  reason  of  his  office,  in  a  pain- 
ful political  crisis.    The  prime  minister, 
Mr.  W.  L.  Mackenzie  King,  had  in  the 
])revious  September  sought  and  obtained 
from  the  governor-general  a  dissolution  of 
|)arliament,  with  the  stipulation  that  it 
could  not   again  be   granted   in  similar 
circumstances.  The  general  election  which 
followed  had  seriously  worsened  Mr.  King's 
l)Osition,  and  he  had  since  carried  on  the 
•Government  with  his  own  liberal  party  in 
a  minority  dependent  on  outside  support. 
Now,  having  to  face  a  vote  of  censure, 
certain  to  go  against  him,  he  asked  for  a 
second  dissolution.   Byng  refused  it,  and 
called   upon   Mr.    Arthur   Meighen,   the 
conservative  leader,  who  believed  that  he 
could  command  a  majority.  Had  he  been 
right  in  this,  the  affair  would  not  have 
created  an  inordinate  stir,  but  he  was 
defeated  by  a  single  vote,  owing  to  the 
breaking  of  his  'pair'  by  a  pledged  sup- 
porter. Byng  then  granted  him  a  dissolu- 
tion, and  in  the  subsequent  election  the 
liberals  were  victorious.    The  affair  was 
complicated  by  the  fact  that  when  Mr. 
Meighen  took  office  there  was  an  inter- 
regnum because  the  liberals  had  left  their 
offices,  so  that  there  was  no  ministry.   If 
the  new  ministers  had  now  accepted  offices 
of  profit  they  would  have  had  to  vacate 
their  seats  and  seek  re-election.  To  avoid 
this   until   the   session   was   ended,   Mr. 
Aleighen  decided  that  there  should  be  no 
appointment  to  offices  and  no  emoluments, 
l)ut  that  a  small  nvunber,  who  had  already 
taken  the  oath  of  privy  councillors,  should 
carry  on  as  ministers  without  portfolio. 
This  procedure  was  strongly  reprobated  by 
the  liberal  party.    Byng's  last  days  in 
Canada  were   clouded   by  this   episode, 
althougli  Mr.  King  himself  and  all  the 
more  responsible  of  his  adherents  refrained 
from    criticizing    the    governor-general's 
motives  and  expressed  their  appreciation 
of  his  sincerity.  Yet  it  was  with  unfeigned 
affection  and  deep  regret  that  the  people 
of  Canada  said  farewell  to  him.    It  has 
been  asserted  that  the  decision  of  the 
Imperial    Conference    which    was    held 
shortly  after  Byng's  return  proved  that  he 
had  been  in  error  in  his  handling  of  the 
crisis ;  but  this  is  an  over-simplification  of 
the  problem.   What  the  Imperial  Confer- 
ence   decided    was    that    the    governor- 
general  is  the  representative  of  the  king, 
not  of  the  British  government,  and  that 
the   constitutional   relationship   between 
him  and  the  prime  minister  of  Canada  is 
the  same  as  that  between  the  king  and  the 
British  prime  minister.  Byng  had,  in  fact. 


acted  in  accordance  with  this  principle. 
He  believed,  as  did  Mr.  Meighen,  that,  in 
similar  circumstances,  the  king  would  have 
acted  as  had  Byng. 

In  Jvme  1928  Byng  was  asked  by  the 
home  secretary.  Sir  William  Joynson- 
Hicks  [q.v.],  to  become  chief-commissioner 
of  the  metropolitan  police.  He  strove  to 
excuse  himself  on  the  grounds  of  age  and 
indifferent  health,  but  strong  pressure  was 
put  upon  him,  and  he  gave  way.  There 
was  need  at  Scotland  Yard  for  an  able  man 
with  high  prestige  and  a  combination  of 
tact  and  ruthlessness.  The  public  was 
becoming  disquieted  about  what  appeared 
to  be  inefficiency  and  by  certain  unsavoury 
scandals.  But  Byng,  the  least  politically 
minded  of  men,  became  once  more  the 
subject  of  a  political  controversy.  The 
appointment  was  strongly  resented  by  the 
labour  opposition  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  a  heavy  attack  was  made  upon 
it  by  one  of  the  labour  leaders,  Philip 
Snowden  [q.v.].  This  agitation  presently 
died  down.  Byng's  reforms  were  wide- 
spread and  fundamental.  He  retired  a 
number  of  senior  officers,  not  because  he 
suspected  them  of  complicity  in  the 
scandals  but  because  he  considered  that 
the  force  was  in  need  of  fresh  and  vigorous 
blood.  He  reorganized  the  system  of 
patrolling,  abolishing  the  conventionality 
and  clock-like  regularity  to  which  the 
malefactor  had  become  accustomed.  He 
instituted  police  telephone  boxes  and 
extended,  if  he  cannot  be  said  to  have 
instituted,  the  use  of  police  cars.  He 
tightened  up  discipline.  Yet  his  reforms 
were  not  resented,  as  had  at  first  seemed 
possible,  in  the  force,  over  which  he 
established  as  strong  a  hold  as  he  had  done 
over  every  other  body  of  men  whom  he 
had  commanded.  When  the  labour  govern- 
ment took  office  in  1929,  mindful  of  the 
criticism  with  which  his  appointment  had 
been  received,  he  went  to  the  home 
secretary,  Mr.  John  Robert  Clynes,  and 
told  him  that  he  was  prepared  to  resign, 
although  he  would  be  glad  to  continue  at 
his  post  if  the  government  so  desired.  Mr. 
Clynes  informed  him  that  he  possessed  the 
confidence  of  the  government  and  that 
he  could  rely  upon  its  support.  Byng's 
health  deteriorated  towards  the  end  of  his 
term  of  office,  and  he  resigned  in  September 
1931. 

Byng  had  been  appointed  G.C.M.G.  in 
1921  and  advanced  to  a  viscountcy  in 
1928,  but  the  highest  honour  of  the  career 
of  arms  had  so  far  eluded  him.  Although 
not  an  ambitious  man,  his  hopes  had  been 


135 


Byng 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


set  upon  the  field-marshal's  baton.  A 
former  secretary  of  state  had  decided  that 
it  should  not  be  accorded  to  a  retired 
officer,  despite  the  fact  that  Byng  would 
probably  have  had  it  had  he  remained  two 
or  three  years  longer  on  the  active  list  and 
not  retired  voluntarily  to  make  way  for 
youth.  To  his  great  satisfaction,  he  re- 
ceived it  in  October  1932.  He  died 
suddenly  at  Thorpe  Hall  6  June  1935, 
leaving  no  issue,  and  his  peerage  therefore 
became  extinct. 

Byng  had  developed,  through  careful 
self-preparation  and  experience,  from  a 
somewhat  shy  young  officer,  avoiding 
when  he  could  all  society  except  that  most 
congenial  to  him,  to  a  public  figure  at 
home  in  any  society  and  able  to  impress 
his  personality  upon  multitudes.  Yet  he 
was  to  the  end  essentially  simple-minded, 
and  his  greatest  weakness  was  a  guileless 
belief  in  the  integrity  of  mankind.  Since 
he  never  suspected  an  ulterior  motive  in 
any  action,  men  less  scrupulous  than  him- 
self could  on  occasion  take  advantage  of 
his  trustfulness.  Yet  the  man  who  expects 
most  from  his  fellow  men  generally  gets 
more  from  them  than  does  the  suspicious 
man,  and  this  was  the  case  with  Byng. 
He  had  a  genius  for  friendship  and  many 
friends  in  all  walks  of  life.  As  a  soldier  he 
was  thoroughly  competent  as  well  as 
personally  inspiring.  He  never  held  in- 
dependent command  in  the  field,  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  he  possessed  the  scope 
or  the  forcefulness  of  Haig.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  did  well  what  he  was  called  upon 
to  do,  and  the  manner  in  which  he  first 
welcomed  and  then  developed  the  draft 
scheme  for  the  Cambrai  offensive  proves 
that  as  a  commander  he  was  lacking 
neither  in  open-mindedness  nor  in 
imagination. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Byng,  by  P.  A.  de 
Ldszlo,  at  5  St.  James's  Square,  and 
another,  in  field-marshal's  imiform,  by  the 
same  artist,  at  Thorpe  Hall.  A  third 
portrait  is  included  in  J.  S.  Sargent's 
picture,  'Some  General  Officers  of  the 
Great  War',  painted  in  1922,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  Cyril  Falls,  and  Wilfred 
Miles,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great  War. 
Military  Operations,  France  and  Belgium, 
1914-1918,  1922-1940;  C.  F.  Aspinall- 
Oglander,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great  War. 
Military  Operations,  Gallipoli,  vol.  ii,  1932; 
Lady  Byng,  Up  the  Stream  of  Time,  1945; 
E.  A.  Forsey,  The  Royal  Power  of  Dissolution 
of  Parliament  in  the  British  Commonwealth, 
1943 ;  private  information.] 

Cyril  Falls. 


CAINE,  Sir  (THOMAS  HENRY) 
HALL  (1853-1931),  novehst,  was  born  at 
Runcorn,  Cheshire,  14  May  1853,  the 
eldest  son  of  John  Caine,  a  ship's  smith, 
of  Ballaugh,  Isle  of  Man,  by  his  wife, 
Sarah,  daughter  of  Ralph  Hall,  of  White- 
haven. John  Caine  had  migrated  to 
Liverpool  from  Ramsey  in  an  attempt  to 
better  his  fortunes,  but  much  of  Hall 
Caine's  childhood  was  spent  in  the  Isle  of 
Man. 

Leaving  an  elementary  school  in  Liver- 
pool at  the  age  of  fourteen.  Hall  Caine 
became  the  pupil  of  a  local  architect,  but 
when  he  was  about  seventeen,  owing  to 
ill  health,  he  abandoned  work  for  a  time 
and  revisited  the  Isle  of  Man,  where  he 
succeeded  his  uncle  as  schoolmaster  at 
Kirk  Maughold  Head.  Returning  to 
Liverpool  after  nearly  a  year,  he  con- 
tributed articles  to  the  Builder  and  the 
Building  News,  and  soon  became  assistant 
to  a  builder.  These  essays  in  architectural 
criticism  won  him  the  notice  of  John 
Ruskin  [q.v.],  whilst  his  membership  of 
the  'Notes  and  Queries'  Society  brought 
him  into  touch  with  many  famous  men, 
including  (Sir)  Henry  Irsang  and  the  poet 
(Sir)  William  Watson  [qq.v.].  Later  in 
life  he  became  an  intimate  friend  of  the 
Manx  writer  T.  E.  Brown  [q.v.]. 

Hall  Caine's  most  important  literary 
contact  was  with  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti 
[q.v.].  In  1878  he  delivered  a  lecture  in 
Liverpool  on  Rossetti' s  poetry  which,  on 
its  publication  the  next  year,  was  the 
beginning  of  a  friendship  described  in  his 
Recollections  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti 
(1882;  new  and  enlarged  version  1928). 
When,  in  1881,  Hall  Caine  decided  to 
devote  himself  entirely  to  writing,  Ros- 
setti invited  him  to  live  at  his  house  and 
he  remained  the  poet's  constant  friend 
and  companion  until  Rossetti's  death  in 
1882.  In  the  latter  year  Hall  Caine 
married  Mary  (died  1932),  daughter  of 
William  Chandler,  of  Walthamstow.  There 
were  two  sons  of  the  marriage. 

Shortly  after  Rossetti's  death  Hall  Caine 
was  offered  a  post  on  the  Liverpool 
Mercury  and,  whilst  still  living  in  London, 
he  worked  for  a  time  as  one  of  its  leader- 
writers.  His  first  novel.  The  Shadow  of  a 
Crime  (1885),  appeared  as  a  serial  in  the 
Liverpool  Weekly  Mercury,  but  he  soon 
abandoned  journalism  and  settled  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight.  The  publication  in  1887 
of  The  Deemster,  a  story  set  in  the  Isle 
of  Man,  which  Rossetti  had  suggested  as 
a  good  subject  for  fiction,  marked  the 
beginning  of  his  extraordinary  popularity. 


136 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Calthorpe 


His  books  were  translated  into  many  lan- 
guages and  several,  including  The  Bondman 
(1890),  were  adapted  for  the  stage.  His  suc- 
cess helped  to  popularize  the  shorter  one- 
volume  format  which  he  adopted  in  pre- 
ference to  the  traditional  three  volumes. 

In  1892-1893  Hall  Caine  visited  Poland 
and  the  frontier  towns  of  Russia  at  the 
request  of  the  Russo- Jewish  Committee  in 
order  to  investigate  the  facts  of  the  Jewish 
persecutions,  and  in  1895  he  was  sent  on 
behalf  of  the  Incorporated  Society  of 
Authors  and  the  Colonial  Office  to  Canada 
where  he  conducted  successful  negotia- 
tions with  the  Dominion  government  on 
the  subject  of  Canadian  copyright.  From 
1901  to  1908  he  was  a  member  of  the 
Manx  House  of  Keys,  associating  himself 
with  the  reforming  party. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Hall  Caine 
devoted  his  energies  to  Allied  propaganda 
in  the  United  States  of  America.  He  also 
edited  King  AlberVs  Book  (1914),  a  service 
for  which  he  was  made  an  officer  of 
the  Belgian  Order  of  Leopold.  He  was 
appointed  K.B.E.  in  1918  and  C.H.  in  1922. 
He  died  at  his  home,  Greeba  Castle,  Isle 
of  Man,  31  August  1931,  leaving  unfinished 
a  Life  of  Christ  which  was  published 
posthumously  in  1938. 

Hall  Caine' s  novels  are  remembered 
chiefly  for  their  astonishing  popularity. 
Over  a  million  copies  were  sold  of  The 
Eternal  City  (1901),  and  The  Christian 
(1897)  was  hardly  less  popular,  but  the 
success  of  books  such  as  these  should  not 
obscure  the  genuine  merit  of  some  of  his 
Manx  novels,  notably  The  Manxman 
(1894).  He  had  a  real  knowledge  of  the 
Manx  people,  their  history  and  customs, 
and  in  the  Isle  of  Man  he  found  a  setting, 
hitherto  unknown  to  novelists,  which  ex- 
actly suited  his  romantic  and  picturesque 
stories. 

Two  portraits  of  Hall  Caine,  one  by 
Annie  Louisa  Swynnerton,  the  other  by 
Alfred  Jonniaux,  are  in  the  possession  of 
the  family.  A  bust,  by  Joseph  William 
Swynnerton,  is  in  the  Douglas  Free 
Library.  A  drawing  by  Sir  Bernard  Par- 
tridge appeared  in  Punch  27  October  1926. 

[Hall  Caine,  My  Story,  1908,  and  Recollec- 
tions of  Rossetti,  1928;  Samuel  Norris,  Two 
Men  of  Manxland,  1947;  C.  F.  Kenyon,  Hall 
Caine:  the  Man  and  the  Novelist,  1901 ;  William 
Gaunt,  The  Pre-Raphaelite  Tragedy,  1942 ;  The 
Times,  1  September  1931 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] Georgina  Battiscombe. 


CALTHORPE,        Sir        SOMERSET 
ARTHUR  GOUGH-  (1864^1937),  admiral 


of  the  fleet,  the  younger  son  of  Somerset 
Frederick,  seventh  Lord  Calthorpe,  by  his 
wife,  Eliza  Maria,  only  child  of  Captain 
Frederick  Chamier,  R.N.  [q.v.],  and 
widow  of  Captain  Frederick  Crewe,  was 
born  in  London  23  December  1864. 

Calthorpe  entered  the  Royal  Navy  from 
the  training-ship  Britannia  in  1878.  He 
soon  made  his  mark,  gaining  special 
promotion  to  lieutenant  in  1886  for  meri- 
torious examinations.  In  1887  he  was 
posted  to  the  Vernon  in  order  to  qualify  in 
torpedo.  He  was  promoted  to  commander 
in  1896  for  active  service  on  the  Africa 
station;  he  served  in  the  latter  rank  for 
six  years,  five  of  which  were  spent  at  sea, 
and  was  promoted  post-captain  in  1902. 
As  a  captain  he  was  for  three  years  naval 
attache  to  Russia,  Sweden,  and  Norway, 
after  which  he  commanded  the  cruiser 
Roxburgh,  the  battleship  Hindustan,  and 
was  captain  of  the  fleet  (commodore  1st 
class)  of  the  Home  Fleet  until  his  promo- 
tion to  rear-admiral  in  1911.  He  was 
rear-admiral  of  the  first  battle  squadron 
(1912-1913)  with  his  flag  in  the  St.  Vincent, 
rear-  and  vice-admiral  in  command  of  the 
second  cruiser  squadron  (1914-1916)  (flag 
in  the  Shannon),  second  sea  lord  and 
admiral  commanding  coastguard  and 
reserves  (1916-1917),  and  British  com- 
mander-in-chief, Mediterranean  (1917- 
1919)  (flag  in  the  Egmont,  Superb,  and 
Iron  Duke).  He  was  promoted  to  admiral 
in  1919  and  was  commander-in-chief, 
Portsmouth,  from  1920  to  1923.  In  July 
1924  he  became  first  and  principal  naval 
aide-de-camp  to  King  George  V  and  held 
this,  his  last  service  appointment,  until 
his  promotion  to  admiral  of  the  fleet  in 
May  1925.  This  was  an  exceptional  record 
of  continuous  service  and  testifies  to  the 
esteem  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  supe- 
rior officers  afloat  and  at  the  Admiralty. 
As  a  lieutenant  he  was  perhaps  fortimate 
in  seeing  active  service  when  such  oppor- 
tunities were  rare.  As  commander  he  was 
a  highly  successful  executive  officer,  and 
as  captain  he  was  noted  for  handling  his 
ships  well  and  for  getting  the  best  results 
from  his  officers  and  men. 

Having  spent  part  of  his  boyhood  in 
France  Calthorpe  spoke  French  fluently 
and  was  a  student  of  French  history.  This 
was  to  prove  a  great  asset  to  him  when 
naval  attache  in  Russia  and  in  the  high 
appointments  which  he  held  later.  When 
captain  of  the  fleet  to  Sir  W.  H.  May 
[q.v.],  who  initiated  great  advances  in  the 
battle  tactics  of  a  modern  fleet,  he  was  an 
invaluable  adviser  and  assistant  to  his 


137 


Calthorpe 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


chief,  who  made  handsome  acknowledge- 
ment of  the  fact.  In  1912,  as  a  result  of 
the  Titanic  disaster,  a  Board  of  Trade 
committee  was  appointed  to  make  re- 
commendations for  the  increased  safety 
of  life  at  sea.  J.  C.  Bigham,  Viscount 
Mersey  [q.v.],  was  president  and  Calthorpe 
was  the  Admiralty's  representative.  Their 
conclusions  were  of  great  practical  value 
and  were  adopted  and  passed  into  law 
without  delay  or  amendment. 

In  the  battle  squadron  and  cruiser 
squadron  commands  that  Calthorpe  held 
as  a  rear-admiral  no  signal  opportunities 
of  distinction  presented  themselves,  but 
in  August  1917  he  was  given  command  of 
all  the  British  naval  forces  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Supreme  command  was  vested  in 
the  Allied  (French)  commander-in-chief, 
Admiral  Gauchet,  but  this  officer  was 
never  active  in  direction  or  guidance  and 
Calthorpe,  as  president  of  a  mixed  com- 
mission at  Malta  of  French,  Italian,  and 
Japanese  admirals,  bCrre  the  main  re- 
sponsibility for  the  defence  of  Allied  trade 
throughout  the  Mediterranean,  and  the 
operations  against  Turkey.  He  controlled, 
in  addition  to  vessels  of  those  nations 
and  of  the  United  States  of  America  and 
Greece,  over  a  thousand  ships,  large  and 
small,  flying  the  white  ensign.  His 
measures  were  successful,  and  as  the 
climax  of  the  war  approached  the  pro- 
bability of  a  Turkish  capitulation  became 
evident. 

On  22  October  1918  Calthorpe  was 
empowered  by  the  Admiralty  to  conclude 
an  armistice  with  Turkey,  acting  as  sole 
negotiator  on  behalf  of  all  the  Allies.  His 
position  in  so  doing  was  a  delicate  one. 
French  agreement  to  this  procedure  was 
apparently  lacking  and  expostulations 
were  immediately  forthcoming  from  the 
French  government  and,  what  made  mat- 
ters still  more  difficult,  from  his  nominal 
superior  officer,  Gauchet.  Prescience  had, 
however,  already  taken  Calthorpe  to 
Mudros,  the  Turkish  plenipotentiaries 
were  fetched  by  a  British  cruiser,  the 
discussions  were  expedited  by  his  skilful 
and  rapid  diplomacy,  and  the  armistice 
was  signed  on  30  October.  The  fait 
accompli  was  perforce  accepted,  and  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  Allied  fleet,  British, 
French,  Italian,  and  Greek,  which  passed 
the  Dardanelles  and  anchored  off  Con- 
stantinople on  13  November  was  led  by 
the  British  flagship  and  commanded  by 
the  British  commander-in-chief.  He  was 
at  once  also  nominated  British  high  com- 
missioner  in    Turkey    and    fulfilled   the 


duties  of  both  appointments  with  striking 
success,  in  the  face  of  Turkish  intrigues. 
Allied  dissensions,  a  French  naval  mutiny, 
and  a  spasmodic  state  of  war  with 
Bolshevist  Russia  until  his  relief  a  year 
later. 

Calthorpe's  subsequent  service  as  com- 
mander-in-chief, Portsmouth,  and  as 
Admiralty  representative  on  the  arma- 
ment commission  of  the  League  of  Nations, 
although  less  momentous, .  was  in  the 
highest  traditions  of  the  naval  service,  and 
his  promotion  to  admiral  of  the  fleet  was 
a  fitting  recognition  of  all  that  he  had 
accomplished  for  the  navy  and  the  nation. 
His  character  was  an  admirable  blend  of 
simplicity  and  sagacity,  moderation  and 
firmness,  prudence  and  prompt  decision; 
he  had  great  charm  of  manner,  and  was 
the  soul  of  honour.  Self-seeking  ambition 
or  advertisement  were  wholly  alien  to  his 
nature,  and  he  commanded  the  complete 
confidence  and  affection  of  his  colleagues 
and  subordinates  in  the  Royal  Navy,  and 
of  the  many  foreign  officers  of  high  rank 
who  served  with  him,  or  under  his 
direction,  in  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

Calthorpe  was  awarded  many  British 
and  Allied  decorations,  including  the 
C.V.O.  (1910),  the  G.C.M.G.  (1919),  the 
G.C.B.  (1922),  and  the  highest  orders  of 
France,  Italy,  Greece,  Rumania,  China, 
Japan,  and  the  United  States. 

On  his  retirement  from  the  navy  in  1930 
Calthorpe  resided  in  the  Isle  of  Wight 
where  he  was  a  D.L.  and  a  J.P.  and  a 
notable  supporter  of  all  good  causes  in 
that  locality.  He  married  in  1900  Effie, 
daughter  of  Robert  Dunsmuir,  of  Victoria, 
British  Columbia,  and  had  no  issue.  He 
died  at  Ryde  27  July  1937. 

There',is  a'portrait  of  Calthorpe  by  Phihp 
Connard,  painted  on  board  the  Superb  in 
1919,  at  the  Imperial  War  Museum. 

[The  Times,  28  July  1937;  Admiralty 
records ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  M.  BURMESTEB. 

CAMPBELL,  BEATRICE  STELLA 
(1865-1940),  better  known  as  Mks. 
Patrick  Campbell,  actress,  was  born  in 
Kensington  9  February  1865,  the  yoimgest 
daughter  and  child  of  John  Tanner,  the  son 
of  an  army  contractor  to  the  British  East 
India  Company  and  a  descendant  of 
Thomas  Tanner,  bishop  of  St.  Asaph 
[q.v.].  Her  mother  was  Maria  Luigia 
Giovanna,  daughter  of  Count  Angelo 
Romanini,  an  Italian  political  exile. 
Beatrice  Tanner  was  educated  at  Brighton 
and  Hampstead,  and  in  Paris,  and  studied 


138 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Campbell,  B.  S. 


for  a  short  time  at  the  Guildhall  School  of 
Music.  In  1884,  when  she  was  nineteen, 
she  eloped  to  marry  Patrick  Campbell, 
who  had  then  a  small  post  in  the  City :  his 
liither  owned  property  at  Stranraer. 

In  October  1888  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell 
went  upon  the  professional  stage,  making 
Iter  first  appearance  in  a  play  called 
Bachelors  at  the  Alexandra  Theatre, 
I -Liverpool.  After  touring  in  the  company 
of  (Sir)  Phillip  Ben  Greet  [q.v.]  (Rosahnd 
and  Viola  were  among  her  parts),  she 
arrived  in  London  in  March  1890,  playing 
Helen  in  The  Hunchback  at  the  Adelphi 
Theatre.  During  the  following  year  the 
Ciattis  engaged  her  for  the  Adelphi  where 
she  acted  between  August  1891  and  the 
spring  of  1893  in  such  melodramas  as  The 
Trumpet  Call  and  The  Black  Domino. 
Shortly  after  The  Black  Domino  opened 
she  received  a  fortnight's  notice  from  the 
Gattis  (who  were  paying  her  £8  a  week) 
on  the  grounds  that  her  voice  and  gestures 
were  ineffective  and  that  nothing  she  said 
or  did  'got  over  the  footlights'.  It  was  at 
this  time  that  her  performance  was  seen 
l)y  Mrs.  Alexander  and  Graham  Robertson, 
the  artist,  who  knew  that  (Sir)  George 
Alexander  [q.v.]  wanted  an  actress  to  play 
the  part  of  Paula  Tanqueray  in  the  new 
dratna.  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  by 
(Sir)  A.  W.  Pinero  [q.v.]  at  the  St.  James's 
Theatre.  Negotiations  followed,  made 
difficult  by  the  attitude  of  the  Gattis  who 
wished  to  keep  Mrs.  Campbell  when  they 
heard  that  she  was  sought  for  the  St. 
James's.  At  last  she  was  released,  and, 
thanks  to  the  generosity  of  Elizabeth 
Robins,  who  had  been  cast  meantime  for 
I'atda  and  withdrew  in  Mrs.  Campbell's 
favour,  this  almost  unknown  player — '  the 
fragile  creature  of  Italian  origin',  as 
Pinero  called  her— had  her  chance.  From 
the  moment  that  she  walked  upon  the 
stage  of  the  St.  James's  on  the  night  of 
27  May  1893,  her  success  was  astonishing. 
Mrs.  Campbell  had  a  dark  Italian  beauty 
and  a  rich  and  expressive  voice:  it  was 
soon  realized  that  none  of  her  contempor- 
aries had  her  gift  for  portraying  passionate, 
complex  women,  'the  flash  and  gloom,  the 
swirl  and  the  eddy,  of  a  soul  torn  by 
supposed  intellectual  emotion',  as  (Sir) 
Edmimd  Gosse  put  it  in  a  letter  to  her 
Avritten  in  1895.  She  might  fail  in  the 
simplicities,  but  properly  cast  she  was 
unexampled.  William  Archer  wrote  of  her 
Paula:  'Never  was  there  a  more  uncom- 
promisingly artistic  piece  of  acting.  It 
was  incarnate  reality,  the  haggard  truth.' 
John  Davidson  in  a  letter  to  her  written 


in  1901  said:  '"Paula"  is  like  an  opal  of 
many  hues  and  lustres,  with  stains  of  life} 
and  wovmds  of  passion  through  which  the 
disastrous  fires  glow  that  shatter  it  in  the 
end.'  Although,  as  Mr.  Hamilton  Fyfe  has 
noted,  Davidson  did  not  attribute  this 
merit  entirely  to  the  actress,  no  other 
player  of  Paula  has  left  the  same  impres- 
sion or  shown  the  same  temperamental 
brilliance. 

Later  during  the  'nineties,  when  her  fame 
was  at  its  height,  Mrs.  Campbell  appeared 
in  such  parts  as  Dulcie  Larondie  in  Henry 
Arthur  Jones's  strong,  romantic  play, 
The  Masqueraders  (St.  James's,  April 
1894);  Agnes  Ebbsmith,  who  threw  the 
Bible  into  the  fire,  in  Pinero's  The 
Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  (Garrick  Theatre, 
March  1895) ;  Fedora,  in  the  play  of  that 
name  (Haymarket  Theatre,  May  1895); 
Juliet  to  the  Romeo  of  (Sir)  Johnston 
Forbes-Robertson  [q.v.]  at  the  Lyceum 
Theatre  (September  1895),  a  part  to  which 
she  was  less  fitted ;  and  Magda  in  Suder- 
mann's  drama  of  that  name,  also  at  the 
Lyceum  (June  1896),  in  which  she  was 
superb  in  revolt  and  indignation.  Although 
the  play  failed  on  its  first  production,  she 
acted  in  it  often  during  her  later  career. 
In  November  1896  she  appeared  at  the 
Avenue  Theatre  as  the  Rat  Wife  in  Ibsen's 
Little  Eyolf.  She  was  generally  considered 
to  have  been  miscast  as  Ophelia  to  Forbes- 
Robertson's  Hamlet  at  the  Lyceum  (Sep- 
tember 1897),  although  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
defended  her  in  the  Saturday  Review.  '  Mrs . 
Patrick  Campbell,'  he  wrote,  'with  that 
complacent  audacity  of  hers  which  is  so 
exasperating  when  she  is  doing  the  wrong 
thing,  this  time  does  the  right  thing  by 
making  Ophelia  really  mad.  The  resent- 
ment of  the  audience  at  this  outrage  is 
hardly  to  be  described.  .  .  .  Playgoers 
naturally  murmur  when  something  that 
has  always  been  pretty  becomes  painful ; 
but  the  pain  is  good  for  them,  good  for  the 
theatre,  and  for  the  play.'  Nine  months 
after  this,  in  June  1898,  Mrs.  Campbell 
had  one  of  her  most  memorable  successes 
as  a  Melisande  of  haunting  beauty  in 
Maeterlinck's  PelUas  and  Mdlisande 
(Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre,  June  1898), 
with  (Sir)  John  Martin  Harvey  as  Pelleas. 
Her  Lady  Macbeth  (Lyceum,  September 
1898)  was  played  with  what  A.  B.  Walkley 
[q.v.]  termed  'a  mysterious  sensuous 
charm'. 

In  September  1899  Mrs.  Campbell  went 
into  management  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's, 
opening  with  a  failure,  Chester  Bailey 
Fernald's  Japanese  play,  The  Moonlight 


139 


Campbell,  B.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Blossom.  The  financial  loss  was  heavy.  In 
April  of  the  next  year  Mrs.  Campbell  had 
a  deep  personal  grief  when  her  husband 
was  killed  fighting  in  South  Africa.  Her 
management  remained  unfortunate  finan- 
cially, but  she  had  a  run  of  artistic 
successes  in  such  parts  as  Mrs.  Daventry 
(Royalty  Theatre,  October  1900)  in  the 
play  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Daventry,  based  by 
Frank  Harris  [q.v.]  on  a  scenario  of  Oscar 
Wilde ;  Mariana  in  a  revival  of  Jose  Eche- 
garay's  play  of  that  name  (Royalty,  May 
1901) ;  and  Mrs.  Clara  Sang,  the  bedridden 
wife  in  Bjornstjerne  Bjornson's  Beyond 
Human  Power  (Royalty,  November  1901). 
During  January  1902  she  acted  for  the 
first  time  in  New  York,  as  Magda.  When 
she  returned  to  London  she  appeared  in  a 
series  of  unimportant  productions  inter- 
rupted by  one  famous  revival:  that  in 
which  she  played  Melisande  in  French  to 
the  Pelleas  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  (Vaudeville 
Theatre,  July  1904).  According  to  W.  L. 
Courtney  [q.v.]  in  the  Daily  Telegraph, 
Mrs.  Campbell's  Melisande  was  'in  its 
French  form  more  gracious  and  childlike 
and  poetic  than  we  have  ever  seen  it 
before'.  After  'a  nightmare',  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell's word  for  the  melodrama  The  Bond- 
man by  (Sir)  Hall  Caine  [q.v.]  (Drury  Lane 
Theatre,  September  1906)  in  which  she 
appeared  as  Greeba,  there  came  the 
triumph  of  a  few  Court  Theatre  matinees 
of  Ibsen's  Hedda  Gdbler  (March  1907).  Mrs. 
Campbell,  physically  nothing  like  Ibsen's 
description,  was  a  mistress  of  heat  and 
light  and  sound;  she  saw  Hedda  as  'a 
proud,  intelligent  woman,  a  well-bred 
woman  in  the  highest  sense.  A  vital 
creature,  suffocated  by  the  commonplace.' 
Another  visit  to  the  United  States  of 
America  followed,  and  then  an  English 
tour.  Next  Mrs.  Campbell  gave  matinees 
at  the  New  Theatre  (November  1908)  of 
Arthur  Symons's  version  of  Hugo  von 
Hofmannsthal's  Elektra  and  of  Yeats's 
Deirdre.  In  January  1909  she  played 
Olive  in  Rudolf  Besier's  Olive  Latimefs 
Husband  (Vaudeville),  and  in  September 
of  that  year  Mieris  in  the  ill-fated  False 
Gods  by  J.  B.  Fagan  [q.v.],  with  Sir 
H.  Beerbohm  Tree  at  His  Majesty's 
Theatre. 

Mrs.  Campbell  spent  the  year  1910  in 
America.  Back  in  London  she  opened  at 
the  Haymarket  (March  1911)  in  Besier's 
Lady  Patricia.  Here  it  was  said  of  her  that 
she  burlesqued  with  much  humour  both 
herself  as  an  actress  and  the  kind  of 
woman  she  had  been  impersonating  for  so 
long.  At  the  St.  James's  (December  1911) 


she  appeared  with  Sir  George  Alexander 
for  the  first  time  in  seventeen  years:  the 
part — one  she  had  refused  more  than  once 
and  never  liked — was  Mrs.  Chepstow  in 
the  drama  Bella  Donna,  by-  Fagan  and 
Mr.  Robert  Hichens.  After  a  revival  at 
the  St.  James's  (June  1913)  of  The  Second 
Mrs.  Tanqueray  and  her  performance  of 
Leonora  in  The  Adored  One  by  Sir  J.  M. 
Barrie  [q.v.]  (Duke  of  York's  Theatre, 
September  1913),  Mrs.  Campbell  found 
one  of  her  last  major  successes,  Eliza 
Doolittle,  the  flower-girl  Galatea  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw's  Pygmalion.  'I  invented 
a  Cockney  accent  and  created  a  human 
Eliza'  she  wrote  later  of  a  part  that  she 
played  first  at  His  Majesty's  (April  1914) 
and  afterwards  in  the  United  States. 
Mr.  Shaw  was  always  a  firm  friend:  his 
letters  to  her  are  the  crown  of  the 
autobiography  which  she  published  in 
1922. 

During  the  rest  of  her  career  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell's star  slowly  waned.  She  had  such 
effective  parts  as  Rosalie  la  Grange  in  The 
Thirteenth  Chair  (Duke  of  York's,  October 
1917),  George  Sand  in  Madame  Sand 
(Duke  of  York's,  June  1920),  and  Anastasia 
in  The  Matriarch  (Royalty,  May  1929). 
There  were  also  revivals  of  Macbeth 
(Aldwych  Theatre,  November  1920,  with 
the  American  actor  James  K.  Hackett) ; 
Hedda  Gdbler  (Everyman  Theatre,  May 
1922);  and  Ibsen's  Ghosts  (in  which  she 
played  Mrs.  Alving,  Wyndham's  Theatre, 
March  1928).  But  much  of  her  time  was 
spent  in  touring  and  her  new  parts  were 
few  and  unimportant.  She  never  regained 
her  full  hold  on  the  West  End  stage,  and 
during  the  last  years  of  her  life  she  was 
engaged  chiefly  in  minor  film  work  in 
America.  To  the  end  she  retained  her 
sense  of  humour  and  cutting  wit.  Off  the 
stage  she  was  tempestuous,  tactless,  and 
good-hearted ;  upon  it  she  was  an  actress 
in  the  grand  manner.  A  modern  critic, 
James  Agate,  said  of  her  at  her  death:  'In 
my  life  I  have  seen  six  great  actresses,  and 
six  only.  These  are  Bernhardt,  Rejane, 
Mrs.  Kendal,  Ellen  Terry,  Duse,  and  Mrs. 
Patrick  Campbell.'  She  died  of  pneumonia 
at  Pau  9  April  1940.  In  1914  she  had 
married,  as  his  second  wife,  (Major) 
George  Frederick  Myddleton  Cornwallis- 
West.  By  her  first  husband  she  had  a  son, 
who  was  killed  in  action  in  France  in  1917, 
and  a  daughter,  SteUa  Patrick  Campbell, 
an  actress  who  appeared  often  with  her 
mother. 

A  portrait  of  Mrs.  Campbell  as  Paula 
Tanqueray  was  painted  by  Solomon  J. 


140 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cannan 


Solomon  in  1894,  and  another  was  painted 
by  Prince  Pierre  Troubetzkoy. 

[The  Times,  11  April  1940;  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell,  My  Life  and  Some  Letters,  1922; 
n.  Hamilton  Fyfe,  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  Plays 
and  Players,  1930;  G.  Bernard  Shaw,  Our 
Theatres  in  the  Nineties,  vol.  iii,  1932 ;  A.  E.  W. 
Mason,  Sir  George  Alexander  and  the  St.  James'' 
Theatre,  1935;  James  Agate,  Ego  4,  1940; 
Who 's  Who  in  the  Theatre,  1939.] 

J.  C.  Trewin. 


CAMPBELL,  JAMES  HENRY  MUS- 
SEN,  first  Bakon  Glenavy  (1851-1931), 
Irish  lawyer  and  politician,  was  born  at 
Terenure,  Dublin,  4  April  1851,  the 
youngest  son  of  William  Mussen  Campbell, 
an  officer  in  the  Dublin  metropolitan 
police,  by  his  wife,  Delia,  daughter  of 
Henry  Francis  Graham  Poole,  of  Newtown 
Abbey,  co.  Kildare.  He  was  educated  at 
Kingstown,  co.  Dublin,  and  at  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  where  he  won  a  classical 
scholarship  and  was  a  senior  moderator  in 
both  classics  and  history.  As  a  speaker  he 
was  outstanding,  and  won  the  college 
historical  society's  gold  medal  for  oratory. 

Called  to  the  Irish  bar  (King's  Inns, 
Dublin)  in  1878  Campbell  rapidly  became 
a  leading  junior  on  the  North-Eastern 
circuit.  His  oratory  won  him  distinction 
among  such  brilliant  advocates  as  T.  M. 
Healy,  Edward  Carson  [qq.v.],  and  Sey- 
mour Bushe.  He  took  silk  in  1892  and  was 
made  a  bencher  of  King's  Inns  in  1894. 
He  was  called  to  the  English  bar  by 
Gray's  Inn  in  1899,  and  became  a  bencher 
in  1901  and  K.C.  in  1906,  but  practised 
little  in  England. 

Like  most  Irish  barristers  Campbell 
was  a  politician.  He  became  prominent  as 
a  unionist.  Elected  to  parliament  for  the 
St.  Stephen's  Green  division  of  Dublin  at 
a  by-election  in  1898,  he  lost  this  seat  to 
the  nationalists  in  1900.  In  1903,  at 
another  by-election,  he  was  returned  as 
one  of  the  two  members  for  Dublin 
University,  Carson  having  been  the  other 
member  since  1892.  This  seat  Campbell 
held  until  he  was  raised  to  the  bench  in 
1916.  An  effective  member,  his  speeches 
were  praised  by  A.  J.  Balfour.  He  held 
office  as  solicitor-general  for  Ireland  from 
1901  to  1905  and  as  attorney -general  for 
a  short  time  in  December  1905.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy  Coimcil  in  the 
last-named  year. 

During  the  home  rule  controversy  of 
1912  to  1914  Campbell,  deeply  involved  in 
the  Ulster  unionist  movement,  was  a 
member  of  Carson's  provisional  govern- 


ment. He  was  re-appointed  attorney- 
general  in  April  1916  a  few  days  before  the 
Sinn  Fein  rising.  In  December  1916  he 
was  made  lord  chief  justice  of  Ireland, 
was  created  a  baronet  in  1917,  and  in  June 
1918  was  appointed  lord  chancellor  of 
Ireland.  In  the  last  scramble  for  office 
before  the  setting  up  of  the  Irish  Free 
State  in  1921  he  was  induced  to  retire  in 
favour  of  Sir  John  Ross  [q.v.],  and  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Glenavy, 
of  Milltown,  CO.  Dublin. 

Campbell's  experience  as  potential  rebel 
in  the  Ulster  provisional  government  and 
attorney-general  after  the  rising  of  1916 
had  considerably  modified  his  views  on 
home  rule.  During  the  years  1918  to  1921, 
as  head  of  the  Irish  judiciary  while  the 
country  was  in  active  rebellion,  he  had 
come  to  see  that  a  change  was  inevitable. 
Accordingly  when  the  Irish  Free  State  was 
established  he  accepted  the  new  regime 
and  was  made  a  member  of  its  first  senate 
of  which  he  was  elected  chairman  in  1922. 
He  was  a  dominating  figure,  perhaps  too 
strong  for  a  chairman,  and  did  not  allow 
the  senate  to  develop  its  independence. 
He  was  even  known  to  adjourn  the  House 
to  suit  his  own  convenience.  In  the  words 
of  his  fellow  senator,  W.  B.  Yeats  [q.v.], 
'handsome,  watchful,  vigorous,  dominat- 
ing, courteous,  he  seemed  like  some  figure 
from  an  historical  painting'.  The  chair- 
manship of  the  senate  was  his  last  office. 
In  1928  he  did  not  seek  re-election. 

Glenavy  was  a  convinced  member  of 
the  Church  of  Ireland  and  served  on  its 
synod.  In  private  life  he  was  a  keen  golfer 
and  bridge  player.  He  married  in  1884 
Emily  (died  1939),  second  daughter  of 
John  MacCullagh,  resident  magistrate,  of 
Newry,  co.  Down,  and  niece  of  the  mathe- 
matician James  MacCullagh  [q.v.].  They 
had  three  sons,  the  youngest  of  whom  was 
killed  in  the  war  of  1914f-1918,  and  one 
daughter.  Glenavy  died  in  Dublin  22 
March  1931,  and  was  succeeded  as  second 
baron  by  his  eldest  son,  Charles  Henry 
Gordon  (born  1885). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Glenavy,  by  Sir 
William  Orpen,  at  Gray's  Inn,  and  an- 
other, by  Leo  Whelan,  is  in  the  possession 
of  his  son. 

[The  Times,  23  March  1931;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

DiA3EtMiD  Coffey. 

CANNAN,  EDWIN  (1861-1935),  econo- 
mist, was  bom  at  Funchal,  Madeira,  3 
February  1861,  the  younger  son  of  David 
Alexander  Cannan,  a  native  of  Kirkcud- 


141 


Cannan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


brightshire,  who  held  a  business  post  in 
AustraUa  at  the  time  of  the  Victoria  gold 
rush,  and  in  Edwin's  boyhood  resided  at 
Bournemouth.  His  mother,  Jane  Doro- 
thea Claude,  who  died  eighteen  days  after 
his  birth,  was  the  daughter  of  a  Liverpool 
merchant,  of  Huguenot  descent.  He  was 
brother  of  Charles  Cannan  [q.v.]. 

Cannan  was  educated  at  Clifton  and 
Balliol  College,  Oxford.  At  Balliol,  owing 
to  illness  and  a  consequent  voyage  round 
the  world,  he  did  not  take  an  honours 
degree  but,  in  the  pass  school,  took 
political  economy  as  one  of  his  subjects. 
In  1885  he  won  the  Lothian  essay  prize.  In 
the  introduction  to  his  Economic  Outlook 
(1912),  he  gave  a  characteristic  account 
of  the  evolution  of  his  studies  as  an 
economist.  An  essay,  which  was  un- 
successfully submitted  for  the  Cobden 
prize  in  1886,  was  turned  partly  into  his 
first  book.  Elementary  Political  Economy 
(1888),  partly  into  a  paper  on  'The  Bear- 
ings of  Recent  Economics  on  Indivi- 
dualism, Collectivism,  and  Communism' 
(republished  in  The  Economic  Outlook 
under  the  title '  Economics  and  Socialism ') 
which  was  read  to  the  Fabian  Society  in 
1889,  and  contained  the  germs  of  much 
that  was  most  characteristic  in  his 
approach  to  the  problems  of  economic 
policy.  There  followed  three  years '  study 
of  the  works  of  earlier  economists.  This 
resulted  in  1893  in  A  History  of  the 
Theories  of  Production  and  Distribution  in 
English  Political  Economy  from  1776  to 
1848,  a  work  which,  in  spite  of  some 
protest  at  the  sharpness  of  its  strictures 
on  the  masters  of  the  past,  established 
his  standing  in  the  profession. 

On  the  strength  of  these  writings  and 
perhaps  partly  because  it  was  believed 
that  his  attitude  to  the  main  tradition  of 
English  political  economy  was  much  more 
unorthodox  than  in  fact  it  actually  was, 
when  the  London  School  of  Economics 
and  Political  Science  was  founded  in  1895, 
he  was  among  those  who  were  invited  to 
lecture  on  economics.  Thenceforward, 
although,  by  a  deliberate  choice  which 
sprang  from  the  enjoyment  of  independent 
means,  his  appointment  was  never  on  a 
full-time  basis  and  he  resided  all  his  life 
at  Oxford,  his  teaching  at  the  school  was 
the  main  preoccupation  of  his  life.  He 
was  not  created  professor  of  political 
economy  in  the  university  of  London 
until  1907.  But  throughout  this  whole 
period  he  was  the  effective  head  of  the 
economics  department  and  played  an 
essential  part  in  building  up  the  main 


tradition  of  the  school.  He  retired  in  1926 
and  devoted  himself  first  to  the  prepara- 
tion of  A  Review  of  Economic  Theory 
(1929),  which  embodies  the  substance  of 
his  great  sixty -lecture  course  on  principles 
of  economics  at  the  school,  and  is  as 
much  a  running  disquisition  on  past 
theories  and  their  genesis  as  an  exposi- 
tion of  contemporary  doctrine.  He  then 
turned  to  a  number  of  miscellaneous 
works,  some  arising  from  the  presidency 
of  the  Royal  Economic  Society  to  which  he 
was  elected  in  1932.  The  universities  of 
Glasgow  (1901)  and  Manchester  (1927) 
conferred  honorary  degrees  upon  him.  He 
died  at  Bournemouth  8  April  1935.  He 
married  in  1907  his  second  cousin, 
Margaret  Mary,  eldest  daughter  of  David 
CuUen,  deputy-surgeon-general,  of  Chel- 
tenham. The  only  child  of  the  marriage 
died  in  boyhood. 

The  concern  with  the  history  of  econo- 
mic thought,  which  showed  itself  in 
Cannan' s  first  major  work,  was  an  abiding 
interest  throughout  his  whole  career.  In 
1895  he  had  the  supreme  good  fortune  to 
discover  a  set  of  student's  notes  of  Adam 
Smith's  Glasgow  lectures  which  he  pub- 
lished with  a  learned  introduction  and 
notes  the  next  year  (Lectures  on  Justice, 
Police,  Revenue  and  Arms  delivered  in  the 
University  of  Glasgow  by  Adam  Smith  .  .  . 
in  1763).  In  1904  he  published,  in  two 
volumes,  what  is  acknowledged  to  be  the 
standard  edition  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 
Later  there  came  an  edition  of  the  Bullion 
Report  (The  Paper  Pound  of  1797-1821, 
1919). 

Cannan  was  a  severe  critic  of  the  classi- 
cal economists.  Many  would  say  that  he 
was  too  severe  and  that,  in  some  instances 
at  least,  a  better  case  could  be  made  out 
for  his  victims  than  he  was  prepared  to 
concede.  Nevertheless,  he  was  deeply 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  classical 
outlook — its  long  views,  its  wide  perspec- 
tives, the  broad  humanity  and  cosmopoli- 
tanism of  its  approach.  The  questions 
which  seemed  to  him  to  be  important 
were  the  questions  to  which  the  classical 
economists  attempted  to  provide  an 
answer:  the  question  regarding  the  main 
causes  of  the  increase  of  wealth  and  the 
conditions  determining  its  distribution. 
His  text-book  Wealth:  A  Brief  Explanation 
of  the  Causes  of  Economic  Welfare  (1914) 
is  still  probably  the  best  introduction  to 
the  study  of  the  economic  system  from 
this  point  of  view.  He  was  much  less 
interested  in  the  questions  of  equilibrium 
and  disequilibrium  which  have  been  the 


142 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Carlyle 


main  preoccupation  of  the  present  genera- 
tion of  economists.  He  had  a  strong  dis- 
like of  the  mathematical  approach,  and 
an  almost  passionate  conviction  that  the 
important  economic  truths  could  be 
expressed,  as  he  tried  so  hard  to  express 
them,  in  language  which  would  be  intel- 
ligible to  laymen.  Coupled  with  this  was 
a  sturdy  suspicion  of  any  speculative 
excursion  which  did  not  seem  to  have  a 
more  or  less  direct  concern  with  practice. 
While  he  would  have  rightly  repudiated 
the  suggestion  that  he  was  a  clqtssical 
economist  malgri  lui,  for  that  would  have 
suggested  affiliations  with  the  Ricardians 
with  their  lack  of  a  sense  of  history,  it  is 
probable  that  he  would  not  have  resented 
the  suggestion  of  some  continuity  of  out- 
look, if  not  of  doctrine,  with  that  of  the 
author  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 

Cannan's  work  in  economics  was  not 
confined  to  the  exposition  and  history  of 
general  theory.  From  a  very  early  stage 
he  took  a  lively  interest  in  policy ;  and  he 
played  a  prominent  part  in  the  public 
discussion  of  the  practical  problems  of  the 
day.  For  many  years  he  reviewed  current 
governmental  publications  for  the  Oxford 
Economic  Review ;  and  he  served  a  term  of 
office  on  the  Oxford  city  council.  At  an 
early  stage,  also,  his  interest  in  demo- 
graphy led  to  a  prediction,  many  years 
ahead  of  other  experts,  of  'The  Probable 
Cessation  of  Growth  of  Population  in 
England  and  Wales'  (Economic  Journal, 
1895,  reprinted  in  Economic  Scares,  1933). 
His  profound  knowledge  of  local  govern- 
ment and  its  history  received  classic 
expression  in  his  History  of  Local  Rates  in 
England  (1896:  the  second  edition,  pub- 
lished in  1912,  contains  very  important 
additional  matter).  His  criticisms  and 
disquisitions  on  various  aspects  of  econo- 
mic policy  during  and  immediately  after 
the  war  of  1914-1918,  reprinted  in  An 
Economist's  Protest  (1927),  are  marked 
by  great  practical  insight  and  expository 
skill.  It  was  in  this  last  connexion  that 
he  became  involved  in  the  great  monetary 
controversies  of  the  day — inflation,  stabi- 
lization, rate  of  interest,  the  role  of  bank 
credit,  and  the  like ;  and  the  vigour  of  his 
polemics  on  some  of  these  topics,  especi- 
ally in  regard  to  the  nature  of  bank  credit 
and  the  return  to  the  gold  standard,  is 
probably  responsible  for  the  dispropor- 
tionate attention  which  has  been  given  to 
his  attitude  towards  these  questions,  to 
the  neglect  of  his  more  solid  and  enduring 
contributions. 

As  a  teacher  Cannan  was  outstanding. 


In  lectures  his  delivery  was  poor.  But  his 
sense  of  the  architecture  of  his  subject 
was  superb;  and  his  complete  disin- 
terestediiess  and  great  learning  and  good 
sense,  disguised  behind  a  somewhat  jaimty 
informality  which  endeared  him  greatly 
to  the  yoimg,  exercised  a  profound  in- 
fluence upon  all  who  came  into  contact  with 
him.  In  the  years  following  his  death, 
owing  partly  to  his  lack  of  interest  in  those 
aspects  of  pure  theory  which  were  the 
main  focus  of  attention  in  this  country  in 
the  inter- war  period,  and  partly  to  his 
identification  in  the  public  mind  with 
certain  practical  policies  in  regard  to 
money  which,  in  their  results,  proved  to 
be  unfortxmate,  his  reputation  has  tended 
to  be  somewhat  under  a  cloud.  But  his 
contributions  to  pure  scholarship  and  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  incen- 
tives and  institutions  are  of  lasting  value. 
If  it  is  fair  to  say  that  he  ignored  much 
that  was  good  in  the  intellectual  develop- 
ments of  the  inter- war  period,  it  is  equally 
fair  to  say  that  in  his  own  work  there  is 
much  that  is  novel  and  true  that  has  not 
yet  received  full  recognition. 

Cannan  was  a  man  of  strong  personality. 
A  mordant  wit  and  an  abrupt  manner 
concealed  a  character  of  strong  attach- 
ments and  infinite  gentleness  and  sym- 
pathy. He  possessed  in  a  marked  degree 
that  characteristic  British  determination 
to  assert  his  individual  rights  as  a  citizen 
which  has  done  so  much  for  the  rule  of 
law  in  this  country;  and,  although  not 
litigious,  if  he  thought  that  a  principle 
was  involved,  he  would  go  to  any  trouble 
and  expense  to  defend  it.  He  had  httle 
feeling  for  the  arts,  save  for  the  modes  of 
the  sweet,  wholesome  English  prose  that 
he  himself  handled  with  such  distinction. 
But  he  had  a  great  interest  in  the  day -to- 
day history  of  the  face  of  England  and  he 
was  a  leading  authority  on  roads  which  he 
studied  for  many  years,  first  as  an  ardent 
cyclist,  and  then  as  a  driver  of  a  'baby' 
Austin  which  he  learned  to  drive  at  the 
age  of  sixty-six. 

[Economic  Journal,  June  1935 ;  Clare  Market 
Review,  vol.  xv.  No.  3,  and  vol.  xvi.  No.  1, 
1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Lionel  Robbins. 

CARLYLE,  Sir  ROBERT  WARRAND 

(1859-1934),  Indian  civil  servant  and 
scholar,  was  born  at  Brechin  11  July  1859, 
the  elder  son  of  James  Edward  Carlyle, 
minister  of  the  Free  church  at  Brechin, 
subsequently  successively  Free  Church 
chaplain  in  Bombay,  Berlin,  and  Pieter- 


143 


Carlyle 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


maritzburg,  by  his  wife,  Jessie  Margaret, 
daughter  of  James  Milne,  of  Huntly, 
Aberdeenshire.  The  original  spelling  of 
the  name,  Carlile,  was  altered  by  Robert's 
grandfather,  a  kinsman  of  the  famous 
Thomas  Carlyle  and  brother-in-law  of 
Edward  Irving  [q.v.]  through  Robert's 
grandmother, 

Robert  Carlyle  was  educated  privately 
and  at  Glasgow  University  and  Balliol 
College,  Oxford.  He  passed  the  Indian 
civil  service  examination  of  1878  and  in 
1880  was  posted  to  the  old  undivided 
province  of  Bengal.  Here  he  spent  his 
jiuxior  years  in  attaining  the  sound  grasp 
of  district  administration  which  stood  him 
in  good  stead  thereafter.  In  1897  he  was 
collector  of  Darbhauga  during  one  of  the 
last  serious  Bihar  famines,  and  was  con- 
spicuous for  his  untiring  personal  super- 
vision of  relief  operations  over  a  wide  area, 
his  excellent  work  being  recognized  by 
his  appointment  as  CLE.  in  1898.  His 
next  important  appointment  was  that 
of  inspector-general  of  poUce  (1902),  in 
which  he  gained  the  respect  of  all  ranks. 
This  was  followed  by  promotion  (1904)  to 
the  difficult  post  of  officiating  chief  secre- 
tary to  the  government  of  Bengal  (the 
appointment  was  confirmed  in  1905),  and 
thence  to  that  of  secretary  to  the  govern- 
ment of  India  in  the  revenue  and  agricul- 
tural department  at  Simla  (1907).  He 
became  a  member  of  the  governor-general's 
council  in  1910,  and  was  serving  in  that 
capacity  during  the  viceroyalty  of  Lord 
Hardinge  of  Penshurst  at  the  time  of  the 
momentous  removal,  in  1911,  of  the  head- 
quarters of  the  government  of  India  from 
Calcutta  to  Delhi.  Of  the  wisdom  of  that 
change  he  always  entertained  doubts. 

Secretariat  work  was  never  particularly 
congenial  to  Carlyle.  His  handwriting 
was  curiously  illegible,  and  he  had  no 
liking  for  debates  in  the  legislative  coiuicil. 
His  strength  lay  in  his  thorough  knowledge 
of  administration,  the  soiuidness  of  his 
judgement,  the  fearless  expression  of 
his  views,  and  the  attractiveness  of  his 
personality.  He  was  held  in  high  regard 
by  all,  both  British  and  Indian,  and  always 
commanded  the  loyalty  of  those  who 
served  under  him.  He  was  appointed 
C.S.I,  in  1910  and  K.C.S.I.  in  1911. 

Carlyle  retired  in  1915  and  went  to  live 
in  Essex.  Thenceforward  his  main  in- 
terest lay  in  collaboration  with  his 
brother,  Alexander  James  Carlyle,  in  the 
writing  of  A  History  of  Mediaeval  Political 
Theory  in  the  West  (6  vols.,  1903-1936). 
He  also  wrote  an  article  on  'The  Pohtical 


Theories  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas',  which 
appeared  erroneously  above  his  brother's 
name,  in  the  Scottish  Review  for  January 
1896.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Central 
Tribunal  to  consider  adjustments  between 
war  service  and  necessary  industrial 
activities  (1916-1918)  and  a  trustee  of 
the  King's  Fund  (1919). 

Carlyle  married  in  1903  Isabel  Jane, 
daughter  of  James  Barton,  of  Farndreg, 
Dundalk,  co.  Louth.  Lady  Carlyle,  whose 
house  was  always  a  gracious  social  centre, 
was  indefatigable  in  organizing  much 
needed  comforts  for  the  troops  engaged  in 
the  Mesopotamian  campaign,  for  which 
work  she  received  the  Kaiser-i-Hind  gold 
medal  in  1916.  There  were  no  children  of 
the  marriage.  After  his  retirement  both 
Carlyle  and  his  wife  were  much  interested 
in  the  work  of  his  cousin.  Prebendary 
Wilson  CarUle,  founder  of  the  Church  Army. 
Carlyle  died  at  Florence  23  May  1934. 

[The  Times,  28  May  1934;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Henry  Wheeler. 

CAROE,  WILLIAM  DOUGLAS  (1857- 
1938),  architect,  was  bom  at  Great  Crosby, 
near  Liverpool,  1  September  1857,  the 
younger  son  of  Anders  Kruise  Caroe, 
Danish  consul  at  Liverpool  and  a  natura- 
lized British  subject,  by  his  wife,  Jane, 
Green.  He  was  educated  at  Ruabon  Gram- 
mar School  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  was  a  senior  optime  in  the 
mathematical  tripos  of  1879. 

Caroe  was  articled  to  J.  L.  Pearsoi 
[q.v.],  and  after  completing  his  articles| 
he  remained  on  in  Pearson's  office  on 
gradually  diminishing  part-time  basis^ 
while  he  built  up  his  own  practice.  It  was 
at  this  period  that  he  was  responsible 
tmder  Pearson  for  a  great  deal  of  the 
detailing  of  Truro  Cathedral.  His  own 
practice  at  that  time  included  a  large 
amoimt  of  work  in  Ireland — ^houses,  farm 
buildings,  and  stables — and  his  church 
work  in  England  grew  rapidly.  In  1895 
he  was  appointed  architect  to  the  Ecclesi- 
astical Commissioners  and  the  Charity 
Commission  and  held  the  post  untU  his 
death.  A  vast  amount  of  ecclesiastical 
work  passed  through  his  hands  in  these 
years.  He  acted  as  consulting  architect  to 
the  diocesan  boards  of  finance  of  Lichfield, 
Canterbury,  Bath  and  Wells,  and  New- 
castle-upon-Tyne. He  was  architect  to  the 
cathedrals  of  Canterbury,  Durham,  South- 
well, St.  Davids,  Brecon,  and  Jerusalem, 
and  to  many  churches,  including  Great 
Malvern     Priory,     Tewkesbury     Abbey, 


144 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Carpenter 


llomsey  Abbey,  and  St.  Peter's,  Wolver- 
hampton. He  built  or  reconstructed  the 
archbishop's  palace  at  Canterbury,  and 
the  bishops'  palaces  at  Abergwili,  South- 
well, Bristol,  St.  Albans,  Llandaff,  Roches- 
ter, and  Wolvesey  (Winchester).  He  was 
ulso  the  designer,  among  other  buildings, 
of  the  University  College  of  South  Wales 
and  Monmouthshire  at  Cardiff,  the  Ted- 
dington  laboratories  of  the  National 
Physical  Laboratory,  the  offices  of  the 
Ecclesiastical  Commissioners  in  Millbank, 
Wycombe  Abbey  School,  Sherborne 
School  for  Girls,  North  Foreland  School, 
Broadstairs,  new  buildings  for  Pembroke 
College,  Cambridge,  and  the  churches  of 
St.  David,  Exeter,  St.  George,  Leicester, 
SS.  Andrew  and  Patrick,  Elveden,  Suffolk, 
St.  Helen,  St.  Helens,  Lancashire,  and  St. 
Ninian,  Douglas,  Isle  of  Man.  He  designed 
internal  fittings  for  many  hundred  medie- 
val churches,  including  St.  Mary's,  Weston 
Zoyland,  Winchester  College  Chapel,  and 
St.  Mary's,  Cardigan,  and  between  the 
years  1887  and  1937  he  was  responsible 
for  the  structural  restoration  of  many 
medieval  buildings  including  the  churches 
of  St.  Hilda,  Hartlepool,  and  St.  Michael, 
Stanton  Harcourt;  he  also  did  important 
restoration  work  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 
He  ■  designed  the  monuments  to  Arch- 
bishop Temple  in  Canterbury  Cathedral, 
to  Bishop  Owen  in  St.  David's  Cathedral, 
to  Bishop  Satterlee  and  Bishop  Harding 
in  Washington  Cathedral,  U.S. A.,  and  to 
Bishop  Ridding  in  Southwell  Cathedral. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  first  commission 
on  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  in  1912,  when  he 
signed  a  minority  report  with  (Sir)  Horace 
Darwin  [q.v.],  and  acted  as  adviser  to  the 
Norwegian  government  on  Trondhjem 
Cathedral.  He  received  the  Order  of  St. 
Olaf  of  Norway,  and  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects 
in  1890. 

Caroe's  publications  include  two  books, 
Sefton  (1893)  and  King's  Hostel,  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge  (1909).  He  edited 
'  Tom  Tower  \  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  Some 
Letters  of  Sir  C.  Wren  to  J.  Fell  (1923). 
He  married  in  1891  Grace  Desborough 
(died  1947),  daughter  of  John  RandaU, 
barrister,  of  London,  and  had  two  sons 
and  one  daughter.  He  died  at  the  house 
which  he  had  built  at  Kyrenia  in  Cyprus 
25  February  1938. 

Caroe  was  a  man  of  forceful  character 
and  great  energy  and  business  capacity. 
He  was  a  faithful  representative  of  what 
may  be  considered  the  closing  phase  of  the 
Gothic  revival  which  reached  its  climax 


in  the  work  of  his  master,  Pearson,  and  of 
G.  F.  Bodley  [q.v.],  and  gave  way  in  its 
turn  to  later  developments  which  aimed 
at  the  spirit  of  Gothic  architecture  rather 
than  at  the  close  reproduction  of  period 
methods  and  details. 

A  crayon  drawing  of  Caroe  is  in  the 
office  of  his  firm  at  3  Great  College  Street, 
Westminster. 

[The  Times,  1  and  4  March  1938 ;  Journal  of 
the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects,  11 
April  1938 ;  Builder  and  Architect,  4  March 
1938 ;  private  information.] 

Ian  MacAlister. 


CARPENTER,  Sir  (HENRY  CORT) 
HAROLD  (1875-1940),  metaUurgist,  was 
born  at  Clifton,  Bristol,  6  February  1875, 
the  second  son  of  William  Lant  Carpenter, 
engineer,  of  Bristol,  by  his  wife,  Annie 
Grace  Viret.  He  was  a  grandson  of  W.  B. 
Carpenter  [q.v.]  and  a  great-great-grand- 
son of  Henry  Cort  [q.v.],  the  inventor  of 
the  puddling  process  for  iron.  Owing  to  his 
father's  early  death,  his  mental  develop- 
ment was  much  influenced  by  his  uncle, 
J.  Estlin  Carpenter  [q.v.].  He  was 
educated  at  St.  Paul's  School  and  at  East- 
bourne College  for  a  year  and  in  1893 
entered  Merton  College,  Oxford,  as  a  post- 
master. Having  obtained  a  first  class  in 
natural  science  in  1896,  he  studied  organic 
chemistry  at  Leipzig  and  took  his  Ph.D. 
at  the  end  of  two  years.  He  then  worked 
with  W.  H.  Perkin  [q.v.]  at  the  Owens 
College,  Manchester,  until  1901,  when  he 
was  appointed  to  take  charge  of  the  new 
departments  of  chemistry  and  metallurgy 
at  the  National  Physical  Laboratory. 
His  interest  soon  shifted  from  organic 
chemistry  to  metallurgy,  and  from  1905 
he  confined  his  work  to  that  subject,  his 
first  original  contribution,  with  B.  F.  E. 
Keeling,  being  a  study  of  the  alloys  of 
iron  and  carbon,  involving  accurate 
measurements  in  the  range  of  high  tem- 
peratures. This  difficult  investigation,  es- 
tablishing the  main  features  of  the  system, 
was  followed  by  studies  of  the  structure 
of  other  alloys,  especially  the  complex 
alloys  of  copper  with  aluminium. 

In  1906  Carpenter  was  invited  to  occupy 
the  new  chair  of  metallurgy  in  the  univer- 
sity of  Manchester,  where  he  built  up  a 
school  of  research,  investigating  tool  steels 
and  various  complex  alloys  containing 
copper  and  aluminium.  The  'growth'  of 
cast  iron  was  traced  to  the  penetration 
of  oxygen  along  the  surface  of  the  flakes  of 
graphite.  He  left  Manchester  in  December 
1913  for  the  chair  of  metallurgy  at  the 
145  L 


Carpenter 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Royal  School  of  Mines,  South  Kensington, 
but  before  taking  up  the  duties  he  made  a 
six  months'  tour  of  Canada  and  the 
United  States  of  America  in  order  to 
study  metallurgical  operations  on  a  large 
scale.  At  the  Royal  School  of  Mines, 
however,  he  devoted  himself  mainly  to  the 
metallographic  side  of  the  subject.  In  a 
series  of  papers,  mostly  in  collaboration 
with  Miss  C.  F.  Elam  (Mrs.  Tipper),  he 
followed  the  process  of  recrystallization 
of  metals  which  had  been  deformed,  in 
the  course  of  which  means  were  devised 
for  growing  crystals  of  metals,  especially 
aluminium,  large  enough  to  allow  of  a 
study  of  their  mechanical  properties. 
This  research  laid  the  foundation  of  later 
work  on  single  crystals.  Other  papers, 
in  collaboration  with  Mr.  John  Monteath 
Robertson,  described,  more  minutely  than 
before,  the  changes  of  structure  in  carbon 
steels  when  heated  or  cooled  through  the 
critical  range  of  temperature.  The  pro- 
duction of  well-formed  crystals  of  oxide 
of  iron  heated  under  a  reduced  pressure 
of  oxygen  was  also  studied,  as  was  the 
structure  of  native  metals,  these  subjects 
being  linked  by  a  common  interest  in  the 
processes  of  growth  of  crystals. 

Carpenter  successively  filled  the  presi- 
dential chairs  of  the  three  principal 
metallurgical  institutes,  being  president 
of  the  Institute  of  Mining  and  Metallurgy 
(1934),  of  that  of  Metals  (1918-1920),  and 
of  that  of  Iron  and  Steel  (1935-1937).  He 
had  been  instrumental  in  founding  the 
Institute  of  Metals,  and  as  chairman  of 
a  Treasury  committee  was  responsible  in 
1929  for  a  report  which  resulted  in  im- 
proving the  status  of  professional  men  in 
government  service.  He  was  elected 
F.R.S.  in  1918  and  knighted  in  1929.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.Met. 
from  the  university  of  Sheffield  and  that 
of  D.Sc.  from  the  university  of  Wales.  He 
also  received  numerous  gold  medals, 
including  the  Japanese  Honda  medal 
(1940). 

Carpenter  married  in  1905  Ethel  Mary, 
daughter  of  George  Henry  Lomas,  of 
Brooklands,  Cheshire;  there  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage. 

In  the  war  of  1914-1918  Carpenter 
served  on  the  Admiralty  Board  of  Inven- 
tion and  Research.  On  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1939  the  metallurgical  department 
of  the  Royal  School  of  Mines  was  trans- 
ferred to  Swansea,  and  it  was  while  on  a 
country  walk  that  he  succumbed  to  heart 
failure  13  September  1940. 

Carpenter's  numerous  publications  in- 


clude only  one  book,  a  two-volume  work 
on  Metals,  written  in  collaboration  with 
Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  and  published  in 
1939,  remarkable  for  its  clear  exposition 
of  the  main  facts  of  the  structure  of  metals 
and  alloys. 

[The  Times,  16  September  1940;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  10, 
December  1941  (portrait);  Journal  of  the 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  vol.  cxlii,  1940; 
Metallurgia,  October  1940;  personal  know- 
ledge.] C.  H.  Desch. 

CARSON,  EDWARD  HENRY,  Baron 
Carson,  of  Duncairn  (1854-1935),  Ulster 
leader  and  lord  of  appeal  in  ordinary,  was 
born   in   Dublin   9   February    1854,   the 
second  son  of  Edward  Henry  Carson,  a 
civil  engineer  practising  in  that  city,  by 
his  wife,  Isabella,  daughter  of  Captain 
Peter  Lambert,  of  Castle  Ellen,  Athenry, 
CO.  Galway,  a  descendant  of  General  John 
Lambert_  [q.v.].     He   was    educated    at 
Portarlington  School  and  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  where  he  studied  law,  although 
his  first  inclination  was  towards  architec- 
ture.   After  taking  his  degree,  he  was 
called   to   the    Irish   bar    (King's    Inns, 
Dublin)  in  1877  and  by  1880  had  become 
known  to  solicitors  as  'a  desirable  junior', 
so  that  three  years  later  he  was  much  ins 
demand  both  in  the  Dublin  courts  and  onj 
the  Leinster  circuit.   In  1887  he  became] 
junior  covmsel  to  the  attorney -general  J 
John  Gibson,  on  whose  elevation  to  theJ 
bench  in  1888  Peter  O'Brien  (afterwards  | 
Lord  O'Brien,  q.v.)  continued  Carson  asl 
his  counsel.    As  junior  crown  prosecutorl 
he  conducted  several  important  criminalj 
trials  until,  in  1889,  he  took  silk.  At  the' 
instance  of  A.  J.  Balfour,  who  had  formed 
a  high  opinion  of  him,  he  was  appointed 
solicitor-general  for  Ireland  in  June  1892, 
only  two  months  before  the  end  of  Lord 
Salisbury's    second    administration.     In 
July  he  was  returned  to  parliament  as  one 
of  the  members  for  Dublin  University,  a 
seat   which   he    continued   to    hold   for 
twenty-six  years.  He  then  determined  to 
explore  the  wider  field  open  to  talent 
across  St.  George's  Channel,  and  he  was 
called  to  the  English  bar  by  the  Middle 
Temple  in  1893,  becoming  Q.C.  the  follow- 
ing year.   In  due  course  he  was  elected  a 
bencher  (1900)  and  treasurer  (1922)  of  his 
Inn ;  he  had  been  a  bencher  of  King's  Inns 
since  1891. 

Carson's  first  success  at  the  English  bar 
was  in  the  libel  action  brought  in  1895  by 
Oscar  Wilde  [q.v.]  against  the  Marquess 
of  Queensberry,  which  caused  him  to  be 


146 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Carson 


acknowledged  by  common  consent  as  one 
of  the  foremost  advocates  at  the  bar. 
Although  he  was  invited  to  take  odice 
when  the  unionists  gained  power  in  1895, 
Carson  refused:  he  was  at  the  height  of 
his  powers  as  an  advocate,  and  he  felt  it 
necessary  to  devote  himself  to  his  profes- 
sional career.  In  1900,  however,  having 
been  sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy  Council  in 
1896,  he  became  solicitor-general  for 
England,  an  office  which  involved  a  knight- 
hood and  which  he  held  until  the  fall  of 
the  unionist  administration  in  December 

1905,  when  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  In  January  1910  he  was  chosen 
as  leader  of  the  Irish  unionists  in  the 
House  of  Commons  on  the  retirement  of 
W.  H.  (afterwards  Viscount)  Long  [q.v.] 
from  that  position.  On  the  resignation  of 
Balfour  himself  from  the  leadership  of  the 
opposition  in  the  next  year,  Carson  was 
one  of  the  four  men  canvassed  as  possible 
successors,  but  he  refused  to  allow  his 
name  to  go  forward,  preferring  to  devote 
all  his  energies  to  the  service  of  Irish 
unionism.  Many  years  afterwards  he  said : 
*From  the  day  I  first  entered  parliament 
up  to  the  present,  devotion  to  the  union 
has  been  the  guiding  star  of  my  political 
life.' 

Even  though  the  liberals  had  promised 
that  no  home  rule  bill  should  be  intro- 
duced during  the  parliament  elected  in 

1906,  Carson  saw  that  a  liberal  admini- 
stration constituted  a  grave  menace  to  the 
imion,  and  he  promoted  to  the  best  of  his 
ability  the  close  organization  of  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  loyalists  of  Ulster;  in  1907 
he  vigorously  opposed  the  devolution 
scheme  which,  as  it  was  also  rejected  by 
the  nationalists,  remained  stillborn.  In 
the  battle  over  the  parliament  bill  (1910- 
1911),  his  speeches  were  directed  to  show- 
ing the  effect  that  this  measure  would  have 
on  the  Irish  problem,  for  if  the  veto  of  the 
House  of  Lords  were  abolished,  the 
passage  of  home  rule  was  assured. 

In  1911  the  Ulster  Unionist  Council 
appointed  a  commission  'to  take  im- 
mediate steps,  in  consultation  with  Sir 
Edward  Carson,  to  frame  and  submit  a 
constitution  for  a  provisional  government 
in  Ulster'.  For  this  post  of  Ulster  leader, 
Carson  had  all  the  qualities  necessary ; 
readiness  to  accept  responsibility,  insight, 
courage,  resource,  and  single-minded  sin- 
cerity for  the  cause.  At  a  great  demon- 
stration on  23  September,  at  Craigavon, 
near  Belfast,  he  was  welcomed  as  the  new 
leader,  and  in  a  speech  in  reply  to  ad- 
dresses  declaring   for  resistance   to   the 


jurisdiction  of  a  Dublin  parliament,  he 
declared  that  the  people  of  Ulster  and  he 
joined  together  would  yet  defeat  'the  most 
nefarious  conspiracy  that  has  ever  been 
hatched  against  a  free  people'  and  called 
on  them  to  be  ready  themselves  'to  be- 
come responsible  for  the  government  of 
the  Protestant  Province  of  Ulster'.  The 
appeal  was  heard,  and  in  spite  of  extreme 
provocation  and  threats,  the  discipline 
maintained  by  him  prevented  any  out- 
break of  disorder  in  Ulster. 

In  1912  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force  was 
raised,  and  application  was  made  to  the 
magistrates  for  permission  to  drill.  It  was 
granted,  and  soon  battalions  sprang  up  all 
over  the  province  to  form  the  nucleus  of 
the  body  which  gave  substance  to  the 
declaration  that  Ulster  intended  to  govern 
the  districts  over  which  she  had  control. 
On  9  April  1912,  at  a  great  demonstration 
at  Balmoral,  near  Belfast,  Bonar  Law, 
after  assuring  Ulster  of  the  support  of 
English  imionists,  shook  hands  with 
Carson  as  a  visible  sign  of  the  pledge  amid 
great  enthusiasm. 

When  in  the  committee  stage  of  the 
home  rule  bill  an  amendment  was  put 
down  by  Thomas  Charles  Reginald  Agar- 
Robartes,  liberal  member  for  St.  Austell, 
to  exclude  the  counties  of  Antrim,  Down, 
Derry,  and  Armagh  from  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Dublin  parliament,  Carson  advised 
that  it  should  be  supported.  His  colleagues 
had  doubts,  but  their  faith  in  his  judge- 
ment was  such  that  they  imanimously 
supported  him.  Once  more,  at  a  gathering 
at  Blenheim  on  29  July,  Bonar  Law 
pledged  the  support  of  the  imionists  of 
England,  and  Carson  announced  that  the 
people  of  Northern  Ireland  would  shortly 
challenge  the  government  to  interfere  with 
them  if  they  dared,  and  would  await  the 
result  with  equanimity.  This  was  followed 
by  the  drafting  of  a  bond  or  sacred  obliga- 
tion, which  at  first  was  intended  to  be 
worded  according  to  the  Scottish  national 
covenant  of  1581 ;  but  this  was  found  to 
be  impracticable,  and  a  new  covenant  was 
drawn  up  which  was  to  be  signed  all  over 
the  province  on  28  September,  known  as 
'Ulster  day'.  Carson  described  the  cove- 
nant as  a  step  forward,  not  in  defiance, 
but  in  defence,  not  in  a  spirit  of  aggression 
nor  of  ascendancy,  but  with  a  full  know- 
ledge that  Ulster  would  carry  out  every- 
thing which  it  meant,  whatever  the 
consequences.  Following  this  up,  Carson 
moved,  in  January  1913,  the  exclusion  of 
the  whole  province  of  Ulster  from  the 
scope  of  the  bill.    The  amendment  was 


147 


Carson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


defeated,  although  Carson's  speech  made 
a  powerful  impression,  and  on  16  January 
the  bill  was  read  a  third  time.  A  fortnight 
later  it  was  defeated  in  the  Lords  by  a 
majority  of  257,  but  it  had  only  to  be 
passed  again  in  two  succeeding  sessions 
in  order  to  become  law,  and  therefore 
preparations  were  pushed  forward  in 
Ulster,  plans  were  adopted  for  a  provisional 
government,  and  Carson,  accepting  the 
chairmanship  of  the  central  authority, 
said  Ulster  might  be  coerced  into  sub- 
mission, but  in  that  case  she  would  have 
to  be  governed  as  a  conquered  country. 
To  the  guarantee  fimd  of  £250,000  for 
members  of  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force 
and  their  dependents  who  might  suffer  as 
a  result  of  their  services,  Carson  subscribed 
immediately  £10,000. 

The  importation  of  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion into  Ireland  having  been  prohibited 
by  royal  proclamation  in  December  1913, 
correspondence  took  place  between  Carson 
and  the  prime  minister,  H.  H.  Asquith, 
which  many  people  looked  upon  as  the 
forerimner  of  some  concessions  on  the  part 
of  the  government.  Carson,  however, 
knowing  how  much  the  government  was 
in  the  hands  of  the  nationalists,  had  no 
illusions  on  the  subject,  and  his  scepticism 
was  shown  to  be  well  founded  when,  on 
the  second  reading  of  the  bill  on  9  March 
1914,  the  prime  minister  was  only  able  to 
offer  '  county  option '  with  a  time  limit  of 
six  years.  Carson  described  the  offer  as 
'sentence  of  death  with  a  stay  of  execu- 
tion', but  he  noted  with  satisfaction  that 
the  government  had  admitted  the  prin- 
ciple of  exclusion.  The  debate  was  ad- 
joxu-ned,  but  on  14  March  at  Bradford 
Mr.  Winston  Churchill  made  a  grave 
speech  clearly  hinting  that  if  Ulster  refused 
the  offer  of  the  prime  minister,  force 
would  be  employed,  and  concluded:  'Let 
us  go  forward  together  and  put  these  grave 
matters  to  the  proof.'  What  this  meant 
was  revealed  when  it  was  announced  that 
warships  had  been  dispatched  to  Lamlash 
in  the  Isle  of  Arran,  and  that  extra  troops 
were  to  be  rushed  into  Ulster.  The  im- 
mediate sequel  was  the  '  Curragh  incident ' 
(20  March),  and  the  imminence  of  civil 
war  was  brought  home  to  the  world. 
Lastly,  when  the  gun-running  at  Larne 
(24  April)  was  denounced  by  Asquith  as  a 
grave  and  unprecedented  outrage,  Carson 
replied  that  he  took  full  responsibility  for 
everything  that  had  been  done.  The 
prime  minister  then  assured  the  House  of 
Commons  that  the  government  would, 
without  delay,  take  proper  steps  to  vindi- 


cate the  authority  of  the  law ;  but  there 
the  matter  ended,  for  no  steps  whatever 
were  taken. 

The  promised  amending  biU  was  intro- 
duced and  passed  the  Commons  (25  May), 
but  on  8  July  the  Lords  substituted  the 
permanent  exclusion  of  the  whole  province 
of  Ulster  in  the  place  of  'county  option'. 
Rumours  reached  Carson  that  there  were 
differences  of  opinion  in  the  Cabinet  over 
the  amending  bill.  At  the  subsequent 
conference  of  party  leaders  opened  at 
Buckingham  Palace  on  21  July,  Carson 
and  James  Craig  (afterwards  Viscount 
Craigavon,  q.v.)  attended  as  the  Ulster 
representatives,  and  when,  on  24  July,  it 
broke  down  on  the  question  what  portion 
of  Ulster  should  be  excluded,  the  amend- 
ing bill,  with  'county  option',  was  put 
down  for  second  reading  on  30  July.  By 
then,  however,  the  country  was  on  the 
brink  of  war,  and  at  Asquith's  request,  in 
order  to  avoid  domestic  controversy  at 
such  a  crisis,  Carson  and  Bonar  Law  con- 
sented to  the  postponement  of  the  pro- 
ceedings on  the  amending  bUl,  on  the 
express  assurance  of  the  prime  minister 
that  'this  was  of  course  without  prejudice 
to  its  future'.  War  having  broken  out  h 
August,  a  party  truce  was  proclaimed  oi 
the  terms  that  no  controversial  measure 
were  to  be  taken,  but  the  prime  ministe 
provoked  the  protest  of  the  whole  unionis 
party  by  advising  the  royal  assent  to  tl 
home  rule  bill,  although  at  the  sann 
time  annoimcing  a  bill  suspending  it 
operation  until  after  the  war,  and  sayini 
that  '  as  an  integral  part  of  the  proposals] 
the  government  would  introduce  ai 
amending  bill  before  the  Irish  government 
bill  could  possibly  come  into  operatioi 
In  the  same  speech  Asquith  declared  the 
coercioii  of  Ulster  to  be  'an  absolutely 
unthinkable  thing'  which  he  and  hi 
colleagues  'would  never  countenance  o^ 
consent  to'. 

Together  with  the  rest  of  the  unionisi 
party,  Carson  considered  the  governmeni 
to  have  been  guilty  of  a  flagrant  breach  o( 
faith  in  thus  passing  the  home  rule  bill 
into  law;  nevertheless,  he  offered  it  the 
services  of  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force,  In 
Belfast,  on  30  September,  he  explained 
to  the  Ulster  Unionist  Council  the  position 
in  regard  to  the  postponement  of  the 
amending  bill,  and  said  that  however 
unworthily  the  government  had  acted, 
their  own  duty  was  to  think  of  their 
country.  Their  country  and  the  Empire 
were  in  danger;  England's  difficulty  was 
their  difficulty  and  England's  sorrows  had 


148 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Carson 


been,  and  always  would  be,  their  sorrows. 
He  therefore  said  to  the  Ulster  volunteers : 
'  Go  and  help  to  save  your  country ;  go  and 
win  honour  for  Ulster  and  for  Ireland.' 
Next  morning  he  marched  at  the  head  of 
the  North  Belfast  volunteers  to  the  Old 
Town  Hall  where  they  were  enrolled  as 
the  first  unit  of  the  now  famous  36th 
(Ulster)  division. 

In  Asquith's  administration  of  May 
1915,  Carson  was  appointed  attorney- 
general.  In  the  eighteen  months  of  its 
existence,  he  became  more  and  more 
dissatisfied  with  the  way  in  which  the 
government  was  being  conducted,  holding 
strong  views  about  the  delay  in  applying 
conscription,  the  necessity  of  a  retreat 
from  the  Dardanelles,  and  the  dishonour 
of  Great  Britain's  abandonment  of  Serbia 
after  the  pledges  given  by  Sir  Edward 
Grey.  The  exigencies  of  war  having  still 
required  the  further  postponement  of 
the  amending  bill,  Asquith  renewed  his 
pledge  on  the  matter,  but  after  the  Easter 
rebellion  in  Dublin  in  1916,  the  govern- 
ment, to  the  astonishment  of  everyone, 
proposed  that  negotiations  should  be 
opened  for  an  arrangement  for  bringing 
the  Home  Rule  Act  into  immediate  opera- 
tion, subject  to  an  amending  biU  exclud- 
ing'the  whole  or  a  portion  of  Ulster.  On 
behalf  of  the  government,  Lloyd  George 
asked  Carson  to  go  to  Belfast  to  try  to 
persuade  the  people  there  to  agree  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  six  counties.  Carson  con- 
sented, solely,  as  he  said,  'on  account  of 
the  representations  made  to  me  as  to  the 
urgency  of  the  matter  for  the  prosecution 
of  the  war  and  the  encouragement  of 
America  to  join  the  Allies.  The  Ulster 
people,  with  equal  reluctance,  authorised 
me  to  assent  on  their  behalf,  while  pro- 
testing that  their  devotion  to  the  vmion 
remained  luiimpaired.' 

Before  leaving  on  this  difficult  mission, 
Carson  had  received  a  letter  from  Lloyd 
George  'assuring  him  that  the  six  county 
area  would  be  permanently  excluded  from 
the  act  of  1914'.  Meanwhile  the  national- 
ist leaders  had  persuaded  their  followers 
to  agree  to  this  policy  of  exclusion,  but 
they  maintained  that  a  promise  as  to  its 
temporary  character  had  been  made  to 
them.  On  this  misunderstanding  the 
negotiations  broke  down.  On  24  July 
Lloyd  George  gave  another  assurance  that 
under  no  conditions  did  the  present 
government  or  any  member  of  it  contem- 
plate forcing  the  six  counties  into  a  home 
rule  government  against  their  will. 

Carson's    resignation    from    office    in 


October  1916  heralded  the  break  up  of 
Asquith's  administration.  Under  Lloyd 
George,  who  became  prime  minister  in 
December  1916,  Carson  accepted  office  as 
first  lord  of  the  Admiralty.  His  admiration 
for  the  men  of  the  navy  was  unbounded 
and  he  avowed  that  the  glory  of  success 
belonged  only  to  the  officers  and  men  of 
the  ships.  His  whole  duty  lay  in  serving 
them,  in  seeing  that  they  got  all  that  they 
required  for  their  support  in  guns, 
ammimition,  and  comfort. 

Carson  had  said :  '  I  myself  would  never 
have  accepted  office  in  [Lloyd  George's] 
government  except  on  the  distinct  under- 
standing that  no  attempt  would  be  made 
to  violate  these  reiterated  pledges  not  to 
put  Ulster  under  Home  Rule.'  Neverthe- 
less, T.  P.  O'Connor  [q.v.]  once  more 
raised  the  question  in  the  Commons  on 
7  March  1917,  and  Lloyd  George  in  his 
speech  on  that  occasion  pointed  out  that 
'in  the  north-eastern  portion  of  Ireland 
you  have  a  population  as  hostile  to  Irish 
rule  as  the  rest  of  Ireland  is  to  British 
rule,  as  alien  in  blood,  in  religious  faith, 
in  traditions,  in  outlook — as  alien  from  the 
rest  of  Ireland  in  this  respect  as  the  in- 
habitants of  Fife  or  Aberdeen'.  In  May, 
under  pressure  from  the  prime  minister, 
Carson  consented  to  the  setting  up  of  a 
convention  of  representative  Irishmen 
under  the  chairmanship  of  Sir  Horace 
Plimkett  [q.v.],  and  it  was  said  by  Lloyd 
George  that  if  this  body  could  propose  a 
settlement  'by  substantial  agreement', 
the  government  would  introduce  legisla- 
tion to  give  effect  to  it.  But  after  it  had 
sat  for  many  months,  the  prime  minister 
admitted  that  in  the  report  of  the  con- 
vention there  was  no  'substantial  agree- 
ment'. In  January  1918,  on  learning  that 
Lloyd  George  was  intending  to  introduce 
a  home  rule  bill  for  the  whole  of  Ireland, 
which  it  was  generally  assumed  would  be 
based  on  the  majority  report  from  which 
all  the  Ulster  delegates  had  dissented, 
Carson,  who  had  left  the  Admiralty  in 
order  to  become  a  member  of  the  War 
Cabinet  in  July  1917,  resigned  from  the 
government. 

The  joint  letter  issued  by  Lloyd  George 
and  Bonar  Law  on  the  eve  of  the  general 
election  of  December  1918  gave  a  solemn 
pledge  that  only  when  the  condition  of 
Ireland  was  sufficiently  settled  would  the 
Home  Rule  Act  of  1914  be  put  into  force, 
and  that  the  policy  of  the  government,  if 
again  returned  to  power,  was  to  exclude 
the  six  counties  of  north-east  Ulster  from 
its   operation.    Carson   was   shown  this 


149 


Carson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


letter  and  asked  if  he  agreed  with  it.  He 
repUed  in  the  affirmative,  and  in  response 
to  representations  from  Belfast,  consented 
to  return  to  Westminster  for  the  newly 
created  Duncairn  division  of  Belfast.  No 
one  realized  more  than  Carson  that  the 
danger  to  Ulster  was  as  great  as  ever  and 
that  while  the  Home  Rule  Act  of  1914 
was  likely  to  come  into  force  at  any  time 
after  the  legal  end  of  the  war  had  been 
determined,  no  provision  had  been  made 
for  the  amending  bill.  In  December  1919 
Lloyd  George,  stating  that  three-fourths 
of  the  people  of  Ireland  were  bitterly 
hostile  and  were  at  heart  rebels  against 
the  Crown  and  government,  but  that 
Ulster  was  a  complete  contrast  which 
would  make  it  an  outrage  to  place  her 
people  under  the  rest  of  Ireland,  an- 
nounced that  these  were  the  considera- 
tions upon  which  he  based  his  proposed 
legislation  for  the  next  session. 

When  the  Government  of  Ireland  bill 
had  been  introduced  on  25  February  1920, 
Carson  went  to  Belfast  and  after  a  speech 
from  him,  the  Ulster  Unionist  Council 
adopted  a  resolution  disclaiming  respon- 
sibility for  the  bill,  but  declaring  that 
as  there  was  no  prospect  of  securing  the 
repeal  of  the  Act  of  1914,  the  Ulster  parlia- 
mentary representatives  should  not  assume 
the  responsibility  of  attempting  to  defeat 
it.  Therefore  when  the  rejection  of  the 
bill  was  moved  on  31  March  1920,  Carson 
rose  and  reiterated  his  opposition  to  the 
very  end  to  the  whole  policy  of  home  rule 
for  Ireland:  'It  will  be  fraught  with 
disaster  to  your  country  and  to  mine.  .  .  . 
The  truth  of  the  matter  is  there  is  no 
alternative  to  the  union,  unless  separation, 
and  anybody  who  will  think  out  the 
circumstances  will  necessarily  come  to  that 
conclusion. .  . .  What  you  are  really  going 
to  do,  and  I  wish  to  put  it  on  record  as  my 
opinion,  is  to  give  a  lever  to  your  enemies 
by  which  they  may,  under  the  guise  of 
constitutional  law,  attain  results  which 
you  know  in  your  hearts  will  be  absolutely 
fatal  to  your  whole  Empire.'  But  he  went 
on:  'If  I  help  to  kill  this  bill,  I  bring 
automatically  into  force  the  Act  of  1914', 
and  he  added,  'It  may  turn  out,  as  the 
leader  of  the  House  said  yesterday,  that 
under  this  bill,  if  it  passes,  the  only  part 
of  Ireland  which  will  have  a  parliament 

is  the  part  that  never  asked  for  it 

One  thing  I  will  promise  you,  that  Ulster 
will  do  her  level  best  with  her  parliament.' 
And  to  the  lord  chancellor,  F.  E.  Smith, 
Lord  Birkenhead  [q.v.],  he  wrote  a  letter 
which  the  latter  read  to  the  House  of 


Lords  on  22  November  1920.  'We  have 
agreed  therefore,  and  have  made  up  our 
minds  that  in  the  interests  of  Ireland, 
Great  Britain  and  the  Empire,  the  best 
and  only  solution  of  the  question  is  to 
accept  the  present  bill  and  endeavour  to 
work  it  loyally.'  When  therefore  the 
Government  of  Ireland  bill  became  law  on 
23  December  1920,  many  people  believed 
that  the  great  struggle  had  at  last  come 
to  an  end. 

Carson  now  felt  that  his  place  should  be 
taken  by  a  younger  man,  and  at  a  meeting 
of  the  Ulster  Unionist  Council  held  on 
4  February  1921  he  announced  his  resigna- 
tion as  leader  of  the  Ulster  unionists.  An 
urgent  request  to  him  to  continue  in  office 
was  met  by  the  plea  that  it  was  a  case  of 
age  and  energy,  and  that  he  felt  himself 
unequal  to  the  task  of  undertaking  the 
initiation  and  establishment  of  the  new 
Northern  Ireland  parliament.  Three 
months  later  (24  May)  he  left  the  House 
of  Commons  on  appointment  as  a  lord  of 
appeal  in  ordinary.  As  a  compliment  to 
his  old  constituency  he  took  the  title  of 
Baron  Carson,  of  Duncairn,  and  from  his 
seat  in  the  House  of  Lords  he  never 
ceased  to  guard  the  interests  of  Ulster.  He 
strongly  protested  against  handing  over 
the  southern  loyalists  to  their  enemies 
under  the  'treaty'  of  6  December  with 
Sinn  Fein.  He  also,  on  11  May  1922,  spoke 
very  strongly  in  support  of  measures 
taken  by  the  government  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  old  Royal  Irish  Constabulary, 
and  once  more  he  called  attention  to  the 
treatment  by  Sinn  Fein  of  British  subjects 
in  Ireland.  At  the  end  of  October  1929  he 
resigned  his  office  as  lord  of  appeal  in 
ordinary. 

In  October  1926,  in  the  course  of  a 
fortnight's  stay  in  Ulster,  Carson  received 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from 
Queen's  University,  Belfast,  and  his  last 
two  visits  were  for  the  opening  of  the  new 
parliament  buildings  at  Stormont  by  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  1932  and  for  the  un- 
veiling of  his  own  statue  in  front  of  these 
buildings  in  July  1933. 

Soon  after  his  eightieth  birthday  (1934) 
Carson  fell  very  seriously  ill  with  bron- 
chitis, and  although  he  recovered,  his 
health  was  undermined  and  he  died  at 
Cleve  Court,  Minster,  Kent,  22  October 
1935.  He  was  given  a  state  funeral  in 
Belfast  and  was  buried  in  St.  Anne's 
Cathedral. 

Carson  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1879 
to  Sarah  Annette  Foster  (died  1913), 
adopted  daughter  of  Henry  Persse  Kir 


I 


150 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Carter 


wan,  of  Triston  Lodge,  co.  Galway,  and 
had  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  whom 
the  elder  son  and  younger  daughter  pre- 
(ieceased  their  father;  secondly,  in  1914 
to  Ruby,  elder  daughter  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Stephen  Frewen  (afterwards 
Frewen-Laton),  of  Winton  and  Sigston 
Castle,  Yorkshire,  formerly  commanding 
the  16th  Lancers,  and  had  one  son,  who 
was  elected  conservative  member  of 
parliament  for  the  Isle  of  Thanet  in  July 
1945. 

Carson  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
and  powerful  advocates  that  the  bar  has 
ever  produced,  and  one  of  the  most  con- 
scientious and  fearless  in  defence  of  his 
clients'  interests.  He  had  a  shrewd  and 
wide  insight  into  human  nature  and  his 
persuasive  influence  was  enhanced  by  the 
charm  of  his  attractive  personality.  As  a 
lawyer  he  was  at  his  best  in  cross- 
examination  and  in  his  appeal  to  a  jury, 
of  which  he  was  an  acknowledged  master. 
His  gift  of  searching  cross-examination 
Avas  aided  by  his  piercing  eyes  and  the 
height  of  his  thin  sinewy  frame.  He  was 
certainly  not  a  bully,  as  his  enemies 
sometimes  suggested,  but  he  overpowered 
a  witness  with  his  penetrating  eyes  and 
the  impression  of  commanding  power.  He 
was  liked  by  all  the  juniors  at  the  bar  and 
respected  by  them,  because  he  was  never 
overbearing,  pompous,  or  remote.  He 
would  never  take  a  case  unless  he  could 
oive  his  whole  time  to  it.  He  cared  nothing 
for  money  if  it  stood  in  the  way  of  what 
he  conceived  to  be  his  duty.  In  the 
Archer-Shee  case  (1910),  in  which  he 
vindicated  the  honour  of  a  young  Osborne 
cadet  against  all  the  forces  of  the  Crown 
and  its  law-officers,  he  devoted  ten  days 
to  the  case  for  a  nominal  fee  and  turned 
away  a  brief  for  1,500  guineas.  He  said  to 
a  friend  after  he  had  become  a  lord  of 
appeal  in  1921 :  'I  died  on  the  day  I  left 
the  House  of  Commons  and  the  bar.'  As 
a  judge,  he  was  fearless  in  his  champion- 
ship of  right  and  in  his  passionate  desire 
to  do  justice  and  prevent  oppression  and 
wrong. 

Carson  was  a  great  orator — perhaps  the 
greatest  of  his  time,  if  the  test  of  oratory 
is  its  power  to  move  men  to  the  very 
depths  of  their  souls — but  he  never 
attempted  to  be  oratorical.  He  never  pre- 
pared set  speeches.  Lord  Morley  said  to  a 
friend  in  reference  to  the  greatest  oration 
which  Carson  ever  made  (the  speech  in  the 
House  of  Lords  on  the  capitulation,  as  he 
regarded  it,  of  the  government  to  Sinn 
Fein):   'It  was  so  overwhelming  in  its 


passionate  sincerity  that  if  a  division  had 
been  taken  at  that  moment  I  should  have 
trembled  for  the  result.'  But  Carson  told 
the  same  friend :  '  I  had  prepared  nothing, 
because  I  had  a  heavy  case  in  the  courts 
that  day.' 

To  the  eloquence,  courage,  and  capacity 
of  Carson  in  critical  years,  Ulster  owes 
her  existence,  for  it  can  be  truly  said  that 
by  his  determined  refusal  to  allow  Ulster 
to  be  driven  out  of  the  union,  he  saved 
the  province  from  being  coerced  into  a 
separation  from  all  that  it  held  dear.  His 
services  to  Ulster  were  made  at  great 
personal  sacrifice  without  the  slightest 
consideration  of  the  cost  or  the  risk  in- 
volved, and  he  was  distinguished  by  a 
moral  grandeur  of  character  of  which 
everybody  was  conscious  except  himself. 

Probably  the  best  portrait  of  Lord 
Carson  is  that  by  P.  A.  de  Ldszlo  in  the 
Middle  Temple.  An  oil-painting  by  Sir 
John  La  very,  executed  in  1921,  is  in  the 
Belfast  Museum  and  Art  Gallery.  A 
picture  by  the  American  artist  Robert 
MacCameron  is  in  the  possession  of  Lady 
Carson,  as  well  as  a  portrait  of  Carson  as 
a  young  man  by  Julia  Falkard.  There  is 
also  a  portrait  by  Sir  Edward  Burne- Jones 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Walter  Carson.  In 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  and  also  in 
the  Belfast  Museum  and  Art  Gallery,  there 
is  an  etching  of  the  head  by  John  George 
Day  (1914)  which  is  a  striking  likeness. 
The  statue  which  stands  in  the  grounds  of 
the  parliament  buildings  at  Stormont  is 
by  L.  S.  Merrifleld,  who  also  executed  a 
marble  bust  now  in  the  possession  of  the 
Belfast  Corporation.  In  Vanity  Fair,  9 
November  1893  appeared  a  cartoon  by 
'Lib'  entitled  'Dublin  University',  which 
is  considered  an  excellent  likeness  and  was 
reproduced  by  Edward  Marjoribanks  as 
the  frontispiece  to  his  biography. 

[Edward  Marjoribanks,   The  Life  of  Lord 
Carson,  vol.  1,  1932;  Ian  Colvln,  The  Life  of 
Lord  Carson,   vols,   ii   and  iii,    1934,    1936; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
D.  L.  Savory. 

CARTER,  HOWARD  (1874-1939), 
painter  and  archaeologist,  was  born  in 
London  9  May  1874,  the  youngest  son  of 
Samuel  John  Carter,  animal-painter,  of 
South  Kensington,  by  his  wife,  Martha 
Joyce  Sandys.  He  was  educated  privately 
and  trained  by  his  father  to  be  a  draughts- 
man. At  the  age  of  seventeen  (1891)  he 
went  to  Egypt  as  assistant  draughtsman 
on  the  staff  of  the  Archaeological  Survey 
of  Egypt  then  being  carried  out  by  the 


131 


Carter 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Egypt  Exploration  Fund.  Early  in.  1892 
Carter  joined  (Sir)  W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie 
at  El-Amarna  and  under  him  received  four 
months'  training  in  the  art  of  excavating. 
In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  he  was 
appointed  draughtsman  on  the  staff  of 
the  Archaeological  Survey  and  worked 
in  the  tombs  of  Beni  Hasan  and  El- 
Bersheh  in  Middle  Egypt.  Late  in  1893 
he  joined  at  Deir  el-Bahari  the  staff  of 
Edouard  Naville  with  whom  he  remained 
six  years  making  line-drawings  of  the 
sculptured  scenes  and  inscriptions  in  the 
temple  of  Queen  Hatshepsut ;  these  draw- 
ings were  published  by  the  Egypt  Explora- 
tion Fund  in  six  volumes  with  letterpress 
by  Naville  (1896-1908).  At  the  end  of 
1899  Carter  was  appointed  by  the 
Egyptian  government  to  be  inspector-in- 
chief  of  the  monuments  of  Upper  Egypt 
and  Nubia  with  headquarters  at  Thebes. 
In  1902  he  began  excavations  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings,  dis- 
covered the  sepulchres  of  Hatshepsut  (as 
sovereign)  and  Tuthmosis  IV,  and  installed 
electric  lighting  in  several  of  the  larger 
royal  tombs  at  Thebes  and  in  the  rock- 
temple  at  Abu  Simbel  in  Nubia.  In  1903 
Carter  was  transferred  to  the  inspectorate 
of  Lower  Egypt  with  headquarters  at 
Tanta,  but  soon  afterwards,  owing  to  an 
incident  with  foreigners  in  which  he 
asserted  that  he  had  done  no  more  than 
his  duty,  he  resigned  and  devoted  himself 
to  water-colour  painting  as  a  profession. 

Five  years  later  (1908),  at  the  urgent 
request  of  (Sir)  Gaston  Maspero,  then 
director-general  of  the  Service  of  Anti- 
quities of  Egypt,  Carter  returned  in  order 
to  superintend  the  excavations  in  the 
necropoUs  at  Thebes  being  conducted  by 
George  Herbert,  fifth  Earl  of  Carnarvon 
[q.v.].  During  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
among  other  discoveries,  he  found  and 
cleared  the  long  sought  for  tomb  of 
Amenophis  I.  On  4  November  1922  he 
•  made  the  great  discovery  which  will 
always  be  associated  with  his  name,  the 
tomb  of  King  Tutankhamun  with  its 
extraordinary  wealth  of  artistic  treasures. 
Carter's  records  of  the  objects  found  and 
his  handling  and  packing  of  them  for 
transport  down  the  Nile  to  Cairo  were 
a  most  brilliant  achievement  and  occupied 
no  less  than  ten  seasons  (1922-1932).  He 
published  The  Tomb  of  Tui-ankh-Amen 
(3  vols.,  1923-1933,  vol.  i  in  collaboration 
with  A.  C.  Mace)  and  he  had  hoped  to 
publish  the  full  catalogue  of  all  objects 
found,  but  his  health  failed  and  the  work 
was  unfinished.    He  died  in  Kensington 


I 


after  a  grievous  illness  2  March  1939.  He 
was  unmarried. 

[The  Times,  3  March  1939;  Journal  of 
Egyptian  Archaeology,  vol.  xxv,  1939 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Percy  E.  Newberry. 

CASH,  JOHN  THEODORE  (1854r- 
1936),  physician,  was  born  at  Manchester 
16  December  1854,  the  yoimger  son  of 
John  Walker  Cash,  who  retired  from 
business  and  took  up  farming  near  Leeds, 
by  his  wife,  Martha  Midgley.  He  was 
educated  at  Bootham  School,  York,  and 
the  Edinburgh  CoUegiate  School,  and 
studied  medicine  at  the  university  of 
Edinburgh,  where  he  qualified  M.B.,  CM., 
and  M.R.C.S.  (Eng.)  in  1876  and  gained 
a  gold  medal  for  his  M.D.  thesis  in  1879. 
After  graduation  he  studied  the  methods 
of  pharmacological  research  in  Berlin, 
Vienna,  and  Paris.  He  was  then  house 
physician  at  the  Edinburgh  Royal  In- 
firmary, but  returned  to  Berlin  and  after- 
wards moved  to  Leipzig.  On  coming  to 
London  he  began  researches  with  (Sir) 
T.  L.  Bnmton  [q.v.]  at  St.  Bartholomew's 
Hospital  and  from  1880  to  1884  published 
many  valuable  pharmacological  papers 
which  are  representative  of  a  new  and 
accurate  scientific  approach  to  the  elucida- 
tion of  the  actions  of  drugs.  His  elaborate 
and  precise  researches  upon  the  various 
alkaloids  of  aconitum,  begun  prior  to  1886, 
paved  the  way  for  his  pioneer  endeavours, 
by  researches  on  the  substituted  am- 
monias and  benzene  compounds,  to  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  relationship  between 
chemical  constitution  and  pharmacological 
action :  this  investigation,  published  jointly 
with  Bnmton  in  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions of  the  Royal  Society  (1885,  1892), 
indicated  to  synthetic  chemists  paths 
towards  the  discovery  of  new  remedies. 

The  high  scientific  standard  of  Cash's 
researches  led  to  his  appointment  to  the 
regius  chair  of  materia  medica  and  thera- 
peutics in  Aberdeen  University  in  1886 
and  to  his  election  as  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  the  following  year.  He  was  a 
skilled  experimentalist,  ingenious  in  de- 
vising recording  apparatus,  and  imbued 
with  the  axiom  that,  in  order  to  obtain 
true  results,  the  least  disturbance  of  the 
tissues  was  of  paramount  importance.  His  ~J 
gracious  manner  and  cultured  language  as  jHI 
a  lecturer  inspired  honourable  work  by  "i 
his  students  and  his  scientific  example 
encouraged  A.  R.  Cushny  [q.v.]  to  adopt 
pharmacology  as  his  lifework. 

Cash  was  dean  of  the  faculty  of  medicine 
at  Aberdeen  University  and  from  1911 


152 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Cavendish 


to  1019  a  member  of  the  General  Medical 
Council  when  he  took  a  large  share  in 
editing  the  British  Pharmacopoeia  of  1914. 
He  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  Edinburgh 
and  Aberdeen. 

Cash's  chief  recreation  was  a  passionate 
devotion  to  salmon  and  trout  fishing :  he 
was  an  expert  on  the  pathology  of  diseases 
of  the  salmon,  and  a  particular  salmon-fly 
bears  his  name.  The  opening  of  the 
salmon  fishing  season  could  always  be 
dated  by  his  disappearance  from  the 
laboratory  after  months  of  continuous 
research.  He  retired  from  his  chair  in  1919 
and  settled  at  Hereford  where,  on  the 
Wye,  he  enjoyed  his  favourite  pastime 
but  continued  to  be  keenly  interested  in 
pharmacological  researches.  He  died  at 
Hereford  30  November  1936  and  is  buried 
there. 

Cash  married  in  1881  Margaret  Sophia 
(died  1924),  youngest  daughter  of  the 
statesman  John  Bright  [q.v.],  and  had 
two  sons  and  two  daughters.  His  ac- 
complished wife  painted  the  beautiful 
water-colours  used  to  illustrate  his  lectures 
on  materia  medica. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  6,  January  1938  (bibliography 
and  portrait);  Aberdeen  University  Review, 
vol.  xxiv,  1937 ;  British  Medical  Journal,  1936, 
vol.  ii,  p.  1238 ;  Lancet,  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  1429.] 
Walter  J.  Billing. 

CAVENDISH,  VICTOR  CHRISTIAN 
WILLIAM,  ninth  Duke  of  Devonshire 
(1868-1938),  was  born  in  London  31  May 
1868,  the  eldest  son  of  Lord  Edward 
Cavendish,  yoimgest  son  of  William 
Cavendish,  seventh  Duke  of  Devonshire 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Emma  Elizabeth, 
fourth  daughter  of  William  Saunders 
Sebright  Lascelles,  third  son  of  Henry 
Lascelles,  second  Earl  of  Harewood  [q.v.]. 
He  was  a  nephew  of  Lord  Frederick 
Cavendish  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
When  he  came  down  from  Cambridge, 
where  he  had  been  president  of  the 
Amateur  Dramatic  Club,  he  went  into  a 
firm  of  accountants  in  the  City  in  order 
to  gain  experience,  and  in  order  to  obtain 
a  knowledge  of  legal  principles  he  entered 
the  Inner  Temple.  On  the  death  in  1891 
of  his  father  who  had  represented  West 
Derbyshire  as  a  unionist,  he  succeeded 
him  unopposed,  becoming  the  youngest 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons.  In 
1892  he  married  Lady  Evelyn  Emily 
Mary,  elder  daughter  of  H.  C.  K.  Petty- 


Fitzmaurice,  fifth  Marquess  of  Lansdowne 
[q.v.].  They  lived  chiefly  at  Holker  Hall 
in  Lancashire  where  he  carried  on  tradi- 
tions of  the  famous  Holker  herd  of  short- 
horns. A  popular  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons  he  was  appointed  treasurer  of 
the  household  in  1900,  and  in  1901  he 
undertook  the  duties  of  a  whip.  From 
1903  to  1905  he  was  financial  secretary  to 
the  Treasury.  On  the  death  in  1908  of 
his  uncle  S.  C.  Cavendish,  eighth  Duke  of 
Devonshire  [q.v.],  he  succeeded  to  the 
dukedom,  and  in  1916  he  was  appointed 
governor-general  of  Canada  in  succession 
to  the  Duke  of  Connaught. 

During  his  tenure  of  the  governor- 
generalship  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  toured 
through  the  Dominion  from  east  to  west, 
from  Nova  Scotia  to  Vancouver.  Without 
courting  popularity  he  was  exceedingly 
well  liked  and  gained  the  confidence  of  the 
Meighen  government  without  forfeiting 
the  friendship  of  the  liberals  and  agrarians . 
In  1922,  the  year  after  his  return  home, 
he  declined  the  secretaryship  of  state  for 
India  in  Lloyd  George's  coalition  govern- 
ment, but  when  at  the  end  of  that  year 
Bonar  Law  offered  him  the  office  of 
secretary  of  state  for  the  Colonies  he 
accepted  and  thereby  became  involved  in 
the  preparations  for  the  British  Empire 
Exhibition  held  at  Wembley  in  1924,  the 
fortunes  of  which  owed  an  immense  debt 
to  him  for  the  particular  care  which  he 
gave  to  it  both  before  and  after  its  opening. 
Without  the  knowledge  of  the  public,  he 
was  a  principal  financial  guarantor  for  its 
success.  ReUeved  in  the  spring  of  1925 
of  the  double  strain  of  office  and  of  the 
exhibition,  he  took  continuous  and  violent 
exercise  on  his  Irish  estate,  which  caused 
a  sudden  collapse  which  endangered  his 
life  and  left  him  something  of  an  invalid 
for  the  rest  of  his  days. 

When  Cavendish  succeeded  to  the  duke- 
dom he  decided  to  live  at  Chatsworth 
as  far  as  possible.  But  the  Duke  was 
careful  to  arrange  that  the  public  should 
have  access  to  the  house  and  grounds, 
and  he  continued  the  same  traditions  at 
Bolton  Abbey,  where,  as  at  Chatsworth, 
he  was  visited  by  King  George  V  and 
Queen  Mary.  In  1926  he  presented 
Pevensey  Castle  to  the  nation.  In  1932 
he  was  elected  president  of  the  Royal 
Agricultural  Society  of  England,  and  he 
was  vice-president  of  the  Navy  League 
from  1909. 

The  Duke  of  Devonshire  was  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council  in  1905,  and  appointed 
G.C.V.O.  in  1912  and  K.G.  and  G.C.M.G. 


153 


Cavendish 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


in  1916.  He  was  high  steward  of  Cambridge 
University  from  1923,  and  chancellor  of 
Leeds  University  from  1909.  He  died  at 
Chatsworth  6  May  1938,  and  was  survived 
by  his  two  sons  and  Ave  daughters.  He 
was  succeeded  as  tenth  duke  by  his  elder 
son,  Edward  William  Spencer,  Marquess 
of  Hartington  (born  1895),  whose  elder 
son,  William  John  Robert,  Marquess  of 
Hartington,  was  killed  in  action  in  France 
in  1944. 

A  portrait  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire 
wearing  the  robes  of  chancellor  of  Leeds 
University,  by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo  (1928),  is 
at  Chatsworth :  one  of  several  copies  is  at 
Leeds  University. 

[The  Times,  7,  9,  11  May  1938.] 

E.  I.  Carlyle. 

CHALMERS,        ROBERT,        Babon 

Chalmers,  of  Northiam  (1858-1938),  civil 
servant  and  master  of  Peterhouse,  Cam- 
bridge, was  born  in  London  18  August 
1858,  the  only  son  of  John  Chalmers,  of 
Aberdeen,  by  his  wife,  Julia,  daughter 
of  Robert  Mackay.  He  was  educated  at 
the  City  of  London  School  imder  Edwin 
Abbott  [q.v.],  and  in  1877  entered  Oriel 
College,  Oxford,  as  a  classical  scholar.  He 
obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions in  1878  and  a  second  class  in  natural 
science  (biology)  in  1881. 

Chalmers  secured  in  1882  the  first  place 
in  the  open  competitive  examination  for 
the  upper  division  of  the  civil  service  and 
was  appointed  a  second-class  clerk  in  the 
Treasury.  He  was  promoted  first-class 
clerk  in  1894,  principal  clerk  in  1899,  and 
assistant  secretary  in  1903.  In  1907  he 
accepted  the  post  of  chairman  of  the 
Board  of  Inland  Revenue,  where  he  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  rearrangement 
under  which,  by  the  Finance  Act  of  1908, 
excise  was  transferred  from  the  Inland 
Revenue  department  to  the  Board  of 
Customs  which  now  became  the  Board 
of  Customs  and  Excise.  In  1911  he  returned 
to  the  Treasury  as  permanent  secretary 
and  auditor  of  the  civil  list.  Two  years 
later  Chalmers  was  appointed  governor  of 
Ceylon,  a  coimtry  in  which  he  was  in- 
terested, as  one  of  his  parerga  was  the 
study  of  Pali,  Ceylon's  ancient  language. 
But  his  time  as  governor  was  a  troubled 
one,  his  '  spiritual  home '  was  the  Treasury, 
and  he  was  glad  to  return  there  in  1916  as 
joiut  permanent  secretary  with  Sir  T.  L. 
Heath  [q.v.]  and  Sir  John  (afterwards 
Lord)  Bradbury.  Almost  immediately, 
however,  at  Mr.  Asquith's  request,  he 
accepted,   in  May,   the   post   of  under- 


secretary to  the  chief  secretary  of  Ireland, 
on  the  retirement  of  Sir  Matthew  Nathan 
[q.v.]  after  the  Easter  rebellion  of  that 
year.  This  was  only  a  temporary  appoint- 
ment, and  he  returned  in  September  to 
his  former  office  at  the  Treasury,  which 
he  held  until  his  retirement  in  March  1919, 
his  period  of  service  being  prolonged  from 
August  1918  at  the  personal  request  of 
Bonar  Law.  He  had  been  sworn  of  the 
Irish  Privy  Council  in  1916.  On  Chalmers's 
retirement  the  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
(Sir)  Austen  Chamberlain,  recorded  in  a 
Treasury  minute:  'There  cannot  be  many 
instances  in  the  long  line  of  his  distin- 
guished predecessors  where  tasks  of  such 
difficulty  and  diversity  have  been  heaped 
in  quick  succession  on  the  shoulders  of  a 
single  man.' 

In  1924,  on  the  death  of  Sir  Adolphus 
Ward  [q.v.],  Chalmers,  who  had  been 
raised  to  the  peerage  in  1919  as  Baron 
Chalmers,  of  Northiam  in  the  county  of 
Sussex,  accepted  the  mastership  (which 
he  retained  until  1931)  of  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge,  a  college  with  which  he  was 
already  identified:  his  younger  son,  who 
had  died  of  wounds  in  May  1915,  had  been 
an  undergraduate  there,  and  he  himself 
had  resided  and  taken  an  ad  eundem 
degree  from  there  in  1920.  From  1920 
to  1922  he  was  a  member  of  the  royal 
commission  on  the  universities  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge. 

Chalmers  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1888  to  Maud  Mary  (died  1923),  daughter 
of  John  George  Forde  Pigott;  secondly, 
in  1935  to  Iris  Florence,  elder  daughter 
of  Sir  John  Biles  [q.v.],  and  widow  of 
Robert  Latta,  professor  of  logic  at  Glas- 
gow University.  By  his  first  wife  he  had 
two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  was  killed 
in  May  1915,  and  one  daughter.  He  died 
at  Oxford  17  November  1938,  when  the 
peerage  became  extinct. 

Chalmers  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1900, 
K.C.B.  in  1908,  and  G.C.B.  in  1916.  He 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Oriel 
College  in  1918,  and  academic  honours 
were  showered  upon  him.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities 
of  Glasgow  (1913),  Oxford  (1923),  Cam- 
bridge (1924),  and  St.  Andrews  (1930).  He 
was  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  (1924- 
1931) ;  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  (1927) ;  and  was  president  of 
the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  (1922-1925, 
years  which  included  the  society's  cen- 
tenary). Besides  his  works  on  Pali  he  was 
the  author  of  a  History  of  Currency  in  the 
British  Colonies  (1893). 


154. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


Chalmers  was  a  many-sided  man,  and 
the  side  which  he  presented  to  the  official 
world,  and  to  the  world  of  Ceylon,  Ireland, 
and  Cambridge,  was  not  always  his  most 
attractive  side.  It  is  a  testimony  to  his 
merits  that  this  did  not  affect  his  career. 
Those  who  knew  him  soon  discovered  that 
his  mask  of  pomposity  and  cynicism  con- 
cealed not  only  genuine  kindness  of  heart 
and  unostentatious  generosity  often 
secretly  exercised,  but  an  intense  inward 
sensitiveness  to  misfortune  and  suffering. 
He  felt  bitterly,  although  he  never  showed 
it,  the  deaths  of  his  two  sons,  of  whom 
he  was  very  proud.  Few  of  his  younger 
colleagues  at  the  Treasury  knew  that,  as 
a  young  man,  he  had  lived  in  the  East  End 
where  he  worked  under  Samuel  Barnett 
[q.v.],  then  vicar  of  St.  Jude's,  White- 
chapel,  giving  up  all  the  time  not  required 
by  his  official  duties  at  the  Treasury  to  the 
social  work  of  St.  Jude's  and  helping  by 
personal  contact  the  poor  and  the  sick. 
If,  in  the  civil  service  as  a  whole,  his  strict 
guardianship  of  the  public  purse  made  him 
respected  rather  than  loved,  his  absolute 
integrity  in  the  high  positions  which  he 
occupied  was  generally  recognized.  In  the 
Treasury  itself  his  profound  knowledge  of 
financial  procedure  was  a  valuable  asset ; 
and  he  had  the  faculty,  such  as  few 
seniors  possessed,  of  communicating,  by 
influence  and  example,  his  methods  and 
his  energy,  if  not  his  own  powers,  to  those 
of  his  juniors  who  were  able  to  profit  by 
them.  As  master  of  Peterhouse,  although 
he  did  not  take  a  prominent  part  in  the 
life  of  the  university,  he  proved,  in  spite 
of  his  mannerisms,  a  real  acquisition  to  his 
college  as  an  institution,  and  a  generous 
benefactor  to  the  poorer  scholars  whom  he 
helped  lavishly  by  his  hospitality,  and 
from  his  private  purse. 

[The  Times,  18,  19,  26,  and  28  November 
1938 ;  P.  E.  Matheson,  Lord  Chalmers,  1858- 
1938  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  XXV,  1939  (portrait) ;  official  records ; 
personal  knowledge.]    Maurice  Headlam. 

CHAMBERLAIN,  (ARTHUR) 
NEVILLE  (1869-1940),  statesman,  was 
the  youngest  of  three  members  of  his 
family  who,  in  two  successive  generations, 
played  great  parts  at  the  highest  level  of 
British  statesmanship.  He  was  born  at 
Edgbaston,  Birmingham,  18  March  1869, 
the  only  son  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.], 
by  his  second  wife,  Florence,  daughter  of 
Timothy  Kenrick,  of  Birmingham.  His 
half-brother  (Sir  Joseph)  Austen  Chamber- 
lain [q.v.],  being  set  apart  for  a  political 


career,  passed  from  Rugby  to  Cambridge. 
Neville,  who  was  to  go  into  business, 
returned  home  from  Rugby  and  took 
commercial  courses  at  Mason  College, 
which  was  afterwards  converted  into 
Birmingham  University.  There  he  studied 
metallurgy  and  engineering  design.  From 
Mason  College  he  entered  the  office  of 
a  firm  of  accountants  where  his  mental 
alertness  and  quick  mastery  of  financial 
problems  were  soon  noted. 

In  1890  Joseph  Chamberlain  bought 
20,000  acres  on  the  island  of  Andros  in 
the  Bahamas  where  he  was  advised  that 
sisal  could  be  profitably  grown.  There 
Neville  went  at  the  age  of  twenty-one 
(November  1890)  to  take  charge  of  the 
development  of  the  estate.  For  seven 
years  he  planned  and  toiled  in  the  attempt 
to  bring  the  enterprise  to  success.  It  was 
a  life  of  extreme  hardship,  and  all  in  vain : 
the  soil  was  too  thin  for  the  crop.  In 
the  complete  social  isolation  of  those 
years,  he  found  comfort  in  books,  reading 
steadily  and  well  in  history,  biography, 
and  science.  While  his  character  was 
strengthened,  the  extreme  loneliness  of 
the  life  must  have  intensified  the  natural 
shyness  and  reserve  which  handicapped 
him  for  a  time  when  he  entered  public  life. 

Back  at  Birmingham  in  1897,  Chamber- 
lain began  the  business  career  which  for 
many  years  absorbed  all  his  energies. 
Although  he  then  had  no  ambition  for 
a  parliamentary  career,  he  was  an  ardent 
politician  with  a  lively  interest  in  local 
public  affairs.  No  one  could  be  of  the 
household  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  and 
remain  indifferent  to  the  problems  of 
government  or  to  the  individual's  civic 
responsibilities.  But  his  father  and  brother 
were  fully  occupied  by  their  public  duties 
and,  after  the  loss  of  precious  time  in  the 
Bahamas,  Neville  felt  that  he  must  concen- 
trate on  business  until  he  had  established 
an  independent  position.  He  soon  became 
one  of  the  outstanding  figures  in  the 
industrial  life  of  Birmingham  and  took 
an  active  part  in  the  proceedings  of  the 
influential  chamber  of  commerce.  At  the 
same  time  his  lifelong  interest  in  health 
questions  was  stimulated  by  work  for  the 
General  Hospital,  of  which  he  became 
chairman.  His  life  was  broadening  as 
Joseph  Chamberlain's  had  done  a  genera- 
tion before.  There  is,  indeed,  a  remarkable 
resemblance  between  father  and  son,  not 
only  in  the  several  main  stages  of  their 
careers — business,  city  government, 
parliament.  Cabinet — but  (allowing  for 
the  seven  lost  years)  in  the  timing  of  them. 


155 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Chamberlain  was  elected  to  the  Birming- 
ham city  council  in  1911,  the  year  of  his 
marriage  to  Annie  Vere,  daughter  of 
Major  William  Utting  Cole,  3rd  Dragoon 
Guards,  of  Woodhay  House,  Newbury, 
who  became  an  unfailing  help  in  all 
phases  of  his  public  as  of  his  private  life. 
To  city  government  he  brought  new 
vitality  and  enterprise.  Under  his  chair- 
manship of  the  town  planning  committee, 
two  Birmingham  schemes  for  planning  in 
built-up  areas  were  the  first  to  be  sanc- 
tioned in  this  country.  A  stiU  more  notable 
personal  achievement  was  the  establish- 
ment in  1916,  against  the  strong  opposi- 
tion of  banking  interests,  of  the  first 
municipal  savings  bank.  Although  it 
succeeded  beyond  expectation,  it  remains 
the  only  municipal  institution  of  its  kind 
in  the  country. 

Chamberlain's  very  exceptional  record 
in  city  government  was  noted  outside 
Birmingham  and  soon  widened  his  re- 
sponsibilities. In  1915  he  was  appointed  a 
member  of  the  Central  Control  Board 
(Liquor  Traffic).  A  hapless  experience  in 
national  war  administration  followed.  In 
December  1916  Lloyd  George,  who  had 
just  succeeded  Asquith  as  prime  minister, 
proposed  to  relieve  the  strain  on  man- 
power by  voluntary  recruitment  of  labour 
for  war  industries.  Chamberlain  was  made 
director-general  of  national  service  to 
organize  and  direct  the  work.  In  order 
that  he  might  give  his  full  time  to  the 
post,  he  resigned  the  lord  mayoralty  of 
Birmingham,  to  which  he  had  been 
elected  for  a  second  term  in  the  previous 
month.  His  efforts  were  fruitless.  Within 
a  few  days  of  the  appointment  Lloyd 
George  conceived  a  dislike  of  him  and  he 
was  left  without  authority  or  equipment 
for  his  difficult  task.  He  said  afterwards 
that  he  was  without  instructions  and 
without  powers.  After  seven  months  of 
futility  he  resigned  and  returned  to 
Birmingham. 

This  unhappy  episode  was  a  turning- 
point  in  Chamberlain's  life.  He  was  not 
the  man  to  sit  down  quietly  under  failure 
that  was  not  due  to  fault  of  his  own.  His 
mind  was  at  last  fixed  on  a  career  in 
national  politics  and,  at  the  general 
election  of  December  1918,  he  was  re- 
turned to  the  House  of  Commons  as 
conservative  member  for  the  Ladywood 
division  of  Birmingham.  He  was  then  in 
his  fiftieth  year :  there  is  no  other  instance 
of  a  prime  minister  who  entered  parliament 
so  late. 

For  four  years  Chamberlain  supported 


the  coalition  government  of  which  his 
brother  Austen  was  a  leading  member. 
He  spoke  seldom  but  always  well.  Voice, 
pose,  and  a  lucid  and  incisive  style  recalled 
memories  of  his  father.  He  was  chairman 
of  several  departmental  committees  but 
rejected  a  suggestion  of  Bonar  Law  that 
he  should  accept  government  office;  he 
no  longer  had  any  confidence  in  Lloyd 
George  and  would  not  serve  under  or  with 
him.  On  the  Irish  'treaty'  of  December 
1921  he  supported  the  government. 

When  the  coalition  fell  in  October  1922, 
Chamberlain  was  on  his  way  home  from 
a  holiday  in  Canada.  For  the  first  time 
he  and  his  brother  were  in  different  camps. 
Austen  was  the  chief  defender  of  the 
coalition  at  the  Carlton  Club  meeting 
(19  October)  which  destroyed  it;  and  he 
continued  for  a  time  longer  his  co-opera- 
tion with  Lloyd  George.  Bonar  Law  pressed 
Neville  to  join  the  new  government  and, 
having  become  definitely  anti-coalition, 
he  accepted  office  as  postmaster-general. 
At  once  the  prime  minister  was  greatly 
impressed  by  his  sound  judgement  and 
fine  administrative  gifts.  Promotion  came 
swiftly,  and  he  rose  easily  to  each  suc- 
cessive post.  There  were  four  posts  in 
a  little  over  a  year  (1922-1924) :  after  the 
Post  Office,  the  paymastership-general, 
the  Ministry  of  Health  (where  he  passed 
an  important  housing  bill),  and  the 
chancellorship  of  the  Exchequer.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1922. 

In  his  first  term  at  the  Treasury  (1923- 
1924),  Chamberlain  was  a  chancellor 
without  a  budget.  Baldwin,  who  suc- 
ceeded Bonar  Law  as  prime  minister  in 
May  1923,  having  annomiced  a  policy  of 
tariff  reform,  decided- — against  the  advice 
of  most  of  his  colleagues,  including 
Chamberlain — to  appeal  to  the  country 
in  the  autumn.  The  conservative  majority 
was  lost  and,  with  liberal  help,  Ramsay 
MacDonald  [q.v.]  formed  the  first  labour 
government  in  January  1924. 

It  was  a  sharp  disappointment  to 
Chamberlain  that  when  the  conservatives 
secured  a  great  majority  in  the  following 
October,  the  party  was  once  more  com- 
mitted against  a  general  tariff.  Baldwin 
offered  him  the  Exchequer  again  but  he 
preferred  to  return  to  the  Ministry  of 
Health;  Mr.  Churchill,  who  had  just 
rejoined  the  conservative  party,  went  to 
the  Exchequer.  His  first  budget  provided 
the  finance  of  the  widows,  orphans,  and 
old-age  pensions  bill.  This  measure  was 
suggested  to  Baldwin  by  Chamberlain 
while  in  opposition  in  1924  and  it  was  he 


136 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


who  piloted  the  bill  through  the  House 
in  1925. 

Chamberlain's  four  and  a  half  years 
(1924-1929)  at  the  Ministry  of  Health 
raised  the  department's  status  and  his 
own.  Masterly  conduct  of  the  difficult 
Rating  and  Valuation  Act  of  1925  (which 
gave  relief  to  agriculture  and  industry) 
put  him  in  the  first  rank  of  parliament- 
arians. By  securing  the  fuU  co-operation 
of  private  builders  as  weU  as  of  the  local 
councils,  he  solved  the  immediate  housing 
problem :  nearly  a  million  houses  had  been 
built  when  he  left  office.  In  1929  he 
passed  the  very  important  Local  Govern- 
ment Act  which  reformed  the  Poor  Law 
(boards  of  guardians  were  abolished)  and 
recast  the  financial  relations  of  the  State 
and  local  authorities. 

At  the  general  election  of  May  1929 
Chamberlain  was  returned  for  the  Edg- 
baston  division  of  Birmingham,  and  held 
the  seat  until  his  death.  With  labour 
in  office  again,  he,  at  Baldwin's  request, 
turned  his  attention  to  the  re-organization 
of  the  conservative  central  office.  A 
research  department  was  set  up  and  at 
once  gave  special  consideration  to  the 
question  of  tariffs.  The  party  leadership 
also  came  under  review  and,  as  chairman 
of  the  central  office,  he  presented  a  critical 
memorandum  which  Baldwin  so  much 
disliked  that  for  a  short  time  it  was 
thought  that  he  would  resign. 

In  the  financial  crisis  of  August  1931, 
which  destroyed  the  labour  government, 
it  was  Chamberlain  who,  until  Baldwin 
returned  from  abroad,  represented  the 
conservative  party  in  negotiations  pre- 
ceding the  formation  of  the  provisional 
all-party  government.  In  that  he  was 
again  minister  of  health,  but  he  succeeded 
Philip  Snowden  [q.v.]  as  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  when  the  government  was 
reconstituted  in  November  after  the 
general  election,  and  he  held  the  office  for 
five  and  a  half  years.  Drastic  economies 
were  necessary  for  several  years  before 
normal  expenditure  and  revenue  could  be 
balanced.  Throughout  that  trying  period 
he  directed  policy  with  courage  and 
sound  judgement.  Upon  him  also  fell  the 
brunt  of  negotiation  and  decision  on  war 
reparations,  war  debts,  and  Empire  trade 
policy,  this  last  being  dealt  with  at  the 
memorable  Imperial  Economic  Conference 
held  at  Ottawa  in  1932. 

Although,  in  the  general  election,  the 
government  was  not  committed  on  the 
fiscal  question.  Chamberlain  secured 
Cabinet    approval    for    a    general    tariff 


which,  at  a  common  standard  of  10  per 
cent.,  was  more  for  revenue  than  protec- 
tion. The  free  trade  system,  initiated 
eighty-six  years  before  with  the  repeal  of 
the  Corn  Laws,  was  thus  ended  in  1932 ; 
and  the  settlement  has  not  since  been 
seriously  challenged.  In  the  same  year 
a  great  saving  in  debt  charges  was  effected 
by  the  conversion  of  £2,000,000,000  of  the 
5  per  cent,  war  loan  to  a  3J  per  cent, 
stock. 

By  1935  there  seemed  to  be  a  good 
prospect  of  substantial  tax  reductions ; 
but  hope  of  that  vanished  when,  in  the 
following  year,  the  government  proposed 
an  expenditure  of  £1,500,000,000  on  re- 
armament within  five  years.  This  had 
been  delayed  to  the  point  of  danger, 
partly  because  of  hostile  public  opinion, 
partly  because  a  disarmament  policy  was 
still  being  pursued  in  the  League  of 
Nations,  and  partly  because  the  financial 
crisis  in  the  early  'thirties  was  held  to  be, 
for  the  time,  more  important.  As  soon  as 
that  anxiety  was  relieved  Chamberlain's 
was  the  chief  political  initiative  in  increas- 
ing the  air  estimates  in  1934.  He  thought 
that  Baldwin  exaggerated  the  strength  of 
labour  opposition  in  the  country  and  he 
desired  to  make  rearmament  the  main 
issue  at  the  general  election  in  1935. 

Dangers  multiplied .  Italy  invaded  Abys- 
sinia in  October  1935 ;  Hitler's  aggressions 
had  already  begun ;  the  Spanish  civil  war 
broke  out  in  July  1936;  the  Japanese 
menace  continually  disturbed  the  Far 
East.  Foreign  affairs  occupied  more  and 
more  of  the  time  of  the  Cabinet,  and 
Chamberlain  took  an  active  part  in  the 
discussions.  Labour  party  hostility  to 
him,  which  reached  the  depth  of  bitterness 
after  the  Munich  conference  of  1938,  was 
intensified  in  the  Abyssinian  war  when, 
quite  wrongly,  he  was  widely  regarded  as 
pro-Italian  and  anti-League  of  Nations. 
He  had  been  in  fact  a  stout  upholder  of 
the  League  and  in  the  Abyssinian  crisis 
was  ready,  if  the  French  had  been  willing 
to  co-operate,  to  prevent  or  stop  war.  He 
supported  Leagxie  sanctions  against  Italy, 
and  called  for  their  abandonment  only 
when  their  failure  was  manifest. 

In  the  summer  of  1936  Baldwin,  worn 
by  the  labours  and  anxieties  of  the  time, 
decided  to  resign  the  premiership  after  the 
coronation  in  the  following  May.  There 
was  no  rival  to  Chamberlain  as  his  suc- 
cessor and,  within  the  inmost  circle  of 
high  politics,  it  was  known  for  months 
before  that  he  would  be  the  next  prime 
minister.  It  was  with  the  warm  approval 


157 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  goodwill  of  all  his  colleagues  that  he 
entered  upon  the  office  on  28  May  1937. 

Chamberlain  had  thus  been  able  to 
ponder,  months  in  advance,  over  the  grave 
responsibilities  awaiting  him.  The  para- 
mount, inescapable  problem  now  was 
national  defence.  German  militarism,  and 
its  aggressive  political  direction,  menaced 
the  peace  of  the  world.  Great  Britain  was 
unprepared  to  meet  it :  and  danger  was  so 
near  that  it  had  become  imprudent  to 
reveal  her  military  weakness.  The  labour 
party's  opposition  to  rearmament  still 
continued. 

The  position  was  one  of  extraordinary 
difficulty.  British  and  French  military 
weakness  was  an  incitement  to  German 
aggression,  and  prejudiced  every  effort  by 
negotiation  to  stop  the  drift  towards  war. 
Could  Germany  and  Italy  be  brought  back 
into  the  comity  of  nations  ?  In  no  other 
way  could  war  be  averted.  It  was  the  way 
which  for  nearly  two  years  Chamberlain 
resolutely  pursued.  He  knew  the  diffi- 
culties and,  in  particular,  was  not  unaware 
of  the  sinister  qualities  of  Hitler  and 
Mussolini.  But  the  pacification  of  Europe, 
which  was  the  aim  of  his  policy,  could  not 
be  achieved  without  their  collaboration, 
and  not  to  seek  it  was  to  admit  failure 
which  he  would  not  do  while  any  hope  of 
success  remained.  He  often  said  that  he 
would  take  no  responsibility  for  war  until 
he  had  done  everything  possible  to 
prevent  it. 

Conversations  with  the  Berlin  govern- 
ment were  opened  in  the  early  days  of  the 
new  premiership.  The  German  foreign 
minister  accepted  an  invitation  to  come 
to  London  in  Jiuie;  but  events  in  the 
Spanish  civil  war  angered  Hitler  and  the 
visit  was  never  paid.  Chamberlain  then 
turned  to  Rome.  Through  the  foreign 
secretary,  Mr.  Eden,  he  sent  a  message 
to  Mussolini  who,  in  a  friendly  reply, 
suggested  the  expansion  of  the  Anglo- 
Italian  'gentleman's  agreement'  of  the 
previous  January.  It  was  arranged  to 
begin  negotiations  in  September,  but  here 
also  the  Spanish  war  barred  the  way. 

In  November  direct  contact  with  Hitler 
came  about  in  a  curious  manner.  Lord  Hali- 
fax, who  was  a  master  of  foxhovmds  as 
well  as  lord  president  of  the  Coimcil,  went 
to  Berlin  for  a  national  himting  exhibition. 
While  there  he  was  invited  to  meet  the 
Fiihrer  at  Berchtesgaden.  They  had  what 
Lord  Halifax  called  a  'free,  frank,  informal 
and  confidential  talk'.  There  was  in  this 
no  movement  away  from  France,  whose 
government  was  at  once  informed  of  what 


happened.  M.  Chautemps,  the  premier, 
and  M.  Delbos,  the  foreign  minister,  came 
to  London  for  discussion  of  the  European 
situation;  and,  shortly  afterwards,  M. 
Delbos  exchanged  views  with  von  Neurath 
in  Berlin.  The  way  appeared  to  be  clearing 
for  Anglo-German  negotiations.  Sir  Nevile 
Henderson,  the  British  ambassador  in 
Berlin,  came  to  London  for  consultation 
and  returned  with  full  instructions.  At 
the  same  time  von  Ribbentrop,  already 
counted  an  enemy  of  Great  Britain,  was 
appointed  foreign  minister  in  the  German 
government.  A  month  passed  before 
Hitler  received  the  ambassador.  He  was, 
Henderson  reported,  in  a  bad  temper, 
very  angry  with  British  newspapers,  and 
resentful  of  any  criticism  of  his  relations 
with  Austria. 

Hitler's  designs  upon  Austrian  inde- 
pendence alarmed  Mussolini  who  at  this 
turning-point  (February  1938)  informed 
the  British  government  that  he  was  ready 
to  open  discussions  covering  all  matters  in 
dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  Italy. 
Chamberlain  felt  that  if  this  offer  were 
spurned  the  Hitler-Mussolini  association 
would  be  strengthened  and  the  risk  of  war 
increased.  Mr.  Eden  objected  to  the  pro- 
cedure proposed  on  the  grornid  that  there 
should  be  no  negotiation  with  Italy  until 
she  had  withdrawn  a  substantial  part  of 
her  forces  from  Spain.  Chamberlain'^ 
undertaking  that  no  agreement  should 
take  effect  until  that  condition  was  com- 
plied with  did  not  satisfy  the  foreign 
secretary;  and,  after  close  discussion  at 
three  meetings  of  the  Cabinet,  he  resigned 
on  20  February.  Lord  Halifax  succeeded 
him  at  the  Foreign  Office,  and  negotiations 
with  Italy  began  at  once.  Three  weeks 
later  Hitler  invaded  Austria,  destroyed 
its  government,  and  proclaimed  it  a  pro- 
vince of  the  German  Reich.  British  pro- 
tests, ignored  in  Berlin,  were  repeated  in 
parliament:  Chamberlain  spoke  of  the 
profound  shock  to  the  friends  of  peace 
and  the  setback  to  hopes  of  international 
co-operation.  The  Germans  gave  a  general 
undertaking  that  there  would  be  no 
further  aggression,  and  a  particular  assur- 
ance that  they  had  no  designs  against 
Czechoslovakia.  But  confidence  was 
everywhere  weakened. 

The  British  Cabinet  considered  the 
position  and,  on  24  March,  Chamberlain 
gave  to  the  House  of  Commons  a  detailed 
review  of  the  country's  liabilities  abroad. 
As  to  Czechoslovalda,  he  quoted  with 
approval  a  statement  made  by  Mr.  Eden, 
when  foreign  secretary,  that  'nations  can- 


158 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


not  be  expected  to  incur  automatic  mili- 
t  ary  obligations  save  for  areas  where  their 
\ital  interests  are  concerned'.  But  that, 
Chamberlain  continued,  must  not  be  in- 
terpreted as  meaning  that  Britain  would 
in  no  circumstances  intervene.  Ought 
1  Britain  to  assure  France  forthwith  of  full 
military  support  if  she  were  called  upon, 
I  )y  reason  of  German  aggression,  to  go  to 
the  aid  of  her  ally,  Czechoslovakia?  The 
(  abinet  had  decided  against  that  but, 
said  Chamberlain,  'legal  obligations  are 
not  alone  concerned  and,  if  war  broke 
out ...  it  would  be  well  within  the  bounds 
of  probability  that  other  coiuitries  besides 
those  which  were  parties  to  the  original 
dispute  would  almost  immediately  become 
involved.  This',  he  added,  'is  especially 
true  in  the  case  of  two  countries  like  Great 
Britain  and  France,  with  long  associations 
of  friendship,  with  interests  closely  inter- 
woven, devoted  to  the  same  ideals  of 
democratic  liberty  and  determined  to 
uphold  them.' 

^Vhile  the  labour  opposition  condemned 
Ihis  speech,  Mr.  Churchill  welcomed  it  as 
'a  very  considerable  advance  on  any 
previous  declaration'.  In  effect,  he  said, 
there  was  evidently  a  defensive  alliance 
with  France  and  he  was  for  declaring  it 
openly  and  making  it  effective  by  a  mili- 
tary convention.  This  view  was  not 
accepted.  The  Dominion  governments 
approved  the  policy  announced,  but  they 
did  not  wish  to  widen  their  obligations; 
and  it  would  not  have  been  easy  at  that 
time,  nor  even  when  events  became  more 
critical  later  in  the  year,  to  bring  them 
into  war  on  any  issue  which  had  then 
arisen  in  central  Europe. 

Within  Czechoslovakia  the  situation 
rapidly  worsened  throughout  the  sum- 
mer. Discontent  among  the  three  million 
Germans  in  the  Sudeten  border  districts 
was  whipped  by  Nazi  agents  into  fierce 
agitation.  Concessions  by  the  Prague 
government  were  met  by  demands  for 
more  and  still  more.  Border  'incidents', 
invented  or  distorted,  were  reported  with 
provocative  headings  in  all  the  German 
newspapers.  The  position  was  already 
dangerous  when,  towards  the  end  of  July, 
(  hamberlain  persuaded  Lord  Runciman 
to  go  to  Prague  as  mediator.  After  weeks 
of  negotiation  with  both  sides  he  sub- 
mitted a  plan  of  home  rule  for  the  Sudeten 
areas  on  the  Swiss  cantonal  model,  and  it 
was  accepted  by  the  Czech  government. 
It  was  too  late.  Henlein,  the  Sudeten 
leader,  threw  off  disguises  and  was  seen 
to  be  Hitler's  tool.  The  orders  now  came 


direct  from  Hitler.  At  Nuremberg,  on  12 
September,  he  demanded  self-determina- 
tion for  the  Sudetens  and  promised  them 
the  support  of  the  Reich.  Powerful 
German  forces  were  ready  for  action. 
Lord  Runciman  could  do  no  more  and 
returned  to  London  on  16  September. 

The  French  government  had  approved 
the  Rvmciman  mission.  France  was 
pledged  by  treaty  to  defend  the  Czechs 
against  aggression.  At  Lanark  on  27 
August,  Sir  John  Simon,  speaking  for  the 
government,  repeated  Cliamberlain's 
declaration  of  24  March  which  was,  in 
effect,  that  if  France  were  involved  in  war 
with  Germany  because  she  went  to  the  aid 
of  the  Czechs,  Britain  would  be  at  the  side 
of  France .  Ne  vile  Henderson  also  repeated 
this  in  an  official  communication  to  the 
German  foreign  minister.  But  France  was 
unready.  Many  French  newspapers,  of  all 
parties,  favoured  the  German  minority 
claims  and  blamed  the  Czech  government 
for  dilatoriness.  Public  opinion  generally 
was  apathetic.  After  information  that  the 
German  army  was  ready  to  strike,  the 
French  Cabinet  met  on  13  September  and 
the  announcement  was  made  that  'more 
reserves  may  be  called  up '.  It  was  evident 
that  France  would  not  then  fulfil  her 
treaty  obligations  to  the  Czechs.  M. 
Daladier,  the  premier,  afterwards  said 
that  he  suggested  to  Downing  Street  some 
'exceptional  procedure'. 

Chamberlain  had  already  considered 
what,  in  such  a  situation,  his  exceptional 
action  should  be.  On  the  evening  of  14 
September  the  world  was  startled  by  the 
news  that  he  had  just  sent  a  message  to 
Hitler  proposing  that  they  should  meet 
the  next  day  to  discuss  a  peaceful  settle- 
ment. Hitler  agreed,  and  on  Thursday,  15 
September,  Chamberlain  flew  to  Berchtes- 
gaden.  His  action  was  everywhere  ap- 
proved. Hitler  demanded  an  immediate 
assurance  that  the  British  government 
accepted  the  principle  of  self-determina- 
tion for  the  Sudeten  Germans.  Chamber- 
lain said  that  he  would  consult  the 
Cabinet  about  that  if  Hitler  gave  an 
assurance  that  Germany  would,  mean- 
time, refrain  from  hostilities.  The  assur- 
ance was  given. 

Chamberlain  returned  to  London  on  the 
Friday,  the  same  day  that  Lord  Runciman 
arrived  from  Prague.  The  Cabinet  sat  for 
five  hours  on  the  Saturday,  and  on  the 
Simday  there  were  long  discussions  with 
M.  Daladier  and  M.  Bonnet,  the  French 
foreign  minister.  It  was  then  annoimced 
that    the    two    governments    were    'in 


159 


Chamberlain,  A.  N. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


complete  agreement'.  The  demand  for 
self-determination  had  been  conceded. 
British  labour  leaders  condemned  the 
decision  and  sought  common  action 
against  it  with  French  labour  only  to 
find  that  their  French  friends  were  not 
prepared  to  risk  a  war  to  preserve  the 
integrity  of  Czechoslovakia. 

On  Thursday,  22  September,  Chamber- 
lain met  Hitler  a  second  time,  at  Godes- 
berg,  and  was  able  to  tell  him  that 
self-determination  was  accepted  not  only 
by  Britain  and  France  but  also  by  Czecho- 
slovakia. Moreover,  arrangements  for  the 
transfer  of  territory  had  already  been 
worked  out.  Hitler  denounced  these 
arrangements  as  dilatory  and  said  that 
the  German  flag  must  fly  over  Sudetenland 
within  a  few  days.  Having  considered  this 
overnight,  Chamberlain  sent  a  letter  to 
Hitler,  protesting  against  any  threat  of 
force  and  adding  that  the  Czechs  could 
not  withdraw  their  armed  forces  so  long 
as  they  were  faced  with  the  prospect  of 
invasion.  HUtler  replied  a  few  hours 
later  with  a  violent  attack  on  the  Czechs. 
Germany's  decision  was  irrevocable. 
Chamberlain's  curt  rejoinder  was  that  he 
proposed  to  return  home  at  once.  He 
asked  for  a  memorandum  and  a  map 
showing  the  areas  in  which  it  was  proposed 
that  plebiscites  should  be  taken.  These 
were  not  received  and  at  half -past  ten  that 
night  he  saw  Hitler  again.  He  was  then 
shown  the  memorandum.  It  provided  for 
Czech  evacuation  of  the  Sudeten  frontier 
districts  within  forty-eight  hours.  This 
moved  Chamberlain  to  anger.  He  called 
it  an  ultimatum.  Talk  continued  for 
several  hours  Avithout  removing  the  dead- 
lock. But  Hitler  did  say  that  'this  was  the 
last  of  his  territorial  ambitions  in  Europe, 
and  that  he  had  no  wish  to  include  in  the 
Reich  people  of  any  other  race  than  the 
Germans'.  On  Saturday,  24  September, 
Chamberlain  returned  to  London. 

Before  the  Godesberg  conference  ended, 
the  Prague  government  was  informed  that 
the  British  and  French  governments  could 
no  longer  take  the  responsibility  of  ad- 
vising it  not  to  mobiUze.  French  opinion 
stiffened  and  M.  Daladier  said  that  if 
Czechoslovakia  were  attacked  France 
would  take  measures  to  help  her.  The 
Czech  government  rejected  the  German 
terms.  War  appeared  to  be  certain. 
British  mflitary  and  civil  defence  pre- 
parations were  pressed  forward  with  all 
speed. 

But  Chamberlain  refused  to  abandon 
his  peace  efforts.  On  26  September  he  sent 


Sir  Horace  Wilson  to  Berlin  with  a  letter 
to  Hitler  suggesting  that  German  and 
Czech  representatives  should  together 
consider  how  the  territory  to  be  ceded 
should  be  handed  over.  The  letter  was 
delivered  to  Hitler  the  same  day  by  Sir 
Horace  and  the  British  ambassador.  Next 
morning  Sir  Horace  saw  Hitler  again  and 
gave  him  this  message  from  the  British 
prime  minister : '  If,  in  pursuit  of  her  treaty 
obligations,  France  became  actively  en- 
gaged in  hostilities  against  Germany,  the 
United  Kingdom  would  feel  obliged  to 
support  her.'  'It  is  Tuesday  to-day', 
Hitler  retorted,  'and  by  next  Monday  we 
shall  be  at  war.'  But  he  replied  to  the 
prime  minister  with  an  assurance  that 
the  Czechs'  fears  were  groundless  and 
that  their  'economic  organism'  would  be 
stronger  than  before.  Chamberlain  there- 
upon appealed  to  him  not  to  risk  a  world 
war  when  settlement  was  within  reach  in 
a  few  days.  At  the  same  time  he  asked 
Mussolini  to  support  his  proposal  for 
further  negotiation ;  and  the  Duce  asked 
Hitler  and  Ribbentrop  to  delay  action  for 
twenty-four  hours. 

The  next  afternoon,  Wednesday,  28 
September,  the  prime  minister  reported 
to  the  House  of  Commons.  From  no 
quarter  was  there  any  ray  of  hope  that  war 
would  be  averted.  The  speech,  heard  in 
sombre  silence,  was  near  its  end  when  a 
note  from  Lord  Halifax  was  passed  along 
the  Treasury  bench  and  handed  to 
Chamberlain  who  read  it  and,  with  scarce 
a  pause,  announced  that  Hitler  had  in- 
vited him  to  a  conference  at  Munich  on 
the  following  day.  Mussolini  and  Daladier 
were  also  invited.  'I  need  not  say  what 
my  answer  will  be',  he  added.  The  reUef 
was  indescribable.  For  the  moment 
differences  were  forgotten,  and  the  good- 
will of  the  whole  House  was  with  him  as  he 
left  for  the  last  stage  of  these  momentous 
events. 

Many  people,  perhaps  most,  failed  to 
apprehend  the  Umited  range  of  the  Munich 
conference.  Settlement  was  possible  only 
on  the  basis  of  self-determination,  which 
meant  the  cession  of  the  Sudeten  districts 
in  which  Germans  were  a  majority  of  the 
population.  That  had  already  been  agreed : 
it  was  Hitler's  assumption  of  the  rights  of 
a  victor  in  war  that  the  Czechs,  supported 
in  this  by  Great  Britain  and  France,  foxmd 
intolerable.  In  a  few  hours  at  Munich  the 
Godesberg  terms  were  so  modified  that 
the  Czech  government  accepted  them. 
The  evacuation  of  the  Sudeten  areas,  which 
was  to  have  been  completed  on  1  October, 


160 


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was  extended  over  ten  days.  It  was 
agreed  that  the  limits  of  the  territory  to 
be  occupied  by  the  Germans  after  the  first 
four  days  should  be  defined  by  an  inter- 
national commission.  An  international 
force  was  to  occupy  the  plebiscite  areas. 
Hitler  withdrew  his  demand  that  the 
evacuating  Czechs  should  take  none  of 
their  goods  with  them.  The  release  of 
Germans  from  the  Czech  army  was  to  be 
completed,  not  in  one  day  but  in  four 
weeks ;  and  a  right  of  option  into  or  out 
of  the  transferred  territories  might  be 
exercised  at  any  time  within  six  months 
after  the  date  of  the  agreement.  So,  for 
the  time,  was  peace  saved. 

The  agreement  was  signed  at  12.30  a.m. 
on  Friday,  30  September.  Later  the  same 
morning  Chamberlain  saw  Hitler  for  the 
last  time  and  they  both  signed  a  declara- 
tion which,  taken  at  its  face  value,  was  of 
inunense  importance.  The  agreement  on 
Czechoslovakia  just  signed  was  said  to  be 
'symbolic  of  the  desire  of  our  two  peoples 
never  to  go  to  war  again ' ;  and  '  the 
method  of  consultation  shall  be  the  method 
adopted  to  deal  with  any  other  questions 
that  may  concern  our  two  countries '.  This 
document  had  been  prepared  by  Chamber- 
lain in  advance,  with  the  thought  in  his 
mind  that,  if  it  were  violated,  it  would 
effectually  damn  Hitler.  A  similar  de- 
claration, on  behalf  of  Germany  and 
France,  was  signed  in  Paris  several  weeks 
later. 

In  the  evening  of  30  September 
Chamberlain  was  welcomed  back  to  Lon- 
don by  vast  crowds  of  cheering  people. 
The  newspapers  of  all  parties  on  the 
Saturday  and  Sunday  acclaimed  him  as 
the  saviour  of  peace:  the  British  press 
had  never  been  more  united  on  any  great 
public  occasion.  The  churches  were 
crowded  at  services  of  thanksgiving.  From 
all  parts  of  the  world  messages  of  con- 
gratulation poured  into  Downing  Street. 
The  statesmen  of  the  Dominions  and 
Colonies  were  fervent  in  their  praise.  'A 
great  champion  has  appeared  in  the  lists'. 
General  Smuts  said  at  Johannesburg.  .  .  . 
'He  risked  all  and  I  trust  he  has  won  all.' 

But  there  was  criticism,  much  of  it 
strident  and  bitter,  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons during  the  four  days'  debate,  in  the 
following  week.  With  a  few  notable 
exceptions,  the  labour  party  was  solidly 
hostile ;  and  a  small  conservative  minority 
which  condemned  the  Munich  settlement 
included  Mr.  Churchill.  Yet  nearly  every 
speaker  swelled  the  chorus  of  praise  of 
the  prime  minister's  courageous  struggle 


for  peace.  All  deplored  the  terms  of  settle- 
ment. The  government's  justification  was 
put  in  one  sentence  by  Sir  John  Simon: 
'How  many  amongst  us  are  there  who, 
if  we  could  undo  what  was  then  done, 
would  reject  the  settlement  to  which  the 
prime  minister  put  his  hand  on  Friday, 
and  instead — because  it  was  the  only 
alternative— would  fling  the  world  into 
the  cauldron  of  immediate  war  ? '  Cham- 
berlain said:  'By  my  action  I  did  avoid 
war.  I  feel  equally  sure  that  I  was  right 
in  doing  so.' 

On  6  October,  by  366  votes  to  144,  the 
House  of  Commons  declared  confidence 
in  the  government.  There  was  no  division 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  the  speeches 
there,  spread  over  three  days,  nearly  all 
supported  Chamberlain's  policy.  It  was 
remarkable,  moreover,  that  in  the  French 
Chamber  the  Munich  settlement  was 
approved,  except  for  the  communists,  by 
an  all  but  unanimous  vote. 

Chamberlain  had  the  support  of  a  great 
majority  of  the  nation.  He  said  in  the 
Commons  debate  that  he  would  not  snatch 
party  advantage  by  capitalizing  the 
thankfulness  for  peace;  he  would  not 
advise  an  early  general  election  unless 
some  new  issue  arose  which  required  a 
fresh  mandate  from  the  country,  or  he  lost 
the  confidence  of  his  supporters.  One 
other  sentence  showed  that  on  the  morrow 
of  Munich  he  realized  the  grave  un- 
certainties of  the  future.  'It  is  possible', 
he  said,  'that  we  may  want  great  efforts 
from  the  nation  in  the  months  to  come, 
and  if  that  be  so  the  smaller  our  differ- 
ences the  better.'  He  had  insisted  that 
rearmament  would  be  pressed  forward. 

The  European  prospect  worsened 
throughout  the  autumn.  A  dreadful 
pogrom  against  Jews  in  Germany  horrified 
civilized  people  everywhere.  Hatred  of 
Hitler  and  his  works  spread  among  all 
classes  in  Britain.  But  Chamberlain 
would  not  yet  abandon  his  peace  efforts: 
if  there  was  to  be  war  let  the  coimtry  be 
ready  for  it.  He  could  not,  of  course, 
persist  in  his  attempt  to  turn  the  Germans 
from  their  evil  ways  and,  at  the  same 
time,  tell  the  world  what  he  thought  of 
their  leader.  The  restraints  which  his 
policy  imposed  were  misunderstood,  and 
the  prejudice  against  him,  fostered  by 
poUtical  opponents,  deepened  from  this 
time  on. 

With  Italy  relations  had  temporarily 
improved.  The  negotiations  that  followed 
Mr.  Eden's  resignation  soon  led  to  a  com- 
prehensive agreement.    It  was  approved 


161 


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D.N.B.  1931-1940 


by  the  House  of  Commons  on  2  May  1938. 
The  condition  that  it  should  not  take 
effect  vmtil  there  had  been  a  substantial 
withdrawal  of  Italian  forces  from  Spain 
was,  however,  insisted  upon  and  the 
agreement  did  not  come  into  full  operation 
until  November.  In  January  1939  Cham- 
berlain and  Lord  Halifax  went  to  Rome 
for  discussions  with  the  Italian  govern- 
ment, but  without  any  fixed  agenda  and 
the  visit  had  no  lasting  effect. 

In  the  same  month,  at  Birmingham, 
Chamberlain  spoke  of  political  tension  in 
Europe.  There  was  talk  of  German  designs 
on  the  free  city  of  Danzig  which  was  in  the 
Polish  customs  system;  but  Ribbentrop 
covmtered  that  with  the  assurance  at 
Warsaw  on  26  January  that  enmity  no 
longer  existed  between  Germans  and  Poles. 
This  was  the  prelude  to  a  war  of  nerves 
against  the  Czechs.  President  Hacha  was 
summoned  to  Berlin  on  14  March  and  there 
bullied  hour  after  hour  until  he  signed 
a  document  in  which  he  'placed  the  fate 
of  the  Czech  people  in  the  hands  of  the 
Reichsfiihrer'.  Czechoslovakia  was  simul- 
taneously invaded  and,  in  a  few  hours,  the 
Prague  Cabinet  surrendered. 

The  policy  of  appeasement  was  dead — 
'wantonly  shattered'.  Chamberlain  said 
at  Birmingham.  Hitler  stood  before  the 
world  a  man  forsworn,  whose  word  no  one 
could  trust,  from  whose  lawless  aggression 
no  neighbour  of  Germany  was  safe.  The 
Poles  at  once  consulted  the  British  and 
French  governments,  and  a  provisional 
miderstanding  was  reached.  On  31  March 
Chamberlain  announced  in  the  House  of 
Commons  that  Britain  and  France  would 
give  all  the  support  in  their  power  to 
Poland  if  her  independence  were  threatened 
while  negotiations  were  in  progress. 

Even  before  that  announcement  there 
were  more  aggressions:  Hitler  had  seized 
MemeUand  from  Lithuania  and  demanded 
the  incorporation  of  Danzig  in  the  Reich. 
On  Good  Friday,  7  April,  Italy  invaded 
Albania,  three  days  after  an  official  denial 
that  military  action  was  intended  against 
that  country.  The  British  government 
thereupon  gave  assurances  of  support  to 
Greece  and  Rumania,  and  made  a  long- 
term  agreement  with  Turkey. 

As  early  as  March  it  was  found  that 
Poland  and  Russia  could  not  be  brought 
into  one  alliance.  But  obviously  Britain's 
new  agreements  in  Europe  would  be 
strengthened  by  a  good  understanding 
with  the  Soviet  government.  Anglo-French 
negotiations  to  secure  it  were  begun  at 
Moscow  early  in  the  summer.  One  obstacle 


was  Russia's  demand  that  Britain  shoiild 
recognize  her  annexation  of  the  three 
Baltic  republics,  Latvia,  Esthonia,  and 
Lithuania.  This  could  not  be  squared  with 
the  British  policy  of  protecting  small 
nations  against  aggression.  Yet  on  24  May 
Chamberlain  told  the  House  of  Commons 
that  he  hoped  for  early  and  full  agreement. 
Discussions  continued,  and  at  the  begin- 
ning of  August  British  and  French  mili- 
tary missions  went  to  Moscow.  As  this 
was  done  on  Russia's  invitation,  a  painful 
shock  was  caused  by  the  announcement  on 
21  August  that  she  had  signed  a  non- 
aggression  pact  with  Germany. 

German  propagandist  reports  that 
Britain  would  now  abandon  Poland  were 
at  once  denied  by  Chamberlain.  If  the 
need  arose,  he  said,  British  forces  would 
be  fully  engaged  in  support  of  our  Allies. 
Yet  he  continued  the  most  strenuous 
exertions  to  prevent  war  and  intensified 
these  efforts  when,  in  the  last  week  of 
August,  the  hour  of  decision  was  felt  to 
be  near.  But  Hitler  was  bent  on  war,  and 
on  the  morning  of  Friday,  1  September, 
German  armies  invaded  Poland.  British 
and  French  demands  for  suspension  of 
hostilities  being  ignored.  Chamberlain,  at 
11.15  in  the  morning  of  Sunday,  3  Sep- 
tember, broadcast  from  10  Downing  Street 
the  annoimcement  that  'this  coimtry  is 
at  war  with  Germany.  ...  It  is  the  evil 
things  we  shall  be  fighting  against — brute 
force,  bad  faith,  injustice,  oppression  and 
persecution — and  against  them  I  am 
certain  that  right  wiU  prevail.'  France 
declared  war  on  Germany  six  hours  later. 

Chamberlain's  wish  that  the  war-time 
government  should  represent  all  parties 
was  thwarted  by  the  refusal  of  the  labour 
leaders  and  of  liberals  led  by  Sir  Archibald 
Sinclair  to  serve  under  him.  But  there 
were  some  notable  recruits,  Mr.  Churchill 
and  Mr.  Eden  among  them.  Emergency 
measures  were  passed  quickly  with  the 
support  of  all  parties. 

The  opening  stages  of  the  war  were  very 
different  from  what  had  been  expected. 
U-boat  attacks  on  British  and  AUied 
shipping  began  on  the  first  day  but  many 
months  passed  before  enemy  air  raiders 
bombed  London,  and  there  were  only 
minor  clashes  between  the  opposing  armies 
on  the  Franco-German  frontier.  After  the 
quick  defeat  of  Poland,  there  were  no 
important  land  operations  until  the  in- 
vasion of  Denmark  and  Norwaj^  on  9 
April  1940.  As  the  British  fleet,  owing  to 
air  attacks,  could  not  remain  in  the  Skager- 
rak,  there  was  no  effective  check  upon 


162 


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Chamberlain,  J.  A. 


enemy  reinforcements  for  Norway,  and 
the  small  British  forces  landed  to  help 
the  Norwegian  defence  were  mostly  re- 
embarked  Avithin  two  or  three  weeks. 

This  was  the  first  and  not  the  worst 
British  disaster  in  the  war  but  it  made  a 
greater  impression  upon  parliament  than 
any  that  followed.  On  7  and  8  May  the 
withdrawal  from  Norway  was  debated  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  In  the  division 
forced  by  the  labour  party  the  government 
was  given  a  majority  of  81 — the  figures 
were  281  to  200 — but  40  ministerialists 
were  in  the  minority  and  many  abstained. 
Chamberlain  thereupon  considered  his 
position  and,  when  he  was  informed  on 
10  May  that  labour  members  still  refused 
to  serve  under  him,  he  at  once  tendered 
his  resignation  and  advised  the  King  to 
commission  Mr.  Churchill  to  form  a  new 
administration.  The  change  was  an- 
nounced in  a  broadcast  by  Chamberlain 
that  night. 

Chamberlain  joined  the  new  govern- 
ment as  lord  president  of  the  Council  and 
for  several  months  worked  in  full  harmony 
with  his  successor.  In  August  he  under- 
went an  operation  which  was  believed  to 
be  successful  and  he  resumed  his  official 
duties,  but  only  for  a  short  time:  illness 
returned  and  on  1  October  he  resigned 
from  the  War  Cabinet,  knowing  that  his 
public  life  was  over.  Titular  honours 
(including  the  Garter)  he  declined,  pre- 
ferring to  remain  plain  Mr.  Chamberlain. 
He  was  a  freeman  of  Birmingham;  the 
freedom  of  the  City  of  London  death 
prevented  him  from  accepting,  and  the 
scroU  was  presented  to  Mrs.  Chamberlain 
in  1941.  Honorary  degrees  were  conferred 
upon  him  by  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Cambridge,  Birmingham,  Bristol,  Leeds, 
and  Reading ;  and  he  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society  (1938).  He  died  at 
Highfield  Park,  Heckfield,  near  Reading, 
on  9  November.  His  ashes  were  interred 
in  Westminster  Abbey.  His  son  and 
daughter  survived  him. 

Chamberlain's  career  has  some  remark- 
able features.  Coming  to  parhament  in 
his  fiftieth  year,  without  a  reputation  in 
national  politics,  he  excelled  in  every 
office  entrusted  to  liim  and  was  given  the 
premiership  for  the  best  of  all  reasons, 
because  he  was  the  most  trusted  man  in 
his  party.  He  owed  nothing  to  social 
influence.  He  was  temperamentally  un- 
fitted for  the  arts  of  self-advertisement. 
The  lucid  speech  of  which  he  was  a  master 
was  on   simple,   straight  lines:   and  the 


of  the  premiership  he  was  exceptionally 
efficient.  Occasionally  his  appointments 
to  government  office  were  criticized,  but 
his  leadership  of  the  Cabinet  was  strong 
and  masterful;  and  his  colleagues  knew 
that  in  all  affairs  that  came  before  them 
he  was  animated  by  a  lofty  sense  of  public 
duty.  To  this  all  his  varied  interests  were 
subordinate.  Gardening  and  bird  life 
attracted  him  all  through  his  life.  Music 
was  a  joy  to  him  and  he  did  much  to 
foster  public  interest  in  the  art.  Family 
love  and  loyalty  were  deep  and  strong. 
His  leadership  of  the  conservative  party 
did  not  mean  repudiation  of  essentials  in 
the  radical  faith  in  which  he  was  brought 
up,  and  it  was  a  grief  to  him  that  war 
prevented  far-reaching  social  reforms  upon 
which  his  heart  was  set.  The  failure  to 
maintain  peace  was  not,  however,  a 
complete  failure;  for,  as  Mr.  Churchill 
said  on  the  first  day  of  the  war,  his  resolute 
struggle  for  peace  was  of  the  highest  moral 
and  practical  value  and  secured  'the 
wholehearted  concurrence  of  scores  of 
millions  of  men  and  women  whose 
co-operation  was  indispensable'. 

Of  portraits  of  Chamberlain,  one,  by 
Sir  William  Orpen,  is  in  the  possession  of 
Mrs.  Chamberlain;  another,  by  Oswald 
Birley,  is  in  the  Birmingham  Art  Gallery ; 
and  a  third,  by  James  Gunn,  is  at  the 
Carlton  Club. 

[Keith  Failing,  The  Life  of  Neville  Chamber- 
lain, 1946;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  W.  Hadlky. 

CHAMBERLAIN,  Sir  (JOSEPH) 
AUSTEN  (1863-1937),  statesman,  was 
born  at  Birmingham  16  October  1863,  the 
only  son  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.]  by 
his  first  wife,  Harriet,  daughter  of  Archi- 
bald Kenrick,  of  Berrow  Court,  Edgbaston. 
His  mother  died  at  his  birth,  and  his 
father  subsequently  remarried  twice: 
(Arthur)  NeviUe  Chamberlain  [q.v.]  was 
his  half-brother.  Austen  Chamberlain 
was  educated  at  Rugby  and  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge ;  he  took  his  degree  in 
1885.  On  leaving  Cambridge  he  was  sent 
to  France  for  nine  months,  and  it  was  then 
that  he  developed  the  love  of  that  country 
which  was  to  influence  him  so  greatly  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  In  Paris  he  attended 
at  the  ficole  des  Sciences  Politiques,  and 
among  those  whose  acquaintance  he  made 
was  Clemenceau.  In  February  1887  he 
went  to  Germany  for  twelve  months,  and 
he  never  revisited  the  country,  although 
he  had  arranged  to  do  so  in  the  summer 
of  1914.    Chamberlain  went  regularly  to 


163 


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D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Treitschke's  lectures  on  Prussian  history, 
but  they  disquieted  him.  Beriin  did  not 
attract  him  as  Paris  had  done,  and  he 
found  it  'shghtly  provincial'.  What  was 
true  of  the  German  capital  equally  applied 
to  the  Germans  themselves,  and  from 
these  early  days  his  preference  was  always 
for  the  French. 

When  Chamberlain  came  home  from 
Germany  the  first  step  that  his  father  took 
was  to  find  him  a  constituency,  and  he 
was  duly  adopted  as  prospective  candi- 
date for  the  Border  Burghs.  He  nursed 
the  seat  for  four  years,  when  something 
more  attractive,  and  nearer  Birmingham, 
offered  itself,  namely.  East  Worcester- 
shire, and  he  was  returned  unopposed  as 
a  liberal  unionist  at  a  by-election  in  March 
1892.  Parliament  was  dissolved  shortly 
afterwards,  and  Chamberlain  did  not  make 
his  maiden  speech  until  after  the  ensuing 
general  election,  when  he  was  re-elected. 
In  April  1893,  however,  Gladstone  is 
found  writing  to  Queen  Victoria  that 
Austen  Chamberlain  had  'delivered  one 
of  the  best  speeches  which  has  been  made 
against  the  bill  [the  second  home  rule 
bill],  and  exhibited  himself  as  a  person  of 
whom  high  political  anticipations  may 
reasonably  be  entertained'.  The  liberal 
unionists  were  returned  forty-seven  strong 
at  the  election  of  1892,  and  Chamberlain 
was  appointed  their  junior  whip.  When 
the  conservatives  came  back  to  office  in 
1895  he  was  made  a  civil  lord  of  the 
Admiralty,  a  post  which  he  held  until  1900 
when  he  became  financial  secretary  to  the 
Treasury ;  as  usual,  that  soon  led  to  high 
office,  in  his  case  the  postmastership- 
general  with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet  and  a 
Privy  Councillorship.  In  1903  he  was  ap- 
pointed chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
when  both  his  father  and  the  free  traders 
left  Balfour's  administration. 

This  appointment  had  been  very  largely 
made  in  order  that  the  breach  between 
Joseph  Chamberlain  and  Balfour  should 
not  be  widened  unnecessarily,  and  Austen 
was  to  be  a  link  between  his  father  and  the 
prime  minister.  But  the  new  chancellor 
found  Balfour  by  no  means  easy  to  under- 
stand, and  if  he  acted  as  a  link,  it  was 
as  one  which  often  had  to  stand  a  very 
severe  strain.  He  was  responsible  for  two 
budgets  during  his  first  tenure  of  office 
as  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  but  the 
circumstances  in  which  he  was  appointed 
precluded  him  from  applying  the  principles 
of  tariff  reform  and  imperial  preference  in 
which  he  had  come  to  believe,  and  he  had 
to  do  the  best  he  could  with  the  exist- 


ing fiscal  system.  Nevertheless,  although 
neither  of  his  budgets  was  sensational, 
they  were  both  well  received .  In  December 
1905  the  administration  resigned,  and  at 
the  general  election  of  the  following  month 
its  supporters  were  routed  at  the  polls, 
although  East  Worcestershire  remained 
faithful  to  Austen  Chamberlain. 

Shortly  afterwards,  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain was  incapacitated  from  taking  any 
further  active  part  in  political  life,  and  in 
opposition  his  son  had  now  a  difficult  part 
to  play.  In  theory,  the  conservatives  and 
liberal  unionists  were  still  distinct,  but  as 
only  a  small  number  of  the  latter  had 
survived  the  election  Chamberlain's  im- 
mediate following  hardly  mattered:  his 
task  was  to  leaven  the  conservative  mass 
with  the  doctrine  of  tariff  reform,  and  to 
ensure  that  when  next  the  party  obtained 
a  majority  protection  would  be  carried 
into  effect.  This  brought  him  into  conflict 
with  other  sections  of  the  party,  and  not 
infrequently  with  Balfour  himself.  In  the 
fight  against  the  parliament  bill  in  1911 
he  was  numbered  among  the  'die-hards', 
although  in  later  years  he  admitted  that 
it  had  been  a  mistake  for  the  House  of 
Lords  to  throw  out  the  budget  in  the  first 
instance. 

In  November  1911  Balfour  resigned  the 
leadership  of  the  conservative  party  and 
Chamberlain  and  Walter  Long  (afterwards 
Viscount  Long  of  Wraxall,  q.v.)  were 
rival  candidates  for  the  succession.  How- 
ever, as  the  voting  was  likely  to  be  close, 
they  both  stood  down  in  favour  of  Bonar 
Law,  who  was  elected  unanimously. 
Whether  this  compromise  was  really  in 
the  best  interests  of  the  party  and  the 
country  is  a  moot  point,  and  Chamberlain 
was  to  have  differences  at  least  as  serious 
with  his  new  leader  as  those  which  he  had 
experienced  with  his  old.  At  first  Bonar 
Law  relied  upon  him  to  a  very  large 
extent,  but  before  long,  to  quote  Cham- 
berlain himself  in  Down  the  Years,  he 
'turned  more  and  more  to  Sir  Edward 
Carson'  and  Chamberlain  doubted  the 
wisdom  of  concentrating  the  party's 
energies  so  largely  upon  opposition  to  the 
third  home  rule  bill,  to  the  exclusion  of 
educational  work  for  tariff  reform.  There 
was,  in  particular,  a  sharp  difference  of 
opinion  between  the  two  men  over  the 
advisability  of  postponing  the  imposition 
of  taxes  on  food  in  the  event  of  a  conser- 
vative victory,  a  course  advocated  by 
Bonar  Law. 

Chamberlain  played  a  prominent  part 
during  the  days  immediately  preceding 


164 


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Chamberlain,  J.  A. 


the  outbreak  of  the  war  of  1914-1918  in 
inducing  the  opposition  leaders  to  bring 
pressure  upon  the  government  to  stand 
by  France  and  Russia,  and  to  assure 
Asquith  of  conservative  support.  When 
the  coaHtion  was  formed  in  May  1915  he 
became  secretary  of  state  for  India,  and 
he  retained  that  office  for  two  years.  His 
resignation  was  brought  about  by  the  mis- 
management of  the  campaign  in  Mesopo- 
tamia, for  the  commission  which  inquired 
into  it  revealed  a  very  disquieting  state 
of  affairs,  particularly  where  the  medical 
services  were  concerned.  There  was  never 
any  suggestion  that  blame  attached  to 
Chamberlain,  but  he  was  secretary  of  state 
for  India,  and  as  it  was  his  department 
which  was  involved  he  felt  it  to  be  his 
duty  to  resign  in  July  1917. 

Until  April  1918,  when  he  became  a 
member  of  the  War  Cabinet,  Chamberlain 
remained  out  of  office,  although  his 
services  were  by  no  means  wasted,  for  he 
did  valuable  work  on  a  committee  to  con- 
trol the  dollar  expenditure  of  all  depart- 
ments. When  Lloyd  George  reorganized 
his  government  after  the  general  election 
of  1918  he  offered  Chamberlain  the  post 
of  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  which  was 
accepted  (January  1919)  on  condition  that 
therfe  should  be  an  early  return  to  the  old 
Cabinet  system  which  had  been  suspended 
during  the  war.  During  this  second  period 
at  the  Treasury  Chamberlain  was  con- 
fronted with  a  very  difficult  situation,  not 
least  owing  to  the  industrial  unrest  which 
was  the  aftermath  of  the  war,  and  the 
three  budgets  for  which  he  was  respon- 
sible went  a  long  way  towards  placing  the 
national  finances  on  a  sound  footing.  For 
two  years  he  remained  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  with  Bonar  Law  as  lord  privy 
seal  and  leader  of  the  conservative  party. 
In  March  1921  Bonar  Law  retired  on 
account  of  ill  health,  and  Chamberlain 
succeeded  him  in  the  conservative  leader- 
ship :  the  Exchequer  he  vacated  in  favour 
of  Sir  Robert  Home  (afterwards  Viscount 
Home  of  Slamannan,  q.v.). 

Chamberlain  was  leader  of  the  conserva- 
tive party  in  the  House  of  Commons  from 
the  spring  of  1921  until  the  autumn  of  the 
following  year,  and  his  task  was  no  easy 
one.  The  rank  and  file  was  showing  every 
day  a  more  marked  desire  to  break  away 
from  the  coalition,  and  was  arguing  that 
in  view  of  the  unpopularity  of  the  govern- 
ment this  was  the  only  course  for  the 
conservative  party  to  pursue  if  it  was  not 
o  go  down  to  disaster  with  Lloyd  George 
t  the  next  general  election.  Chamberlain 


did  not  share  this  opinion.  He  had  no 
confidence  in  his  party's  ability  to  win  an 
independent  majority  of  its  own,  and  in 
view  of  the  strength  of  the  disruptive 
forces  up  and  down  the  country  the  fall 
of  the  existing  administration  might  well 
be  the  prelude  to  revolution.  From  the 
beginning,  therefore,  there  were  sharp 
differences  between  the  new  leader  and 
many  of  his  followers. 

The  great  dissolvent  of  conservative 
unity  was  the  problem  of  Ireland.  Cham- 
berlain was,  in  October  1921,  one  of  the 
British  representatives  at  the  conferences 
which  then  began  with  Sinn  Fein.  He  also 
signed  the  Irish  'treaty'  itself  on  6  Decem- 
ber. His  next  task  was  to  obtain  the 
assent  of  his  followers  to  the  settlement, 
and  although  he  secured  a  substantial 
majority  at  the  party  conference  in  Liver- 
pool his  difficulties  were  increased  rather 
than  diminished.  The  'die-hards',  as  the 
irreconcilable  element  was  again  termed, 
became  increasingly  dissatisfied  with  his 
continued  support  of  Lloyd  George,  and 
during  the  year  1922  his  position  and  that 
of  the  government  was  still  further 
weakened  by  the  murder  of  Sir  Henry 
Wilson  [q.v.]  and  by  the  situation  in  the 
Near  East  where  war  with  Turkey  was 
narrowly  averted. 

With  the  approach  of  autumn  the  crisis 
within  the  conservative  party  reached  its 
height,  and  the  head  of  the  machine,  Sir 
George  Younger  (afterwards  Viscount 
Younger  of  Leckie,  q.v.),  was  at  open 
variance  with  his  chief.  Accordingly  a 
meeting  of  conservative  members  of 
parliament  was  convoked  at  the  Carlton 
Club  on  19  October,  and  Chamberlain 
recommended  that  the  existing  govern- 
ment as  then  constituted  under  the 
leadership  of  Lloyd  George  should  go  to  the 
country ;  it  would  be  time  to  talk  of  changes 
when  the  victory  had  been  won.  A  motion 
was  at  once  proposed  to  the  effect  that  the 
party  'should  fight  the  election  as  an 
independent  party  with  its  own  leader  and 
its  own  programme',  and  this  point  of 
view  was  backed  by  Stanley  Baldwin.  It 
was,  however,  the  reappearance  of  Bonar 
Law  that  decided  the  issue,  for  he  gave 
his  support  to  the  motion,  which  was  then 
carried  by  187  votes  to  87.  Chamberlain 
refused,  as  he  put  it,  'to  send  to  the  prime 
minister  a  message  of  dismissal',  and  he 
consequently  ceased  to  be  leader  of  the 
conservative  party. 

Chamberlain,  in  common  with  Lord 
Birkenhead  and  others  who  had  supported 
him  at  the  Carlton  Club,  did  not  take 


165 


Chamberlain,  J.  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


office  under  either  Bonar  Law  or  Baldwin, 
but  assumed  an  attitude  of  benevolent 
neutrality.  This  attitude,  so  far  as  Cham- 
berlain was  concerned,  was  in  no  small 
measure  due  to  the  presence  of  his  half- 
brother,  Neville  Chamberlain,  in  the 
administration,  and  he  is  found  writing, 
'If  Neville  had  not  joined  this  Govern- 
ment, I'd  have  had  them  out  in  six  months.' 
Chamberlain  disapproved  of  the  precipi- 
tancy of  Baldwin  in  going  to  the 
country  in  1923  on  a  protectionist  policy 
without  adequate  preparation,  but  the 
labour  victory  at  the  polls  soon  reunited 
the  conservative  party.  When,  therefore, 
Baldwin,  on  the  formation  of  his  second 
government  in  November  1924,  offered 
Chamberlain  the  foreign  secretaryship  he 
gladly  accepted. 

Chamberlain  took  office  in  circumstances 
of  peculiar  difficulty,  in  view  of  the 
estrangement  of  France  from  Germany 
over  the  occupation  of  the  Ruhr,  although 
he  had  the  advantage  of  enjoying  that 
free  hand  which  Baldwin  gave  to  all  his 
ministers.  His  first  task  was  to  denounce 
the  protocol  of  Geneva,  which  had  been 
approved  by  the  previous  government. 
The  proposal  had  met  with  a  hostile 
reception  in  many  quarters  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  Empire  overseas,  and  was 
especially  disliked  by  Chamberlain's  own 
party.  Something,  nevertheless,  had  to  be 
put  in  its  place,  and  an  offer  by  Strese- 
mann,  then  German  foreign  minister,  to 
guarantee  the  existing  territorial  position 
on  the  Rhine,  gave  Chamberlain  an  op- 
portunity to  initiate  negotiations  which 
later  resulted  in  the  Locarno  pact.  His 
patience  in  overcoming  obstacles,  both  on 
the  part  of  Germany  and  of  France,  was 
remarkable,  for  although  the  scheme  was 
first  envisaged  in  January  1925,  it  was  not 
until  the  following  16  October  that  the 
Locarno  pact  was  actually  signed.  It  was 
very  largely  Chamberlain's  work,  and  the 
recognition  of  this  fact  came  in  the  form 
of  the  Garter,  which  was  conferred  upon 
him  at  this  time,  an  honour  bestowed  upon 
only  two  commoners,  Sir  Edward  Grey 
and  A.  J.  Balfour,  since  the  award  to 
Castlereagh  in  1814.  If  it  be  objected  that 
the  Locarno  pact  did  not  go  far  enough, 
especially  where  Germany's  eastern  fron- 
tiers were  concerned,  the  answer  must  be 
that  it  was  as  far  as  Chamberlain  could 
then  have  persuaded  his  fellow  coimtry- 
men  to  go,  and  that  it  did  give  Europe  a 
breathing-space. 

Chamberlain  was  the  first  foreign  secre- 
tary to  make  a  habit  of  attending  regu- 


larly the  meetings  of  the  Council  of  the 
League  of  Nations,  and  in  1926  his  presence 
at  Geneva  was  very  necessary  to  ensure 
for  Germany  that  seat  on  the  Council 
which  she  had  been  promised  at  Locarno. 
It  was  not  only  in  Europe  that  Chamber- 
lain had  difficulties  to  surmount.  He  had 
hardly  taken  office  when  he  was  confronted 
with  the  murder  of  Sir  Lee  Stack  [q.v.], 
and  during  his  tenure  of  the  foreign  secre- 
taryship he  was  continually  endeavouring 
to  put  the  admittedly  imsatisfactory 
Anglo-Egyptian  relations  upon  a  sounder 
footing.  In  1927  matters  got  so  far  as  a 
draft  treaty,  but  these  hopes  were  wrecked 
upon  the  rock  of  Wafd  opposition.  In 
China,  too,  the  British  position  became 
extremely  serious  in  face  of  an  outbreak 
of  xenophobia  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
refusal  of  the  Japanese  to  co-operate  on 
the  other.  Chamberlain  was  much  criti- 
cized for  making  no  effort  to  regain  the 
British  concession  at  Hankow,  which  had 
been  captured  by  the  Chinese  in  January 
1927,  but  he  knew  that  the  country  was 
not  prepared  for  a  campaign  in  the  in- 
terior of  China ;  nevertheless  he  persuaded 
the  Cabinet  to  send  a  strong  force  to 
Shanghai  to  prevent  a  repetition  there  of 
the  events  which  had  taken  place  at 
Hankow. 

During  the  greater  part  of  1928  Cham- 
berlain was  ill,  and  so  was  unable  to  be 
present  at  the  signing  of  the  Kellogg  pact 
in  Paris  on  27  August  of  that  year.  At  the 
general  election  of  May  1929  the  conser- 
vative government  was  defeated,  and 
although  Chamberlain  urged  Baldwin  to 
meet  parliament,  the  prime  minister  de- 
cided otherwise,  and  the  administration 
resigned. 

Of  the  various  offices  which  Chamber- 
lain held  during  the  course  of  his  career 
he  is  best  remembered  for  his  foreign 
secretaryship.  In  this  connexion  he  would 
seem  to  have  two  claims  to  distinction ;  he 
never  took  a  step  without  preparing  the 
way  very  carefully  indeed,  and  his  his- 
torical sense  rendered  him  profoundly 
aware  of  the  mistakes  of  his  predecessors. 
It  has  been  said  that  he  was  little  more 
than  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay, 
and,  alternatively,  that  he  was  the  dupe 
of  Stresemann.  These  accusations  are 
mutually  contradictory,  and  neither  of 
them  is  true.  As  foreign  secretary  he  was 
above  all  else  a  great  realist;  he  never 
hankered  after  the  unattainable,  but  he 
did  his  best  with  the  tools  that  he  had. 
When  he  laid  down  office  the  world  was 
far  more  settled  than  it  had  been  when  he 


166 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Chamberlain,  J.  A. 


became  foreign  secretary  four  and  a  half 
years  earlier. 

For  a  time  Chamberlain  was  under  a 
cloud ;  he  was  returned  for  West  Birming- 
ham, the  seat  to  which  he  had  succeeded 
on  his  father's  death  in  1914,  and  which 
he  never  lost,  by  the  narrow  majority  of 
43:  his  policy  of  solidarity  with  France 
was  temporarily  unpopular  in  many 
quarters;  and  a  number  of  conservative 
members  of  parliament  had  asked  Baldwin 
for  a  promise  that  Chamberlain  would  not 
go  back  to  the  Foreign  Office  when  their 
party  returned  to  power.  He  had,  how- 
ever, no  longer  any  ambitions  for  himself, 
and,  the  ties  between  himself  and  his 
brother  being  as  strong  as  they  were, 
all  his  political  hopes  were  based  upon 
Neville  succeeding  Baldwin  in  the  leader- 
ship, and  thus  eventually  becoming  prime 
minister. 

When  the  all-party  government  came 
to  be  formed  in  August  1931,  and  Cham- 
berlain was  asked  to  co-operate,  he  willing- 
ly agreed,  but  he  was  bitterly  disappointed 
that  it  was  the  Admiralty  and  not  the 
Foreign  Office  which  was  offered  to  him. 
He  felt  that  at  the  latter  he  might  have 
been  of  real  assistance,  whereas  at  the 
Admiralty  'except  to  a  few  I  appear  not 
as  someone  who  gives  all  he  can  to  help 
in  a  crisis  but  as  an  old  party  hack  who 
might  be  dangerous  outside  and  so  must 
have  his  mouth  stopped  with  office'.  His 
tenure  of  office  as  first  lord  of  the  Admiralty 
was  not  destined  to  be  of  long  continuance, 
but  it  was  marked  by  one  important 
event,  namely,  the  naval  mutiny  at  Inver- 
gordon  in  September.  It  has,  however, 
nowhere  been  suggested  either  that 
Chamberlain  was  in  any  way  responsible 
for  this  incident,  or  that  his  attitude  was 
other  than  scrupulously  correct.  After  the 
general  election  of  October  1931  he  wrote 
to  Baldwin  to  say  that  he  waived  all  claim 
to  inclusion  in  the  new  administration 
which  was  in  process  of  formation.  By  no 
means  the  least  cogent  of  the  motives  by 
which  he  was  actuated  was  the  desire  to 
help  his  brother.  'I  hope',  he  wrote,  'that 
my  elimination  will  make  Neville's  acces- 
sion to  the  Chancellorship  easier  to 
secure.' 

When  Chamberlain  left  office  for  the 
last  time  he  had  still  five  and  a  half  years 

Ito  live,  and  his  position,  politically,  re- 
called that  of  his  father  between  1886  and 
1895  in  that  he  exercised  over  the  House 
of  Commons  a  control  which  had  not  been 
his  when  he  was  a  minister.  Advancing 
years  may  have  prevented  him  from  that 


participation  in  the  daily  round  at  West- 
minster which  had  characterized  him 
during  the  earlier  part  of  his  career,  but 
he  was  rarely  absent  when  foreign  policy 
was  the  subject  to  be  discussed.  Nor  did 
he  treat  the  House  of  Commons  as  if  it 
were  a  mere  platform  from  which  to 
address  the  country,  for  he  listened  to 
others  with  the  courteous  attention  that 
he  expected  from  his  listeners.  He  refused 
to  indulge  in  any  factious  criticism  of  the 
government  of  the  day,  but  as  the  Ger- 
man danger  became  ever  more  manifest 
he  neglected  no  opportunity  of  warning 
his  fellow  countrymen  against  it.  Another 
task  which  occupied  a  good  deal  of  his 
time  was  the  work  of  the  joint  select 
parliamentary  committee  on  Indian  con- 
stitutional reform  which  was  set  up  in 
1932,  and  of  which  he  was  a  member. 

Chamberlain  took  part  at  this  time  in 
a  number  of  non-political  activities.  He 
was  chancellor  of  Reading  University 
(1935-1937),  and  chairman  both  of  the 
court  of  governors  of  the  London  School 
of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine  and  of 
the  governing  body  of  the  British  Post- 
graduate Medical  School;  he  was  also 
chairman  of  the  board  of  governors  of 
Rugby  School :  in  all  of  these  capacities  he 
worked  extremely  hard,  for  to  the  very 
end  he  displayed  all  his  old  zeal  on  behalf 
of  any  cause  with  which  he  was  associated. 
In  addition,  he  formed  a  number  of  busi- 
ness connexions,  and  also  wrote  from  time 
to  time  for  the  British,  French,  and 
American  press.  It  was  during  this  period, 
too,  that  he  published  two  books  of  an 
autobiographical  character. 

The  last  occasion  on  which  Chamberlain 
appeared  in  the  centre  of  the  political  stage 
was  in  December  1935,  after  the  conclusion 
of  the  Hoare-Laval  pact,  which  he  criti- 
cized severely.  It  was  said  that  at  first 
the  government  had  intended  to  stand  by 
the  pact,  and  that  what  decided  Baldwin 
to  take  the  opposite  course,  even  at  the 
price  of  dropping  his  foreign  secretary, 
was  the  fear  that  Chamberlain  would 
attack  him,  although  in  actual  fact  Cham- 
berlain had  not  decided  what  line  to  adopt. 
In  the  ensuing  debate  Chamberlain  sup- 
ported the  government,  but  he  believed, 
with  considerable  justification,  that  'after 
S.  B.'s  miserably  inadequate  speech  and 
the  initial  blunder'  he  could  'have  so 
reduced  his  majority  as  to  force  his 
resignation'.  On  the  following  day  Bald- 
win asked  Chamberlain  to  join  the  ad- 
ministration as  minister  of  state  without 
a  department,,  as  he  considered  that  he  was. 


167 


Chamberlain,  J.  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


too  old  to  go  to  the  Foreign  Office  again. 
Chamberlain  refused,  as  he  believed  that 
all  that  Baldwin  wanted  was  'the  use  of 
my  name  to  help  patch  up  the  damaged 
prestige  of  his  government'. 

Chamberlain  died  suddenly  in  London 
16  March  1937.  To  turn  from  the  states- 
man to  the  man,  all  who  knew  him  can 
bear  witness  to  his  devotion  to  his  family 
and  to  his  sociability.  He  married  in  1906 
Ivy  Muriel,  daughter  of  Colonel  Henry 
Lawrence  Dundas,  of  Datchet,  and  had 
two  sons  and  one  daughter.  He  was  a 
devoted  husband  and  father,  and  it  was 
the  happiness  of  his  home  life  which  en- 
abled him  to  emerge  unscathed  from  the 
storms  of  his  public  career.  He  was  a 
scholar,  and  throughout  his  life  he  read 
widely,  which  was  apparent  in  all  that  he 
did  and  said.  He  was  also  a  lover  of  nature 
and  of  rural  pursuits,  and  possessed  a  very 
considerable  knowledge  of  flowers.  No- 
thing gave  him  greater  pleasure  than  to 
stroll  through  woods  and  fields  in  spring 
picking  primroses  and  cowslips,  and  when 
he  was  able  to  cultivate  a  rock-garden  in 
Sussex,  he  spent  many  hours  attending  to 
his  precious  Alpines  on  which  he  became 
quite  an  authority.  Owing  to  his  poor 
sight  and  immaculate  attire  Chamberlain 
often  conveyed  to  strangers  an  impression 
of  austerity  which  was  very  far  from  being 
the  case.  Actually,  he  was  the  most 
'  clubbable '  of  men,  was  naturally  sociable, 
and  delighted  in  company.  He  was  an 
extremely  interesting  and  agreeable  talker, 
for  he  had  stored  up  in  a  exceedingly  reten- 
tive memory  a  host  of  reminiscences 
which  he  told  well.  He  had  an  even 
temper  which  was  always  under  control, 
and  an  inborne  generosity  which  led  him  to 
acknowledge  without  reserve  any  mistakes 
which  he  had  made.  He  delighted  in 
travel  and  sight-seeing,  especially  if  he 
had  the  opportunity  of  studying  pictures 
and  works  of  art,  in  which  he  took  great 
pleasure.  He  spoke  French  easily  and 
well,  and  although  his  German  became 
rather  rusty,  he  could  understand  most  of 
a  conversation  in  that  language.  He  had 
a  large  acquaintance  among  people  of 
many  nations,  and  he  liked  to  invite  them 
to  his  house  in  London,  and  to  exchange 
views  with  them  upon  international 
politics. 

The  chief  portraits  of  Chamberlain  are 
a  full-length  in  Garter  robes  by  I.  M. 
Cohen  in  the  Cordwainers'  Company's 
hall ;  one  as  chancellor  of  Reading  Univer- 
sity by  Sir  William  Rothenstein  at  Read- 
ing ;  and  one  by  P.  A.  de  Ldszlo  in  the  robes 


of  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  private 
possession. 

[The  Times,  17  March  1937;  Austen 
Chamberlain,  Down  the  Years,  1935,  Politics 
from  Inside,  1936,  and  Seen  in  Passing,  1937 ; 
E.  Stern-Rubarth,  Three  Men  Tried,  1939; 
Sir  Charles  Petrie,  Life  and  Letters  of  the 
Right  Hon.  Sir  Austen  Chamberlain,  2  vols., 
1939-1940 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Petrie. 

CHAMPNEYS,  BASIL  (1842-1935), 
architect  and  author,  was  born  in  London 
17  September  1842,  the  third  of  the  five 
sons  of  WiUiam  Weldon  Champneys, 
rector  of  St.  Marj^'s  church,  Whitechapel, 
afterwards  dean  of  Lichfield  [q.v.],  by  his 
wife,  Mary  Anne,  fourth  daughter  of  Paul 
Storr,  of  Beckenham,  Kent.  He  was  an 
elder  brother  of  Sir  F.  H.  Champneya 
[q.v.]. 

Champneys  was  educated  at  Charter- 
house School,  then  in  London;  and  atj 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  hej 
obtained  a  second  class  in  the  classical! 
tripos  of  1864,  He  then  studied  architec- 
ture under  John  Prichard,  diocesan  sur- 
veyor of  Llandaff,  who  was  'an  uncom- 
promising medievalist,  and  stickler  for 
the  letter  of  Gothic'.  He  began  private 
practice  in  1867  and  continued  it  for 
forty  years.  The  long  list  of  his  buildings 
includes  the  Indian  Institute,  Mansfield  j 
College,  the  Robinson  Tower  at  New  CoI-| 
lege,  new  buildings  for  Oriel  and  Mertonf 
Colleges,  the  library  of  Somerville  Col- 
lege, and  the  church  of  St.  Peter-le-Bailey,* 
all  at  Oxford ;  the  Archaeological  Muse- 
um, the  Divinity  and  Literary  Schools, 
and  Newnham  College  (at  intervals  from 
1875  to  1910),  all  at  Cambridge;  new 
buildings  for  Bedford  College,  in  Regent's 
Park,  London;  King's  Lynn  Grammar 
School;  the  Butler  Museum  at  Harrow 
School;  the  chapel  at  Mill  Hill  School; 
the  museum  at  Winchester  College;  the 
Harpur  Girls'  School  at  Bedford ;  churches 
at  Slindon  (Staffordshire),  Hastings,  and 
Kentish  Town;  much  work  at  Manches- 
ter Cathedral;  and,  most  important  of 
all,  the  John  Rylands  Memorial  Library 
in  Deansgate,  Manchester,  which  took 
nine  years  (1890-1899)  to  build  and 
equip.  This  remarkable  and  costly  monu- 
ment was  raised  to  the  memory  of  John 
Rylands  [q.v.]  by  his  widow,  as  a  worthy 
repository  for  the  fine  collection  of  early 
books  and  manuscripts  (the  'Althorp 
Library')  which  he  had  purchased  from 
Lord  Spencer.  Mrs.  Rylands  seems  to 
have  admired  the  small  library  of  Mans- 


168 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Charles 


field  College,  one  of  Champneys's  most  suc- 
cessful buildings,  and  to  have  asked  him 
to  develop  it  on  a  far  more  lavish  and 
magnificent  scale.  In  spite  of  its  cramped 
position  on  a  mean  street,  the  Rylands 
Library  is  a  really  noble  design  carried  out 
in  every  detail  with  consummate  skill  in 
late  Gothic  style  and  with  considerable 
regard  for  practical  requirements.  Champ- 
neys  was  happiest  when  working  in  stone 
rather  than  in  brick,  and  in  late  Gothic 
rather  than  in  neo-Jacobean  or  some  form 
of  Renaissance  design.  His  work  was 
always  scholarly ;  and,  if  not  invariably 
original,  was  at  least  more  original  than 
that  of  some  of  his  contemporaries. 

The  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects 
paid  tribute  to  Champneys's  great  talents 
by  awarding  him  the  Royal  gold  medal  for 
architecture  in  1912,  but  he  never  became 
A  member  of  that  institute  or  took  any 
part  in  professional  politics,  being  himself 
\%  pronounced  individualist  who  regarded 
MPchitecture  as  an  art  rather  than  a  pro- 
fession. However,  he  was  by  no  means  a 
•ecluse  and  had  a  wide  circle  of  friends, 
unong  them  Coventry  Patmore  [q.v.], 
whose  Memoirs  and  Correspondence  he 
published  in  1900.  It  is  said  that  he 
iivided  his  time  fairly  equally  between 
irchitecture  and  literature,  and  as  early 
IS  1875  he  produced  a  little  book  on  the 
Shen  unfrequented  district  around  Rye 
md  Romney  Marsh  under  the  title  A 
'iuiet  Corner  of  England.  In  later  life  he 
jublished  (1915)  a  Retrospect  and  Memoir 
f  his  mother-in-law,  Adelaide  Drummond, 
ind  also  wrote  many  delightful  articles  on 
listoric  towns  and  buildings. 

Champneys  married  in  1876  May 
'heresa  Ella,  second  daughter  of  Maurice 
Jrummond,  a  descendant  of  William 
Drummond,  fourth  Viscount  Strathallan 
q.v.],  and  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 
Je  died  at  his  home  at  Hampstead  5  April 
,935,  at  the  age  of  ninety -two. 

[The  Times,  6  April  1935;  Manchester 
hiardian,  8  April  1935 ;  Builder  and  Architect, 
2  April  1935;  Journal  of  the  Royal  Insti- 
llte  of  British  Architects,  27  April  1935.] 

Maktin  S.  Briggs. 


CHARLES,  ROBERT  HENRY  (1855- 
931),  archdeacon  of  Westminster  and 
dblical  scholar,  was  born  at  Cookstown, 
o.  Tyrone,  6  August  1855,  the  fifth  of  the 
even  sons  of  David  Hughes  Charles,  M.D., 

P.,  of  Cookstown,  by  his  wife,  Annie 
Elizabeth,  second  daughter  of  John  Allen. 
le  was  an  elder  brother  of  Sir  Richard 
[avelock  Charles,  first  baronet  [q.v.].  His 


education  was  begun  at  a  private  school 
near  his  home ;  but  he  became  dissatisfied 
with  the  quality  of  the  instruction,  and, 
at  his  own  request,  he  was  transferred  to 
Belfast  Academy.  Here  he  made  rapid 
progress,  and  entered  Queen's  College, 
Belfast,  in  1874.  Concentrating  on  classics, 
he  won  the  first  of  five  scholarships,  and 
graduated  B.A.  (1877)  and  M.A.  (1880), 
both  with  first  class  honours.  During  his 
undergraduate  years  at  Belfast  he  passed 
through  a  spiritual  crisis,  one  of  the  results 
of  which  was  his  resolve  to  seek  ordination. 
He  accordingly  entered  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  where  he  had  a  brilliant  career  in 
classics  and  theology.  At  the  end  of  his 
courses  he  spent  some  time  in  Germany 
and  Switzerland  ;  and  it  was  during  a  stay 
at  Heidelberg  that  he  met  Mary  Lilias, 
daughter  of  William  Bence-Jones,  of 
Lisselan,  co.  Cork.  They  were  married  in 
1886 ;  and,  although  they  had  no  children, 
their  house  was  the  home  of  a  number  of 
nieces  whom  they  brought  up  as  their  own 
children. 

Charles  was  ordained  deacon  in  1883 
and  priest  in  1884  and  during  the  six  years 
from  1883  to  1889  served  curacies  in 
Whitechapel,  Kensington,  and  Kennington 
with  such  zeal  and  energy  that  his  health 
was  seriously  impaired  and  prolonged  rest 
became  necessary.  With  his  wife  he  went 
to  Germany  for  a  year.  During  this  visit 
he  began  the  study  of  the  religious  develop- 
ments within  Judaism  in  the  period 
between  the  Testaments,  and  particularly 
the  exposition  of  the  Apocalyptic  literature 
both  Jewish  and  Christian. 

On  their  return  Charles  settled  in  Oxford 
and  incorporated  at  Exeter  College  in 
1891.  At  Oxford  began  the  publication  of 
a  long  series  of  works  of  first-rate  impor- 
tance. It  opened  with  an  English  transla- 
tion of  the  Book  of  Enoch  (1893,  2nd  ed. 
1912)  and  was  crowned  by  the  massive 
edition  of  the  Apocalypse  of  St.  John  (2 
vols.,  1920)  and  the  great  Critical  and 
Exegetical  Commentary  on  the  Book  of 
Daniel  (1929).  In  the  intervening  years  he 
published  English  translations,  with  com- 
mentaries, of  many  important  Apocalyp- 
ses. More  important  still,  he  provided 
scholars  with  reliable  information  al)out 
the  texts.  For  this  purpose  it  was 
necessary  to  command  not  only  Hebrew, 
Greek,  and  Latin,  but  also  Syriac,  Arme- 
nian, and  Ethiopic.  Charles  did  it  all:  his 
mastery  of  classical  Ethiopic  was  out- 
standing and  universally  recognized.  His 
critical  editions  of  the  Book  of  Jubilees 
(Ethiopic,  1895)  and  Enoch  (also  Ethiopic, 


169 


Charles 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1906),  and  The  Testaments  of  the  Twelve 
Patriarchs  (Greek,  1908)  are  indispensable. 
Indeed,  nothing  of  his  on  Apocalyptic 
literature  can  safely  be  ignored.  "VVhile 
pursuing  his  own  researches  with  charac- 
teristic zeal  he  gathered  about  him  a  band 
of  scholars  with  similar  interests,  and  the 
result  of  their  joint  labours  was  the  great 
Oxford  edition  of  The  Apocrypha  and 
Pseudepigrapha  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
English  (2  vols.,  1913),  in  which,  besides 
the  general  editorship,  Charles  had  a  large 
share  of  the  detailed  work.  He  brought 
together  his  conclusions  on  the  Apocalyptic 
literature  and  its  main  ideas  in  two  im- 
portant articles,  'Apocalyptic  Literature' 
and  'Eschatology',  published  in  the 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica;  in  his  Jowett 
lectures  for  1898-1899,  A  Critical  History 
of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life  in  Israel, 
in  Judaism  and  in  Christianity  (1899,  2nd 
revised  and  enlarged  ed.  1913) ;  and  in  his 
Religious  Development  between  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testaments  (1914).  In  1916  he 
made  a  valuable  contribution  to  Byzantine 
studies  by  producing  an  English  edition  of 
the  Chronicle  of  John,  Bishop  of  Nikiu. 

Charles's  great  scholarship  obtained  due 
recognition.  He  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Belfast  (1923)  and 
Oxford  (1928).  He  was  professor  of  biblical 
Greek  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin  (1898- 
1906) ;  Grinfield  lecturer  on  the  Septua- 
gint  (1905-1911)  and  Speaker's  lecturer  in 
bibUcal  studies  (1910-1914)  at  Oxford; 
Warburton  lecturer  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Chapel  from  1919 ;  and  Schweich  lecturer 
of  the  British  Academy  (1919-1920).  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1906  and  of  Merton  College, 
Oxford,  in  1910.  In  1925  he  was  the  first 
recipient  of  the  British  Academy's  medal 
for  biblical  studies.  In  1913  he  was  ap- 
pointed a  canon  of  Westminster,  and 
became  archdeacon  in  1919.  Here  he 
applied  himself  with  his  customary  zeal 
to  the  duties  of  his  office,  especially  the 
preaching.  His  sermons  were  solid  and 
scholarly  deliverances  on  important  mat- 
ters of  Christian  life  and  doctrine:  many 
of  them  appeared  in  print.  In  the  last 
eighteen  months  of  his  Ufe  he  was  gravely 
handicapped  by  injuries  sustained  in  a 
road  accident.  He  died  at  his  home  in 
Little  Cloisters  30  January  1931.  He  was 
a  benefactor  of  Ripon  Hall,  Oxford,  the 
library  of  which  inherited  many  of  his 
books.  His  portrait,  painted  in  oils  by 
M.  Grixoni,  was  given  to  the  haU  by  his 
nephew,  Sir  Havelock  Charles. 

Of  Charles's  work  on  the  Apocalyptic 


literature,  on  which  his  fame  chiefly  rests, 
two  things  fall  to  be  said.  He  was  a  man 
of  powerful  intellect  and  unflagging  in- 
dustry who,  by  years  of  concentrated 
study,  made  himself  master  of  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Apocalypses.  His  knowledge 
was  vast  in  extent  and  accurate  in  detail ; 
and  his  commentaries  are  a  wonderful 
storehouse  of  exact  information.  Yet  there 
was  a  sense  in  which  the  language  of 
Apocalyptic  remained  a  foreign  language 
to  him.  He  could  never  be  completely  at 
home  in  the  world  of  the  Apocalyptists. 
And  this  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
achieve  that  perfect  understanding  which 
demands  sympathy  as  well  as  knowledge. 
Further,  his  editions  of  the  texts  stand  as 
models  of  scholarship.  The  materials  are 
set  out  with  far  greater  completeness  and 
accuracy  than  ever  before ;  and  those  who 
find  themselves  compelled  to  dissent  from 
some  of  Charles's  conclusions  usually  do 
so  on  the  basis  of  evidence  which  Charles 
himself  supplies.  The  making  available 
of  so  much  material  was  an  inunense 
service  to  biblical  scholarship,  and  further 
progress  in  this  field  must  inevitably  be 
based  on  Charles's  work. 

[The  Times,  2  February  1931 ;  F.  C.  Burkitt, 
Robert  Henry  Charles,  1855-1931  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xvii,  1931 ; 
Memoir  by  Dr.  C.  F.  D'Arcy  prefixed  to  the 
posthumous  volume  of  Charles's  sermons. 
Courage,  Truth,  Purity,  1931  (portrait) ;  private 
information.]  T.  W.  Manson. 

CHARRINGTON,  FREDERICK 

NICHOLAS  (1850-1936),  philanthropist 
and  temperance  reformer,  was  born  in 
London  4  February  1850,  the  eldest  son 
of  Frederick  Charrington,  brewer,  by  his 
wife,  Louisa,  daughter  of  Huxley  Griffith, 
of  Stepney.  After  two  terms  at  Marl- 
borough in  1864,  he  left  and  a  year  later 
was  sent  to  Brighton  College.  On  leaving 
school  after  two  years  he  travelled  on  the 
continent,  and  afterwards  went  into  a 
brewery  at  Windsor  with  a  view  to  learn- 
ing the  details  of  that  trade.  A  place  was 
then  found  for  him  in  his  father's  firm 
of  Charrington  &  company,  but  this  he 
soon  relinquished,  sacrificing  the  prospect 
of  a  large  fortiuie  in  order  to  take  up  the 
cause  of  Christianity  and  temperance  in 
the  district  surrounding  the  brewery  in 
the  East  End. 

Charrington  was  at  that  time  (1870) 
aged  twenty,  and  his  action  created  a 
considerable  impression.  At  a  meeting  of 
the  Band  of  Hope  over  which  he  presided 
there  was  a  crowded  audience.  The  early 


170 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Chesterton 


meetings  of  the  Tower  Hamlets  mission 
which  he  founded  were  held  in  a  tent.  The 
work  made  great  progress.  A  conference 
hall  was  built,  and  later  the  great  assembly 
hall  in  Mile  End  Road  to  hold  4,000 
people.  Here  every  Sunday  Charrington 
provided  a  free  tea  for  700  hungry  men 
and  women  of  the  district,  and  in  1909 
King  George  V,  then  Prince  of  Wales, 
gave  the  first  of  an  annual  series  of  free 
teas.  The  lord  mayor  and  sheriffs  of  London 
on  lord  mayor's  day  have  contributed  to 
this  charitable  hospitality  since  1887. 

Charrington's  ardent  advocacy  of  the 
causes  which  he  championed  led  at  times 
to  some  criticism  and  opposition  from  a 
section  of  the  public  and  the  press.  But 
the  very  publicity  that  ensued  brought 
the  conditions  of  life  in  the  poorer  quarters 
of  London  to  the  notice  of  many  who  be- 
came his  devoted  friends  and  supporters. 
A  man  of  great  muscular  strength,  he 
never  made  any  attempt  to  avoid  violence 
in  the  strange  quarters  which  he  frequented 
by  day  and  night  and  from  the  strange 
characters  with  whom  he  had  to  do. 
Although  quite  capable  of  giving  as  good 
as  he  got,  he  was  more  than  once  severely 
injured  by  assaults  from  his  opponents.  At 
times  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  allowed 
his  fervent  enthusiasm  to  carry  him  to 
fantastic  lengths.  On  18  May  1915,  when 
the  House  of  Commons  was  discussing  the 
report  of  a  select  committee  on  pensions, 
Charrington,  wearing  evening  dress,  an 
overcoat,  and  a  silk  hat,  dashed  into  the 
House  from  the  members'  lobby,  seized 
the  mace  from  the  Speaker's  table,  and 
began  to  protest  against  the  drinking  bar 
inside  the  lobby  being  used  by  members. 
He  was  arrested,  but  released  after  two 
hours'  detention. 

Charrington  was  one  of  the  original 
members  (1889-1895)  of  the  London 
County  Council,  a  member  of  the  old  Mile 
End  guardians  and  vestry,  and  later  of 
the  Stepney  borough  council.  He  died, 
unmarried,  in  London  2  January  1936.  He 
left  his  body  to  the  medical  school  of  the 
London  Hospital. 

A  portrait  of  Charrington  was  presented 
to  him  in  1930  and  is  now  at  the  Tower 
Hamlets  Mission. 

[The  Times,  3  January  1936;  Guy  Thorne 
(C.  A.  E.  R.  Gull),  The  Cfreat  Acceptance ;  the 
Life  Story  of  F.  N.  Charrington,  1912.] 

Arthur  Cochrane. 

CHELMSFORD,  first  Viscount  (1868- 
1933),  viceroy  of  India.  [See  Thesiger, 
Frederic  John  Napier.] 


CHESTERTON,    GILBERT    KEITH 

(1874-1936),  poet,  novelist,  and  critic,  was 
born  on  Campden  Hill,  London,  29  May 
1874,  the  elder  son  of  Edward  Chesterton, 
head  of  the  well-known  Kensington  firm 
of  auctioneers  and  estate  agents.  His 
mother,  Marie  Louise  Grosjean,  was  of 
French  and  Scottish  blood,  and  her 
maternal  ancestors,  the  Keiths  of  Aber- 
deen, gave  Chesterton  his  middle  name. 
He  was  educated  at  St.  Paul's  School  from 
1887  to  1892.  At  sixteen  he  started  the 
junior  debating  club  and  a  magazine 
known  as  'The  Debater'  which  contains 
startlingly  good  work  for  a  boy  of  that 
age — a  boy,  moreover,  who  was  almost 
two  years  behind  his  contemporaries  in 
his  school  work.  The  practical  side  of 
producing  and  distributing  the  paper  was 
altogether  beyond  Chesterton's  powers 
and  was  taken  care  of  by  one  of  his  most 
intimate  friends,  later  his  wife's  brother- 
in-law,  Lucian  Oldershaw.  He  was  al- 
ready the  kind  of  being  that  he  was  to 
remain  all  his  life :  absent-minded,  good- 
natured  almost  to  weakness,  yet  of  a  rock- 
like strength  in  holding  and  maintaining 
his  ideas.  Some  of  those  ideas  were 
inherited:  love  of  freedom,  belief  in 
human  equality  and  in  all  that  is  gener- 
ally known  as  liberalism ;  others  he  was 
now  slowly  acquiring.  As  he  sat  at  his 
desk,  a  tall,  clumsy,  unbrushed,  untidy 
scarecrow,  drawing  all  over  his  blotter 
and  his  books,  his  mind  was  deeply  con- 
centrated, not  on  his  lessons,  but  on  the 
deepest  problems  of  reality.  Of  this 
mental  travail  he  has  given  some  notion 
in  Orthodoxy  and  it  is  confirmed  by  his 
note-books  and  the  memories  of  his 
friends. 

Chesterton's  drawings  at  this  time 
showed  so  much  talent  that  it  was  decided 
that  he  should  go,  not  to  Oxford,  but  to 
the  Slade  School  of  Art,  continuing  at  the 
same  time  to  study  English  literature  at 
London  University.  It  soon  became 
abundantly  clear  that  writing,  not  draw- 
ing, was  his  primary  talent.  But  that  he 
could  and  still  did  draw  may  be  seen  from 
his  illustrations  to  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc's 
novels:  he  would  often  complete  the 
sketches  for  one  of  these  in  a  couple  of 
hours:  at  all  times  he  would  draw  and 
paint  while  he  talked  or  thought.  In  The 
Coloured  Lands,  published  in  1938  after 
his  death,  may  be  seen  a  fair  sample  of  his 
work  at  different  periods. 

Although  Chesterton's  headmaster  had 
spoken  of  him  to  his  mother  as  a  genius, 
neither  she  nor  his  father  dreamed  of  a 


171 


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D.N.B.  1931-1940 


livelihood  made  by  writing  alone.  Ob- 
viously unfitted  for  the  career  of  an  estate 
agent,  he  worked  for  a  time  in  two 
publishing  houses  and  thence  moved 
gradually  into  journalism.  This  became 
his  profession,  and  in  later  years  when  his 
fame  was  at  its  height  he  would  claim  no 
other  title  than  that  of  journalist. 

Chesterton  in  1899  was  working  on  the 
Speaker  with  a  group  of  young  liberals  of 
the  same  general  outlook  as  his  own.  His 
friendship  with  Mr.  Belloc  had  begun, 
and  this  meant  rnuch  for  his  social  think- 
ing. He  had  fallen  in  love  and  was 
engaged  to  Frances,  eldest  daughter  of 
George  William  Blogg,  a  London  diamond 
merchant.  She  was  an  Anglo-Catholic, 
and  this  meant  much  for  his  religious 
thinking.  His  first  published  volumes 
were  both  verse.  The  Wild  Knight, 
financed  by  his  father,  won  wide  acclaim 
as  poetry.  Greybeards  at  Play,  illustrated 
by  the  author,  was  highly  successful  fool- 
ing. Both  were  published  in  1900.  He  was 
married  in  1901.  Public  events  were 
shaping  in  a  fashion  that  stimulated  at 
once  his  patriotism  and  a  fierce  criticism 
of  the  country  that  he  loved.  The  South 
African  war  came  like  a  flash  of  lightning 
separating  liberal  from  liberal — Chester- 
ton, for  instance,  from  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw : 
separating  brother  from  brother — Ches- 
terton, for  instance,  from  his  brother 
Cecil :  and  casting  a  vivid  light  on  thoughts 
that  had  not  yet  been  fully  outlined  even, 
perhaps,  to  himself. 

Rightly  or  wrongly,  Chesterton  thus 
accepted  the  war  and  his  own  possible 
unpopularity  as  a  pro-Boer  as  a  test  of 
his  social  and  political  views.  He  hated 
imperialism :  he  was  what  has  been  called 
a  'little  Englander':  and  he  wrote  The 
Napoleon  of  Notting  Hill  (1904)  in  fantas- 
tic illustration  of  this  thesis,  outlining  it 
more  soberly  in  his  long  introductory 
chapter  to  England  a  Nation  (also  1904), 
a  symposium  of  young  liberal  thinking 
with  the  sub-title  'Papers  of  a  Patriots' 
Club',  edited  by  Oldershaw. 

During  the  period  1900  to  1910  the 
whole  of  Chesterton's  philosophy  was 
outlined  and  illustrated  in  twenty  books 
and  innumerable  articles.  He  published 
over  one  hundred  volumes  in  the  course 
of  a  lifetime,  greatly  enriching  and  deepen- 
ing but  in  no  fimdamental  altering  that 
philosophy.  There  were  vigorous  contro- 
versies in  the  religious  field  with  Robert 
Blatchford  and  Joseph  McCabe,  in  the 
social  field  with  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  and 
H.  G.  Wells ;  criticism  in  the  national  field 


of  Rudyard  Kipling  and  the  imperialists 
made  of  Heretics  (1905)  a  brilliant  display 
of  fireworks  that  drew  all  eyes.  He  had 
long  contributed  art  criticism  to  the 
Bookman,  and  in  1904  he  published  G.  F. 
Watts.  In  the  field  of  pure  letters  his 
studies  of  Robert  Browning  (1903)  and  of 
Charles  Dickens  (1906)  won  him  another 
sort  of  fame:  it  seemed  that  he  might 
choose — poet,  fantastic  novelist,  artist  and 
art  critic,  political  pamphleteer,  essayist, 
sociologist,  philosopher,  and  theologian. 
He  chose  them  all  and  he  chose,  too,  to 
remain  in  style  and  manner  a  journalist, 
to  be  careless  of  his  facts  and  references, 
to  avoid  solemnity,  to  laugh  at  the  experts 
and  at  himself,  to  puzzle  his  fellow  journa- 
lists alike  by  his  earnestness  and  his 
frivolity,  to  prove  that  'there  is  foam  on 
deep  water'. 

Orthodoccy  (1908)  was  called  by  Chester- 
ton 'a  sort  of  slovenly  autobiography'.  It 
was,  he  said,  'an  attempt  to  utter  the 
unutterable  things  .  .  .  my  ultimate 
attitude  towards  life'.  As  against  the 
various  'prophets'  of  the  period — Ibsen, 
Mr.  Shaw,  Wells,  Kipling,  and  the  rest,  each 
of  whom  was  stressing  some  one  element 
or  tendency — Chesterton  saw  the  riddle 
of  a  vast  variety  in  the  universe  and  he 
came  to  see  Christianity  as  its  only 
answer.  Christianity  made  a  new  balance 
that  was  also  a  liberation:  it  'made 
moderation  out  of  the  still  crash  of  two 
impetuous  emotions',  'got  over  the  diffi- 
culty of  combining  furious  opposites  by 
keeping  them  both  furious'.  It  taught 
'terrible  ideals  and  devouring  doctrines': 
it  managed  to  make  the  lion  lie  down  with 
the  lamb  and  yet  keep  his  royal  ferocity. 
Orthodoxy  was  'a  thrilling  romance'.  It 
was  not  the  philosophy  created  by  one 
man  to  fit  himself,  and  hence  too  small 
even  to  satisfy  that  self.  'God  and 
humanity  made  it  and  it  made  me.' 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  Orthodoxy 
the  Chestertons  moved  from  their  little 
flat  in  Battersea  and  went  to  live  at 
Beaconsfield  where  they  remained  for  the 
rest  of  their  lives,  at  first  in  a  small  rented 
house,  later  in  one  built  to  suit  their  ideal, 
a  house  with  a  few  small  bedrooms  and 
one  vast  living-room  where  they  could 
have  parties  for  young  iand  old,  act 
charades,  or  show  plays  in  Chesterton's 
favourite  toy  theatre.  He  spent  much 
time  in  painting  and  cutting  out  figures 
and  scenery  for  this  theatre  and  in  making 
drawings  for  guessing  games  in  the  inven- 
tion of  which  he  showed  an  endless 
fertility.    Grieved  at  having  no  child  of 


172 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Chesterton 


their  own  the  Chestertons  surrounded 
themselves  with  children:  nieces  and 
nephews,  godchildren  and  young  neigh- 
bours. His  wife  created  a  lovely  garden 
in  which  Chesterton  took  a  vague  pleasure 
and  which  often  appears  in  the  back- 
ground of  his  stories.  He  began  to  write 
about  Father  Brown,  the  little  priest- 
detective  {The  Innocence  of  Father  Brown 
was  published  in  1911).  He  took  his  wife 
with  him  and  motored  over  the   King 

I  Alfred  country  planning  The  Ballad  of  the 
_  iVhite  Horse.  He  saw  his  many  friends, 
sometimes  in  London,  sometimes  at 
Beaconsfleld :  he  appeared  in  pageants  as 
Dr.  Johnson:  he  grew  fatter  every  year 
and  became  more  and  more  a  figure  of 
legend,  wearing  a  large  flapping  hat  and 
an  ample  cloak,  carrying  a  sword-stick  and 
getting  lost  on  every  possible  and  impos- 
sible occasion.  Setting  out  from  home  to 
give  a  lecture  in  some  midland  town  he 
telegraphed  to  his  wife:  'Am  in  Market 
Harborough.   Where  ought  I  to  be  ? ' 

'Father  Brown'  was  actually  Father 
(afterwards  Monsignor)  O'Connor  who, 
despite  his  Irish  name,  is  a  Yorkshireman, 
in  whose  house  part  of  the  White  Horse 
was  written  and  who,  in  long  walks  over 
the  Yorkshire  moors,  helped  Chesterton 
to'  thrash  out  the  ideas  that  beset  him. 
Both  Father  O'Connor  and  Mr.  Belloc 
were  deeply  concerned  with  the  social 
angle  of  Christianity's  answer  to  the  riddle 
of  the  universe.  And  as  with  Orthodoxy  so, 
too,  with  Chesterton's  social  philosophy 
the  battle  against  the  opposing  ideas  held 
by  Mr.  Shaw  and  others  brought  Chester- 
ton's own  thoughts  into  clearer  focus.  In 
1909  he  published  his  brilliant  sketch  of 
Mr.  Shaw.  'I  liked  it  very  much,'  wrote 
Mr.  Shaw,  'especially  as  it  was  so  com- 
pletely free  from  my  own  influence.'  This 
book  cleared  the  ground  for  What 's  Wrong 
with  the  World?  (1910)  much  as  Heretics 
and  the  controversy  with  Blatchford  had 
cleared  it  for  Orthodoxy. 

Starting  life  as  a  liberal  by  inheritance 
Chesterton  said  in  these  years:  'as  much 
as  ever  I  did,  more  than  ever  I  did  I 
believe  in  Liberalism.  But  there  was  a 
rosy  time  of  innocence  when  I  believed 
in  Liberals.'  It  seemed  to  him  that  while 
no  medical  doctor  says:  'we've  had  too 
much  scarlet  fever,  let's  try  a  little 
measles  for  a  change',  that  was  precisely 
what  the  sociological  'doctors'  were 
saying.  Capitalism  was  a  failure:  he 
agreed  that  it  was  a  disease:  but  when 
they  said:  'let's  try  a  little  socialism  for 
a  change',  it  seemed  to  him  that  for  lack 


of  a  clear  picture  of  health  one  disease  was 
being  offered  as  remedy  for  another. 

In  What's  Wrong  with  the  World? 
Chesterton  suggests  some  root  thought  on 
the  nature  of  man,  of  sex,  of  the  child 
and  its  education.  Historically  and  of  Ixis 
nature  man  needs  the  family,  for  its  pro- 
tection the  family  needs  property  which 
capitalism  destroys  no  less  than  socialism. 
'It  is  the  negation  of  property  that  the 
Duke  of  Sutherland  should  have  all  the 
farms  in  one  estate:  just  as  it  would  be 
the  negation  of  marriage  if  he  had  all  our 
wives  In  one  harem.'  Property  in  its  true 
meaning  is  also  a  condition  for  the 
ordinary  man's  development:  'Property 
is  the  art  of  the  democracy.'  He  goes  on 
to  define  'the  functions  of  father,  mother 
and  child  as  such '  and  to  show  the  limits 
that  a  free  family  would  set  to  the  power 
of  the  State.  The  book  is  Chesterton's 
social  credo :  later  on  he  wrote  The  Super- 
stition of  Divorce  (1920),  Eugenics  and 
Other  Evils  (1922),  The  Outline  of  Sanity 
(1926).  These  and  his  essays  deepen  and 
enrich  his  social  thinking  but  they  add 
nothing  in  essentials  to  What 's  Wrong  with 
the  World? 

The  Ballad  of  the  White  Horse  was 
published  in  1911  and  in  1912  Manalive, 
which  is  among  the  best  of  Chesterton's 
fantastic  stories,  expressing  as  it  does 
supremely  the  intense  zest  which  he 
brought  to  the  business  of  living.  The 
Victorian  Age  in  Literature  (1913)  showed 
liim  stUl  brilliant  in  the  field  of  pure 
literature.  The  same  year,  goaded  by  Mr. 
Shaw,  he  produced  a  play.  Magic,  which, 
despite  admiring  reviews,  was  a  stage 
failure. 

Then  came  the  war  of  1914-1918  and 
Chesterton's  almost  mortal  iUness.  He 
had  been  overworking,  overeating,  and 
drinking — ('absent-mindedly'  as  a  friend 
said,  for  it  was  only  necessary  to  fill  his 
plate  or  glass  while  he  talked  for  him  to 
empty  it  again).  Cecil  Chesterton  had 
stood  his  trial  for  a  libel  action  which  had 
worried  his  elder  brother  more  than  him- 
self: the  war  had  come  as  a  final  blow.  '  I 
wonder',  the  doctor  heard  him  murmur 
as  he  was  lifted  into  a  water  bed,  'if  this 
bally  ship  will  ever  get  to  shore.'  He  lay 
for  many  months  unconscious  between 
life  and  death.  His  wife  nursed  him 
devotedly  and  brought  him  back  to  full 
life  and  vigour.  'I  am  afraid',  he  wrote 
at  once  to  Mr.  Shaw,  '  you  must  reconcile 
yourself  to  the  dismal  prospect  of  my 
being  more  or  less  like  what  I  was  before ; 
and  any  resumption  of  my  ordinary  habits 


173 


Chesterton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


must  necessarily  include  the  habit  of 
disagreeing  with  you.' 

In  1917  appeared  Chesterton's  fascinat- 
ing, sketchy,  and  inaccurate  Short  History 
of  England.  It  exasperated  historians,  yet 
'He's  got  at  something  we  hadn't  got' 
wryly  confessed  a  professor  of  history  to 
one  of  Chesterton's  friends.  In  1919  came 
Irish  Impressions  and  in  1920  The  New 
Jerusalem.  These  books  all  mark  stages 
in  that  mental  voyage  of  discovery  in 
which  Chesterton,  historically  and  in  the 
contemporary  world,  was  approaching 
nearer  and  nearer  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Externally  he  was  at  once  urged 
forward  and  held  back  by  the  circum- 
stances of  his  life.  Cecil  Chesterton  had 
with  Mr.  Belloc  some  years  earlier  started 
a  newspaper,  first  (1911)  the  Eye  Witness, 
later  (1912)  the  New  Witness,  to  combat 
corruption  in  public  life  and  to  uphold 
and  restore  the  liberties  of  the  poor  against 
a  growing  bureaucracy.  On  Cecil's  joining 
the  army  in  1916  Gilbert  took  over  the 
editorship.  Cecil  died  in  France  in 
December  1918,  and  his  brother  continued 
to  edit  the  paper  until  its  termination  in 
1923.  It  was  revived  under  his  editorship 
in  1925  as  G.  K.^s  Weekly,  which  survived 
until  1938.  Added  to  all  that  he  already 
had  in  hand,  this  editorship  produced  a 
chronic  condition  of  overwork.  On  the 
other  hand  a  journey  to  Jerusalem  gave 
fresh  inspiration  to  his  thinking,  and 
lecture  tours  in  Holland  and  the  United 
States  of  America  strengthened  his  aware- 
ness of  the  Church's  universality.  All  his 
thinking — directly  religious,  philosophical, 
sociological — brought  him  to  the  same 
conclusion,  and  in  1922  he  overcame  the 
largely  physical  problem  posed  for  him 
by  overwork,  physical  lethargy,  and  the 
habit  of  depending  on  his  wife  for  all 
practical  decisions.  Chesterton  was  re- 
ceived into  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  by 
Father  O'Connor  in  July  1922.  His  wife 
followed  him  four  years  later. 

The  two  best  known  of  the  books  which 
quickly  followed  Chesterton's  reception 
are  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  (1923)  and  The 
Everlasting  Man  (1925).  Of  these  the 
former  is  by  far  the  more  popular,  the 
latter  the  more  important.  In  Orthodoxy 
Chesterton  had  traced  his  own  discovery 
of  Christianity,  in  The  Everlasting  Man  he 
traced  rather  what  that  discovery,  that 
revelation,  had  meant  for  mankind  as  a 
whole.  Like  Wells  writing  his  Outline  of 
History,  Chesterton  claimed  'the  right  of 
the  amateur  to  do  his  best  with  the  facts 
the  specialists  provide'.  Unlike  Wells:  'I 


do  not  believe',  says  Chesterton,  'that  the 
best  way  to  produce  an  outline  of  history 
is  to  rub  out  the  lines.'  But  his  own  aim 
was  not  merely  to  draw  an  outline  but  to 
show  something  that  seemed  stale  and 
dusty  and  old  as  it  really  was,  fresh  and 
new  everlastingly.  He  asked  men  to  read 
the  Gospels  like  their  daily  paper,  not 
merely  as  good  but  as  news.  'I  desire  to 
help  the  reader  to  see  Christendom  from 
the  outside  in  the  sense  of  seeing  it  as  a 
whole  against  the  background  of  other 
historic  things ;  just  as  I  desire  him  to  see 
humanity  as  a  whole  against  the  back- 
ground of  natural  things.  And  I  say  that 
in  both  cases  when  seen  thus,  they  stand 
out  from  their  background  like  super- 
natural things.' 

When  The  Everlasting  Man  was  pub- 
lished Chesterton  had  only  eleven  years  to 
live.  They  were  years  of  little  external 
action,  of  amazing  productivity.  He 
travelled:  to  Europe  fairly  often,  to 
America  once  more  (1930-1931)  where  he 
gave  courses  at  Notre  Dame  University, 
Indiana,  and  lectured  throughout  the 
country  and  in  Canada.  He  wrote  another 
play  (The  Judgment  of  Dr.  Johnson,  1927), 
essays  innumerable,  more  detective  stories, 
more  poems  (especially  The  Queen  of 
Seven  Swords,  1926),  literary  works,  of 
which  by  far  the  best  was  his  R.  L. 
Stevenson  (1927),  theology  and  philosophy, 
books  of  travel.  His  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
(1933)  was  called  by  Etienne  Gilson  'the 
best  book  on  St.  Thomas  that  has  ever 
been  written '.  The  pages  of  G.  K  's  Weekly 
are  littered  with  brilliant  matter  never 
reprinted,  but  from  them  and  from  his 
scattered  papers  were  gathered  post- 
humously (1940)  The  End  of  the  Armistice 
which  cast,  like  his  William  Cobbett  (1925) 
written  during  the  same  period,  an  almost 
lurid  light  of  prophecy  on  the  horrors  that 
have  followed.  Never  did  Chesterton  give 
in  to  the  'rather  weakminded  reaction', 
the  mood  of  pacificism  and  appeasement 
that  followed  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

Added  to  Chesterton's  other  activities 
in  his  last  years  were  several  series  of 
radio  talks  for  the  British  Broadcasting 
Corporation.  Both  his  own  purely  literary 
talks  and  his  contributions  to  various  series 
('The  Spice  of  Life',  'Seven  Days  Hard') 
were  received  with  rare  enthusiasm.  In 
these  talks  and  in  his  writings  down  to  the 
hour  of  his  death  an  element  was  present 
that  has  caused  the  most  fundamental 
disagreement  as  to  Chesterton's  character 
and  his  place  in  history.  A  note  of  youth, 
of  high  spirits,  of  fooling,  present  when  he 


174 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cheyne 


entered  letters  as  a  young  joiurnalist,  was 
as  audible  in  the  mature  man  broadcasting 
his  last  message  to  his  coimtrj'men 
They  may  go  out  with  a  whimper, 
But  I  will  go  out  with  a  bang. 

'  Chesterton  the  Child '  was  the  supreme 
attribute  given  to  Chesterton  by  Walter 
de  la  Mare  when  the  sword  of  the  warrior 
and  the  pen  of  the  thinker  had  been  laid 
aside.  There  was  nothing  childish  in 
Chesterton,  nothing  callow  in  his  youthful 
high  spirits.  The  conception  of  Chesterton 
as  a  Peter  Pan  who  never  grew  up  accords 
ill  with  the  books  and  ideas  which  led 
philosophers  to  welcome  him  as  one  of 
their  own  calibre,  poets  to  give  him  front 
rank  among  themselves,  and  men  of 
letters  to  acclaim  his  Dickens,  his  Brown- 
ing, and  his  Stevenson  as  showing  the 
insight  of  genius. 

Chesterton  died  at  Beaconsfield  14  June 
1936 ;  his  wife  survived  him  imtil  1938. 

A  painting  of  Chesterton,  Maurice  Bar- 
ing, and  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc  ( 1932),  by  James 
Gimn,  belongs  to  Mr.  Hugh  Balfour,  Foss 
House,  Pitlochry.  There  is  a  plasticine 
medallion,  by  Theodore  Spicer-Simson,  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  which  also 
owns  a  bronze  bust  by  Maria  Petrie. 

[G.  K.  Chesterton,  Autobiography,  1936; 
Mais'ie  Ward,  Gilbert  Keith  Chesterton,  1944; 
personal  knowledge.]  Maisie  Ward. 

CHEYNE,  Sir  (WH^LIAM)  WATSON, 
first  baronet  (1852-1932),  bacteriologist 
and  surgeon,  was  born  at  sea,  off  Hobart 
Town,  Tasmania,  14  December  1852,  the 
only  son  of  Andrew  Cheyne,  of  OUaberry, 
Shetland,  captain  in  the  mercantile 
marine,  by  his  wife,  Eliza,  daughter  of 
WiUiam  Watson,  minister  of  the  united 
parishes  of  Fetlar  and  North  Yell.  He  was 
educated  at  the  grammar  school  and 
King's  College,  Aberdeen,  and  at  Edin- 
burgh University,  where  he  graduated  with 
first  class  honours  in  medicine  in  1875.  He 
went  the  same  year  to  Vienna,  where  he 
attended  the  lectures  of  A.  C.  Theodor 
Billroth,  Ernest  Wilhelm  von  Brixcke, 
Anton  Politzer,  Ferdinand  R.  von  Hebra, 
and  Siegmund  Exner,  and  the  following 
spring  spent  three  months  with  the  great 
pathologist  Friedrich  Daniel  von  Reck- 
linghausen at  Strasburg. 

Shortly  after  his  return  to  Edinburgh 
Cheyne  became  house-surgeon  to  Joseph 
(afterwards  Lord)  Lister  [q.v.],  who  in- 
vited him  to  accompany  him  to  King's 
College  Hospital,  where  Lister  had  been 
appointed  professor  of  clinical  surgery  in 
1877.  At  first,  Lister  and  Cheyne  received 


only  a  cold  welcome  which,  however, 
enabled  Cheyne  to  pursue  his  study  of 
bacteriology,  including  the  translation  of 
two  German  works  on  bacteriology  for  the 
New  Sydenham  Society,  namely,  Robert 
Koch's  Etiology  of  the  Traumatic  Infective 
Diseases  (1880)  and  Carl  Fliigge's  Micro- 
organisms, with  Special  Reference  to  the 
Etiology  of  the  Infective  Diseases  (1890). 
Gradually,  however,  Cheyne  received  due 
recognition,  and  in  1882  he  published  an 
important  work  entitled  Antiseptic  Sur- 
gery: its  Principles,  Practice,  History  and 
Results,  an  enlargement  of  his  thesis  for 
the  Jacksonian  prize,  awarded  by  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons  in  1881,  fol- 
lowed three  years  later  by  Lister  and  his 
Achievements  (1885),  which  formed  the 
subject  of  the  first  Lister  memorial  lecture 
delivered  at  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons 
of  England  in  1924,  when  he  was  awarded 
the  Lister  medal.  In  1880  Cheyne  was 
appointed  assistant-surgeon  at  King's 
College  Hospital,  becoming  full  surgeon  in 
due  course,  professor  of  the  principles 
and  practice  of  surgery  in  1891,  and 
professor  of  clinical  surgery  in  1902.  He 
was  Hunterian  professor  at  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  from  1888  to  1890. 

On  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African 
war  in  1899  Cheyne  was  appointed  civil 
consulting  surgeon  to  the  forces  and  was 
appointed  C.B.  for  his  services,  and  in 
1908  he  was  created  a  baronet.  When  war 
broke  out  in  1914  he  was  made  consulting 
surgeon  to  the  navy  and  in  1915  became 
temporary  surgeon-general,  and  was  ap- 
pointed K.C.M.G.  in  1916.  He  retired 
from  active  practice  at  the  end  of  the  war. 

The  importance  of  Cheyne's  work  lies 
in  the  fact  that  not  only  was  he  a  pioneer 
in  antiseptic  surgery  and  was  one  of 
Lister's  most  active  followers,  but  he  also 
emphasized  the  value  of  preventive  medi- 
cine in  clinical  practice.  When  Cheyne 
began  his  bacteriological  investigations  at 
Edinburgh  'there  was  no  staining  of 
bacteria,  no  oil  immersion  lenses,  no  solid 
cultivating  media,  no  proper  incubators — 
in  fact,  everything  was  in  its  infancy'. 

In  1917  Cheyne  was  elected  member  of 
parliament  for  the  universities  of  Edin- 
burgh and  St.  Andrews  and  from  1918  to 
1922  he  was  a  member  for  the  combined 
Scottish  Universities.  In  1919  he  was 
gazetted  lord-lieutenant  of  Orkney  and 
Shetland,  an  office  from  which  he  resigned 
in  1930.  He  was  elected  in  1879  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  was 
president  from  1914  to  1916,  and  Hun- 
terian orator  in   1915.    In  1894  he  was 


175 


Cheyne 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


elected  F.R.S.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Edinburgh,  and  Birmingham. 

Cheyne  was  twice  married :  first,  in  1887 
to  Mary  Emma  (died  1894),  daughter  of 
the  Rev.  William  Servante,  of  Plumstead, 
Kent,  and  had  two  sons  and  one  daughter, 
who  died  in  infancy ;  secondly,  in  1894  to 
Margaret  (died  1922),  daughter  of  George 
Smith,  of  Lerwick,  Shetland,  and  had  one 
son  and  two  daughters,  all  of  whom  pre- 
deceased him.  He  retired  in  1922  to 
Fetlar  where  he  died  after  a  prolonged 
illness  19  April  1932,  and  was  succeeded 
as  second  baronet  by  his  eldest  son, 
Joseph  Lister  Cheyne,  M.C.  (born  1888), 
colonel,  16th  Lancers. 

[The  Times,  20  April  1932 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  RoyallSociety,  No.  1,  December 
1932  (portrait) ;  British  Medical  Journal,  1932, 
vol.  i,  p.  821  (portrait);  Lancet,  1932,  vol.  i, 

p.  963.]  J.  D.  ROLLESTON. 

CHILDS,      WILLIAM      MACBRIDE 

(1869-1939),  educationist,  was  born  at 
Carrington,  near  Boston,  Lincolnshire, 
3  January  1869,  the  second  son  of  William 
Linington  Childs,  vicar  of  Carrington  and 
Frith  Ville,  who  in  1879  became  vicar  of 
St.  George's  church,  Portsea,  by  his  wife, 
Henrietta  Fowles  Bell.  He  was  educated 
at  Portsmouth  Grammar  School  and  at 
Keble  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  a 
scholar;  he  obtained  a  second  class  in 
modern  history  in  1891.  In  1892  he  be- 
came assistant  private  secretary  to  (Sir) 
A.  H.  D.  Acland  [q.v.],  but  a  career  in 
official  service  did  not  attract  him,  and, 
in  1893,  he  accepted  a  lecturership  in 
history  at  a  college  in  Reading  which  had 
recently  been  opened  at  the  instance  of 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  as  a  centre  for 
education  of  the  university  extension 
pattern.  Within  a  few  years  Childs  had 
become  convinced  that  this  college  (which 
in  1902  received  the  title  of  University 
College,  Reading)  would  offer  a  field  for 
the  work  of  his  whole  life.  In  1897  he 
married  Emma  Catharine,  daughter  of 
Alfred  Whiting  Pollard ;  he  fixed  his  home 
in  Reading,  and  he  neither  sought  nor 
accepted  employment  elsewhere.  In  1903, 
on  the  resignation  of  (Sir)  Halford  John 
Mackinder,  the  first  principal  of  the  college, 
Childs,  who  had  become  vice-principal  in 
1900,  succeeded  him,  and  thenceforward 
until  his  retirement  he  devoted  himself 
unreservedly  to  its  interests. 

It  was  Childs's  achievement  to  inspire 
and  direct  the  efforts  which  in  little  more 
than  twenty  years  converted  the  obscure 


college  of  1903  into  an  independent 
university.  No  one  could  have  reached 
this  end  without  many  helpers,  and  Childs 
was  remarkably  successful  in  bringing 
together  a  group  of  persons  who,  like 
himself,  believed  in  the  future  of  the 
college.  But  the  initiative  in  its  develop- 
ment was  always  with  him,  and  its  ex- 
pansion was  made  possible  by  his  personal 
qualities.  It  was  his  obvious  sincerity 
which  won  him  the  support  of  those  whose 
aid  he  needed.  His  advocacy  was  made 
more  effective  by  his  conviction  that  a 
college  which  aimed  at  the  character  of  a 
university  must  establish  an  ordered  form 
of  common  life  for  its  students.  A  series  of 
halls  of  residence  was  an  integral  part 
of  the  college  which  he  was  planning,  and 
few  events  in  his  career  gave  him  greater 
satisfaction  than  the  opening,  in  1908, 
of  Wantage  Hall,  a  foundation  for  men 
students  of  the  type  traditional  in  the 
older  English  universities. 

By  the  end  of  1911  Childs  had  obtained 
an  endowment  which  made  possible  the 
ultimate  independence  of  the  college. 
Progress  was  delayed  by  the  war  of  191 4- 
1918  and  the  necessary  work  of  recon- 
struction, but  the  end  was  reached  in  1926, 
and  Childs  became  the  first  vice-chancellor 
of  the  new  university  of  Reading.  In  1929, 
feeling  that  the  main  object  of  his  work 
had  been  secured,  he  retired  from  office. 
He  died  at  Hermitage,  near  Newbury,  21 
June  1939,  survived  by  his  wife  and  their 
four  sons.  He  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Liverpool  (1928), 
Oxford  (1929),  and  Reading  (1935). 

There  are  two  portraits  of  Childs,  one 
by  Morley  Fletcher,  the  other  by  Eric 
Kennington,  in  the  university  of  Reading. 

[W.  M.  Childs,  Making  a  University,  1933 ; 
personal  knowledge.]  F.  M.  Stenton. 

CHOLMONDELEY,  HUGH,  third 
Baron  Delamere  (1870-1931),  pioneer 
settler  in  Kenya,  was  born  in  London,  28 
April  1870,  the  only  son  of  Hugh  Chol- 
mondeley,  second  Baron  Delamere,  by 
his  second  wife,  Augusta  Emily,  eldest 
daughter  of  Sir  George  Hamilton  Seymour 
[q.v.].  Educated  at  Eton,  he  inherited  the 
title  with  the  estate  of  Vale  Royal,  Cheshire, 
at  the  age  of  seventeen.  Pie  served  for  a 
time  in  the  3rd  battalion,  The  Cheshire 
Regiment,  and  in  the  Cheshire  Yeomanry. 
As  a  young  man  he  organized  five  expedi- 
tions to  Somaliland  in  pursuit  of  big  game ; 
the  fifth  took  him  from  Berbera  into  the 
unsettled  desert  region  through  which  the 
Kenya- Abyssinia  border  now  runs.   He 


«i 


176 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cholmondeley 


reached  the  highlands  of  what  is  now 
Kenya  Colony  in  1897,  the  first  English- 
man to  traverse  this  route. 

Delamere  could  not  settle  down  to  the 
life  of  a  country  gentleman  at  Vale  Royal, 
and  in  January  1903  he  returned  to  the 
East  Africa  Protectorate  and  decided  to 
take  up  land.  The  highlands  were  still 
wild  and  partly  uninhabited,  but  the 
newly  built  Uganda  railway  connected 
Lake  Victoria  with  the  coast. 

The  commissioner,  Sir  Charles  Eliot 
[q.v.],  was  then  embarking  on  a  policy  of 
attracting  white  settlers.  Delamere  re- 
ceived a  ninety-nine-years'  lease  on  100,000 
acres  in  the  Njoro  district,  and  immedi- 
ately set  about  importing  rams  from 
England  and  New  Zealand  in  order  to 
improve  the  native  sheep.  At  this  time 
he  was  suffering  from  severe  injuries  to 
the  spine  as  a  result  of  several  bad  falls 
and  arrived  at  his  new  estate  on  a  stretcher. 
When  the  land  proved  unsuitable  for 
sheep  he  turned  to  cattle  and  finally,  after 
these  too  had  died,  to  wheat,  on  which  he 
inaugurated  East  African  research  into 
the  breeding  of  rust-resistant  varieties. 
Although  not  the  first  settler  in  East 
Africa,  he  was  the  first  to  experiment  on 
a  large  scale  and  to  sink  considerable 
capital  (mostly  borrowed,  for  he  was  never 
well  off)  in  these  untried  farming  lands. 

Delamere's  fiery  and  autocratic  temper, 
his  quickness  in  debate,  his  generosity, 
and  his  passionate  belief  in  the  civilizing 
mission  of  white  settlement  in  Africa 
fitted  him  for  leadership  of  the  settlers  in 
their  frequent  tussles  with  colonial  officials 
and  their  attacks  on  bureaucratic  restric- 
tions and  delays.  He  was  elected  the  first 
president  of  the  Farmers'  and  Planters' 
Association  in  1903  (which  became  the 
Colonists'  Association  in  1904),  and  was 
one  of  two  unofficial  members  nominated 
to  the  first  legislative  council  in  1907. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was  at 
first  employed  on  intelligence  work  among 
the  Masai  along  the  German  border.  The 
strenuous  life  and  severe  malaria  did  his 
heart  an  injury  which  was  ultimately  to 
cause  his  death,  and  he  was  forced  to  give 
up  active  service.  After  six  months  in 
England  he  returned  to  his  ranch,  Soy- 
sambu,  on  which  he  had  been  able  to 
realize  his  ambition  of  breeding,  on  a 
large  scale,  high-grade  merino  sheep. 

After  the  war  the  European  community 
was  enfranchised  and  Delamere  was 
elected  member  for  the  Rift  Valley  in  1920. 
He  held  this  position  until  his  death  and 
became,  in  addition,  leader  of  the  elected 


members,  and  one  of  two  unofficial  mem- 
bers of  the  governor's  executive  council. 
In  1923  he  headed  a  deputation  to  the 
Colonial  Office  to  resist  proposals  to 
enfranchise  Indians  on  a  common  roll  with 
Europeans  and  to  allow  their  unrestricted 
immigration. 

Delamere's  guiding  faith  was  his  belief 
in  the  need  for  strong  and  permanent 
settlements  of  British  famihes  in  the 
highlands  of  Africa.  After  the  conquest  of 
'  German  East '  he  hoped  to  see  this  policy 
extended  to  Tanganyika  Territory,  and  a 
chain  of  European  settlements  forged  from 
Kenya  to  the  Cape.  He  envisaged  the 
eventual  creation  of  an  East  African 
Dominion,  working  towards  the  goal  of 
self-government  already  reached  by  the 
white  communities  of  South  Africa  and 
Southern  Rhodesia,  and  he  persistently 
pressed  for  the  grant  of  an  unofficial 
majority  in  the  Kenya  legislative  council. 
In  1925  he  organized,  at  his  own  expense, 
an  imofficial  conference  of  delegates  from 
Kenya,  Tanganyika,  Northern  Rhodesia, 
and  Nyasaland,  held  at  Tukuyu  (southern 
Tanganyika) ,  to  promote  the  'solidification 
of  the  white  ideal '.  Two  other  conferences 
followed,  in  Livingstone  and  Nairobi,  in 
1926  and  1927.  The  economic  crisis, 
however,  put  an  end  to  these  and  other 
projects  for  the  strengthening  of  white 
settlement  in  Tanganyika  and  the  Central 
African  territories.  In  1929  Delamere  was 
appointed  K.C.M.G.  for  his  public  services. 

By  now  the  British  government  had 
veered  from  a  belief  that  'the  main  object 
of  our  policy  and  legislation  should  be  to 
found  a  white  colony'  (1920),  to  a  declara- 
tion that  'primarily,  Kenya  is  an  African 
territory,  and  .  .  .  the  interests  of  the 
African  natives  must  be  paramount' 
(1923).  With  this  latter  statement  Dela- 
mere could  never  agree,  and  in  1930  he 
headed  his  last  deputation  to  London  to 
put  forward  the  colonists'  point  of  view 
to  the  labour  government.  By  this  time 
he  was  a  sick  man,  and  on  his  return  to 
Kenya  the  strain  of  reorganizing  his 
heavily  indebted  farms  to  meet  the 
catastrophic  fall  in  prices,  superimposed 
on  exacting  political  duties,  proved  too 
much  for  a  system  which  he  had  never 
spared.  He  died  of  angina  at  Loresho, 
near  Nairobi,  13  November  1931,  and  was 
buried  on  his  estate  at  Soysambu,  near 
Lake  Elmenteita. 

Delamere  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1899  to  Florence  Ame  (died  1914),  fourth 
daughter  of  Lowry  Egerton  Cole,  fourth 
Earl  of  Enniskillen,  and  had  one  son; 


177 


Cholmondeley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


secondly,  in  1928  to  Gwladys  Helen  (died 
1943),  daughter  of  Rupert  Evelyn  Beckett, 
formerly  wife  of  Sir  Charles  Markham, 
second  baronet.  He  was  succeeded  as 
fourth  baron  by  his  son,  Thomas  Pitt 
Hamilton  (born  1900). 

A  portrait  of  Delamere  by  F.  R.  Copnall, 
hangs  in  the  chamber  of  the  Legislative 
Council,  Nairobi.  A  statue,  by  Lady 
Kennet,  stands  at  the  j  miction  of  Dela- 
mere Avenue  and  Government  Road,  Nai- 
robi. 

[The  Times,  14  November  1931;  Elspeth 
Huxley,  White  Man's  Country:  Lord  Delamere 
and  the  Making  of  Kenya,   2   vols.,    1935; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Elspeth  Huxley. 

CLARK,  ALBERT  CURTIS  (1859- 
1937),  classical  scholar,  born  at  Salisbury 
21  February  1859,  was  the  eldest  son  of 
Albert  Charles  Clark,  writing-master  at 
Haileybury  College,  by  his  wife,  Ellen 
Curtis.  He  was  educated  at  Hertford 
Grammar  School  and  Haileybury  College, 
and  afterwards  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
of  which  he  was  an  exhibitioner.  After  a 
brilliant  undergraduate  career,  during 
which  he  gained  first  classes  in  classical 
moderations  (1879)  and  literae  humani- 
ores  (1881),  the  Ireland  (1879)  and  the 
Craven  (1882)  scholarships,  Clark  was 
elected  (1882)  to  a  classical  fellowship  at 
Queen's  College,  where,  first  as  lecturer 
(1882-1887),  and  then  as  tutor  (1887- 
1913),  he  not  only  proved  himself  a 
teacher  and  lecturer  of  exceptional  ability, 
but  won  a  world-wide  reputation  by  the 
distinction  and  originality  of  his  work 
upon  the  text  of  Cicero's  orations. 

In  1895  Clark  produced  a  full-scale 
edition  of  the  Pro  Milone  (with  English 
notes),  which  was  followed  by  four 
volumes  containing  the  text  of  the  follow- 
ing speeches:  Pro  Milone,  Caesarianae, 
Philippicae  (1900);  Pro  Sex.  Roscio,  de 
imperio  Cn.  Pompei,  pro  Cluentio,  in  Cati- 
linam,  pro  Murena,  pro  Caelio  (1905) ;  Pro 
Quinciio,  pro  Roscio  Comoedo,pro  Caecina, 
de  lege  agraria,  pro  C.  Rabirio,  pro  Flacco, 
in  Pisonem,  pro  Rabirio  Postumo  (1909) ; 
Pro  Tullio,  pro  Fonteio,  pro  Sulla,  pro  Ar- 
chie, pro  Plancio,  pro  Scauro  (1911).  To 
these  must  be  added  his  edition  of  Asconius 
(1907).  These  volumes  reveal  scholarship, 
learning,  and  industry  of  the  highest 
quality.  Clark  made  a  thorough  collation 
and  classification  of  the  manuscripts,  and 
threw  new  light  upon  their  history  and 
value  in  his  Collations  from  the  Harleian 
MS.   of  Cicero   2682   (1891),   The   Vetus 


Cluniacensis  of  Poggio  (1905),  and  the 
Inventa  Italorum  (1909).  Of  these  The 
Vetus  Cluniacensis  is  his  chef  d^ceuvre,  a 
masterpiece  of  erudition,  detective  ability, 
and  constructive  power. 

Clark  had  in  1909  been  appointed 
university  reader  in  Latin,  a  deserved 
tribute  to  the  distinction  of  his  work,  and 
when  in  1913  the  Corpus  Christi  professor- 
ship of  Latin  fell  vacant,  his  claim  to  the 
succession  was  universally  acknowledged. 
Three  minor  works  of  considerable  interest 
belong  to  the  period  of  his  readership :  the 
Pontes  Prosae  Numerosae  (1909),  a  collec- 
tion of  ancient  evidences  for  Latin  prose 
rhythms;  The  Cursus  in  Mediaeval  and 
Vulgar  Latin  (1910),  a  fascinating  study 
showing  that  the  rhythms  of  classical 
oratory  were  preserved  in  medieval  Latin, 
with  this  difference  that,  whereas  the 
classical  rhythm  was  based  on  quantity, 
the  medieval  was  based  on  stress  accent ; 
and  Prose  Rhythm  in  English  (1913)  where- 
in he  sought  to  relate  the  Latin  rhythms 
with  those  of  English. 

The  works  published  by  Clark  during 
his  tenure  of  the  chair,  despite  thei 
erudition  and  ingenuity,  are  on  tl 
whole  less  convincing.  They  are  largely 
concerned  with  the  application  of  sticho- 
metry  to  textual  problems  presented  by 
the  Greek  Testament,  a  field  in  which  he 
moved  with  less  security,  while  his  in- 
terest in  this  method  had  become  almost 
an  obsession.  In  his  Primitive  Text  of  the 
Gospels  and  Acts  (1914)  he  employed  it  to 
explain  the  difference  between  the  two 
main  families  of  manuscripts,  contending 
that  the  longer  text  of  the  Codex  Bezae 
and  its  kindred  represented  the  primitive 
form,  and  that  the  shorter  version  given 
by  the  Codices  Sinaiticus  and  Vaticanus 
was  due  to  line-omissions.  To  this  scheme 
Clark  returned  in  the  elaborate  edition  of 
The  Acts  of  the  Apostles  published  in  1933 ; 
there,  however,  he  laid  less  emphasis  on 
stichometric  principles  and  held  that  the 
shorter  version  of  the  Acts  was  largely  due 
to  deliberate  revision.  He  also  sought  to 
show  that  the  Codex  Bezae  came  not  from 
the  West  but  from  Egypt,  and  that  the 
author  of  the  Acts  was  not  the  author  of 
St.  Luke's  Gospel.  Between  the  publica- 
tion of  these  two  works  Clark  had  returned 
to  his  first  love  in  a  learned  and  valuable 
work.  The  Descent  of  Manuscripts  (1918), 
illustrated  in  the  main  from  the  text  of 
Cicero,  but  extending  its  survey  to  the 
manuscripts  of  Plato  and  Demosthenes. 
Here  again  the  importance  of  stichometry 
is  perhaps  overstressed. 


178 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Clarke,  E.  G. 


In  1934  ill  health  and  failing  sight  led 
Clark  to  resign  his  chair:  he  retired  to 
London  where  he  died,  unmarried,  5 
February  1937.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Durham, 
Dublin,  Manchester,  and  Oxford,  and  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  three 
colleges  (Balliol,  Queen's,  and  Corpus 
Christi)  and  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  (1916).  But  he  was  something 
more  than  a  great  scholar:  he  was  a 
delightful  human  being  who  could  carry 
his  learning  lightly,  the  best  of  company, 
full  of  humour  and  of  wit,  a  perfect 
raconteur;  above  all,  he  was  courteous, 
warm-hearted,  and  kindly,  ready  with  his 
help  and  counsel  for  all  who  sought  it.  As 
a  scholar  he  won  admiration ;  as  a  man, 
affection  and  regard. 

[The  Times,  6  February  1937 ;  Cyril  Bailey, 
Albert  Curtis  Clark,  1859-1937  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxiii, 
1987;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  E.  Butler. 

CLARKE,   Sir  EDWARD   GEORGE 

(1841-1931),  lawyer  and  politician,  was 

the  eldest  son  and  third  of  the  six  children 

of  Job  Grey  Clarke,  by  his  wife,  Frances, 

daughter  of  Henry  George,  of  Bath.   His 

fath^,    who    came    from    Axbridge    in 

Somersetshire,  kept  a  small  silversmith's 

shop  in  King  William  Street  in  the  City  of 

London,  in  the  rooms  over  which  he  lived 

with  his  family,  and  there  Clarke  was  born 

15  February  1841.   At  the  age  of  ten  he 

was  sent  for  two  years  as  a  boarder  to 

College    House,    Edmonton,    where    his 

bealth,  previously  delicate,  was  set  up  for 

life.  In  December  1854  he  was  taken  from 

he  City  Commercial  School  in  Lombard 

treet,  where  he  had  spent  another  two 

ears,  to  assist  his  father  in  the  shop :  and 

e  remained  in  that  uncongenial  occupa- 

ion  until  nearly  the  end  of  1858.    In 

February  1859  he  took  up  a  clerkship  in 

the  India  Office,  which  had  been  recently 

jstablished  on  the  dissolution  of  the  old 

East  India  Company.    He  obtained  the 

jlerkship  by  examination.  There  were  400 

sandidates  and  Clarke  was  placed  seventh 

>n  the  list,  a  very  remarkable  achievement 

!onsidering   how    scanty    had    been    his 

►pportunities  for  education.  He  had,  how- 

!ver,  made  the  most  of  those  opportimities. 

Vhen  serving  in  the  shop  he  spent  any 

pare  time  in  reading  and,  after  the  shop 

iras  closed,  he  attended  evening  classes 

egularly,   becoming,   in   1858,  the   first 

ssociate   in   arts   of  the    university   of 

)xford.   Moreover,  he  was  gifted  with  a 


very  retentive  memory  and  his  industry 
never  flagged. 

Clarke  found  that  the  life  of  a  clerk  in 
a  government  office  was  as  little  to  his 
liking  as  that  of  a  shop  assistant.  In  1860 
he  happened  to  hear  the  aged  Lord  Lynd- 
hurst  make  one  of  his  last  speeches  in  the 
House  of  Lords  and  was  fired  with  ambi- 
tion to  be  called  to  the  bar  and  to  make 
such  a  career  for  himself.  Accordingly, 
when,  later  that  same  year,  the  govern- 
ment, desiring  to  reduce  the  clerical  staff 
at  the  India  Office,  offered  compensation 
to  clerks  who  were  willing  to  resign,  Clarke 
sent  in  his  resignation  and  received  £253 
by  way  of  compensation.  It  was  an  act  of 
great  courage  and  self-confidence — quali- 
ties which  Clarke  displayed  throughout 
his  life — ^to  give  up  an  assured  competence 
for  the  hazards  of  a  career  at  the  bar,  more 
especially  since  several  years  would  neces- 
sarily elapse  before  he  could  be  called  and 
begin  to  earn  an  income  at  that  profession. 
During  those  years  he  supported  himself 
by  reporting  law  cases  and  parliamentary 
debates  and  by  writing  literary  reviews: 
but  in  addition  to  those  sources  of  income 
he  obtained,  in  1861,  one  of  the  Tancred 
studentships  at  Lincoln's  Inn  which  pro- 
vided him  with  an  income  of  £95  for  six 
years.  In  June  1861  he  was  admitted  as 
a  student  of  Lincoln's  Inn :  in  November 
1864  he  was  called  to  the  bar :  and  in  1880 
he  took  silk.  He  became  a  bencher  of  his 
Inn  in  1892  and  was  treasurer  in  1906. 
From  the  time  when  he  became  a  Q.C.  he 
was  beyond  all  question  one  of  the  most 
eminent,  if  not  the  most  eminent,  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Common  Law  bar.  He  was 
an  admirable  forensic  orator  in  jury  cases, 
and  for  many  years  he  was  engaged  on 
one  side  or  the  other  in  most  of  the 
important  cases  on  the  Common  Law  side 
of  the  High  Court. 

From  the  time  when  he  quitted  the 
India  Office  Clarke  took  an  active  interest 
in  politics.  He  was  a  strong  conservative 
and  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield.  In  February  1880  he  stood 
as  the  conservative  candidate  at  a  by- 
election  for  the  borough  of  Southwark  and 
won  a  notable  victory  over  his  liberal 
opponent.  He  was  defeated  at  the  general 
election  which  took  place  in  April  of  that 
year ;  but  he  was  elected  at  a  by-election 
for  Plymouth  in  July,  and  for  the  next 
twenty  years  he  represented  that  consti- 
tuency in  the  House  of  Conunons. 

While  making  a  name  for  himself  at  the 
bar  Clarke  worked  hard  for  the  conserva- 
tive cause  both  in  parliament  and  in  the 


170 


Clarke,  E.  G. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


country  and  when,  in  the  summer  of  1885, 
Lord  SaHsbury  formed  his  first  administra- 
tion, Clarke  had  reasonable  grounds  for 
thinking  that  he  might  be  appointed  one 
of  the  law  officers.  His  claims  were,  how- 
ever, disregarded.  Richard  Webster,  sub- 
sequently Viscoimt  Alverstone  and  lord 
chief  justice  of  England  [q.v.],  who  was 
not  then  and  had  never  been  a  member  of 
parliament,  was  appointed  attorney- 
general.  On  hearing  a  rumour  that  Web- 
ster would  be  appointed  attorney -general 
Clarke  actually  wrote  to  Lord  Salisbury 
that  it  wotdd  be  a  mistake  to  make  such 
an  appointment  and  at  the  same  time  with 
characteristic  frankness  he  sent  a  copy  of 
the  letter  to  Webster  himself.  In  the 
following  year,  when  Lord  Sahsbury,  after 
the  defeat  of  Gladstone's  first  home  rule 
bill,  was  again  called  upon  to  form  a 
government,  Clarke's  claims  were  recog- 
nized and  he  was  appointed  solicitor- 
general,  an  office  which  he  continued  to 
hold  until  1892  when  the  government 
resigned  and  Gladstone  formed  his  last 
administration.  The  position  which  Clarke 
had  by  that  time  attained  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  where  eminent  barristers 
are  often  apt  to  fail,  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  he  was  chosen  to  answer  the 
speech  of  Gladstone  when  he  introduced 
his  second  home  rule  bill  in  February 
1893. " 

The  general  election  of  1895  gave  the 
unionist  party  a  clear  majority  over 
the  combined  forces  of  the  liberals  and  the 
Irish  nationalists  and  Lord  Salisbury  be- 
came prime  minister  for  the  third  time. 
He  invited  Clarke  to  resume  the  office  of 
solicitor-general  subject,  however,  to  the 
condition,  which  Webster  as  attorney- 
general  had  accepted,  that  he  would  not 
take  any  private  practice  so  long  as  he 
held  the  office.  Clarke  refused  the  office  on 
that  condition.  Two  years  later  Lord 
Salisbury  offered  Clarke  the  important 
judicial  office  of  master  of  the  Rolls,  but 
Clarke  declined  that  office  also,  because  it 
would  have  precluded  him  from  taking 
any  part  in  politics.  During  the  parlia- 
ment which  sat  from  1895  to  1900  Clarke, 
although  sitting  as  a  private  member  on 
the  government  side  of  the  House,  seems 
to  have  developed  a  cross-bench  mind.  He 
criticized  the  conduct  of  the  Foreign 
Office  in  the  matter  of  the  Venezuelan 
boundary  dispute ;  he  crossed  swords  with 
the  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Sir 
Michael  Hicks  Beach  [q.v.],  on  the  subject 
of  Irish  taxation ;  and  he  denounced  the 
conduct  of  the  colonial  secretary,  Joseph 


Chamberlain  [q.v.],  with  regard  to  the 
Boer  Republics.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to 
suggest  that  Lord  Salisbury  should  himself 
take  over  from  Chamberlain  the  manage- 
ment of  South  African  affairs.  His 
speeches  on  these  subjects — for  Clarke 
considered  it  his  duty  to  express  his 
opinions  publicly — were  very  displeasing 
to  many  of  his  supporters  in  Plymouth. 
He  was  asked  in  1900  to  resign  his  seat, 
and  thereupon  did  so. 

At  the  general  election  of  1906  Clarke 
was  elected  as  the  senior  member  for  the 
City  of  London ;  but  in  May  he  resigned 
his  seat  ostensibly  on  the  ground  that  his 
health  was  no  longer  good  enough  for  both 
his  work  at  the  bar  and  his  parliamentary 
duties.  Thus  at  the  age  of  sixty-five  he 
abandoned  the  political  ambition  which 
he  had  formed  when  he  was  a  clerk  at  the 
India  Office.  He  continued  in  practice  at 
the  bar  until  1914,  retiring  nearly  fifty 
years  after  the  date  of  his  call.  The  posi- 
tion which  he  had  attained  in  the  profession 
is  marked  by  the  fact  that  in  1908  he  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  that  on 
his  retirement  the  bench  and  bar  gave 
him  a  dinner  in  Lincoln's  Inn  hall,  at 
which  the  prime  minister,  H.  H.  Asquith, 
presided. 

Clarke  was  a  staunch  supporter  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  in  1894  had 
built  at  his  sole  expense  a  church  beside 
the  river  at  Staines,  dedicated  in  honour 
of  St.  Peter,  and  on  his  retirement  from 
the  bar  he  lived  at  a  house  called  Peter- 
house  which  he  had  built  adjacent  to  the 
church.  There  he  died  26  April  1931  in 
his  ninety-first  year.  On  the  following  day 
there  appeared  in  The  Times  newspaper 
a  long  obituary  notice  which  he  had 
himself  written  and  sent  to  The  Times 
eighteen  years  before  with  a  covering 
letter  expressing  the  remarkable  opinion 
that  an  obituary  notice  of  a  man  who 
has  reached  old  age  should  be  written  by 
himself. 

Clarke  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1866 
to  Ann  (died  1881),  eldest  daughter  of 
George  Mitchell,  builder,  of  Camberwell; 
secondly,  in  1882  to  Kathleen  Mathilda, 
daughter  of  Augustus  William  Bryant.  By 
his  first  wife  he  had  one  son  and  three 
daughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  died  in 
infancy  and  the  second  as  a  child .  By  his 
second  wife  he  had  two  sons,  the  younger 
of  whom  died  at  birth. 

A  portrait  of  Clarke,  painted  by  S.  J. 
Solomon  and  presented  to  him  by  the  bar 
of  England,  was  given  by  him  to  the 
Royal  Courts  of  Justice  and  hangs  there. 


180 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Clarke,  G.  S. 


Cartoons  by  'Spy'  appeared  in   Vanity 
Fair  13  March  1880  and  11  June  1903. 

[The  Times,  27  AprU  1931;  D.  Walker- 
Smith  and  E.  Clarke,  The  Life  of  Sir  Edward 
Clarke.  1939;  Sir  Edward  Clarke,  The  Story 
of  My  Life,  1918,  and  Selected  Speeches,  with 
Introductory  Notes,  1908.] 

Malcolm  M.  Macnaghten. 


CLARKE,  GEORGE  SYDENHAM, 
Baron  Sydenham  of  Combk  (1848-1933), 
administrator,  was  born  at  Swinderby, 
Lincolnshire,  4  July  1848,  the  eldest  of 
the  five  sons  of  Walter  John  Clarke,  vicar 
of  Swinderby,  later  of  Knoyle  House, 
Folkestone,  by  his  wife,  Maria  Frances, 
daughter  of  Joseph  Mayor,  rector  of  South 
Collinghani,  Nottinghamshire.  His  mother 
was  a  first  cousin  of  J.  E.  B.  Mayor  [q.v.]. 
After  being  sent  successively  to  Repton, 
Rossall,  Haileybury,  and  finally  Wim- 
bledon, he  passed  both  first  into  and 
first  out  of  the  Royal  Military  Academy, 
being  gazetted  to  the  Royal  Engineers 
in  1868.  In  1871  he  was  appointed  lec- 
turer on  practical  geometry  and  engineer 
drawing  at  the  newly  established  Royal 
Indian  Engineering  College  at  Coopers 
tlill,  near  Staines,  where  he  remained  until 
1880. 

Although  he  took  part  in  the  Egyptian 
J3q)edition  of  1882  and  the  eastern  Sudan 
»mpaign  of  1885,  Clarke  saw  little  active 
•ervice,  and  his  promotion  was  slow,  for 
he  military  authorities  of  those  days  had 
ittle  regard  for  scientific  young  officers 
dth  progressive  views.  In  other  quarters, 
lowever,  his  gifts  were  fully  appreciated, 
md  he  was  given  nimnerous  missions 
kbroad  for  investigating  and  reporting  on 
echnical  questions,  in  one  of  which  the 

fectness  of  his  judgement  was  after- 
is  to  be  startlingly  proved  when 
oured  cupolas,  on  which  at  Bucharest 
liad  reported  unfavourably  in  1885, 
ipsed  before  the  German  guns  at  Liege 
-ix,^  Namur  in  1914.  As  an  alternative  he 
dvocated  earthwork  defences  such  as  had 
one  good  service  for  the  Turks  at  Plevna, 
nd  his  views  carried  great  weight  with 
tie  Colonial  Defence  Committee  to  which 
e  was  secretary  from  1885  to  1892.  As 
scretary  to  the  royal  commission  on  navy 
nd  army  administration  (1888-1890),  he 
ecame  an  earnest  advocate  of  closer  ties 
etween  the  mother-country  and  its  over- 
:as  possessions  in  matters  naval  and 
lilitary,  as  well  as  between  the  navy  and 
le  army.  It  was  indeed  to  Clarke's  room 
i  the  Horse  Guards  that  for  the  first  time 
naval   officer  was   brought   from  the 


Admiralty  for  joint  discussion  of  imperial 
strategy.  Moreover,  during  his  seven  years 
(1894—1901)  as  superintendent  of  the  royal 
carriage  department  at  Woolwich  Arsenal, 
he  had  realized  sooner  than  anyone  else 
what  a  strain  a  war,  such  as  the  South 
African,  would  put  upon  the  resources  of 
the  Empire  in  the  production  of  war 
material ;  and  when  during  that  war  the 
need  was  recognized  for  reorganizing  the 
War  Office,  Clarke  was  made  in  1900  a 
member  of  the  committee  entrusted  with 
the  preparation  of  a  scheme  of  reform,  and 
in  1903  he  was  summoned  home  to  serve, 
with  Lord  Esher  and  Lord  Fisher  [qq.v.], 
on  the  War  Office  reconstitution  commit- 
tee set  up  by  the  conservative  government. 
This  committee  [see  Brett,  Reginald, 
Viscount  Esher]  reported  within  two 
months,  in  March  1904,  recommending  the 
establishment  of  a  general  staff,  later 
known  as  the  Army  Council,  and  this  led 
on  eventixally  to  the  Imperial  General 
Staff  and  the  Haldane  reforms.  The  report 
was  immediately  adopted  and  Clarke  was 
appointed  to  the  Committee  for  Imperial 
Defence. 

As  early  as  1901  Clarke  had  interrupted 
his  labours  on  military  organization  by 
accepting  the  office  of  governor  of  Victoria. 
At  Melbourne  he  made  himself  popular 
and  respected  by  all,  but  the  constitutional 
checks  imposed  by  his  position  on  a 
masterful  spirit  might  have  led  to  early 
retirement  but  for  his  summons  home  in 
1903.  In  1907,  however,  on  the  recom- 
mendation of  Campbell-Bannerman,  he 
was  appointed  governor  of  Bombay,  and 
this  ushered  in  the  period  of  his  life  in 
which  he  received  most  fame  and  obloquy. 

Clarke  was  a  lifelong  liberal,  and,  as 
often  happens  to  men  of  that  temper,  his 
views  came  to  be  identified  at  the  end  of 
his  life  with  hide-bound  toryism.  Given 
co-operation  with  Indians,  he  expected  to 
do  much  to  advance  the  political  life  of 
India,  but  he  was  soon  disillusioned.  His 
appeals  for  co-operation,  which  caused 
him  to  be  looked  upon  as  'dangerously 
pro-native',  fell  upon  deaf  ears,  and 
believing  as  a  liberal  that  it  was  his  para- 
mount duty  to  maintain  law  and  order 
wdthout  distinction  of  race  or  colour  or 
creed,  he  formed  the  deepest  suspicion  of 
the  motives  of  the  Indian  political  leaders 
and  of  the  result  to  the  unvocal  millions 
of  the  races  of  India  if  democratic  institu- 
tions were  introduced.  When  therefore 
Tilak,  the  popular  Brahman  leader,  ad- 
vocated the  use  of  the  bomb,  Clarke  had 
him  prosecuted,  but  on  his  conviction, 


181 


Clarke,  G.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


commuted  his  transportation  to  imprison- 
ment at  Mandalay.  The  prosecution  was 
regarded,  even  by  Morley,  no  behever  in 
popular  government  for  India,  as  unwise ; 
nevertheless,  when  he  resigned  in  1913, 
Clarke  left  India  as  one  who  had  brought 
great  improvements,  moral  and  material, 
to  Bombay,  who  had  paved  the  way  for 
the  construction  of  the  great  Sukkur 
barrage,  and  who  left  a  memory  of  a 
'great,  fearless,  and  upright'  governor 
whom  Indians  would  visit  in  his  retire- 
ment in  Kent  and  ask  for  his  advice  in 
their  political  problems.  He  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  on  his  retirement  as  Baron 
Sydenham  of  Combe,  of  Dulverton, 
Somerset. 

It  was  a  profound  disappointment  to 
Sydenham  that  his  services  were  not 
called  upon  by  the  government  in  the  war 
with  Germany  in  1914,  but  he  had  been 
appointed  in  1913  chairman  of  a  royal 
commission  on  venereal  diseases,  the  duties 
of  which  he  carried  out  most  judiciously. 
Other  notable  services  which  he  rendered 
were  as  chairman  (1915-1916)  of  the 
central  tribunal  hearing  appeals  from  local 
committees  administering  the  National 
Service  Act,  and  as  a  member  (1918)  of 
Lord  Bryce's  conference  on  the  second 
chamber.  After  the  war  he  became  more 
and  more  mistrustful  of  the  opinions 
apparently  dominant,  and  both  in  ample 
writings  and  in  speeches  in  the  House  of 
Lords  he  made  it  no  secret  that  he  regarded 
the  future  of  the  Empire  and  of  civilization 
with  the  deepest  pessimism.  He  died  in 
London  7  February  1933. 

Sydenham  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1871  to  Caroline  Emily  (died  1908),  eldest 
daughter  of  General  Peregrine  Henry 
Fellowes,  and  had  one  daughter,  who  pre- 
deceased her  father ;  secondly,  in  1910  to 
Phyllis  Angelina  Rosamond,  youngest 
daughter  of  George  Morant,  Grenadier 
Guards,  resident  at  Shirley  House,  Carrick- 
macross,  co.  Monaghan,  and  widow  of 
Captain  Arthur  Reynolds,  East  Surrey 
Regiment.  There  were  no  other  children 
and  the  title  became  extinct.  He  was 
appomted  C.M.G.  (1887),  K.C.M.G.  (1893), 
G.C.M.G.  (1905),  G.C.I.E.  (1907),  G.C.S.I. 
(1911),  and  G.B.E.  (1917).  He  was  elected 
F.R.S.  in  1896. 

A  portrait  of  Sydenham  by  a  Hvmgarian 
artist.  Miss  Schulz,  is  in  the  possession  of 
his  widow. 

[The  Times,  8,  9, 11,  and  15  February  1933 ; 
Lord  Sydenham,  My  Working  Life,  1927,  and 
Studies  of  an  Imperialist,  1928.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 


CLARKE,  MAUDE  VIOLET  (1892- 
1935),  historian,  was  bom  in  Belfast  7  May 
1892.  In  1903  her  father,  Richard  James 
Clarke,  rector  of  Trinity  church,  Belfast, 
later  archdeacon  of  Connor,  accepted  the 
living  of  Carnmoney  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  city,  and  here,  in  an  atmosphere  of 
religion  and  scholarship,  Maude,  the 
second  child  and  only  daughter,  and  her 
three  brothers  grew  up.  Her  mother  was 
Anne  Nugent,  daughter  of  John  Thomas 
Jessop,  J.P.,  of  Mount  Jessop,  CO.  Longford. 

After  being  educated  at  a  school  in 
Belfast  and  later  at  Alexandra  School  and 
College,  Dublin,  Miss  Clarke  graduated 
with  a  first  class  in  history  at  the  univer- 
sity of  Belfast.  She  then  went  with  a 
scholarship  to  Lady  Margaret  Hall, 
Oxford,  where  she  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  modern  history  in  1915.  The  three 
years  from  1916  to  1919  were  spent  in 
Belfast,  deputizing  for  the  professor  of 
modern  history,  (Sir)  Frederick  Maurice 
Powicke,  and  in  the  last-named  year  she 
returned  to  Oxford  as  history  tutor  of 
Somerville  College.  The  rest  of  her  life  was 
divided  between  Coole  Glebe  (the  rectory 
house  of  Carnmoney)  and  Somerville 
College,  of  which  she  became  a  fellow  in 
1922  and  vice-principal  in  1933.  With  a 
witty  Irish  tongue  masking  a  deeply 
religious  nature,  and  an  iron  mil,  she  made 
an  indelible  impression  upon  her  pupils 
and  contemporaries,  living  a  free  social 
life  and  extending  open  hospitality  to  a 
wide  circle  of  friends.  She  lived,  in  fact, 
at  full  pressure  in  these  years,  making  for 
herself  a  many-sided  reputation  as  a 
college  tutor  and  administrator,  as  a  uni- 
versity lecturer  (1930),  and,  not  least, 
as  a  scholar.  A  fine  future  seemed  to  lie 
ahead  when,  in  1933,  she  was  smitten 
with  cancer,  and  she  died  at  Carnmoney 
17  November  1935,  working  almost  to 
the  last  after  a  stoical  resistance  to  the 
disease. 

Although  the  best  was  stUl  to  come — 
a  projected  history  of  fourteenth-century 
England — Miss  Clarke  had  achieved  at  her 
death  an  established  reputation  by  a 
number  of  articles  of  which  'The  Origin 
of  Impeachment'  (1934)  and  a  brilliant 
paper  on  the  Wilton  Diptych  (1931),  now 
in  the  National  Gallery,  are  outstanding. 
An  elaborate  study  of  the  Modus  tenendi 
parliamentum  was  also  finished  just  before 
her  death  and  published  posthumously 
(1936)  under  the  title  of  Medieval  Repre- 
sentation and  Consent.  Equally  sure  in  its 
treatment  of  both  the  English  and  the 
Irish  material,  the  book  is  an  important 


182 


it 

lii 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


Clerk 


contribution  to  the  history  of  parliament 
at  a  critical  phase  in  its  development.  A 
collection  of  her  papers  was  published  as 
Fourteenth  Century  Studies  (edited  by 
L.  S.  Sutherland  and  M.  McKisack,  1937). 
Although  Avritten  for  the  scholar  these 
articles  are  uniformly  stimulating  and  at 
times  provoking.  With  their  great  learn- 
ing lightly  borne,  close  reasoning,  and 
clear  cut  conclusions  they  are  eminently 
original,  and  even  the  unproved  hypo- 
thesis will  be  found  to  have  thrown  light 
on  the  problem. 

A  distinguished  personality  and  a  tire- 
less worker.  Miss  Clarke  advanced  know- 
ledge by  her  own  work  and  through  that 
of  her  pupils.  Her  premature  death  was 
incontestably  a  loss,  not  easily  measured, 
to  later  medieval  studies  in  England. 

[The  Times,  18  November  1935 ;  Memoir  by 
E.  L.  Woodward  prefixed  to  M.  V.  Clarke, 
Fourteenth  Century  Studies,  1937  (portrait); 
personal  knowledge.]        V.  H.  Galbraith. 

CLERK,  Sir  DUGALD  (1854^1932), 
mechanical  engineer,  was  born  at  Glasgow 
81  March  1854,  the  eldest  son  of  Donald 
Clerk,  machinist,  of  Glasgow,  by  his  wife, 
Martha  Symington,  second  daughter  of 
John- Brown,  of  Glasgow.  He  was  about 
fifteen  years  old  when  he  began  his  train- 
ing in  the  drawing  office  of  Messrs.  H.  O. 
Robinson  &  company,  of  Glasgow,  and 
in  his  father's  works,  also  attending  classes 
at  the  West  of  Scotland  Technical  College ; 
nd  from  1871  to  1876  he  studied  at 
Anderson's  College,  Glasgow,  and  the 
Jforkshire  College  of  Science,  Leeds,  under 
ihe  chemist  (Sir)  T.  E.  Thorpe  [q.v.],  who 
nade  him  one  of  his  assistants  and  set 
lim  to  work  on  the  fractionation  of 
jetroleum  oils,  an  exercise  which  proved 
>f  great  value  to  him  in  his  subsequent 
nvestigations.  He  had  intended  to  be- 
some  a  chemical  engineer,  but  his  attention 
vas  drawn  to  the  gas  engine  by  seeing  one 
►f  the  Lenoir  type  at  work  in  a  joiner's 
hop  in  Glasgow,  and  it,  with  other  forms 
f  the  internal-combustion  engine,  became 
he  leading  interest  of  his  life. 

After  his  return  to  Glasgow  from  Leeds 
Ilerk  was  for  a  short  time  assistant  to 
1.  J.  Mills,  the  Young  professor  of  techni- 
al  chemistry  at  the  Royal  Technical 
bllege;  he  then  devoted  himself  to  re- 
;arch  on  the  theory  and  design  of  the  gas 
ngine  with  the  Glasgow  firm  of  Messrs. 
liomson,  Sterne  &  company  from  1877 
1885  and  with  Messrs.  Tangyes,  of 
irmingham,  from  1886  to  1888.  In  the 
itter   year   he   joined    his    friend    (Sir) 


George  Croydon  (later  Lord)  Marks  in  the 
firm  of  Messrs.  Marks  and  Clerk,  consulting 
engineers  and  patent  agents ;  this  partner- 
ship lasted  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  From 
1892  to  1899  he  was  engineering  director 
of  Messrs.  Kynoch,  of  Birmingham,  for 
whom  he  designed  machinery  for  the 
manufacture  of  ammunition,  and  from 
1902  he  was  a  director  and  from  1929  until 
his  death  chairman  of  the  National  Gas 
Engine  Company,  of  Ashton-under-Lyne. 

Clerk  began  his  work  on  the  gas  engine 
at  the  end  of  1876.  His  first  patent,  taken 
out  in  1877,  was  followed  by  a  second  in 
1878,  and  in  1881  he  patented  an  engine 
working  on  what  became  known  as  the 
Clerk  (two-stroke)  cycle,  in  which  the  main 
crankshaft  received  an  impulse  at  each 
revolution,  in  contrast  to  the  Otto  (four- 
stroke)  engine  in  which  there  was  one 
impulse  for  each  two  revolutions.  Engines 
of  the  Clerk  type  were  manufactured  in 
considerable  numbers,  but  their  popularity 
waned  for  a  time  after  the  lapse  of  the 
Otto  patent  in  1890.  The  Clerk  cycle, 
however,  came  into  extensive  use  for  gas 
engines  of  the  larger  sizes. 

The  long  series  of  researches  carried 
out  by  Clerk  on  the  internal-combustion 
engine,  the  specific  heat  of  gases,  and  the 
explosion  of  gaseous  mixtures  won  him  an 
international  reputation.  He  embodied 
his  results  in  a  book.  The  Gas  Engine  * 
(1886),  which  subsequently  appeared  as 
The  Gas,  Petrol  and  Oil  Engine  (1909),  and 
in  many  communications  to  scientific  and 
technical  societies,  particularly  the  In- 
stitution of  Civil  Engineers,  to  which, 
between  1882  and  1928,  he  contributed 
five  papers,  besides  two  James  Forrest 
lectures  (1904  and  1920).  The  second  of 
these  lectures,  dealing  with  coal  conserva- 
tion in  the  United  Kingdom,  was  of  wider 
scope  than  his  other  contributions,  and 
with  it  may  be  coupled  his  Thomas 
Hawksley  lecture  to  the  Institution  of 
Mechanical  Engineers  in  1915,  on  the 
world's  supplies  of  fuel  and  motive  power. 
In  1917  he  delivered  the  first  Trueman 
Wood  lecture  to  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts. 

Dxiring  the  war  of  1914-1918  Clerk  was 
director  of  Engineering  Research  at  the 
Admiralty  (1916-1917)  and  served  on 
many  committees  concerned  with  the  war 
effort.  He  was  also  chairman  of  the  water 
power  resources  committee  of  the  con- 
joint board  of  scientific  societies  (1917) 
and  a  member  of  the  water  power  resour- 
ces committee  appointed  by  the  Board  of 
Trade  in  1918.  Other  activities  included 
chairmanship  of  the  Delegacy  of  the  City 


183 


Clerk 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  Guilds  College,  South  Kensington 
(1918-1919),  and  membership  of  the 
University  Grants  Conunission  and  of 
the  Carnegie  Trust  for  Scotland.  He  was 
frequently  a  judge  at  the  reliability  trials 
which  were  fashionable  in  the  early  days 
of  the  motor-car. 

Clerk,  who  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in 
1917,  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Glasgow,  Leeds,  Liverpool, 
Manchester,  and  St.  Andrews.  The  Royal 
Society  of  Arts  awarded  him  the  Albert 
medal  in  1922,  and  the  Royal  Society,  of 
which  he  was  elected  a  fellow  in  1908, 
a  Royal  medal  in  1924.  For  the  papers 
which  he  read  before  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers  he  received  the  Watt 
medal  (1882),  Telford  prize  (1882  and 
1886),  and  Telford  gold  medal  (1907).  He 
was  president  of  many  engineering  soci- 
eties, and  would  have  been  president  of 
the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers  for  the 
session  of  1932-1933  had  not  ill  health 
prevented  him  from  assuming  office.  He 
married  in  1883  Margaret  (died  1930), 
elder  daughter  of  Alexander  Hanney,  of 
Helensburgh.  He  died  at  his  home  at 
Ewhurst,  Surrey,  12  November  1932. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  2,  December  1933  (portrait); 
Engineer  and  Engineering,  18  November  1932 
(portraits);  Proceedings,  vol.  ccxxxv,  1932— 
1933,  and  Journal,  vol.  xii,  1938-1939,  of  the 
Institution  of  Civil  Engineers ;  Proceedings  of 
the  Institution  of  Mechanical  Engineers,  vol. 
cxxiii,  1932 ;  Nature,  24  December  1932.] 

H.  M.  Ross. 

COBBE,  Sir  ALEXANDER  STAN- 
HOPE (1870-1931),  general,  was  born  at 
Naini  Tal,  India,  5  Jime  1870,  the  second 
son  of  Lieutenant-General  (Sir)  Alexander 
Hugh  Cobbe,  17th  regiment,  by  his  wife, 
Emily  Barbara,  daughter  of  Captain  G. 
Stanhope  Jones,  59th  regiment.  He  was 
educated  at  Wellington  and  Sandhurst. 
Commissioned  in  the  South  Wales  Bor- 
derers in  1889,  he  was  promoted  to 
lieutenant  in  1892  but  transferred  to  the 
Indian  Staff  Corps  that  year,  his  appoint- 
ment being  confirmed  in  1894.  He  was 
attached  to  the  32nd  Sikh  Pioneers,  with 
whom  he  saw  active  service  in  Chitral  in 
1895,  taking  part  in  Colonel  (later  Major- 
General)  F.  H.  Kelly's  great  march  to  the 
relief  of  the  Agency.  He  subsequently 
served  in  Nyasaland  in  1898  and  1899  in 
various  minor  operations  and  with  the 
Central  African  regiment  in  Ashanti  in 
1900,  was  wounded,  and  awarded  the 
D.S.O.  He  was  again  on  active  service  in 
1902,  in  Somaliland,  and  won  the  V.C.  at 


Erego  6  October  for  good  work  with  a 
Maxim  gun  when  left  alone  in  front  of  the 
line  at  a  critical  moment,  while  later  he 
went  out  vmder  heavy  fire  and  brought  in 
a  wounded  man.  He  had  received  his 
captaincy  in  1900  and  became  major  and 
brevet  lieutenant-colonel  in  1907. 

Between  1902  and  1914  Cobbe  held 
several  staff  appointments  in  India  and 
at  the  War  Office  and  was  made  aide-de- 
camp to  the  king  and  brevet-colonel  in 
1911.  He  went  to  France  in  October  1914 
as  general  staff  officer  of  the  Lahore 
division,  transferred  to  the  staff  of  the 
Indian  Corps  in  June  1915,  and  was  later 
brigadier-general.  General  Staff,  I  Corps. 
Returning  to  India  in  January  1916  as 
director  of  staff  duties  and  military  train- 
ing, he  took  over  the  Meerut  7th  Indian 
division  in  Mesopotamia  the  following 
June,  becoming  major-general,  and  two 
months  later  succeeded  General  Sir  Stan- 
ley Maude  [q.v.]  in  the  III  Indian  Corps, 
which  he  commanded  in  the  operations 
of  December  1916-February  1917  for  the 
recapture  of  Kut  al  Amara,  being  particu- 
larly concerned  with  the  clearance  of  the 
Kliudhaira  bend  and  the  capture  of  the 
Sannaiyat  position.  He  was  later  in  charge 
of  the  operations  which  resulted  in  sub- 
stantial success  at  Mushahida  (March 
1917)  and  Istabulat  and  the  capture  of 
Samarra  (April)  and  also  of  the  advance 
to  Tikrit  in  October.  In  1918  his  corps 
carried  out  the  advance  upon  Mosul  which 
culminated  after  sharp  fighting  at  Sharqat 
and  on  the  Lesser  Zab  in  the  surrender  of 
the  main  Turkish  field  force.  Difficulties 
of  supply  and  transport  were  great  but 
Cobbe's  plans  resulted  in  an  outstanding 
success. 

Cobbe  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1915, 
K.C.B.  in  1917,  C.S.I,  in  1918,  and 
K.C.S.I.  in  1919,  becoming  lieutenant- 
general  in  that  year.  From  October  1919 
to  June  1920  and  again  in  1921  and  1922 
he  was  military  secretary  at  the  India 
Office ;  he  was  general  officer  commanding- 
in-chief.  Northern  Command  in  India  from 
1926  to  1930,  and  had  returned  to  his  old 
post  at  the  India  Office  shortly  before  he 
died.  He  had  been  promoted  fuU  general 
in  February  1924,  being  the  yoimgest 
holder  of  that  rank  in  the  army,  and  was 
made  aide-de-camp  general  to  the  King 
and  appointed  G.C.B.  in  1928.  To  the 
great  pleasure  of  his  old  regiment  he  had 
been  made  colonel  of  the  South  Wales 
Borderers  in  1922.  An  accomplished,  as 
weU  as  a  gallant  and  popular,  soldier,  he 
had  a  fine  record  both  as  a  staff  officer  and 


184 


Jll 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Cochrane 


in  command  in  the  field  and  he  inspired 
confidence  as  well  as  liking  and  respect. 

Cobbe  married  in  1910  Winifred  Ada, 
eldest  daughter  of  Sir  Albert  Edward 
Bowen,  first  baronet,  of  Colworth  Park, 
Bedfordshire,  and  had  one  son,  who  was 
killed  in  the  war  of  1939-1945  as  an  officer 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  and  two  daughters. 
He  died  in  London,  after  an  operation, 
29  June  1931. 

[The  Times,  1  July  1931 ;  J.  W.  B.  Mere- 
wether  and  F.  Smith,  The  Indian  Corps  in 
France  (1918) ;  (Official)  History  of  the  Great 
War.  The  Campaign  in  Mesopotamia,  vols,  iii 
and  iv,  1925-1927 ;  regimental  information.] 
C.  T.  Atkinson. 

COCHRANE-BAILLIE,  CHARLES 
WALLACE  ALEXANDER  NAPIER 
ROSS,  second  Baron  Lamington  (1860- 
1940).   [See  Baillie.] 

COCHRANE,  DOUGLAS  MACKIN- 
NON BAILLIE  HAMILTON,  twelfth 
Earl  of  Dundonald  (1852-1935),  lieu- 
tenant-general, was  born  at  Auchentoul 
House,  Banff,  29  October  1852,  the  second 
son  of  Thomas  Barnes  Cochrane,  eleventh 
Earl  of  Dundonald,  a  soldier,  by  his  wife, 
Louisa  Harriet,  daughter  of  William 
Alexander  Mackinnon  of  Mackinnon.  He 
was  a  grandson  of  Thomas  Cochrane, 
tenth  Earl  of  Dundonald  [q.v.]. 

Dundonald  (then  Lord  Cochrane)  was 
educated  at  a  private  school  at  Walton- 
on-Thames  and  at  Eton,  and  in  1870 
entered  the  army  as  cornet  and  sub- 
lieutenant in  the  2nd  Life  Guards.  During 
the  following  fifteen  years  he  visited 
Germany  and  South  America  and  in  1884 
was  sent  in  command  of  a  contingent  of 
the  2nd  Life  Guards  to  relieve  General 
Gordon  [q.v.]  at  Khartoum.  He  took  part 
in  the  battles  of  Abu  Klea  and  Gubat  in 
1885.  His  rides  with  dispatches  across  the 
desert  to  announce  the  seizure  of  Gakdul 
WeUs  and  again  to  tell  of  the  death  of 
Gordon  and  the  fall  of  Khartoum  made 
him  famous  at  the  time.  During  this 
campaign  he  succeeded  to  the  title  (1885). 
For  his  services  in  Egypt  he  was  mentioned 
in  dispatches  and  promoted  lieutenant- 
colonel  on  his  return  early  in  1885.  Four 
years  later  he  became  a  brevet  colonel.  In 
1890  he  was  made  captain  of  the  Queen's 
Guard,  and  in  1895  he  took  command  of 
the  2nd  Life  Guards.  Four  years  later 
the  Boers  attacked  Natal,  and,  although 
his  period  of  command  had  in  the  mean- 
time expired,  within  a  few  weeks  (October 
1899)  he  landed  at  Cape  Town  and  offered 


his  services  to  Sir  Redvers  Buller  [q.v.] 
and  was  given  conunand  of  the  South 
Natal  Field  Force.  With  it  he  was  engaged 
at  Colenso,  and  early  in  1900,  in  command 
of  the  2nd  Cavalry  brigade,  he  took  part 
in  the  Tugela  fighting  and  on  28  February 
1900  entered  Lady  smith.  Later  the  same 
year  he  commanded  the  combined  3rd 
iviounted  and  Natal  Volunteer  brigades  in 
the  fighting  on  the  Biggarsberg,  and  at 
Laing's  Nek  and  in  the  eastern  Transvaal. 
When  Buller  resigned  the  command  of  the 
Natal  army  in  October  1900  the  brigade 
was  broken  up  and  Dimdonald  returned 
to  England.  For  his  services  in  the  cam- 
paign he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches  six 
times  and  promoted  major-general  (1900). 

In  December  1900  Dundonald  sat  on 
the  Yeomanry  Reorganization  Conunit- 
tee  which  brought  about  many  changes, 
particularly  in  replacing  the  sword  by  the 
rifle.  In  1902  he  was  invited  to  take  com- 
mand of  the  Canadian  Militia  with  a  view 
to  its  reorganization  and  he  accordingly 
proceeded  in  July  to  Ottawa  where  two 
years  of  inspections  resulted  in  a  scheme 
for  a  Canadia^n  citizen  army.  He  was 
author  of  Cavalry  Training,  Canada 
(1904).  Owing,  however,  to  political  con- 
flict, his  work  came  to  an  end  and  he 
returned  to  England  in  1904,  and  in  1906 
served  on  the  committee  for  the  re- 
organization of  the  Territorial  Army  under 
the  chairmanship  of  R.  B.  (Lord)  Haldane 
[q.v.].  In  1906  he  was  promoted  lieu- 
tenant-general and  retired  from  the  army 
in  1907.  During  the  next  few  years  he 
exerted  himself  in  the  interests  of  ex- 
servicemen  and  the  work  of  their  national 
association.  He  had,  in  1897,  designed  a 
light  machine-gun  and  a  light  ambulance, 
but  neither  was  adopted  for  army  use. 

When  war  broke  out  in  1914  Dun- 
donald was  prevented  by  age  from  active 
participation,  but  he  served  his  coimtry  as 
chairman  of  the  Admiralty  committee  on 
smoke  screens  (1915),  making  use  of  plans 
drawn  up  by  his  grandfather,  the  proposals 
of  which  bore  fruit  in  1918.  In  1921  he 
served  as  special  ambassador  on  the 
occasion  of  the  Peruvian  centenary.  He 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1896,  K.C.V.O.  in 
1907,  and  K.C.B.  in  1913. 

In  1878  Dundonald  married  Winifred 
(died  1924),  daughter  of  Robert  Bamford- 
Hesketh,  2nd  Life  Guards,  of  Gwyrch 
Castle,  Abergele,  Denbighshire.  They  had 
two  sons  and  three  daughters.  Although 
as  a  young  officer  in  Africa  he  suffered  an 
injury  that  somewhat  handicapped  him 
thereafter,  he  remained  active  to  a  late 


185 


Cochrane 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


age,  and  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven  he 
sailed  a  14-ton  boat  across  the  Atlantic 
to  South  America.  He  died  at  his  residence 
at  Wimbledon  Park,  London,  12  April 
1935,  and  was  succeeded  as  thirteenth 
earl  by  his  elder  son,  Thomas  Hesketh 
Douglas  Blair  (born  1886). 

A  cartoon  of  Dundonald  by  'Spy' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  8  May  1902.  He 
is  also  Included  in  the  cartoon  'A  General 
Group'  by  'Spy',  which  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  29  November  1900. 

[The  Times,  13  April  1935 ;  Lord  Dundonald, 
My  Army  Life,  1926.] 

C.  V.  Owen. 

COLERIDGE,  STEPHEN  WILLIAM 
BUCHANAN  (1854-1936),  author  and 
anti-vivisectionist,  was  born  in  London 
31  May  1854,  the  second  son  of  John  Duke 
(afterwards  first  Baron)  Coleridge,  lord 
chief  justice  of  England  [q.v.],  by  his  first 
wife,  Jane  Fortescue,  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
George  Turner  Seymour,  of  Farringford, 
Isle  of  Wight.  He  was  brother  of  the  judge 
B.  J.  C.  Coleridge,  second  Baron  Coleridge 
[q.v.],  and  of  Mr.  Gilbert  Coleridge,  assis- 
tant master  of  the  Crown  Office  from  1892 
to  1921. 

Stephen  Coleridge  did  not  go,  as  did  his 
brothers,  to  Eton.  He  graduated  from 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  after  a 
year  (1879-1880)  spent  in  travel,  became 
private  secretary  to  his  father  (1884-1890). 
In  1886  he  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple.  In  1890  the  lord  chief 
justice  appointed  him  clerk  of  assize  for 
the  South  Wales  circuit.  His  natural  kind- 
ness and  courtesy  made  him  popular  with 
the  members  of  the  circuit. 

An  inherited  rhetorical  faculty  charac- 
terized Coleridge's  ^vritings  both  in  prose  and 
in  verse.  He  appreciated  good  literature, 
and  was  an  acceptable  lecturer.  His  large 
output  includes  A  Morning  in  my  Library 
(1914),  An  Evening  in  my  Library  among 
the  English  Poets  (1916),  and  other  books 
of  the  same  kind.  He  also  published  four 
volumes  of  Letters  to  my  Grandson  (1921- 
1923),  telling  him  of  the  world  about  him, 
the  happy  life,  and  the  glory  of  English 
prose  and  poetry.  He  had  a  pleasing 
amateur  skiU  in  painting,  and  showed  at 
various  exhibitions. 

Coleridge  was  best  known  to  the  public 
for  his  outspoken  attacks  upon  vivisection. 
Hatred  of  cruelty  in  all  forms,  especially 
to  children  and  animals,  was  a  marked 
feature  of  his  character.  He  was  one  of  the 
founders,  in  1884,  of  the  National  Society 
for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children. 


Although  fond  of  games  and  outdoor  pur- 
suits, he  disliked  any  sport  that  involved 
the  taking  of  animal  life,  and  became  presi- 
dent of  the  League  for  the  Prohibition  of 
Cruel  Sports.  But  he  reserved  his  most 
violent  denunciations  for  experiments, 
conducted  in  the  interests  of  medical 
science,  on  living  animals.  In  the  opinion 
of  many  he  carried  his  prejudices  to  un- 
reasonable extremes.  He  would  listen  to 
no  arguments  which  demonstrated  the 
lifesaving  value  of  the  discoveries  founded 
on  vivisection,  and  went  so  far  as  to  say 
that,  even  if  the  examples  given  to  him 
were  true,  they  were  no  justification  for 
the  practice.  He  even  maintained  that 
knowledge  and  reason  were  miserable  bases 
on  which  to  build  conduct,  character,  and 
life.  Such  statements  may  well  be  thought 
to  have  damaged  rather  than  furthered 
the  cause  which  he  advocated,  and  per- 
haps they  did,  but  at  the  same  time  there 
must  be  hesitation  in  accepting  this  view 
without  some  qualification.  Vivisection  is 
not  now  the  detestable  and  almost  un- 
mentionable horror  that  it  was  to  the 
masses  in  the  far-off  days  when  Coleridge 
attacked  it,  but,  on  the  evidence  of  those 
acquainted  with  the  subject,  is  practised 
with  more  care  for  the  alleviation  or 
removal  of  animal  suffering  by  the  use  of 
anaesthetics. 

Coleridge  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1879  to  Geraldine  Beatrix  (died  1910), 
daughter  and  co-heir  of  Charles  Manners 
Lushington,  of  Norton  Court,  Kent,  and 
niece  of  Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  first  Earl 
of  Iddesleigh  [q.v.] ;  secondly,  in  1911  toj 
Susan,  second  daughter  of  Allan  Dunes 
Stewart,  of  Bim  Rannoch  and  Inver- 
hadden,  Perthshire.  By  his  first  marriage 
he  had  three  sons,  the  eldest  of  whom  pre- 
deceased his  father.  Coleridge  died  at  his 
home  at  Chobham,  Surrey,  10  April  1936. 

A   cartoon  of  Coleridge  by   'Elf   ap- 
peared in  Vanity  Fair  27  July  1910. 

[The    Times,     11     April    1936;     Stephei 
Coleridge,  Memories,  1913.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

COLLIER,  JOHN  (1850-1934),  paintei 
and  writer  on  art,  was  born  in  Londoni 
27  January  1850,  the  younger  son  of  the 
judge  Robert  Porrett  Collier,  afterwards! 
first  Lord  Monkswell  [q.v.],  by  his  wife, 
Isabella  Rose,  daughter  of  William  Rose 
Rose,  of  Wolston  Heath,  near  Rugby, 
and  Daventry.  He  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  then  went  abroad  to  study  French 
and  German,  the  latter  at  Heidelberg,  with 
the  intention  of  entering  the  diplomatic 


186 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Colville 


service,  but  instead  lie  went  into  the  City 
office  of  Sir  John  Pender  [q.v.],  chairman 
of  the  Telegraph  Construction  and  Main- 
tenance Company,  whose  trade-mark  of 
the  flying  horse  Collier  designed.  From 
May  1916  to  December  1918  he  served 
as  a  temporary  clerk  at  the  Foreign 
Office. 

Collier's  father  did  not  oppose  his  desire 
to  become  a  painter  but  introduced  him  to 
(Sir)  Lawrence  Alma-Tadema  [q.v.]  who, 
however,  could  not  take  him  as  a  pupil, 
so  Collier  went  to  the  Slade  School  of  Art, 
afterwards  studying  in  Paris  and  Munich. 
He  began  to  exhibit  at  the  Royal  Academy 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five  and  continued  to 
do  so  almost  without  a  break  until  the 
year  of  his  death.  He  was  at  his  best  in 
portraiture.  He  was  vice-president  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Portrait  Painters,  and  he 
is  represented  at  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery  by  no  fewer  than  eleven  works, 
the  subjects  including  Charles  Darwin  and 
T.  H.  Huxley.  At  the  Tate  Gallery  he  is 
represented  by  two  pictures,  'The  Last 
Voyage  of  Henry  Hudson',  a  Chantrey 
purchase  of  1881,  and  'Henrietta  Anne 
Huxley,  aetat.  lxxx',  presented  in  1928. 

Collier's  popular  reputation  rested  upon 
his  so-called  'problem  pictures',  which, 
under  such  titles  as  'The  Cheat'  and  'The 
Fallen  Idol',  appeared  at  the  Academy 
from  time  to  time.  He  himself  disliked 
the  description  and  said  that  he  merely 
depicted  little  tragedies  of  modern  life  and 
always  endeavoured  to  make  their  mean- 
ing perfectly  plain.  Perhaps  the  fairest 
judgement  of  Collier  as  a  painter  is  to 
say  that  he  was  concerned  with  accuracy 
rather  than  with  truth  in  the  artistic 
meaning  of  the  word,  which  implies  a 
certain  amount  of  emotional  deformation. 
Not  that  he  was  indifferent  to  feeling,  but 
he  recorded  it  in  the  subject  rather  than 
expressed  it  in  the  treatment.  In  por- 
traiture he  achieved  a  sober  veracity 
slightly  reminiscent  of  Frank  Holl  [q.v.]. 
If  his  publications,  A  Primer  of  Art  (1882), 
A  Manual  of  Oil  Painting  (1886),  and 
The  Art  of  Portrait  Painting  (1905),  be 
taken  into  account,  it  is  difficult  to  resist 
the  conclusion  that  Collier  had  the  scientific 
rather  than  the  artistic  habit  of  mind. 

In  personal  relations  Collier,  who  was  a 
thin,  bearded  man,  gave  the  impression 
of  quiet  tenacity  and  a  sort  of  polite  ruth- 
lessness.  He  devoted  much  time  and 
thought  to  the  causes  of  Rationalism  and 
divorce  law  reform.  He  was  twice  married : 
first,  in  1879  to  Marian,  second  daughter 
of  Thomas  Henry  Huxley  and  sister  of 


Leonard  Huxley  [qq.v.],  who  herself  drew 
portraits  (she  died  in  1887,  shortly  after 
the  birth  of  their  only  child,  a  daughter) ; 
secondly,  in  1889  in  Norway,  to  Ethel 
Gladys,  fifth  daughter  of  T.  H.  Huxley,  the 
marriage  being  regularized  in  England  by 
the  passing  of  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister 
Act  of  1907.  By  his  second  wife  Collier  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at  his  home 
in  Hampstead  11  April  1934. 

A  self-portrait  of  Collier  hangs  in  the 
Uffizi  Gallery,  Florence. 

\The  Times,  12  April  1934 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Chaules  Marriott. 

COLVILLE,  Sir  STANLEY  CECIL 
JAMES  (1861*-1939),  admiral,  was  born 
in  London  21  February  1861,  the  second 
son  of  Charles  John  Colville,  tenth  Lord 
Colville  of  Culross,  later  Viscount  Colville^ 
of  Culross,  chamberlain  to  Queen  Alexan- 
dra both  as  Princess  of  Wales  and  as  Queen 
(1873-1903).  He  was  grandson  of  General 
Sir  Charles  Colville  [q.v.].  His  mother  was 
Cecile  Katherine  Mary,  only  child  by  his 
first  wife  of  Robert  John  Carrington, 
second  Lord  Carrington.  After  a  short 
time  at  Marlborough,  he  entered  the  train- 
ing ship  Britannia  as  a  naval  cadet  in 
1874  and  in  1876  was  appointed  as  mid- 
shipman to  the  Sultan  in  the  Mediterranean 
under  Prince  Alfred,  Duke  of  Edinburgh 
[q.v.],  and  remained  with  the  Duke  when 
in  1878  he  transferred  to  the  Black  Prince 
in  the  Channel  squadron  and  afterwards 
on  the  North  America  and  West  Indies 
station.  Next  year  he  was  sent  to  the 
Boadicea,  wearing  the  broad  pennant  of 
Commodore  (afterwards  Admiral  Sir) 
F.  W.  Richards  [q.v.],  at  the  Cape,  and 
served  on  shore  in  the  Zulu  war.  Promoted 
sub-lieutenant  in  1880,  he  underwent  the 
usual  examinations  at  Portsmouth.  In 
July  1882  he  joined  the  Alexandra,  flag- 
ship of  Sir  F.  B.  P.  Seymour  (afterwards 
Lord  Alcester,  q.v.)  in  the  Mediterranean, 
being  promoted  lieutenant  in  November: 
thus  he  was  present  at  the  bombardment 
of  Alexandria  (11  July)  and  took  part  in 
the  subsequent  land  operations.  In  1883 
he  was  appointed  to  the  Canada,  North 
America  station,  in  which  Prince  George 
(afterwards  King  George  V)  was  midship- 
man. From  1884  to  1885  Colville  was 
again  in  the  Mediterranean  for  service 
with  the  Nile  flotilla  during  the  Gordon 
relief  expedition,  and  after  a  short  spell 
at  home  in  the  royal  yacht  Osborne, 
resumed  his  service  for  three  years  under 
the  Duke  of  Edinburgh,  now  commander- 
in-chief,  Mediterranean,  with  his  flag  in 


187 


ColviUe 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  Alexandra.  From  1889  to  1892  he  was 
first  lieutenant  of  the  royal  yacht  Victoria 
and  Albert  and  thus  earned  his  promotion 
to  commander  (August  1892). 

After  three  years  as  commander  of 
Admiral  (Sir)  Compton  Domvile's  flagship 
Trafalgar  in  the  Mediterranean,  Colville 
was  at  the  Sirdar's  request  lent  to  the 
Egyptian  government  for  operations  on 
the  Nile,  and  while  in  conmiand  of  the 
flotilla  in  the  Dongola  campaign  (1896) 
was  severely  wounded  [see  Beatty, 
David,  Earl],  For  this  service  he  was 
specially  promoted  captain  in  October, 
and  appointed  C.B.  In  1897-1898  he 
fiUed  his  only  office  appointment  in  London 
as  naval  adviser  to  the  inspector-general 
of  fortifications  at  the  War  Office,  and 
then  went  as  flag-captain  to  Admiral  Pen- 
rose Fitzgerald,  in  the  Barfleur,  in  China 
for  eighteen  months.  Next  he  was  flag- 
captain  to  Sir  Frederick  Bedford,  in  the 
Crescent,  on  the  North  America  station 
for  two  years,  foUowed  by  three  more  as 
chief  of  staff  to  Domvile  in  the  Bulwark, 
Mediterranean  Fleet.  For  one  year  (1906) 
he  had  his  only  independent  captain's 
command  in  the  Hindustan,  Atlantic 
Fleet,  and  reached  flag-rank  in  November 
at  the  early  age  of  forty-five.  In  1908  he 
hoisted  his  flag  in  the  Bulwark  as  rear- 
admiral  of  the  Nore  division  of  the 
recently  formed  Home  Fleet  under  Sir 
Francis  Bridgeman  [q.v.].  A  year  later 
he  was  appointed  to  the  first  cruiser 
squadron,  then  part  of  the  Channel  Fleet 
under  Lord  Charles  Beresford  [q.v.]  just 
before  that  great  officer's  dispute  with 
Lord  Fisher  [q.v.]  ended  in  his  being 
ordered  to  haul  down  his  flag. 

Colville's  squadron  and  the  rest  of  the 
Channel  Fleet  was  then  absorbed  into  the 
expanded  Home  Fleet  imder  Sir  WiUiam 
May  [q.v.],  and  he  soon  found  himself  in 
charge  of  the  first  three  great  battle 
cruisers  of  the  Dreadnought  era,  with  his 
flag  in  the  Indomitable.  He  completed  two 
years  in  that  command,  was  promoted 
vice-admiral  in  April  1911,  and  a  year 
later  went  to  sea  again  as  vice-admiral 
commanding  the  first  battle  squadron. 
Home  Fleet.  He  completed  the  usual  two- 
year  term  in  June  1914,  and  thus  was 
ashore  on  half -pay  when  war  broke  out. 
He  naturally  wished  for  a  new  command 
afloat  but,  nothing  being  available,  he  was 
offered  the  shore  command  of  vice-admiral, 
Orkneys  and  Shetlands.  During  August 
Admiral  Sir  John  (afterwards  Earl)  Jellicoe 
[q.v.]  had  found  the  detailed  work  of 
arranging  for  the  protection  of  the  un- 


defended base  at  Scapa  Flow,  where  the 
main  Grand  Fleet  was  stationed,  too  great 
a  burden  and  asked  for  the  appointment 
of  a  senior  flag-officer  who  should  be 
responsible  for  the  general  defences  of  the 
islands  and  base,  and  for  the  control  of 
patrol  vessels  and  minesweepers  and  the 
placing  of  obstacles  to  prevent  the  entry 
of  enemy  submarines.  Colville  in  accept- 
ing the  post  asked  that  he  should  be  treated 
as  junior  in  rank  to  Jellicoe  to  whom  he 
was  senior  in  the  flag-list  by  five  months. 
The  chief  peril  which  he  had  to  face  was 
the  entry  of  German  submarines  into  the 
anchorage  and  his  measures  were  so  suc- 
cessful that,  although  there  were  several 
reports  of  such  intrusion,  in  fact  none  did 
get  in,  but  one  of  Colville's  patrol  vessels 
rammed  and  sank  one  outside  the  Hoxa 
entrance. 

In  1916  Jellicoe  reported  in  a  dispatch 
that  it  was  largely  due  to  Colville  that  the 
work  at  the  northern  base  was  so  cheer- 
fuUy  and  energetically  carried  out,  and 
official  appreciation  of  the  Admiralty 
was  duly  expressed.  In  February  1916 
he  succeeded  Sir  Hedworth  Meux  [q.v.] 
as  commander-in-chief  at  Portsmouth, 
having  been  promoted  admiral  soon  after 
going  to  Scapa  in  September  1914.  He 
held  that  important  post  for  the  rest  of 
the  war,  and  finally  hauled  down  his  flag 
in  March  1919.  He  was  appointed  first 
and  principal  aide-de-camp  to  the  king  in 
the  foUowing  July  and  was  placed  on  the 
retired  list  in  April  1922, 

In  1927  ColviUe  was  appointed  rear- 
admiral  of  the  United  Kingdom  and  in 
1929  vice-admiral  of  the  United  Kingdom 
and  Ueutenant  of  the  Admiralty,  ancient 
offices  which  had  fallen  into  desuetude 
but  were  revived  in  1901  by  King 
Edward  VII  as  high  court  appointments, 
corresponding  to  the  military  Silver  Stick 
and  Gold  Stick  in  Waiting.  He  died  at 
Crawley  Down,  Sussex,  9  April  1939. 

Colville  was  a  fine  type  of  the  'salt 
horse'  naval  officer:  without  any  preten- 
sions to  brilliance  or  scientific  eminence 
he  had  a  thorough  knowledge  of  his  pro- 
fession, and  possessed  the  complete  con- 
fidence of  his  seniors.  His  lifelong  energy 
and  activity  in  everything  concerned 
with  the  welfare  of  the  navy  were  greatly 
appreciated  by  aU  ranks.  He  made  no 
mistakes  and  was  popular  and  trusted 
throughout  the  service.  Although  owing 
something  no  doubt  to  his  association 
with  the  royal  family,  he  weU  deserved  his 
fortunate  career  in  the  Royal  Navy. 

Colville  was  appointed  C.V.O.  in  1902, 


188 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Connor 


K.C.B.  in  1912,  and  G.C.V.O.  on  the 
occasion  of  the  King's  visit  to  Scapa  in 
July  1915,  G.C.M.G.  in  1919,  and  G.C.B. 
in  1921.  Of  foreign  honours  he  received 
the  Japanese  Order  of  the  Rising  Sun,  the 
Russian  Order  of  St.  Stanislaus,  and  the 
Order  of  the  Crown  of  Siam,  and  he  was  a 
grand  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  He 
married  in  1902  Lady  Adelaide  Jane, 
youngest  daughter  of  Admiral  of  the  Fleet 
Richard  James  Meade,  fourth  Earl  of 
Clanwilliam  [q.v.],  and  had  four  sons. 

An  oil  portrait  of  Colville,  painted  by 
Sir  William  Llewellyn  (1927),  is  in  private 
possession.  A  tinted  charcoal  drawing  of 
him  by  Francis  Dodd  is  in  the  Imperial 
War  Museum. 

[Admiralty  records ;  private  information.] 
Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

COLVIN,  IAN  DUNCAN  (1877-1938), 
journalist,  biographer,  and  poet,  was  born 
at  Inverness  29  September  1877,  the 
second  son  of  Duncan  Colvin,  Free  Church 
minister,  by  his  wife,  Grace  Macpherson 
Strother.  He  was  educated  at  Crieff 
Academy  and  Inverness  College,  and  was 
for  a  short  time  with  the  Inverness  Courier 
before  going  in  1897  to  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity, where  he  studied  under  the  pro- 
fessor of  rhetoric  and  English  literature, 
G.  E.  B.  Saintsbury  [q.v.],  and  won  the 
gold  medal  for  history  and  literature. 

Having  left  Edinburgh  for  London, 
where  he  served  for  a  time  in  the  London 
office  of  the  Allahabad  Pioneer,  Colvin 
went  to  India  in  1900  to  join  the  staff  of 
that  journal.  Three  years  later  he  passed 
(suffering  shipwreck  on  the  way)  to  the 
Cape  Times  under  (Sir)  Maitland  Park. 
Apart  from  his  leading  articles,  he  became 
famous  there  for  his  political  verse  and 
tales  signed  'Rip  van  Winkle'. 

In  1907  Colvin  returned  to  London  and 
in  1909  became  leader  writer  of  the  Morn- 
ing Post,  his  name  being  associated  with 
its  leading  articles  for  the  next  twenty- 
eight  years.  Here  his  knowledge  of 
imperial  questions  became  blended  with 
stern  conservatism  and  a  deadly  satiric 
touch.  Lord  Morley  is  reported  to  have 
said  of  Colvin's  writings :  'There  has  been 
nothing  like  it  since  Junius.'  Colvin's 
industry  and  inspiration  also  found  scope 
in  historical  work.  During  the  war  of 
1914-1918  he  wrote  The  Germans  in 
England  1066-1598  (1915)  and  The  Unseen 
Hand  in  English  History  (1917),  which 
traces  the  struggle  between  the  Merchant 
Adventurers  and  the  Hanseatic  League; 
and  subsequently  appeared  a  book  of  his 


on  protection.  The  Safety  of  the  Nation 
(1919). 

After  the  war  Colvin  engaged  vigorously 
in  the  party  controversies  which  agitated 
the  next  two  decades.  On  nearly  all  these 
questions  he  was  severely  critical  of  the 
official  policies  of  the  day,  irrespective  of 
the  party  in  power.  He  denounced  Lloyd 
George's  Irish  'treaty'  of  December  1921, 
and  was  implacable  in  hostility  towards 
the  Indian  Round  Table  Conference  of 
1931.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  the  com- 
promises and  concessions  with  which  suc- 
cessive governments  sought  to  stave  off 
awkward  questions.  They  affronted  the 
'passionate  logic'  by  which  he  claimed  to 
test  their  worth.  His  last  campaign  was 
inspired  by  the  civil  war  in  Spain,  where 
his  sympathies  were  whole-heartedly  on 
the  side  of  General  Franco.  Assuredly  he 
well  deserved  the  title  that  was  bestowed 
upon  him  by  those  who  came  under  the 
lash  of  his  satire  and  censure :  'keeper  of 
the  tory  conscience'.  He  was  never  in- 
consistent or  imstable.  He  never  'paltered 
with  the  truth  to  serve  the  hour' ;  but  was 
as  faithful  to  his  friends  as  unsparing  to 
his  adversaries,  however  overborne  the 
former  and  however  highly  placed  the 
latter. 

In  1922  Colvin  published  the  Life  of 
Jameson,  in  1929  the  Life  of  General  Dyer, 
whose  action  at  Amritsar  in  1919  he 
championed ;  and,  in  1934  and  1936  respec- 
tively, vols,  ii  and  iii  of  the  Life  of  Lord 
Carson,  of  which  vol.  i  by  Edward  Marjori- 
banks  had  appeared  in  1932.  His  other 
works  include  South  and  East  Africa  (1910) 
and  The  Cape  of  Adventure  (1912);  his 
satirical  verse  is  collected  in  Party  Whips 
(1912),  Intercepted  Letters  (1913),  and  A 
Wreath  of  Immortelles  (1924).  The  Leper's 
Flute  (1920),  a  tragedy  in  blank  verse,  was 
later  produced  as  an  opera.  His  lyrical 
translations  After  the  Chinese  appeared  in 
1927,  and  he  contributed  many  political 
and  literary  articles  to  the  periodicals  of 
his  day.  During  the  six  years  from  1931 
to  1937  his  journalism  was  interrupted  by 
intermittent  ill  health,  and  his  death 
occurred  in  a  nursing  home  at  Ealing 
10  May  1938. 

Colvin  married  in  1909  Sophie,  daughter 
of  the  Rev.  George  Robson,  of  Edinburgh, 
and  had  three  sons  and  one  daughter. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Robert  Hield. 

CONNOR,  RALPH  (pseudonym), 
divine  and  author.  [See  Gordon,  Charles 
William.] 


189 


Conway,  R.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


CONWAY,  ROBERT  SEYMOUR 
(1864-1933),  classical  scholar  and  com- 
parative philologist,  the  eldest  son  of 
Samuel  Conway,  Congregational  minister, 
by  his  wife.  Amy  Curling,  was  born  at 
Stoke  Newington  20  September  1864. 
He  was  educated  at  the  City  of  London 
School  under  Edwin  Abbott  [q.v.],  from 
whom  he  learned  accuracy  in  detail,  an 
interest  in  comparative  philology,  and  a 
broad  outlook  on  literature.  Proceeding 
to  Cambridge  as  a  scholar  of  Gonville  and 
Caius  College,  he  obtained  first  classes  in 
both  parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1885, 
1887).  He  was  distinguished  in  part  ii 
for  an  essay  on  Vernefs  Law  in  Italy 
(published  1887).  Conway  was  appointed 
classical  lecturer  at  Newnham  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  met  Margaret  Mary, 
daughter  of  William  Hall,  an  iron-master 
in  the  Midlands,  whom  he  married  in  1891. 
Shortly  after  this  appointment  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  his  college.  In  1893  he 
became  professor  of  Latin  at  University 
College,  Cardiff,  and  in  1903  Hulme  pro- 
fessor of  Latin  in  the  university  of  Man- 
chester, where  he  remained  until  his 
resignation  in  1929.  He  improved  the 
teaching  of  Latin  and  established  a  final 
honours  examination  in  Latin  alone. 

In  1897  Conway  published  The  Italic 
Dialects  (2  vols.),  which  was  followed  after 
many  years  by  The  Prae-Italic  Dialects  of 
Italy  (with  Joshua  Whatmough  and 
Elizabeth  Johnson,  3  vols.,  1933).  While 
at  Manchester  he  undertook  an  edition  of 
Livy.  He  set  about  his  task  with  enthu- 
siasm and  examined  many  manuscripts, 
especially  in  Italy.  Three  successive 
volumes  were  published  (Books  i-v,  1914 ; 
vi-x,  1919;  xxi-xxv,  1929)  in  collabora- 
tion with  William  Charles  Flamstead 
Walters,  after  whose  death  he  produced 
a  fourth  volume  (Books  xxvi-xxx,  pub- 
lished posthumously,  1935),  with  the  help 
of  Stephen  Keymer  Johnson.  The  work 
is  very  thorough  but  unnecessarily 
detailed.  Conway's  other  great  interest 
was  in  Virgil :  or,  as  he  always  insisted  on 
spelling  it,  'Vergil'.  In  1907  he  published 
in  collaboration  with  J.  B.  Mayor  and 
William  Warde  Fowler  [q.v.]  a  small  but 
important  book  on  The  Messianic  Eclogue ; 
and  many  papers  on  Virgilian  subjects 
came  from  his  pen,  including  an  attempt 
to  find  a  new  site  for  Virgil's  farm  {Where 
was  VergiVs  Farm?,  1923).  The  edition  of 
the  Aeneid,  Book  I,  published  in  1935  after 
his  death  by  his  son  Geoffrey  Seymour 
Conway  is  perhaps  his  happiest  piece  of 
work,  for  it  combines  all  his  main  interests. 


Conway  was  an  accurate  scholar  in  his 
own  fields,  but  they  were  somewhat 
limited.  He  never  lectured  or  wrote  on 
a  Greek  author,  and  outside  Livy,  Virgil, 
and  Cicero  his  acquaintance  with  Latin 
authors  was  not  comprehensive.  But  he 
had  great  enthusiasms  and  a  power  of 
instigating  his  pupils  to  research  on  their  ^ 
own  account.  Conway's  frequent  visits  to 
Italy  gave  him  a  deep  love  of  the  country, 
and  it  was  a  high  pleasure  to  him  when  in 
1929  he  was  made  Commander  of  the  Order 
of  the  Crown  of  Italy.  Among  other 
distinctions  he  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Dublin  (1921), 
Padua  (1922),  and  Oxford  (1928) ;  and  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Gonville 
and  Caius  College  in  1920  and  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy  in  1918.  He  was  a 
founder  of  the  Classical  Association,  and 
its  president  in  1927. 

Conway  died  in  London  28  September 
1933.  He  had  one  son  and  four  daughters. 

[The  Times,  29  September  1933;  Cyril 
Bailey,  Robert  Seymour  Conway,  1864—1933, 
in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
xxii,  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Cyril  Bailey. 

CONWAY,  WILLIAM  MARTIN, 
Baron  Conway  of  Allington  (1856- 
1937),  art  critic  and  collector  and  moun- 
taineer, was  born  at  Rochester  12  April 
1856,  the  only  son  of  William  Conway, 
vicar  of  St.  Nicholas's  church,  Rochester, 
afterwards  rector  of  St.  Margaret's  church, 
Westminster,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Adam  Martin,  M.D.,  of 
Rochester.  Martin  Conway  was  educated 
at  Repton  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  the  counter  attraction  of  the  Fitz- 
william  Museum  robbed  him  of  that  first 
class  in  the  historical  tripos  to  which  he 
had  good  reason  to  aspire.  The  university 
librarian,  Henry  Bradshaw  [q.v.],  who 
became  his  greatest  friend,  was  delighted 
by  his  interest  in  woodcuts  and  early 
printed  books.  'This  is  the  most  wonder- 
ful thing  that  has  happened  to  me',  he 
exclaimed,  'here  have  I  been  for  twenty- 
five  years  studying  the  early  printed  books, 
and  hitherto  not  one  individual  has 
taken  the  smallest  interest  in  the  subject.' 
Bradshaw  financed  the  journeys  on  which 
Conway  collected  the  material  for  his 
Woodcutters  of  the  Netherlands  in  the 
Fifteenth  Century  (1884),  which  was  to 
rank  as  the  most  important  of  his  thirty 
books.  After  leaving  Cambridge,  where 
he  was  a  university  extension  lecturer 
from  1882  to  1887,  Conway  lectured  and 


190 


rii 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Conway,  W.  M. 


wrote  a  book  on  Early  Flemish  Artists 
(1887),  a  masterly  and  beautifully  written 
contribution  to  art  criticism,  republished 
in  1921  as  The  Van  Eycks  and  their 
Followers. 

Conway  became  Roscoe  professor  of  art 
at  University  College,  Liverpool,  at  the 
early  age  of  twenty-nine  (1885),  and  held 
the  post  imtil  1888.  He  was  Slade  pro- 
fessor of  fine  art  at  Cambridge  from  1901 
to  1904,  and  in  1917  was  appointed 
director-general  of  the  Imperial  War 
Museum.  He  was  the  first  to  realize  the 
value  of  a  systematic  and  comprehensive 
collection  of  photographic  records  of  archi- 
tecture and  works  of  art.  He  presented 
his  collection  of  100,000  carefully  classi- 
fied photographs  to  the  Courtauld  Institute 
of  Art,  in  which  the  Conway  library  has  a 
house  to  itself. 

Conway  first  saw  the  Alps  at  the  age  of 
sixteen,  and  from  1872  to  1901  he  missed 
very  few  Alpine  seasons.  He  was  not  a 
natural  athlete,  or  a  good  rock  climber, 
and  the  ideal  mountaineer  whom  he 
extolled  in  a  famous  paper  read  before 
the  Alpine  Club  was,  by  an  odd  coinci- 
dence, very  like  Conway  himself.  He  was 
one  'who  loves  first  and  foremost  to 
wander  far  and  wide  among  the  moun- 
taihs,  does  not  willingly  sleep  two  con- 
secutive nights  in  the  same  inn,  hates 
centres,  gets  tired  of  a  district,  always 
wants  to  see  what  is  on  the  other  side  of 
any  range  of  hills,  prefers  passes  to  peaks, 
but  hates  not  getting  to  the  top  of  any- 
thing he  starts  for;  chooses  the  easiest 
and  most  normal  route,  likes  to  know  the 
names  of  all  the  peaks  in  view,  and  can- 
not bear  to  see  a  group  of  peaks,  none  of 
which  he  has  climbed'. 

Passes  always  moved  Conway  to  more 
enthusiasm  than  peaks,  and  inspired  the 
most  effective  of  his  mountain  writing. 
His  tastes  found  expression  in  that  long 
Alpine  journey  which  is  recorded  in  The 
Alps  from  End  to  End  (1895).  In  1892  he 
mapped  2,000  square  miles  of  the  Kara- 
koram  (Himalayas)  range,  an  achievement 
which  earned  him  his  Imighthood  in  1895. 
He  made  the  first  crossing  of  Spitsbergen 
in  1896,  and  his  experiments  with  ski  on 
that  occasion  placed  him  among  the 
pioneers  of  British  ski-ing.  In  1898  he 
visited  the  Bolivian  Andes  and  cUmbed 
Illimani,  Sorate,  and  Aconcagua  (22,900 
ft.).  He  was  president  of  the  Alpine  Club 
from  1902  to  1904,  and  first  president  of 
the  Alpine  Ski  Club  in  1908. 

Conway's  Zermatt  Pocket  Book  (1881) 
is  the  ancestor  of  an  immense  and  inter- 


national family  of  technical  guides  for  the 
climber,  and  in  particular  for  the  guideless 
chmber.  By  chronicling  the  routes  which 
had  been  climbed,  he  indirectly  gave  an 
impetus,  as  has  been  remarked,  to  the 
pioneering  of  new  routes.  Conway  was 
responsible  for  many  beautiful  mountain 
names,  such  as  Wellenkuppe,  Windjoch, 
and  Dent  du  Requin.  His  gift  of  con- 
veying in  words  the  elusive  qualities  of  a 
painting  explains  the  evocative  power  of 
his  best  movmtain  writing.  He  looked  at 
peaks  and  glaciers  with  the  trained  eye  of 
a  connoisseur  of  colour  and  form,  quick 
to  note  not  only  the  more  dramatic  efiects, 
but  also  the  elusive  beauty  of  some  ap- 
parently featureless  snowfield,  such  as 
the  Plaine  Morte,  the  theme  of  one  of  the 
finest  descriptive  passages  in  Alpine  litera- 
ture, his  contributions  to  which  are  also 
marked  by  his  keen,  discerning  interest 
in  the  peoples  and  historic  traditions  of 
the  coimtries  in  which  he  climbed.  His 
swan  song  as  a  moimtaineer  and  his 
favourite  book.  Mountain  Memories,  was 
published  in  1920. 

Conway,  who  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Durham  and 
Manchester  in  1919,  represented  the  com- 
bined English  Universities  as  a  imionist 
from  1918  vmtil  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage 
as  Baron  Conway  of  Allington  in  1931. 
He  would  not  have  welcomed  'the  century 
of  the  common  man',  for  he  did  not  believe 
in  the  infallibility  of  the  majority,  and 
the  Conway  who,  as  a  young  man,  referred 
with  contempt  to  'the  insane  cry  of 
"Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity"  under 
the  echoes  of  which  the  revolutionaries  of 
Paris  banished  the  reality  of  all  three  from 
the  soil  of  Europe',  expressed  his  mature 
mind  in  his  depreciatory  diagnosis  of  The 
Crowd  in  Peace  and  War  (1915).  He 
considered  this  to  be  his  best  book. 
Conway  was  indulgent  to  human  folly, 
and  felt,  to  paraphrase  Montaigne,  that 
it  was  paying  a  man's  views  too  high  a 
compliment  to  bum  with  indignation 
because  of  them.  His  political  friends  were 
drawn  indiscriminately  from  aU  parties. 
He  was  a  genuine  conservative  but  he  was 
created  a  peer  by  Ramsay  MacDonald, 
and  he  was  on  such  friendly  terms  with 
Leonid  Borisovich  KJrassin  that  he  was 
among  the  first  to  obtain  permission  to 
visit  the  new  Russia,  where  the  Bolshe- 
vists surrendered  to  his  charm  and  gave 
him  every  facility  to  collect  material  for 
his  book  The  Art  Treasures  in  Soviet 
Russia  (1925).  In  the  mountaineering 
world  he  had  the  distinction  of  being  the 


191 


Conway,  W.  M. 


D.N.B.   1931-1940 


only  eminent  mountaineer  with  whom 
W.  A.  B,  CooHdge  [q.v.]  found  it  impossible 
to  pick  a  quarrel.  Few  men  had  a  larger 
circle  of  friends,  and  few  men  could  have 
felt  less  need  for  the  more  intimate  and 
enduring  forms  of  friendship.  'Whether 
in  the  Alps  or  the  Himalayas  his  friend- 
ships seldom  remained  coherent  for  very 
long.' 

Conway  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1884  to  Katrina  (died  1933),  the  beautiful 
daughter  of  Charles  Lambard,  of  Augusta, 
Maine,  U.S.A.,  builder  of  the  Chicago  and 
Western  Railway;  secondly,  in  1934  to 
Iva,  daughter  of  Daniel  Christian  and 
widow  of  Reginald  Lawson,  of  Saltwood 
Castle,  Kent.  By  his  first  marriage  he  had 
one  daughter.  He  died  in  London  19  April 
1937. 

[Lord  Conway,  Episodes  in  a  Varied  Life, 
1932,  and  A  Pilgrim'' s  Quest  for  the  Divine, 
1936;     Alpine    Journal,    November     1937; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Arnold  Lunn. 

COOK,  ARTHUR  JAMES  (1883-1931), 
miners'    leader,    was    born    at   Wookey, 
Somerset,  22  November  1883,  the  eldest 
son  in  a  family  of  three  sons  and  seven 
daughters  of  Thomas  Cook,  by  his  wife, 
Selina  Brock.    His  mother  had  been  a 
travelling  dressmaker,  and  as  his  father 
spent  twenty-one  years  in  the  20tli  Foot 
(Lancashire    Fusiliers),    all    the    family 
except  Arthur  were  born  in  English  or 
Irish  barracks.  As  a  child  he  had  learned 
to  beat  the  drum  and  blow  the  bugle,  but 
at  the  age  of  twelve,  in  rebellion  against 
paternal    discipline,    and    aided    by    his 
mother,  he  was  smuggled  from  the  Cur- 
ragh  in  a  vessel  bound  for  Bristol.  Farm 
work  at  half  a  crown  a  week  preceded 
mining,  and  migrating  to  South  Wales  he 
spent  twenty-one  years  in  imderground 
work.     Christian  Endeavour  and  Band  of 
Hope  membership  shaped  him  as  a  boy 
preacher,  who  at  sixteen  was  conducting 
singing  missions  among  the  Baptists.  The 
independent  labour  party  claimed  him  in 
1905  and  he  was  kept  out  of  many  pulpits 
as  a  resvdt  of  his  socialist  enthusiasm. 
Association  with  the  South  Wales  Miners' 
Federation  afforded  him  a  scholarship  to 
study  Marxian  economics  at  the  Central 
Labour  College  in  1911  and  1912.    After 
filling  various  lodge  offices,  he  was  ap- 
pointed agent  for  Rhondda  No.  1  district 
and  a  member  of  the  South  Wales  Federa- 
tion executive  in  1919.  He  also  represented 
the  Welsh  miners  on  the  Mmers'  Federa- 
tion  of   Great   Britain,   and,   upon   the 


resignation  of  Frank  Hodges,  in  1924,  was 
elected  secretary  and  at  the  same  time 
secretary  of  the  International  Miners' 
Federation.  For  a  time  he  served  on  the 
Rhondda  Urban  District  Council  and  was 
a  governor  of  the  Forth  Schools.  Mining 
disputes  in  1918  and  1921  led  to  his 
imprisonment  on  two  occasions;  the 
second  time  he  was  charged  with  incite- 
ment to  revolutionary  rioting.  He  was  a 
member  of  three  coal  commissions  and 
was  a  government  delegate  to  the  coal 
conference  held  under  the  auspices  of  the 
International  Labour  Organization  at 
Geneva  in  1930. 

Cook  became  a  national  figure,  engag- 
ing extensively  in  trade  union  and  socialist 
propaganda,  and  in  particular  voicing  the 
claims  of  the  miners  before  the  wider 
public.  Associated  with  the  South  Wales 
Miners'  unofficial  reform  committee  which 
issued  The  Miners'  Next  Step  (1912),  Cook 
was  attracted  to  the  syndicalist  policy  and 
was  a  leading  figure  in  the  General  Strike 
in  1926,  by  which  the  unions  affiliated  to 
the  Trades  Union  Congress  endeavoured 
to  compel  support  for  the  miners  after  the 
government  subsidies  to  the  industry  had 
ceased  and  demands  were  being  made  for 
reduced  wages  and  longer  hours.  After 
nine  days,  during  which  the  country 
generally  had  been  caused  not  a  little 
inconvenience,  the  strike  collapsed  andfl 
Cook  was  among  the  minority  who  op-S 
posed  the  miners'  continuing  the  struggle 
alone.  Nevertheless,  accepting  the  ma- 
jority decision,  he  worked  strenuously 
with  his  colleagues  throughout  the  seven 
months  which  elapsed  before  defeat  had 
to  be  acknowledged.  He  was  elected  to 
the  general  coimcil  of  the  Trades  Union 
Congress  in  1927. 

Having  suffered  an  injury  to  his  leg  in 
his  early  mining  days  which  was  ag- 
gravated in  later  life.  Cook  underwent 
amputation  for  cancer  in  the  summer  of 
1931.  He  persisted  in  his  work,  but  the 
cancer  re-appeared  and  he  died  in  hospital 
at  Hampstead  2  November  1931.  In  1906 
he  married  Annie  Edwards,  and  had  one 
son  and  two  daughters. 

Cook  was  portrayed  by  the  press  as  a 
national  menace  in  his  later  days,  but  his 
immediate  colleagues,  recognizing  that  he 
was  more  of  an  agitator  than  a  negotiator, 
held  him  in  regard  for  his  warm-hearted 
though  impulsive  nature  and  his  dogged 
determination  to  make  the  public  realize 
the  actualities  of  mining  life. 

[The  Times,  3  November  1931 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  S.  Middleton. 


i 


192 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Cowen 


COOKE,  GEORGE  ALBERT  (1865- 
1939),  regius  professor  of  Hebrew  and 
canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  was  born 
in  London  26  November  1865,  the  elder 
son  of  George  Isaac  Foster  Cooke,  bar- 
rister, of  Lincoln's  Inn,  by  his  wife,  Agnes 
Marian,  daughter  of  Stephen  Mackenzie, 
a  surgeon,  and  sister  of  Sir  Morell  Mac- 
kenzie and  Sir  Stephen  Mackenzie  [qq.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  Merchant  Taylors 
School  (where  Hebrew  was  still  taught  as 
a  school  subject)  and  in  1884  gained  a 
Hebrew  scholarship  at  Wadham  College, 
Oxford.  He  was  awarded  a  second  class 
in  theology  (1888)  and  won  the  second 
Pusey  and  Ellerton  Hebrew  scholarship 
(1886),  the  junior  Kennicott  Hebrew 
scholarship  (1888),  and  the  Houghton 
Syriac  prize  (1889).  In  1889  he  was 
ordained  and  hcensed  by  the  bishop  of 
Oxford  to  the  curacy  of  Headington, 
and  St.  John's  College  appointed  him 
senior  scholar  and  Hebrew  lecturer.  He 
became  chaplain  (1890)  and  fellow  (1892- 
1899)  of  Magdalen  College,  serving  mean- 
while as  curate  to  Cosmo  Lang  at  the 
university  church  (1894-1896)  and  as 
rector  of  Beaconsfield  (1896-1899).  He 
was  private  chaplain  at  Dalkeith  to  the 
Duke  of  Buccleuch  (1899-1908),  war- 
den of  the  Commxmity  of  St.  Andrew 
of  Scotland  (1904-1908),  and  canon  of 
St.  Mary's  Cathedral,  Edinburgh  (1907- 
1908).  He  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  D.D.  from  Edinburgh  University  in 
1911. 

Returning  to  Oxford  in  1908,  Cooke 
succeeded  T.  K.  Cheyne  [q.v.]  as  Oriel 
professor  of  the  interpretation  of  Holy 
Scripture,  canon  of  Rochester  Cathedral, 
and  fellow  of  Oriel  CoUege.  In  1914  he 
succeeded  S.  R.  Driver  [q.v.]  as  regius 
professor  of  Hebrew  and  canon  of  Clu-ist 
Church.  This  position  he  voluntarily 
resigned  in  1936  to  become  rector  of  the 
tiny  parish  of  Bettiscombe-with-Pilsdon, 
near  Bridport.  He  died  suddenly  at 
Cheltenham  9  September  1939,  while 
undergoing  an  operation.  He  married  in 
1897  Frances  Helen  (died  1932),  daugh- 
ter of  Patrick  Anderson,  a  man  of 
business  in  Dundee,  and  had  four  daugh- 
ters. 

Cooke's  most  valuable  work  is  a  Text- 
book of  North-Semitic  Inscriptions  (1903) 
which  opened  up  the  field  of  Hebrew  and 
Aramaic  epigraphy  to  English-speaking 
students  and  still  remains  unsuperseded. 
Following  on  smaller  commentaries  (for 
the  'Cambridge  Bible')  on  the  Books  of 
Judges  and  Ruth  (1913)  and  Joshua  (1918), 


he  wrote  a  large-scale  Critical  and  Exe- 
getical  Commentary  on  the  Book  of  Ezekiel 
(1937)  and,  in  an  attempt  to  combine 
Coverdale's  style  with  accuracy  of  render- 
ing. The  Prayer  Book  Psalter  Revised 
(1939).  His  standard  of  scholarship  was 
high  and  his  writing  conspicuous  for 
kindliness  and  caution :  the  scholar  in  him 
never  overcame  the  instincts  of  the  con- 
scientious parish  priest. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Cooke  by  Hugh 
Riviere  (1935)  in  the  lodgings  of  the  Pro- 
fessor of  Hebrew,  Christ  Church. 

[The  Times,  11  and  13  September  1939; 
Oxford  Magazine,  26  October  1939;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  Danby. 

COWEN,    Sib   FREDERIC   HYMEN 

(1852-1935),  composer  and  conductor, 
whose  original  name  was  Hyman 
Frederick  Cowen,  was  born  at  Kingston, 
Jamaica,  29  January  1852,  the  younger 
son  of  Frederick  Augustus  Cowen,  who 
later  became  secretary  to  William  Ward, 
first  Earl  of  Dudley,  and  treasurer  to  Her 
Majesty's  Opera  in  London,  by  his  wife, 
EmUy,  second  daughter  of  James  Davis, 
of  Kingston.  Brought  by  his  parents  to 
England  at  the  age  of  four,  Frederic 
Cowen  early  displayed  his  musical  capacity 
by  composing  a  waltz  (which  was  pub- 
lished) when  six,  and  an  operetta,  Gari- 
baldi, when  eight,  to  a  libretto  by  his 
sister,  aged  seventeen:  this  latter  was 
privately  printed.  Becoming  a  pupil  of 
(Sir)  John  Goss  and  (Sir)  Juhus  Benedict 
[qq.v.],  in  1863  he  gave  a  piano  recital  at 
Her  Majesty's  Theatre,  and  in  1864  played 
Mendelssohn's  D  minor  concerto  at 
Dudley  House,  (Sir)  Charles  Santley  [q.v.] 
and  Joseph  Joachim  also  taking  part  in 
the  concert.  A  year  later  he  won  the 
Mendelssohn  scholarship,  the  blue  riband 
of  British  musical  scholarships,  but 
relinquished  it,  as  his  parents  wished  to 
retain  control  of  his  education.  They  took 
him  to  Leipzig,  where  he  entered  the  con- 
servatorium  and  became  a  pupil  of  Louis 
Plaidy,  Ignaz  Moscheles,  Carl  Heinrich 
Garstin  Reinecke,  Ernst  Friedrich  Eduard 
Richter,  and  Moritz  Hauptmann.  In  1867 
he  went  to  the  Stern  Conservatorium  in 
Berlin,  where  he  studied  under  Friedrich 
Kiel  and  laid  the  foundations  of  his  skill  as 
a  conductor. 

Returning  to  England  in  1868,  Cowen 
made  a  name  as  a  pianist,  playing  at  con- 
certs of  the  Philharmonic  Society  and 
elsewhere,  and  became  noted  as  an  ac- 
companist,  assisting   Sir   Michael   Costa 


193 


Cowen 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


[q.v.]  in  that  capacity  at  Her  Majesty's 
Opera  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  and  on 
tour,  under  the  management  of  J.  H. 
Mapleson  [q.v.],  from  1871  to  1877.  His 
gifts  as  a  conductor  led  to  his  appoint- 
ment as  conductor  of  the  Covent  Garden 
promenade  concerts  in  1880  and  to  an 
engagement  for  five  concerts  of  the  Phil- 
harmonic Society  in  1884;  from  1888  to 
1892  he  was  the  society's  permanent 
conductor  in  succession  to  Sir  Arthur 
Sullivan  [q.v.].  The  unprecedented  fee  of 
£5,000  was  paid  him  to  go  to  Australia  to 
conduct  the  daily  orchestral  concerts  at 
the  Melbourne  Centennial  Exhibition  for 
six  months  (August  1888-January  1889). 
He  conducted  the  Halle  Orchestra  in 
Manchester  from  1896  to  1899 ;  and  among 
other  conductorships  which  Cowen  held 
were  those  of  the  Liverpool  Philharmonic 
Society,  the  Bradford  Festival  Choral 
Society,  and  the  Scottish  Orchestra.  He 
returned  to  the  Philharmonic  Society 
from  1900  to  1907,  and  conducted  the 
famous  triennial  Handel  festivals  at  the 
Crystal  Palace  from  1903  to  1912,  and 
again  in  1920  and  1923. 

As  a  composer,  Cowen  wrote  a  number  of 
operas,  one  of  which,  Signa,  was  first  pro- 
duced at  Milan  in  1893,  but  they  have  not 
held  the  stage :  his  oratorios  and  cantatas, 
often  written  for  festivals  and  produced 
there,  have  been  of  use  to  choral  societies, 
and  his  orchestral  works  display  marked 
fancy,  and  are  excellently  scored,  his  skill 
in  this  respect  owing  nothing  to  instruction. 
His  'Scandinavian'  symphony(1880),which 
owed  its  origin  to  three  tours  in  Sweden, 
Denmark,  and  Norway  as  accompanist  to 
the  famous  mezzo-soprano  Zelia  Trebelli, 
may  be  mentioned  as  presenting  imagina- 
tive use  of  orchestral  colouring  then  new 
to  English  audiences,  and  the  suite  'The 
Language  of  Flowers'  (also  1880),  may  be 
cited  as  an  example  of  individual  fantastic 
grace.  Cowen  composed  nearly  three 
hundred  songs :  quite  a  number  of  them 
deserve  remembrance  for  their  lyrical  art : 
others,  Victorian  ballads  of  sentiment, 
among  which  may  be  named  'The  Better 
Land'  and  'The  Children's  Home',  achieved 
a  'best-selling'  success  which  was  at  times 
embarrassing. 

Cowen  was  knighted  in  1911,  and 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Cambridge  (1900)  and  Edin- 
burgh (1910).  He  married  in  1908 
Frederica  Gwendoline,  only  daughter  of 
Frederick  Richardson,  of  London;  there 
was  no  issue  of  the  marriage.  He  died 
in   London    6    October    1935,    and    was 


buried  in  the  Jewish  cemetery  at  Golders 
Green. 

[The  Times,  7  October  1935;  Sir  F.  H. 
Cowen,  My  Art  and  My  Friends,  1913 ;  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  i,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes ;  H.  Saxe  Wynd- 
ham  and  Geoffrey  L'Epine,  Who^s  Who  in 
Music,  1913;  Oxford  Companion  to  Music, 
edited  by  Percy  Scholes,  6th  ed.,  1945; 
Musical  Times,  November  1935 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  Mewburn  Levien. 

COWLEY,  Sm  ARTHUR  ERNEST 

(1861-1931),  orientalist  and  Bodley's 
librarian,  the  fourth  son  among  the 
seventeen  children  of  Frederick  Thomas 
Cowley,  of  Forest  Hill,  Sydenham,  by 
his  wife,  Louisa  Emily  Boddy,  was  born 
at  Forest  Hill  13  December  1861,  and 
educated  at  St.  Paul's  School  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Oxford,  where  he  was  an 
exhibitioner.  He  graduated  without  high 
honours  because  his  interests  even  from 
schooldays  had  come  to  lie  not  in  the 
classics  but  in  oriental,  notably  the 
Semitic,  languages.  There  being  then  no 
school  of  oriental  languages  at  Oxford 
Cowley  was  practically  self-taught,  and 
his  early  departure  from  Oxford  precluded 
his  competing  for  any  of  the  prizes  offered 
in  such  subjects.  After  taking  his  degree 
in  1883  he  studied  at  Lausanne  and  later 
taught  French  and  German,  in  which  he 
had  unusual  proficiency,  at  Sherborne  and 
at  Magdalen  School,  Oxford.  This  last 
appointment  enabled  him  to  follow  up  his 
study  of  Samaritan  liturgies  in  the  British 
Museum  and  put  within  his  reach  the 
Semitic  collections  of  the  Bodleian  Library. 
From  being  quite  unknown  as  an  ori- 
entalist, Cowley  saw  his  reputation  rapidly 
grow,  and  in  1892  he  was  sent  by  the  uni- 
versity to  examine  (along  with  Mr.  John 
Frederick  Stenning)  the  library  of  St. 
Catherine's  monastery  on  Mount  Sinai. 
The  fruits  of  the  expedition  were  not  com- 
mensurate with  the  expectations,  but  may 
be  seen  in  Anecdota  Oxoniensia  (Semitic 
series,  vol.  i,  part  ix,  1896). 

In  1896  Cowley  was  appointed  assistant 
to  Adolf  Neubauer  [q.v.]  in  the  Bodleian 
Library,  and  in  1899  succeeded  him  as 
sub-librarian  in  charge  of  the  oriental 
department;  and  in  1902  he  was  elected 
a  feUow  of  Magdalen  College  and  charged 
with  the  duty  of  giving  instruction  in 
Rabbinic  Hebrew  literature,  on  which  he 
became  the  leading  non-Jewish  authority 
in  the  world.  In  1919  he  succeeded 
Falconer  Madan  as  Bodley's  librarian, 
holding  that  office  until  his  resignation  in 
July  1931. 


194 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cox,  H. 


Cowley's  librarianship  was  marked  by 
academic  agitation,  not  always  based  on 
experience,  for  wider  facilities  for  access 
to  shelves.  With  these  movements  there 
was  coupled  the  question  of  the  enlarge- 
ment and  future  site  of  the  library,  and 
the  present  compromise  was  adopted 
during  his  last  illness  in  May  1931.  Much 
of  his  administrative  work  aimed  at 
objects  wholly  desirable,  such  as  uniform 
administration  of  various  collections 
scattered  all  over  Oxford  and  the  in- 
auguration of  a  much-needed  printed 
catalogue. 

Cowley  was,  however,  pre-eminent  as  a 
scholar  and  a  friend.  Besides  brief  articles, 
he  published  important  work  falling  un- 
der three  heads:  Hebrew,  Aramaic,  and 
Hittite.  In  the  first  of  these  categories  he 
published  (with  Neubauer)  The  Original 
Hebrew  of  a  Portion  of  Ecclesiasticus  (1897) 
followed  by  Facsimiles  of  the  Fragments 
hitherto  recovered  of  the  Book  of  Ecclesi- 
asticus in  Hebrew  (1901)  which  gathered 
together  everything  then  known  of  this 
long-lost  text.  He  edited  (with  Neubauer) 
the  second  volume  of  the  Catalogue  of 
Hebrew  Manuscripts  in  the  Bodleian 
Library  (1906)  and  (as  sole  editor)  the 
Concise  Catalogue  of  the  Hebrew  Printed 
Books  in  the  Bodleian  Library  (1929),  two 
works  indispensable  to  all  students  of 
Hebrew  literature  and  important  works 
of  scholarship.  In  this  class  translations  of 
two  successive  German  editions  of  F.  H.  W 
Gesenius's  Hebrew  Grammar  (1898,  1910) 
may  be  included.  The  second  category 
contains  equally  important  work  in  a  very 
different  field;  the  two  volumes  of  The 
Samaritan  Liturgy  (1909) ;  a  volume  edited 
from  Aramaic  papyri  of  the  fifth  century 
B.C.  presented  to  the  Bodleian  Library  by 
A.  H.  Sayce  [q.v.],  and  published  by 
Cowley  and  Sayce  as  Aramaic  Papyri 
discovered  at  Assuan  (1906) ;  finally,  join- 
ing to  this  an  edition  of  the  documents 
which  had  gone  to  Berlin,  he  was  able  in 
1 923  to  publish  a  corpus  entitled  Aramaic 
Papyri  of  the  5th  Century  B.C.  in  which  he 
presented  the  Aramaic  text  of  every 
known  document  of  this  class  with  transla- 
tion, notes,  and  glossary.  The  last  category 
contains  his  attempts,  in  the  Schweich 
lectures  for  1918  {The  Hittites,  1920),  to 
decipher  Hittite  hieroglyphic  texts,  but  his 
lack  of  success  here  is  not  surprising  as  the 
task  was  one  for  which  he  was  not  ade- 
quately equipped  either  by  temperament 
)r  scholarship. 

Cowley's  strength  as  a  scholar  lay  not  so 
much  in  high  originality  as  in  a  complete 


mastery  of  the  field  to  which  he  had  de- 
voted himself,  with  an  accuracy  so  pains- 
taking and  thorough  that  some  of  the 
texts  which  he  edited  may  never  require 
to  be  done  again.  His  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  and  Aramaic  was  exhaustive, 
and  he  coupled  with  it  a  sound  knowledge 
of  Arabic  and  some  acquaintance  with 
Accadian  literature.  On  problems  of 
biblical  criticism  his  views  were  somewhat 
conservative ;  but  his  outlook  was  in  the 
strictest  sense  scientific.  He  was  a  single- 
minded  scholar,  entirely  free  from  self- 
seeking  or  self-assertion,  but  he  also  stood 
out  for  his  remarkable  talent  for  friend- 
ship with  old  and  young  alike,  being 
quickly  on  easy  terms  with  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men.  He  was  much  in 
demand  for  attendance  at  international 
conferences  where  his  knowledge  of 
languages  and  powers  of  conciliation  made 
him  a  more  than  usually  valuable  member. 
He  represented  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society 
at  an  orientalist  meeting  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Science  at  Boston 
(1921)  and  the  university  of  Oxford  at  the 
centenary  of  the  Societe  Asiatique  in  Paris 
(1922).  He  was  an  enthusiastic  freemason. 
Of  the  academic  honours  conferred  upon 
him,  Cowley  was  especially  proud  of  his 
corresponding  membership  of  the  Institut 
de  France.  He  was  Sandars  reader  in 
bibliography  at  Cambridge  for  1912-1913 
and  was  elected  F.B.A.  in  1914.  In  1931 
he  was  nominated  for  knighthood,  but  his 
death  at  Oxford  after  a  long  illness,  on 
12  October  of  that  year,  anticipated  his 
receiving  the  accolade.  He  married  in 
1913  the  owner  of  the  historic  priory  of 
St.  Osyth,  near  Colchester,  Mabel  Beatrice, 
second  daughter  of  William  Longmore 
Watts,  rector  of  Boxted,  Essex.  He 
adopted  two  sons  but  had  no  issue  of  his 
body.  He  bequeathed  his  estate  to  the 
Bodleian  Library,  where  a  portrait  by 
Harry  CoUison  hangs  in  the  curators' 
room. 

[The  Times,  13  October  1931 ;  T.  W.  Allen, 
Arthur  Ernest  Cowley,  1861—1931  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xix,  1933 ; 
personal  knowledge.]  G.  R.  Driver. 

COX,  HAROLD  (1859-1936),  econo- 
mist and  journalist,  is  reputed  to  have 
been  born  at  Wimbledon  in  1859,  the 
second  son  of  Homersham  Cox,  a  county 
court  judge.  He  was  educated  at  Ton- 
bridge  School,  whence  he  obtained  a 
mathematical  scholarship  at  Jesus  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  He  was  president  of  the 
Union  in  1881,  and  after  graduating  as  a 


195 


Cox,  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


senior  optime  in  the  mathematical  tripos 
of  1882,  became  a  university  extension 
lecturer  in  Yorkshire.  Coming  under  the 
influence  of  Edward  Carpenter  [q.v.], 
according  to  his  own  accoxmt  he  spent 
nearly  a  year  working  as  an  agricultural 
labourer  in  Kent  and  Sussex  'in  order  to 
gain  an  insight  into  the  life  of  English 
labourers'.  From  1885  to  1887  he  taught 
mathematics  in  the  Mohammedan  Anglo- 
Oriental  College  at  Aligarh  in  India. 

On  his  return  to  England  in  1887  Cox 
joined  Gray's  Inn  and  read  for  the  bar, 
but,  turning  to  journalism  and  authorship, 
he  was  appointed  secretary  of  the  Cobden 
Club  in  1899,  and  in  that  position  took  an 
active  part  in  opposing  the  tariff  reform 
proposals  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.]. 
He  resigned  the  secretaryship  in  1904  and 
in  recognition  of  his  services  to  free  trade 
he  was  adopted  as  candidate  by  the  liberal 
party  in  Preston,  and  won  the  seat  at  the 
general  election  in  1906.  But  in  1909, 
when  Lloyd  George's  'people's'  budget 
brought  up  new  issues.  Cox  took  a  line  of 
his  own  which  was  unsatisfactory  to  the 
local  liberals,  and  he  did  not  stand  for 
parliament  again.  His  independence 
attracted  admiration  and  in  1909  he  was 
honoured  by  a  dinner  given  by  the  British 
Constitutional  Association  'in  recognition 
of  his  great  services  in  the  late  Parliament 
to  the  cause  of  personal  liberty  and 
personal  responsibility'.  Lord  Rosebery, 
who  presided,  described  Cox  as  'embody- 
ing the  very  principle  of  Uberty',  in  an 
oration  which  one  of  those  present  pro- 
nounced to  be  'the  most  brilliant  after- 
dinner  speech  I  have  ever  heard'.  Cox, 
in  a  long  reply,  set  forth  at  length  the 
duties  of  a  member  of  parliament.  'Excel- 
lent, but  impracticable' ,  was  the  whispered 
comment  of  one  guest  to  another;  and 
this  obsei^ation  marked  a  defect  in  Cox's 
fine  quaUties,  which  often  made  it  difficult 
for  others  to  co-operate  with  him  in  public 
life. 

After  his  retirement  from  parliament 
Cox  constantly  spoke  and  wrote  against 
the  growth  of  pubUc  expenditure  and  of 
bureaucracy.  Although  in  early  life  he  had 
been  friendly  with  Sidney  Webb  and  had 
collaborated  with  him  in  a  book  on  the 
Eight  Hours  Day  (1891),  he  was  now  an 
imcompromising  opponent  of  socialism; 
and  his  book  on  Economic  Liberty  (1920) 
is  an  admirable  exposition  of  the  case. 
His  public  work  included  membership 
(1914-1915)  of  the  inquiry  into  alleged 
German  atrocities  in  Belgium  held  mider 
the  chairmanship  of  LordBryce  and  (1916) 


of  the  Committee  on  Public  Retrenchment. 
From  1910  to  1912  he  was  an  alderman  of 
the  London  County  Cotuicil,  and  on  the 
death  of  A.  R.  D.  Elliot  [q.v.]  in  1912  he 
was  appointed  editor  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  a  post  which  he  held  until  1929 
when  it  ceased  to  be  published.  He  was 
elected  anhonorary  fellow  of  Jesus  College, 
Cambridge,  in  1913. 

Cox  married  Helen  Clegg;  she  died 
childless  in  1930  after  they  had  removed 
from  Gray's  Inn  to  Old  Kennards,  Leigh, 
near  Tonbridge,  where  he  also  died  1  May 
1936.  One  of  his  neighbours  there  writes : 
'He  was  a  scholar,  but  without  a  trace  of 
pedantry,  and  a  most  attractive  speaker. 
I  was  very  fond  of  him.  He  had  great 
personal  charm  and  maintained  to  the  last 
his  interest  in  a  wide  range  of  public  prob- 
lems. One  of  his  obsessions  was  the  new 
phonetic  spelling.  Gardening  was  his 
favourite  hobby  in  his  charming  cottage 
at  Old  Kennards.' 

[The  Times,  2  May  1936;  Economic 
Journal,  September  1936;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Francis  W.  Hihst. 


COX,     Sir     PERCY     ZACHARIAH 

(1864-1937),  soldier,  administrator,  and 
diplomatist,  was  born  at  Herongate, 
Essex,  20  November  1864,  the  youngest 
of  the  three  sons  of  Arthur  Zachariah  Cox 
(formerly  surnamed  Button),  of  Harwood 
Hall,  Essex,  deputy-lieutenant  of  the 
county,  by  his  wife.  Julienne  EmUy, 
younger  daughter  of  Richard  Saunders, 
of  Largey,  co.  Cavan,  and  Hawley  House, 
Kent.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and 
the  Royal  Mihtary  College  and  was  com- 
missioned to  the  2nd  Cameronians,  then 
stationed  in  India,  in  1884.  He  took 
his  profession  seriously,  learnt  oriental 
languages  quickly,  became  an  excellent 
rider  and  shot,  and  studied  geography  and 
natural  history  with  ardour.  In  1889  he 
married  Louisa  Belle,  youngest  daughter 
of  Surgeon-General  John  Butler  Hamilton, 
of  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  after 
joining  the  Indian  Staff  Corps  as  a  step- 
ping stone  to  the  Political  Department. 
After  holding  minor  political  appoint 
ments  in  the  Mahratta  states  of  Kolhapur 
and  Savantwadi  he  accepted  in  1893  the 
post  of  assistant  political  resident  at  Zeila 
in  the  British  Somaliland  Protectorate 
in  the  hope  that  he  would  enjoy  more 
responsibility  and  independence  in  that 
primitive  country  than  a  junior  could 
expect  to  do  in  India. 


196 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cox,  P,  Z. 


Cox's  chance  came  in  May  1895  after 
his  transfer  to  Berbera  in  the  previous 
year.  The  Rer  Hared  clan  had  closed  the 
trade  routes  and  was  terrorizing  the  coastal 
tribes.  Lieutenant-Colonel  William  Butler 
Ferris,  the  resident,  decided  without 
official  authorization  to  send  an  expedi- 
tion against  the  tribesmen.  He  put  Cox, 
now  captain,  in  command  of  52  trained 
Indian  and  Somali  camelry  and  1,500 
irregulars  whom  Cox's  diary  shows  to  have 
been  as  absurdly  unreliable  as  Falstaff' s 
braves.  Taking  Lieutenant  (afterwards 
Sir  John)  Harrington  as  his  second-in- 
command.  Cox  in  six  weeks  defeated  the 
Rer  Hared,  detached  their  allies,  and 
forced  their  surrender.  This  unauthorized 
'little  war'  gave  the  Protectorate  several 
years  of  peace  and  established  Cox's 
reputation  for  decision  and  ability. 

Later    in    1895    Cox    was    appointed 
assistant  to  the  governor-general's  agent 
in  Baroda.   In  1899  he  was  preparing  to 
join  the  American  explorer  and  hunter  A. 
Donaldson-Smith  in  an  expedition  to  the 
then    unknown    regions    between    Lake 
Rudolf  and  the  Nile,  when  Lord  Curzon 
offered  him  the  post  of  political  agent  and 
consul  at  Muscat  which  he  took  up  in 
October.   He  had  a  delicate  task  to  per- 
form.    Great   Britain    and    France    had 
recognized  the  independence  of  Muscat, 
but  in  1891  the  Indian  government  had 
signed  a  secret  convention  with  its  ruler. 
Sultan  Feisal,  who  bound  himself  not  to 
alienate  any  territory  except  to  the  British 
government.    Meanwhile,  French  agents 
distributed  French  flags  and  papers  to 
Muscat  shipowners — thus  in  effect  giving 
French  protection  to  their  traffic  in  slaves 
and  arms — and  in  1898  persuaded  Feisal 
to  lease  a  coaling  station  to  the  French 
government.    An  over-hasty  ultimatum 
from  Calcutta  was  modified,  but  Feisal, 
jwho  had    been    ordered    on    board   the 
\Eclipse,  the  guns  of  which  were  trained 
|on  his  palace,  and  who  had  lost  his  subsidy 
'from  the  government  of  India,  was  left 
w  ith  a  grievance.   Cox's  first  care  was  to 
restore  good  relations  with  the   Sultan, 
.V  hom  his  knowledge  of  Arabic,  his  dignity, 
•ourtesy,  and  Wellingtonian  presence  had 
nipressed  favourably  at  their  first  meeting, 
le  secured  the  restoration  of  the  subsidy, 
k;feated  several  French  attempts  to  cajole 
ir  bully  Feisal  into  further  concessions, 
md  persuaded  him  to  send  his  son  Taimur 
0  the  Delhi  Durbar  of  1903.  Curzon's  visit 
o  Muscat  and  the  investiture  of  Feisal 
nth  the  G.C.I.E.  in  November  marked  the 
riumph  of  Cox's  masterly  diplomacy. 


Early  in  1904  Cox,  a  major  and  CLE. 
since  1902,  was  promoted  to  acting  poU- 
tical  resident  in  the  Persian  Gulf  and 
consul-general  for  the  Persian  provinces 
of  Fars,  Luristan,  and  Khuzistan  with  the 
Persian  coasts  and  islands  of  the  Gulf.  He 
was  gazetted  resident  in  1909.  As  consul- 
general  he  was  charged,  under  the  British 
minister  in  Teheran,  with  the  defence  of 
this  coimtry's  interests  in  a  region  where 
the  Persian  revolution  of  1905-1907  pro- 
moted lawlessness  to  an  extent  which 
compelled  the  British  government  to  land 
saUors  at  Bushire  in  1909,  and  to  dispatch 
Indian  troops  to  Shiraz  in  1911.  An 
exception  to  the  general  disorder  was  the 
autonomous  Arab  district  of  Mohammera 
bordering  on  Turkey  in  the  Euphrates 
Delta.  Cox  won  the  friendship  of  its  stern 
but  intelligent  ruler,  Sheikh  Khazaal, 
secured  him  British  support  when  Turkey 
threatened  aggression,  and  in  1909 
negotiated  an  agreement  whereby  Khazaal 
leased  a  frontage  on  the  navigable  Euph- 
rates estuary  (Shatt-el-Arab)  to  the  Anglo- 
Persian  Oil  Company  for  the  construction 
of  refineries  and  the  terminus  of  its  pipe- 
line. As  political  resident  Cox  combined 
the  powers  of  an  official  guardian  and  an 
ambassador  to  the  small  Arab  states  on 
the  southern  shores  of  the  Gulf,  and  it 
was  well  for  them  and  for  the  British  and 
Indian  governments  that  their  common 
interests  were  placed  in  his  skilled  charge. 
Local  politics  mirrored  changes  in  the 
European  balance  of  power,  and  while  the 
Anglo-French  and  Anglo-Russian  agree- 
ments had  dissipated  one  threat  to  the 
beneficent  naval  paramountcy  of  Great 
Britain  in  the  Gulf,  the  Turco-German 
thrust  towards  its  waters  constituted 
a  more  serious  danger.  At  Kuweit, 
an  important  strategic  position.  Cox 
strengthened  British  ties  with  its  ruler, 
Mubarak  ibn  Sabah,  and  through  him 
opened  relations  with  a  greater  figure, 
Abdulaziz  ibn  Saud,  who  had  regained  his 
ancestral  throne  in  Nejd.  Cox  recognized 
his  commanding  abilities,  and  in  1906 
suggested  that  the  British  goverrunent 
should  conclude  a  treaty  with  the  ambi- 
tious Wahabi  ruler.  The  suggestion  found 
no  favour  with  the  liberal  government 
which  feared  oriental  entanglements.  Cox, 
however,  managed  to  maintain  good  rela- 
tions with  ibn  Saud,  and  he  must  be  given 
the  entire  credit  for  having  been  the  first 
British  diplomatist  to  foresee  the  ascen- 
dancy of  that  warrior  statesman  and  the 
first  to  urge  the  importance  of  securing 
his  confidence  and  friendship. 


197 


Cox,  P.  Z. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Such  were  the  most  striking  of  Cox's 
achievements  during  his  ten  years  of  almost 
continuous  service  in  an  appaUing  climate 
which  could  not  sap  his  energies.  There 
were  others  to  his  credit.  The  lighting  of 
the  Gulf  from  end  to  end,  the  re-survey  of 
its  coasts,  the  erection  of  wireless  installa- 
tions, the  suppression  of  the  arms  traffic 
were  changes  in  which  he  played  an  im- 
portant part.  British  trade  in  the  Gulf 
had  more  than  doubled  since  he  took  up 
its  defence  in  1904.  Above  all,  his  single- 
minded  devotion  to  the  public  service,  his 
unerring  choice  of  subordinates,  the 
methodical  accuracy  of  his  official  reports 
and  letters — for  whether  he  wrote  in 
Arabic,  Persian,  or  English  his  meaning 
was  always  clear — and  the  confidence 
which  he  inspired  among  all  races  and 
classes  were  of  immense  service  to  his 
country  in  the  troubled  years  to  come. 

In  1911  the  K.C.I.E.  was  conferred 
upon  Cox,  who  had  been  appointed  C.S.I, 
in  1909  and  promoted  lieutenant-colonel 
in  1910.  Early  in  1914  he  was  appointed 
secretary  to  the  government  of  India  in 
the  Foreign  Department.  When  it  was 
decided  to  send  Indian  Expeditionary 
Force  'D'  to  the  Gulf  he  accompanied  it, 
in  October,  as  chief  political  officer,  and 
on  the  outbreak  of  war  with  Turkey 
(31  October)  he  took  charge  in  that 
capacity  of  the  army's  political  relations 
in  Mesopotamia,  where  his  prestige  and 
experience  were  invaluable.  His  influence 
on  ibn  Saud  enabled  him  to  negotiate  a 
treaty  tantamount  to  an  alliance  with  that 
ruler  in  December  1915,  and  subsequently 
to  prevent  the  rivalry  between  the  Wahabi 
Amir  and  King  Hussein  of  the  Hejaz  from 
becoming  dangerous.  He  saw  several 
engagements  during  the  campaign,  ac- 
companying Major-General  (Sir)  Charles 
Townshend  [q.v.]  to  Ctesiphon,  and  being 
promoted  honorary  major-general  (1917), 
but  his  chief  tasks  were  administrative 
and  he  proved  a  first-class  administrator, 
adapting  and  improving  the  Turkish 
system  with  rare  skill.  At  the  beginning 
he  worked  almost  alone,  but  he  gradually 
assembled  and  trained  an  admirable  team 
of  political  and  administrative  officers 
which  included  (Sir)  Arnold  Wilson  [q.v.] 
and  was  joined  later  by  Gertrude  Bell 
[q.v.],  who  became  oriental  secretary. 
The  Iraqi  Arabs  admired  him  and  not 
least  for  his  silences — for  Cox,  although 
by  no  means  tacitvu-n,  never  talked  for 
talking's  sake.  Cox's  relations  with  the 
military  authorities  were  good  until  the 
appointment  of  Major-General  Sir  F.  S. 


Maude  [q.v.]  as  army  commander,  in 
August  1915.  Maude's  reluctance  to  per- 
mit his  chief  political  officer  to  furnish  the 
British  government  with  information  and 
to  safeguard  its  declared  Arab  policy 
would  have  caused  Cox's  resignation  but 
for  Curzon's  decisive  intervention  in  the 
War  Cabinet  on  a  warning  received  from 
Gertrude  Bell.  He  was  appointed  K.C.S.I. 
in  1915  and  G.C.I.E.  in  1917. 

Shortly  before  the  armistice  Cox  was 
sent  as  acting-minister  to  Teheran.  The 
position  there  was  difficult  since  Persia's 
neutrality  had  not  prevented  British, 
Russian,  and  Turkish  miUtary  operations 
on  Persian  territory.  After  the  armistice 
Cox  negotiated  an  Anglo-Persian  treaty 
by  which  Curzon  set  great  store.  Un- 
fortunately, it  never  became  effective, 
partly  owing  to  Persian  fears  that  it 
involved  a  surrender  of  national  indepen- 
dence but  stiU  more  to  Curzon's  over- 
emphasis of  its  importance.  In  June  1920 
Cox  was  summoned  to  London  by  Curzon 
who  informed  him  that  his  appointment 
as  high  commissioner  of  Iraq  under  the 
British  mandate  would  be  announced  in 
order  to  pacify  nationalist  discontent. 
The  announcement  came  too  late  to  pre- 
vent a  tribal  rising.  Asked  his  opinion 
whether  Great  Britain  should  abandon 
Iraq  and  the  mandate  or  set  up  a  nation 
government.  Cox  told  the  government  thai 
he  considered  evacuation  to  be  unthin! 
able  and  that  the  risk  involved  in  settin] 
up  an  Arab  government  was,  'withoul 
over-confidence',  worth  nmning. 

Cox,  who  had  been  appointed  K.C.M.G. 
in  August,  arrived  in  Bagdad  in  October 
to  undertake  the  most  difficult  task  in  his 
career.  It  was  first  necessary  to  form  a 
provisional  government  and  to  pacify  the 
disturbed  districts.  Next,  a  ruler  must  be 
chosen.  The  British  government  favoured 
the  candidature  of  Amir  Feisal,  son  of 
King  Hussein.  Cox  agreed,  provided  that 
the  candidate  was  not  imposed  upon  the 
Iraqis.  Feisal  came  to  Iraq  in  June  1921, 
and  soon  won  widespread  support.  A 
referendum  held  in  July  gave  him  a 
comfortable  majority,  and  he  was  en- 
throned on  23  August.  The  next  step  was 
to  conclude  a  treaty  embodying  the  obli- 
gations of  Great  Britain  to  Iraq  under  the 
mandate.  Here  difficulties  arose  largely 
owing  to  the  weakness  of  King  Feisal  who 
allowed  himself  to  be  manoeuvred  into 
opposition  to  the  mandate  and  his  own 
ministers  by  extremist  politicians  who 
wished  to  substitute  the  treaty  for  the 
mandate.  On  25  August  1922  Feisal  fell 


Dn 

1 


198 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Craig 


dangerously  ill.  The  council  had  resigned. 
To  the  general  relief,  Cox  immediately 
took  over  the  government.  On  his  recovery 
Feisal  realized  his  mistake  and  agreed 
to  accept  the  British  requirements.  The 
treaty  of  alliance  was  signed  on  10  October. 
This  done.  Cox  went  to  meet  ibn  Saud 
whose  tribesmen  had  been  raiding  Iraqi 
territory,  and  fixed  the  boundary  between 
the  two  Arab  states.  In  April  1923,  when 
he  was  about  to  retire,  he  signed  the 
protocol  to  the  treaty  of  alliance.  He  left 
Iraq  on  4  May.  He  had  been  appointed 
G.C.M.G.  in  1922. 

In  retirement  Cox,  as  chairman  of  the 
Mount  Everest  Committee  and  president 
(1933-193G)  of  the  Royal  Geographical 
Society,  kept  in  touch  with  some  of  the 
interests  of  his  active  career.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities 
of  Oxford  (1925)  and  Manchester  (1929). 
He  died  in  the  hunting  field  near  Bedford 
20  February  1937.  His  wife,  who  endured 
the  heat  of  the  Gulf  and  Iraq  for  so  many 
years  and  is  gratefully  remembered  for  her 
hospitality,  survived  him:  she  was  ap- 
pointed D.B.E.  in  1923.  His  only  son  was 
killed  in  action  in  1917,  and  his  only 
daughter  died  at  birth.  In  memory  of  him 
children  in  Iraq  are  still  called  'Kokkus'. 

[The    Times,    22    February    1937;    P.    P. 
Graves,   The  Life  of  Sir  Percy  Cox,   1941; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
PmLip  P.  Graves. 

CRADDOCK,  Sir  REGINALD 
HENRY  (1864-1937),  Indian  civil  ser- 
vant, the  youngest  son  of  Surgeon-Major 
William  Craddock,  of  the  Bengal  Medical 
EstabUshment,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Charlotte, 
daughter  of  Francis  Spencer  Hawkins,  was 
bom  at  Dharmsala,  Punjab,  11  March  1864. 
Educated  at  Wellington  and  at  Keble  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  he  passed  the  open  competi- 
tion for  the  Indian  civil  service  in  1882 
and  the  fllnal  examination  in  1884,  when 
he  proceeded  to  India,  being  posted  to  the 
Central  Provinces  which  had  then  been 
constituted  less  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  and  were  far  more  remote  from 
the  main  currents  of  Indian  life  than  they 
are  to-day.  Craddock  rose  rapidly  in  the 
interesting  work  and  congenial  air  of  the 
Provinces  where  so  many  interests  and  a 
robust,  vigorous  life  could  be  had  for  the 
asking.  As  a  settlement  and  district  officer, 
as  a  very  capable  and  industrious  chief 
secretary  to  the  chief  commissioner,  he 
was  plainly  the  coming  man  of  the  Pro- 
vinces. In  1907  he  was  made  chief  com- 
missioner by  Lord  Minto  [q.v.],  and,  in  a 


time  of  considerable  unrest,  won  general 
appreciation  from  all  classes  and  was  ap- 
pointed K.C.S.I.  at  the  coronation  Durbar 
of  1911.  He  was  then  (1912)  advanced  to 
be  home  member  of  the  viceroy's  execu- 
tive coimcil  on  which  he  served  for  the 
rest  of  Lord  Hardinge  of  Penshurst's  term 
of  office  and  for  a  few  months  of  Lord 
Chelmsford's.  In  1917  he  was  promoted 
to  be  lieutenant-governor  of  Burma,  but 
left  at  the  end  of  1922  on  the  eve  of  the 
change  under  which  Sir  (Spencer)  Harcourt 
Butler  [q.v.]  returned  as  governor  to  that 
province .  The  Rangoon  University  scheme 
was  initiated  by  Craddock,  who  was  the 
first  chancellor. 

Craddock  retired  in  1923  and  was 
appointed  G.C.I.E. ;  and  soon  afterwards 
became  chairman  of  the  Indian  Civil 
Service  (Retired)  Association.  In  1923- 
1924  he  served  as  a  member  of  the  royal 
commission  on  the  superior  civil  services 
in  India  under  the  chairmanship  of  Lord 
Lee  of  Fareham.  In  1931  he  entered 
parliament  as  a  conservative  member  for 
the  Combined  English  Universities.  From 
1932  to  1934  he  served  on  the  joint  select 
parliamentary  committee  on  Indian  con- 
stitutional reform  and  spoke  often  in  com- 
mittee on  the  bill  in  1935.  He  had  an 
uphill  battle  to  fight,  but  he  remained 
popular  with  his  fellow  members. 

Craddock  married  in  1888  Frances 
Henrietta  (died  1932),  younger  daughter 
of  General  Henry  Ralph  Browne,  and  had 
one  son  and  two  daughters.  He  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Keble  Col- 
lege in  1931.  He  died  in  London  10  Feb- 
ruary 1937.  In  The  Dilemma  in  India 
(1929)  Craddock  left  a  valuable  record  of 
his  work  and  his  views  on  affairs  in  India. 
It  was  written  to  be  of  service  at  the  time 
when  the  constitution  then  existing  was 
under  consideration,  but  it  deserves  to  be 
studied  for  other  reasons.  It  is  the  work 
of  a  man  who  knew  India  exceptionally 
well,  was  thoroughly  respected  and  ap- 
preciated by  all  with  whom  he  came  into 
contact,  and  was  a  tower  of  strength  in 
Lord  Hardinge' s  successful  administra- 
tion in  years  of  crisis. 

[The  Times,  11  and  13  February  1937  ; 
R.  H.  Craddock,  The  Dilemma  in  India,  1929  ; 
personal  knowledge.]  H.  V.  Lovett. 

CRAIG,  JAMES,  first  Viscount 
Craigavon  (1871-1940),  statesman,  was 
bom  at  Sydenham,  a  suburb  of  Belfast, 
8  January  1871 ,  the  youngest  of  the  six  sons 
of  James  Craig,  J.P.,  of  Craigavon  and 
Tyrella,  co.  Down,  a  successful  business 


199 


Craig 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


man  in  Belfast,  by  his  wife,  Eleanor 
Gilmour,  daughter  of  Robert  Brown. 
Educated  at  a  private  school  at  Holjrwood 
in  county  Down  and  afterwards  at  Mer- 
chiston  Castle,  Edinburgh,  he  became  a 
stockbroker. 

After  the  South  African  war,  in  which 
he  served  with  distinction,  Craig  turned  to 
politics,  and  at  the  general  election  of 
1906,  after  an  imsuccessful  candidature  in 
North  Fermanagh  (1903),  he  was  elected 
member  for  East  Down  and  held  the  seat 
until  1918.  He  was  member  for  Mid-Down 
from  1918  to  1921.  His  sagacity,  honesty 
of  purpose,  and  courage  were  fully 
recognized  at  Westminster,  and  he  served 
as  parhamentary  secretary  to  the  Ministry 
of  Pensions  (1919-1920)  and  as  parlia- 
mentary and  financial  secretary  to  the 
Admiralty  in  1920-1921.  He  resigned  on 
becoming,  in  June  of  the  last-named  year, 
under  the  Government  of  Ireland  Act  of 
December  1920,  the  jBrst  prime  minister 
of  Northern  Ireland.  Thenceforth  he  sat 
as  one  of  the  members  for  county  Down 
in  the  parliament  of  Northern  Ireland 

Craig's  time  at  Westminster  was  mainly 
occupied  in  a  struggle  against  the  Irish 
separatist  movement,  which  was  relegated 
to  the  background  in  the  general  election 
of  1906  and  by  the  majority  given  then  to 
the  liberals  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
But  the  constitutional  crisis  following  on 
the  rejection  of  the  finance  bill  of  1909 
by  the  House  of  Lords,  involved  two 
appeals  to  the  electorate  (January  and 
December  1910),  the  outcome  of  which 
was  to  make  the  nationalist  vote  a  deci- 
sive factor  in  parliament.  Thereupon  the 
liberal  government  committed  itself  to 
another  home  rule  bill,  and  in  the  bitter 
struggle  which  followed  Craig  took  a  lead- 
ing part  as  the  chief  lieutenant  of  Sir 
Edward  Carson  [q.v.],  the  Ulster  leader. 

Both  leaders  knew  well  the  difficulties 
and  dangers  of  the  task  that  lay  ahead, 
but  they  also  knew  that  the  loyalists  of 
Ulster  would  never  surrender  their  birth- 
right as  citizens  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
Ulster  people  were  convinced  that  home 
rule  for  Ireland  would  lead  to  an  Irish 
republic,  disloyal  to  the  Empire,  and  that 
Ulster's  industries  would  be  seriously 
affected  by  legislation  promoted  by  men 
imacquainted  with  its  industrial  affairs. 

Between  the  two  leaders  it  was  agreed 
that  Carson  would  mainly  devote  himself 
to  upholding  Ulster's  interests  at  West- 
minster and  on  public  platforms  through- 
out the  kingdom,  and  that  Craig  would 
chiefly  deal  with  organizing  the  means  of 


resistance  which,  it  was  felt,  must  be 
adopted.  The  intention  was  that  if  the 
home  rule  bill  became  law,  Ulster  should 
be  held  in  trust,  in  the  King's  name,  until 
the  Act  was  repealed.  To  this  end  a  pro- 
visional government,  with  a  judiciary, 
was  planned,  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force 
was  brought  into  existence  and  armed, 
and  the  Ulster  Covenant  was  signed 
(28  September  1912)  by  almost  half  a 
million  people  who  pledged  themselves  to 
shirk  nothing  which  might  be  required  to 
prevent  dismemberment  of  the  kingdom. 
In  1914  there  followed  a  crisis  of  su- 
preme gravity  marked  by  the  gun-rimning 
incident  at  Larne  (24  April),  but  the  war 
of  1914-1918  supervened,  and  at  Carson's 
call  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force,  to  the 
mihtary  qualities  of  which  Kitchener 
afterwards  paid  tribute,  became  the 
Ulster  Division  and  won  imdying  glory  in 
France. 

Meanwhile  the  home  rule  bill  had  been 
placed  on  the  Statute  Book,  but  with  a 
stay  on  its  operation.  With  the  advent  of 
peace,  however,  the  Irish  question  (com- 
plicated by  the  Sinn  Fein  rising  at  Easter- 
tide 1916)  again  became  a  very  dangerous 
issue,  and  after  the  provisional  'settlement' 
of  1920,  promoted  by  Lloyd  George  as 
head  of  the  coaUtion  government,  had 
been  repudiated  by  the  Southern  Irish, 
the  'treaty'  of  6  December  1921  led  to 
immediate  'opting  out'  by  Northern 
Ireland.  Craig,  a  baronet  since  1918,  re- 
mained prime  minister  of  Northern  Ire- 
land. He  faced  a  task  of  great  difficulty. 
The  members  of  his  government  had  to  be 
chosen  for  the  most  part  from  men  with 
no  former  parliamentary  experience;  a 
new  police  force  had  to  be  brought  into 
being;  and  order  established.  Lawless- 
ness was  rampant  at  the  time,  murder  and 
outrage  of  almost  daily  occurrence,  and 
ministers  carried  on  their  work  at  great 
personal  risk.  In  an  attempt  to  make 
government  impossible,  nationalists  boy- 
cotted the  new  parUament  and  the  new 
Royal  Ulster  Constabulary  Force  and 
demanded  a  revision  of  the  Ulster 
boundary.  In  due  course  a  boundary 
commission  was  set  up  by  the  British 
government  but  its  report  was  never 
published,  the  status  quo  being  maintained 
as  a  result  of  a  financial  deal  between  the 
ministers  of  London  and  DubUn. 

For  nineteen  years,  until  his  death, 
Craig,  who  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Viscount  Craigavon,  of  Stormont,  co. 
Down,  in  1927,  remained  prime  minister 
of  Northern  Ireland,  slowly  and  surely 


I 


200 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Crawfurd 


steering  the  small  ship  of  state  into  rela- 
tively calm  waters,  and  setting  himself  to 
strengthen  its  defences  against  future 
storms.  During  his  premiership  parlia- 
ment passed  many  measures  such  as  those 
maintaining  social  services  similar  to  those 
in  Great  Britain,  providing  for  improved 
housing  and  drainage,  and  creating  a  new 
educational  system,  as  well  as  legislation 
designed  to  further  the  establishment  of 
new  industries  and  improve  the  agri- 
cultural position. 

As  parliamentarian  and  statesman, 
Craigavon  possessed  qualities  of  a  very 
high  order.  He  was  a  man  of  undaunted 
courage,  high  character,  sound  judgement, 
and  devotion  to  duty,  and  his  powers  of 
leadership  were  conspicuous.  He  was  a 
great  organizer.  He  trusted  his  colleagues 
and  his  colleagues  trusted  him. 

Craigavon  died  suddenly  at  Glencraig, 
CO.  Down,  24  November  1940,  and  was 
buried  in  the  grounds  of  the  parliament 
with  the  establishment  of  which  his  name 
is  pectiliarly  connected.  The  aftermath  of 
his  work  has  been  described  in  Mr. 
Churchill's  commentary  on  the  part  played 
by  Ulster  since  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1939.  'Only  one  great  channel  of  entry 
remained  open.  That  channel  remained 
open  because  loyal  Ulster  gave  us  the  full 
use  of  the  Northern  Irish  ports  and  waters, 
and  thus  ensured  the  free  working  of  the 
Clyde  and  the  Mersey.  But  for  the  loyalty 
of  Northern  Ireland  and  its  devotion  to 
what  has  now  become  the  cause  of  thirty 
governments  or  nations,  we  should  have 
been  confronted  with  slavery  and  death, 
and  the  light  which  now  shines  so  strongly 
throughout  the  world  would  have  been 
quenched.' 

Craig  married  in  1905  Cecil  Mary  No  well 
Dering,  only  child  of  Sir  Daniel  Alfred 
Anley  Tupper,  an  officer  of  the  King's 
household,  and  had  twin  sons  and  a 
daughter  all  of  whom  survived  him.  He 
was  succeeded  as  second  viscount  by  his 
elder  son,  James  (bom  1906).  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy  Council  in  1921, 
and  of  that  of  Northern  Ireland  in  1922. 
He  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  Queen's  University,  Belfast,  in  1922, 
and  that  of  D.C.L.  from  Oxford  in  1926. 

A  statue  of  Craigavon  by  L.  S.  Merri- 
field  was  placed  in  the  Northern  Ireland 
House  of  Commons  at  Stormont  in  1945. 

[The  Times,  25  November  1940;  Hugh 
I  Shearman,  Not  an  Inch.  A  Study  of  Northern 

Ireland  and  Lord  Craigavon,  1942 ;  St.  John 
'  Ervine,  Craigavon,  Ulsterman,  1948 ;  personal 

knowledge.]  John  M.  Andrews. 


CRAIGAVON,  first  Viscount  (1871- 
1940),  statesman.   [See  Craig,  James.] 

CRAIGMYLE,  first  Baron  (1850- 
1937),  lawyer  and  politician.  [See  Shaw, 
Thomas.] 

CRAWFORD,  twenty-seventh  Earl  of 
(1871-1940),  politician  and  art  connois- 
seur. [See  Lindsay,  David  Alexander 
Edward.] 

CRAWFURD,  Sir  RAYMOND 
HENRY  PAYNE  (1865-1938),  physi- 
cian and  scholar,  was  born  at  East 
Grinstead,  Sussex,  9  November  1865,  the 
sixth  son  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Walter  Payne 
Crawfurd,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  daughter  of 
James  Adey  Ogle,  regius  professor  of  medi- 
cine at  Oxford  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Winchester,  New  College,  Oxford,  and 
King's  College  Hospital,  at  all  of  which  he 
gained  scholarships  or  prizes.  He  qualified 
B.Ch.  (Oxon.)  in  1894  and  M.D.  (Oxon.) 
in  1896.  After  holding  resident  appoint- 
ments at  his  hospital  and  the  Victoria 
Hospital  for  Children,  Chelsea,  he  became 
in  1898  assistant  physician  to  King's  Col- 
lege Hospital  and  later  (1905)  full  physi- 
cian, as  well  as  lecturer  there  and  at  the 
London  School  of  Medicine  for  Women. 
He  continued  with  active  work  at  King's 
College  Hospital  until  1930. 

Crawfurd  took  a  keen  interest  in  the 
history  of  medicine  and  played  a  leading 
part  in  the  foundation  of  the  section  of  the 
history  of  medicine  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Medicine,  of  which  section  he  became 
president.  He  contributed  to  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  society  many  interesting 
papers  such  as  'Martial  and  Medicine' 
(1913),  'Oliver  Goldsmith  and  Medicine' 
(1914),  and  'Superstitions  concerning 
Menstruation'  (1915).  He  also  published 
a  monograph  entitled  The  Last  Days  of 
Charles  II  (1909).  Besides  his  historical 
work  he  was  the  author  of  a  thesis  on 
exophthalmic  goitre,  and  was  joint  editor 
with  (Sir)  Farquhar  Buzzard  of  Burmoy 
Yeo's  Manual  of  Medical  Treatment  (1913). 

Crawfurd  took  an  active  part  in  the 
affairs  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians, 
of  which  he  was  elected  a  member  in  1894, 
a  fellow  in  1901,  and  registrar  in  1925, 
holding  this  post  imtil  his  death  in  1938. 
He  also  gave  the  Fitzpatrick  lectures  in 
1911-1912  which  were  expanded  and 
published  as  The  King's  Evil  (1911)  and 
as  Plagtie  and  Pestilence  in  Literature  and ' 
Art  (1914),  and  delivered  the  Harveian 
oration  in  1919.  His  skill  as  an  organizer, 
for  which  he  was  knighted  in  1933,  was 


201 


Crawfurd 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


shown  by  the  active  part  which  he  took 
in  the  removal  of  King's  College  Hospital 
from  its  position  near  the  Strand  to  its 
present  site  on  Denmark  Hill.  Reference 
should  also  be  made  to  his  administrative 
ability  as  regards  Epsom  College  of  which 
he  was  the  ideal  chairman  of  the  coimcil 
for  many  years  (1923-1936). 

Crawfurd  married  in  1898  Ethelberta 
Ormrod,  yoimgest  daughter  of  Colonel 
Arthur  Bailey,  J.P.,  of  Bolton,  and  had 
three  sons.  He  died  in  London,  after  a 
few  days'  illness,  9  March  1938. 

[The  Times,  10  March  1938 ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1938,  vol.  i,  p.  651  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 
1938,  vol.  i,  p.  697  (portrait).] 

J.  D.  ROLUESTON. 

CREED,  JOHN  MARTIN  (1889-1940), 
divine,  was  born  at  Leicester  14  October 
1889,  the  eldest  son  of  Colin  John  Creed, 
vicar  of  All  Saints'  church,  Leicester,  and 
later  rector  of  Farthinghoe,  Northampton- 
shire, by  his  wife,  Etheldreda  Wright, 
daughter  of  Frederick  Robert  Spackman, 
M.D.,  of  Harpenden,  Hertfordshire.  He 
was  educated  at  the  Wyggeston  Grammar 
School,  Leicester,  and  in  1908  went  as  a 
scholar  to  Gonville  and  Caius  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  was  a  Bell  scholar 
in  1909  and  obtained  first  classes  in  part  i 
of  the  classical  tripos  (1911)  and  in  part  ii 
of  the  theological  tripos  (1912).  In  1913 
he  was  ordained  to  an  assistant  cur- 
acy at  St.  Paul's  church,  Manningham, 
Bradford,  and  in  the  following  year  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  his  college,  to  which  he 
returned  as  chaplain  in  1915.  From  1917 
to  1919  he  was  a  chaplain  to  the  forces  in 
France.  In  the  last-named  year  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, and  appointed  dean  and  lecturer 
in  theology.  In  1926  he  succeeded  A.  E. 
Brooke  [q.v.]  as  Ely  professor  of  divinity 
and  in  the  canonry  of  Ely  Cathedral 
annexed  to  the  chair,  and  he  held  these 
offices  imtil  his  death  at  Cambridge 
17  February  1940.  He  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1939. 
In  1927  he  married  May  Geraldine,  yovmger 
daughter  of  Alfred  Leslie  Lilley,  canon  of 
Hereford,  and  had  one  son  and  three 
daughters,  the  youngest  of  whom  pre- 
deceased her  father. 

In  his  exact  scholarship  and  historical 
outlook  Creed  inherited  and  maintained 
the  Cambridge  theological  tradition  which 
had  come  down  from  the  time  of  J.  B. 
Lightfoot  [q.v.].  His  principal  contribu- 
tions to  theology  lay  in  the  field  of  the  New 
Testament  and  the  early  Christian  age. 


His  work  in  this  field  is  represented  by 
The  Gospel  according  to  St.  Luke.  The 
Greek  Text  with  Introduction,  Notes,  and 
Indices  (1930),  a  critical  commentary  con- 
cerned especially  with  the  composition  of 
St.  Luke's  narrative  and  the  stage  which 
it  marks  in  the  development  of  the  Gospel 
tradition,  and  by  articles  in  the  Journal  of 
Theological  Studies,  of  which  he  became 
an  editor  towards  the  end  of  1935,  and 
elsewhere.  Noteworthy  amongst  these 
articles  is  a  discussion  of  the  early  Christian 
document  known  as  the  Didache  {Journal 
of  Theological  Studies,  October  1938).  A 
second  field  of  study,  to  which  he  devoted 
himself  increasingly,  was  the  history  of 
rehgious  thought  in  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries.  Although  widely 
separated  in  time,  these  periods  were  not 
dissociated  in  his  thought,  both  because 
the  later  period  gave  him  the  background 
against  which  to  view  the  modem  study 
of  the  earlier  and  the  problems  to  which 
it  had  given  rise,  and  because  his  strong 
historical  sense  led  him  always  to  ap- 
preciate the  continuity,  yet  changing  con- 
ditions, of  Christian  theology.  His  work 
in  the  later  field  is  represented  by  Reli- 
gious Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century 
Illustrated  from  Writers  of  the  Period  (1934), 
prepared  in  collaboration  with  the  Rev.  ! 
J.  S.  Boys  Smith,  and  by  his  Hulsean  ^ 
lectures  delivered  at  Cambridge  in  1936  fl 
and  published  in  1938  under  the  title  of" 
The  Divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  A  Study  in 
the  History  of  Christian  Doctrine  since  Kant, 
which  illustrates  the  characteristic  lucidity 
of  his  thought  and  his  gift  of  literary 
presentation. 

Creed  was  always  deeply  interested  in 
the  history  and  nature  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  as  a  churchman  he  repre- 
sented, as  well  perhaps  as  any  man  of  his 
time,  its  central  tradition,  liberal  in  out- 
look and  resting  upon  sound  learning.  He 
knew  that  the  intimate  association  of  the 
Church  of  England  with  the  history  and 
people  of  England  is  integral  to  the  idea 
of  the  historic  Church  of  England.  In  his 
view,  a  national  Church  was  a  natural 
coimterpart  to  the  political  and  social  order 
of  a  world  in  which  the  nation  was  the 
fundamental  political  and  cultural  imit. 
It  was  thus  a  proper,  though  not  the  only 
legitimate,  form  of  Church  polity,  fitted 
to  express  a  cathoUc  tone  and  temper  and 
able  to  preserve  the  religious  and  the  non- 
religious  activities  of  man  in  their  true 
and  organic  relation.  The  association  of 
Church  and  State  in  England  had  fostered 
this  wholesome  contact  between  the  sacred 


202 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Crompton 


and  the  secular,  which  was  characteristic 
of  the  special  ethos  of  the  Church  of 
England  and  of  the  religion  of  the  English 
people.  This  position,  stated  in  a  number 
of  published  articles  and  sermons  and  sup- 
ported by  wide  learning  and  with  notable 
fairness  of  mind,  gave  to  Creed's  outlook 
a  representative  importance,  and  it  added 
weight  to  the  part  which  he  played  as  a 
member  of  the  Archbishops'  Commission 
on  Christian  Doctrine,  the  Report  of  which 
was  published  in  1938  as  Doctrine  in  the 
Church  of  England. 

[The  Times,  21  and  22  February  1940; 
J.  F.  Bethune-Baker,  John  Martin  Creed, 
1889-1940  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  xxvi,  1940  (portrait) ;  Journal 
of  Theological  Studies,  April  1940;  Cambridge 
Review,  1  March  1940;  The  Eagle  (magazine 
of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge),  vol.  lii, 
pp.  51-54, 1941 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  S.  Boys  Smith. 

CRICHTON-BROWNE,  Sir  JAMES 
(1840-1938),  physician  and  psychologist. 
[See  Bkowne.] 

CROIVIPTON,  ROOKES  EVELYN 
BELL  (1845-1940),  engineer,  was  born  at 
Sion  HiU,  near  Thirsk,  31  May  1845,  the 
fourth  son  and  youngest  child  of  Joshua 
Samuel  Crompton,  by  his  first  wife,  Mary, 
daughter  of  Sir  Claud  Alexander  and  a 
friend  and  pupil  of  Mendelssohn.  The 
names  Rookes  Evelyn  record  his  kinship 
through  the  Rookes,  his  grandmother's 
family,  with  the  diarist  John  Evelyn. 

During  the  Crimean  war  Crompton  was 
allowed  to  accompany  Captain  (Sir)  Wil- 
liam Houston  Stewart  [q.v.],  his  mother's 
cousin,  commander  of  the  Dragon;  and 
was  officially  enrolled  as  a  naval  cadet. 
He  visited  his  elder  brother  in  the  trenches 
and  actually  came  under  fire ;  thus  at  the 
age  of  eleven  he  had  the  Crimean  medal 
and  Sebastopol  clasp. 

School  at  Elstree  prepared  Crompton 
for  Harrow  (1858-1860).  During  his 
holidays  he  built,  in  a  workshop  at  home, 
a  full-size  steam-driven  road  engine ;  but 
before  his  true  engineering  career  began 
he  served  for  four  years  in  India  (1864- 
1868)  as  an  ensign  in  the  Rifle  Brigade. 
Even  there,  however,  he  equipped  a 
travelling  workshop  and  had  his  machine 
tools  sent  out  from  England.  His  strong 
views  on  the  inefficiency  and  slowness  of 
the  bullock  trains  impressed  R.  S.  Bourke, 
Earl  of  Mayo  [q.v.],  then  viceroy,  and 
within  a  short  time  Crompton  introduced 
steam  road-haulage,  receiving  a  govern- 
ment grant  of  £500  for  his  services. 


Returning  in  1875,  Crompton  left  the 
army  and  bought  a  partnership  in  a 
Chelmsford  engineering  firm,  and,  when 
adviser  at  the  Stanton  iron-works  belong- 
ing to  the  Derbyshire  branch  of  his  family, 
purchased  some  of  the  new  Gramme 
dynamos  in  order  to  improve  the  lighting 
of  the  foundry.  Their  success  provided  a 
turning-point;  from  that  date  (1878) 
electricity  and  engineering  became  for 
him  almost  inseparable.  Co-operating 
with  Emil  Biirgin,  of  Basle,  who  was  then 
working  on  dynamo  design,  Crompton 
obtained  the  rights  of  manufacture  and 
sale  of  Biirgin's  machine,  improved  it,  and 
developed  it  to  commercial  success.  He 
began  making  electric  light  plant,  and 
carried  out  many  installations,  those  at 
the  Mansion  House  and  the  Law  Courts  in 
London  and  the  Ring  Theatre  in  Vienna 
being  especially  notable.  In  1881  the  firm 
of  Crompton's  was  awarded  the  first  gold 
medal  ever  given  for  electric  lighting  plant. 

Towards  the  end  of  1886  Crompton 
formed  the  Kensington  Court  Company, 
financed  by  a  few  friends,  for  electricity 
supply  to  neighbouring  premises.  This 
pioneer  enterprise,  one  of  the  first  of  its 
kind,  became  the  Kensington  and  Knights- 
bridge  Electric  Supply  Company.  Cromp- 
ton advocated  the  direct  current  system ; 
S.  Z.  de  Ferranti  [q.v.],  engineer  of  the 
London  Electric  Supply  Corporation, 
believed  in  alternating  current  and  led  the 
opposing  school.  The  resulting  'battle  of 
the  systems',  with  these  two  as  friendly 
antagonists,  has  its  place  in  electrical 
history. 

Between  1890  and  1899  Crompton  re- 
visited India,  advising  the  government  on 
electrical  projects.  On  his  return  he  took 
charge  of  a  volunteer  corps  of  Electrical 
Engineers,  and  by  May  1900  was  in  South 
Africa  with  his  men,  whose  efficiency  in 
maintaining  communications  and  skill  in 
emergencies  won  high  praise.  Crompton 
had  gone  out  as  captain;  on  his  return, 
later  that  year,  he  was  promoted  lieu- 
tenant-colonel, appointed  C.B.,  and  re- 
tained as  consultant  to  the  War  Office  on 
the  development  of  mechanical  transport. 

Although  electrical  matters  still  claimed 
much  of  his  time,  Crompton  became  in- 
creasingly occupied  with  road  transport. 
He  had  been  a  founder-member  of  the 
Royal  Automobile  Club  in  1896,  and  was 
one  of  the  judges  in  1903  at  the  first 
motor  show;  as  engineer-member  of  the 
Road  Board  appointed  by  the  government 
in  1910,  he  improved  road  construction 
practice  and  materials.   In  the  early  part 


203 


Crompton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  the  war  of  1914-1918  Mr.  Churchill 
consulted  Crompton  upon  the  design  of 
an  armoured  vehicle  capable  of  crossing 
trenches,  and  he  was  responsible  for  pro- 
ducing a  type  of  'landship'  which  later 
evolved,  under  various  hands,  into  the 
tank. 

In  his  laboratory  at  'Thriplands',  his 
Kensington  home,  Crompton  spent  many 
hours  at  research.  He  served  on  the 
conmiittee  of  the  National  Physical 
Laboratory,  and  his  advocacy  of  a  closer 
understanding  between  all  countries  on 
electrical  affairs  resulted  in  the  founding 
of  the  International  Electrotechnical 
Commission  in  1906,  of  which  he  was  the 
first  secretary. 

In  1927  the  firm  of  Crompton's  became 
merged  with  another  imder  the  title  of 
Crompton,  Parkinson,  &  company. 
Limited,  'The  Colonel'  was  then  over 
eighty,  but  still  active,  and  he  retained 
a  directorship  in  the  new  concern.  A 
dinner  in  his  honour,  held  in  London  in 
1931,  was  attended  by  probably  the 
largest  gathering  of  distinguished  scientists 
and  engineers  ever  recorded  at  a  personal 
function.  Each  of  the  three  principal 
engineering  bodies,  the  Civil,  Mechanical, 
and  Electrical,  made  him  an  honorary 
member;  he  was  twice  president  of 
the  Institution  of  Electrical  Engineers, 
in  1895  and  again  in  1908.  He  was 
awarded  the  Faraday  medal  in  1926 
and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1933.  His 
ninetieth  year  was  celebrated  by  another 
banquet,  at  which  Sir  James  Swin- 
burne presented  him  with  his  portrait 
by  George  Harcourt,  which  is  now  in  the 
possession  of  the  Institution  of  Electrical 
Engineers. 

Professionally,  Crompton  was  the 
expert,  commanding  respect  and  admira- 
tion ;  socially,  a  host  of  friends  regarded 
him  with  affection.  Young  men  bene- 
fited by  his  cheerful  attitude  to  life,  his 
resource  and  originality,  and  often  by  his 
generous  help. 

Crompton  married  in  1871  Elizabeth 
Gertrude  (died  1939),  daughter  of  George 
Clarke,  of  Tanfield,  nearRipon,  his  father's 
other  estate  in  Yorkshire ;  they  had  two 
sons,  one  of  whom  predeceased  his  father, 
and  three  daughters.  His  wife  was  his 
constant  companion,  keenly  interested  in 
aU  his  enterprises.  He  died  at  Azerley 
Chase,  Ripon,  15  February  1940. 

[R.  E.  B,  Crompton,  Reminiscences,  1928 ; 
J.  H.  Johnson  and  W.  L.  Randell,  Colonel 
Crompton  (British  Council ' Science  in  Britain' 
series),  1945 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of 


the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  January  1941  (biblio- 
graphy and  portrait) ;  Journal  of  the  Institu- 
tion of  Civil  Engineers,  vol.  xiv,  April  1940; 
personal  knowledge.] 

Wilfrid  L.  Randell. 

CROSS,  CHARLES  FREDERICK 

(1855-1935),  analytical  chemist,  was  born 
at  Brentford,  Middlesex,  11  December 
1855,  the  second  son  of  Charles  James 
Cross,  J. P.,  of  Brentford,  who  was  at  first 
a  schoolmaster  and  later  a  director  of  T.  B. 
Rowe  &  Sons,  soap-makers,  of  that  town, 
by  his  wife,  Ella  Mendham.  He  was 
educated  at  King's  College,  London  (where 
he  graduated  B.Sc.  in  1878),  Ziirich 
University  and  Polytechnikum,  and  the 
Owens  College,  Manchester  (1878-1879). 
He  thus  had  as  teachers  Georg  Lunge 
and  (Sir)  H.  E.  Roscoe  [q.v.].  He  devoted 
his  life  to  the  field  of  cellulose  technology, 
and  in  1885  set  up  in  business  in  Lincoln's 
Inn  in  partnership  with  Edward  J.  Be  van, 
his  fellow  student  at  Manchester,  who  died 
in  1921,  as  analytical  and  consulting 
chemists. 

The  reputation  of  Cross  is  based  upon 
many  achievements.  With  the  public, 
especially  with  women,  he  must  rank 
among  the  greatest  of  all  practical 
chemists  since,  by  his  discovery  in  1892 
of  viscose,  he  made  possible  artificial  silk, 
afterwards  called  rayon.  His  achievement, 
which  led  to  the  making  of  textiles,  silk 
stockings  for  example,  from  wood  cellulose, 
is  no  less  esteemed  by  chemists.  The 
discovery  consisted  in  treating  cellulose 
with  aqueous  caustic  soda  and  then  with 
carbon  bisulphide,  producing  a  golden 
yellow  viscous  liquid.  This  liquid  when 
projected  or  spun  through  fine  nozzles 
into  a  precipitating  bath  of  sulphuric  acid 
yielded  fibres.  These,  after  further  treat- 
ment to  remove  the  sulphur,  left  a  pure 
regenerated  cellulose.  His  patent  remained 
a  chemical  master  patent  for  its  full  term 
of  years  and  was  extended  for  a  further 
term  in  view  of  its  outstanding  merit. 

Cross  was  also  a  pioneer  in  the  produc- 
tion of  viscous  films,  now  universal,  as 
well  as  in  that  of  cellulose  acetate,  later 
associated  in  the  public  mind  with  the 
name  Celanese:  he  took  out  the  first 
industrial  patent  for  the  manufacture  of 
this  in  1894.  Although  less  spectacular, 
his  work  was  likewise  of  remarkable 
influence  in  the  development  of  the  paper 
trade. 

Cross,  who  was  far  ahead  of  his  time  in 
working  with  a  substance  so  essentially 
mystic  and  intangible  in  its  chemical 
behaviour,   never   ceased  to  be  actively 


204 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Currie,   A.  W. 


interested  in  the  theoretical  chemistry  of 
cellulose.  He  published  his  researches  in 
book  form  as  well  as  in  contributions  to 
scientific  journals.  His  book  Cellulose 
(written  in  collaboration  with  Bevan, 
1895)  is  unique ;  full  of  imagination  and 
inspiration,  with  ideas,  often  only  partly 
expressed,  tumbling  over  one  another.  He 
also  published  four  volumes  of  Researches 
an  Cellulose,  1895-1921  (1901-1922),  the 
first  three  in  collaboration  with  Bevan, 
the  last  with  Charles  Doree.  Although  he 
achieved  so  much  on  the  technical  side, 
at  heart  he  was  a  scientist,  chiefly  in- 
terested in  the  pursuit  of  pure  knowledge. 
Cross  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1917  and 
was  awarded  the  medal  of  the  Society  of 
Chemical  Industry  (1916),  the  research 
medal  of  the  Worshipful  Company  of 
Dyers  (1918)  and  the  Perkin  medal  of  the 
Society  of  Dyers  and  Colourists  (1924). 
Owing  to  ill  health  he  retired  to  Hove 
about  eight  years  before  his  death,  which 
took  place  there  15  April  1935.  He  married 
in  1890  Edith  Vernon,  daughter  of  Major- 
General  Charles  Roper  Stainforth,  Madras 
Cavalry,  and  had  two  sons  and  one 
daughter.  He  was  fortunate  in  his  artistic 
temperament  and  happy  in  his  musical 
gifts :  he  was  an  organist  of  ability.  A  man 
of  striking  appearance,  cultured,  and  with 
broad  interests,  he  was  widely  popular. 

[The  Times,  16  and  22  April  1935 ;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4, 
December  1935  (portrait) ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] E.  F.  Armstrong. 

CRUMP,  CHARLES  GEORGE  (1862- 
1935),  archivist,  born  at  Wyke  Regis,  near 
Weymouth,  9  April  1862,  was  the  eldest 
son  of  Charles  Ashbrook  Wright  Crump, 
barrister,  of  the  Inner  Temple,  then  an 
instructor  in  the  training-ship  Britannia, 
by  his  wife,  Helen  Ann  Crane.  His  parents 
left  England  with  their  family  in  1872, 
and  lived  at  San  Remo  until  1885.  Charles, 
like  his  brothers  Harry  and  Louis,  was 
educated  by  his  father,  who  also  took 
private  pupils,  for  the  Indian  civil  service, 
and  obtained  seventh  place  in  the  exami- 
nation of  1880,  whereupon  he  entered 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  as  a  civilian  in 
training.  After  graduating  in  jurispru- 
dence in  1883  he  proceeded  to  India,  but 
after  six  months  at  Cawnpore  he  was  in- 
valided home  for  good,  retiring  in  1886. 
On  recovering,  he  aimed  at  a  post  in  the 
home  civil  service,  and  while  waiting  to 
compete,  worked  under  Sir  J.  A.  H. 
Murray  [q.v.]  on  the  Oxford  English 
Dictionary.  In  1887  he  obtained  a  post  as 


clerk  in  the  secretary's  department  of  the 
General  Post  Office,  from  which  in  1888 
he  was  transferred  as  a  junior  clerk  to  the 
Public  Record  Office.  Here  he  remained 
until  his  retirement  with  the  rank  of 
senior  assistant  keeper  (which  he  had  held 
since  1916)  in  1923. 

Crump's  earliest  considerable  work  was 
an  edition  of  the  works  of  W.  S.  Landor 
(1891-1893),  but  the  historical  and 
economic  interest  of  his  official  duties  led 
him  away  from  purely  literary  tasks.  He 
contributed  to  (Sir)  Robert  Harry  Inglis 
Palgrave's  Dictionary  of  Political  Economy 
(1891-1899)  and  to  Social  England  (1893- 
1897)  by  H.  D.  Traill  [q.v.].  With  two 
colleagues,  he  edited  in  1902  the  Dialogus 
de  Scaccario  of  Richard  FitzNeale  [q.v.], 
superseding  the  1711  text  of  Thomas 
Madox  [q.v.],  and  he  was  co-editor  of  the 
essays  entitled  The  Legacy  of  the  Middle 
Ages  (1926).  His  extremely  acute  mind 
and  attractive  character  are  reflected  ia 
some  degree  in  The  Logic  of  History  (1919), 
History  and  Historical  Research  (1928),  and 
his  one  novel.  The  Red  King  Dreams 
(1931).  His  official  work  will  be  found  in 
such  publications  as  the  List  of  Foreign 
Accounts  (1900),  Calendar  of  Charter  Rolls 
(1903-1927),  and  the  Book  of  Fees  (1920- 
1931).  He  was  an  active  member  of  the 
advisory  conunittee  appointed  in  1912  by 
the  master  of  the  Rolls  to  bring  the  Record 
Office  into  closer  touch  with  historical 
scholars ;  but  his  greatest  service  to  history 
was  his  insistence  on  the  need  for  the 
study  of  records  in  their  proper  setting 
as  products  of  an  administrative  machine, 
and  not  merely  as  evidence  of  isolated 
facts.  In  this  respect  the  historians  and 
archivists  of  to-day  are  all  in  a  sense  his 
pupils. 

Crump  married  in  1890  Lucy  (died 
1946),  yoimger  daughter  of  George  Birk- 
beck  Hill,  sister  of  Sir  (Edward)  Maurice 
Hill,  and  sister-in-law  of  Sir  W.  J.  Ashley 
[qq.v.],  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  He 
died  in  London  11  December  1935. 

[The  Times,  13  December  1935;  Official 
records  of  the  Public  Record  Office ;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Johnson. 

CUNNINGHAME-GRAHAM,ROBERT 
BONTINE  (1852-1936),  traveUer,  scholar, 
etc.  [See  Graham.] 

CURRIE,   Sir  ARTHUR  WILLIAM* 

(1875-1933),  general,  was  born  at  Nap- 
perton,  Adelaide,  Ontario,  Canada,  5 
December  1875,  the  son  of  William  Garner 


205 


Currie,  A.  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Currie,  of  Strathroy,  Ontario,  by  his  wife, 
Jane  Patterson.  Both  his  parents  were 
Canadian  born,  but  their  famihes  origin- 
ally migrated  from  Scotland  and  Ulster. 
The  first  years  of  Currie's  life  were  spent 
on  his  father's  farm  and  in  his  education 
at  Strathroy  Collegiate  Institute  and 
Strathroy  Model  School,  but  in  1894  he 
became  a  schoolmaster  in  Sydney,  Van- 
couver Island,  and  later  in  Victoria,  follow- 
ing this  profession  for  the  next  five  and  a 
half  years.  He  then  abandoned  teaching 
and  in  1900  opened  a  brokerage  and 
insurance  business.  Soon  after  reaching 
his  new  home,  however,  he  joined  the 
militia  (1897)  as  a  gunner.  He  became  a 
lieutenant  in  1900  and  such  was  his  energy 
and  enthusiasm  that  by  1909  he  was 
commanding  the  5th  Regiment  Canadian 
Garrison  Artillery. 

In  1913  Currie  left  the  imit  to  command 
the  newly  formed  50th  Regiment  Gordon 
Highlanders  of  Canada ;  and  so,  when  war 
broke  out  in  1914,  he  was  prepared  and 
volunteered  for  service,  and  was  given 
command  of  the  2nd  Canadian  Infantry 
brigade.  With  this  brigade  he  withstood 
the  onslaught  of  superior  forces  at  St. 
Julien  in  1915  and  in  the  same  year  was 
promoted  successively  colonel  and  briga- 
dier-general. When  the  Canadian  Corps 
was  formed  in  September  1915  Currie  was 
given  command  of  the  1st  Canadian 
division,  and  with  the  rank  of  major- 
general  led  his  men  on  the  Sonmie  and  at 
Vimy  Ridge.  When,  in  1917,  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  [q.v.]  brought  him  from  the  division 
to  lead  the  Canadian  Corps,  with  the  rank 
of  lieutenant-general,  the  appointment 
was  questioned  by  the  Army  Council  and 
the  Canadian  government,  but  Haig  was 
satisfied  with  the  enterprise  and  initiative 
of  his  civilian  officer  and  insisted  on  his 
selection  standing.  Subsequent  events 
fully  justified  such  a  bold  decision  on  the 
part  of  the  commander-in-chief.  Currie 
planned  and  carried  through  the  battle  of 
Hill  70  (August  1917)  and  led  his  Corps  at 
Passchendaele  (October).  During  his  first 
year  in  command  of  the  Corps  he  had  a 
number  of  British  staff  officers  serving 
under  him,  a  sufficient  testimony,  if  any 
were  needed,  to  the  esteem  in  which  he 
was  held.  His  and  the  Corps'  great  test 
was  the  battle  of  Amiens  (August  1918) 
where  they  greatly  distinguished  them- 
selves. Currie  himself  was  mentioned  in 
dispatches  nine  times,  was  appointed  C.B. 
in  1915,  K.C.M.G.  in  1917,  K.C.B.  in  1918, 
and  G.C.M.G.  in  1919.  He  received  many 
foreign  decorations. 


After  the  armistice  Currie  remained  for 
a  time  in  command  of  the  Canadian  forces 
on  the  Rhine  and  upon  his  return  to 
Canada  was  promoted  general,  and  made 
inspector-general,  Canadian  Militia,  and 
principal  military  councillor  (1919).  From 
soldiering  his  thoughts  returned  very 
largely  to  education  when  in  1920  he  be- 
came principal  and  vice-chancellor  of 
McGill  University.  He  also  gave  his  ser- 
vices imsparingly  to  the  Canadian  Legion 
of  British  Empire  Service  League  of  which 
he  was  grand  president,  to  the  Carnegie 
Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of 
Teaching,  of  which  he  was  a  trustee,  to  the 
governorship  of  the  Montreal  General  and 
Royal  Victoria  Hospitals,  and  to  the 
directorship  of  the  Bank  of  Montreal. 
Eighteen  universities  in  Great  Britain, 
Canada,  and  the  United  States  of  America 
conferred  honorary  degrees  upon  him. 

Currie  was  a  big,  weU-built,  soldierly 
man,  and  was  a  courageous  and  resource- 
ful commander  possessed  of  great  initiative 
and  a  thorough  grasp  of  strategy.  He 
exemplified  and  interpreted  the  war-time 
genius  of  the  Canadian  people,  and  on  his 
death  at  the  Royal  Victoria  Hospital, 
Montreal,  30  November  1933,  Canadian 
tributes  were  paid  to  his  memory  and 
achievements  by  Sir  Robert  Borden  [q.v.] 
and  Mr.  B.  B.  (later  Viscount)  Bennett. 
He  married  in  1901  Lucy  Sophia,  youngest 
daughter  of  William  Chaworth  Chaworth- 
Musters,  of  Nottingham,  England,  and 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 

A  portrait  of  Currie  is  included  in  J.  S. 
Sargent's  picture,  'Some  General  Officers 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1922,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times,  1  and  5  December  1933; 
Canadian  Defence  Quarterly,  vol.  xi,  1933- 
1934 ;  Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  History  of 
the  Great  War.  Military  Operations.  France  and 
Belgium,  1914-1918, 1922-1939.]  C.  V.  Owen. 

CURRIE,  Sir  JAMES  (1868-1937), 
educationist,  was  born  in  Edinburgh  31 
May  1868,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Rev. 
James  Currie,  principal  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland  Training  College,  Edinburgh,  by 
his  wife,  Jane  Lyall,  daughter  of  George 
Key,  of  St.  Vigeans,  Angus.  He  was 
educated  at  Fettes  and  at  Edinburgh 
University,  from  which  he  transferred  to 
Oxford  in  1888  on  his  election  to  a  classical 
scholarship  at  Lincoln  College. 

Holding  an  idealistic  view  of  the  claims 
of  the  national  system  of  education  on  the 
highly  educated,  after  taking  his  Oxford 
degree  Currie  went  back  to  Edinburgh  to 


206 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Currie,  J. 


teach  in  one  of  the  Scottish  Education 
Board's  schools.  This  gave  him  a  firm 
basis  of  practical  educational  experience 
which  later  stood  him  in  good  stead.  In 
1899  he  joined  the  Egyptian  education 
service,  where  his  originality  and  strength 
of  character  attracted  the  attention  of  Lord 
Cromer  [q.v.],  who  sent  him  in  1900  to  be 
the  first  director  of  education  in  the  Sudan 
and  first  principal  of  Lord  Kitchener's 
newly  founded  Gordon  Memorial  College. 
Here  he  had  a  remarkable  opportunity  of 
original  work  of  lasting  benefit  to  the 
Sudan.  The  country  had  been  left  a 
tabula  rasa  by  thirteen  years  of  Dervish 
tyranny,  following  on  sixty -four  years  of 
Egyptian  misrule.  The  sullen  Arabs,  de- 
feated in  war,  had  to  be  won.  Jurtice, 
education,  and  medicine  were  the  keys  to 
confidence,  and  one  of  these  was  entrusted 
to  Currie.  The  people  soon  saw  that  he 
came  with  his  hands  full  of  gifts,  the  gifts 
of  careers  for  their  sons.  Before  he  left,  in 
March  1914,  the  Gordon  College  was  an 
established  Sudanese  national  institution, 
and  the  country  was  covered  with  a  net- 
work of  schools  from  which  the  college 
was  fed.  He  was  in  advance  of  other 
tropical  administrators  in  realizing  also 
the,  importance  of  scientific  research  for 
the  health  and  welfare  of  the  people.  It 
was  on  his  initiative  that  the  Wellcome 
Medical  Research  Laboratories  were  in- 
stalled in  Khartoum  under  (Sir)  Andrew 
Balfour  [q.v.]  and  that  agricultural  and 
entomological  research  laboratories  and  a 
geological  survey  were  added  to  his  depart- 
ment and  housed  in  Gordon  College.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  governor-general's 
council,  established  in  1910,  and  the 
Medjidieh  and  Osmanieh  decorations  were 
conferred  upon  him. 

The  war  of  1914^1918  brought  Currie 
into  government  service  when,  in  1916, 
the  training  of  munition  workers  was  en- 
trusted to  him  as  volimtary  director  of  a 
new  Labour  Supply  Department.  As  a 
result  thousands  of  semi-skilled  workers 
were  made  available  for  the  manufacture 
of  implements  of  war.  In  1918  he  joined 
the  Ministry  of  Labour,  again  in  a  volun- 
tary capacity,  as  controller  of  the  training 
department.  He  originated  government 
instructional  factories  and  training  centres 
for  the  disabled,  in  which,  when  he  retired 
in  1921 ,  over  25,000  disabled  ex-servicemen 
liad  been  qualified  for  renewed  usefulness. 

At  the  general  election  of  1918  Currie 
stood  imsuccessfuUy  for  the  Devizes 
division.  An  Asquithian  liberal,  he  re- 
garded with  dislike  those  liberals  who  had 

207 


deserted  Asquith.  He  later  became  a 
national  liberal,  but  did  not  again  seek 
election. 

In  1922  Currie  was  appointed  director 
of  the  newly  formed  Empire  Cotton  Grow- 
ing Corporation.  This  gave  yet  another 
opportunity  for  his  special  originality  and 
knowledge.  Cotton  was  to  be  grown  in  a 
dozen  different  countries,  each  with  a 
different  climate  and  different  physical 
conditions.  There  would  be  no  uniform 
cotton  seed  which  would  suit  them  all. 
First  must  come  research  in  each  country, 
experimental  farms,  knowledge  of  con- 
stituents of  soils.  He  therefore  had  to 
concentrate  on  soil  chemists  and  plant 
breeders  before  he  could  supply  seed  which 
would  not  bankrupt  Empire  farmers.  It 
was  this  extension  of  his  activities  into 
tropical  agriculture  which  brought  him 
first  membership  and,  in  1927,  the  chair- 
manship of  the  governing  body  of  the 
Imperial  College  of  Tropical  Agriculture, 
Trinidad.  By  sending  young  men  ap- 
pointed to  the  service  of  his  corporation 
for  training  there,  he  had  initiated  a  plan 
which  was  later  followed  by  the  Colonial 
Office  for  the  training  of  cadets  for  the 
Colonial  agricultural  service.  He  was 
also  a  leading  member  of  the  colonial 
secretary's  advisory  committee  for  educa- 
tion in  the  Colonies. 

As  chairman  of  the  governors  of  Daunt- 
sey's  School,  Devizes,  Currie  took  a  leading 
part  in  converting  a  small  local  grammar 
school  into  a  modern  and  scientific  school 
which  attracted  a  largely  increased  number 
of  pupils  even  from  remote  regions.  He 
was  also  a  member  of  the  governing 
council  of  Marlborough  College,  and  a 
governor  of  the  Imperial  College  of  Science 
and  Technology,  South  Kensington.  He 
was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1912,  K.B.E.  in 
1920,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1933.  After  his 
return  to  England,  in  1914,  he  developed 
a  keen  interest  in  farming. 

Currie  married  in  1913  Hilda  Beatrice, 
only  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Hanbury,  of 
La  Mortola,  Ventimiglia,  Italy,  and  had 
a  daughter,  who  died  in  childhood.  He  died 
at  Cambridge  17  March  1937. 

A  bust  of  Currie  by  Sir  Goscombe  John 
is  in  the  Gordon  College  at  Khartoum; 
a  replica  was  in  his  own  possession.  A 
stone  memorial  plaque  recording  his  love 
of  the  Sudan,  provided  by  his  former 
pupils  of  Gordon  College,  is  affixed  to  a 
wall  in  Daxmtsey's  School. 

[The  Times,  18  March  1937;  Nature,  10 
April  1937;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  E.  N.  Corbyn. 


Cushendun 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


CUSHENDUN,  Baron  (1861-1934), 
Irish  politician.  [See  McNeill,  Ronald 
John.] 

CUSTANCE,  Sir  REGINALD 
NEVILLE  (1847-1935),  admiral,  was 
born  in  Belfast  20  September  1847,  the 
eldest  son  of  General  William  Neville 
Custance,  by  his  second  wife,  Mary,  eldest 
daughter  of  Thomas  Meggison,  of  Walton, 
Northumberland.  He  was  educated  in  the 
Britannia,  and  in  1863  was  present,  as  a 
midshipman  in  the  Euryalus,  at  the  naval 
action  off  Kagoshima  and  next  year  at 
that  off  Shimonoseki.  After  the  ordinary 
promotions  he  was  appointed  in  1886  to 
the  post  of  assistant-director  of  Naval 
Intelligence,  which  he  held  until  he  was 
appointed  to  command  the  cruiser  Phaeton 
in  1890.  He  held  this  post  for  three  years 
and  in  1895  he  was  appointed  captain  of 
the  battleship  Barfleur,  having  in  the  in- 
terval served  as  naval  attache  in  Washing- 
ton and  Paris.  From  1899  to  1902  he  was 
director  of  Naval  Intelligence,  and  in  the 
latter  year  he  was  appointed  rear-admiral, 
Mediterranean  Fleet  (flag  in  the  Venerable), 
where  he  remained  for  two  years.  He  was 
promoted  vice-admiral  in  1906  and  from 
1907  to  1908  he  was  second  in  command  of 
the  Channel  Fleet  (flag  in  the  Hibernia), 
being  promoted  admiral  in  1908.  Although 
Custance's  rare  mastery  of  professional 
topics  and  wide  attainments  were  expected 
to  lead  to  his  preferment  to  the  highest 
appointments  in  the  navy,  he  proved  to 
be  totally  out  of  sympathy  with  Admiralty 
policy  in  the  early  years  of  the  twentieth 
century,  and  as  he  did  not  hesitate  to 
express  his  views,  he  was  retired  in  1912, 
and  his  career  ended  after  his  service  in  the 
Channel  Fleet. 

During  the  early  part  of  Custance's 
career  the  navy  was  in  the  transition 
period  between  sail  and  steam,  and  naval 
designers  were  still  seeking  for  a  battle- 
worthy  type  of  ship  in  which  speed,  arma- 
ment, armour  protection,  and  seaworthi- 
ness were  balanced  to  the  greatest  ad- 
vantage. It  was  also  a  period  when  there 
was  little  prospect  of  war  with  another 
maritime  power.  So  whilst  much  atten- 
tion was  given  to  harbour  drills  and  equal- 
speed  mancEUvres  few  naval  officers  made 
any  serious  study  of  war.  Custance  was 
one  of  the  few  exceptions.  A  lifelong 
student  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  sea- 
warfare,  he  called  attention  to  the  impor- 
tance of  studying  war  in  Naval  Policy;  a 
Plea  for  the  Study  of  War  which  was 
published  in  1907  under  the  nom  de  plume 


'Barfleur'.  His  main  thesis,  to  which  he 
returned  in  several  subsequent  pubhca- 
tions,  was  that  the  naval  mind  had  become 
divided  into  two  schools — the  historical 
and  the  materiel,  and  that  a  consequence 
of  the  materiel  school  being  in  power  was 
that  the  principles  governing  warship 
design  were  entirely  wrong. 

BeUeving  that  'offence  is  the  best 
defence',  Custance  deprecated  sacrificing 
gun-armament  for  speed  or  armour  pro- 
tection, and  advocated  fleets  of  many 
ships  of  moderate  tonnage,  powerful  arma- 
ment, and  slow  speed  in  preference  to  a 
few  very  large,  fast  ships  with  relatively 
weak  armament.  With  his  wide  knowledge 
of  war  and  battle-tactics,  he  was  a  power- 
ful advocate,  and  his  first  book  and  two 
subsequent  pamphlets.  The  Fighting  Power 
of  the  Capital  Ship  (1909)  and  Military 
Growth  of  the  Capital  Ship  (1910),  aroused 
much  interest.  But  his  was  a  voice  crying 
in  the  wilderness.  Once  the  Dreadnought 
was  launched,  there  could  be  no  turning 
back.  All  maritime  powers  followed  the 
lead  given  by  British  designers  and  tl 
process  of  increasing  speed  and  armour 
each  new  class,  which  fiJled  Custance  wit 
misgiving  in  the  ^re-Dreadnought  era 
began  again. 

To  later  generations  of  naval  officei 
Custance's  trenchant  criticism  of  the  larj 
armoured  cruiser,  which  he  aptly  describe 
as  an  excessively  costly  inferior  class 
battleship,  seems  to  be  better  foundec 
and  few  will  disagree  that  he  was  on  solic 
ground  when  he  emphasized  the  dangers 
of  design  being  entirely  in  the  hands  of  a 
materiel  school  and  unrelated  to  battle 
tactics  and  the  lessons  of  history.  After 
retirement  he  wrote  under  his  own  name 
three  books  of  value  to  the  student  of 
naval  warfare;  The  Ship  of  the  Line  in 
Battle  (1912),  a  study  of  tactics  from 
Trafalgar  to  Tsushima;  War  at  Sea, 
Modem  Theory  and  Ancient  Practice  (1919), 
a  study  of  the  campaign  of  Salamis  and 
the  Peloponnesian  war;  and  A  Study  of 
War  (1924). 

Although  his  courageous  effort  to  influ- 
ence the  design  of  warships  failed,  Custance 
aroused  the  navy  to  the  importance  of 
studying  war  and  to  him  the  Naval  Staff 
College  and  various  war  courses  of  to-day 
owe  not  a  little.  He  was  very  reserved  and 
social  activities  made  little  appeal  to  him. 
He  demanded,  and  received,  a  high  stan- 
dard of  service  from  officers  and  men  who 
served  under  him.  Although  not  a  man 
who  could  gather  round  him  a  band  of 
brothers,  his  high  sense  of  duty  and  tireless 


208 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


d'Arcy 


energy  maintained  the  ships  and  squadrons 
under  his  command  at  a  high  standard 
of  efficiency. 

Custance  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1900, 
C.V.O.  in  1903,  K.C.M.G.  in  1904,  K.C.B. 
in  1908,  and  G.C.B.  in  1913.  The  honorary 
degree  of  D.C.L.  was  conferred  upon  him 
by  Oxford  University  in  1913.  In  1868  he 
was  awarded  the  silver  medal  of  the  Royal 
Humane  Society.  He  died,  unmarried,  at 
Broadclyst,  Devon,  30  August  1935. 

[The  Times,  2  September  1935 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  M.  James. 

DALRYMPLE-HAY,  Sir  HARLEY 
HUGH  (1861-1940),  civil  engineer.  [See 
Hay.] 

DALZIEL,  JAMES  HENRY,  Baron 
Dalziel  of  Kirkcaldy  (1868-1935), 
poUtician  and  newspaper  proprietor,  was 
born  at  Borgue,  Kirkcudbrightshire,  24 
April  1868,  the  second  son  of  James 
Dalziel,  shoemaker,  of  Borgue,  by  his  wife, 
Margaret  Emily  Da  vies.  He  was  educated 
at  Borgue  Academy,  Kirkcudbrightshire, 
at  Shrewsbury  High  School,  and  at  King's 
College,  London.  From  an  early  age  he 
worked  as  a  London  journalist,  and  getting 
into  the  press  gallery  became  known  to  the 
liberal  whips.  Thus  it  was  through  their 
support  that  in  March  1892  he  was  adopted 
as  Uberal  candidate  at  a  by-election  in  the 
Kirkcaldy  District,  and  won  the  seat  by 
a  large  majority.  The  constituency  re- 
mained faithful  to  him  for  twenty-nine 
years,  and  he  only  abandoned  it  to  go  to 
the  House  of  Lords. 

Entering  parliament  so  young  as  an 
advanced  radical  with  a  hard  Scottish 
head,  Dalziel  was  expected  to  rise  high  in 
pontics.  But  he  exemplified  the  rule  that 
when  men  combine  journalism  with  a  seat 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  their  journal- 
ism gains  by  the  combination,  but  their 
politics  lose.  He  had  rare  parliamentary 
gifts;  he  was  a  clever  debater,  a  deadly 
asker  of  questions ;  and  he  had  that  sixth 
sense  which  divines  just  how  far  in  any 
particvilar  direction  the  House  will  go. 
But  he  used  his  early  success  at  West- 
minster to  effect  the  difficult  transition 
from  the  writing  side  of  journalism  to  the 
proprietorial  side,  and  thereafter  became 
increasingly  immersed  in  business,  al- 
though on  occasions  he  was  formidable  in 
the  House  to  the  end.  His  chief  newspaper 
property  was  Reynolds^  Weekly  Newspaper, 
an  old  radical  periodical  which  he  converted 
into  a  prosperous  Sunday  paper  of  the 
lower  grade. 


An  old  ally  of  Lloyd  George,  from  1916 
onwards  Dalziel  was  enormously  valuable 
to  that  statesman  as  a  radical  supporter 
of  his  coalition  government.  In  1918 
Lloyd  George  with  his  help  and  that  of 
wealthy  friends  bought  the  Daily  Chronicle, 
then  the  morning  paper  with  the  largest 
circulation  south  of  the  Trent.  Dalziel, 
who  had  been  knighted  in  1908  and  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council  in  1912,  was  rewarded 
with  a  baronetcy  and  made  chairman  and 
poUtical  director  of  the  paper.  In  this 
post,  however,  he  was  not  a  success ;  and 
in  1921  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Baron  Dalziel  of  Kirkcaldy,  but  replaced 
as  political  director  by  Philip  Henry  Kerr 
(afterwards  Marquess  of  Lothian,  q.v.). 
His  complete  retirement  came  a  year  and 
a  half  later  (December  1922) ;  he  then  sold 
out  his  other  newspaper  interests  (includ- 
ing, besides  Reynolds '  Newspaper,  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  the  Era,  and  some  trade 
newspapers),  and  left  active  fife. 

A  bachelor  until  he  was  sixty,  Dalziel 
married  in  1928  Amy  Thackeray,  daughter 
of  Fossey  Thackeray,  and  widow  of 
Donald  MacRae,  of  Wicklow.  Her  sudden 
death,  which  took  place  26  June  1935, 
greatly  affected  him,  and  he  died  at  Hove 
15  July,  nineteen  days  later. 

[The  Times,  16  July  1935 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 

D'ARCY,    CHARLES    FREDERICK 

(1859-1938),  archbishop  of  Armagh  and 
primate  of  all  Ireland,  was  born  at  Reho- 
both  House,  Dublin,  2  January  1859,  the 
eldest  son  of  John  Charles  d'Arcy,  assistant 
cashier  in  the  Great  Southern  and  Western 
Railway  Company's  service,  by  his  wife, 
Henrietta  Anna,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Brierly,  of  Rehoboth  House.  He  was 
descended  from  John  Darcy  [q.v.],  lord 
justice  of  Ireland  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
III.  D'Arcy's  childhood  and  youth  were 
passed  in  Dublin.  He  attended  the  high 
school,  and  in  1877  entered  Trinity  College 
where  he  spent  seven  years,  studying 
chiefly  mathematics,  philosophy,  and 
divinity,  and  graduating  with  a  senior 
moderatorship  in  logics  and  ethics.  In  1884 
he  was  ordained  for  St.  Thomas's  church, 
Belfast.  There  he  remained  for  six  years. 
In  1890  d'Arcy  was  appointed  to  the 
country  parish  of  Billy,  near  the  Giant's 
Causeway,  moving  in  1893>to  the  industrial 
town  of  Ballymena,  co.  Antrim.  Here  he 
laid  the  foundation  of  his  career  and  repu- 
tation, publishing  A  Short  Study  of  Ethics 
(1895)  which  went  through  two  editions 
and  was  reprinted  in  1912.    In  1899  he 


209 


d'Arcy 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


published  his  first  set  of  Donnellan  lectures 
(deUvered  at  Trinity  CoUege  in  1897-1898) 
under  the  title  Idealism  and  Theology. 
This  was  his  best  book;  in  it  he  argues 
boldly  that  the  current  ideahsm  cannot 
bridge  the  gulf  between  the  self  and 
society,  that  idealism,  if  it  is  to  survive, 
must  transcend  itself  and  mere  theism, 
and  must  accept  substance,  at  once  per- 
sonal and  supra-personal,  i.e.  the  Christian 
Trinity. 

D'Arcy  was  now  recognized  as  the  lead- 
ing religious  thinker  of  his  country,  and 
preferment  came  his  way  every  three  or 
four  years.  He  returned  to  Belfast  in  1900 
as  vicar  of  the  city  and  dean  of  the  newly 
founded  cathedral;  three  years  later  he 
was  raised  to  the  bench  as  bishop  of 
Clogher.  In  1907  he  was  translated  to  the 
southern  see  of  Ossory,  Ferns,  and  Leigh- 
lin.  In  1911  he  returned  to  the  north  to 
preside  over  the  populous  see  of  Down 
and  Connor  and  Dromore.  Those  were 
anxious  days  for  Ulster  and  for  all  Ireland. 
The  home  rule  agitation  was  at  its  height, 
and  the  clouds  of  civil  war  were  gathering. 
D'Arcy  after  some  hesitation  took  his  stand 
openly  with  Sir  Edward  (afterwards  I^ord) 
Carson  [q.v.],  and  the  Ulster  Unionist 
Council,  and  signed  the  Ulster  Covenant 
(28  September  1912).  (By  the  Larne  gun- 
running  on  24  April  1914  the  Ulster 
Volunteer  Force  secured  arms;  but  in 
August  the  European  war  broke  out,  and 
civil  war  was  averted.)  D'Arcy's  political 
views  were  strongly  with  Ulster,  and  he 
had  taken  a  firm  line  in  the  crisis ;  but  he 
understood  well  the  feelings  of  southern 
Protestants,  and  was  persona  grata  in  both 
north  and  south.  When  in  1919  the  arch- 
bishopric of  Dublin  fell  vacant,  he  was 
elected  to  fill  the  see ;  but  he  was  not  to 
rule  for  long  in  his  native  city,  for  in  the 
following  year  he  was  called  to  the  highest 
office  in  the  Church  of  Ireland,  becoming 
archbishop  of  Armagh  and  primate  of  all 
Ireland. 

D'Arcy's  eighteen  years'  tenure  of  the 
primacy  was  outwardly  iineventful;  he 
was  not  confronted  with  any  acute  crisis, 
nor  called  upon  to  take  any  far-reaching 
decision;  but  the  problem  of  preserving 
an  undivided  Church  in  a  divided  land 
was  present  and  urgent,  if  in  the  back- 
ground. D'Arcy  avoided  word  or  act 
which  might  accentuate  the  acute  division 
of  political  sentiment  consequent  on  the 
recent  partition  of  the  covmtry ;  thus  he 
rendered  a  signal  service  to  his  Church  at 
a  critical  period.  His  liberal  outlook  in 
theology  and  his  personal  qualities  helped 


I 


to  foster  good  relations  between  north  and 
south. 

As  primate  d'Arcy  soon  became  well 
known  in  England  both  in  ecclesiastical 
circles  and  in  the  learned  societies.  He  was 
prominent  at  the  Lambeth  Conferences  of 
1920  and  1930,  and  at  the  Lausanne  Con- 
ference of  1927.  In  1927  also  he  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy.  In  1936 
he  was  chosen  to  represent  the  Anglican 
communion  at  the  centenary  of  the  con- 
secration of  W.  G.  Broughton  [q.v.]  as 
first  bishop  of  Australia.  In  the  summer 
of  1937  his  health  began  to  fail,  and  he 
had  thoughts  of  resignation,  but  he 
remained  primate  to  the  day  of  his  death, 
which  occurred  at  Armagh  1  February 
1938. 

D'Arcy  had  a  fluent  pen,  never  idle  for 
long.  He  was  not  in  the  first  rank  as  a 
litterateur,  but  his  writings  possess  con- 
siderable interest,  covering  as  they  do  the 
best  part  of  half  a  century,  and  as  a 
leader  of  Christian  thought  he  exerted 
through  his  books  no  little  influence  upon  J 
speculative  theology  and  philosophy.  His 
writings  fall  into  two  periods.  In  hisi 
younger  days  he  was  the  metaphysician 
and  moralist  seeking  along  academic  lines 
to  harmonize  faith  and  reason  in  the 
spheres  of  thought  and  practice.  Later  in 
life  science  in  its  theoretical  aspects 
occupied  his  attention,  and  in  a  series  ofaH 
books.  Science  and  Creation  (1925),  The^ 
Christian  Outlook  in  the  Modern  World 
(1929),  God  in  Science  (1931),  he  en- 
deavoured to  reconcile  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  with  Christian  faith  and  prac- 
tice. His  views  found  their  best  expres- 
sion in  his  last  serious  work.  Providence 
and  the  World  Order  (1932,  Alexander 
Robertson  lectures  delivered  at  Glasgow 
University  in  that  year) ;  here  he  argues 
that  what  to  God  is  creation,  to  man  is 
evolution,  and  that  the  ascending  orders  of 
reality,  physical,  biological,  psychical,  etc., 
constitute  'the  splendid  epic  of  creation'. 

D'Arcy  married  in  1889  Harriet  le  Byrtt 
(died  1932),  elder  daughter  of  Richard 
Lewis,  of  Comrie,  co.  Down,  and  had  one 
son  and  three  daughters.  A  portrait  of 
him  by  Frederic  Whiting  is  at  the 
Palace,  Armagh. 

[The  Times,  2  February  1938 ;  C.  F.  d'Arcy, 
The  Adventures  of  a  Bishop  (his  autobio- 
graphy), 1934 ;  A.  A.  Luce,  Charles  Frederick 
D'Arcy,  1859-1938  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxiv,  1938  (containing 
a  bibliography  of  his  writings  and  apprecia- 
tions of  the  more  important  works) ;  personal 
knowledge.]  A.  A.  Luck. 


210 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Darling 


DARLING,  CHARLES  JOHN,  first 
Bakon  Darling,  of  Langham  (1849-1936), 
judge,  was  born  at  Abbey  House,  Col- 
chester, 6  December  1849,  the  elder  son  of 
Charles  Darling,  afterwards  of  Langham 
Hall,  Essex,  a  member  of  a  Border  family, 
who  managed  estates  and  farmed  on  his 
own  account  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Colchester,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Frances, 
daughter  of  John  Tizard,  of  Dorchester. 
In  childhood  he  suffered  much  from  very 
delicate  health  which  isolated  him  from 
other  children  and  prevented  him  from 
going  to  school.  His  education  was  given 
to  him  by  a  private  tutor  and  added  to  by 
his  own  omnivorous  reading,  but  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  possessed  of 
ambition.  Under  the  patronage  of  a  rich 
uncle,  by  whom  he  was  eventually  left  a 
most  comfortable  competence.  Darling 
was  at  first  articled  to  a  firm  of  Birming- 
ham solicitors.  After  a  short  time  with 
them  he  joined  the  Inner  Temple  as  a 
student  and  became  the  pupil  in  1872  of 
John  Welch,  of  King's  Bench  Walk,  a 
pleader  by  profession.  In  these  chambers 
he  read  for  two  years  and  was  called  to 
the  bar  in  1874,  being  made  a  bencher  of 
the  Inner  Temple  in  1892.  He  began  by 
'devilling'  for  (Sir)  John  Huddleston 
[q.v.]  in  Crown  Office  Row  and  joined 
the  Oxford  circuit.  His  early  years  were 
marked  by  much  journalism,  particularly 
in  connexion  with  the  St.  James's  Gazette, 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  the  Saturday 
Rexxiew.  His  circuit  life  followed  the  usual 
round  and  was  not  such  as  to  call  for  any 
particular  mention.  Indeed  until  his 
appointment  as  a  judge  Darling  was  never 
a  prominent  figure  at  the  bar  and  his 
practice  was  almost  wholly  confined  to  his 
circuit.  In  1885  he  took  silk  and  married 
Mary  Caroline  (died  1913),  elder  daughter 
of  Major-General  William  Wilberforce 
Harris  Greathed,  R.E.,  a  veteran  of  the 
Indian  Mutiny,  and  granddaughter  of 
Caroline  Clive  [q.v.].  He  had  one  son,  who 
predeceased  his  father,  and  two  daughters. 

In  December  1885  Darling  contested 
South  Hackney  as  a  conservative,  and 
after  a  further  unsuccessful  contest  there 
;July  1886)  against  Sir  Charles  Russell 
afterwards  Lord  Russell  of  Killowen, 
l.y.)  he  was  returned  at  a  by-election  in 
b^bruary  1888  for  Deptford  and  retained 
;he  seat  until  his  elevation  to  the  bench  in 
L897.  His  interventions  in  debate  were 
hose  of  a  competent  party  man  rather 
han  of  a  politician  with  any  original  con- 
ributions  to  make.  He  mostly  spoke  on 
^gal  matters  and  on  home  rule  for  Ireland 


and  was  silent  on  social  and  economic 
issues.  Apparently  during  nearly  ten 
years  in  the  House  of  Commons  Darling 
never  entered  the  smoke-room,  its  social 
centre.  He  gave  as  his  reason  that  he  was 
a  non-smoker. 

In  the  autumn  of  1896  Darling  was 
appointed  commissioner  of  assize  on  his 
own  circuit  and  did  his  work  competently. 
The  liberal  party  made  the  appointment 
a  political  issue  on  the  ground  that  this 
place  of  profit  under  the  Crown  vacated 
his  seat.  The  issue  came  to  nothing  when 
Darling  pointed  out  that  he  had  stipulated 
that  no  fee  should  be  paid  to  him  for  his 
services.  In  October  1897  rumours  spread 
that  the  lord  chancellor.  Lord  Halsbury, 
was  intending  to  appoint  Darling  to  the 
High  Court  bench.  On  26  October  The 
Times  devoted  a  leading  article  to  the 
rumours  and  stated,  without  mentioning 
a  name,  that  the  subject  of  the  rumour 
was  a  man  of  'acute  intellect  and  con- 
siderable literary  power',  but  that  he  had 
given  'no  sign  of  legal  eminence  ...  if  he 
is  raised  to  the  Bench,  it  will  be  on 
political  grounds'.  Two  days  later  Darl- 
ing's appointment  to  the  Queen's  Bench 
division  was  announced.  The  Times  re- 
turned to  the  charge;  Asquith  gave  ex- 
pression to  his  doubts ;  much  indignation 
was  expressed  in  the  Temple,  but  the 
Law  Journal  was  prescient  in  writing : '  He 
will  prove  a  far  better  judge  than  some  of 
his  critics  believe.'  Darling  remained  a 
judge  until  1923.  He  was  not  a  great 
judge.  His  summing-up  in  a  criminal  case 
and  his  judgements  in  the  Court  of 
Criminal  Appeal  were  on  the  whole  excel- 
lent; his  judgements  being  particularly 
characterized  by  close  reasoning  and  being 
always  expressed  in  admirable  English. 
In  a  murder  trial  he  was  very  good. 
Unfortunately,  in  charges  of  less  gravity 
he  often  allowed  himself  to  behave  with  a 
levity  quite  unsuited  to  the  trial  of  a 
criminal  case,  thinking  erroneously  that  he 
could  thereby  induce  the  jury  to  bring  in 
the  right  verdict  by  an  eventual  careful 
and  accurate  sunmiing-up.  In  fact  he  had 
frequently  lost  the  respect  of  the  jury  to 
such  an  extent  that  they  ignored  or  paid 
little  attention  to  the  judge.  The  Pember- 
ton  Billing  case  (1918)  was  a  shocking 
example  and  went  far  to  lower  the  status 
of  the  bench.  In  this  instance  he  insisted 
on  trying  the  case  against  the  wish  of  the 
defendant,  who  alleged,  without  con- 
tradiction, that  a  few  weeks  before  in  a 
civil  case  Darling  had  said  of  him  that  he 
did  not  believe  him  on  his  oath.   Darling 


211 


Darling 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


often  allowed  himself  as  a  judge  to  be 
grossly  insulted  by  witnesses  and  laughed 
with  them  and  at  them.  He  presided  over 
the  notorious  Steinie  Morrison  (1911)  and 
Armstrong  (1922)  cases,  Douglas  v.  Ran- 
some  and  Wootton  v.  Sievier  (1913),  the 
Romney  picture  case  (1917),  and  the 
Mond  libel  case  (1919)  amongst  others, 
and  was  much  concerned  with  the  court 
career  of  Horatio  Bottomley  [q.v.].  In  the 
Court  of  Criminal  Appeal  Darling  presided 
over  the  Crippen  (1910)  and  Casement 
(1916)  appeals. 

When  R.  D.  Isaacs,  Lord  Reading 
[q.v.]  went  to  the  United  States  of  America 
as  ambassador  during  the  war  of  1914- 
1918,  Darling  as  senior  puisne  of  the 
King's  Bench  division  served  as  his  deputy 
and  his  work  was  recognized  by  the  dis- 
tinction, imusual  in  the  case  of  a  serving 
judge,  of  being  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
(1917).  It  was  at  one  time  in  some 
quarters  thought  that  he  would  succeed 
Lord  Reading  as  lord  chief  justice,  but  on 
being  passed  over  by  the  appointment  of 
A.  T.  Lawrence,  Lord  Trevethin  [q.v.],  he 
is  said  characteristically  to  have  remarked 
that  he  supposed  he  was  not  old  enough. 
Darling  retired  from  the  bench  in  Novem- 
ber 1923,  an  event  which  was  marked  by 
a  public  farewell  in  court.  A  few  months 
later  (January  1924)  he  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Darling,  of  Langham. 
He  spoke  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  matters 
of  legal  interest;  he  took  part  in  Privy 
Coimcil  cases  as  a  member  of  the  Judicial 
Committee ;  and  as  late  as  1931  he  returned 
to  the  King's  Bench  division  in  order  to 
assist  in  reducing  arrears.  In  1926  he 
made  a  six  weeks'  tour  of  Canada  as  guest 
of  the  Canadian  Bar  Association.  His  last 
three  years  were  lived  quietly,  and  he  died 
at  the  age  of  eighty-six  at  his  home  at 
Lymington  29  May  1936. 

On  the  bench  Darling  was  not  a  pro- 
found lawyer,  nor  was  he  a  good  judge  for 
a  commercial  or  lengthy  case.  He  was 
interested  in  Ufe  and  human  beings  and 
had  sound  common  sense.  His  status  as 
a  wit  was  an  established  one,  but  how  far 
his  impromptus  were  prepared  cannot  be 
determined.  They  certainly  were  some- 
times. But  his  literary  sense  and  rapidity 
of  literary  allusion  were  due  to  a  vast 
reading  and  deep  appreciation  of  English 
and  French  literature. 

Darhng  was  a  member  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  working  of  the  King's 
Bench  (1912),  and  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittees on  courts  martial  (1919),  on  the 
moneylenders  bill  (1925),  and  on  national 


marks  (1928).  As  a  conversationalist, 
particularly  in  the  Benchers'  room  of  the 
Inner  Temple,  he  was  pleasant,  amusing, 
and  often  really  witty,  and  was  a  delight- 
ful companion  on  a  walk.  He  wrote 
Scintillae  Juris  (1877),  which  is  rich  in 
gnomic  wisdom  and  sharp  satire,  and  On 
the  Oxford  Circuit  and  Other  Verses  (1924), 
amongst  other  works  of  distinct  literary, 
although  at  times  somewhat  slight  and 
precious,  character. 

Darling  was  succeeded  as  second  baron 
by  his  grandson,  Robert  Charles  Henry 
(born  1919). 

A  portrait  of  Darling  by  Charles  Furse 
(1890)  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
and  another  by  Aidan  Savage  (1924)  is  in 
the  possession  of  the  family.  A  cartoon  by 
'  Spy '  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  8  May  1907. 

[The  Times,  30  May  1936;  D.  Walker- 
Smith,  Life  of  Lord  Darling,  1938;  Evelyn 
Graham,  Lord  Darling  and  his  Famous  Trials, 
1929 ;  Dudley  Barker,  Lord  Darling'' s  Famous 
Cases,  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Neville  Laski. 

DAVID,  Sir  (TANNATT  WILLIAM) 
EDGEWORTH  (1858-1934),  geologist, 
was  born  at  St.  Fagans,  Cardiff,  28  Janu- 
ary 1858,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
David,  rector  of  St.  Fagans,  by  his 
wife,  Margaret  Harriette  Thomson.  The 
family  claimed  to  be  of  the  same  stock 
as  James  Ussher,  archbishop  of  Ar- 
magh, the  Abbe  Edgeworth  de  Firmont, 
Richard  Lovell  Edgeworth,  and  Maria 
Edgeworth  [qq.v.].  He  was  educated 
at  Magdalen  School,  Oxford,  where,  al- 
though studious,  he  did  not  neglect  athle- 
tics, and  at  New  College,  Oxford,  of  which 
he  was  a  scholar.  He  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1878),  but 
having  for  reasons  of  health  been  absent 
during  five  terms  on  a  voyage  which  took 
him  to  Austraha,  he  graduated  in  the  pass 
schools. 

David's  original  desire  to  take  holy 
orders  gradually  yielded  to  an  interest  in 
geology  under  the  influence  of  (Sir)  Joseph 
Prestwich  [q.v.].  Under  John  Wesley  Judd 
at  the  Normal  School  of  Science  and 
Technology  (later  the  Royal  School  of 
Mines)  he  continued  to  study  that  science. 
In  1882  he  took  up  an  appointment  in 
Sydney  as  assistant  geological  surveyor  to 
the  government  of  New  South  Wales, 
being  for  the  most  part  concerned  during 
the  following  years  with  the  mapping  of 
the  Sydney-Newcastle  basin,  and  although 
his  Memoir  on  the  Geology  of  the  Hunter 
River  Coal  Measures  did  not  appear  imtil  I 


212 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Davies 


1907,  he  paved  the  way  to  the  establish- 
ment of  a  great  coal  industry,  and  greatly 
extended  his  own  fame  by  his  ability  and 
clarity  of  diction  in  scientific  matters. 

In  1891  David  was  appointed  to  the 
chair  of  geology  at  Sydney  University, 
and  there  he  built  up  a  famous  school  of 
geology,  becoming  a  leading  figure  in  the 
investigation  and  exploration  of  permo- 
carboniferous  glacial  phenomena  in 
Australia,  while  his  oratorical  fervour  and 
talent  spread  his  influence  far  beyond  the 
university. 

Besides  his  interest  in  past  geological 
climates,  David  was  deeply  interested  in 
the  problem  of  the  origin  of  coral  atolls, 
and  in  1897,  accompanied  by  his  wife,  he 
led  the  second  of  the  expeditions  sponsored 
by  the  Royal  Society  for  the  solution  of 
the  problem,  at  Funafuti.  He  was  awarded 
the  Bigsby  medal  of  the  Geological  Society 
in  1899,  and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1900. 
In  1906,  onhis  way  to  the  Geological  Inter- 
national Congress  in  Mexico,  he  visited 
areas  in  India  where  the  famous  Talchir 
glacial  boulder-heads  are  developed. 

But  it  is  in  Antarctic  research  that 
David's  name  will  best  be  remembered. 
He  was  invited  to  join  the  British  Ant- 
arctic expedition  of  1907-1909  led  by  (Sir) 
Ernest  Shackleton  [q.v.]  in  the  Nimrod  to 
the  Ross  Sea,  and  his  sterling  qualities  so 
deeply  impressed  Shackleton  that  he  was 
invited  to  become  a  full-time  member  of 
the  expedition.  His  chief  exploits  as  a 
member  of  the  first  party  to  reach  the 
summit  of  Mount  Erebus  (10  March  1908) 
and,  with  (Sir)  Douglas  Mawson,  to  reach 
and  record,  after  a  hazardous  sledge 
journey,  the  south  magnetic  pole  on  16 
January  1909,  made  him  widely  known, 
and  he  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1910. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  David, 
at  the  age  of  fifty-seven,  enlisted  and 
helped  to  raise  a  mining  battalion  of 
Australian  Timnellers.  He  reached  France, 
as  a  major,  in  1916,  and  full  use  was  made 
of  his  experience  both  in  tunnelling  and 
in  the  supply  of  water.  He  was  responsible 
for  the  great  mining  operation  under 
Messines  Ridge.  In  1918  he  was  promoted 
lieutenant-colonel,  was  awarded  the 
D.S.O.,  mentioned  in  dispatches,  and 
withdrawn  to  general  headquarters  in 
order  to  act  as  chief  geological  adviser  to 
the  British  armies.  In  1920  he  was  ap- 
pointed K.B.E. 

After  a,  short  stay  in  England,  David 
returned  to  Sydney  and  became  engrossed 
in  the  compilation  of  his  comprehensive 
(Geology  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Australia 


(2  vols,  with  maps,  edited  by  Dr.  W.  R. 
Browne;  these  are  still  in  the  press).  In 
order  to  enable  him  to  prosecute  this  great 
work  he  was  freed  at  the  end  of  1922  from 
all  teaching  duties,  and,  in  1924,  he  resigned 
his  chair.  The  very  wide  scope  of  this  work 
prevented  any  publication  until  1932,  when 
a  volume  appeared  entitled  Explanatory 
Notes  to  accompany  a  new  Geological  Map 
of  the  Commonwealth  of  Australia,  but  un- 
fortunately further  progress  was  inter- 
rupted by  David's  rather  sudden  death  in 
Sydney  28  August  1934,  and  by  the  out- 
break of  war  in  1939. 

As  a  senior  and  leading  scientist  of  the 
Commonwealth,  David  repeatedly  held 
high  olfice  in  scientific  societies  and  he 
showed  remarkable  powers  of  organization 
on  the  occasion  of  the  visit  of  the  British 
Association  to  Australia  in  1914.  He  was 
awarded  the  Clarke  memorial  medal  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  New  South  Wales,  of 
which  he  was  twice  president  (1895  and 
1911).  The  progress  of  natural  science  in 
AustraUa  during  the  last  forty  years  of  his 
life  owes  a  great  deal  to  his  advocacy  and 
the  charm  of  his  personality.  Shackleton 
indeed  said  of  him  that  he  could  charm  a 
bird  ofif  a  bough.  With  charm  he  combined 
unfailing  courtesy,  kindness,  and  modesty. 
Besides  the  honours  already  mentioned, 
he  received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Oxford,  Manchester,  Cam- 
bridge, Wales,  and  St.  Andrews.  He  was 
elected  in  1926  an  honorary  fellow  of  his 
college  at  Oxford. 

David  married  in  1885  Caroline  Matilda, 
daughter  of  Samuel  Mallet ;  she  had  gone 
out  to  New  South  Wales  as  head  of  the 
Training  College  for  Teachers.  He  had 
one  son  and  two  daughters. 

A  portrait  of  David  by  Norman  Carter 
hangs  in  the  Science  House,  Sydney  Uni- 
versity ;  a  copy  of  this,  by  Norman  Carter, 
is  in  the  City  Hall,  Cardiff. 

[Sydney  Mail,  5  September  1934;  The 
Times,  29  August  1934;  Mary  Edge  worth 
David,  Professor  David,  1937;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4, 
December  1935  (bibliography  and  portrait); 
Geological  Magazine,  vol.  lix,  1922  (biblio- 
graphy up  to  1920) ;  Journal  and  Proceedings 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  New  South  Wales, 
vol.  Ixix,  1935 ;  E.  H.  Shackleton,  The  Heart 
of  the  Antarctic,  1909 ;  Mrs.  Edgeworth  David, 
Funafuti,  1899 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Douglas  Mawson. 

DAVIES,  WILLIAM  HENRY  (1871- 
1940),  poet  and  author,  was  born  at 
his  paternal  grandfather's  public-house, 
Church  House  Tavern,  Newport,   Mon- 


218 


Davies 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


mouthshire,  3  July  1871,  the  younger 
son  of  Francis  Davies,  a  moulder,  by 
his  wife,  Mary  Ann  Evans.  William's 
father  died  when  his  son  was  very  young, 
and  on  his  mother's  remarriage,  he  and 
his  sister  and  imbecile  brother  were 
adopted  by  their  grandparents.  The 
grandfather,  a  native  of  Cornwall,  had 
been  master  of  a  small  schooner.  William 
was  an  unruly  schoolboy,  but  had  a  pas- 
sion for  reading.  Later  on,  in  Who 's  Who, 
imder  the  item  of  'Education',  he  chose 
to  describe  himself  as  having  'picked  up 
knowledge  among  tramps  in  America,  on 
cattle  boats,  and  in  the  common  lodging- 
houses  in  England'.  On  leaving  school  he 
was  apprenticed  to  a  picture-frame  maker, 
but  having  been  left  an  allowance  of  ten 
shillings  a  week  by  his  grandmother,  at 
the  age  of  twenty -two  he  obtained  frOm 
his  trustee  an  advance  of  £15  for  passage- 
money  to  the  United  States  of  America, 
reaching  New  York  with  only  a  few  doUars. 
He  then  began  that  career  which  he  later 
described  in  his  Autobiography  of  a  Super- 
Tramp  (1908),  tramping  thousands  of  miles 
in  the  United  States  in  five  or  six  years, 
most  often  beggmg,  but  sometimes  work- 
ing at  fruit-picking;  riding  illicitly  on 
freight  trains ;  and  making  eight  or  nine 
trips  to  England  as  a  cattle-man.  He  then 
returned  home  for  a  few  months,  in  which 
time  half  of  his  allowance,  none  of  which 
he  had  touched  since  he  had  been  in 
America,  and  which  had  accumulated  to 
£120,  was  spent.  He  now  determined  to 
go  to  the  gold-diggings  in  the  Klondike, 
and  at  Renfrew,  Ontario,  while  attempt- 
ing to  board  a  moving  train,  he  fell,  and 
the  wheel  severed  his  right  foot  at  the 
ankle.  It  was  found  necessary  to  amputate 
the  leg  at  the  knee,  but  he  was  well  nursed 
and  was  able  to  return  to  Wales  within 
five  weeks.  He  soon  moved  to  London, 
where  he  lived  in  common  lodging-houses 
on  his  allowance,  less  two  shillings  which 
he  sent  back  every  week  to  Newport. 
After  more  than  two  years  in  London, 
which  he  continued  to  make  his  base,  he 
made  several  walking  tours  as  a  pedlar  of 
laces,  pins,  and  needles,  sometimes  vary- 
ing this  life  by  singing  hymns  in  the  streets. 
By  1905  Davies's  poems  had  been 
rejected  by  publisher  after  publisher,  until 
he  approached  Messrs.  C.  A.  Watts  & 
company,  bringing  with  him  a  letter  of 
recommendation  from  George  R.  Sims. 
Recognizing  the  merit  of  the  poems,  they 
agreed  to  pay  for  the  printing  of  The  SouVs 
Destroyer,  and  other  poems  partly  on  the 
assurance  that  Davies  would  do  his  ut- 


most to  dispose  of  copies  among  likely 
purchasers.  He  sent  them  to  various 
people,  requesting  each  of  them  either  to 
send  him  half  a  crown  or  to  return  the 
book.  Among  the  recipients  was  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw,  who  became  most  actively 
interested.  At  Mr.  Shaw's  suggestion 
Davies  sent  copies  to  Philip  Edward 
Thomas,  Israel  Zangwill  [qq.v.],  Edward 
Garnett,  St.  John  Adcock,  editor  of  the 
Bookman,  and  others.  Favourable  reviews 
appeared:  Davies  mentions  with  especial 
gratitude  notices  by  Arthur  Symons  and 
Arnold  Bennett.  Edward  Thomas,  he  says, 
'gave  me  a  fine  boom  in  several  influential 
papers  .  .  .  and  became  a  practical  friend, 
finding  me  a  small  cottage  in  the  Weald  of 
Kent  [at  Sevenoaks] . . .  my  rent,  coal  and 
light  being  paid  mysteriously  by  Thomas 
and  his  friends'.  Following  upon  the 
reviews,  one  newspaper  wrote  up  his  story. 

At  Sevenoaks  Davies  wrote  his  Auto- 
biography, which  was  published  with  a 
preface  by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  at  the  sug^ 
gestion   of  Garnett  and   Thomas.    Mrs 
Shaw  paid  for  the  typesetting  and  for  tl 
casting  of  the  plates,  of  which  she  made  : 
present  to  Davies.    It  was  the  preface 
doubtless,  that  made  Davies  known  to 
large  public,  but  it  was,  Mr.  Shaw  states! 
for  the  sake  of  the  poems  that  he  wrote  th^ 
preface  to  the  prose  book.  He  had  recoj 
nized  at  once  that  Davies  was  a  poet: 
was  with  some  amusement  that  he  wrot 
of  the  placid  style  of  the  prose  book 
which  tramps  'argue  with  the  decorum  of 
Socrates,   and   narrate   in   the   style   of 
Tacitus',  and  in  which  Davies's  loss  of  a 
leg  is  mentioned  with  the  utmost  casual- 
ness. 

In  Who 's  Who  Davies  says  that  he  be- 
came a  poet  at  the  age  of  thirty -four  and 
had  remained  one  ever  since.  He  must 
have  been  born  a  poet,  but  between  1905 
and  1939  he  produced  a  score  of  little  books 
of  verse:  the  Collected  Poems  of  1943  con- 
tain 636  pieces  (and  an  introduction  by 
Sir  Osbert  SitweU). 

Besides  these  Davies  wrote  four  novels, 
two  of  which,  The  True  Traveller  (1912) 
and  The  Adventures  of  Johnny  Walker, 
Tramp  (1926),  should  be  read  rather  as 
autobiography,  bridging  the  gap  between 
the  Super-Tramp  and  Later  Days  (1925). 
In  1924  he  wrote  an  introduction  to  Defoe's 
Moll  Flanders,  with  which  book  his  other 
novels  are  akin.  In  1923  he  published 
True  Travellers:  a  Tramp''s  Opera  in  Three 
Acts  in  prose  with  interspersed  lyrics.  This 
was  to  have  been  produced  at  the  Lyric 
Theatre,  Hammersmith,  where  The  Beg- 


214 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Dawber 


gar's  Opera  had  been  revived  so  success- 
fully, but  the  scheme  fell  through.  Other 
prose  books  are  Beggars  (1909),  Nature 
(1914),  and  My  Birds  and  My  Garden 
(1933).  He  selected  and  edited  two  antho- 
logies. Shorter  Lyrics  of  the  Twentieth 
Century,  1900  to  1922  (1922)  and  Jewels  of 
Song  (1930,  reissued  1938).  He  was  joint 
editor,  with  Mr.  Austin  Osman  Spare,  of 
a  monthly  magazine  Form  (October  1921 
to  January  1922),  himself  contributing 
the  editorials,  each  with  incidental  poems. 

In  1919  Davies  was  granted  a  civil  list 
j)ension  which  was  twice  increased.  In 
1926  the  university  of  Wales  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  Litt.D. 
In  1923  he  married  Helen  Matilda, 
daughter  of  William  Payne,  farmer,  who 
came  from  Sussex :  his  happiness  with  her  is 
recorded  and  reflected  in  The  Lover^s  Song- 
J5ooA;(thirty  poems,  1933),  reprinted  as  Love 
Poems  (1935)  with  the  number  of  poems  in- 
creased to  fifty.  He  died,  childless,  at  Nails- 
worth,  Gloucestershire,  26  September  1940. 

The  contrast  between  Davies's  outer 
life  and  the  apparently  effortless  ease, 
delicacy,  and  perfection  of  almost  every 
poem  is  remarkable.  He  speaks  of  him- 
self as  a  drinking  man,  with  a  great  interest 
in  pugilism.  His  poetry  puts  him  with  the 
happiest  of  the  Elizabethans,  with  Blake 
in  the  Songs  of  Innocence  and  of  Experience, 
with  Wordsworth  at  his  simplest.  His  in- 
exhaustible store  of  happy  similitudes  is 
peculiar  to  himself. 

A  bust  of  Davies  by  Jacob  Epstein  is 
in  the  Newport  (Mon.)  Art  Gallery,  and  a 
painting,  by  Augustus  John,  is  in  the 
National  Gallery  of  Wales .  A  pencil  sketch 
by  Augustus  John  (1918)  and  a  plasticine 
medallion  by  Theodore  Spicer-Simson 
(1924)  are  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
There  are  other  portraits,  by  Harold 
Knight,  Laura  Kriight,  Sir  William 
Rothenstein,  and  Walter  Sickert. 

[The  Times,  27  September  1940;  Thomas 
Moult,  W.  H.  Davies,  1934;  W.  H.  Davies, 
The  Autobiography  of  a  Super-Tramp,  1908, 
The  True  Traveller,  1912,  Later  Days,  1925, 
and  The  Adventures  of  Johnny  Walker,  Tramp, 
1926.]  Frederick  Page. 

DAWBER,     Sir    (EDWARD)     GUY 

(1861-1938),  architect,  was  born  at  King's 
Lynn,  Norfolk,  3  August  1861 ,  the  younger 
son  of  John  Stockdale  Dawber,  of  King's 
Lynn,  by  his  wife,  Lois  Ellen  Edwards. 

Dawber  was  educated  at  King's  Lynn 
Grammar  School,  and  was  then  articled 
for  four  years  to  William  Adams,  an  archi- 
tect practising  in  that  town.   Chance  led 


to  his  subsequent  migration  to  Dublin, 
where  he  became  an  assistant  in  the  office 
of  Sir  Thomas  Deane  [q.v.].  Here  Dawber 
spent  his  spare  time  in  measuring  and 
sketching  the  fine  Georgian  buildings  of 
the  city.  He  had  only  been  there  a  year 
when  political  troubles  caused  an  inter- 
ruption in  building,  so  he  went  to  London 
with  a  roll  of  drawings  under  his  arm  and 
was  fortunate  enough  to  join  the  staff  of 
(Sir)  Ernest  George  [q.v.].  That  well- 
known  architect  had  already  established 
a  reputation  as  a  designer  of  imposing 
mansions  in  the  country  and  picturesque 
houses  in  the  West  End;  and  his  office 
became  noted  as  a  nursery  of  genius.  In 
his  evenings,  at  this  period,  Dawber 
attended  the  Royal  Academy  Schools. 
In  1887,  however,  overwork  strained  his 
eyes,  and  George  therefore  sent  him  to  be 
clerk  of  works  on  a  great  house  at  Bats- 
ford  in  Gloucestershire.  This  apparent 
interruption  to  his  career  proved,  in  fact, 
to  be  his  opportunity ;  for  he  applied  him- 
self with  his  usual  zest  to  an  intensive 
study  of  the  beautiful  but  then  little- 
known  krchitecture  of  the  Cotswolds. 
Soon  he  decided  to  begin  practice  on  his 
own  account  in  that  delightful  district, 
and  for  his  office  hired  a  room  in  the 
village  institute  at  Bourton-on-the-Hill, 
at  a  rent  of  ninepence  a  week.  Small  com- 
missions began  to  come  to  him  at  once, 
and  in  1891  he  opened  an  office  in  London. 
From  that  date  up  to  the  time  of  his  death 
a  steady  stream  of  attractive  designs, 
especially  although  not  exclusively  for 
country  houses,  flowed  from  his  versatile 
and  painstaking  pencil.  A  complete  list 
of  them  is  given  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Institute  of  British  Architects  for  9  May 
1938 ;  but  here  it  is  only  possible  to 
mention  a  few  typical  examples:  Nether 
Swell  Manor,  Burdocks,  and  Eyford  Park 
in  Gloucestershire;  Conkwell  Grange, 
Purton  Manor,  and  Hamptworth  Lodge 
in  Wiltshire;  Ashley  Chase  in  Dorset; 
Tuesley  Court  and  Dutton  Homestall  in 
Surrey ;  Stowell  Hill  in  Somerset ;  and  the 
Foord  Almshouses  at  Rochester.  The  last- 
named  building  was  the  first  to  be  accorded 
a  preservation  order  under  the  Town  and 
Country  Planning  Act. 

Honours  came  freely  to  Dawber  in  later 
life.  He  was  elected  A.R.A.  in  1927  and 
R.A.  in  1935 ;  he  served  as  president  of  the 
Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects  in 
1925-1927;  and  was  awarded  the  Royal 
gold  medal  for  architecture  in  1928.  He 
was  knighted  in  1936.  He  took  a  pro- 
minent part  in  establishing  in  1926  the 


215 


Dawber 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Council  for  the  Preservation  of  Rural 
England  of  which  he  became  vice-president 
and  chairman,  and  England  was  always 
his  first  love  although  he  travelled  exten- 
sively abroad.  A  friendly,  genial  man, 
looking  more  like  a  country  sqtiire  than 
an  artist,  he  seemed  to  typify  in  his  person 
the  spirit  of  rural  England  which  he  under- 
stood so  well;  and  his  charming  country 
houses  and  gardens  invariably  melted  into 
their  natural  surroundings. 

Apart  from  his  consummate  skill  in  the 
EngUsh  tradition  and  his  sensitive  handling 
of  all  the  building  crafts,  Dawber  was  a 
talented  painter  in  water-colour,  his 
sketches  showing  a  luminous  quality  far 
removed  from  prosaic  architectural  draw- 
ing. He  contributed  notes  and  sketches 
to  two  books  illustrating  Old  Cottages  and 
Farm-houses  in  Kent  and  Siissex  (1900) 
and  Old  Cottages,  Farm-houses,  and  other 
Stone  Buildings  in  the  Cotswold  District 
(1905). 

Dawber  married  in  1896  Mary,  daughter 
of  Alexander  Eccles,  of  Roby,  near  Liver- 
pool, who  survived  him.  There  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage.  He  died  in 
London  24  April  1938.  His  portrait  by 
Sir  William  Orpen  is  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tute of  British  Architects. 

[The  Times,  25  April  1938;  Builder,  29 
April  1938 ;  Journal  of  the  Royal  Institute  of 
British  Architects,  23  June  1928  and  9  May 
1938;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge,] Maktin  S.  Briggs. 

DEARMER,  PERCY  (1867-1936), 
divine,  was  born  in  London  27  February 
1867,  the  yoimger  son  of  Thomas  Dearmer, 
artist  and  drawing  master,  who  died  when 
Percy  was  ten  years  old,  by  his  wife, 
Caroline  Miriam  Turner.  He  was  educated 
at  Streatham  School,  at  Westminster 
(1880-1881),  at  a  private  school  at  Vevey, 
and  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  where  he 
read  modern  history. 

At  Christ  Church  Dearmer  began  to 
absorb  the  two  dominant  interests  of  his 
life — Christian  art  and  the  Christian '  social 
movement'.  He  was  much  influenced  as 
a  young  man  by  James  Adderley,  Charles 
Gore  [q.v.],  and  others  of  their  circle,  and 
threw  himself  into  the  work  of  the 
Christian  Social  Union,  of  the  London 
branch  of  which  he  was  secretary  from 
1891  to  1912.  But  fundamentally  he  was 
an  artist;  his  most  creative  work  lay  in 
this  field  and  his  most  permanent  con- 
tribution both  to  the  Church  and  to 
national  life  is  to  be  foimd  in  his  imder- 
standing   of  the  true  relation   between 


religion  and  art.  He  saw  that  art  is  not 
mere  decoration  but  an  essential  and 
integral  expression  of  the  worship  offered 
to  God  in  religion.  No  one  man  did  more 
to  raise  the  standards  of  art  in  public  wor- 
ship, and  he  is  believed  to  be  the  only 
clergyman  to  have  been  awarded  the  dis- 
tinction of  the  honorary  A.R.I.B.A. 

Dearmer  was  ordained  deacon  in  1891 
and  priest  in  1892,  and  after  serving  four 
curacies  (which  ranged  from  St.  Ajuic's, 
South  Lambeth,  to  Berkeley  Chapel,  May- 
fair),  he  was  appointed  in  1901  to  the 
vicarage  of  St.  Mary's,  Primrose  Hill, 
where  he  remained  until  1915,  and  there 
he  put  his  convictions  into  practice.  Lead- 
ing artists  of  all  kinds  gathered  round  him, 
and  St.  Mary's  became  known  throughout 
the  country.  His  Parson's  Handbook  (1899, 
12th  ed.  1931)  was  an  attempt  to  recall 
the  Church  to  the  native  English  tradition 
in  matters  of  liturgy  and  ceremonial.  He 
made  vigorous  and  imaginative  efforts  to 
improve  the  quality  of  church  music,  and 
was  largely  responsible  for  editing  the 
English  Hymnal  (1906),  Songs  of  Praise 
(1925),  and  the  Oxford  Book  of  Carols 
(1928),  which  revolutionized  congrega- 
tional hymn-singing.  i 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Dearmer 
was  chaplain  to  the  British  Red  Cross 
ambulance  unit  in  Serbia  where  his  wife, 
Jessie  Mabel,  daughter  of  Surgeon-Major 
WiUiam  White,  whom  he  had  married  in 
1892,  died  of  enteric  fever  in  1915.  She 
was  a  novelist  and  playwright.  In  1916 
he  married  Nancy,  only  daughter  of  Arthur 
Knowles,  and  after  the  war  resided  in 
Chelsea  and  busied  himself  in  manifold 
activities.  He  was  first  professor  of  ecclesi- 
astical art  at  King's  College,  London 
(1919-1936)  and  was  lecturer  in  art  there 
(1924-1932).  In  1920  he  became  secretary 
(chairman,  1921-1936)  of  the  recently 
founded  League  of  Arts,  and,  along  with 
Miss  Maude  Royden,  with  whom  he  worked 
tmtil  1924,  he  established  the  Guildhouse. 
In  1931  he  was  nominated  to  a  canonry  at 
Westminster  Abbey,  where — perhaps  too 
late  in  life — his  gifts  had  full  scope  and 
opportunity.  He  made  a  distinctive  con- 
tribution to  the  preaching  and  ceremonial 
in  the  Abbey  and  developed  remarkable 
powers  as  a  broadcaster  of  services  for 
children.  He  died  suddenly  at  his  resi- 
dence in  the  Little  Cloister  29  May  1936^ 
and  was  buried  in  the  cloister.  ^ 

Striking  in  appearance  and  highly  'in- 
dividual' in  speech  and  manner,  Dearmer 
was  an  original,  independent  thinker, 
informed  by  a  thorough  scholarship  in  his 


216 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Delamere 


own  subjects,  although  in  later  life  this 
tended  to  be  dissipated  by  an  overgreat 
and  somewhat  ephemeral  output. 

By  his  first  wife  Dearmer  had  two  sons, 
the  yoimger  of  whom  died  of  wounds 
received  at  Gallipoli  in  1915;  by  his 
second  wife,  who  survived  him,  he  had 
one  son,  who  was  killed  in  1942,  and  two 
daughters. 

A  drawing  of  Dearmer  by  David  Rolt 
(1935)  is  in  the  possession  of  Lady  Sykes 
(formerly  Mrs.  Dearmer). 

[Nan  Dearmer,  Percy  Dearmer  (with  biblio- 
graphy), 1940.]  F.  R.  Southwell. 
(F.  R.  Barry.) 

DE  BUNSEN,  Sir  MAURICE 
WILLIAM  ERNEST,  baronet  (1852- 
1932),  diplomatist,  was  born  in  London 
8  January  1852,  the  second  son  of  Ernest 
Christian  Ludwig  de  Bunsen,  of  Abbey 
Lodge,  Regent's  Park,  and  grandson  of 
the  well-loved  Baron  von  Bunsen  who  was 
Prussian  minister  in  England  from  1841 
to  1854  and  had  married  an  English- 
woman. His  father,  a  soldier,  courtier,  and 
mystical  writer,  became  a  British  subject 
in  1849.  His  mother,  Elizabeth  Sheppard, 
daughter  of  Samuel  Gurney  [q-v.],  of  Ham 
House,  West  Ham,  Essex,  bill  discounter 
and  philanthropist,  was  one  of  the  Gurneys 
of  Earlham  and  a  remarkable  character ; 
she  was  a  niece  of  Elizabeth  Fry  [q.v.], 
with  whom  she  travelled  abroad.  He  was 
brought  up  with  a  Quaker  background  in 
the  ctiltured  and  cosmopolitan  atmosphere 
of  Abbey  Lodge,  and  was  educated  at 
Rugby  and  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

De  Biuisen  entered  the  diplomatic  ser- 
vice in  1877.  In  his  third  post,  at  Madrid, 
he  was  commended  for  his  dignity  and 
discretion  when  left  in  charge  of  the  lega- 
tion at  a  difficult  time.  After  three  years 
(1891-1894)  as  secretary  of  legation  in 
Japan,  he  was,  in  1894,  appointed  charge 
d'affaires  and  consul  general  at  Bangkok, 
where  he  was  in  the  confidence  of  the 
King  and  the  Siamese  authorities  in  their 
rtruggle  against  French  pressure.  He  was 
first  secretary  at  Constantinople  (1897- 
1902)  in  the  days  of  Abdul  Hamid  and  the 
Cretan  troubles,  and  was  then  transferred  to 
Paris  as  first  secretary.  He  was  appointed 
C.B.  in  1895,  C.V.O.  in  1903,  and  K.C.V.O. 
in  1905.  In  the  last-named  year  he  went 
as  minister  to  Lisbon. 

In  1906  de  Bunsen  was  sworn  of  the 


ICing  Alfonso  XIII  and  his  Queen.  Perhaps 
de  Bunsen's  most  conspicuous  diplomatic 
achievement  was  his  unofficial  mediation, 
in  1911-1912,  at  the  invitation  of  both 
parties,  in  the  dispute  over  Morocco  be- 
tween France  and  Spain,  which  materially 
helped  to  bring  about  a  peaceful  settle- 
ment. He  was  appointed  G.C.M.G.  in  1909. 
In  1913  he  succeeded  Sir  Fairfax  Cart- 
wright  as  ambassador  at  Vienna,  where  he 
kept  the  British  government  in  close  touch 
with  the  complicated  political  develop- 
ments preceding  the  outbreak  of  war. 

De  Bunsen  worked  in  the  Foreign  Office 
until  1918,  when  he  headed  a  mission  to 
the  states  of  South  America,  which  was 
a  remarkable  success.  After  its  close,  he 
retired,  at  the  end  of  1918,  from  the 
diplomatic  service  to  spend  thirteen  busy 
years  as  a  City  man  and  a  prominent 
member  of  many  societies  in  London, 
where  he  died  in  harness  at  the  age  of 
eighty  21  February  1932. 

De  Bimsen's  good  looks  and  appearance 
went  well  with  his  courtesy,  fearless 
character,  and  complete  honesty.  In  the 
service  he  stood  out  among  his  con- 
temporary diplomats  for  his  ability  to 
reconcile  opposing  parties  and  to  bring 
the  representatives  of  clashing  interests 
to  discuss  their  differences  with  reason 
and  temper.  He  was  looked  upon  as  the 
ideal  chief,  for  kindness,  example,  and 
hospitality.  A  keen  sportsman  and  a  good 
shot,  he  was  also  a  lover  of  literature  and 
well  informed  on  many  subjects.  His  most 
notable  accomplishment  was  in  public 
and  personal  relationships  and  in  the  art 
of  Hving. 

De  Bunsen's  family  life  was  a  happy 
one.  In  1899  he  married  Berta  Mary,  elder 
daughter  of  Armar  Henry  Lowry-Corry, 
who  was  in  the  Foreign  Office ;  she  was  a 
niece  of  M.  W.  Lowry-Corry,  Lord  Rowton 
[q.v.],  private  secretary  to  Disraeli  from 
1866  to  1881.  They  had  four  daughters. 
De  Bunsen  was  created  a  baronet  in  1919. 

A  portrait  of  de  Bunsen  by  Emil  Fuchs 
(1912),  in  diplomatic  imiform  and  the 
robes  of  a  G.C.M.G.,  is  in  the  possession  of 
his  daughter,  Mrs.  Salisbury  Jones. 

[The  Times,  22  February  1932;  E.  T.  S. 
Dugdale,  Maurice  de  Bunsen:  Diplomat  and 
Friend,  1984;  British  Documents  on  the 
Origins  of  the  War,  edited  by  G.  P.  Gooch  and 
H.  W.  V.  Temperley,  vol.  xi ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

George  Franckenstein. 


DELAMERE,    third 
1931),   pioneer   settler 


I  Privy  Council  and  appointed  K.C.M.G., 
G.C.V.O.,    and   ambassador   at   Madrid, 
where  he  and  his  wife  were  popular  and 
enjoyed  the  friendship  and  confidence  of  |  Cholmondeley,  Hugh.] 
217 


Baron    (1870- 
a    Kenya.     [See 


De  Laszlo 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


DE     LiSZLO,     PHILIP     ALEXIUS 

(1869-1937),   painter.     [See   L1szl6    de 

LOMBOS.] 

DELIUS,  FREDERICK  (1862-1934), 
musician,  was  born  at  Bradford  29  January 
1862,  the  second  son  in  a  family  of  four 
sons  and  ten  daughters  of  JuUus  Delius, 
a  well-to-do  wool  merchant,  of  Bradford, 
by  his  wife,  Elise  Pauline,  daughter  of 
Christian  Kroenig,  of  Bielefeld,  West- 
phalia. Both  his  parents  were  German- 
born  but  his  father,  who  was  also  from 
Bielefeld,  had  become  a  naturalized 
Englishman  in  1850.  There  was  much 
music-making,  both  amateur  and  pro- 
fessional, in  the  home.  The  young 
Frederick  soon  began  to  prefer  Chopin 
and  Grieg  to  Mozart  and  Beethoven,  a 
trend  of  taste  which  remained  undeviat- 
ing  to  the  end. 

After  receiving  some  education  at  Brad- 
ford Grammar  School  and  the  Inter- 
national College  at  Isleworth  (1876-1879) 
Delius,  who  wished  to  make  music  his 
career,  was  ordered  into  the  family  business 
and  there  was  actually  a  brief  period  of 
unavailing  endeavour  in  the  woollen 
industry  until  the  domestic  crisis  so 
familiar  in  the  lives  of  artists  came  to  a 
head.  In  this  case  the  unusual  com- 
promise, reached  after  some  heat,  was 
that  Frederick  Delius,  aged  twenty -two, 
should  go  out  and  plant  oranges  in  Florida. 
There  the  solitude  of  the  grove,  the 
resplendent  tropical  scenery,  and  the 
strange  music  of  the  negroes  combined  to 
set  the  youth's  imagination  ablaze.  He 
must  get  a  pianoforte.  While  negotiating 
for  this  in  Jacksonville  he  fell  in  with  a 
convalescent  Brooklyn  organist,  T.  F. 
Ward,  who  returned  to  the  grove  with 
Delius  and  the  pianoforte  to  become  his 
informal  teacher.  This  six-months'  course 
proved  of  greater  value  than  all  the  formal 
instruction  which  Delius  was  subsequently 
to  undergo.  In  1885  he  left  the  grove  and 
set  up  as  a  teacher  of  pianoforte  and  violin 
first  at  Jacksonville  and  later  at  Danville, 
Virginia. 

Meanwhile  Dehus's  parents  had  al- 
together lost  touch  with  their  errant  and 
now  independent  offspring.  But  they 
eventually  succeeded  in  causing  a  message 
to  reach  him  in  which  they  offered  terms 
of  well-nigh  unconditional  surrender.  At 
all  events  in  August  1886  Delius  became 
installed  as  a  student  at  the  Leipzig  Con- 
servatorium.  Now  at  last  he  could  hear 
orchestras  and  operas  to  his  heart's  con- 
tent and  live  for  nothing  but  music.  There 


was  also  the  formal  instruction  at  the 
conservatorium,  but  no  trace  of  this  can 
be  found  in  his  subsequent  output  except 
in  certain  of  the  weaker  passages.  The 
great  event  of  this  sojourn  was  the  meet- 
ing with  Grieg,  who  was  probably  the 
second  person — Ward  being  the  first — to 
perceive  the  genius  in  the  younger  man. 
In  the  spring  of  1888  an  orchestra  was 
hired  with  the  contents  of  a  barrel  of  beer 
to  play  a  suite  by  Delius  called  'Florida'. 
The  conductor  was  Hans  Sitt,  one  of 
Delius's  masters;  the  audience,  Grieg, 
Christian  Sinding,  and  the  composer.  The 
new  work  received  an  enthusiastic  ovation. 
Delius,  after  about  eighteen  months  in 
Leipzig,  accompanied  Grieg  to  London 
where  he  was  giving  some  concerts.  No 
there  was  arranged  a  special  dinner  party 
at  which  Grieg  finally  persuaded  Juhui 
Delius  of  his  son's  quality.  This  auspicious 
occasion  marks  the  end  of  parental  opposi 
tion  to  Frederick's  musical  career.  When 
Grieg  died  in  1907  Delius  'felt  that  he  hai 
lost  his  best  friend'. 

Delius  then  (1888)  became  a  whole-time 
composer.  He  never  did  anything  else. 
He  moved  to  France  where  he  lived  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  He  worked  mostly  in 
Paris  for  eight  years,  consorting  with 
literary  folk,  painters,  and  sculptors — 
notably  Gaugin  and  Strindberg — rather^ 
than  with  French  musicians  with  whon^B 
he  had  but  little  in  common ;  to  this  day 
his  music  is  vmknown  in  France.  In  1897 
two  friends  of  his,  girl  students  of  paint- 
ing, invited  him  for  the  week-end  to  a 
house  which  they  had  taken  for  the  sum- 
mer at  Grez-sur-Loing,  near  Fontaine- 
bleau.  He  accepted  and  stayed  on  until 
death.  So  did  one  of  the  yoxmg  ladies, 
Jelka  Helen  (von)  Rosen,  whom  shortly 
afterwards  he  married.  Born  of  a  German 
diplomatic  family,  she  had  linguistic  talent 
and  a  rare  literary  and  artistic  perception. 
Wonderful  though  she  was  as  a  wife, 
particularly  during  her  husband's  last 
stricken  years,  she  was  more  than  that. 
She  helped  in  the  selection  and  arrange- 
ment of  the  words  for  most  of  the  choral 
output  of  his  best  years,  a  literary  task 
which,  imaided,  the  composer  was  not  at 
all  well  qualified  to  perform.  Notable  too 
were  her  wit  and  charm,  which  even  life 
with  Delius  failed  to  impair. 

From  then  until  1921  all  the  great  works 
were  composed  in  the  quiet  home  at  Grez 
with  the  garden  running  down  to  the  river. 
Here  the  couple  mostly  remained  except 
when  the  war  came  too  dangerously  near 
for  comfort.  Then  having  buried  the  wine. 


218 


A 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Delius 


they  sought  the  temporary  shelter  of  these 
shores.  Otherwise  there  would  merely  be 
trips  to  Germany  and  England  in  order  to 
hear  Delius's  works  performed,  and  to  the 
Norwegian  mountains  for  the  summer 
holidays.  He  had  learnt  to  love  these  in 
youth  during  one  of  his  wool-trade  visits 
to  Sweden. 

It  is  a  tale  of  toil,  frustration,  gradual 
recognition,  and  ultimate  triumph.  Before 
the  end  of  the  century  faint  signs  of 
recognition  were  stirring.  Hans  Haym 
and  Alfred  Hertz,  of  Elberfeld,  and  Julius 
Buths,  of  Diisseldorf,  began  to  show 
interest.  In  1899  DeUus  gave  a  choral- 
orchestral  concert  in  the  St.  James's  Hall, 
London.  Hertz  came  over  to  conduct  the 
programme  which  included  the  tone  poem 
'Over  the  Hills  and  Far  Away'  (which  had 
already  been  given  at  Elberfeld  under 
Haym),  the  music  which  now  forms  the 
close  of  'A  Mass  of  Life',  and  excerpts 
from  the  opera  Koanga,  the  negro  opera 
inspired  by  his  sojourn  in  Florida.  Press 
and  public  gave  this  concert  a  fairly  good 
though  puzzled  reception ;  yet  the  general 
impression  remains  that  a  considerable 
curiosity  to  hear  more  of  this  unknown 
composer  was  aroused. 

Nevertheless,  it  was  left  to  Germany  to 
carry  on  the  good  work  with  performances 
of  'Appalachia'  (choral-orchestral  varia- 
tions on  an  old  slave  song,  also  inspired 
by  Florida)  at  Diisseldorf  (1905),  'Sea- 
Drift'  (cantata  with  words  taken  from  a 
poem  by  Walt  Whitman)  at  Essen  (1906), 
and  the  opera  A  Village  Romeo  and  Juliet 
at  Berlin  (1907).  Delius's  renown  was 
established  in  Germany  by  virtue  of  these 
three  works  alone,  and  his  subsequent 
compositions  were  repeatedly  played  with 
abundant  success  up  and  down  the  country 
('Brigg  Fair'  for  instance  was  in  1910 
alone  played  by  thirty-six  different  orches- 
tras) until  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914. 

But  about  1910  a  young  conductor 
called  Thomas  Beecham  had  already  ap- 
peared to  put  English  lovers  of  music  in 
general  and  of  Delius  in  particular  under 
an  unlimited  debt.  He  was  the  first  to 
discover  the  key  to  this  composer's  tempi 
and  to  his  peculiar  mode  of  utterance. 
Fortunately  he  has  directed  the  recording 
of  most  of  DeUus's  large  works  for  the 
concert  hall.  These  are  the  authoritative 
renderings  ecstatically  approved  through- 
out by  the  composer,  so  that  there  can 
never  be  any  excuse  for  future  arbitrary 
individual  'readings',  for  the  tradition  is 
now  established  once  and  for  all.  But  the 
list  is  still  (1945)  incomplete. 


Soon  after  1924  Delius  lost  his  sight  and 
the  use  of  his  limbs.  It  seemed  that  his 
muse  must  be  stilled  for  ever.  Meanwhile 
there  was  a  steady  increase  in  performances 
of  Delius,  although  Sir  Thomas  Beecham 
was  at  that  time  in  temporary  self-imposed 
retirement.  In  1920  there  occurred  at  the 
Queen's  Hall  the  first  performance  of '  The 
Song  of  the  High  Hills'  under  Albert 
Coates,  and  later  (1925)  the  first  post-war 
performance  of  'A  Mass  of  Life'  under 
Paul  Klenau,  both  at  concerts  of  the  Royal 
Philharmonic  Society.  Sir  Henry  Wood 
also  was  including  certain  smaller  works 
in  his  promenade  and  Saturday  symphony 
concerts  at  the  Queen's  Hall,  while  (Sir) 
Hamilton  Harty  in  the  north  was  do- 
ing good  work.  But  with  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham's  return  in  1926  the  composer 
rapidly  became — ^what  his  most  fervent 
admirers  had  never  envisaged — a  genuine 
popular  success.  That  he  had  at  last  won 
the  ear  of  the  musical  multitude  was 
proved  by  the  six-day  Delius  festival  held 
at  the  Queen's  Hall  in  the  autumn  of  1929 
under  Beecham  and  in  the  presence  of  the 
composer  in  his  bathchair.  With  the  dis- 
appointing exception  of  'The  Song  of  the 
High  Hills'  the  cream  of  his  orchestral 
output  with  and  without  soli  and  chorus 
was  included.  In  the  same  year  the  King 
appointed  Delius  a  C.H.  In  1932  he 
received  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Brad- 
ford and  in  1933  an  honorary  degree  from 
Leeds  University.  In  1929  the  university 
of  Oxford  invited  him  to  come  and  receive 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.Mus.,  but  at  the 
last  moment  he  was  unable  to  visit  Oxford. 

In  1928  Mr.  Eric  Fenby,  a  yoimg  York- 
shire musician,  offered  his  services  as 
amanuensis  and  they  were  gratefully 
accepted.  The  task  consisted  largely  in 
constructing  finished  articles  from  previ- 
ously existing  sketches,  but  there  was  also 
actual  invention  of  new  material.  The  pro- 
cess of  dictation  evolved  by  this  unique 
partnership  is  fascinatingly  described  in 
Mr.  Fenby's  book  Delius  as  I  knew  him 
(1936).  The  most  outstanding  work  realized 
by  this  collaboration  is  '  Songs  of  Farewell ' 
for  double  chorus  and  orchestra  given  at  a 
Courtauld-Sargent  concert  in  1932. 

Delius  died  at  Grez-sur-Loing  10  June 
1934.  After  temporary  burial  in  Grez 
churchyard,  his  body  was  next  year 
removed  to  Limpsfield  in  Surrey.  At  the 
service  on  that  occasion  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham  read  the  funeral  oration  and 
conducted  a  detachment  of  picked  orches- 
tral players  in  certain  Delius  pieces  fitting 
for    the   occasion.    Delius's   widow  was 


219 


Delius 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


placed  beside  her  husband  a  few  days  later. 
There  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

'But  it's  not  music'  expostulated  Delius 
one  day,  humming  a  misquotation  from 
Beethoven.  His  bitterly  caustic  tongue, 
at  strange  variance  with  his  music,  in  a 
harsh  almost  rasping  accent,  half  Brad- 
ford, half  foreign,  would  thus  give  pimgent 
expression  to  his  distaste  for  the  classics. 
Another  violent  antipathy  was  towards 
the  verbal  discussion  of  composition  tech- 
nique. A  notable  English  pundit  was  one 
day  holding  forth  upon  this  subject  in  a 
musical  company  until  Delius,  bearing  it 
no  longer,  interpolated  the  observation 
'Well,  at  any  rate  music  is  a  thing  to  be 
listened  to,  not  talked  about.'  Both  these 
traits  explain  to  some  extent  his  curious 
isolation  in  musical  realms,  for  apart  from 
a  superficial  affinity  with  Grieg's  his  music 
derives  from  nothing  and  leads  nowhere. 
Professional  critics  have  decried  his  lack 
of  'form'  and  amateur  listeners  have 
complained  of  monotony  of  texture.  Both 
strictures  are  half  just.  He  disdained  the 
use  of  mechanical  expedient  to  secure 
semblance  of  'form',  so  that  the  innocent 
listener,  deprived  of  such  adventitious  aids 
to  sustained  attention,  cannot  always 
follow  the  composer's  thought  and  tends 
to  become  drowsy  with  the  sheer  sensuous 
beauty  of  sound  from  moment  to  moment. 
So  with  his  operas,  which  are  not  'drama- 
tic '  according  to  any  hitherto  known  con- 
ventions. Yet  the  carefully  wrought  and 
beautiful  performances  under  Beecham  at 
the  Royal  College  of  Music  of  A  Village 
Romeo  and  Juliet  (1934)  convinced  the 
audiences  of  the  work's  innate  though 
highly  individual  dramatic  purpose.  In- 
tensely susceptible  to  the  beauties  of 
nature  and  to  the  emotions,  joys,  and 
sorrows  of  life,  Delius  made  these  the 
inspiration  of  all  his  most  lovely  works, 
the  titles  of  which  usually  indicate  the 
character  of  each  one. 

There  are  three  portraits  of  Delius  by 
James  Gunn :  a  painting  which  represents 
him  listening  to  his  'Mass  of  Life'  (1929) 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  City  Art  Gallery, 
Bradford;  a  sketch  in  oils  (1932)  and 
another  portrait  (also  1932)  are  in  private 
possession. 

[Philip  Heseltine,  Frederick  Delius,  1923; 
Clare  Delius,  Frederick  Delius.  Memories  of 
my  Brother,  1935;  Eric  Fenby,  Delius  as  I 
knew  him,  1936;  R.  H.  Hull,  Delius,  1928; 
Arthur  Hutchings,  Delius,  1948 ;  Grove's  Dic- 
tionary of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol. 
ii,  edited  by  H.  C.  Colles ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Patrick  Hadley. 


DELL,  ETHEL  MARY  (1881-1939), 
novelist.  [See  Savage.] 

DELLER,  Sir  EDWIN  (1883-1936), 
principal  of  the  university  of  London,  was 
born  at  Paignton,  Devon,  16  March  1883, 
the  son  of  Edwin  Deller,  carpenter,  of 
Paignton,  by  his  wife,  Marj^  Ann  Stone. 
He  was  educated  at  local  schools  up  to 
the  age  of  fourteen,  when  he  began  work 
as  a  clerk  for  an  uncle  at  Paignton.  He 
came  to  London  at  the  age  of  about 
twenty  and  was  engaged  on  clerical  work 
in  various  offices  before  joining  the  Kent 
education  committee,  with  which  he 
stayed  until  1912,  when  he  became  a 
secretary  in  the  academic  department  of 
London  University.  He  was  already  a 
member  of  the  imiversity,  for  he  had 
matriculated  in  1908  as  an  evening  student 
at  King's  College,  graduating  LL.B.  in 
1911.  He  obtained  the  degree  of  LL.D. 
in  1916  with  a  thesis  entitled  'The  Liberty 
of  the  Subject',  as  a  student  of  University 
College.  He  had  also  studied  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics.  His  career  on  the 
staff  of  the  university  was  rapid.  In  1921 
he  became  academic  registrar,  in  which 
post  he  made  his  mark,  and  in  1929  he 
was  elected  principal  of  the  university. 

Great  things  were  expected  of  Deller 
and  he  fulfilled  those  expectations;  for 
he  had  many  gifts.  He  was  a  born  admini- 
strator and  a  man  of  great  culture  and 
knowledge  of  the  world,  while  his  quick- 
ness of  intuition  made  him  singularly  skil- 
ful in  handling  men  and  situations.  He 
seldom  intervened  in  debate,  but  when 
he  did,  he  would  settle  a  point  by  a  few 
brief  words,  wise  and  tactful,  and  often 
touched  with  a  quiet  and  irresistible 
humour.  He  had  a  quick  eye  for  the  heart 
of  any  problem,  and  an  equability  of 
temper  that  was  of  the  utmost  value  in 
handling  the  often  heated  controversies 
which  confronted  him  during  his  term  of 
office.  Above  all,  he  was  a  man  of  striking 
personaUty  and  charm,  and  won  the  en- 
during affection  of  those  with  whom  he 
worked.  His  open-hearted  friendliness  and 
his  quiet  wisdom  diffused  a  much  needed 
spirit  of  goodwill  and  co-operation  in  the 
university,  upon  which  the  erection  of 
the  central  buildings  in  Bloomsbury  set 
the  crown.  In  the  organization  of  these 
buildings  and  the  general  policy  of  the 
development  of  the  site  Deller  made  a 
great  contribution,  although  he  was  not 
destined  to  see  their  completion,  dying  in 
London  30  November  1936  from  the  effects 
of  an  accident  when  visiting,  three  days 


I 


220 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Denny 


earlier,  the  great  tower,  then  in  the  course 
of  construction. 

Outside  the  university,  Deller  played  a 
great  part  in  founding  the  British  Insti- 
tute in  Paris .  In  1 926  he  visited  the  United 
States  of  America,  and  on  his  return  wrote 
an  excellent  book  Universities  in  the  United 
States  (1927),  He  was  made  a  chevalier  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour  in  1932  and  was 
knighted  in  1935.  Among  other  distinc- 
tions he  was  elected  an  honorary  bencher 
of  the  Inner  Temple  in  1933.  He  married 
in  1914  Winifred  Lilian  (Betty),  eldest 
daughter  of  Benjamin  Willey  Betts,  em- 
bosser and  chaser,  of  Hornsey,  and  had  a 
son. 

[The  Times,  1,  2,  4,  and  5  December  1936; 
personal  knowledge.]  H.  E.  Butuek. 

DE  MONTMORENCY,  JAMES 
EDWARD  GEOFFREY  (1866-1934), 
legal  scholar,  was  born  at  Greenwich 
6  December  1866,  the  third  son  of  James 
Lodge  de  Montmorency,  a  member  of  the 
hospital  staff  there,  by  his  wife,  Susan 
Kiddel.  Educated  at  Blackheath  Proprie- 
tary School,  he  was  admitted  to  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge,  in  1886,  and  graduated  B.A. 
in  1889  and  LL.B.  in  1890 :  in  1909  he  was 
awarded  the  Seatonian  prize  for  an  English 
po^m  on  a  sacred  subject.  In  1892  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  the  Middle  Temple 
and  went  into  chambers  on  the  Chancery 
side.  He  had  a  strong  inclination  towards 
the  more  academic  aspects  of  the  law  and, 
at  an  early  stage  in  his  career,  was  inspired 
with  enthusiasm  for  comparative  legal 
studies  by  the  influence  of  (Sir)  John  Mac- 
donell  [q.v.],  Quain  professor  of  compara- 
tive law  in  the  university  of  London.  In 
1902  he  was  Quain  prizeman  in  compara- 
tive law  at  University  College,  London, 
and  in  1911  and  1912  King  Edward  VII 
legal  research  scholar  of  the  Middle  Temple. 
In  1920  he  succeeded  Macdonell  as  Quain 
professor  and  he  held  the  chair  until  his 
retirement  in  1932.  From  1930  to  1932  he 
was  also  dean  of  the  faculty  of  laws  in  the 
university  of  London. 

De  Montmorency's  activities  covered  a 
wide  area  and,  in  addition  to  those  already 
mentioned,  he  was  for  many  years  literary 
editor  of  the  Contemporary  Review.  He 
acted  as  assistant  secretary  of  the  royal 
commission  on  divorce  and  matrimonial 
causes  (1910-1912)  and  as  joint  secretary 
and  member  of  the  attorney-general's 
committee  of  inquiry  into  breaches  of  the 
laws  of  war  (1918-1920).  He  was  a  prolific 
writer,  but  much  of  his  published  work  is 
of  a  somewhat  miscellaneous  and  transient 


character.  He  was  one  of  the  principal 
contributors  to  the  series  of  monographs 
published  by  the  Society  of  Comparative 
Legislation  under  the  title  of  'Great 
Jurists  of  the  World'  and  he  wrote  the 
section  on  'Sea-Policy  and  the  Alabama 
Claims'  in  the  Cambridge  History  of  British 
Foreign  Policy,  vol.  iii  (1923).  Selections 
of  the  articles  which  he  contributed  to 
The  Times  and  the  Contemporary  Review 
were  published  under  the  titles  of  The 
Never-Ending  Road  (1916),  The  White 
Riders  (1918),  and  The  AdmiraVs  Chair 
(1921). 

De  Montmorency  met  with  considerable 
success  as  a  teacher  of  the  law.  He  was  of 
a  warm-hearted  and  generous  disposition, 
which  endeared  him  to  students,  and  he 
was  untiring  in  his  efforts  to  assist  them. 
A  keen  churchman,  he  was  invaluable  as 
a  governor  and  manager  of  Church  schools. 
He  married  in  1899  Caroline  Maud  Sau- 
marez,  third  daughter  of  Major- General 
James  de  Havilland,  and  had  one  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  at  Blackheath 
9  March  1934. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  C.  GUTTERIDGE. 

DENNY,  Sm  ARCHIBALD,  first 
baronet  (1860-1936),  shipbuilder  and 
engineer,  was  born  at  Dumbarton  7 
February  1860,  the  fourth  son  of  Peter 
Denny,  of  Helenslee,  Dumbarton,  ship- 
builder, by  his  wife,  Helen,  eldest  daughter 
of  James  Leslie,  of  Dumbarton.  Educated 
at  the  Dumbarton  Burgh  Academy  until 
the  age  of  fourteen,  he  spent  two  years 
at  the  ficole  Cantonale  at  Lausanne,  and 
then  began  his  apprenticeship  in  the  ship- 
building department  of  the  family  business 
of  William  Denny  &  Brothers,  shipbuilders 
and  engineers.  During  this  period  he 
qualified  for  entrance  to  the  Royal  Naval 
College,  Greenwich,  and  for  three  years 
combined  academic  and  practical  train- 
ing. On  the  completion  of  these  courses 
he  served  for  a  short  time  on  the  Liverpool 
staff  of  Lloyd's  Register  of  Shipping. 

In  1883  Denny  became  a  partner  in 
his  father's  firm,  and  quickly  assumed 
responsibility  for  the  technical  side  of  the 
undertaking.  He  was  particularly  identi- 
fied with  the  development  of  the  experi- 
ment tank  in  the  Leven  shipyard,  which 
was  installed  in  1883,  the  first  in  the  world 
in  a  private  establishment;  his  name  is 
probably  best  known  to  the  public  as 
a  designer  and  builder  of  high-speed 
passenger  vessels,  particularly  those  of  the 
cross-Channel  type.  On  the  scientific  side 


221 


Denny 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  his  profession  he  was  an  acknowledged 
leader,  and  was  freely  consulted  by  govern- 
ment departments  and  other  interests. 
He  played  a  prominent  part  in  the  counsels 
of  the  Institution  of  Naval  Architects,  and 
for  long  was  chairman  of  the  technical 
committee  of  the  British  Corporation 
Register  of  Shipping.  He  was  chairman 
of  the  British  Engineering  Standards 
Institution  for  nine  years ;  of  the  Board  of 
Trade  committee  on  the  subdivision  of 
ships  from  1 920  to  1 924 ;  and  of  the  commit- 
tee appointed  to  investigate  the  Titanic 
disaster  (1912-1915),  and  also  during  this 
period,  of  the  International  Conference  on 
the  Safety  of  Life  at  Sea.  He  also  acted 
as  chairman  or  served  as  a  member  of 
many  other  governmental  and  official  com- 
missions or  committees. 

An  enthusiastic  volunteer,  Denny  served 
for  many  years  (ultimately  as  second  in 
command)  in  the  local  battalion  of  the 
Argyll  and  Sutherland  Highlanders. 

For  his  professional  services  to  the 
country  and  his  profession  Denny  was 
created  a  baronet  in  1913.  He  received 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  the 
universities  of  Glasgow  (1911)  and  Cam- 
bridge (1927). 

In  1885  Denny  married  Margaret, 
second  daughter  of  John  TuUoch,  engineer, 
of  Dumbarton,  a  partner  in  the  engineer- 
ing department  of  the  firm.  He  had  five 
sons  and  one  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
29  May  1936,  and  was  succeeded  as  second 
baronet  by  his  eldest  son,  Maurice  Edward 
(born  1886). 

A  portrait  of  Denny  by  Maurice 
Greiffenhagen  is  the  property  of  Sir 
Maurice  Denny. 

[Leven  Ship  Yard  office  papers;  personal 
knowledge.]  Maurice  Denny. 

DEVLIN,  JOSEPH  (1871-1934),  Irish 
politician,  was  born  in  Hamill  Street, 
Belfast,  13  February  1871,  the  fourth  son 
of  Charles  Devlin,  car-driver,  of  Belfast, 
by  his  wife,  Elizabeth  King.  His  parents, 
recent  immigrants  from  the  Lough  Neagh 
district,  were  Roman  Catholics,  and  at 
the  age  of  six  he  entered  the  Christian 
Brothers'  Schools,  Divis  Street.  While 
still  very  young  he  became  a  pot-boy  in  a 
public  house.  He  showed  an  early  aptitude 
for  public  speaking,  and  at  the  age  of 
fifteen  was  elected  chairman  of  a  debating 
society  formed  to  commemorate  the 
victory  of  Thomas  Sexton  [q.v.]  over  his 
unionist  opponent  at  West  Belfast  in 
1886.  From  1891  until  1893  Devlin  was  a 
journalist  on  the  Irish  News,  the  Belfast 


nationalist  paper,  and  in  the  last-named 
year  became  Belfast  correspondent  of  the 
Freeman's  Journal.  He  soon  became 
secretary  of  the  Belfast  Young  Ireland 
Society,  which  he  represented  at  the  con- 
vention held  in  Dublin  in  1897.  This  led 
to  a  post  at  the  party  headquarters  in 
Dublin.  In  1902  he  went  to  the  United 
States  of  America  as  secretary  of  the 
United  Irish  League,  and  on  five  later 
occasions  visited  the  United  States  on 
political  missions .  He  also  visited  Australia 
in  1905.  He  was  returned  unopposed  for 
North  Kilkenny  at  a  by-election  in  Febru- 
ary 1902,  and  in  1906  regained  the  seat 
for  West  Belfast  which  Sexton  had  lost  in 
1892,  holding  it  until  1918.  During  this 
period  he  refounded  the  Ancient  Order  of 
Hibernians,  of  which  he  was  president 
from  1905  until  his  death.  In  1913  he  was 
a  leading  organizer  of  the  National 
Volimteers  in  opposition  to  the  Ulster 
Volimteers  of  Sir  Edward  (later  Lord) 
Carson  [q.v.].  He  was  a  member  of  the 
Irish  Convention  of  1917-1918,  and  his 
difference  with  J.  E.  Redmond  [q.v.]  over 
the  customs  question  contributed  to  the 
failure  of  the  convention.  On  Redmond's 
death  in  1918  he  was  offered  the  chairman- 
ship of  the  party,  but  gave  way  in  favour 
of  John  Dillon  [q.v.].  In  that  year  he 
defeated  Mr.  de  Valera  in  the  Falls 
division  of  Belfast  (Imperial  parliament), 
holding  the  seat  until  1922,  when  he  un- 
successfully contested  the  Exchange  divi- 
sion of  Liverpool.  In  1921  he  was  returned 
for  county  Antrim  and  West  Belfast  in  the 
new  Northern  Irish  parliament.  He  did 
not  take  his  seat  (West  Belfast  only)  until 
1925,  and,  after  holding  this  seat  until 
1929  and  being  returned  for  Central  Belfast 
in  1930,  with  the  other  nationalist  members 
withdrew  in  1932,  having  won  concessions 
for  his  co-religionists  in  the  Education 
Act  of  1930.  From  1929  onwards  he  was 
senior  member  for  Fermanagh  and  Tyrone 
at  Westminster,  and  was  again  elected 
for  Central  Belfast  in  the  Northern  Irish 
parliament  in  1933.  He  died,  unmarried, 
in  Belfast  18  January  1934,  and  his  body 
was  followed  to  the  grave  by  representa- 
tives of  both  Irish  governments. 

Devlin,  who  was  smaU  and  thick-set, 
with  a  large  head  and  coal-black  hair,  was 
loved  by  all  creeds  and  parties,  accessible 
to  aU  his  constituents,  generous  and  active 
on  behalf  of  the  poor  and  oppressed.  He 
founded  a  holiday  home  for  working- 
women  near  Belfast.  In  debate  he  was 
witty  but  intellectual,  a  ready  improviser 
and,  although  very  nervous,  a  powerful 


« 


222 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Dewrance 


platform  speaker.  He  was  called  by  T.  M. 
Healy  [q.v.] '  the  duodecimo  Demosthenes ' 
and  by  Belfastmen  '  Wee  Joe '.  He  was  the 
last  eminent  survivor  of  the  Irish  party, 
and  Northern  nationalism  has  had  no  such 
leader  since. 

A  portrait  of  Devlin  by  Sir  John 
Lavery  hangs  in  the  Municipal  Gallery, 
Belfast,  and  a  bronze  head  by  Francis 
Doyle-Jones  is  at  Charlemont  House, 
Dublin. 

[Irish  News,  The  Times,  Irish  Times,  Belfast 

Telegraph,    19     January     1934;     Christian 

Brothers'"  Souvenir  (Derry),  1927;  Hibernian 

Journal,  January  1947 ;  private  information.] 

Maubice  Craig. 

DEVONPORT,  first  Viscount  (1856- 
1034),  business  man.  [See  Kearley, 
Hudson  Ewbank.] 

DEVONSHIRE,  ninth  Duke  of  (1868- 
1988).  [See  Cavendish,  Victor  Christian 
William.] 

DEWRANCE,  Sir  JOHN  (1858-1937), 
mechanical  engineer,  was  born  at  Peck- 
ham,  London,  13  March  1858,  the  only 
son  of  John  Dewrance,  of  Greenhills, 
Tilford,  Surrey,  who  erected  the  loco- 
motive Rocket  for  George  Stephenson  [q.v.] 
and  was  on  its  footplate  with  him  during 
the  famous  trials  at  Rainhill  in  1829,  by 
his  wife,  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Curtis,  of  Tilford.  He  was  educated  at 
Charterhouse  and  King's  College,  London, 
Avhere  he  paid  special  attention  to  chemis- 
try, and  was  a  pupil  of  his  step-father, 
'  Colonel  John  Davis.  On  coming  of  age  he 
itook  control  of  the  engineering  business 
I  of  Dewrance  &  company,  which  had  been 
jleft  him  by  his  father,  who  died  in  1861. 
I  In  this  business,  which  was  opened  in 
iLondon  in  1835  by  Joseph  Woods,  brother 
lof  Edward  Woods  [q.v.],  the  elder 
Dewrance  became  a  partner  and  on  the 
[death  of  Woods  in  1842  changed  its  name 
jto  Dewrance  &  company,  which  it  still 
jbears. 

I  Dewrance  had  a  'great  affection'  for 
[scientific  research,  which  he  said  was  im- 
planted in  him  by  the  electro-metallurgist 
peorge  Gore  [q.v.],  and  in  1880  he  started 
ft  research  laboratory,  taking  over  Pro- 
tessor  Frederick  Barff's  assistants  and 
[ipparatus  and  working  up  his  process  for 
protecting  iron  from  rust  by  treatment 
^th  superheated  steam.  In  this  labora- 
;ory  he  produced,  in  1882,  an  ingot  of 
iluminium  by  electrolysis,  and  carried  out 
extensive  investigations,  notably  on  lubri- 


cation and  the  corrosion  of  marine  boilers. 
Some  of  his  results  were  described  in  two 
papers  which  he  read  before  the  Institu- 
tion of  Civil  Engineers;  the  first,  on 
mechanical  bearings,  won  him  a  Telford 
premium  in  1896,  and  the  second,  on  the 
corrosion  of  boilers,  a  Watt  gold  medal 
and  a  Telford  premium  in  1900.  Some 
years  before  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  gave 
up  this  laboratory,  which  by  then  had 
developed  into  a  two-acre  factory  with  a 
pier  on  the  Thames,  and  with  it  what  he 
called  individualistic  research.  His  inter- 
est in  research,  however,  continued,  and 
hoping  by  team  work  to  accomplish  more 
for  the  benefit  of  industry  than  could  be 
done  by  working  alone,  he  became  a  mem- 
ber of  many  research  committees,  parti- 
cularly those  of  the  Institution  of  Mechani- 
cal Engineers  on  alloys  and  cutting  tools, 
of  both  of  which  he  was  chairman .  Increase 
of  co-ordinated  research  work,  standardiza- 
tion, and  mass  production  was  the  pre- 
scription which  he  offered  in  1923  for  the 
future  prosperity  of  British  industry. 

DcAvrance  was  a  prolific  inventor  who 
took  out  more  than  a  hundred  patents, 
mainly  relating  to  steam  fittings  and 
boiler  movmtings.  He  was  also  an  able 
administrator  and  man  of  business.  From 
1899  until  a  few  months  before  his  death 
he  was  chairman  of  Babcock  &  Wilcox, 
Ltd.,  and  from  1914  of  Kent  Coal  Con- 
cessions, Ltd.,  and  allied  companies; 
aspersions  cast  by  a  shareholder  on  his 
conduct  of  these  coal  companies  led  him 
to  take  legal  action,  and  in  1924  the  of- 
fender was  convicted  of  defamatory  libel. 
In  1923  he  was  president  of  the  Institution 
of  Mechanical  Engineers  and  from  1926 
to  1928  of  the  Institute  of  Metals.  He  was 
also  president  of  the  Engineering  and 
Allied  Employers'  National  Federation 
(1920-1926),  master  of  the  Armourers'  and 
Braziers'  Company  (1923),  and  a  fellow  of 
King's  College,  London  (1929).  He  was 
appointed  K.B.E.  in  1920  and  G.B.E.  in 
1928.  In  1882  he  married  Isabella  Ann 
(died  1922),  second  daughter  of  Francis 
Trevithick,  of  Penzance,  and  grand- 
daughter of  Richard  Trevithick  [q.v.], 
the  '  father  of  the  locomotive ' ;  they  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at  his  home, 
Wretham  Hall,  Thetford,  Norfolk,  7  Octo- 
ber 1937. 

[The  Times,  8  October  1937 ;  Engineer  and 
Engineering,  15  October  1937  (portraits) ; 
Proceedings  of  the  Institution  of  Mechanical 
Engineers,  vol.  cxxxvi,  1937;  Journal  of  the 
Institution  of  Civil  Engineers,  vol.  ix,  1937— 
1938.]  H.  M.  Ross. 


223 


Dibdin 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


DIBDIN,  Sir  LEWIS  TONNA  (1852- 
1938),  ecclesiastical  lawyer,  judge,  and 
administrator,  was  born  in  London  19  July 
1852,  the  third  son  of  the  Rev.  Robert 
William  Dibdin,  by  his  wife,  Caroline, 
only  child  of  William  Thompson,  barrister, 
of  the  Temple.  He  was  grandson  of 
Charles  Dibdin  the  younger,  of  Sadler's 
Wells  Theatre,  who  was  a  natural  son  of 
Charles  Dibdin  the  dramatist  and  song- 
writer, and  nephew  of  the  musician  Henry 
Edward  Dibdin,  [qq.v.].  His  father  en- 
joyed considerable  popularity  for  many 
years  as  a  preacher  at  West  Street  chapel. 
Seven  Dials,  which,  as  La  Tremblade,  had 
been  one  of  the  earliest  Huguenot  churches 
in  London  and  at  a  later  date  was  a  regular 
preaching  place  of  John  Wesley. 

Dibdin,  after  being  educated  at  home, 
entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in 
1869,  and  graduated  as  a  senior  optime  in 
the  mathematical  tripos  of  1874.  He  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1876 
and  from  1895  to  1901  was  official  counsel 
to  the  attorney -general  in  charity  matters. 
His  main  interest,  however,  had  from  an 
early  date  been  ecclesiastical  law  and 
history,  and  he  was  appointed  chancellor 
of  the  dioceses  of  Rochester  (1886),  Exeter 
(1888),  and  Durham  (1891).  In  1899  he 
was  engaged  in  the  Lambeth  hearings  on 
incense  and  reservation.  He  took  silk  in 
1901.  Next  year  he  appeared  for  the  Crown 
in  the  proceedings  arising  out  of  the  ap- 
pointment of  Charles  Gore  [q.v.]  to  the 
see  of  Worcester;  his  services  had  been 
sought  by  aU  four  other  parties.  From 
1903  to  1934  he  was  dean  of  the  Arches, 
master  of  the  Faculties,  and  official  princi- 
pal of  the  Chancery  Court  of  York,  and 
from  1925  to  1934  he  was  vicar-general  of 
the  province  of  Canterbury. 

In  1907  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister's 
Marriage  Act  was  passed ;  next  year  Dibdin 
had  to  decide  its  effect  in  the  memorable 
Utigation  known  as  the  Deceased  Wife's 
Sister  case,  which,  in  its  various  phases, 
lasted  from  1908  to  1912.  His  judgement 
was  upheld  in  the  divisional  court,  the 
Court  of  Appeal,  and  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  the  principle  was  settled  that  the 
Deceased  Wife's  Sister's  Marriage  Act  of 
1907  vahdates  for  all  purposes  a  marriage 
between  a  man  and  his  deceased  wife's 
sister,  wherever  and  whenever  contracted. 
In  view  of  his  evangelical  upbringing, 
several  of  his  decisions  in  the  Court  of 
Arches  came  as  a  welcome  surprise  to  the 
Anglo- Catholic  party  and  strengthened  its 
position. 

Dibdin's    main    occupation,    however. 


from  his  appointment  as  first  Church 
estates  conunissioner  in  1905  until  his 
resignation  in  1930  was  the  direction  of 
the  business  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Com- 
mission. During  that  time  he  bore  the 
chief  responsibiUty  for  its  poUcy  and,  with 
Lord  Phillimore  [q.v.],  for  initiating  the 
many  schemes  for  the  benefit  of  the  clergy 
which  eventually  took  statutory  shape  in 
the  measures  beginning  with  the  clergy 
pension  and  episcopal  pension  measures 
of  1926.  To  him,  too,  are  largely  attri- 
butable the  munerous  measures  relating 
to  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission  and  to 
patronage  and  episcopal  endowments. 
Combining  with  his  office  of  commissioner 
that  of  an  active  governor  and  chairman 
of  committees  of  Queen  Anne's  Boiuity, 
he  eliminated  much  of  the  overlapping  of 
functions  and  the  competition  which  had 
formerly  existed, 

Dibdin  had  taken  a  prominent  part  i: 
the  deliberations  of  the  House  of  Layme: 
of  the  Convocation  of  Canterbury  almos 
from  the  formation  of  the  House  in  188' 
and  he  was  for  a  time  its  vice-chairman, 
Immediately  on  the  establishment  of  th« 
Church  Assembly  in  1920  he  took  a  ve 
active   share   in   its   work,   both  in   hisi 
personal  capacity  and  as  the  spokesman! 
of  the  ecclesiastical  commissioners,  and! 
he  was  largely  responsible  for  a  great  many] 
of  its  measures.  There  is  probably  no  on 
to  whom  the  assembly  is  more  heavil; 
indebted  for  its  procedure  and  for  th 
spirit  in  which  its  business  is  conducted. 

Dibdin  served  on  many  royal  and  other 
commissions  and  conunittees  on  Church 
affairs.  The  report  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  ecclesiastical  discipUne  (1904- 
1906)  was  mainly  his  work.  As  a  signatory 
of  the  minority  Report  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  divorce  (1909-1912)  he,  to- 
gether with  the  archbishop  of  York  (Cosmo 
Lang)  and  Sir  William  Anson  [q.v.], 
recommended  no  alteration  in  the  exist- 
ing law  other  than  equality  of  treatment 
for  the  sexes.  In  1914  he  presided  over 
the  Archbishops'  Ancient  Monuments 
(Churches)  Committee,  which  led  to  the 
formation  of  the  diocesan  advisory  com- 
mittees. The  historical  section  of  the 
Report  of  the  Archbishops'  Committee  on 
Church  and  State  was  prepared  by  Dibdin 
and  A.  L.  Smith,  master  of  Balliol  College, 
Oxford  [q.v.],  and  published  in  1916 ;  on 
this  Report  were  based  the  constitution 
of  the  Church  Assembly  and  the  proposals 
which  received  statutory  form  in  the 
Church  of  England  (Assembly)  Powers 
Act,  commonly  called  the  Enabling 


1 


224 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Dickinson 


of  1919.  Between  1923  and  1928  he  served 
on  the  ecclesiastical  courts  commission. 
In  1934  illness  compelled  his  resignation 
from  the  commission  on  the  relations 
between  Church  and  State,  appointed  in 
1930  after  the  rejection  by  the  House  of 
Commons  of  the  1928  Prayer  Book.  At 
the  same  time  he  resigned  all  his  offices, 
legal  and  administrative. 

Dibdin  was  knighted  in  1903 ;  in  1891  he 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L. 
from  Durham  University ;  he  was  elected 
a  bencher  of  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1908  and  an 
honorary  fellq\v  of  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  in  1924.  Other  honours  were 
offered  him  and  were  refused.  He  died  at 
his  home  at  Dormansland,  Surrey,  12  June 
1938.  He  married  in  1881  Marianne  Aubrey 
(died  1927),  eldest  daughter  of  Humphrey 
Senhouse  Pinder,  rector  of  Bratton  Flem- 
ing, North  Devon.  He  was  survived  by 
j  three  of  his  five  sons  and  by  his  two 
daughters;  the  eldest  son,  Mr.  Lewis 
George  Dibdin,  became  secretary  of  the 
Church  Assembly  in  1939. 

Dibdin  combined  in  a  very  rare  degree 
the  qualities  of  lawyer,  judge,  and  ad- 
1  ministrator,  and  this,  together  with  his 
great  experience,  gave  him  a  unique  posi- 
tion for  a  layman  in  Church  affairs.  Arch- 
bishop Benson  relied  greatly  upon  him 
and  wlien  Archbishop  Davidson  was  at 
Lambeth  Dibdin  advised  him  almost 
daily  on  practically  everything  except 
patronage. 

Dibdin  wrote  or  edited  a  number  of  legal 
and  other  works  including  The  Livery 
Companies  of  London  (1886),  Monasticism 
in  England  (1890),  and  The  Ecclesiastical 
Commission  (1919).  His  Establishment  in 
England  (1932),  a  collection  of  essays 
written  over  a  period  of  fifty  years, 
emphasizes  his  strong  support  of  the 
lEstablishment. 

[The  Times,  13  and  16  June  1938;  Church 
Times,  17  June  1938 ;  Guardian,  3  August 
1887;  G.  K.  A.  Bell,  Life  of  Archbishop 
Davidson,  2  vols,  1936 ;  Records  of  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  and  of  Lincoln's  Inn; 
Reports  of  royal  commissions ;  Law  Reports, 
passim ;  private  information.] 

William  Cleveland-Stevens. 

DICKINSON,  GOLDSWORTHY 

LOWES  (1862-1932),  humanist,  histo- 
rian, and  philosophical  writer,  was  born  in 
JLondon  6  August  1862,  the  third  child  and 
younger  son  of  Lowes  (Cato)  Dickinson 
I  q.v.],  portrait-painter,  by  his  wife,  Marga- 
|et  Ellen,  daughter  of  William  Smith  Wil- 
iams,   wlio,   as   the   literary   adviser  of 


Messrs.  Smith,  Elder  &  company,  dis- 
covered Charlotte  Bronte  for  that  firm. 
He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse  and 
went  to  King's  College,  Cambridge,  as  an 
exhibitioner  in  1881 ;  in  1884  he  was 
awarded  a  first  class  in  the  classical  tripos 
and  the  chancellor's  English  medal  for  a 
poem  on  Savonarola,  and  was  elected  into 
a  fellowship  at  his  college  three  years  later 
with  a  dissertation  on  Plotinus. 

Against  the  grain  Dickinson  forced 
himself  to  begin  to  qualify  as  a  physician, 
believing  it  to  be  his  duty  to  do  practical 
service  to  his  fellow  men.  He  passed  his 
first  M.B.  examination  in  1887  and  his 
second  in  1888,  but  he  then  had  to  admit 
that  medicine  was  not  his  metier,  and  he 
saw  that  he  could  better  discharge  his  duty 
in  life  by  giving  a  practical  application  to 
his  own  qualities  of  mind  and  spirit.  He 
had  already  given  courses  of  university 
extension  lectures  and  he  now  turned  to 
modern  history,  regarding  this  as  the  field 
in  which  his  pursuit  of  truth  could  best  be 
brought  to  bear  on  the  practical  problems 
of  humanity.  The  first  fruits  of  this 
decision  were  Revolution  and  Reaction  in 
Modern  France  (1892)  and  The  Develop- 
ment of  Parliament  during  the  Nineteenth 
Century  (1895),  and  when  his  fellowship 
was  permanently  renewed  in  1896,  it  was 
as  an  historian  that  he  was  appointed, 
holding  the  post  of  lecturer  in  political 
science  from  then  until  1920,  when  he 
retired  with  a  pension  fellowship  for  life. 

During  the  next  fifteen  years  Dickin- 
son's lectures,  tuition,  and  the  discussion 
society  which  he  founded  kindled  the 
imagination  and  the  inquiring  spirit  of  the 
young  in  the  tradition  handed  down  at 
King's  from  Oscar  Browning  [q.v.].  But 
besides  thus  fulfilling  his  practical  obliga- 
tions, Dickinson,  established  in  those 
benign  surroundings  which  were,  in  no 
ordinary  sense,  his  spiritual  home,  felt 
free  to  devote  himself  to  the  studies  which 
had  always  been  nearest  to  his  heart. 
Plato  and  the  Greeks  had  been  his  first 
love,  and  this  love  he  now  commemorated 
in  The  Greek  View  of  Life  (1898)  which 
was  for  long  the  finest  appreciation  of  the 
Greek  genius  in  English,  and  this  was 
followed  by  a  series  of  dialogues  in  the 
Socratic  tradition,  written  in  pure  English 
yet  tinged  with  pervasive  poetry  and  lit 
by  the  love  of  plain  truth:  The  Meaning 
of  Good  (1901),  A  Modern  Symposium 
(1905),  and  Justice  and  Liberty  (1908). 

Dickinson  helped  to  found  the  Indepen- 
dent Review  in  1903,  and  in  the  following 
years  he  contributed  a  number  of  articles, 


225 


Dickinson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


some  of  which  were  reprinted  in  Religion. 
A  Criticism  and  a  Forecast  (1905)  and 
Religion  and  Immortality  (1911).  He  made 
two  lecture  tours  in  the  United  States  of 
America  in  1901  and  1909,  and  in  1912 
he  became  the  first  holder  of  the  Albert 
Kahn  travelling  fellowship,  which  took 
him  to  India,  China,  and  Japan.  India  he 
did  not  like,  but  China,  which  he  had 
already  celebrated  from  intuition  rather 
than  knowledge  in  Letters  from  John  China- 
man (1901),  answered  aU  his  expectations, 
and  the  mandarin's  cap  which  he  brought 
back  and  wore  as  indoor  head-gear  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  symbolized  his  affection  for 
a  civilization  which  stood  second  only  to 
Greece  in  his  spiritual  loyalties. 

The  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  abruptly 
closed  this  golden  period  and  brought 
Dickinson  sharply  back  to  his  own  sternest 
conception  of  his  tasks.  He  was  not  a 
conscientious  objector  and  he  did  not 
think  that  the  war  could  have  been 
avoided,  but  all  his  hopes  for  humanity 
seemed  to  have  been  brought  to  nought. 
Yet  he  threw  himself  at  once  into  practical 
activity  in  the  cause  of  preventing  future 
wars.  Within  the  first  fortnight  of  the 
war  he  drafted  schemes  for  a  'League  of 
Nations'  (a  phrase  which  he  may  have 
invented)  and  played  the  leading  part  in 
founding  the  group  of  pacificist  inter- 
nationalists known  as  the  Bryce  group, 
which  later  became  one  of  the  nuclei  of  the 
League  of  Nations  Union  and  promulgated 
some  of  the  actual  provisions  of  the 
covenant  of  the  League.  Dickinson 
worked  hard  throughout  the  war  in  these 
organizing  and  propagandist  activities: 
he  attended  a  pacificist  conference  at  The 
Hague  in  1915,  and  lectured  in  America 
the  following  year:  he  also  produced  a 
large  number  of  books  and  pamphlets  of 
which  the  most  considerable  are  The 
European  Anarchy  (1916)  and  The  Choice 
Before  Us  (1917).  These  were  the  fore- 
runners of  the  far  more  authoritative 
work.  The  International  Anarchy,  1904- 
1914  (1926),  with  which  he  brought  to 
consummation  and  put  on  record  his 
labours  to  unravel  the  true  causes  of  the 
war  and  to  show  by  contrast  the  principles 
on  which  alone  peace  could  be  built  for  the 
future. 

With  this  publication  Dickinson  en- 
tered what  was  perhaps  the  happiest 
period  of  his  life.  The  war  years  and  their 
aftermath  had  been  a  time  of  great  bitter- 
ness, and  he  had  only  allowed  himself  one 
interlude  from  his  sterner  labours — the 
poetic  fantasy  of  The  Magic  Flute  (1920) — 


but  his  remaining  six  years  were  a  kind  of 
St.  Martin's  summer  which  he  devoted  to 
his  old  loves  of  Plato,  poetry,  and  the 
pursviit  of  truth.  The  new  generation  of 
imdergraduates,  comparatively  vmtouched 
by  the  war,  took  Dickinson  to  its  heart, 
and  he,  emerging  from  his  loneliness,  found 
that  the  college,  which  had  never  ceased 
to  shelter  him  during  the  stress  of  war, 
sought  him  as  a  companion  of  both  young 
and  old  in  the  concerns  and  occasions  of 
its  daily  life.  Under  these  influences  of 
balm  and  stimulus,  Dickinson  wrote  After 
Two  Thousand  Years:  a  Dialogue  between 
Plato  and  a  Modern  Young  Man  (1930),  a 
last  flowering  from  the  old  roots,  which  he 
himself  described  as  his  Nunc  Dimittis. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Dickinson  that, 
at  a  time  when  he  might  well  have  felt 
that  his  work  was  done,  he  found  a  new 
activity  and  became  a  broadcaster,  to 
whom  the  response  was  wide  enough  for, 
repeated  contributions  to  be  invited.  The 
themes  which  he  chose  were  those  nearest 
to  his  heart :  Goethe  (a  lifelong  devotion)^ 
Plato,  and  the  hope  of  throwing  the  light 
of  clear  thought  on  the  ways  of  the  world^ 
Plato  and  his  Dialogues  (1931)  is  ai 
expansion  of  one  of  these  broadcast  seriesJ 
His  last  work.  The  Contribution  of  Ancieni 
Greece  to  Modern  Life  (1932),  was  a  lecture 
deUvered  at  a  Cambridge  summer  school 
a  few  weeks  before  he  died  in  London  3 
August  1932.  He  was  unmarried. 

As  a  young  man  Dickinson  had  been  a 
member  of  that   Cambridge   Society  ia 
which  Roger  Fry  [q.v.],  his  oldest  friend, 
J.  M.  E.  M'Taggart  [q.v.],  and  Nathaniel 
Wedd  were  then  the  moving  spirits.  This 
society  meant  much  to  Dickinson  all  his 
life;    but   no    searcher   after   truth   less 
deserved  the  name  of  'highbrow'  or  fitted, 
less  into  a  coterie  than  Dickinson.  Never! 
was  anyone  less  pompous,  less  of  a  prigj 
or  more  charming:  he  was  a  loved  an(f 
honoured  member  of  the  intellectual  elite! 
of  the  time,   but   he  thought   his   own] 
thoughts  and  went  his  own  way.    In  a| 
rationalist  age  he  was  interested  in  mysti- 
cism, and  his  sense  of  the  mystical  wasj 
never  far  below  the  surface,  although  he! 
himself  had  no  experience  of  ecstasy.  Hej 
was  at  no  time  tempted  to  swerve  fromi 
agnosticism    into    Christianity,    but    hisj 
scepticism  was  of  the  true  unresting  kind! 
and  would  never  find  in  suspension  ofl 
judgement  a  relief  from  the  necessity  ofl 
further  thought.  There  could  be  no  doubt  J 
of  his  seriousness  on  any  important  sub- 
ject, but  there  was  no  trace  of  the  puritan] 
in  his  nature  or  his  work.  He  loved  gaiety  j 


226 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Dillon,  E.  J. 


and  humour,  he  felt  the  cold  intensely,  he 
suffered  from  a  kind  of  amused  exaspera- 
tion with  inanimate  objects ;  but  he  cared 
for  first  things  first  and  did  honour  over  a 
lifetime  to  truth,  beauty,  and  love. 

A  portrait  of  Dickinson  by  Roger  Fry 
(1925)  hangs  in  the  hall  at  King's  College, 
Cambridge ;  another  portrait  by  the  same 
artist  (1893)  is  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

[E.  M.  Forster,  Goldsworthy  Lowes  Dickinson 
(with  a  bibliography  by  R.  E.  Balfour),  1934; 
Cambridge  Review,  14  October  1932 ;  un- 
published letters  and  papers ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] P.  D.  Proctor. 

DICKSON-POYNDER,  Sib  JOHN 
POYNDER,  sixth  baronet,  and  Baron 
Islington  (1866-1936).  [See  Poyndeb.] 

DILLON,    EMILE    JOSEPH    (1854- 
1933),  philologist,  author,  and  journalist, 
was  born  in  Dublin  21  March  1854,  the 
only  son  of  Michael  Dillon,  a  cutlery  and 
hardware  merchant,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Byrne.   He  ardently  desired  that  his  son 
I  should  enter  the  priesthood ;  and  after 
I  visiting  the  Carmelite  School  and  Holy 
t  Cross  College,  Clonliffe,  the  young  man 
'  spent  some  time  at  Pantasaph  Monastery 
in   Wales,   the   Grande    Chartreuse,   the 
Seminary  of  St.  Sulpice,  and  the  Paulist 
College,  New  York.  But  theology  attracted 
Dillon  much  less  than  oriental  languages, 
to  which  he  devoted  himself  under  Ernest 
Renan   at  the   College   de  France.     In- 
spired by  that  great  man's  enthusiasm 
and  erudition,  he  continued  his  hnguistic 
studies  at  the  universities  of  Innsbriick, 
Leipzig,  Tiibingen,  Louvain,  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  Kharkoff.    At  three  of  these 
institutions  he  obtained  his  doctorate  in 
oriental  languages,  comparative  philology, 
and  philosophy.    Sanskrit,  Arabic,  Heb- 
rew, and  Persian  were  among  the  lan- 
:iuages   which   he   acquired,   as   well   as 
;uedieval   Scandinavian,   Armenian,   and 
i^end.    Various  modern  languages  were 
idded,  without  apparent  effort,  to  his 
ange  of  learning  and,  as  an  example  of 
he  correctness  with  which  he  spoke  them, 
le  went  from  Germany  to  act  as  tutor  to 
he  sons  of  a  Russian  nobleman  and  only 
ifter  five  months  there  was  it  realized  that 
Jillon  was  not  a  German. 

Although  he  wrote  learned  works  on 
)hilology  and  such  books  as  The  Sceptics 
f  the  Old  Testament  (1895)  Dillon's  true 
ent  was  towards  journalism  and  oc- 
asional  literature.  He  published  essays 
nd  fiction  in  Russian,  translated  some  of 


Tolstoy's  stories,  contributed  to  the  Fort- 
nightly  Review  a  series  of  bold  articles, 
signed  'E.  B.  Lanin',  on  Russian  affairs, 
married  in  1881  a  Russian  lady,  the 
daughter  of  a  St.  Petersburg  civil  servant 
(who  bore  him  three  sons  and,  the  marriage 
having  been  dissolved,  died  in  1919),  and 
edited  a  newspaper  in  Odessa.  Returning 
to  Kharkoff  University  in  1884  he  lectured, 
of  course  in  Russian,  as  professor  of  com- 
parative philology.  A  journey  to  Armenia, 
the  language  of  which  fascinated  him, 
resulted  in  the  translation  of  an  ancient 
Armenian  manuscript  into  Russian  and 
subsequently  he  was  elected — a  rare  dis- 
tinction which  he  shared  with  Byron — to 
membership  of  the  Armenian  Academy  in 
Venice. 

From  1887  to  1914  Dillon  was  the 
correspondent  in  Russia  of  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph, which  frequently  entrusted  him 
with  special  missions  elsewhere.  If  he 
judged  that  the  situation  was  critical  in 
any  country  he  could  go  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  merely  letting  the  editor  know 
that  he  had  gone.  Within  a  few  hours  of 
arriving  at  his  destination  he  would  be 
sending  long  and  well  informed  dispatches. 
In  1894,  forbidden  by  the  Sultan  to  go  to 
Armenia  after  the  massacres,  he  went  in 
disguise  as  a  Russian  officer  and  was 
received  with  military  honours;  the  dis- 
patches which  he  sent  by  devious  routes 
created  a  sensation  and  won  the  high 
approval  of  Gladstone.  In  1897  he  watched 
the  Cretan  revolt  against  Turkish  misrule 
and,  disguised  as  an  insurgent  monk,  he 
went  with  Eleutherios  Venizelos — his 
friend  ever  after — on  board  the  flagship  of 
the  Allied  Fleet,  to  refuse  autonomy  instead 
of  annexation  to  Greece.  On  leaving  the 
ship  the  pious  Italian  admiral  asked  for 
his  blessing,  whereupon,  with  two  fingers 
on  the  admiral's  head,  he  muttered  a  few 
words  of  Anacreon,  all  he  could  think  of 
at  the  moment.  During  the  Spanish- 
American  war  of  1898  he  was  in  Spain. 
Next  year  he  reported  voluminously  the 
second  trial  of  Alfred  Dreyfus,  at  Rennes. 
In  1900  he  followed  the  international 
expedition  against  the  Chinese  'Boxers'. 
He  was  ubiquitous  and  indefatigable.  Of 
medium  stature  and  without  marked  phy- 
sical characteristics,  Dillon  could  mingle 
unnoticed  with  any  oriental  crowd,  while 
his  linguistic  virtuosity  disarmed  suspicion . 

Throughout  his  long  life  Dillon  remained 
a  man  of  mystery.  He  kept  secret  his 
methods  of  gaining  information.  Not 
many  of  his  employers  or  colleagues  felt 
that  they  knew  him,  but  that  did  not 


227 


Dillon,  E.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


prevent  their  admiration.  'He  is',  said 
W.  T.  Stead — no  mean  authority — 'far 
and  away  the  ablest,  most  cultured  and 
most  adventurous  newspaperman  I  have 
ever  met,  with  an  extraordinary  combina- 
tion of  varied  faculties,  an  artist  in 
temperament,  a  journalist  by  instinct,  a 
scholar  and  philosopher  by  choice,  a  states- 
man in  ambition.'  His  most  intimate 
friend  among  foreign  statesmen  was  Count 
Serge  de  Witte,  the  rough-hewn  Russian 
railway  organizer  and  financial  statesman, 
whose  views  Dillon  sedulously  advocated, 
although  it  was  never  clear  whether 
Dillon  inspired  Witte  or  Witte  Dillon. 
Witte  took  Dillon  with  him  as  his  adviser 
when  he  went  to  take  part  as  first  plenipo- 
tentiary in  the  peace  negotiations  at 
Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  in  1905, 
and  he  used  Dillon's  pen  to  sign  the  peace 
treaty.  Witte's  resignation  of  the  premier- 
ship next  year  did  not  prevent  the  two 
men  from  still  seeing  a  great  deal  of  each 
other,  thrashing  out  with  many  disagree- 
ments (as  can  be  seen  from  Dillon's  very 
detailed  diaries)  intricate  questions  of  the 
past,  present,  and  future.  In  1908-1909 
Dillon  supported  Baron  von  Aehrenthal, 
the  Austro-Hungarian  foreign  minister, 
against  the  Russian  foreign  minister, 
Isvolsky,  during  the  Bosnian  annexation 
crisis. 

For  many  years  Dillon  wrote  a  monthly 
article  on  foreign  affairs  for  the  Con- 
temporary Review  and  nmnerous  others 
(often  under  a  pseudonym)  in  the  Fort- 
nightly and  the  National  Reviews  and  in 
American  organs.  The  publicity  which  he 
thus  commanded,  together  with  his  wide 
learning  and  experience,  gained  him  ready 
access  to  leading  statesmen  and  diploma- 
tists who  were  often  eager  to  consult  him. 
Sir  Cecil  Spring-Rice,  for  instance,  wrote 
that  he  was  a  sort  of  pupil  of  Dillon  and 
that  from  him  he  had  learned  more  than 
from  anyone  else  about  foreign  politics. 
Yet  it  cannot  be  affirmed  that  he  left  an 
abiding  mark  upon  the  history  of  his 
times.  His  very  versatility  may  have 
detracted  from  his  permanent  influence. 
His  fame  rests  upon  his  linguistic  abiU- 
ties  and  his  remarkable  achievements  as 
a  copious  chronicler  of  contemporary 
events.  He  wrote  leading  articles  in  five 
languages,  although  he  used  modestly  to 
say  that  those  in  Spanish  had  to  be  cor- 
rected. Retiring  from  the  Daily  Telegraph 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918,  he  remained 
very  active  behind  the  scenes.  Subse- 
quently he  went  twice  to  Mexico,  on  which 
country  he  wrote  two  books.   But  in  his 


last  book,  published  posthumously  in  1934, 
he  returned  to  Russia.  In  Count  Leo 
Tolstoy  he  related  his  association,  pleasant 
and  otherwise,  with  that  great  man.  In 
such  a  book  there  was  scope  for  his  wit  and 
irony,  while  the  floridness  once  fashionable 
in  the  Daily  Telegraph  is  absent. 

In  1914  Dillon  married  his  second  wife, 
Kathleen,  daughter  of  James  Ireland,  of 
Belfast,  who  survived  him.  In  his  old  age 
he  bought  a  house  in  Barcelona,  where  he 
died  9  June  1933.  A  portrait  of  him, 
painted  by  Sir  William  Orpen,  is  in  the 
National  Gallery,  Dublin. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  10  June  1933 ;  Fortnightly 
Review,  July  1933;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.] 

Henry  Baerlein. 

DILLON,  HAROLD  ARTHUR  LEE-, 

seventeenth  Viscount  Dillon  (1844- 
1932),  antiquary,  was  born  in  London  24 
January  1844,  the  elder  son  of  Arthur 
Edmund  Denis  Dillon-Lee,  sixteenth  Vis- 
count Dillon,  a  numismatist  (whom  he 
succeeded  in  1892),  by  his  wife,  Ellen, 
daughter  of  James  Adderley,  of  King's 
county.  The  Dillon  family  had  held  land 
in  Ireland  since  the  twelfth  century: 
several  of  its  members  are  noticed  in  this 
Dictionary.  The  seventh  viscount  raised 
the  famous  Dillon  regiment  for  James  II, 
which  at  a  later  date  went  over  to  the 
French  service;  the  eleventh  married,  in 
1744,  the  heiress  of  the  Lees,  of  Ditchley, 
Oxfordshire,  through  whom  Lord  Dillon 
was  related  to  Sir  Henry  Lee  [q.v.], 
champion  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  des- 
cended from  Charles  II.  He  was  educated 
at  a  private  school  at  Eltham  from  1855 
to  1860,  and  afterwards  at  Bonn  Univer- 
sity. He  passed  out  fourth  in  the  army 
examination  of  1862,  and  was  gazetted  as 
an  ensign  in  the  Rifle  Brigade.  After 
having  been  stationed  in  Canada  and 
India,  he  retired  from  the  Brigade  in  1874, 
whereupon  he  was  promoted  captain  in 
the  Oxfordshire  Light  Infantry  (militia 
battalion),  retiring  as  major  in  1891. 

After  leaving  the  Rifle  Brigade  Dillon 
became  interested  first  in  military  equip- 
ment and  dress  and  later  in  the  history  of 
arms  and  armour,  medieval  costume,  and 
kindred  subjects,  of  which  he  made  an 
exhaustive  study.  In  1892  he  was  ap- 
pointed first  curator  of  the  armouries  of 
the  Tower  of  London,  a  post  which  he  held 
until  1913.  In  the  course  of  his  researches 
he  travelled  much  abroad,  making  frequent 
visits  to  France,  Belgium,  Germany,  and 
Russia.    In   1905   he   found  in  Paris  a 


i 


228 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Dixon,  R.  B. 


volume  of  armourer's  drawings  which  en- 
abled him  to  identify  many  armours  in  the 
Tower,  at  Windsor,  and  elsewhere,  and  on 
his  advice  it  was  purchased  for  the  Victoria 
and  Albert  Museum.  He  never  collected 
armour,  as  he  considered  that  the  keeper 
of  a  national  armoury  should  not  make  a 
private  collection.  He  took  all  the  im- 
portant armours  in  the  Tower  to  pieces  in 
order  to  learn  their  construction  and  made 
minute  studies  of  the  locks  and  crossbows 
and  firearms.  His  knowledge  of  medieval 
and  later  periods  was  encyclopaedic,  and 
inquiries  on  subjects  within  these  fields 
came  to  him  from  all  over  the  world.  He 
had  two  maxims,  one  that  'Duty  is  doing 
more  than  you  are  paid  for',  the  other 
being  'Never  say  you  do  not  know,  but 
find  out  and  then  reply'.  On  one  occasion 
it  took  him  three  months  and  a  visit  to 
Germany  to  deal  with  a  question,  but  he 
answered  it  correctly. 

Dillon  was  responsible  for  much  of  the 
work  connected  with  the  Stuart  and  Tudor 
exhibitions  held  at  the  New  Gallery, 
Regent  Street,  in  1889  and  1890.  As 
chairman  of  the  trustees  of  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery  from  1894  to  1928  his 
knowledge  was  of  the  greatest  possible 
value  to  that  body.  From  the  notable 
collection  at  Ditchley  he  presented  to  the 
Gallery  in  1925,  in  memory  of  his  first 
wife,  three  portraits  of  outstanding  his- 
torical importance.  Archbishop  Warham, 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  Sir  Henry  Lee  (the 
last-named  by  Antonio  Moro).  He  pre- 
sented and  bequeathed  other  portraits. 
Including  the  Ditchley  Queen  Elizabeth, 
to  the  gallery. 

In  any  case  where  finance  was  involved 
Dillon  was  very  exact,  and  he  would  never 
give  an  official  signature  until  he  had 
checked  the  accounts  before  him.  His 
knowledge  of  his  own  library  was  such 
that  he  could  tell  the  shelf,  the  colour  of 
the  binding,  and  often  the  page  of  the 
work  which  was  asked  for.  He  would 
never  put  forward  theories  unsupported 
by  evidence,  and  when  at  a  trial  which 
involved  the  authenticity  of  a  suit  of 
armour  the  opposing  counsel  questioned 
his  opinion  he  replied:  'My  opinions  are 
facts.'  A  true  aristocrat,  he  was  equally 
at  home  in  a  royal  palace  and  in  a  third 
class  carriage  of  the  Great  Western  Rail- 
way by  which  he  travelled  from  Charlbury 
to  London  and  back  several  times  a  week 
for  many  years. 

Dillon  contributed  numerous  papers  to 
archaeological  and  antiquarian  journals, 
lie  was  president  of  the  Royal  Archaeo- 


logical Institute  (1892-1898)  and  of  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries  (1897-1904) ;  was 
a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  (1905- 
1912)  and  of  the  Wallace  Collection  (1918- 
1931);  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  on  its  foundation  in  1902. 
He  was  antiquary  to  the  Royal  Academy 
and  was  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Armourers'  Company  of  London.  He  was 
appointed  C.H.  in  1921.  He  was  twice 
married :  first,  in  1870  to  Julia  (died  1925), 
eldest  daughter  of  Isaac  Brock  Stanton,  of 
Ottawa,  and  had  one  son  who  predeceased 
him ;  secondly,  in  1926  to  Margaret  Louisa 
Everard,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Henry 
Edward  Browne  ffolkes,  and  widow  of  the 
Rev.  John  Erasmus  Philipps.  He  died  at 
Ditchley  18  December  1932,  and  was 
succeeded  as  eighteenth  viscount  by  his 
nephew,  Arthur  Henry  (1875-1934),  who 
sold  Ditchley  in  1933,  when  nearly  all  the 
remaining  pictures  in  the  collection  were 
dispersed. 

Lord  Dillon  possessed  a  fine  head  and 
figure.  A  portrait  by  Georgina  Bracken- 
bury  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
and  a  portrait  by  Maurice  Codner  belongs 
to  the  Society  of  Antiquaries.  There  is  a 
monumental  tablet  in  St.  Peter's  chapel. 
Tower  of  London,  and  a  memorial  window 
depicting  his  kneeling  figure  is  in  Enstone 
church,  Oxfordshire,  in  the  churchyard  of 
which  he  is  buried.  A  portrait-medal,  by 
Sydney  Carline,  was  struck  in  1913. 

[The  Times,  20  December  1932 ;  C.  ffoulkes, 
Viscount  Dillon,  1844^1932  in  Proceedings  of 
the  British  Academy,  vol.  xviii,  1932  (con- 
taining a  bibliography  compiled  by  J.  G. 
Mann) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

C.  FFOULKES. 

DIXON,  Sir  ROBERT  BLAND  (1867- 
1939),  engineer  vice-admiral,  was  born  at 
Darlington  30  March  1867,  the  elder  son 
of  Robert  Bland  Dixon,  architect  and 
surveyor,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Ann  White- 
comb  Parr.  He  was  the  elder  brother  of 
Walter  Ernest  Dixon  [q.v.].  He  was 
educated  at  Queen  Elizabeth  Grammar 
School,  Darlington,  and  at  the  Royal 
Naval  Engineering  College  at  Keyhara, 
then  recently  established,  and  was  in  fact 
the  first  student  of  the  college  to  reach  the 
head  of  his  profession.  Thence  in  1888  he 
passed  for  further  training  to  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Greenwich,  with  the  rank 
of  assistant  engineer  (the  equivalent  of 
sub-lieutenant).  His  first  year's  progress 
qualified  him  for  an  additional  two  years' 
study  and  for  specialization  in  machinery 
design  and  the  more  scientific  side  of  his 


229 


Dixon,  R.  B. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


profession,  with  only  sea  service  required 
to  qualify  him  for  successive  steps  of  pro- 
motion. 

On  leaving  Greenwich  in  1891,  Dixon 
joined  the  Hecla,  one  of  the  earliest  repair 
ships,  in  the  Mediterranean.  A  special 
feature  of  her  equipment  was  the  carriage 
of  a  flotilla  of '  second-class  torpedo  boats ' 
which  were  hoisted  out  and  exercised 
together,  and  provided  the  initial  experi- 
ence in  the  evolution  of  destroyers  and 
destroyer  tactics.  On  promotion  to  en- 
gineer in  1892  he  was  sent  to  the  battle- 
ship Trafalgar,  and  in  1893  to  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Greenwich,  as  instructor 
in  applied  mechanics  to  assist  J.  H. 
Cotterill. 

After  two  years'  service  on  the  China 
station  in  the  Centurion  (1896-1898)  Dixon 
came  home  and  was  posted  successively 
to  Chatham  dockyard  as  assistant  to  the 
chief  engineer  (1899),  to  the  Admiralty,  to 
Portsmouth  as  first  assistant  to  the  en- 
gineer manager  (1902)  and,  in  1904,  soon 
after  his  promotion  to  chief  engineer,  he 
joined  the  staff  of  the  director  of  dockyards. 

In  that  same  year,  owing  to  the  change 
in  naval  titles  then  introduced,  Dixon  be- 
came engineer  commander,  and  as  such  he 
spent  his  last  spell  of  sea  service  in  the 
battleship  Dominion,  during  1907  and 
1908.  By  then  he  was  recognized  by  both 
his  seniors  and  juniors  as  an  exceptionally 
capable  and  popular  officer,  and  after  three 
years  at  Haulbowline  yard  as  chief  en- 
gineer, he  was  appointed  engineer  manager 
of  Portsmouth  yard  in  1912. 

Dixon  held  this  post  until  1917,  having 
been  promoted  engineer  captain  in  1915, 
a  period  which  gave  his  powers  of  organiza- 
tion and  technical  judgement  a  full  test 
on  account  of  the  great  increase  both  in 
men  and  machinery  demanded  by  first  the 
threat  and  secondly  the  outbreak  of  war. 
He  left  Portsmouth  in  order  to  become 
assistant  director  of  dockyards,  and  he 
remained  at  Whitehall  until  his  retirement 
in  1928,  being  successively  assistant  en- 
gineer (1919),  deputy  engineer  (1920), 
and,  in  succession  to  Sir  George  Goodwin, 
engineer-in-chief  of  the  fleet  in  1922,  re- 
ceiving then  the  usual  promotion  from 
engineer  rear-admiral  (1919)  to  engineer 
vice-admiral  on  appointment. 

On  retirement  in  1928,  Dixon  became 
chairman  and  director  of  several  engineer- 
ing firms,  notably  of  Messrs.  Babcock  & 
Wilcox.  He  was  an  active  member  of 
several  technical  societies  and  was  presi- 
dent in  1926  of  the  Junior  Institute  of 
Engineers,  and  in    1929   of  the   Marine 


Engineers.  He  served  on  the  Privy  Council 
committee  of  scientific  and  industrial 
research.  He  took  a  keen  and  continuous 
interest  in  engineering  education,  and 
served  on  the  committee  on  the  training 
of  naval  cadets  under  the  chairmanship  of 
Sir  Reginald  Custance  [q.v.]  in  1912,  and 
on  the  education  committee  of  the 
Mechanical  Engineers. 

Although  no  spectacular  advance  marked 
Dixon's  tenure  of  high  office  comparable 
with  the  introduction  of  the  water  tube 
boiler  and  the  steam  turbine,  the  British 
lead  in  Admiralty  engineering  was  fully 
maintained.  In  the  Kent  class,  designed 
to  embody  the  experience  of  the  war  of 
1914f-1918  and  to  meet  the  growing  menace 
from  the  air,  the  'unit'  system  whereby 
each  propeller  can  have,  as  required,  its 
own  independent  supply  of  steam,  with 
high  pressures  and  temperatures,  was, 
after  long  opposition,  introduced  in  the 
Nelson  and  the  Rodney  and  is  now  almost 
universal  in  aU  important  vessels.  The 
cure  of  '  condenseritis '  was  achieved  after 
prolonged  tests  by  the  use  of  cupro- 
nickel  tubes,  while  the  introduction  of 
corrugated  steam-pipes  to  provide  fora 
expansion  successfully  met  a  difficulty  in] 
spite  of  opposition  from  competent  opinion. 
Another  development  was  the  use  of 
electric  drive  at  cruising  speeds  for  auxili- 
ary machinery,  but  of  steam  drive  witl 
independence  of  the  vulnerable  'ringmain' 
when  in  action. 

At  a  time  when  the  German  navy  hac 
adopted  the  Diesel  engine — notably  in  the 
Deutschland  and  Graf  von  Spec — and  the 
United  States  in  the  Maryland  and  others 
— it  was  largely  owing  to  the  representa- 
tions of  Dixon  that  in  face  of  persistent 
and  repeated  pressure  the  Royal  Navy 
retained  its  faith  in  the  steam  turbine ;  a 
faith  fully  justified,  since  both  coimtries 
reverted  to  British  practice. 

Further,  during  Dixon's  term  of  office 
there  largely  disappeared  the  lack  of 
vmderstanding  and  contact  between  sea- 
going engineer  officers  and  the  higher 
engineer  officers  at  the  Admiralty  of  which 
the  former  had  long  been  conscious. . 

Dixon  was  a  man  of  quiet  and  retiring 
disposition,  with  great  tenacity  of  charac- 
ter. He  rarely  thrust  his  views  forward, 
but  was  always  ready,  when  called  upon, 
with  a  well  weighed  and  considered  opinion. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  on  leaving  Ports- 
mouth in  1918  and  K.C.B.  in  1924.  The 
university  of  Sheffield  conferred  upon  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.Eng.  in  1926. 
Dixon  married  in  1896  Hettie  Alice  (died 


230 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Dobbs 


1936),  daughter  of  Dr.  Frank  Sextus  Tuck, 
of  Aylesford,  Kent.  He  died,  without 
issue,  at  Sydney,  New  South  Wales,  while 
on  a  business  visit  for  Messrs.  Babcock  & 
Wilcox,  28  July  1939. 

[The  Times,  29  July  1939;  Admiralty 
records ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  Scott  Hill. 

DIXON,  WALTER  ERNEST  (1870- 
1931),  pharmacologist,  was  born  at  Dar- 
lington 2  June  1870,  the  younger  son  of 
Robert  Bland  Dixon,  architect  and  sur- 
veyor, by  his  wife,  Mary  Ann  Whitecomb 
Parr.  He  was  the  younger  brother  of  Sir 
Robert  Bland  Dixon  [q.v.].  He  was 
educated  at  Queen  Elizabeth  Grammar 
School,  Darlington,  and  entered  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital  in  1890,  graduating 
B.Sc.  (1891)  and  M.D.  (Lond.,  1898).  In 
1899  he  was  appointed  assistant  to  the 
Downing  professor  of  medicine  at  Cam- 
bridge. In  1909  he  was  made  lecturer  and 
in  1919  first  reader  in  pharmacology  in 
that  university,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
his  death.  He  also  held  concurrently  until 
1919  the  chair  of  materia  medica  at 
King's  College,  London.  For  his  services 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918,  in  the  Intelligence 
Department  of  the  Royal  Navy,  he  was 
appointed  O.B.E.  in  1919. 

When  Dixon  began  to  devote  himself  to 
pharmacology  in  1899,  there  was  no 
university  chair  in  this  subject  in  England, 
and  the  science  received  scanty  attention 
from  the  point  of  view  of  teaching  or  re- 
search. By  the  time  of  Dixon's  death,  chairs 
of  pharmacology  had  been  established 
in  many  English  universities  and  the  sub- 
ject was  attaining  somewhat  nearer  to  the 
recognition  which  its  importance  for  the 
practice  of  medicine  deserved.  In  fostering 
this  development,  Dixon  played  a  domi- 
nant part.  He  taught  pharmacology  as  an 
experimental  science  and  as  the  scientific 
basis  of  therapeutics.  As  a  writer,  teacher, 
lecturer,  and  investigator,  he  became  one 
of  the  foremost  pharmacologists  of  the 
■world.  He  was  author  of  A  Manual  of 
Pharmacology  (1905,  7th  ed.  1929)  and 
Practical  Pharmacology  (1920). 

Dixon's  own  original  researches,  of 
which  only  a  few  can  be  mentioned, 
covered  a  wide  field.  With  the  help  of 
I  various  collaborators  he  investigated  the 
physiology  and  pharmacology  of  the  bron- 
I  chial  muscles,  the  pulmonary  circulation, 
I  and  the  cerebro-spinal  fluid.  He  was 
greatly  interested  in  the  subject  of  addic- 
tion and  tolerance  to  drugs  and  in  various 
papers  dealt  specifically  with  particular 


drug  habits — tobacco,  alcohol,  cocaine, 
morphine,  and  Indian  hemp.  His  most 
significant  contribution  to  the  foundations 
of  pharmacology  was  made  in  1907,  when 
he  suggested  that,  when  a  nerve  is  excited, 
the  resultant  effect  may  be  due  to  the 
liberation  of  some  chemical  substance. 
Based  upon  somewhat  slender  experimen- 
tal data,  this  hypothesis  gained  little 
credence  at  the  time,  but  its  subsequent 
verification  has  completely  revolutionized 
conceptions  of  the  nature  of  transmission 
of  nerve  impulses,  and  has  constituted  one 
of  the  most  far-reaching  advances  in 
physiology  of  this  century. 

Dixon's  impact  on  his  generation  would 
be  imdervalued  by  mere  consideration  of 
his  own  contributions  to  science.  He  took 
a  wide  and  participating  interest  in 
medical  affairs.  His  witty  and  persuasive 
lectures  and  dogmatic  writing  had  a  potent 
influence  in  moulding  medical  thought 
both  within  and  without  the  confines  of 
his  own  university.  His  buoyant  and  reso- 
lute spirit  was  a  stimulus  and  example  to 
his  fellows. 

Dixon  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1911  and 
F.R.C.P.  in  1930.  The  university  of  Mani- 
toba conferred  upon  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  in  1930.  In  1907  he 
married  Hope,  only  daughter  of  Francis 
Glen- Allan,  of  Dulwich;  they  had  no 
children.  At  their  home  at  Whittlesford, 
near  Cambridge,  where  scientists  from  all 
parts  of  the  world  had  enjoyed  so  much 
hospitality,  he  died  suddenly  16  August 
1931. 

[The  Times,  17  August  1931 ;  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  ex,  B,  1932  (portrait) ; 
Journal  of  Pharmacology,  vol.  xliv,  1932 
(bibliography) ;  British  MedicalJournal,  1931, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  361  and  405;  Lancet,  1931,  vol.  ii, 
p.  429 ;  personal  knowledge.]    J.  A.  Gunn. 

DOBBS,  Sir  HENRY  ROBERT  CON- 
WAY (1871-1934),  Indian  civil  servant 
and  administrator  of  Iraq,  was  born  in 
London  26  August  1871,  the  second  son  of 
Robert  Conway  Dobbs,  of  Cappoquin,  co. 
Waterford,  and  Killiney,  co.  Dublin,  by 
his  wife,  Edith  Julianna,  daughter  of 
Henry  Fowler  Broadwood,  of  Lyne,  Sur- 
rey. He  was  a  scholar  of  both  Winchester 
and  Brasenose  College,  Oxford.  He  passed 
the  Indian  civil  service  examination  of 
1890,  entered  the  service  in  1892,  and  was 
transferred  to  the  political  department  in 
1899.  His  first  'political'  post  was  in  the 
State  of  Mysore ;  but  it  was  not  long  before 
he  found  his  way  to  the  North-West 
Frontier  with  which  so  much  of  his  later 


231 


Dobbs 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


career  was  to  be  associated.  Dobbs  carried 
out  some  adventurous  journeys  in  his 
earlier  years  in  the  poUtical  department. 
In  1902-1903  he  travelled  across  Persia 
from  Bagdad  to  Seistan:  in  1904  he  ex- 
plored the  little-known  tract  of  Hazarajat 
between  Herat  and  Kabul.  He  paid  two 
further  visits  to  Afghanistan  in  the  course 
of  his  career.  The  first  was  in  1904-1905, 
when  he  was  attached  as  secretary  to  Sir 
Louis  Dane's  mission  to  Kabul,  the  out- 
come of  which  was  the  treaty  by  which  the 
Amir  Habibullah  renewed  the  engage- 
ments entered  into  by  his  predecessor  in 
1880.  The  terms  of  this  treaty  aroused 
some  criticism  at  the  time;  but  it  stood 
the  test  of  the  war  of  1914-1918.  Later, 
in  1920-1921,  Dobbs  himself  headed  a 
mission  to  Kabul  and  negotiated  a  revised 
treaty  with  HabibuUah's  successor,  Ama- 
nullah. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Dobbs  saw 
active  service  as  political  officer  with  the 
Expeditionary  Force  in  Mesopotamia  and 
was  present  at  the  battle  of  Ctesiphon 
(22  November  1915).  He  returned  to 
India  at  the  end  of  1916  and  served 
successively  as  revenue  and  judicial  com- 
missioner (April  1917)  and  chief  commis- 
sioner (December  1917)  in  Baluchistan, 
and  subsequently  (1919)  as  foreign  secre- 
tary to  the  government  of  India.  In  1923 
he  succeeded  Sir  Percy  Cox  [q.v.]  as  high 
commissioner  for  Iraq.  It  was  not  an  easy 
post  to  fill;  nor  was  'Kokkus',  with  his 
immense  experience  and  prestige  in  the 
Middle  East,  an  easy  man  to  follow.  The 
circumstances  of  the  moment  were  ab- 
normal. Iraq  was  in  process  of  recovery 
from  a  period  of  acute  unrest.  The  worst 
stage  was  past,  for  Cox  had  already  laid 
the  foundations  of  a  more  stable  regime ; 
but  the  task  that  awaited  his  successor — 
that  of  raising  a  durable  superstructure — 
was  •  scarcely  less  exacting.  Dobbs  was 
fond  of  saying  that  he  liked  difficult  tasks. 
He  had  his  full  share  of  them  at  Bagdad. 
During  the  six  years  of  his  high  com- 
missionership  the  political  sky  was  seldom 
clear  for  many  weeks  in  succession.  One 
political  problem  followed  on  the  heels  of 
another.  The  election  of  a  constituent 
assembly,  and  subsequently  of  the  Iraqi 
parliament ;  the  ratification  of  the  Anglo- 
Iraqi  treaty ;  the  control  of  the  Kurdish 
districts;  the  Mosul  frontier  question: 
these  marked  the  successive  stages  by 
which  the  Iraqi  State,  under  the  high 
commissioner's  wise  and  sympathetic 
guidance,  advanced  through  adolescence 
towards  maturity.   At  each  stage  heavy 


demands  were  made  upon  his  tact, 
patience,  and  administrative  experience. 
When  Dobbs  retired  in  1929  he  left 
behind  him  what,  compared  with  the  con- 
ditions of  1923,  could  fairly  be  described 
as  a  prosperous  and  contented  country. 
It  was  also  a  country  which  was  to  acquire 
full  national  status  in  the  following  year 
and  to  afford  a  striking  illustration — not 
without  significance  for  the  future — of  the 
successful  operation  of  the  'mandatory' 
system. 

Dobbs  was  appointed  CLE.  in  1905, 
C.S.I,  in  1916,  K.C.LE.  and  K.C.S.I.  in 
1921,  K.C.M.G.  in  1925,  and  G.B.E.  in 
1929.  He  married  in  1907  Esme  Agnes, 
eldest  daughter  of  George  Rivaz,  of  Canter- 
bury, late  Indian  civil  service,  and  had 
two  sons  and  two  daughters.  The  last 
years  of  his  life  were  spent  at  his  family 
home  at  Cappoquin,  where  he  died,  after  a 
long  illness,  30  May  1934. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Dobbs  by  G. 
Kelly  in  the  Embassy  at  Bagdad :  a  copj 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 

[The  Times,  1  June  1934;  Annual  Registe 
1934;  Colonial  Office  records.] 

J.  E.  Shuckburgh. 

DOLMETSCH,  (EUGENE)  ARNOLl 
(1858-1940),  musician  and  musical  crafts 
man,  was  born  at  Le  Mans,  France,  24 
February  1858.  He  came  of  a  family 
musicians.  His  grandfather,  of  Bohemia 
origin,  settled  in  Zurich  in  1808.  There 
father,  Rudolf  Arnold  Dolmetsch,  was  born" 
and  became  a  pianoforte  maker  but  was  him- 
self a  musician  who  played  Bach's  fugues 
on  the  clavichord.  His  mother  was  Marie 
Zelie  Guillouard.  Arnold  was  the  eldest 
son.  He  was  thus  early  apprenticed  to  the 
craft  of  instrument  making  and  the  art  of 
playing.  After  his  father's  death  he  went 
to  the  Brussels  Conservatoire  for  a  general 
musical  education  and  studied  the  violin 
with  Henri  Vieuxtemps.  In  1883  he  en- 
tered the  newly  founded  Royal  College  of 
Music  in  London  and  was  encouraged  by 
its  director.  Sir  George  Grove  [q.v.],  not 
only  in  his  professional  career  as  music 
master  at  Dulwich  College  but  in  his 
investigations  into  the  early  English 
instrumental  music  which  he  found  in  the . 
British  Musemn  in  1889.  9| 

Thereafter  the  study  of  old  music,  th«!|| 
way  to  play  it,  the  instruments  on  which 
to  play  it,  how  to  play  them,  and,  when 
the  stock  of  old  specimens  ran  out,  the 
making  of  new  lutes,  virginals,  clavi- 
chords, harpsichords,  recorders,  and  ulti- 
mately   of    viols    and    violins,    became 


23S 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Donald 


Dolmetsch's  lifework.  His  chief  contribu- 
tions to  the  English  musical  renaissance, 
which  throughout  his  lifetime  was  growing 
from  roots  pushed  into  native  soil  by  the 
revivals  of  folk-music  and  Tudor  music, 
was  the  rediscovery  of  a  school  of  English 
composers  for  consorts  of  viols,  of  whom 
the  chief  were  John  Jenkins  (1592-1678) 
and  William  Lawes  [qq.v.],  and  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  recorder  (first  made 
by  him  in  1921)  as  an  instrument  of 
popular  music.  In  1915  he  published  The 
Interpretation  of  the  Music  of  the  Seventeenth 
and  Eighteenth  Centuries.  He  soon  after 
settled  at  Haslemere,  Surrey,  and  estab- 
lished workshops  there.  In  1925  he  founded 
an  annual  summer  festival  of  chamber 
music  at  which  old  music  unearthed  from 
many  a  library  was  performed  on  the 
instruments  for  which  it  had  been  com- 
posed and  in  the  right  style.  These  per- 
formances by  his  family  and  pupils  were 
not  always  highly  polished  in  execution, 
but  Dolmetsch  was  unabashed.  He  for- 
mulated his  principles  in  these  words: 
'This  music  is  of  absolute  and  not  anti- 
quarian importance ;  it  must  be  played  as 
the  composer  intended  and  on  the  in- 
struments for  which  it  was  written  with 
their  correct  technique;  and  through  it 
personal  music-making  can  be  restored  to 
the  home,  from  which  two  centuries  of 
professionalism  have  divorced  it.'  His 
sons  and  daughters,  who  were  all  four 
turned  by  him  into  versatile  executants, 
certainly  formed  a  domestic  consort.  His 
restoration  of  the  recorder  opened  a  new 
line  of  amateur  effort.  His  improved 
harpsichords  encouraged  the  use  of  that 
instrument  for  the  basso  continuo  of 
eighteenth-century  operas  and  oratorios. 
His  work  for  viols  and  lute  was  of  the 
greatest  antiquarian,  although  of  less 
general  musical,  interest.  In  the  words  of 
Sir  Henry  Hadow  [q.v.]  his  lifework  as  a 
whole  certainly  'opened  the  door  to  a 
forgotten  treasure-house  of  beauty'. 

In  1928,  in  honour  of  Dolmetsch's  seven- 
tieth birthday,  the  Dolmetsch  Foundation 
was  incorporated  for  the  'encouragement 
of  the  revival  of  early  instrumental  music'. 
In  1937  he  was  granted  a  civil  list  pension ; 
in  1938  he  was  created  a  chevalier  of  the 
Legion  of  Honour ;  and  in  1939  he  received 
the  honorary  degree  of  doctor  of  music 
from  Durham  University.  He  was  natural- 
ized in  1931.  He  died  at  Haslemere  28 
February  1940. 

Dolmetsch  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1877  to  Marie  Morel,  of  Namur ;  secondly, 
in  1903  to  Mabel,  daughter  of  John  Brookes 


Johnston,  of  Denmark  Hill.  By  his  first 
wife  he  had  a  daughter,  Helene  (1880- 
1924),  who  was  a  fine  player  of  the  viola 
da  gamba.  By  his  second  wife  he  had  two 
sons,  the  elder  of  whom  was  killed  in  the 
war  of  1939-1945,  and  two  daughters. 

There  are  portraits  of  Dolmetsch  by 
Sir  Max  Beerbohm,  Sir  William  Rothen- 
stein,  and  Nevill  Lytton  at  Haslemere, 
and  by  Edmond  Xavier  Kapp  at  Bedales 
Junior  School. 

[Arnold  Dolmetsch,  Dolmetsch  and  his  In- 
struments (privately  printed  at  Haslemere), 
1929 ;  Robert  Donington,  The  Work  and  Ideas 
of  Arnold  Dolmetsch,  Dolmetsch  Foundation, 
1932 ;  Musical  Quarterly,  April  1933 ;  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  ii,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes.] 

Frank  Howes. 


DONALD,  Sir  ROBERT  (1860-1933), 
journalist,  was  born  at  Corsemaul  in  the 
parish  of  Mortlach,  Banffshire,  29  August 
1860,  the  son  of  Robert  Donald,  a  mason,  of 
Auchindoun ,  by  his  wife,  Jane  (or  Jean)  Mc- 
Conachie.  Donald  early  took  up  journalism 
in  Edinburgh  and  subsequently  in  the  Eng- 
lish provinces,  Paris,  and  New  York  before 
coming  to  London  where  in  1893  he  founded 
the  Municipal  Journal  and  in  1897  the 
Municipal  Year  Book,  having  made  a 
special  study  of  local  government.  He 
edited  these  periodicals  until  1902  when 
he  became  editor  of  the  London  Daily 
Chronicle  (subsequently  News  Chronicle) 
to  which  he  gave  a  distinctive  character, 
increasing  both  its  circulation  and  its 
influence.  He  made  book  reviewing  one 
of  its  strong  features  and  developed  its 
literary  side  to  an  importance  equal  with 
news  and  political  topics.  He  was  also 
managing  director  of  United  Newspapers 
with  control  over  several  journals  outside 
London.  Although  never  a  keen  politician, 
he  kept  in  close  touch  with  liberal  party 
leaders  and  was  a  very  popular  as  well 
as  a  prominent  member  of  the  National 
Liberal  Club. 

In  1917,  on  Donald's  recommendation, 
Lloyd  George  created  the  Department 
(which  in  1918  became  the  Ministry)  of 
Information:  he  was  made  a  director  of 
it  and  in  that  capacity  strongly  advocated 
the  dropping  of  leaflets  over  enemy  terri- 
tory, a  device  that  proved  very  useful  and 
which  he  considered  the  War  Office  was 
far  too  slow  in  adopting.  In  1918  the 
Daily  Chronicle  was  sold  without  his 
knowledge  to  a  group  representing  Lloyd 
George .  Donald  at  once  resigned  the  editor- 
ship, declining  to  remain  under  control 


233 


Donald 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  the  new  board.  To  mark  the  respect 
for  him  which  was  felt  by  all  journalists 
irrespective  of  party  ties  he  was  enter- 
tained at  a  luncheon  and  made  a  speech  in 
which  he  accused  Lloyd  George  of  trying 
to  'corner  public  opinion'  and  declared 
that  no  editor  should  be  expected  to  work 
under  any  conditions  save  those  of  'abso- 
lute freedom  and  independence'  such  as 
he  had  enjoyed.  Limitation  of  that 
freedom  would,  he  warned  his  audience, 
be  a  national  danger.  Persons  who  became 
newspaper  proprietors  did  not  become 
newspaper  men  and  it  was  by  newspaper 
men  that  newspapers  should  be  conducted. 
The  speech  attracted  much  attention  and 
made  public  a  matter  which  was  more  and 
more  widely  discussed  in  the  years  that 
followed  and  led  eventually  to  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  royal  commission  on  the  press 
in  1947. 

After  his  retirement  or  'ejection',  as  he 
called  it,  Donald  occupied  himself  more 
with  public  affairs  than  with  journalism. 
He  bought  a  Sunday  newspaper,  the 
Referee,  and  an  interest  in  the  Yorkshire 
Observer,  but  neither  experiment  was 
successful.  Valuable  work  was  done  by 
him,  however,  as  a  member  of  royal  com- 
missions and  committees  on  local  govern- 
ment, wireless,  and  transport ;  as  chairman 
of  the  publicity  committee  of  the  British 
Empire  Exhibition  held  at  Wembley  in 
1924 ;  and  as  organizer  of  Imperial  Press 
Conferences  and  the  Empire  Press  Union, 
of  which  latter  he  was  chairman  from  1915 
to  1926.  For  these  services  he  was  ap- 
pointed G.B.E.  in  1924,  and  during  a 
visit  to  Canada  in  1920  he  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Toronto 
University.  During  his  last  years  he 
undertook  publicity  work  for  his  old  friend 
Ramsay  MacDonald  and  the  national 
labour  party,  and  also  wrote  several  books 
on  subjects  connected  with  European 
reconstruction  in  the  period  1920-1930, 
urging  that  special  attention  should  be 
paid  to  what  he  believed  were  the  '  danger 
spots  of  Europe',  Poland  among  others. 

In  all  that  he  did  or  wrote  Donald  gave 
proof  of  well  balanced  judgement,  steady 
industry  in  collecting  information,  wise 
foresight,  and  sturdy  courage.  He  engaged 
in  many  controversies  and  usually  won  his 
point.  To  him  was  due  the  recasting  of 
the  original  plans  for  the  British  Empire 
Exhibition,  on  which  he  made  severe 
public  comment.  His  vigorous,  well 
directed  efforts  led  to  many  improvements 
in  Post  Office  and  wireless  communica- 
tions. He  worked  hard  to  bring  about  the 


broadcasting  of  special  programmes  to  the 
British  Empire,  which  proved  of  great 
value.  He  married  in  1890  Marie-Jeanne, 
daughter  of  Professor  Garassut,  of  Paris, 
and  had  one  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
17  February  1933. 

[The  Times,  18  February  1933;  personal 
knowledge.]  Hamilton  Fyfe. 

DONALDSON,  St.  CLAIR  GEORGE 
ALFRED  (1863-1935),  successively  arch- 
bishop of  Brisbane  and  bishop  of  Salisbury, 
was  born  in  London  11  February  1863, 
the  third  of  the  four  sons  of  Sir  Stuart 
Alexander  Donaldson  [q.v.],  first  premier 
of  New  South  Wales,  by  his  wife,  Amelia, 
daughter  of  Frederick  Cooper,  of  Carleton 
Hall,  Cumberland.  He  was  nephew  of  the 
philologist  J.  W.  Donaldson  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  Eton  and  obtained  a 
scholarship  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  was  placed  in  the  first  class  in 
both  the  classical  (1885)  and  the  theological 
tripos  (1887).  He  was  trained  for  the 
ministry  at  Wells  theological  college  and 
was  ordained  deacon  in  1888  and  priest  in 
1889. 

Donaldson's  first  appointment  was  that 
of  assistant  curate  at  St.  Andrew's  church, 
Bethnal  Green,  in  1888,  but  later  in  the 
same  year  he  became  resident  chaplain 
to  E.  W.  Benson,  archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury [q.v.].  He  remained  at  Lambeth 
for  three  years  and  was  then  placed  in 
charge  of  the  Eton  mission  at  Hackney 
Wick  from  1891  to  1900.  In  1901  he  was 
appointed  rector  of  Hornsey,  and  rural 
dean  of  Hornsey  in  the  following  year.  His 
thoughts  had  long  dwelt  upon  the  pos- 
sibility of  work  overseas  and  it  was  in 
accordance  with  that  leaning  that  he 
acted  as  president  of  the  London  Junior 
Missionary  Association.  The  call  came  in 
1904  when  he  accepted  the  invitation  to 
become  bishop  of  Brisbane.  He  was 
consecrated  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
London,  on  28  October. 

The  year  after  his  arrival  Brisbane  be- 
came the  archdiocese  of  the  newly  con- 
stituted province  of  Queensland,  and 
Donaldson,  in  spite  of  his  protests,  became 
the  first  archbishop  of  that  province.  The 
work  was  of  a  very  varied  nature  and 
carried  him  as  far  afield  as  New  Guinea 
and  the  islands  of  the  Torres  Strait.  In 
his  own  diocese  his  rule  was  marked  by 
the  foundation  of  the  previously  projected 
Bush  Brotherhood,  with  headquarters  at 
Charleville.  He  revived  his  predecessor's 
project  for  the  building  of  a  cathedral  at 
Brisbane.    The  choir  and  transepts  with 


284 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Donaldson 


a  portion  of  the  nave  were  built  under 
this  fresh  in>petus  and  were  consecrated 
in  1910.  Later,  as  a  diocesan  memorial  to 
the  fallen  in  the  war  of  1914r-1918,  he 
succeeded  in  founding  the  St.  Martin's 
Hospital  on  a  closely  adjacent  site. 

On  a  somewhat  larger  stage  Donaldson 
showed  himself  the  champion  of  the 
Aboriginals.  He  also  took  a  leading  part 
in  the  vain  effort  to  disentangle  the 
Church  of  England  in  Australia  from  its 
'legal  nexus'  with  the  Church  at  home 
and  to  make  it  completely  autonomous. 
Further,  he  led  the  struggle  to  secure  the 
recognition  of  the  place  of  religion  in  the 
state  system  of  education  and  succeeded 
after  a  referendum  in  obtaining  the  right 
of  entry  for  denominational  teachers  into 
the  state  schools.  He  founded  (1907)  St. 
Francis  College,  Nundah,  for  the  training 
of  candidates  for  the  ministry,  and  also 
St.  John's  College,  an  Anglican  residential 
hostel  for  students  at  the  university  of 
Queensland.  His  main  object  in  these  two 
latter  measures  was  to  build  up  a  body  of 
Australian  clergy,  trained  in  their  own 
country.  The  success  of  the  effort  can  be 
seen  from  the  fact  that  whereas  when 
Donaldson  arrived  in  Queensland  there 
were  in  his  own  diocese  only  fifty-three 
priests,  thirty-eight  of  whom  had  been 
born  and  trained  in  England,  when  he  left 
the  number  had  risen  to  one  hundred  and 
sixteen,  all  but  thirty -two  of  whom  had 
been  born  and  trained  in  Australia. 

Donaldson  was  translated  to  the  diocese 
of  Salisbury  in  1921.  He  found  the  change 
to  a  highly  complicated  system  of  ecclesi- 
astical administration  as  trying  as  have  all 
other  bishops  from  overseas.  His  reform- 
ing efforts  to  leave  the  episcopal  palace 
and  to  divide  the  somewhat  unwieldy 
diocese  were  opposed  and  presently  aban- 
doned. In  order  to  meet  the  difficulty  the 
ancient  see  of  Sherborne  was  revived  as 
a  suffragan  bishopric  in  1925.  This  gave 
Donaldson  some  freedom  to  serve  the 
Church  outside  the  borders  of  his  own 
diocese.  When  the  Missionary  Council  was 
created  in  1921  he  became  its  chairman  and 
he  helped  to  organize  the  first  missionary 
schools  which  were  to  do  a  great  deal  in 
building  up  a  well  informed  public  opinion 
about  the  vast  Anglican  communion  over- 
seas. He  held  this  chairmanship  through- 
out the  formative  years  of  the  coxincil  and 
only  resigned  to  make  way  for  a  younger 
man  in  1933. 

Donaldson  also  served  as  chairman 
(1931-1935)  of  the  Canterbury  Convoca- 
tion committee  on  the  Church  and  marriage 


and  as  such  signed  the  report  of  the  joint 
committees  of  Canterbury  and  York 
which  was  published  in  1935.  He  took  an 
adequate  share  in  the  Lambeth  Conference 
of  1930,  showing  himself  as  always  alive 
to  new  movements  of  thought  while 
refusing  to  countenance  any  large  on- 
slaught upon  the  Church's  traditional 
faith  and  practice.  It  was  from  this  point 
of  view  that  he  defended  the  famous 
Resolution  No.  15  on  birth  control  while 
drawing  attention  to  the  very  careful 
reservations  with  which  it  was  protected. 

Such  wider  interests  did  not  prevent 
Donaldson  from  devising  new  ways  of 
dealing  with  his  own  diocese.  He  was 
particularly  interested  in  meeting  the 
needs  of  youth  and  of  those  educated 
people  who  sat  loose  to  the  claims  of 
orthodoxy.  For  the  former  he  organized 
week-end  gatherings  in  his  palace,  known 
to  the  irreverent  as  the  'bishop's  lipstick 
parties'.  For  the  latter  he  arranged 
courses  of  Lent  lectures  which  were  also 
held  at  the  palace.  Invitations  to  these 
lectures  were  eagerly  sought  and  those 
who  attended  were  not  deterred  by  the 
quickly  earned  sobriquet  of  'bishop's 
heathen'. 

Donaldson  himself  published  nothing 
beyond  the  ephemeral  writings  which  are 
the  duty  of  every  diocesan.  However,  the 
intensity  of  his  personal  religious  life  was 
revealed  by  the  posthumous  publication 
(1937)  of  a  small  book  entitled  A  Medita- 
tion on  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  which  was 
compiled  from  the  notes  which  he  left  of 
his  daily  thoughts  and  prayers. 

Donaldson  received  several  honours. 
Besides  the  honorary  degree  of  D.D.  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  Cambridge  University 
on  his  elevation  to  the  bench,  he  was  an 
honorary  D.D.  of  Oxford  (1920)  and  D.C.L. 
of  Durham  (1908).  In  1923  he  was  elected 
an  honorary  fellow  of  Magdalene  CoUege, 
Cambridge.  In  1933  when  he  became 
prelate  of  the  Order  of  St.  Michael  and  St. 
George  he  received  the  insignia  of  a  knight 
commander  of  the  order. 

Donaldson  died,  unmarried,  at  Salis- 
bury 7  December  1935.  Valuable  as  was 
his  work  in  England,  his  strongest  influence 
was  felt  in  Australia,  where  he  showed 
himself  the  greatest  ecclesiastical  states- 
man that  coimtry  has  yet  seen.  A  portrait 
by  Oswald  Birley  is  at  Bishop's  House, 
Salisbury. 

[C.  T.  Dimont  and  F.  de  Witt  Batty,  St. 
Clair  Donaldson,  1939;  personal  knowledge.] 

Wm.  Londin. 
(J.  W.  C.  Wand.) 


235 


Douglas 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


DOUGLAS,  Sir  (HENRY)  PERCY 
(1876-1939),  hydrographer,  was  born  at 
Dacre  Hill,  Higher  Bebington,  Cheshire, 
1  November  1876,  the  second  son  of 
Admiral  Sholto  Douglas,  by  his  wife, 
Maria  Louisa,  only  daughter  of  William 
Bickford,  of  Stonehouse,  Devon.  He 
entered  the  training  ship  Britannia  as  a 
naval  cadet  in  1890,  and  in  1892  was 
appointed  to  the  Cleopatra  on  the  North 
America  and  West  Indies  station  as  mid- 
shipman. At  the  end  of  1895  he  was 
transferred  to  the  Majestic,  flagship  of 
Lord  Walter  Kerr  [q.v,],  Channel  squad- 
ron, and  promoted  sub-lieutenant  in  1896. 
Then  followed  the  usual  courses  at  Green- 
wich and  Portsmouth;  and,  having  de- 
cided to  enter  the  surveying  branch,  he 
served  in  the  Stork,  surveying  ship,  in  the 
Pacific  for  nearly  three  years,  being 
promoted  lieutenant  in  her  in  1898. 

Until  the  end  of  1906  Douglas  was  con- 
tinuously employed  on  surveying  work  in 
the  Red  Sea,  Mediterranean,  China,  west 
coast  of  Africa,  and  home  waters.  He  then 
had  a  short  spell  ashore  as  naval  assistant 
to  the  hydrographer,  and  in  June  1907 
joined  the  Egeria  at  Esquimalt  for  survey 
work  in  the  North  Pacific.  A  year  later 
he  was  selected  for  command  of  the 
Waterwitch  for  the  survey  of  the  Malacca 
Straits  and  other  Far  Eastern  waters.  In 
March  1910  he  was  brought  to  Whitehall 
to  be  superintendent  of  charts  in  the 
hydrographic  department  and  held  this 
post  for  nearly  five  years,  being  promoted 
commander  at  the  end  of  1910.  By  this 
time  Douglas  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
ablest  of  the  younger  surveying  officers, 
and  when  Admiral  (Sir)  John  de  Robeck 
[q.v.],  at  the  beginning  of  the  Dardanelles 
campaign,  asked  the  Admiralty  for  the 
addition  to  his  staff  of  a  good  surveying 
officer,  Douglas  was  sent  out  in  February 
1915  and  joined  the  Inflexible,  flagship, 
and  later  the  Queen  Elizabeth  and  Lord 
Nelson.  De  Robeck's  dispatches  contain 
several  mentions  of  his  'work  of  inestim- 
able value  to  the  fleet'.  His  expert  work 
was  in  fact  indispensable  for  successful 
landing  operations  and  included  also  the 
compilation  and  printing  of  new  local 
charts  and  dealt  with  problems  of  mine- 
fields, ranges,  and  indirect  bombardment. 
His  zeal  and  ability  were  recognized  by 
promotion  to  acting  captain  in  October 
1915,  confirmed  two  months  later. 

In  June  1916,  after  the  evacuation  of 
the  Gallipoli  peninsula,  Douglas  returned 
to  the  hydrographic  department  and  held 
the  new  office  of  director  of  the  naval 


meteorological  service  from  April  19171 
until  January  1918.  Then  Admiral  Roger] 
(afterwards  Lord)  Keyes,  who  had  beenj 
chief  of  staff  to  de  Robeck,  asked  foi 
Douglas's  assistance  on  his  staff  at  Dovei 
in  preparation  for  the  Zeebrugge  anc 
Ostend  exploits.  He  was  accordingly  ap- 
pointed to  the  Arrogant  (Keyes's  flagship) 
for  indirect  firing  duties.  Keyes  reportec 
that  his  services  were  invaluable  and  hisl 
dispatches  of  May  1918  stated  that  the! 
preparation  of  the  routes  from  the  starting] 
point  of  attack  by  the  removal  of  obstruc- 
tions and  the  placing  of  navigational] 
marks  and  marks  for  the  long-range  bom- j 
bardments  were  carried  out  by  Douglas] 
and  his  assistant.  For  this  service  hej 
was  appointed  C.M.G.  and  received  thei 
Belgian  Order  of  Leopold  and  the  Italiai 
silver  medal  for  valour. 

From  February  1919  until  July  1921J 
Douglas  was  assistant  hydrographer,  anc 
then  resumed  duty  at  sea  in  command  oi 
the  Mutine,  and  later  the  Ormonde  tot 
surveys  in  British  Guiana  and  the  West 
Indies.  He  received  the  official  commen- 
dation of  the  governors  of  HondurasJ 
Jamaica,  and  Bermuda  for  surveying  worl 
in  their  waters. 

Douglas  returned  to  the  Admiralty  as 
hydrographer  of  the  navy  in  October  1924 
and,  on  completing  the  normal  five  years 
in  that  office,  was  offered  and  accepted  ai 
extension  for  three  more  years  on  condi- 
tion of  retiring  from  the  active  list.  He 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1929  and  K.C.B.  in 
1933.  He  reached  flag  rank  in  February 
1927  and  was  promoted  vice-admiral  on 
the  retired  list  in  1931.  After  retirement 
from  the  service  he  was  appointed  acting 
conservator  of  the  Mersey  and  chairman 
of  the  Dover  harbour  board,  and  on  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  September  1939  was 
employed  as  commodore  superintendent 
of  Dover,  where  he  died  the  following  4 
November;  he  was  buried  at  sea  at  hisH 
own  wish  in  the  Straits  of  Dover.  H 

Douglas  was  much  interested  in  the^ 
technical  side  of  his  professional  work  and 
had  a  probing,  inventive  mind  for  the 
discovery  of  new  aids  to  navigation.  When 
in  command  of  the  Waterwitch  he  developed 
the  Douglas-Schafer  sounding  gear  which 
did  much  to  facilitate  the  accurate  de- 
termination of  the  depth  of  water  in  from 
twenty  to  one  hundred  fathoms,  and 
received  the  thanks  of  the  Board  of 
Admiralty  'for  devising  and  perfecting  a 
sounding  traveller  for  rapid  sounding  for 
ships  under  weigh'  and  was  given  a  money 
prize  for  this  service.  He  was  an  enthusi- 


236 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Dreyer 


astic  advocate  of  echo-sounding  and  it  is 
mainly  owing  to  his  enterprise  that  this 
valuable  invention  was  adopted  for  general 
use.  Various  improvements  in  surveying 
apparatus  are  due  to  him,  especially  the 
development  of  the  45°  prismatic  astrolabe. 

In  hydrography,  Douglas's  interest  was 
mainly  in  improvements  of  instruments 
and  the  geodetic  and  astronomical  control 
of  marine  surveys  and  he  did  much  to 
improve  both ;  he  maintained  his  study  of 
meteorology,  begim  officially  in  1917.  He 
was  from  1928  to  1932  Admiralty  repre- 
sentative on  the  Discovery  executive  com- 
mittee, appointed  by  the  Colonial  Office 
for  the  promotion  of  research  in  the 
southern  and  Antarctic  seas,  and  took  a 
leading  part  in  the  design,  equipment,  and 
manning  of  the  new  ship  built  for  that  pur- 
pose. He  gave  close  and  invaluable  personal 
attention  to  all  her  proceedings  until  she 
was  finally  laid  up  shortly  before  the  out- 
break of  war  in  1939.  This  work  led  to  his 
being  associated  with  other  polar  explora- 
tion schemes  in  which  his  expert  help  was 
readily  and  unobtrusively  given.  He  had 
many  intimate  friends  particularly  in  the 
scientific  world  and  seldom  made  enemies. 

Douglas  was  a  younger  brother  of 
Trinity  House.  He  married  in  1898 
Katlierine  Chute,  second  daughter  of 
Captain  John  Mackenzie,  Lincolnshire 
Militia,  of  Belmont,  near  Kirkcudbright, 
and  had  one  daughter. 

[Admiralty  records;  Geographical  Journal, 
April  1940 ;  private  information.] 

Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

DOVE,  JOHN  (1872-1934),  journalist, 
was  born  at  Birkenhead  6  November  1872, 
the  second  son  of  John  Matthew  Dove, 
I  managing  director  of  the  Liverpool,  Lon- 
don and  Globe  Insurance  Company,  of 
j  Birkenhead  and  Boreatton  Hall,  Bas- 
i  church,  Shropshire,  by  his  wife,  Amy 
I  Gordon  Wood.  He  was  educated  at  Rugby 
I  and  New  College,  Oxford,  where  he  read 
classics ;  and  after  being  called  to  the  bar 
by  the  Inner  Temple  (1898),  he  became  in 
1903  assistant  town  clerk,  and  later  town 
clerk,  of  Johannesburg;  in  these  posts, 
and  as  chairman  (1907-1911)  of  the  Trans- 
vaal Land  Settlement  Board,  he  played 
an  important  part  in  the  work  of  admini- 
strative reconstruction  after  the  South 
African  war.  In  1918,  after  serving  during 
the  European  war  in  the  Intelligence 
JDepartment  of  the  War  Office,  Dove  be- 
came a  director  of  the  Commonwealth 
Trust,  a  non-profit-making  organization 
formed   to   take    over   the    sequestrated 


properties  of  certain  German-Swiss  mis- 
sionary bodies.  Despite  health  which  had 
been  permanently  injured  by  an  early 
hunting  accident  and  by  dysentery  con- 
tracted in  South  Africa,  he  undertook 
several  arduous  journeys  in  India  and 
Africa  for  the  trust,  before  returning  to 
England  to  assume  in  1920  the  editorship 
of  the  Round  Table,  the  quarterly  review 
of  British  Commonwealth  and  inter- 
national affairs.  The  Round  Table  had 
been  founded  in  1910  by  a  number  of  his 
friends  who,  like  Dove  himself,  had  be- 
longed to  that  group  of  young  men, 
affectionately  dubbed  'the  kindergarten', 
whom  Alfred,  Lord  Milner  [q.v.]  gathered 
about  him  in  South  Africa.  He  was  editor 
until  his  death,  which  took  place  at  North 
Aston,  Oxfordshire,  18  April  1934.  He 
was  unmarried. 

As  editor  Dove  always  took  great  pains 
to  ensure  that  nothing  which  he  printed 
should  be  inaccurate  in  facts  or  faulty  in 
balance.  Although  he  himself  wrote  very 
little  for  publication,  he  carefully  guided 
the  policy  of  the  review,  according  to  his 
own  luminous  idealism,  which  embraced 
a  strong  belief  in  the  need  for  cohesion  of 
the  British  Commonwealth  and  for  loyal 
support  for  the  wider  League  of  Nations. 

After  his  death  a  volume  of  his  personal 
letters,  mostly  written  on  his  travels  in 
India  and  Europe  after  the  war,  was 
edited  by  his  friend  Mr.  Robert  Henry 
(later  Lord)  Brand,  and  published  {The 
Letters  of  John  Dove,  1938).  They  reveal 
a  deep  sensitivity  and  insight  into  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  people  of  different 
nations  whom  he  came  across,  as  well  as 
great  foresight  into  the  future.  He  was 
a  man  beloved  by  many  friends.  Through 
them,  and  through  the  anonymous  pages 
of  the  Round  Table  and  the  work  of  its 
constituent  groups  in  the  Dominions, 
which  he  himself  had  helped  to  form  in 
1910,  he  left  his  mark  modestly  but 
distinctly  upon  the  thought  of  his  time. 

[The  Times,  19  April  1934;  Round  Table, 
June  1934;  Letters  of  John  Dove,  edited  by 
R.  H.  Brand,  1938 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  V.  HODSON. 

DREYER,  GEORGES  (1873-1934), 
pathologist,  was  born  at  Shanghai  4  July 
1873,  the  second  son  and  third  and 
youngest  child  of  Captain  Georg  Hannibal 
Napoleon  Dreyer,  of  the  Royal  Danish 
Navy,  by  his  wife,  Dagmar  Alvilde, 
daughter  of  Judge  W.  T.  Qvistgaard,  of 
Fredensborg,  a  well-known  jurist.  Their 
place  of  residence  was  Copenhagen,  but 


237 


Dreyer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


at  the  time  of  Dreyer's  birth  his  father 
was  in  Shanghai  in  the  capacity  of  diplo- 
matic adviser  to  the  Great  Northern  Cable 
Company. 

Dreyer  was  sent  to  school  at  Borger- 
dydsskolen  at  Christiansharn.  His  un- 
usually rich  education  in  mathematics, 
physics,  and  chemistry,  and  periods  of 
postgraduate  research  in  Denmark,  Ger- 
many, and  England  under  Carl  Julius 
Salomonsen,  Niels  Ryberg  Finsen,  Albert 
Neisser,  and  Sir  J.  Burdon  Sanderson 
[q.v.],  with  the  command  of  languages 
which  he  then  acquired,  supremely  fitted 
him  for  a  scientific  career  after  he  had 
graduated  M.D.  at  the  university  of 
Copenhagen  in  1900.  During  his  first 
appointment  as  demonstrator  of  patho- 
logy in  the  university  of  Copenhagen  he 
laboured  long  days  and  nights  in  research 
as  well  as  in  arduous  routine.  Here,  in 
collaboration  with  Thorvald  Madsen,  he 
made  valuable  additions  to  the  knowledge 
of  diphtheria-toxin  and  anti-toxin,  and 
studied  the  effects  of  ultra-violet  radia- 
tions on  micro-organisms.  From  the  be- 
ginning a  passionate  precision  of  technique 
and  a  loathing  of  slipshod  thought  charac- 
terized all  his  work,  and  it  was  in  the 
accurate  quantitative  measurement  of 
biological  processes  that  he  made  many  of 
his  most  notable  contributions  to  science. 

Appointed  in  1907,  when  only  thirty- 
four,  to  the  chair  of  pathology  at  Oxford, 
which  he  held  until  his  death,  Dreyer 
revolutionized  the  teaching,  and  by  his 
vivid  personality,  enthusiasm,  and  learn- 
ing attracted  a  steady  succession  of  col- 
laborators. Among  the  varied  fields  of 
research  which,  with  his  assistants,  he 
pursued  at  Oxford  were  the  principle  and 
practice  of  the  serological  diagnosis  of 
intestinal  infections ;  quantitative  studies 
of  blood-volume,  the  size  of  the  aorta, 
vital  capacity,  and  their  relations  to 
height  and  weight ;  the  calculation  of  the 
dosage  of  toxins  and  drugs  according  to  the 
surface-area  of  the  individual ;  inoculation 
against  typhoid  and  paratyphoid  fevers, 
and  its  effects  on  the  Widal  reaction ;  and 
methods  of  serological  diagnosis  in  syphilis. 
Putting  to  practical  use  in  the  war  of 
1914-1918  his  expert  knowledge  of  enteric 
fever,  he  instituted  in  1915  the  Standards 
Laboratory  at  Oxford  which  for  the  next 
thirty  years  provided  this  country  and  the 
Dominions  with  scientifically  standardized 
reagents  for  serological  diagnosis.  Later 
came  investigations  on  the  quantitative 
estimation  of  tuberculin,  on  variations  in 
the  virulence  of  the  tubercle  bacillus,  and 

288 


on  the  preparation  and  use  of  immunizing 
reagents  against  tuberculosis.  He  carried, 
out,  over  a  period  of  some  years,  a  success- 
ful field-test  of  the  latter  in  Danish  cattlej 
which  deserved  more  recognition  than  it 
received. 

Although  in  his  later  years  he  paid  in- 
creasing attention  to  university  business 
and  to  the  building  of  the  Sir  Williar 
Dunn  School  of  Pathology,  which  is  his 
monument  and  his  provision  for  the  am-1 
pier  development  of  his  science,  Dreyer'sj 
soul  was  always  in  research.  An  extensive] 
study  of  the  action  of  radiations  oi 
bacteria,  a  revival  of  an  earlier  interestj 
and  the  devising  of  quantitative  methoc 
for  the  estimation  of  bacteriophage- 
potency  were  the  main  activities  of  thi 
period. 

Dreyer  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
Kongeligi  Danske  Videnskabernes  Selskal 
in  1909,  and  in  1913  received  the  Frencl 
order  of  Officier  de  1' Instruction  Publique^ 
From  1915  to  1919  he  served  with  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force  in  France 
with  the  temporary  rank  of  lieutenant'^ 
colonel.  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  Fox 
his  war-work  on  the  oxygen  supply  tc 
high-fiiers  and  on  the  diagnosis  of  enteric 
fever  he  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in  1919^ 
and  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1921. 

In  1912  Dreyer  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  and  although 
professor's  main  allegiance  belongs  to  the 
university  he  always  showed  great  interest 
in  the  college,  which  profited  greatly  bj 
his  wise  counsels.  He  served  for  many 
years  on  the  hebdomadal  council  where 
his  unusual  power  of  understanding  the 
points  at  issue,  shown  in  university, 
college,  and  scientific  matters,  caused  his 
opinions  and  judgement  to  comman(^_ 
respect.  j^m 

Dreyer  married  in  1900  Margrete  Caro-" 
line,  daughter  of  Laurits  Jorgersen,  of 
SoUestedgaard  Manor,  Laaland,  Denmark. 
There  was  no  issue  of  the  marriage.  He  was 
naturalized  in  1912.  He  died  suddenly  at 
SoUestedgaard  17  August  1934. 

[Georges  Dreyer.  A  Memoir  by  his  Wife, 
1937 ;  E.  W.  Ainley  Walker,  Georges  Dreyer.  His 
Scientific  Work  at  Oxford,  1934;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4,  December 
1935  (bibliography  and  portrait) ;  Journal  of 
Pathology  and  Bacteriology,  vol.  xxxix,  1934 
(bibliography  and  portrait) ;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  H.G.Hanbury.    J 


DRINKWATER,  JOHN  (1882-1937) 
playwright,  poet,  and  actor,  was  born  at 
Leytonstone,  Essex,  1  June  1882,  the  only 
son  of  Albert  Edwin  Drinkwater,  a  school 


[iooi<fl| 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Druce 


master  who  came  from  Oxford  and  who 
later  turned  actor,  theatrical  manager, 
and  playwright,  by  his  first  wife,  Annie 
Beck,  only  daughter  of  John  Beck  Brown, 
an  ironmonger,  of  Oxford.  The  father, 
like  many  actors,  was  determined  to  dis- 
courage stage  ambitions  in  his  son ;  and  on 
leaving  the  Oxford  High  School  at  the  age 
of  fifteen  the  boy  was  put  into  the  service 
of  the  Northern  Assurance  Company  at 
Nottingham.  Later  he  was  transferred  to 
an  office  at  Birmingham,  where  he  met 
(Sir)  Barry  Jackson,  a  wealthy  young  man 
some  three  years  his  senior.  Both  were 
enthusiasts  for  the  theatre,  and  they  be- 
came co-founders,  in  1907,  of  the  Pilgrim 
Players,  an  amateur  dramatic  society. 
Their  work  was  so  good  that,  in  1909,  Mr. 
Jackson  decided  to  build  a  professional 
repertory  theatre  and  invited  Drinkwater 
to  become  its  manager.  Drinkwater  leapt 
at  the  chance  to  escape  from  business 
drudgery,  and  in  the  four  years  before  the 
Birmingham  Repertory  Theatre  took  full 
professional  rank  (1913)  he  not  only  acted 
many  parts  but  also  began  to  take  himself 
seriously  as  a  writer.  He  was  handicapped 
at  first  by  lack  of  a  cultural  background, 
but  boundless  energy  and  a  questing  mind 
soon  made  up  the  gaps  in  his  education.  By 
1917  he  had  to  his  credit  some  lyrics  of 
authentic  quality  and  several  verse  plays. 

Drinkwater  now  had  the  idea  of  writing 
a  series  of  historical  plays,  for  the  first  of 
which  he  chose  Abraham  Lincoln  as  his 
subject.  The  play  was  produced  at  Bir- 
mingham in  1918,  and  had  a  success 
which  led  to  its  transfer  to  London  in  the 
following  year.  It  was  staged  by  (Sir) 
Nigel  Playfair  [q.v.]  during  his  memorable 
tenure  of  the  Lyric  Theatre  at  Hammer- 
smith, ran  for  over  a  year,  and  established 
Drinkwater's  fame  at  a  blow. 

Although  none  of  the  other  plays  in  his 
historical  series — Mary  Stuart  (published 
1921,  produced  1922),  Oliver  Cromwell 
(published  1921,  produced  1923),  and 
Robert  E.  Lee  (published  and  produced 
1923) — enjoyed  a  similar  success,  each 
added  to  the  esteem  in  which  the  author 
was  held.  Later,  in  1928,  critics  who 
[accused  him  of  over-solemnity  were  con- 
futed when  Bird  in  Hand  (published  1927), 
1  comedy  of  contemporary  country  life 
|«Titten  with  the  lightest  touch,  was 
received  with  applause  in  both  England 
md  the  United  States  of  America.  Drink- 
ivater  became  a  busy  writer  in  many  fields, 
resides  making  occasional  appearances  on 
he  stage,  and  although  his  strength  was 
^reat,  he  overtaxed  it.  He  died  in  London 


25  March  1937.  He  was  twice  married: 
first,  in  1906  to  Kathleen  Walpole,  who 
acted  in  the  Birmingham  company  as 
Cathlcen  Orford;  this  marriage  was  dis- 
solved in  1924;  secondly,  in  1924  to  a 
violinist  of  note,  Daisy,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Arthur  Kennedy,  schoolmaster,  of  Nor- 
wood, Adelaide,  Australia,  and  formerly 
wife  of  Benno  Moiseiwitsch,  the  Russian 
pianist.  There  was  one  daughter  of  the 
second  marriage. 

A  bust  of  Drinkwater  by  Savd  Botzaris 
is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[John  Drinkwater,  Inheritance,  1931,  and 
Discovery,  1932 ;  Who's  Who  in  the  Theatre, 
1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  A.  Darlington. 

DRUCE,  GEORGE  CLARIDGE  (1850- 
1932),  botanist,  was  born  at  Potterspury, 
Northamptonshire,  23  May  1850,  the 
illegitimate  son  of  Jane  Druce  who  came 
of  farming  stock  from  Buckinghamshire. 
Little  is  known  of  his  early  life :  circum- 
stances were  evidently  difficult  for  his 
mother  and  in  1855  she  took  a  situation 
in  the  nearby  small  village  of  Yardley 
Gobion.  Two  ministers  of  the  Independent 
chapel  at  Potterspury,  J.  and  T.  B.  Slye, 
took  an  interest  in  the  boy  and  his  educa- 
tion. From  his  earliest  years  Druce  had 
an  eye  for  plants  and  a  remarkable  memory 
of  their  occurrence.  As  a  child  his  chief 
relaxation  and  interest  were  found  in  the 
collection  and  study  of  the  insects  and 
flora  of  the  country-side. 

In  1866  Druce  was  apprenticed  to  P. 
Jeyes  &  company,  of  Northampton,  a  firm 
of  retail  and  manufacturing  chemists. 
After  long  hours  in  shop  and  laboratory, 
in  which  he  was  soon  given  considerable 
responsibility,  he  somehow  found  time  for 
hard  study  and  in  1873  passed  all  his 
pharmaceutical  examinations  with  high 
honours.  Once  these  were  out  of  the  way 
he  felt  free  to  give  time  to  field  botany. 
He  began  to  collect  a  herbarium,  to  write 
on  the  local  flora,  and  helped  to  found  and 
organize  the  activities  of  the  Northampton- 
shire Natural  History  Club.  For  six  years 
after  qualifying  he  remained  with  his 
employer,  but  in  June  1879  he  suddenly 
broke  aU  connexions  with  Northampton 
and  took  the  risk  of  setting  up  in  business 
in  Oxford,  where  he  invested  his  savings 
of  about  £400  in  a  chemist's  shop  at  118 
High  Street.  The  cause  of  this  unexpected 
and  complete  break  with  Northampton 
may  perhaps  be  connected  with  his  parent- 
age. Local  tradition  has  it  that  he  aspired 
to  copy  the  industrious  apprentice  too 


239 


Druce 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


closely  and,  being  reminded  of  the  circum- 
stances of  his  birth,  left,  declaring  that  he 
would  make  both  money  and  a  name  for 
himself.  If  these  were  his  ambitions,  he 
succeeded,  for  he  left  a  considerable  fortune 
and  his  name  is  firmly  placed  in  the  litera- 
ture of  British  floristic  botany. 

As  soon  as  he  was  settled  in  Oxford, 
Druce  began  to  take  part  in  activities 
similar  to  those  abandoned  at  Northamp- 
ton. In  1880  he  helped  to  found  the 
Ashmolean  Natural  History  Society  of 
Oxfordshire  and  began  to  investigate  the 
county  flora.  In  1886  he  published  the 
Flora  of  Oxfordshire.  In  1895  recognition 
came  in  his  appointment  as  Fielding  cura- 
tor in  the  department  of  botany,  an  ap- 
pointment which  gave  him  official  access 
to  the  library  and  herbarium  there.  In 
1889  he  had  been  given  the  degree  of 
honorary  M.A.,  and  he  was  matriculated 
by  Magdalen  College  in  1902.  He  was 
granted  an  M.A.  by  decree  in  1919. 

The  cares  of  his  business  and  the  pursuit 
of  his  hobby  did  not  exhaust  Druce's 
energies.  He  was  prominent  in  free- 
masonry and  took  an  active  part  as  a 
liberal  in  municipal  affairs.  He  served  on 
the  city  council  from  1892  until  his  death, 
was  chairman  of  the  public  health  com- 
mittee for  thirty  years,  and  was  sheriff  in 
1897  and  mayor  in  1900.  He  also  served 
on  the  council  of  the  Pharmaceutical 
Society  of  which  he  was  president  in  1901 
and  1902. 

From  1903  until  his  death  Druce  was 
secretary  to  the  British  Botanical  Ex- 
change Club,  the  main  purpose  of  which 
was  the  exchange  of  specimens  collected 
in  Great  Britain.  During  Druce's  period 
of  office  the  membership  grew  rapidly, 
especially  among  amateurs  interested  in 
the  wild  life  of  their  counties.  The  secre- 
tary's reports  gave  Druce  a  medium  of 
publication;  as  editor  he  had  a  journal 
entirely  within  his  own  hands  and  in  its 
pages  his  more  original  and  unorthodox 
views  appeared. 

Druce  was  remarkable  as  a  topographical 
field  botanist.  He  'visited  places  not  in 
order  to  get  a  rare  plant  already  known 
to  occur  there,  but  to  find  out  what  other 
rare  plants  that  locality  afforded  and  to 
make  notes  of  such  as  were  absent'.  He 
travelled  in  all  the  counties  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  and  also  went  several 
times  to  the  Shetlands  and  Channel 
Islands.  As  the  cares  of  his  business 
became  less,  and  after  his  retirement,  so 
his  opportunities  to  travel  became  greater. 
He  accompanied  the  British  Association 


to  AustraUa  and  made  independent  visits 
to  Mediterranean  lands  and  South  America. 
From  his  eighteenth  year  until  the  end  of 
his  long  life,  Druce,  with  many  character- 
istics of  a  keen  investigator,  noted  and 
collected  plants  whenever  and  wherever 
he  could.  It  is  therefore  hardly  surprising 
that  'he  never  studied  intensively  nor 
became  an  authority  on  a  group '  of  plants. 
Indeed,  the  soundness  of  his  taxonomic 
judgement  may  often  be  questioned.  In 
nomenclature,  he  consistently  favoured 
the  earliest  name  for  a  plant,  whatever  the 
International  Rules  might  decree.  He 
appeared  to  take  delight  in  showing  that 
the  generally  accepted  name  should  be 
replaced  by  a  new  combination  reviving 
some  older  specific  epithet.  Criticism,  of 
which  he  was  impatient,  attacked  his  fond- 
ness for  creating  'nou.  comb.''  while  'his 
descriptions  were  singularly  unequal,  never 
orthodox  and  usually  avoided  the  citation 
of  types'.  The  results  of  his  wide  travels j 
in  Great  Britain  appear  in  his  Comital\ 
Flora  of  the  British  Isles  (1932).  In  com- 
piling this  he  was  greatly  helped  by  thej 
information  which  came  to  him  from  the 
Botanical  Exchange  Club. 

Druce's  best  work  is  to  be  found  in  his] 
four  books  on  the  Flora  of  Oxfordshire} 
(1st  ed.  1886,  2nd  ed.  1927),  of  Berkshire\ 
(1897),  of  Buckinghamshire  (1926),  and  of\ 
Northamptonshire  (begun  in  1873  and  pub- 
lished by  the  Northamptonshire  Natural' 
History  Club  in  1879,  revised  in  1930). 
He  also  collaborated  with  S.  H.  Vines 
[q.v.]  in  accounts  of  the  two  more  famous 
of  the  ancient  herbaria  at  Oxford,  that  of 
Dillenius  (1907)  and  that  of  Morison  (1914). 

Druce  died  at  Oxford  29  February  1932. 
During  his  long  life  and  as  a  result  of  his 
public  service  he  made  many  friends  and 
acquaintances.  He  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  university  of  St. 
Andrews  (1919);  obtained  the  D.Sc.  of 
Oxford,  by  examination  (1924) ;  and  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1927.  The  wide  respect 
and  affection  which  was  felt  for  him  was 
remarkably  demonstrated  in  the  celebra- 
tions of  his  eightieth  birthday  and  at  his 
funeral.  He  left  his  library  and  herbarium 
to  the  department  of  botany  together  with 
the  residue  of  his  estate  as  an  endowment,  j 
He  was  unmarried. 

There  is  a  portrait  by  P.  A.  de  Laszl6| 
in  the  Radcliffe  Science  Library,  and  aj 
copy  hangs  in  the  City  Hall  at  Oxford  ;| 
a  bronze  bust  by  Frank  Lascelles  is  in| 
the  department  of  botany,  Oxford. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Roycl^ 
Society,   No.    1,   December   1932   (portrait); 


240 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Duff 


Autobiographical  notes  in  Flora  of  Northamp- 
tonshire, 1930,  p.  cxxi,  and  in  Flora  of  Bucking- 
hamshire, 1926,  p.  cvi;  Journal  of  Botany, 
vol.  Ixx,  1932;  Kew  Bulletin,  1932,  p.  157; 
Pharmaceutical  Journal  and  Pharmacist, 
January  to  June,  1932 ;  The  Times,  1  March 
1932;  Oxford  Times,  4  March  1932;  Nature, 
19  March  1932;  private  information.] 

T.  G.  B.  OSBORN. 


DUDGEON,  LEONARD  STANLEY 

(1876-1938),  pathologist,  was  born  in 
London  7  October  1876,  the  second  son 
and  the  youngest  of  the  eight  children  of 
John  Hepburn  Dudgeon,  of  Haddington, 
East  Lothian,  by  his  wife,  Catherine, 
daughter  of  Alexander  Pond.  He  was 
educated  at  University  College  School  and 
St.  Thomas's  Hospital,  and  qualified  in 
1899.  Close  association  with  Louis  Leopold 
Jenner  and  S.  G.  Shattock  [q.v.]  led  him 
to  become  one  of  the  earliest  workers  in 
pathology  and  bacteriology  as  specialized 
subjects.  After  acting  for  a  short  period 
as  a  pathologist  at  the  West  London 
Hospital,  he  returned  in  1903  to  St. 
Thomas's,  where  he  spent  the  rest  of  his 
life,  and  became  superintendent  of  the 
Louis  Jenner  Clinical  Laboratory.  He 
found  students  eager  to  be  taught  and 
colleagues  willing  to  take  advantage  of 
the  application  of  pathology  and  bacterio- 
logy to  medicine  and  surgery.  His  col- 
laboration was  constantly  sought  over 
obscure  cases  in  the  wards,  and  under  his 
direction  the  clinical  laboratory  became 
one  of  the  most  important  departments  of 
the  hospital.  He  was  appointed  director 
of  the  pathological  laboratory  and  bacterio- 
logist (1905),  professor  of  pathology  in  the 
university  of  London  (1919),  curator  of 
the  Shattock  Museum  (1927),  and  dean  of 
the  medical  school  (1928). 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Dudgeon 
served  in  the  Near  East  as  a  temporary 
colonel.  Army  Medical  Services,  and  carried 
out  valuable  investigations  of  infectious 
diseases  prevalent  among  the  troops.  An 
account  of  his  work  on  dysentery  in  Mace- 
donia was  published  by  the  Medical 
Research  Council  in  1919.  For  his  war 
services  he  was  thrice  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches and  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1918 
and  C.B.E.  in  1919,  and  awarded  the  Order 
of  St.  Sava  of  Serbia. 

As  dean  of  St.  Thomas's  Hospital 
Dudgeon  enjoyed  the  full  confidence  of 
the  staff,  and  during  his  term  of  office  the 
medical  school  was  largely  rebuilt  and 
j  modernized.  He  was  for  many  years 
j  honorary  secretary  of  the  Voluntary 
Hospitals  Committee,    chairman   of  the 

»•»•  241 


Deans'  Committee,  and  a  member  of  the 
senate  of  London  University.  He  was  an 
active  member  of  the  Sankey  commission 
on  voluntary  hospitals  which  reported  in 
1937.  In  these  positions  he  exerted  con- 
siderable influence  on  the  course  of  medi- 
cal education  and  hospital  policy,  and  in 
particular  took  a  leading  part  in  securing 
co-operation  forteaching  purposes  between 
the  voluntary  and  the  London  Coimty 
Council  hospitals. 

Administration,  teaching,  and  the  claims 
of  a  large  consulting  practice  left  little 
time  for  research.  Nevertheless,  Dudgeon 
published  work  that  was  both  sound  and 
original.  He  was  the  author  of  The 
Bacteriology  of  Peritonitis,  in  collabora- 
tion with  (Sir)  Percy  Sargent  (1905),  and 
of  Bacterial  Vaccines  and  their  Position  in 
Therapeutics  (1927),  and  wrote  many 
papers  on  tropical  diseases  and  on  bacterio- 
logy and  immunity.  During  the  latter 
years  of  his  life  he  developed  a  technique 
by  means  of  smears  for  the  rapid  diag- 
nosis of  tiunours  and  for  the  detection  of 
malignant  cells  in  bodily  secretions,  which 
has  found  wide  application.  At  the  Royal 
College  of  Physicians,  of  which  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  in  1908,  he  was  Horace 
Dobell  lecturer  (1908)  and  Croonian 
lecturer  (1912).  He  gave  the  Erasmus 
Wilson  lecture  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons  in  1905  and  1908,  and  was  presi- 
dent of  the  section  of  tropical  diseases  of 
the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine  (1923- 
1925). 

Dudgeon  was  a  kindly  and  humorous 
man,  who  endeavoured  to  disguise  his 
warm  humanity  by  a  somewhat  brusque 
manner.  He  married  in  1909  Norah,  third 
daughter  of  Richard  Orpen,  of  Kenmare, 
CO.  Kerry,  and  had  two  sons  and  one 
daughter.  He  died  in  London  22  October 
1938. 


[The  Times,  24  October  1938;  Journal  of 
Pathology  and  Bacteriology,  January  1939 
(portrait);  St.  Thomas's  Hospital  Gazette, 
December  1938  (portrait) ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1938,  vol.  ii,  p.  922  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 
1938,  vol.  ii,  pp.  1031  and  1088  (portrait); 
private  information.]  W.  J.  Bishop. 

DUDLEY,  second  Earl  of  (1867- 
1932),  lord-lieutenant  of  Ireland  and 
governor-general  of  Australia.  [See  Ward, 
William  Humble.] 

DUFF,  Sir  ALEXANDER  (LUDO  VIC) 
(1862-1933),  admiral,  was  born  at  Knock- 
leith,  Aberdeenshire,  20  February  1862, 
the  fourth  son  and  seventh  child  of  Colonel 


Duff 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


James  Duff,  of  Knockleith,  by  his  wife, 
Jane  Bracken,  daughter  of  Alan  Colquhoun 
Dunlop,  of  Edinburgh.  He  entered  the 
navy  in  1875,  and  served  as  midshipman 
in  the  Mediterranean  from  1877  to  1881. 
He  served  as  sub-lieutenant  in  the  royal 
yacht  Victoria  and  Albert,  and  was  pro- 
moted to  lieutenant  from  her  in  September 
1884,  serving  on  the  China  station  for  two 
years  in  the  Agamemnon.  Having  quali- 
fied as  torpedo  lieutenant  he  served  for 
three  years  in  the  Imperieuse,  flagship  of 
the  China  station,  and  afterwards  (1891) 
in  the  Blake,  flagship  of  the  North  America 
station,  and  the  torpedo  depot-ship  Vulcan. 
He  was  promoted  to  commander  in  1897. 
After  two  years  in  command  of  the 
destroyer  Bat  on  training  service  at  Devon- 
port,  he  joined  the  cruiser  St.  George  as 
executive  officer.  He  was  promoted 
captain  in  1902  and  became  flag  captain 
in  the  battleship  Albemarle,  flagship  of 
the  rear-admiral,  first  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  later  in  the  Channel  Fleet. 

In  1905  Duff  became  naval  assistant  to 
the  controUer  of  the  navy  for  three  years, 
returning  thence  to  sea  service  in  com- 
mand of  the  battleship  Temeraire.  In 
1910  he  was  appointed  commodore  of  the 
naval  barracks  at  Portsmouth  for  a  year 
before  becoming  director  of  naval  mobi- 
lization (entitled  director  of  the  mobiliza- 
tion division  after  the  creation  of  the 
Naval  War  Staff  in  1912),  continuing  to 
hold  this  appointment  after  his  promotion 
to  rear-admiral  in  March  1913.  In  October 
1914  he  returned  to  sea  service  as  rear- 
admiral,  fourth  battle  squadron  in  the 
Grand  Fleet  (flag  in  the  Emperor  of 
India).  The  commander-in-chief,  Admiral 
Sir  John  Jellicoe,  recognizing  his  great 
technical  abUities,  put  him  in  charge, 
jointly  with  Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  Arthur 
Cavenagh  Leveson,  of  experiments  with 
devices  for  defending  ships  from  sub- 
marine mines  and  with  other  inventions ; 
during  the  battle  of  Jutland  Duff  flew 
his  flag  in  the  Superb.  When  in  December 
1916  Jellicoe  left  the  fleet  to  become 
first  sea  lord  in  order  to  cope  with  the 
immense  problem  of  the  U-boat  war,  he 
took  Duff  with  him  to  the  Admiralty  as 
director  of  the  anti-submarine  division 
which  was  then  formed  in  the  Naval  Staff. 
Six  months  later  Duff  joined  the  Board  of 
Admiralty  with  the  title  of  assistant  chief 
of  the  Naval  Staff  and  was  put  in  charge 
of  all  the  divisions  dealing  with  the  same 
problems,  being  replaced  as  director  of 
the  anti-submarine  division  itself  by 
Captain  (Sir)  W.  W.  Fisher  [q.v.].  To  his 


and  Fisher's  work  in  accomplishing  the| 
eventual  defeat  of  the  U-boat,  JeUicoej 
later   paid   a   handsome   tribute   in   his] 
book  The  Crisis  of  the  Naval  War  (1920). 
Duff  was  promoted  vice-admiral  in  1918] 
and  appointed  K.C.B.    On  leaving  the! 
Admiralty   in    1919    he    was    appointed] 
commander-in-chief  of  the  China  station] 
and  during  his  three  years  tenure  of  that] 
command  he  convened  a  conference  with] 
the    commanders-in-chief    of    adjoining! 
stations  which  reconunended  the  establish-1 
ment  of  the  naval  base  at  Singapore.  He 
was  promoted  admiral  in  1921  and  relin- 
quished the  China  command  the  follow- 
ing year.    He  was  appointed  C.B.  (civil) 
in  1912  and  (mihtary)  in  1916,  G.C.B. 
1926,  K.C.V.O.  in  1922,  and  G.B.E.  in| 
1924.    For  his  services  he  was  awarded, 
amongst  other  foreign  orders,  the  com- 
mandership  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  anc 
the  American  D.S.M.  He  retired  in  1925J 
and  settled  at  Copdock,  Ipswich. 

Duff  was  twice  married:  first,  in  18861 
to    Janet    Douglas    (died    1908),    third! 
daughter   of   Garden    William   Duff,    of 
Hatton  Castle,  Aberdeenshire,  and  hadtwol 
daughters ;  secondly,  in  1924  to  Marjorie,} 
daughter  of  Charles  Hill-Whitson,  of  Park- 
hill,  Perthshire ;  there  was  no  issue  of  this 
marriage.  He  died  in  London  22  November 
1933. 

[The  Times,  23  November  1933 ;  Admiraltj 
records ;  private  information.] 

H.  G.  Thursfield. 

DUFFY,  Sir  FRANK  GAVAN  (1852- 
1936),  Australian  judge,  was  born  in 
Dublin  29  February  1852,  the  elder  son 
of  the  Irish  nationalist  and  colonial  poli- 
tician (Sir)  C.  G.  Duffy  [q.v.],  by  his  second 
wife,  Susan,  daughter  of  Philip  Hughes, 
of  Newry,  co.  Down.  He  was  educated  at 
Stonyhurst  College  and  at  the  university 
of  Melbourne,  where  he  graduated  M.A., 
LL.B.  He  was  called  to  the  Victorian  bar 
in  1874. 

Duffy  was  for  some  time  an  officer  of 
the  Victorian  State  Treasury.  In  his  legal 
practice  he  devoted  himself  first  to  the 
County  Court,  where  he  became  a  leading 
practitioner.  He  subsequently  transferred 
his  practice  to  the  Supreme  Court,  where 
he  became  a  leader  of  the  bar,  being 
regarded  as  a  brilliant  cross-examiner.  He 
took  silk  in  1901.  In  the  course  of  a  busy 
practice  Duffy  found  time  to  lecture  in 
law  at  the  university  of  Melbourne,  and 
he  was  the  editor  of  the  Australian  Law 
Times  and  subsequently  of  the  Victorian 
Law  Exports.    In  addition   he  was   the 


242 


A 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Duke 


author  and  joint  author  of  several  works 
on  legal  subjects. 

In  1913  Duffy  was  appointed  a  justice 
of  the  High  Court  of  Australia.  The 
federal  character  of  the  Commonwealth 
constitution  is  such  that  the  High  Court 
is  not  infrequently  called  upon  to  pro- 
nounce upon  constitutional  issues  of  far- 
reaching  importance,  and  Duffy  was  a 
member  of  the  court  on  the  occasion  of 
several  famous  decisions .  In  the  Engineers' 
case  (1920),  one  of  the  most  famous  deci- 
sions in  the  history  of  Australian  con- 
stitutional interpretation,  the  High  Court 
overruled  earlier  decisions  in  which  it  had 
been  held  that  State  instrumentalities  were 
not  subject  to  the  operation  of  federal  law. 
Duffy  was  the  sole  dissentient,  and  in  a 
short  and  closely  reasoned  judgement 
expounded  a  view  of  the  federal  character 
of  the  constitution  which  denied  to  Com- 
monwealth legislation  a  general  power  to 
bind  the  States  as  such. 

In  an  earlier,  and  almost  equally  famous, 
case,  Farey  v.  Burvett  (1916),  decided  in 
the  course  of  the  war  of  1914-1918,  Duffy 
also  dissented.  The  majority  there  held 
that  the  defence  power  conferred  by  the 
constitution  upon  the  Commonwealth 
supported  the  fixing  of  the  price  of  bread. 
Duffy's  view  was  that  while  the  ambit  of 
defence  might  be  more  extensive  in  time 
of  war  than  in  peace,  a  power  to  legislate 
with  respect  to  the  naval  and  military 
defence  of  the  Commonwealth  did  not 
justify  a  general  regulation  of  the  national 
economy. 

In  general  it  may  fairly  be  said  that 
Duffy  was  unfavourable  to  an  extended 
interpretation  of  Commonwealth  powers. 
The  two  decisions  already  cited  are  per- 
haps the  best  illustration  of  this.  Again, 
in  cases  involving  Commonwealth  Arbitra- 
tion Court  powers,  there  is  evident  in 
Duffy's  judgements  the  same  tendency  to 
interpret  these  powers  restrictively.  On 
the  other  hand,  towards  the  close  of  his 
judicial  career,  in  the  Clothing  Factory 
case  (1935),  a  decision  involving  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  defence  power  of  the 
Commonwealth,  Duffy  was  a  party  to  the 
[majority  decision  that  the  peace-time 
I  activities  of  the  Commonwealth  Clothing 
'Factory  were  authorized  by  the  con- 
stitution. 

Duffy  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1929, 
and  in  1931,  on  Sir  Isaac  Isaacs  becoming 
igovernor-general  of  the  Commonwealth, 
jhe  was  raised  to  be  chief  justice  of  the 
High  Court.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1932,  and  resigned  the  office 


of  chief  justice  in  1935.  He  died  in  Mel- 
bourne 29  July  1936. 

Duffy  married  in  1880  Ellen  Mary, 
daughter  of  John  Richard  Torr,  ware- 
houseman, of  Melbourne.  He  had  six  sons, 
three  of  whom  predeceased  their  father, 
and  one  daughter,  who  also  died  before 
him. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Duffy  by  W.  B. 
Mclnnes  in  the  High  Court  Buildings  in 
Melbourne. 

[Australian  Law  Journal,  October  1935  and 
August  1936 ;  Commonwealth  Law  Reports ; 
private  information.]  Zelman  Cowen. 

DUKE,  HENRY  EDWARD,  first 
Baron  Merrivale  (1855-1939),  judge 
and  politician,  was  the  second  son  of 
William  Edward  Duke,  then  a  clerk  at  the 
granite  works  at  Walkhampton,  South 
Devonshire,  where  Henry  was  born  5 
November  1855.  His  mother  was  Eliza- 
beth Ann  Lord.  Without  any  advantage 
of  family  or  fortune,  he  was  educated 
locally,  did  not  attend  any  public  school, 
nor  was  he  a  member  of  any  university. 
In  early  life  he  was  a  journalist  on  the 
Western  Morning  News,  but  he  came  up 
to  London  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  and 
entered  the  press  gallery  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  While  there  he  read  for  the 
bar  and  was  called  by  Gray's  Inn  in  1885. 
He  joined  the  Western  circuit  and  acquired 
a  considerable  practice  at  assizes  and  in 
the  local  courts.  His  reputation  as  an 
advocate  soon  reached  London  where  he 
built  up  a  large  jimior  practice  and  took 
silk  in  1899.  He  was  recorder  of  Devon- 
port  and  Plymouth  from  1897  to  1900, 
retaining  the  recordership  of  Devonport 
(which  he  held  until  1914)  when  he  became 
unionist  member  of  parliament  for  Ply- 
mouth in  1900.  He  lost  his  seat  in  1906 
but  was  returned  for  Exeter  in  January 
1910.  In  December  1910  his  opponent 
headed  the  poll  by  four  votes,  but  after  a 
scrutiny  Duke  was  awarded  the  seat  by 
one  vote  and  held  it  until  1918. 

At  the  height  of  his  career  at  the  bar 
Duke  found  himself  opposed  to  such 
famous  advocates  of  the  day  as  Sir  Edward 
Clarke,  Sir  Edward  (afterwards  Lord) 
Carson,  and  Sir  Rufus  Isaacs  (afterwards 
first  Marquess  of  Reading)  [qq.v.].  Al- 
though his  industry  and  experience  had 
given  him  a  wealth  of  legal  knowledge, 
he  was  better  in  cases  tried  by  judge  and 
jury  than  by  a  judge  alone.  No  one  would 
dispute  his  claim  to  be  one  of  the  finest 
nisi  prius  advocates  of  his  time.  He  under- 
stood well  the  outlook  and  reactions  of 


243 


Duke 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  ordinary  juryman.  Tall,  with  a  com- 
manding presence,  he  was  a  slow  and 
deliberate  speaker,  and  had  a  slight  Devon- 
shire accent  which  attracted  attention. 
In  court  he  was  always  serious  with  a  pro- 
found belief  in  the  cause  he  was  pleading. 
Above  all  he  was  imperturbable  and  never 
upset  when  things  appeared  to  go  against 
him.  As  a  cross-examiner  he  was  formid- 
able, and  often  turned  to  the  advantage 
of  his  client  what  had  seemed  to  be  a 
damaging  answer.  Among  many  famous 
cases  in  which  Duke  was  engaged  were 
those  of  Adam  v.  Ward  (1914),  a  libel 
action  brought  against  the  permanent 
under-secretary  of  state  for  war,  and  the 
Slingsby  baby  (1915).  In  1915  he  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  and  was  ap- 
pointed attorney -general  to  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  a  post  which  he  held  until  31  July 
1916. 

Duke  did  well  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
achieving  more  success  than  lawyers  usu- 
ally do  in  that  assembly.  During  the  early 
days  of  the  coalition  government  of  1915 
he  sat  on  the  front  opposition  bench  and 
greatly  advanced  his  reputation  by  his 
speeches.  In  1915  he  presided  over  the 
royal  commissions  on  the  defence  of  the 
realm  losses  and  on  the  liquor  trade  con- 
trol losses.  Meanwhile  affairs  in  Ireland 
had  become  critical.  A  citizen  army  had 
been  enrolled,  and  broke  out  into  rebel- 
lion on  Easter  Day  1916.  The  actual  fight- 
ing was  chiefly  street  fighting  in  Dublin 
and  lasted  a  week,  only  about  2,000  rebels 
in  all  being  engaged.  The  British  troops 
lost  379  men,  including  106  killed,  while 
the  rebel  losses  were  trifling.  The  chief 
secretary  for  Ireland,  Augustine  Birrell 
[q.v.],  resigned  and  the  situation  was 
extremely  grave.  It  was  in  these  circum- 
stances that,  on  31  Jidy  1916,  Asquith 
appointed  Duke  chief  secretary  with  a  seat 
in  the  Cabinet. 

The  chief  secretaryship  has  been  the 
graveyard  of  many  reputations.  What- 
ever may  be  said  of  Duke's  tenure  and 
administration  of  the  office,  it  required 
high  political  courage  and  even  a  stern 
sense  of  duty  to  accept  it  at  such  a  time 
and  under  such  conditions.  The'  govern- 
ment at  once  set  on  foot  negotiations  for 
an  Irish  settlement,  but  they  failed,  as 
did  also  a  convention  of  Irishmen  called 
under  government  sanction  which  sat  for 
nearly  a  year.  Matters  consequently  went 
from  bad  to  worse.  Any  attempt  at 
concession  or  conciliation  was  regarded  by 
the  Sinn  Fein  party  as  a  sign  of  weakness. 
Early  in  1917  seditious  propaganda  had 


increased  to  such  an  extent  that  both  the 
military  authorities  and  the  police  urged 
the  need  of  strong  measures,  to  which 
Duke  steadily  refused  his  sanction.  All 
the  incidents  of  those  troublous  times  can- 
not be  set  out  here.  It  was  an  impossible 
task  which  confronted  the  chief  secretary. 
Sinn  Fein  continued  to  go  from  strength 
to  strength,  an  Irish  republican  army  was 
organized,  and  in  May  1918  Duke  resigned. 
Two  views  are  taken  of  his  Irish  admini- 
stration. Both  recognize  that  'the  verdict 
on  his  Chief  Secretaryship  must  be  modi- 
fied by  a  due  appreciation  of  his  position 
as  the  representative  of  Coalition  Ministries 
in  a  period  of  unexampled  difficulty'  [The 
Times,  22  May  1939].  His  critics  contend 
that  his  methods  were  too  conciliatory, 
that  he  resorted  to  clemency  when  a  firm 
hand  was  called  for.  They  say  that  he  had 
no  'imagination  or  breadth  of  view'  and 
that  he  lacked  'appreciation  of  the  Irish 
psychology.  The  troubles  of  that  time 
were  not  to  be  met  by  administrative 
routine,  however  conscientiously  carried 
on'  [IhidJ].  His  supporters,  and  they  were 
many,  say  that  he  was  a  high-minded 
English  gentleman,  that  he  did  his  best, 
and  earned  the  esteem  of  all  people  of 
good  will.  History  will  probably  find  far 
more  to  commend  than  criticize  in  his 
career  as  chief  secretary.  He  could  not^ 
command  success  and  it  is  difficult  to  se^H 
how  he  could  have  done  better  in  the^ 
situation  in  which  he  found  himself. 

On  his  retirement  from  Ireland,  Duke 
was  knighted  and  made  a  lord  justice  of 
appeal,  an  office  which  he  held  for  eighteen 
months  until  he  was  appointed  in  Novem- 
ber 1919  president  of  the  Probate,  Divorce, 
and  Admiralty  division  of  the  High  Court. 
The  presidency  is  an  office  of  great  com- 
mercial and  social  importance,  and  Duke's 
appointment  was  an  excellent  one.  His 
natural  seriousness  admirably  fitted  him 
for  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  a  divorce 
judge.  He  was  dignified  and  efficient. 
There  were  no  'scenes'  in  his  court,  no 
bandying  of  jokes,  no  laughter  during  the 
hearing  of  a  case.  During  his  presidency 
there  was  passed  the  Matrimonial  Causes 
Act  (1923)  which  placed  the  sexes  on  an 
equality  as  regards  grounds  for  divorce. 
The  work  increased  and  necessitated  the 
appointment  of  an  additional  judge  in 
1925.  Duke  in  his  summings  up  and 
judgements  showed  great  power  in  clari- 
fying the  issues  and  marshalling  the  facts. 
He  was  an  urbane  judge,  always  courteous 
to  counsel.  In  the  Admiralty  Court  he 
was  satisfactory  but  had  not  technical 


244 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Du  Maurier 


knowledge.  It  fell  to  him  to  wind  up  the 
work  of  the  Prize  Court.  He  retired  in  1933. 

Duke  was  raised  to  the  peerage  in  1925 
as  Baron  Merrivale,  of  Walkhampton  in 
the  county  of  Devon.  He  was  a  devoted 
member  of  Gray's  Inn,  serving  as  trea- 
surer in  1908  and  1927.  He  married  in 
1876  Sarah  (died  1914),  daughter  of  John 
Shorland,  of  Shrewsbury,  and  had  one  son, 
Edward  (born  1883),  who  succeeded  him 
as  second  baron,  and  one  daughter.  He 
died  in  London  20  May  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Duke  by  Sir  William  Orpen 
is  at  Gray's  Inn. 

[The  Times,  22  May  1939 ;  Annual  Register, 
1939;  E.  H.  Butcher  in  Graya  (Gray's  Inn 
magazine),  Easter  Term  1940;  personal 
knowledge.]  Sankey. 

DU  MAURIER,  Sm  GERALD 
HUBERT  EDWARD  BUSSON  (1873- 
1934),  actor-manager,  was  born  26  March 
1873  at  Hampstead,  where  he  lived  all 
through  his  boyhood  and  young  manhood 
until  his  marriage  in  1903,  and  whither  he 
returned  in  1916  and  remained  until  he 
died.  He  was,  as  he  himself  said,  essen- 
tially a  cockney,  but  he  was  a  Hampstead 
cockney,  a  cockney  entirely  different  from 
all  others.  He  was  extraordinary  among 
these  unique  cockneys  for  several  reasons. 
I  His  father,  George  Louis  Palmella  Busson 
du  Maurier  [q.v.],  although  the  son  of  a 
naturalized  British  subject,  was  a  French- 
man, born  in  Paris  and  married  to  an 
Englishwoman,  Emma,  daughter  of  Wil- 
liam Wightwick. 

Gerald  du  Maurier,  the  younger  son  and 
youngest  child  in  a  family  of  five,  was 
educated  at  Harrow.    At  first  indeter- 
minate about  his  career,  he  decided  that 
as  he   had   been   successful   in   amateur 
theatrical  performances,  he  might  as  well 
go  on  to  the  professional  stage.  The  deci- 
sion was  as  casual  as  his  style  of  acting, 
a  deceptive  style,  since  it  caused  shallow- 
jminded   people   to  think  that  he   'was 
always    himself    and    to    overlook    the 
remarkable  technique  which  he  brought 
:()  this   easy,   casual   performance.     His 
irst  appearance  was  made  at  the  Garrick 
Theatre  on  6  January  1894,  as  Fritz  a 
vaiter,  in  An  Old  Jew  by  Sydney  Grundy. 
I'he  management  was  that  of  (Sir)  John 
lare   [q.v.],   and   du  Maurier  appeared 
mder  it  because  his  father  and  Hare  were 
riends.    He  remained  with  Hare  for  six 
nonths,  went  on  tour  with  (Sir)  Johnston 
'orbes-Robertson     [q.v.],    and    then    in 
September     1895     joined    (Sir)    Herbert 
ieerbohm  Tree  [q.v.]  at  Manchester,  to 


play  the  part  of  Dodor  in  the  dramatic 
version  of  his  father's  novel.  Trilby,  which 
was  brought  to  the  Hay  market  Theatre, 
London,  in  October.  He  stayed  with  Tree 
for  just  over  four  years,  steadily  perfect- 
ing his  nonchalant  style.  Two  years  (1899- 
1901)  with  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  [q.v.] 
followed  his  long  engagement  with,  Tree. 
It  was  not,  however,  until  November 
1902  that  he  established  himself  truly. 
In  that  month,  at  the  Duke  of  York's 
Theatre,  he  played  the  part  of  the  Hon. 
Ernest  WooUey  in  The  Admirable  Crichton, 
a  comedy  by  (Sir)  J.  M.Barrie  [q.v.],  and 
his  nonchalance  was  now  seen  to  be  power. 
Thus  he  began  an  association  with  Barrie 
which  was  to  be  highly  beneficial  to  both 
men :  his  tally  of  Barrie  pieces  was  eight, 
including  Peter  Pan  (in  which  he  'created' 
the  parts  of  Captain  Hook  and  Mr. 
Darling),  What  Every  Woman  Knows,  and 
Dear  Brutus.  In  1910  du  Maurier  joined 
Frank  Curzon  in  the  management  of 
Wyndham's  Theatre  where  he  remained 
for  fifteen  years,  except  for  a  short  break 
in  1918  when  he  became  a  cadet  in  the 
Irish  Guards.  After  his  separation  from 
Curzon,  he  joined  Gilbert  Miller  at  the 
St.  James's  Theatre,  his  first  production, 
Frederick  Lonsdale's  The  Last  of  Mrs. 
Chcyney  (1925),  being  immensely  suc- 
cessful. 

Du  Maurier  was  knighted  in  1922,  and 
died  in  London  after  an  operation  11  April 
1934.  His  wife,  Muriel,  herself  an  actress, 
daughter  of  Harry  Beaumont,  a  solicitor, 
was  playing  with  him  in  The  Admirable 
Crichton  at  the  time  of  their  engagement. 
They  had  three  daughters,  of  whom  the 
second.  Daphne,  is  a  widely  popular  novel- 
ist and  has  written  successful  plays. 

Du  Maurier,  who,  in  addition  to  intro- 
ducing a  style  of  acting  which  is  now  over- 
common  and  almost  routine,  was  a  very 
skilful  producer  of  plays,  had  a  singularly 
successful  career  in  the  theatre.  His 
daughter  Daphne  wrote  of  him  'he  did 
not  know  what  it  was  to  wait  at  stage 
doors  to  interview  managers  and  beg  for 
a  part  in  a  new  production'.  If  his  good 
fortune  began  to  flicker  in  the  last  year 
or  two  of  his  life,  it  was  because  he  be- 
came careless  of  his  performance.  His 
moods  were  unusually  variable,  but  he 
rallied  easily  from  despondency  and  was 
good  company,  especially  when  he  exer- 
cised his  gift  of  mimicry.  His  family  affec- 
tion was  strong,  and  he  was  deeply 
distressed  by  the  death  in  action  in  1915 
of  his  brother  Guy,  a  professional  soldier 
who  had,  unexpectedly,  written  a  play, 


245 


Du  Maurier 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


An  Englishman's  Home,  which  was  remark- 
ably successful  when  Gerald  produced  it 
in  1909 ;  and  the  deaths  of  his  sisters  and 
of  his  mother  distressed  him  no  less.  His 
standard,  as  a  theatre  manager,  was  good, 
although  not  of  the  highest  order.  His 
profile,  he  declared,  was  against  him,  and 
debarred  him  from  poetic  drama  and 
tragedy.  But  he  read  poetry  aloud  very 
charmingly,  and  might,  if  he  had  trusted 
himself  more,  have  aspired  to  greater 
heights  than  he  achieved. 

There  are  portraits  of  du  Maurier  by 
Harrington  Mann  and  John  Collier  in  the 
possession  of  his  widow.  Another  por- 
trait by  Collier  is  in  the  Public  Library  at 
Hampstead.  A  portrait  by  Augustus  John 
was  last  heard  of  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  A  cartoon  by  'Spy'  appeared 
in  Vanity  Fair,  25  December  1907. 

[The  Times,  12  April  1934;  Daphne  du 
Maurier,  Gerald:  A  Portrait,  1934;  personal 
knowledge.]  St.  John  Ervine. 

DUNDONALD,  twelfth  Earl  of  (1852- 
1935),  lieutenant-general.  [See  Coch- 
BANE,  Douglas  Mackinnon  Baillie 
Hamilton.] 

DUVEEN,  JOSEPH,  Baron  Duveen, 
of  Millbank  (1869-1939),  art  dealer, 
patron,  and  trustee,  was  born  at  Hull 
14  October  1869,  the  eldest  of  the  ten  sons 
and  four  daughters  of  (Sir)  Joseph  Joel 
Duveen  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Rosetta, 
daughter  of  Abraham  Barnett,  of  Hull. 
He  was  educated  privately,  and  at  the  age 
of  seventeen  entered  his  father's  business, 
which  had  dealt  chiefly  with  oriental 
porcelain  and  objects  of  art.  He  quickly 
visualized  the  vast  possibilities  of  buying 
pictures  by  the  great  masters  from  Europe 
and  selling  them  in  America,  thus  adding 
enormously  to  the  activities  of  the  busi- 
ness, which  became  the  most  prominent 
in  the  art  trade.  His  intense  energy  and 
salesmanship  made  him  the  world's  fore- 
most dealer,  and  his  transactions  were  on  a 
scale  that  was  until  then  unprecedented. 
He  paid  £60,900  for  the  small  Romney 
portrait  of  Mrs.  Bromley  Davenport; 
£77,700  for  the  Lawrence  portrait  of 
'Pinkie'  (Mary  Moulton  Barrett);  and 
£73,500  for  Gainsborough's  'Harvest  Wag- 
gon'. Besides  these  auction  purchases  he 
acquired  privately  whole  collections  at 
immense  sums,  such  as  those  of  Oscar 
Hainauer  from  BerUn  (1906) ;  the  Rodolphe 
Kann  collection  from  Paris  (1907);  the 
Maurice  Kann  collection  (Rembrandt  and 


Boucher  rooms,  1909);  the  Morgan  col- 
lection of  Chinese  porcelain,  eighteenth- 
century  furniture,  and  the  great  Fragonard 
room  which  is  now  in  the  Frick  Museum 
in  New  York  (1914);  Robert  Henry 
Benson's  collection  of  Italian  pictures 
(1927) ;  the  Gustav  Dreyfus  collection  of 
Italian  sculpture,  bronzes,  etc.  (1930); 
and  Lord  Hillingdon's  collection  of  Sevres 
porcelain  and  furniture  (1936) ;  also  the 
two  superb  Raphael  Madonnas  of  1504 
and  1508  which  he  purchased  from  Pans- 
hanger  (Lady  Desborough's  collection, 
1914  and  1928);  Gainsborough's  'Blue 
Boy '  from  the  Duke  of  Westminster  (1921); 
and  the  Giorgione  from  Lord  Allendale 
(1937).  These  and  many  other  treasures 
passed  to  such  prominent  collectors  as 
Benjamin  Altmann,  Jules  S.  Bache,  Henry 
Clay  Frick,  Henry  E.  Huntington,  Samuel 
H.  Kress,  Andrew  Mellon,  Mrs.  Hamilton 
Rice,  and  Joseph  E.  Widener,  and  were 
presented  by  them  either  as  collections 
where  formed,  or  as  part  of  the  National 
Gallery  of  Art,  Washington,  D.C.,  and 
other  public  galleries  and  museums  in 
America. 

Duveen's  art  benefactions  to  this  coun- 
try were  on  a  princely  scale.  In  addition 
to  many  valuable  pictures  and  works  of 
art,  including  Hogarth's  'The  Graham 
Children',  Correggio's  'Christ  Taking 
Leave  of  His  Mother',  J.  S.  Sargent's 
'Mme.  Gautreau',  and  Mr.  Augustus 
John's  'Mme.  Suggia',  which  he  presented 
to  the  national  collections,  he  gave  to  the 
Tate  Gallery  in  1926  several  galleries  for 
modern  foreign  art  and  one  devoted  to 
the  work  of  Sargent,  and  in  1937  a  new 
building  comprising  three  large  and  two 
smaller  galleries  for  modern  sculpture ;  to 
the  National  Gallery  in  1932  a  gallery 
for  Italian  primitives;  to  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery  in  1933  an  extension; 
and  to  the  British  Museum  a  gallery  for 
the  Elgin  marbles.  He  also  bore  the  cost 
of  the  decorations  at  the  Wallace  Col- 
lection and  of  Rex  Whistler's  mural 
decorations  at  the  Tate,  and  was  a  generous 
contributor  to  the  National  Art-Collec- 
tions Fund.  He  foimded,  financed,  and 
organized  the  British  Artists  Exhibitions 
Organization  for  the  encouragement  of 
lesser  known  British  artists ;  and  in  1931 
he  endowed  a  chair  for  the  history  of  art 
in  London  University. 

Duveen  was  a  trustee  of  the  Wallace 
Collection  from  1925;  of  the  National 
Gallery  from  1929  to  1936;  and  of  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  from  1933.  He 
was  an  honorary  member  of  the  council 


I 


246 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Dyson,  F.  W. 


of  the  National  Art-Collections  Fund  and 
of  the  Council  of  the  British  School  at 
Rome.  He  was  director  of  the  American 
Institute  for  Persian  Art  and  Archaeology, 
New  York  City ;  a  trustee  of  the  Museum 
of  Modern  Art,  New  York ;  and  honorary 
correspondent  of  the  Commissions  of 
Ancient  and  Modern  Art  of  the  Royal 
Belgium  Museum  of  Fine  Art.  In  1929  he 
was  presented  with  the  freedom  of  the 
city  of  Hull.  He  received  foreign  decora- 
tions from  France,  Belgium,  Holland, 
Serbia,  and  Hungary.  He  was  knighted 
in  1919,  created  a  baronet  in  1927,  and 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Duveen, 
of  Millbank  (commemorating  his  long 
association  with  the  Tate  Gallery)  in  1933. 

Duveen  married  in  1899  Elsie,  daughter 
of  Gustav  Salamon,  of  New  York.  She 
survived  him  with  their  only  child,  a 
daughter.  The  peerage  therefore  became 
extinct  on  his  death,  which  took  place  in 
London  25  May  1939. 

There  is  a  pencil  drawing  of  Duveen 
by  W.  E.  Tittle,  and  also  a  stone  bust  by 
Sir  W.  Reid  Dick,  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

[The  Times,  26  May  1939 ;  A.  C.  R.  Carter, 
Let  Me  Tell  You,  1940;  Auction  and  exhibi- 
tion catalogues ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alec  Maktin. 

DYKE,  Sir  WILLIAM  HART,  seventh 
baronet  (1837-1931),  politician,  was  bom 
at  East  Hall,  Orpington,  Kent,  7  August 
1837,  the  second  son  of  (Sir)  Percyvall 
Hart  Dyke,  sixth  baronet,  of  Lullingstone 
iCastle,  Eynesford,  Kent,  by  his  wife,  Eliza- 
beth, youngest  daughter  of  John  Wells,  of 
Bickley  Park,  Kent.  He  was  educated  at 
Harrow  and  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

At  Oxford  Dyke  was  the  most  famous 

"ackets  player  of  his  day.   He  played  for 

'our  years  against  Cambridge,  and  won 

ivery  match,  both  doubles  and  singles. 

En  1862  he  challenged  Francis  Erwood, 

he  professional  at  Woolwich  and  holder 

)f  the  world's  championship,  and  won  by 

bur  games  to  two  at  Woolwich  and  by 

our  games  to  one  at  the  old  Prince's  Club 

a  Hans  Place,  Chelsea.   To  him  was  due 

jhe  starting  of  the  public  schools'  rackets 

jhampionship.     He    was    very    fond    of 

?nnis  and  kept  up  the  game  at  Prince's 

lub,  Knightsbridge,  imtil  he  was  well 

ast  his  seventieth  year.  He  was  also  an 

riginator  of  lawn  tennis.  In  1873,  a  year 

efore  Major  W.  C.  Wingfield  took  out  a 

atent  for  'Sphairistike',  Dyke  and  two 

iends  laid  out  a  court  at  Lullingstone 

astle  and  played  the  first  game. 


Although  Dyke  wished  to  enter  the 
navy,  he  acquiesced  in  his  father's  desire 
that  he  should  go  into  parliament.  He 
was  elected  conservative  member  for  West 
Kent  in  1865  and  represented  Mid  Kent 
from  1868  to  1885.  Before  the  general 
election  in  the  last-named  year  he  was 
candidate  for  the  Med  way  division, 
regarded  as  a  safe  seat,  but  he  was  soli- 
cited to  contest  the  Dartford  division, 
considered  a  probable  Uberal  division,  and 
was  returned  at  the  head  of  the  poll ;  and 
he  sat  for  Dartford  until  the  liberal  revival 
of  1906,  when  he  was  defeated  and  retired 
from  parliament  into  private  life.  In  1868 
he  was  appointed  a  whip  and  in  1874  he 
was  promoted  to  be  chief  whip  as  patron- 
age secretary  to  the  Treasury.  In  this 
capacity,  known  as  'Billy  Dyke',  he  had 
great  influence  with  his  party  and  was 
esteemed  by  his  opponents.  He  was  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council  in  1880. 

In  1885,  when  Lord  Salisbury  came  into 
office  for  a  few  months.  Dyke  was  ap- 
pointed chief  secretary  for  Ireland  and 
sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy  Coiincil.  During 
this  administration  the  Ashbourne  Act 
was  passed.  In  Salisbury's  second  admini- 
stration he  was  appointed  vice-president 
of  the  committee  of  council  on  education 
(1887-1892).  He  estabUshed  a  reputation 
as  an  efficient  and  conscientious  admini- 
strator and  was  partly  responsible  for  the 
code  of  1890  which  was  the  first  step  in 
the  abolition  of  the  system  of  'payment 
by  results'.  During  its  passage  through 
the  House  of  Commons  he  was  in  charge 
of  the  free  education  bill. 

Dyke,  who  succeeded  his  father  in  1875, 
spent  practically  his  whole  life  in  Kent, 
being  alderman  of  the  county  council  as 
well  as  deputy-Ueutenant.  He  married  in 
1870  Lady  Emily  Caroline,  elder  daughter 
of  John  William  Montagu,  seventh  Earl  of 
Sandwich.  They  celebrated  their  diamond 
wedding.  They  had  three  sons,  the  two 
elder  of  whom  predeceased  their  father, 
the  second  in  infancy,  and  three  daughters. 
Dyke  died  at  Lullingstone  Castle  3  July 
1931  in  his  ninety-fourth  year,  and  was 
succeeded  as  eighth  baronet  by  his 
yovmgest  son,  Oliver  Hamilton  Augustus 
(born  1885). 

[The  Times,  4  July  1931.] 

E.  I.  Carlyle. 

DYSON,    Sir    FRANK    (WATSON) 

(1868-1939),  astronomer,  was  born  at 
Measham,  near  Ashby  de  la  Zouche, 
8  January  1868,  the  eldest  child  in  a 
family  of  four  sons  and  three  daughters 


247 


Dyson,  F.  W. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


of  Watson  Dyson,  a  Baptist  minister,  by 
his  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of  James 
Dodwell,  of  Long  Crendon,  Buckingham- 
shire. Educated  at  Bradford  Grammar 
School  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
being  a  scholar  of  the  latter,  he  was 
second  wrangler  in  the  mathematical  tri- 
pos of  1889  and  in  1891  was  first  Smith's 
prizeman  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his 
college.  In  1892  he  was  awarded  an  Isaac 
Newton  studentship  for  research  in  astro- 
nomy. In  1894  he  was  selected  by  the 
astronomer  royal,  (Sir)  W.  H.  M.  Christie 
[q.v.],  to  fill  the  post  of  chief  assistant  at 
the  Royal  Observatory,  Greenwich.  The 
choice  proved  a  singularly  happy  one  and 
Dyson  devoted  himself  with  energy  and 
enthusiasm  to  the  advancement  of  practi- 
cal astronomy.  His  first  task  was  to  take 
charge  of  the  Greenwich  share  in  the  great 
international  co-operative  scheme  for  the 
preparation  of  a  star-catalogue  and  star- 
map  of  the  whole  sky.  This  work  brought 
home  to  him  the  need  of  an  increase  in 
knowledge  of  the  motions  of  the  stars.  He 
therefore  undertook,  with  William  Grasset 
Thackeray,  a  new  reduction  of  the  27,000 
observations  of  more  than  4,000  circum- 
polar  stars  made  at  Blackheath  between 
1806  and  1819  by  Stephen  Groombridge 
[q.v.].  The  stars  were  re-observed  at 
Greenwich  and  their  motions  were  derived. 
This  work  made  an  important  addition  to 
the  knowledge  of  stellar  motions,  which  it 
extended  to  fainter  stars. 

In  1906  Dyson  was  appointed  astro- 
nomer royal  for  Scotland.  He  made 
investigations  of  stellar  motions  in  rela- 
tion to  the  distances  and  luminosities  of 
the  stars  and  to  their  distribution  in  space. 
He  showed  that  the  phenomenon  of  star 
streaming,  which  had  been  announced  by 
Jacobus  Cornelius  Kaptejoi  in  1904,  was 
confirmed  by  stars  of  large  proper-motion. 

In  1910,  on  the  retirement  of  Christie, 
Dyson  returned  to  Greenwich  as  astro- 
nomer royal  and  from  then  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1933  a  description  of  his  work  is 
largely  a  description  of  the  work  of  the 
Royal  Observatory  at  Greenwich.  This 
was  extended  in  many  new  directions :  the 
determination  of  stellar  parallaxes  and 
proper-motions  by  photographic  methods, 
of  stellar  magnitudes,  of  effective  wave- 
lengths, and  of  temperatures  were  under- 
taken. Particular  attention  was  given  to 
the  reduction  and  discussion  of  meridian 
observations,  the  programmes  of  observa- 
tion being  chosen  with  care  to  meet  the 
needs  of  practical  astronomy.  Sanction 
was  obtained  for  the  construction  of  a 


new  transit  circle  of  the  highest  modem 
standard.  The  time  service  was  greatly 
improved  and  clocks  of  a  new  type,  known 
as  free-pendulum  clocks,  of  much  higher 
precision  than  earlier  clocks,  were  installed 
as  the  standards  of  time.  In  1924  the 
distribution  through  the  British  Broad- 
casting Corporation  of  time  signals  from 
Greenwich  was  begun,  and  in  1927  from 
the  Post  Office  wireless  station  at  Rugby 
the  transmission  of  wireless  time  signals 
of  world-wide  range  for  the  benefit  of 
shipping  was  inaugurated.  Dyson  was  for 
many  years  president  of  the  British  Horo- 
logical  Institute,  which  awarded  him  its 
gold  medal  in  1928.  He  was  also  twice 
master  of  the  Clockmakers'  Company. 
Under  his  direction  the  prestige  of  the 
Royal  Observatory  was  greatly  enhanced. 

Dyson  was  keenly  interested  in  total 
eclipses  of  the  sun.  He  observed  the 
eclipses  of  1900  in  Portugal,  1901  in 
Sumatra,  1905  in  Tunis,  1912  in  Paris, 
1927  at  Giggleswick,  and  1932  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  he  made 
important  contributions  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  spectra  of  the  sun's  chromosphere 
and  corona.  He  organized  the  two  expedi- 
tions, one  from  Greenwich  and  one  from 
Cambridge,  to  test,  at  the  eclipse  of  1919, 
Dr.  Albert  Einstein's  prediction  of  the 
deflexion  of  star-light  in  the  sun's  gravita- 
tional field.  The  successful  results  ob- 
tained by  these  expeditions  confirmed  the 
prediction  and  did  much  to  secure  general 
acceptance  of  Dr.  Einstein's  generalized 
theory  of  relativity. 

Dyson  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  re- 
constitution  of  international  scientific  co- 
operation after  the  war  of  1914^1918 
through  the  International  Research  Coun- 
cil and  in  the  formation  of  the  Inter- 
national Astronomical  Union,  of  which  he 
was  president  for  the  period  1928-1932. 
A  gift  in  1931  by  Mr.  W.  Johnston  Yapp 
to  the  Royal  Observatory  of  a  fine  36-inch 
reflecting  telescope  to  commemorate  the 
great  services  of  Dyson  as  astronomer 
royal  was  gratefully  accepted  by  the  lords 
commissioners  of  the  Admiralty  and  is  a 
fitting  memorial  of  his  important  con- 
tributions to  astronomy.  He  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society 
from  1911  to  1913,  and  of  the  British 
Astronomical  Association  from  1916  to 
1918,  and  from  1913  to  1914  vice-president 
of  the  Royal  Society,  of  which  he  had  been 
elected  a  fellow  in  1901.  He  was  awarded 
a  Royal  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  in 
1921,  the  Bruce  gold  medal  of  the  Astro- 
nomical Society  of  the  Pacific  in  1922,  and 


248 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Edge 


the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Astronomical 
Society  in  1925.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Cambridge,  Edinburgh,  Durham,  Leeds, 
Toronto,  Perth,  and  Melbourne,  and  was 
foreign  or  corresponding  member  of  various 
academies.  He  was  knighted  in  1915  and 
appointed  K.B.E.  in  1926. 

Dyson  was  a  man  of  engaging  personality 
and  of  singular  charm  of  manner.  He 
married  in  1894  Caroline  Bisset  (died 
1937),  daughter  of  Palemon  Best,  M.B., 
J. P.,  of  Louth,  Lincolnshire,  and  had  two 
sons  and  six  daughters.  He  died  at  sea 
25  May  1939,  when  returning  from  a  visit 
to  Australia. 

[The  Times,  26  May  1939;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8,  January 
1940  (portrait) ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  H.  Spencer  Jones. 

DYSON,  WILLIAM  HENRY  (WILL) 

(1880-1938),  cartoonist  and  etcher,  was 
born  at  Ballarat,  Australia,  3  September 
1880,  the  sixth  son  of  George  Arthur 
Dyson,  traveller,  who  came  from  London, 
by  his  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of  Ambrose 
Mayall,  cotton  spinner,  of  Ashton-under- 
Lyne.  He  was  educated  at  Melbourne. 
He  began  with  caricatures,  working  first 
for  the  Sydney  Bulletin  and  later  for  Lone 
Hand,  Gad  Fly,  and  Clarion.  In  1909  he 
came  to  London  as  a  cartoonist,  and  his 
first  work  to  be  published  in  England  was 
iin  the  New  Age  of  A.  R.  Orage  [q.v.],  who 
in  due  course  indoctrinated  him  with  the 
social  credit  theories  of  Major  Clifford 
Hugh  Douglas,  of  which  he  became  an 
ardent  and  brilliant  exponent. 

There  followed  contributions  to  the 
Weekly  Dispatch,  the  World,  the  Daily 
Chronicle,  the  Daily  Sketch,  and  the  Daily 
Herald.  In  the  last-named  (in  which  his 
first  cartoon  appeared  in  1913)  Dyson 
found  his  true  vehicle,  for  he  had  an 
extremely  radical  outlook  which  often 
jxpressed  itself  in  bitter  attacks  on  the 
propertied  classes.  He  was  therefore  able 
to  lend  powerful  aid  to  the  Daily  Herald 
n  its  formative  years.   ' 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Dyson 
)ecame  an  official  artist  on  the  western 
ront,  and  in  1918  a  collection  of  his  v/ar 
irawings  was  shown  at  the  Leicester 
naileries,  London.  He  returned  to  the 
')nily  Herald,  but  in  1925  went  back  to 
Australia.  Although  he  was  on  the  staff 
)f  the  Melbourne  Herald,  he  had  the 
lotion  of  concentrating  upon  pure  art 
IS  an  etcher.  In  1930  he  went  to  New 
t'ork  with  a  selection  of  his  etchings. 


which  were  successfully  exhibited  there; 
and  in  November  of  the  same  year  he 
showed  them  at  the  St.  George's  Gallery, 
Hanover  Square,  London.  These  etchings 
display  great  beauty  of  line,  and  many 
of  them  are  humorous  literary  com- 
mentaries. 

But  British  labour  was  engaged  in 
fierce  political  strife,  and  in  August  1931 
Dyson  gave  up  all  ideas  of  artistic  detach- 
ment and  rejoined  the  Daily  Herald.  He 
remained  a  valued  contributor  to  that 
journal  up  to  the  day  of  his  death,  which 
occurred  from  heart  failure  21  January 
1938  after  a  morning's  painting  in  his 
Chelsea  studio. 

Dyson  was  an  inveterate  castigator  of 
greed,  snobbery,  and  militarism,  and  some 
of  his  best  cartoons  had  that  power  of 
seeing  phenomena  sub  specie  aeternitatis 
which  gives  distinction  to  pictorial  satire. 
He  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  noteworthy 
cartoonists  of  his  age,  although  his  com- 
position was  often  diffuse  and  formal 
design  was  not  his  strong  point.  His 
bitterness  was  reserved  for  causes,  and  in 
his  personal  relationships  he  was  quiet, 
modest,  and  friendly. 

Dyson  was  very  sensitive  to  the  needs 
of  his  less  fortunate  fellow  artists,  and  was 
a  champion  of  British  art  against  detrac- 
tors who  seemed  to  him  over-fond  of 
foreign  products.  His  advocacy  of  social 
credit  found  literary  expression  in  a  book. 
Artist  Among  the  Bankers,  published  in 
1933. 

Dyson  married  in  1910  Ruby  Lindsay, 
an  Australian  artist  whose  works  were 
signed  'Ruby  Lind'.  She  died  in  1919, 
leaving  one  daughter,  Betty,  who  in  her 
turn  became  an  artist. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Dyson  by  T.  C. 
Dugdale  is  in  the  possession  of  the  artist. 

[The  Times,  22  January  1938  ;  Daily  Herald, 
22,  24,  and  25  January  1938,  4  November 
1930 ;  Manchester  Guardian,  22  January  1938 ; 
W.  H.  Stevenson  in  supplement  to  Labour, 
February  1938.]     Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

EDGE,  SELWYN  FRANCIS  (1868- 
1940),  pioneer  motorist,  was  born  at 
Concord,  Sydney,  New  South  Wales,  29 
March  1868,  the  son  of  Alexander  Ernest 
Edge,  by  his  wife,  Annie  Charlotte  Sharp. 
He  was  brought  to  England  in  1871  and 
educated  at  Belvedere  House  College, 
Upper  Norwood ,  London .  He  was  intended 
for  the  army,  but  was  attracted  by 
bicycling,  and  after  winning,  at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  the  Westerham  Hill  climb  on 
a  'safety'  bicycle,  entered  the   bicycle 


240 


Edge 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


business,  obtaining  employment  with  the 
Rudge  Company  and  afterwards  with  the 
Dunlop  Tyre  Company,  of  which  he  be- 
came manager. 

Edge  left  the  Dunlop  Company  in  1896 
and  turned  to  the  motor-car,  which  in  that 
year  was  emancipated  from  the  red  flag. 
Besides  introducing  foreign  makes,  such 
as  the  De  Dion-Bouton  and  the  Gladiator, 
to  the  British  market,  he  took  a  share  in 
promoting  the  manufacture  of  motor-cars 
in  this  country,  where  at  that  time  the 
industry  was  non-existent,  by  inducing 
Montague  Stanley  Napier,  of  D.  Napier  & 
Son,  makers  of  mint  machinery,  to  take 
up  motor-car  manufacture.  Through  S.  F. 
Edge,  Limited,  a  company  in  which  he 
was  the  principal  shareholder,  he  managed 
the  sales  of  Napier  cars,  and  by  driving 
them  in  races  and  competitions  and  by 
vigorous  use  of  other  arts  of  publicity  did 
much  to  increase  their  popularity.  His 
wide  experience  as  a  driver  and  his  know- 
ledge of  the  trend  of  public  taste  also 
enabled  him  to  influence  the  Napier  firm 
both  in  its  general  policy  and  in  respect  of 
such  mechanical  details  as  the  number  of 
cylinders  in  its  engines,  the  adoption  of 
battery  and  coil  in  preference  to  hot-tube 
ignition,  and  the  use  of  the  propeller  shaft 
in  place  of  chains  for  the  final  drive  to  the 
rear  wheels. 

The  first  Napier  engine  to  be  put  on  the 
road,  a  two-cylinder  model  of  8  h.p.,  was 
fitted  in  the  Panhard  and  Levassor  car 
No.  8  which  had  obtained  second  place  in 
the  Paris-Marseilles  race  of  1896.  This  car 
was  bought  by  Edge  in  1898  and  he  drove 
it,  with  the  new  engine,  in  the  trials 
between  Southall  and  Stokenchurch  or- 
ganized by  the  Automobile  Club  in  1899. 
In  the  following  year  he  drove  the  first 
complete  Napier  car,  also  of  8  h.p.,  in  the 
same  club's  1,000  miles  trials  over  roads 
in  Great  Britain,  and  in  1902  he  won  the 
Gordon-Bennett  cup  with  a  four-cylinder 
Napier  of  50  h.p.  in  a  race  from  Paris  to 
Innsbruck.  His  powers  of  physical  en- 
durance were  shown  by  his  feat  in  1907 
of  driving  a  six-cylinder  Napier  of  60  h.p. 
round  the  track  at  Brooklands  continu- 
ously for  twenty-four  hours  at  an  average 
speed  of  all  but  sixty-six  miles  an  hour.  In 
motor-boat  racing  he  had  several  notable 
successes,  boats  fitted  with  Napier  engines 
winning  the  British  International  (Harms- 
worth)  trophy  at  Queenstown  with  Napier 
I  in  1903  and  off  Ryde  with  Napier  Minor 
in  1904,  the  Kaiser's  Cup  at  Kiel  in  1904, 
and  the  Championship  of  the  Sea  at  Monaco 
in  1906. 


In  1912  Edge  sold  his  interest  in  S.  F. 
Edge,  Limited,  to  the  Napier  Company, 
one  condition  of  the  sale  being  that  he 
should  keep  out  of  the  motor-car  trade  for 
seven  years.  He  then  devoted  himself  to 
agricultural  pursuits  in  Sussex,  in  par- 
ticular the  breeding  of  pedigree  pigs  on  a 
large  scale.  A  pioneer  in  the  use  of 
mechanical  traction  on  the  farm,  he  was 
appointed  controller  of  the  agricultural 
machinery  department  of  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions  in  1917,  but  did  not  hold  the 
position  long,  work  in  a  government  office 
not  being  congenial  to  his  energetic  and 
impulsive  temperament.  In  1921  he  re- 
turned to  the  motor-car  business  with  the 
A.  C.  (Acedes)  car,  but  the  venture  did  not 
prove  a  financial  success.  In  1934  he 
published  My  Motoring  Reminiscences. 

Edge  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1892 
to  Eleanor  Rose  (who  predeceased  him), 
daughter  of  John  Sharp,  warehouseman ; 
and  secondly,  in  1917  to  Myra  Caroline, 
daughter  of  John  Martin,  and  had  two 
daughters.  He  died  at  Eastbourne  12 
February  1940. 

[The  Times,  13  February  1940;  Engineer 
and  Engineering,  16  February  1940;  S.  F. 
Edge,  My  Motoring  Reminiscences,  1934; 
Claude  Johnson,  The  Early  History  of  Motor- 
ing [n.d.] ;  private  information.] 

H.  M.  Ross. 

EDWARDS,      ALFRED      GEORGE 

(1848-1937),  successively  bishop  of  St. 
Asaph  and  first  archbishop  of  Wales,  was 
born  2  November  1848  at  the  Bryn,  a 
small  manor  house  used  as  the  rectory  of 
Llanymawddwy,  a  remote,  wide-spreading, 
mountain  parish  in  Merionethshire.  He 
was  the  youngest  son  of  WiUiam  Edwards, 
later  vicar  of  LlangoUen,  by  his  wife,  h 
Sarah,  daughter  of  Thomas  Wood,  of  H 
Painswick.  Alfred  Edwards's  famUy  was  ^ 
typically  Welsh  in  its  strongly  clerical 
character.  His  grandfather  was  a  devout 
churchman,  three  of  whose  four  sons  be- 
came clergymen  in  Welsh  parishes.  His 
home  backgroimd  was  austere,  but  culti- 
vated. His  father's  income  never  reached 
£450  a  year.  Edwards,  after  only  one 
year  (1860-1861)  at  Llandovery  College, 
went  to  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  with  an 
exhibition  which  brought  up  his  income 
to  £75  for  his  first  year;  in  his  last 
two  years  it  was  £140.  After  taking  his 
degree  in  1874  he  became  second  master 
at  Llandovery  and  in  the  following  year 
headmaster,  an  appointment  that  he  owed 
to  his  knowledge  of  Welsh.  The  task  was 
formidable ;  but  Edwards  was  equal  to  it. 


250 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Edwards 


In  five  years'  time  the  numbers  had  risen 
from  27  to  178 ;  a  large  percentage  of  the 
boys  were  going  to  Oxford  and  Cambridge ; 
scholarships  were  won  at  both  universities. 
After  eleven  years  of  strenuous  work 
Edwards,  who  had  been  ordained  deacon 
in  1874  and  priest  in  1875,  was,  in  1885, 
appointed  chaplain  and  secretary  to  Basil 
Jones,  bishop  of  St.  David's,  and  also 
accepted  one  of  the  two  vicarages  of 
Carmarthen. 

In  1889  Edwards  was  chosen  bishop  of 
St.  Asaph  on  the  recommendation  of  Lord 
Salisbury.  It  was  a  critical  moment  in 
the  history  of  Wales.  Social  discontents 
were  becoming  clamant.  In  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century  the  small  farmers  had 
had  a  severe  struggle  to  make  ends  meet ; 
in  the  coal-mines  great  fortunes  were 
made,  but  the  lot  of  the  workers  was 
harsh;  education  was  at  a  low  ebb.  The 
social  cleavage  was  accentuated  by  the 
difference  of  ecclesiastical  allegiance.  By 
1889  things  had  changed  vastly  for  the 
better.  The  work  of  Bishops  Connop 
Thirlwall,  Alfred  OUivant,  and  T.  V.  Short 
[qq.v.]  had  borne  fruit  in  a  widespread 
system  of  Church  schools,  restored 
churches,  and  quickened  religious  life.  But 
the  .evil  memory  remained.  Political 
strategy  canalized  these  memories  by  con- 
centrating discontent  upon  the  Established 
Church.  The  year  before  Edwards  became 
bishop  of  St.  Asaph  the  destruction  of  'the 
English  establishment  in  Wales '  had  been 
declared  by  Stuart  Rendel,  the  leader  of 
the  Welsh  party  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, to  be  the  first  objective  of  the 
liberal  party.  This  controversy  dominated 
Edwards's  episcopate  of  forty-five  years. 
Even  before  he  became  bishop  he  had  been 
active  (in  London  no  less  than  in  Wales) 
in  defending  the  Welsh  Church.  The  first 
stage  was  completed  when  the  fall  of  Lord 
Rosebery's  government  in  1895  swept 
away  a  disestablishment  biU  of  a  most 
drastic  character. 

Edwards  took  a  leading  part  in  another 
controversy  which  then  came  to  the  fore. 
The  Education  Act  of  1902  introduced 
order  into  the  field  of  education;  but  it 
left  unsolved  the  grievances  connected 
%\ith  religious  instruction.  Edwards,  as 
a  former  schoolmaster,  took  an  indepen- 
dent line.  After  consultation  with  Lloyd 
(ieorge  and  (Sir)  Robert  Morant  [q.v.],  he 
introduced  a  series  of  bills  designed  both 
to  placate  the  Welsh  county  councils, 
which  were  penalizing  Church  schools,  and 
also  to  establish  religious  instruction  on 
u  wider  basis.  They  provided  for  religious 


instruction  in  all  schools,  freedom  for  the 
teacher,  and  the  transference  of  all  build- 
ings to  the  State.  His  efforts  failed  largely 
because  Church  opinion  thought  more  of 
the  preservation  of  Church  schools  than  of 
the  extension  of  religious  teaching  to  State 
schools. 

The  return  of  the  liberal  party  to  power 
in  1906  brought  the  question  of  the  dis- 
establishment of  the  Welsh  Church  to  the 
front  again.  To  Edwards  and  to  John 
Owen,  bishop  of  St.  David's  [q.v.],  fell  the 
leadership  in  the  struggle  for  the  defence 
of  the  Church  in  Wales.  Once  again  the 
task  of  negotiation  with  political  leaders 
was  left  to  Edwards.  Despite  the  outbreak 
of  war,  the  bill  disestablishing  the  Church 
in  Wales  and  Monmouthshire  passed  into 
law  in  September  1914,  although  in  the 
following  July  disestablishment  was  post- 
poned by  an  order  in  council  until  the  end 
of  the  war.  From  that  time  onwards 
Edwards  devoted  his  energies  to  securing 
better  terms  for  the  Church  than  those 
which  the  bill  had  originally  proposed.  He 
was  between  two  fires.  The  Welsh  members 
of  parliament  insisted  upon  the  bill.  A 
group  of  loyal  friends  of  the  Church, 
headed  by  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  were  de- 
manding repeal.  In  the  last  stages 
Edwards  maintained  close  contact  with 
Lloyd  George  and  Bonar  Law,  having 
been  given  complete  power  to  act  by  the 
governing  body  which  had  been  set  up  for 
the  Church  in  Wales  in  October  1917.  The 
Welsh  Church  Temporalities  Act,  passed 
in  August  1919,  gave  more  generous  terms. 
If  the  Welsh  Church  emerged  from  the 
struggle  consolidated  by  reason  of  its 
freedom,  and,  although  poorer,  not  crip- 
pled, much  of  the  credit  must  go  to 
Edwards's  skill  as  a  negotiator. 

In  April  1920  Edwards  was  elected  the 
first  archbishop  of  Wales.  His  remaining 
years  were  occupied  with  the  heavy  task 
of  reorganization,  which  included  the 
creation  of  two  new  sees,  Monmouth,  and 
Swansea  and  Brecon,  and  the  consolida- 
tion of  the  finances  of  the  Church.  He 
retired  in  1934,  and  died  at  St.  Asaph 
22  July  1937.  In  1920  he  received  hono- 
rary degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Oxford,  Cambridge,  and  Wales,  and  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  college. 
It  was  fortunate  for  the  Church  in  Wales 
that,  at  the  crisis  of  its  fate,  it  threw  up  a 
leader  who  combined  absolute  devotion 
to  his  Church  and  the  land  of  his  fathers 
with  a  determined  will,  an  alert  and  supple 
mind,  and  a  wide  outlook  on  the  needs  of 
the  hour. 


251 


Edwards 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Edwards  was  married  three  times ;  first, 
in  1875  to  Caroline  Elizabeth  (died  1884), 
daughter  of  Edward  Edwards,  of  Llan- 
gollen, and  had  three  sons  and  two 
daughters;  the  second  son  and  younger 
daughter  predeceased  their  father ;  second- 
ly, in  1886  to  Mary  Laidley  (died  1912), 
youngest  daughter  of  Watts  John  Garland, 
of  Lisbon  and  Worgret,  near  Wareham, 
Dorset,  and  had  one  son,  who  was  killed 
in  action  in  1915,  and  one  daughter; 
thirdly,  in  1917  to  Margaret,  daughter  of 
John  Richard  Armitstead,  vicar  of  Sand- 
bach. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Edwards  (aetat. 
45)  by  (Sir)  W.  Q.  Orchardson  in  the 
possession  of  Captain  Harold  Edwards, 
Bryn  Arthur,  St.  Asaph,  and  a  copy  by  the 
artist  is  at  the  Palace,  St.  Asaph.  Another 
portrait  (aetat.  74),  by  St.  Helier  Lander, 
is  in  the  hall  of  Howell's  School,  Denbigh. 

[The  Times,  23  July  1937 ;  A.  G.  Edwards, 
Memories,  1927 ;  George  Lerry,  Alfred  George 
Edwards,  Archbishop  of  Wales,  1940 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  A.  S.  Duncan-Jones. 

ELGAR,  Sir  EDWARD  WILLIAM, 
baronet  (1857-1934),  composer,  was  born 
at  Broadheath,  near  Worcester,  2  June 
1857,  the  fifth  child  and  eldest  surviving 
son  of  William  Henry  Elgar,  by  his  wife, 
Ann,  daughter  of  Joseph  Greening,  of 
Weston,  Herefordshire.  The  father,  who 
came  from  Dover,  settled  in  Worcester  in 
1841,  and  was  for  many  years  organist  of 
St.  George's  Roman  Catholic  church  there. 
During  that  time  he  established  a  music 
shop  in  the  city. 

Edward  Elgar  was  brought  up  in  a 
family  where  there  was  much  talk  of  music 
and  in  a  district  where  there  was  regular 
music-making.  He  often  sat  with  his 
father  in  the  organ-loft  at  St.  George's  and 
after  a  time  played  the  organ  there, 
eventually  succeeding  his  father  as  organ- 
ist (1885-1889).  He  went  to  a  local  teacher 
for  violin  lessons  and  realized  one  of  his 
earliest  ambitions  when,  as  a  violinist,  he 
joined  the  orchestra  of  the  Worcester  Glee 
Club,  and,  like  his  father,  played  in  the 
orchestra  at  the  meetings  of  the  Three 
Choirs.  Soon  after  his  coming  of  age, 
Elgar  was  conducting  some  of  the  local 
concerts,  with  members  of  his  family  in 
the  orchestra.  Works  by  Mozart,  Rossini, 
and  others  were  played,  but  first  of  all 
had  to  be  arranged  by  the  young  conductor 
for  the  slender  orchestra  of  the  club.  By 
trial  and  experience  he  began  to  learn  how 
to  transfer  a  part  written  for  one  instru- 
ment to  another,  and  how  to  treat  the 


orchestral  garment  at  his  disposal  so  that 
it  did  not  seem  too  threadbare. 

Elgar's  education  insisted  chiefly  upon 
self-reliance.  He  had  been  to  a  kinder- 
garten and  later  to  a  boys'  school,  Littleton 
House,  near  Worcester,  where  during  a 
scripture  lesson  he  formed  the  first  dim 
resolve  to  compose  one  day  a  work  on  the 
subject  of  Christ's  Apostles.  He  left  school 
at  the  age  of  fifteen  and  for  a  short  time 
served  as  an  apprentice  in  a  solicitor's 
office.  Then  he  had  the  idea  of  becoming 
a  solo  violinist  and  began  to  give  lessons 
with  the  intention  of  saving  enough  money 
to  have  violin  lessons  himself  in  London 
from  a  good  teacher.  Everything  had  to  be 
worked  out  carefully  in  terms  of  money, 
and  at  length  in  1877,  'living  on  two  bags 
of  nuts  a  day',  as  he  himself  used  to 
describe  the  venture,  he  embarked  on  a 
series  of  violin  tessons  from  Adolf  PoUitzer. 
As  a  result  he  found  himself  gradually 
coming  to  the  decision  that  he  would 
devote  his  life  and  thought,  not  to  the 
mastery  of  the  violin,  but  to  the  composi- 
tion of  music. 

But  the  knowledge  which  Elgar  had 
gained  was  casual.  He  began  to  perceive 
that,  if  he  would  realize  his  dreams,  it  was 
not  enough  to  continue  arranging  music 
for  the  Glee  Club  and  the  Worcestershire 
County  Asylum  band.  He  studied  Mozart 
and,  by  stern  application,  taught  himself 
the  externals  of  symphonic  form.  He  went 
to  Leipzig  for  two  weeks  in  1882  and  heard 
all  the  music  available  there.  Not  long 
afterwards,  in  1883,  an  orchestral  compo- 
sition of  his  called  '  Intermezzo :  Serenade 
Mauresque'  was  performed  at  a  Birming- 
ham concert. 

A  visit  by  Dvorak  to  England  must  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  early  influences  in 
Elgar's  life,  not  in  the  matter  of  style  but 
as  an  incident  which  stirred  the  young 
composer's  enthusiasm.  Another  influence 
can  be  dated  from  1886  when  Miss  Caroline 
Alice  Roberts  came  to  him  as  a  pupil.  She 
was  the  only  daughter  of  Sir  Henry  Gee 
Roberts  [q.v.],  and  they  were  married  in 
1889.  The  Elgars  settled  in  London,  but 
in  1891  they  moved  to  Malvern  and  thence 
(1904)  to  Hereford,  where  they  remained 
until  1911.  In  1912  they  made  their  head- 
quarters at  Severn  House,  Hampstead, 
where  they  remained  until  Lady  Elgar's 
death  eight  years  later. 

It  was  about  the  time  of  his  marriage 
that  Elgar,  encouraged  by  his  wife,  de- 
cided to  give  most  of  his  time  to  composi- 
tion. Without  a  doubt,  his  wife's  belief 
in  his  genius  was  a  prime  factor  in  his 


« 


252 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Elgar 


development  at  this  period.  The  develop- 
ment was  not  spectacular  but  very  sure.  He 
began  to  think  in  terms  of  the  larger  forms 
of  composition.  For  the  Worcester  festival 
of  1890  he  was  ready  with  the  'Froissart' 
overture.  Three  years  later  (1893)  he  had 
finished  a  work  which  he  described  as  'a 
symphony  for  chorus  and  orchestra' 
called  'The  Black  Knight',  and  in  another 
three  years  (1896)  he  had  completed  his 
first  oratorio,  'The  Light  of  Life',  and  his 
choral  work,  'Scenes  from  the  Saga  of  King 
Olaf.  It  was  in  this  last  work  that  Elgar 
became  fully  confident  of  his  powers,  and 
in  1899  he  produced  a  work,  'Variations 
on  an  original  theme  for  orchestra',  gener- 
ally known  by  the  title  'Enigma  varia- 
tions', which  left  no  more  doubt  in  the 
public  estimation  of  his  genius.  This  fine 
work,  which  has  become  one  of  the  best 
known  of  all  Elgar's  orchestral  composi- 
tions, was  first  played  under  Hans  Richter 
in  1899.  When  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan  died  in 
1900  it  became  apparent  to  many  that 
Elgar,  although  a  composer  of  another 
build,  was  his  true  successor  as  first 
musician  of  the  land.  It  was  in  that  year 
that  his  masterpiece  appeared,  the  oratorio 
f  'The  Dream  of  Gerontius',  a  setting  of  part 
f  of  Newman's  poem.  This  was  first  per- 
formed on  3  October  at  the  Birmingham 
festival  under  Richter.  The  performance 
itself  was  disappointingly  below  standard, 
but  after  the  work  had  been  given  in 
Germany  with  a  German  translation  of  the 
text  (at  Diisseldorf  in  1901  and  again  in 
1902)  with  Julius  Biiths  as  conductor,  it 
was  accepted  at  its  proper  worth  in  the 
composer's  own  country.  It  was  'Gerontius' 
which  moved  Richard  Strauss  to  drink  to 
the  success  of  'the  first  English  progres- 
sive musician,  Meister  Elgar'.  Meanwhile 
the  university  of  Cambridge  had  antici- 
pated this  toast  by  conferring  upon  Elgar 
in  1900  the  honorary  degree  of  doctor  of 
music. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  Elgar's  most 
sustained  period  of  creative  energy  and  it 
lasted  until  1920,  which  was  the  year  of 
his  wife's  death.  From  time  to  time  he 
turned  aside  to  the  smaller  forms  and 
produced  songs,  incidental  music  for  plays, 
[and  music  for  occasions  (the  'Coronation 
lOde',  1902,  and  the  'Coronation  March', 
]!)ll),  but  for  the  most  part  during  these 
>  ears  he  was  at  work  upon  some  full  scale 
orchestral  or  choral  work.  The  unfolding 
of  his  genius  showed  him  to  be  essentially 
I  symphonic  writer.  This  was  already  to 
be  discerned  in  the  oratorios  'The  Apostles' 
1903)  and  'The  Kingdom'  (1906),  which 


were  the  first  two  works  of  an  uncompleted 
trilogy,  and  again  in  a  number  of  orchestral 
works  such  as  the  first  four  'Pomp  and 
Circumstance'  marches  (1901-1907,  the 
first  of  which  contains  the  popular  tune 
later  known  as  '  Land  of  Hope  and  Glory '), 
the  overtures  'Cockaigne'  (1901 )  and  'In  the 
South  (Alassio)'  (1904),  and  the  superb 
'Introduction  and  Allegro'  for  strings 
(1905).  But  the  full  flower  of  his  imagina- 
tion was  not  shown  until  the  two  sym- 
phonies and  the  violin  concerto  were 
completed  and  performed.  These  achieve- 
ments, together  with  the  symphonic  study 
'Falstaff'  (1913),  with  their  richness,  ex- 
pansiveness,  and  majesty,  can  be  truly 
appraised  only  against  the  background  of 
the  Edwardian  age,  although  the  violin 
concerto  is  more  contemplative  than  the 
others.  This  concerto  Avas  dedicated  to 
Fritz  Kreisler  who  was  soloist  in  the  first 
performance  in  1910.  The  first  symphony 
(Symphony  in  A  flat,  1908)  may  be 
thought  of  as  a  noble  paean  in  praise  of 
the  Edwardian  era,  the  second  symphony 
(Symphony  in  E  flat,  1911)  as  an  epic,  and 
the  violoncello  concerto  (1919)  as  an  elegy 
on  the  same  theme.  This  last-named  work 
and  three  examples  of  chamber  music 
plainly  reveal  the  disillusioning  influence 
of  the  war  years  of  1914  to  1918,  especially 
the  concerto,  with  its  spare  orchestration 
and  plangent  cadences. 

When  in  1924  Elgar  was  made  master 
of  the  king's  musick,  it  was  evident  that 
there  were  some  in  authority  who  heard 
in  his  music  a  voice  of  exceptional  elo- 
quence. But  there  were  others,  steadily 
increasing  in  numbers,  who  knew  that 
Elgar  was  far  greater  than  a  mere  laureate, 
and  that,  like  Sibelius,  he  was  a  composer 
whose  music,  although  imbued  with 
national  feeling,  spoke  with  universal 
appeal.  English  people  had  been  slow  to 
appreciate  his  work  until  the  'Enigma 
variations'  was  heard,  but  thereafter  ap- 
proval and  understanding  increased  with 
almost  every  composition.  He  received 
numerous  honours:  he  was  appointed  a 
member  of  the  Order  of  Merit  in  1911 
(being  the  first  musician  to  receive  the 
order),  was  knighted  in  1904,  created  a 
baronet  in  1931,  and  appointed  K.C.V.O. 
in  1928  and  G.C.V.O.  in  1933.  Besides  his 
Cambridge  doctorate  already  mentioned, 
he  received  honorary  doctorates  of  music 
from  the  universities  of  Durham,  Oxford, 
Yale,  and  London,  and  honorary  degrees 
from  several  others,  and  among  foreign 
honours  are  to  be  reckoned  those  of  cor- 
responding member  of  the  Institut  de 


258 


Elgar 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


France  and  honorary  member  of  the 
Regia  Accademia  di  Santa  Cecilia. 

After  Lady  Elgar's  death,  Elgar  pro- 
duced no  major  work.  Some  very  personal 
orchestrations  of  Bach  and  Handel,  some 
music  for  the  Wembley  British  Empire 
Exhibition  (1924),  some  incidental  music 
for  a  play.  No.  5  of  the  'Pomp  and  Circum- 
stance' marches,  planned  as  a  set  of  six 
(1930),  and  the  'Nursery  Suite'  (1931, 
dedicated  to  the  Duchess  of  York  and  the 
Princesses  Elizabeth  and  Margaret)  were 
almost  the  only  evidence  which  the  public 
had  to  indicate  that  the  composer  had  not 
completely  given  up  writing  music.  A  few 
friends  knew  that  he  had  sketched  some 
music  for  an  opera  which  was  to  be  based 
on  Ben  Jonson's  play  The  Devil  is  an  Ass, 
and  on  the  occasion  of  his  seventy-fifth 
birthday  (1932)  it  was  announced  that  the 
British  Broadcasting  Corporation  had 
commissioned  him  to  write  his  third 
symphony.  Elgar  made  some  sketches 
for  this  work,  but  before  he  could  come  to 
grips  with  the  great  undertaking,  a  fatal 
illness  overtook  him,  and  he  died  at 
Worcester  23  February  1934.  He  was 
buried  in  his  wife's  grave  in  the  church- 
yard of  St.  Wulstan,  Little  Malvern.  He 
was  survived  by  his  only  child,  a  daughter. 

Among  symphonic  composers  of  all 
nations,  Elgar's  name  shines  because  of  his 
orchestral  writing,  and  in  this  respect  he 
did  much  to  raise  the  standard  of  orches- 
tral playing  in  England.  By  the  members 
of  English  orchestras  he  was  greatly  be- 
loved, and  in  turn  memories  of  early  days, 
when  he  was  a  humble  bandsman,  made 
him  deeply  appreciative  of  their  work,  and 
led  him  to  take  great  pains  in  helping 
them  to  understand  the  intricacies  of  his 
scores.  His  reward  has  been  that  the  best 
of  the  English  orchestras  have  the  secret 
of  bowing  his  melody  and  of  breathing  his 
rich  harmony,  and  have  mastered  the 
idiom  of  his  phrase  and  the  curve  of  his 
eloquence. 

In  the  history  of  music  Elgar  will  be 
remembered  as  the  man  who  so  far  lifted 
the  status  of  English  music  that  the  once 
fashionable  description  of  England  as  'the 
land  without  music'  became  an  absurdity. 
'Falstaff',  one  of  the  finest  of  all  works 
written  for  a  modem  orchestra,  is  called 
a  symphonic  study  and  the  symphonic 
aspect  cannot  be  too  much  emphasized. 
The  music's  behaviour,  that  is,  is  guided 
by  an  inner  logic  of  its  own  rather  than  by 
a  series  of  scenes  and  events,  although  it  is 
still  true  that  the  agreement  between  that 
inner  logic  and  the   'programme'   is  a 


remarkable  feature  of  the  music.    When] 
Elgar's  finely  imaginative  achievement  in  j 
'Falstaff'  is  contemplated  and  some  of  the 
excellent  music  which  he  wrote  in  anl 
earlier  work,  the  cantata 'Caractacus' (1898), 
is  then  recalled,  it  is  impossible  not  to  bej 
set  wondering  what  heights  the  composer] 
would  have  reached  in  the  Ben  JonsonI 
opera  which  he  was  sketching.    But,  al- 
though destiny's  plan  included  no  opera  I 
by  Elgar,  the   splendid  attainments   of] 
succeeding  English  composers,  especially 
in  symphonic  writing,  have  been  so  much 
the  more  notably  excellent  for  the  vantage- 
ground  gained  by  Elgar  in  his  oratorios,  j 
symphonies,     concertos,     the     'Enigma! 
variations' ,  the  '  Introduction  and  Allegro  * 
and  in  'Falstaff'. 

A  portrait  of  Elgar  by  Talbot  Hughes] 
no  longer  exists,  but  a  drawing  by  (Sir);! 
William  Rothenstein  (1910)  in  the  Royal' 
Library  at  Windsor  Castle  is  reproduced  inl 
Music  and  Letters,  January  1920.  A  bronze] 
cast  of  a  bust  by  Percival  Hedley  (1927),] 
is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Basil  Maine,  Elgar.  His  Life  and  Work^ 
2  vols.,  1933;  R,  J.  Buckley,  Sir  Edwarc 
Elgar,  1904;  Ernest  Newman,  Elgar,  1906;^ 
W.  H.  Reed,  Elgar,  1939 ;  Grove's  Dictionary 
of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol.  ii,  edited 
by  H.  C.  Colles ;  Louise  B.  M.  Dyer,  Music  by 
British  Composers.  A  Series  of  Complete  Cata- 
logues. No.  2.  Sir  Edward  Elgar,  1931 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Basil  Maine. 

ELIOT,  Sir  CHARLES  NORTON 
EDGECUMBE  (1862-1931),  diplomat  and 
orientalist,  was  born  at  Sibford  Gower, 
Oxfordshire,  8  January  1862,  the  eldest 
son  of  Edward  Eliot,  perpetual  curate  of 
Sibford  Gower,  who  in  1863  became  vicar 
of  Norton  Bavant,  Wiltshire,  by  his 
wife,  Elizabeth  Harriet  Wyatt,  younger 
daughter  of  Charles  Henry  Watling,  rector 
of  Tredington,  Warwickshire  (then  Wor- 
cestershire). He  was  educated  at  Chelten 
ham  College  and  at  Oxford,  where  his 
career,  first  as  a  scholar  of  Balliol  College 
and  later  (1884)  as  a  fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  was  a  succession  of  triumphs 
which  almost  bears  comparison  with  that 
of  D.  S.  Margoliouth  [q.v.].  He  obtained 
a  first  class  in  classical  moderations  (1881) 
and  liter ae  humaniores  (1884),  and  won  the 
Hertford  (1881),  Boden  Sanskrit  and 
Ireland  (1883),  Craven  (1884),  and  Derby 
(1886)  scholarships,  as  well  as  the  Hough 
ton  Syriac  prize  (1884).  His  chief  interest! 
at  this  period,  and  indeed  throughout  hii 
life,  was  the  study  of  languages  both, 
ancient  and  modern.  In  addition  to  a 
great  store   of  classical  learning  and  a 


I 


254 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


EUerman 


familiar  knowledge  of  several  modern 
European  languages,  he  was  conversant 
with  Finnish  (of  which  he  published  the 
first  grammar  in  English  in  1890),  San- 
skrit, Pali,  Hebrew,  Syriac,  Arabic, 
Turkish,  Persian,  Hindustani,  and  Chinese, 
besides  having  acquaintance  with  many 
other  languages  and  dialects. 

Eliot  entered  the  diplomatic  service  in 
1887  and  served  as  third  secretary  at  St. 
Petersburg  and  in  several  posts  in  the 
Near  East,  where  he  gained  the  knowledge 
which  enabled  him  to  write  the  authorita- 
tive Turkey  in  Europe  (1900).  In  1898  he 
was  appointed  C.B.  and  nominated  first 
secretary  at  Washington,  and  the  following 
year  was  sent  to  Samoa  as  British  repre- 
sentative on  a  three-Power  commission  to 
consider  the  future  government  of  the 
islands.  For  this  work  he  was  appointed 
K.C.M.G.  in  1900.  His  next  post  was  as 
consul-general  at  Zanzibar  and  commis- 
sioner for  the  British  East  African  Protec- 
torate. He  found  the  work  of  colonial 
administration  much  to  his  taste,  and 
travelled  widely  in  the  regions  under  his 
control  on  tours  of  observation  which 
enabled  him  to  produce  his  book,  The  East 
African  Protectorate,  in  1905.  His  service 
in  Africa  came  to  an  unhappy  end  in  1904, 
through  a  dispute  with  the  Foreign  Office 
over  a  question  of  policy  upon  which  he 
felt  that  he  must  resign. 

Eliot  now  turned  to  academic  life,  be- 
coming vice-chancellor  (1905-1911)  of  the 
newly  founded  Sheffield  University.    He 
spent  several  long  vacations  in  journeys 
to  India,   China,  and  Japan,  which  he 
described  in  a  lively  book  entitled  Letters 
from  the  Far  East  (1907).    In  1908-1909 
he  served  on  the  royal  commission  on 
electoral  systems.  He  left  Sheffield  in  1912 
in  order  to  become  vice-chancellor  of  the 
new  university  of  Hong-Kong.    In  1918 
le  accepted  the  post  of  British  high  com- 
nissioner  in  Siberia,  but  the  provisional 
government  supported  by  the  AUies  col- 
apsed  within  a  year  of  his  arrival.   The 
^'oreign  Office  having  now  forgotten  or 
orgiven  the  East  African  dispute  of  1904, 
le  was  offered  in  1919  (the  year  in  which 
le  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council)  the 
l)ost  of  ambassador  to  Japan,  and  took  up 
his  appointment  in  the  spring  of  1920. 
\^fter  the   Anglo-Japanese   alliance   had 
een  allowed  to  lapse  in  1921,  Eliot's  main 
ask  as  ambassador  was  to  ensure  that 
inglo-Japanese  relations  should  be  ad- 
isted  to  the  new   circumstances   with- 
ut  friction.    This  he  carried   out  with 
access,  thanks  to  his  sympathetic  under- 


standing of  oriental  peoples.  He  was 
appointed  G.C.M.G.  in  1923.  It  happened 
that  during  his  term  in  Japan  no  acute 
political  issues  arose  to  occupy  his  atten- 
tion. He  was  therefore  able  to  maintain 
his  long-standing  interest  in  marine 
biology  (on  which  he  had  written  many 
valuable  papers) ;  to  complete  his  greatest 
work,  the  profound,  erudite,  and  lucid 
three-volume  Hinduism  and  Buddhism 
(1921);  and  to  collect  further  materials 
for  a  study  of  Buddhism  in  Japan. 

Eliot's  term  of  service  as  ambassador 
came  to  an  end  in  1926.  He  continued  to 
reside  in  Japan,  but  failing  health  slowed 
down  progress  on  his  last  book  and  it  was 
not  quite  complete  when  he  died  at  sea 
16  March  1931 .  It  appeared  posthumously 
in  1935,  with  some  minor  additions  by 
other  hands,  under  the  title  of  Japanese 
Buddhism.  Although  not  the  book  that  it 
would  have  been  had  he  given  it  the 
finishing  touch,  it  is  nevertheless  a  worthy 
ornament  to  the  noble  edifice  of  oriental 
scholarship  which  he  erected  during  his 
life. 

Eliot  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Edinburgh  (1905), 
Durham  (1908),  Oxford  (1923),  Hong- 
Kong  (1924),  and  Sheffield  (1926).  He  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Oxford,  in  1924.  He  was  vm- 
married. 

[Sir  Harold  Parlett,  In  Piam  Memoriam 
prefixed  to  C.  N.  E.  Eliot,  Japanese  Buddhism, 
1935 ;  personal  knowledge.]     G.  B.  Sansom. 

ELLERMAN,  Sir  JOHN  REEVES, 
first  baronet  (1862-1933),  financier  and 
shipowner,  reputed  at  his  death  to  be 
possibly  the  richest  man  and  certainly  one 
of  the  greatest  forces  behind  shipping  that 
Britain  had  ever  known,  was  born  at 
Kingston-upon-HuU  15  May  1862,  the 
only  son  of  Johannes  Hermann  EUer- 
mann,  a  Hamburg  corn-merchant  who 
was  naturalized  in  1854  and  settled  in 
Hull,  by  his  wife,  Ann  Elizabeth,  daughter 
of  Timothy  Reeves,  of  Kingston-upon- 
HuU.  He  was  left  fatherless  before  he 
reached  his  'teens,  but  his  mother,  a  gifted 
woman,  encouraged  him  to  follow  his  bent 
and  train  as  an  accountant,  at  the  same 
time  fostering  in  him  a  love  of  beauty  and 
the  arts,  a  whole-hearted  loyalty  to 
family,  friends,  and  country,  and  a  quick 
response  to  human  need.  She  lived  to  see 
him  established  in  the  great  Victorian 
mansion  at  1  South  Audley  Street,  May- 
fair,  and  created  a  baronet  in  1905.  But 
she    died   twelve   years    before   he   was 


255 


EUerman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


appointed  C.H.  in  1921,  a  tribute  to  his 
work  which  he  dearly  prized  and  the 
satisfaction  in  which  he  would  have 
delighted  to  share  with  her. 

It  was  a  great  moment  for  EUerman 
when  he  joined  the  board  of  the  Ley  land 
line  in  1892.  He  had  been  dealing  in 
shipping  in  a  quiet  way,  and  was  to  give 
substantial  help  to  the  government  in  the 
transport  of  troops  during  the  South 
African  war.  Indeed  ships  meant  romance 
as  well  as  business  to  him.  His  idea  of  a 
hoUday,  and  very  sensibly  he  took  many, 
was  to  cast  off  from  a  British  port  for 
Egypt,  Italy,  or  the  south  of  France,  and 
the  more  picturesque  the  port  of  entry  the 
better.  His  house  overflowed  with  mosaics, 
tapestries,  carvings,  furniture,  and  a 
medley  of  objects,  some  of  them  works  of 
art  and  others  without  value,  which  had 
caught  his  fancy  in  the  markets  and 
bazaars  of  Europe  and  Africa.  He  loved 
showing  these  to  his  friends  and  telling 
the  tale  of  how  he  bargained  for  them.  So 
romance  and  commerce  fused  in  the  board 
room  of  Leyland's.  It  was  not  long  before 
he  became  chairman ;  now  he  could  enter 
boldly  the  immense  and  stimulating  field 
of  operations  that  shipping  proved  to  be 
for  his  genius.  It  might  be  said  here  that 
EUerman  exercised  his  talent  for  making 
money  largely  for  the  pure  joy  of  self- 
expression,  and  only  incidentally  for 
financial  advantage.  He  was  at  heart  an 
artist,  but  the  financial  wizard  in  him 
overwhelmed  in  the  end  every  other 
creative  impulse.  Within  the  decade  he 
had  acquired  for  himself  the  Mediterranean 
services  of  Leyland's  after  bringing  off  a 
complicated  deal  with  Jolin  Pierpont 
Morgan,  and  founded  the  EUerman  line 
(1901).  One  after  the  other  in  order  of 
mention  he  drew  into  his  orbit  that  same 
year,  Westcott  and  Lawrence,  which  had 
been  founded  in  1857,  The  Papayanni 
group  (1854),  the  City  line  (1839),  and  the 
Hall  line  (c.  1863).  Later  he  acquired 
BucknaUs  Steamship  Company,  the  Shaw, 
Savill,  and  Albion,  and  other  concerns.  In 
1916  he  created  a  sensation  by  absorbing 
the  great  Wilson's  of  HuU,  which  became 
known  as  EUerman's  Wilson  line.  During 
the  war  of  1914-1918  his  ships  were  of 
immense  value  to  the  country  because  of 
their  numbers  and  efficient  management. 
At  his  death  the  fleets  under  his  control 
represented  about  1,500,000  tons  gross. 

Newspapers  were  EUerman's  second 
favourite  investment.  At  one  time  he 
joined  Lord  Northcliffe  as  shareholder  in 
The  Times  and  in  Associated  Newspapers, 


Limited,  and  later  he  took  over  the  bulk 
of  the  shares  of  the  'Big  Six',  which 
comprised  the  Illustrated  London  News, 
the  Sphere,  the  Taller,  the  Sketch,  Eve, 
and  the  Illustrated  Sporting  and  Dramatic 
News.  With  his  immense  curiosity  and 
endless  appetite  for  detail,  he  thoroughly 
sampled  each  new  field  that  he  entered  untU 
he  got  the '  feel '  of  it.  For  example,  he  sur- 
prised editors  in  the  late  'twenties  when 
he  began  suggesting  books  for  review, 
drafting  out  new  features,  and  even  inter- 
viewing an  individual  contributor  who  had 
attracted  his  attention.  At  about  the 
same  time  he  conducted  a  series  of  London 
property  deals.  Some  hundred  or  more 
acres  changed  hands  in  South  Kensington 
and  Chelsea,  together  with  a  considerable 
acreage  in  the  Oxford  Circus  district. 
Many  guesses  have  been  made,  and  wiU 
stiU  be  made,  at  the  total  amount  of  his 
fortune.  He  left  estate  which  in  September^ 
1936  was  resworn  at  £36,684,994,  in-( 
dicating  death  duties  of  about  £18,000,0( 

Apart  from  his  acknowledged  genius  foi 
finance,  EUerman's  dominant  character-^ 
istic  was  his  unmitigated  determinatioi 
to  keep  his  private  life  and  that  of 
family  from  public  knowledge.  The  more 
astonishing  his  financial  achievements 
became,  the  deeper  he  burrowed  into 
anonymity.  Very  few  besides  relatives 
and  business  associates  entered  the  blind- 
looking  door  in  the  heavily  curtained 
frontage  of  1  South  Audley  Street.  As  a 
result  of  this  almost  morbid  passion  for 
secrecy,  much  material  about  his  business 
career  will  never  be  known,  because  he 
obscured  his  vast  transactions  in  shipping, 
newspapers,  and  periodicals,  London  real 
estate,  breweries,  and  other  interests  under 
the  guise  of  trust  companies,  the  shares 
of  which  he  held.  Only  his  confidential 
deputies  and  managers,  who  were  excep- 
tionally loyal  to  him,  knew  the  extent  of 
his  investments  and  the  number  of  mil- 
lions involved.  This  intimate,  tightly  knit 
business  concern,  its  numberless  branches^ 
fitting  with  engineering  precision  into 
organic  whole,  had  an  advantage  not 
unforeseen  by  its  brilliant  founder, 
death  created  scarcely  a  ripple  of  disturb 
bance  on  the  surface  of  London  finance, ' 
and  his  organization  continues  to  functionj 
almost  automaticaUy  to-day  from  the 
same  headquarters  at  21  Moorgate,  with 
unimpaired  efficiency  and  steadily  risi 
increment. 

EUerman  was  not  a  public  benefactorj 
but  encouraged  by  his  wife  he  poured  ou'f 
money  anonymously  on  causes  and  in^ 


256 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Elliott 


dividuals  known  to  him.    A  number  of  tutor  of  Queen's  College.    This  post  he 


struggling  artists  were  maintained  by  him, 
one  or  two  for  life.  The  things  he  shrank 
from  doing  are  illuminating :  rarely  if  ever 
did  he  dine  at  a  restaurant,  or  have  his 
photograph  taken,  or  go  to  a  race-meeting 
or  public  banquet,  make  a  speech,  or 
accept  invitations  from  any  but  his  few 
intimate  friends,  attend  a  club,  public 
conference,  concert,  or  even  a  church.  His 
great  delight  was  to  bring  business  friends 
home  to  a  lunch  which  he  had  planned 
down  to  the  minutest  detail  in  conference 
with  his  chef.  It  remained  for  his  wife 
only  to  preside  at  the  table  and  arrange 
the  flowers.  Afterwards  he  would  show 
his  guests  his  fine  library  and  large  collec- 
tion of  paintings  of  the  conventional 
Royal  Academy  type.  He  was  jealous  as 
well  as  proud  of  his  wife's  vitality  and 
attractiveness,  and  to  please  him  she  gave 
up  having  friends  of  her  own.   'He  keeps 

!j  me  in  a  glass  case,  but  I  keep  him  human ', 
she  would  say.   Ellerman  had  no  lasting 
I  interests  outside  his  work  and  family,  and 
»lhe  moved  in  a  routine  so  rigid  as  to  ap- 
liproach  the  ritualistic.   His  weakness  was 
i  that  he  made  no  attempt  to  understand 
the  new  forces  working  beneath  the  surface 
of  his  time.  Generous  and  sympathetic  in 
his  own  small  circle,  he  was  lacking  in 
X  broad  humanitarian  outlook  and  had 
ittle  social  imagination. 

Ellerman  married  in  1908  Hannah 
Annie),  daughter  of  George  Glover;  she 
airvived  him  until  1939.  She  was,  after 
lis  mother,  the  most  powerful  influence 
n  his  life.  They  had  one  son  and  one 
laughter  (a  writer  of  distinction  under  the 
lame  of  Bryher).  He  died  suddenly  of  a 
troke  at  Dieppe  16  July  1933  while  on 
loliday.  He  was  succeeded  as  second 
aronet  by  his  son,  John  Reeves  (born 
909). 

[The  Times,  18  July  1933;  Robert  McAl- 
lon,  Being  Geniuses  Together,  1938 ;  private 
iformation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Louise  Morgan. 

ELLIOTT,  EDWIN  BAILEY  (1851- 
J.']7),  mathematician,  was  born  at  Oxford 

June  1851,  the  eldest  son  of  Edwin 
itchfield  Elliott,  an  Oxford  business  man, 
v'  his  wife,  Matilda  Bailey.  He  was  edu- 
ited  at  Magdalen  School,  Oxford,  and 

1869  went  up  to  Magdalen  CoUege  with 

(iemyship.  His  mathematical  ability 
IS  soon  recognized  and,  after  having 
•en  awarded  a  first  class  in  moderations 
I S72)  and  in  the  final  school  (1873),  he  was 
1  1874  elected  fellow  and  mathematical 


held  for  eighteen  years;  for  nine  years 
(1884-1893)  he  was  lecturer  in  mathe- 
matics at  Corpus  Christi  College.  In  1892 
he  was  appointed  the  first  Waynflete 
professor  of  pure  mathematics,  a  chair 
carrying  with  it  a  fellowship  at  Magdalen 
College.  After  twenty-nine  years'  tenure 
of  this  chair  he  retired  in  1921 :  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Queen's 
College  in  1916.  He  was  an  active  member 
of  the  London  Mathematical  Society, 
serving  on  the  council  for  many  years  and 
holding  the  two-year  presidency  in  1896- 
1898.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1891. 

Elliott  served  the  university  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Hebdomadal  Council,  a  visitor 
of  the  Observatory,  a  delegate  of  the 
Common  University  Fund,  and  a  curator 
of  the  University  Chest.  His  opinion  was 
often  sought  in  financial  matters,  where 
his  strength  lay  in  exactness  of  detail 
rather  than  in  boldness  of  conception.  He 
was  a  trustee  of  the  Oxford  City  Chari- 
ties and  a  treasurer  of  the  Oxford  Eye 
Hospital.  His  whole  life  was  spent  in 
Oxford,  where  he  died  21  July  1937.  He 
married  in  1893  Charlotte  Amelia  (died 
May  1937),  daughter  of  John  William 
Mawer,  an  Oxford  business  man;  there 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

EUiott's  mathematical  life  circulated 
round  the  twin  foci  of  Oxford  and  London. 
Besides  his  work  in  formal  teaching  and 
lecturing  at  Oxford  he  was  one  of  the 
founders  (1888)  of  the  Oxford  Mathemati- 
cal Society,  its  first  secretary,  and  later  its 
president. 

Elliott  wrote  much  for  English  mathe- 
matical periodicals:  the  Proceedings  and 
Journal  of  the  London  Mathematical 
Society,  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Mathe- 
matics, and  the  Messenger  of  Mathematics. 
To  the  Royal  Society  he  communicated 
in  1889  a  lengthy  memoir  on  reciprocants 
{Philosophical  Transactions,  vol.  clxxxi, 
1890).  His  most  important  published 
work,  An  Introduction  to  the  Algebra  of 
Quantics,  appeared  in  1895  with  a  second 
edition  in  1913,  and  it  is  by  this  book  that 
he  is  most  generally  known  to  mathe- 
maticians. Arthur  Cayley  [q.v.],  J.  J. 
Sylvester  [q.v.],  and  others,  both  in 
England  and  on  the  continent,  had 
developed  the  theory  of  the  invariants 
under  linear  substitutions,  of  homogeneous 
algebraic  expressions  (quantics).  Elliott's 
contributions  to  the  theory  were  impor- 
tant :  he  gave  a  fluent  and  characteristic 
account  of  it  in  his  book,  which  was  for 
long   the   recognized   text-book   on   the 


257 


Elliott 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


subject.  Much  work  in  this  field,  especi- 
ally abroad,  had  been  developed  by  purely 
symbolic  methods ;  these  Elliott  eschewed, 
preferring  always  to  rely  on  direct  and, 
so  to  speak,  more  tangible  processes,  and 
his  presentation  is,  in  this  respect,  charac- 
teristically English.  His  work,  like  all 
good  mathematics,  was  distinguished  by 
simplicity  and  naturalness,  surprising 
results  being  often  achieved  by  the  ex- 
ploitation, with  real  insight,  of  ideas  in 
themselves  elementary.  His  earUer  study 
of  reciprocants  had  been  in  a  more  limited 
field  concerned  with  the  invariance  of 
differential  expressions  under  a  restricted 
linear  substitution.  This  lacked  the  com- 
pleteness of  his  subsequent  algebraic  work 
but  doubtless  helped  to  direct  his  mind  to 
invariant  principles  and  problems. 

Elliott's  last  important  contribution  to 
mathematics  was  made  in  his  seventy- 
seventh  year,  a  striking  challenge  to  the 
doctrine,  sometimes  accepted,  that  mathe- 
maticians do  aU  their  best  work  in  their 
thirties.  It  concerned  an  inequality  of 
considerable  consequence  in  the  theory  of 
integral  equations.  Elliott's  proof  was 
short  and  it  was  decisive :  it  was  obviously 
the  right  proof,  although  it  had  escaped 
the  notice  of  contemporary  mathemati- 
cians of  distinction. 

Elliott's  lesser  writings  are  concerned 
mainly  with  algebra,  algebraic  or  pure 
geometry,  and  with  closely  linked  regions 
of  analysis  such  as  elliptic  functions  and 
the  theory  of  convergence.  Here  too  are 
to  be  found  the  simple  imexpectedness 
and  beauty  of  form  of  his  more  important 
work. 

Elliott's  other  interests  lay  in  music,  in 
natural  history,  and  in  literature:  he  was 
one  of  the  founders  of  the  Addison  Society, 
the  oldest  literary  society  at  Queen's 
College. 

In  demeanour  Elliott  was  modest  and 
retiring,  hesitant  in  speech,  unfailing  in 
his  helpfulness  to  others,  a  much-loved 
man.  He  held  by  the  ancient  virtues, 
deploring  many  of  the  changes  that  he 
had  seen  both  in  the  city  and  in  the 
university.  He  cared  deeply  for  the  in- 
tegrity of  mathematics  and  had  little 
patience  with  specious  half-proofs  or  lui- 
supported  speculation.  For  these  reasons 
he  did  not  readily  encourage  research  by 
the  young  mathematicians  unless,  at 
least,  he  was  certain  that  they  had  some- 
thing of  substance  to  consider.  His  con- 
victions made  him  a  severe  critic  of 
mathematical  writing,  whether  his  own  or 
others,  and  sharpened  his  style  to  a  certain 


austere  lucidity.  His  work  looked  back  to 
a  closing  epoch.  It  was  typically  English, 
it  could  be  called  Victorian;  it  lacked 
sympathy  with  more  recent  developments, 
but  it  had  honesty  and  dignity  and  set  a 
fair  example  to  those  that  follow. 

[The  Times,  23  July  1937 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  5,  January 
1938  (portrait) ;  St.  Edmund  Hall  Magazine, 
1937;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] T.  Chaundy. 

ELLIS,  HENRY  HAVELOCK  (1859- 
1939),  pioneer  in  the  scientific  study  of 
sex,  thinker,  critic,  essayist,  and  editor, 
was  born  at  Croydon  2  February  1859,  the 
only  son  of  Edward  Peppen  Ellis,  by  his 
wife,  Susannah  Mary,  daughter  of  John 
Wheatley.  His  father  and  his  maternal 
grandfather  were  both  sea-captains,  anc 
all  his  near  male  relatives  lived  on  or  b^ 
the  sea.  He  was  called  after  Sir  Henr 
Havelock,  the  general  of  the  Indian 
Mutiny  [q.v.],  who  was  his  materns 
grandfather's  first  cousin.  Those  were  tM 
days  of  sailing  ships,  and  the  fathe 
voyaged  annually  round  the  world  xii 
Australia,  taking  nine  months.  When  thd 
boy  was  seven  he  made  the  voyage  wit| 
him ;  but  for  the  rest  he  was  brought  u| 
in  the  Surrey  suburbs  of  London  an2 
educated  at  private  schools  at  Merton  an<j 
Mitcham.  There  he  had  no  chance 
become  a  trained  scholar ;  but  the  accoim| 
of  his  personal  reading  given  in  his  autc 
biography  shows  precocity  and  a  stror 
literary  bent.  The  first  writer  to  mal 
him  conscious  of  the  latter  was  Scott. 

When  Ellis  was  sixteen,  alarm  was  feJ 
about  his  health,  and  it  was  decided  tha 
he  should  make  a  year's  sea- voyage  in  tl 
ship  which  his  father  commanded.    Bi 
after  they  reached  Australia  he  settled 
there  as  a  school-teacher,  and  eventuallj 
stayed  four  years.    A  part  of  this  time 
which  he  spent  teaching  at  a  lonely  schoc 
at  Sparkes  Creek  in  the  New  South  Wak 
bush,   proved   the   turning-point   in 
career.    There  came  to  him  then  what 
never  afterwards  lost,  a  belief  in  the  unit 
of  scientific  and  artistic  attainment ;  base^ 
doubtless  in  part  on  an  exceptional  dus 
ism  in  his  own  nature,  equally  preoccupies) 
with  factual  and  with  aesthetic  value 
The   Sparkes   Creek  period  was  one 
stormy  solitude  and  bitter  self-questioninj 
He    lost    his    childhood's    moorings 
evangelical  piety,  and  passed  through 
tangle  of  perplexities  to  attain  a  kind  of 
peace:  not  in  faith,  but  in  search — the 
search  for  scientific  truth,  which  was  seen 


258 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Ellis 


also  as  the  source  of  artistic  satisfaction. 
In  all  this  he  was  much  helped  by  the 
writings  of  James  Hinton  [q.v.],  whose 
blending  of  medical  with  philosophical 
studies  he  resolved  to  emulate.  He  first 
planned  to  write  a  book  on  religion,  but 
then  chose  as  his  life's  main  task  the  study 
of  sex. 

With  these  ideas  Ellis  returned  in  1879 
to  England,  and  eventually  became  a 
medical  student  at  St.  Thomas's  Hospital. 
A  friend  of  the  Hintons  lent  him  £200,  and 
his  mother  added  £100  from  a  legacy; 
and  thus  furnished  he  embarked  upon  the 
seven-year  course.  But  it  took  him  over 
eight  years  (1881-1889) ;  for  although  he 
worked  hard,  he  had  a  natural  inaptitude 
for  examinations;  and  in  the  end,  after 
passing  some  and  missing  others  and  fail- 
ing to  secure  the  joint  qualifications  of 
the  Colleges  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons,  he 
became  a  doctor  with  the  licence  of  the 
Society  of  Apothecaries.  Afterwards  he 
scarcely  practised  at  all.  His  sole  gain 
was  a  scientific  grounding,  which  might, 
he  came  to  think,  have  been  had  otherwise 
at  less  cost. 

The   eight  years,   however,   were   not 
spent   on   medicine   alone.     Ellis   began 
writing   for   the    monthly   reviews,    and 
found  his  way  into  the  clubs  and  haunts 
where  young  people  with  new  ideas  for- 
gathered.   In  this  way  he  early  became 
familiar  with  many  English  socialists  of 
the  'eighties — John  Burns,  Henry  Hyde 
Champion,  R.  B.  P.  Frost,  H.  M.  Hynd- 
man[q.v.],ErnestBelfortBax,Mr.Bernard 
Shaw,  and  the  two  Davidsons,  Thomas 
and  John  Morrison.  But  he  was  not  carried 
in  their  currents;  his  preoccupations  re- 
mained literary  and  scientific.    In  each 
of  these  fields  he  soon  made  a  name  as 
the  editor  of  a  well-known  series.  On  the 
literary  side  was  the  'Mermaid'  series  of 
dramatists — reprints,  scholarly  and  vm- 
jexpurgated,  of  all  the  best  plays  by  Shake- 
speare's contemporaries,  made  accessible 
Ifor  the  first  time  to  the  reading  public 
m  octavo  volumes  at  popular  prices.  The 
Idea  was  Ellis's  own;  he  showed  great 
pkill   in    selecting   his    sponsors   for   the 
Idifferent  dramatists ;  and  although  after  a 
ear,  in  1888,  the  series  passed  out  of  his 
ands,  he  had  made  in  it  a  real  contri- 
ution  to  English  literary  culture.    His 
imilar  success  on  the  scientific  side  was 
he  'Contemporary  Science'  series.  Begim 
hen  the  toil  of  his  examinations  neared 
[ts  chmax,  this  was  a  surprising  venture 
for   a   medical   student.     But   again   he 
^vlcceeded  in  getting  the  best  people  to 


work  for  him ;  many  volumes  in  the  series 
became  famous  text-books ;  and  the  effect 
of  the  whole  in  popularizing  scientific 
progress  was  outstanding.  He  continued 
to  be  editor  until  1915.  These  two  editorial 
enterprises  brought  him  the  friendship  of 
many  distinguished  men,  with  at  least  one 
of  whom,  Arthvu"  Symons,  he  formed  a 
close  lifelong  connexion. 

Meanwhile  Ellis  developed  relations  of 
passionate  attachment  to  two  remarkable 
women,  each  an  authoress.  The  first  was 
Olive  Schreiner  [q.v.],  famous  for  The 
Story  of  an  African  Farm ;  the  second  was 
Edith  Mary  Oldham  Lees  (only  daughter 
of  Samuel  Oldham  Lees,  a  landed  pro- 
prietor of  Ashton-under-Lyne),  who  be- 
came his  wife.  Not  the  least  singular 
feature  of  these  attachments  (which  are 
described  and  documented  in  his  autobio- 
graphy) was  their  co-existence.  He  met 
Olive  Schreiner  early  in  1884,  through  the 
intermediary  of  Karl  Marx's  daughter 
Eleanor,  and  between  then  and  Miss 
Schreiner's  leaving  England  in  1889  some 
thousands  of  letters  passed  between  them. 
They  were  love-letters,  and  the  relation 
was  passionate  and  exclusive,  although  the 
lady  decided  eventually  against  marriage. 
After  her  return  to  Cape  Colony  the  letters 
went  on,  unabated  save  by  the  delays  of 
distance;  first  he  and  then  she  found 
marriage  elsewhere,  but  neither  spouse 
objected  to  the  relationship  continuing; 
and  it  did  so  until  Olive  Schreiner's  death 
in  1920.  Ellis's  attachment  to  Edith  Lees 
did  not  begin  until  a  year  after  Miss 
Schreiner  left  England,  but  it  led  to 
marriage  in  1891.  Thomas  Davidson,  the 
well-known  Scottish- American '  wandering 
scholar',  had  in  1883  collected  not  a  few 
talented  people  into  a  'Fellowship  of  the 
New  Life',  from  which  the  Fabian  Society 
originated  in  1884  as  an  offshoot. 
Weakened  by  this  hiving-off,  the  fellow- 
ship lasted  fourteen  years  longer;  and  in 
its  final  phases  Edith  Lees,  a  young 
woman  of  dynamic  personality  with  a 
bachelor  income  and  pronounced  gifts  for 
lecturing  and  writing,  became  its  chief 
organizer.  On  marrying  Ellis  she  let  it 
drop,  but  in  other  respects  was  sedulous 
to  preserve  despite  wedlock  her  separate 
activity.  Her  literary  output  includes 
sketches,  short  stories,  novels,  a  successful 
short  play,  and  a  good  many  essays ;  per- 
haps she  would  have  chosen  to  be  judged 
by  the  volume  Three  Modem  Seers  (1910), 
studies  of  James  Hinton,  Nietzsche,  and 
Edward  Carpenter  [q.v.].  Her  sincerity 
and  eagerness  gave  her  best  work  some 


259 


Ellis 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


abiding  value,  although  it  was  always 
more  vivid  than  matured. 

The  common  bond  which  first  brought 
Ellis  and  his  wife  together  was  the  in- 
fluence of  Hinton's  teaching  on  sex,  for 
which  both  were  enthusiasts.  Their  mar- 
riage relations  were  on  an  unusual  footing, 
which  is  fully  described  in  Ellis's  auto- 
biography, and  corresponded  to  the  desire 
of  both  parties  for  freedom  and  experi- 
ment in  life.  Theirs  was  a  turbulent  love, 
but  on  its  peculiar  terms  it  endured  until 
Edith  Ellis's  final  illness ;  and  although  it 
robbed  the  husband  of  peace,  it  must  have 
stimulated  his  thinking.  They  lived  to- 
gether at  various  places,  but  for  the 
longest  time  at  Carbis  Bay  in  Cornwall. 
As  he  then  earned  little,  while  she  was 
an  impulsive  spender,  they  were  normally 
short  of  money;  and  she  died  in  1916, 
leaving  him  much  encumbered.  Olive 
Schreiner  attended  her  funeral. 

Meantime  Ellis  had  gone  ahead  with 
his  chosen  life  work.  It  took  shape  in  a 
series  of  six  volumes,  Studies  in  the 
Psychology  of  Sex,  of  which  the  first  ap- 
peared in  1897  and  the  last  in  1910.  On 
completing  the  sixth,  he  felt,  he  tells  us, 
like  Gibbon  finishing  his  History,  and 
wrote  in  his  diary :  '  The  work  that  I  was 
born  to  do  is  done.'  In  1928- he  added  a 
seventh;  and  in  1936  rearranged  the 
whole  in  four  volumes.  The  earliest  in  the 
original  series  (it  was  entitled  Sexual 
Inversion)  was  the  occasion  in  1898  of 
a  notable  prosecution,  Reg.  v.  Bedborough. 
Bedborough  was  not  the  publisher,  but  an 
anarchist  bookseller  who  had  stocked  the 
book.  A  committee  was  formed,  including 
most  of  the  leading  radicals  and  socialists 
of  the  day,  and  they  raised  a  substantial 
defence  fund ;  but  their  guns  were  spiked 
by  Bedborough  himself,  who  pleaded 
guilty  and  was  bound  over.  EUis  remained 
in  a  precarious  position — not  prosecuted 
but  liable  to  prosecution ;  and  for  a  short 
while  he  left  the  country.  The  problem  of 
continuing  the  Studies  was  solved  by 
publishing  them  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  Although  essentially  addressed 
to  doctors  and  psychologists,  and  not  to 
the  public  at  large,  they  have  since  been 
translated  into  many  languages. 

At  the  same  time  Ellis  poured  out  a 
stream  of  books  meant  for  the  general 
reader.  Some  of  them  were  by-products 
of  his  studies  in  sex;  the  best  of  these, 
Man  and  Woman,  appeared  as  early  as 
1894,  but  was  repeatedly  revised  and  en- 
larged in  later  editions  (the  eighth  in 
1934);   others  are  The  Erotic  Bights  of 


Women  (1918),  The  Play-Function  of  Sex 
(1921),  and  notably  Little  Essays  of  Love 
and  Virtue  (1922).  Others  are  on  special 
subjects,  such  as  criminology ;  and  others 
deal  directly  with  the  problem  of  life  and 
the  universe :  the  best  of  these.  The  Dance 
of  Life,  appeared  in  1923.  Lastly,  he 
wrote  much  about  literature  and  the  arts, 
and  here  his  best  work  is  in  the  thre< 
series  of  Impressions  and  Comments  (1914 
1921,  and  1924).  His  appreciation  of  arl 
was  genuine  and  many  sided,  but  not 
original;  he  followed  closely,  if  uncon- 
sciously, the  art  fashions  (usually  th« 
Parisian);  and  apart  from  the  charm  oi 
the  style  these  books  are  chiefly  interest 
ing  as  reflecting  their  changes.  His  posthu 
mously  published  autobiography.  My  Lift 
(1940),  contains  much  that  is  of  minoi 
concern,  but  the  long  account  of  hii 
marriage  is  a  human  dociunent  of  extra 
ordinary  interest.  Expansive  in  youth 
he  became  later  in  life  more  of  a  hermit 
seeing  few  but  intimates.  His  last  hom< 
was  at  Hintlesham  in  Suffolk,  the  coiuit] 
of  his  ancestors;  and  there  he  died 
without  issue,  8  July  1939. 

A  drawing  of  Ellis  by  W.  Rothensteii^ 
(1931)  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
Busts  by  J.  Davidson  (1916)  and  A.  Strobl 
(1936)  are  privately  owned,  as  is  a  painting 
by  Henry  Bishop,  of  which  a  replica  is  at 
the  College  of  Physicians.  A  bronze  bust 
by  A.  G.  Walker  is  in  the  Ipswich  Museiun. 

[The  Times,  11  July  1939;  H.  Havelock 
Ellis,  My  Life,  1940 ;  Houston  Peterson,  Have' 
lock  Ellis,  Philosopher  of  Love  (containing  a 
complete  bibliography  of  his  writings  down  to 
1928),  1928.]  R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 

ERNLE,  Babon  (1851-1937),  admini- 
strator, author,  and  minister  of  agriculture. 
[See  Pbothero,  Rowland  Edmund.] 

EUMORFOPOULOS,  GEORGE  (1863- 
1939),  collector  of  Chinese  and  other 
works  of  art,  was  born  at  Liverpool  18 
April  1863,  the  eldest  son  of  Aristides 
George  Eumorfopoulos,  by  his  wife, 
Mariora  Scaramanga.  His  father  was  a 
Greek  merchant  whose  family  originally 
came  from  the  island  of  Chios.  George 
entered  the  firm  of  Ralli  Brothers,  mer- 
chants, of  London,  of  which  for  a  time  in 
early  life  he  was  representative  in  south 
Russia:  he  rose  eventually  to  be  vice- 
president  and  retired  in  1934.  In  1890  he 
married  Julia  (died  1943),  daughter  of 
George  Emanuel  Scaramanga,  merchant, 
of  Tiltwood,  Crawley  Down,  Sussex.  Soon 
afterwards  Eumorfopoulos  started  collect- 


260 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Evans,  E.  V. 


ing:  beginning  with  European  porcelain, 
he  was  soon  led  on  to  Chinese.  It  was  a 
time  when  the  frontiers  of  knowledge  of 
Chinese  art  in  the  West  were  about  to 
expand  rapidly:  railway  construction  in 
north  China  cut  into  tombs  richly  furnished 
with  pottery  figures  and  vessels  of  the 
first  to  the  tenth  century  a.d.  In  his 
preface  to  the  first  of  the  six  volumes  of 
R.  L.  Hobson's  monumental  catalogue  of 
his  Chinese  and  other  Eastern  ceramics 
(1925-1928)  Eumorfopoulos  records  that 
it  was  in  1906  that  he  saw  the  first 
specimens  of  tomb  wares : '  First  came  the 
Han,  then  the  T'ang  (figures  of  horses 
and  camels  first  in  1910),  and  lastly  the 
Wei.'  The  collection  grew  rapidly  until 
it  became  remarkably  representative  of 
the  ceramics  of  the  Sung  and  earlier 
periods.  Not  content  with  this,  he 
launched  out  into  the  field  of  Chinese 
archaic  bronzes  and  jades,  and  eventually 
of  sculpture  and  paintings  as  well,  until 
it  became  the  greatest  of  his  time.  He 
lived  first  at  Clandon  in  Surrey  and  after- 
wards in  London,  where  he  added  a  two- 
story  museum  at  the  back  of  7  Chelsea 
Embankment.  There  he  and  his  wife 
were  always  ready  to  show  the  collection, 
and  their  Sunday  afternoon  receptions 
became  a  feature  of  London  life  for  all 
those  interested  in  the  arts. 

Eumorfopoulos  had  intended  to  be- 
queath his  collection  to  the  nation,  but  in 
1934  he  found  it  necessary  to  realize  a 
part ;  and  he  offered  the  national  museums 
all  that  they  required  of  the  Chinese  por- 
tion for  £100,000,  a  sum  which  was 
estimated  at  the  time  to  be  well  under  half 
the  market  value.  The  money  was  found, 
and  the  division  between  the  British  and 
Victoria  and  Albert  museums  made  on  a 
basis  of  three  to  two.  His  small  frame  and 
stooping  shoulders  concealed  resources  of 
energy,  fed  by  the  enjoyment  that  he 
received  from  the  'dehghted  surprise' 
with  which  he  saw  new  works  of  art.  He 
was  indeed  an  inveterate  collector,  and 
continued  to  buy  Chinese  antiquities  untU 
his  death.  But  his  taste  was  wide,  ranging 
from  Islamic  and  medieval  art  to  modern 
European  painting  and  sculpture.  Archaeo- 
logical appeal  alone,  he  has  recorded, 
never  induced  him  to  acquire  an  object ; 
while  the  vitality  of  his  judgement  is 
shown  in  the  remarkable  examples  of 
modern  work  which  he  acquired,  largely 
through  patronage  of  young  painters  and 
sculptors.  He  also  supported  archaeologi- 
ical  studies  and  was  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  Oriental  Ceramic  Society  and  the  first 


president  from  1921  until  his  death  in 
London  19  December  1939.  The  collections 
remaining  in  his  hands  were  sold  by 
auction  in  Messrs.  Sotheby's  rooms  from 
28  to  31  May  and  on  5  and  6  June  1940 
and,  after  his  widow's  death,  in  1944.  He 
had  no  children. 

A  bust  of  Eumorfopoulos  by  Ivan 
Mestrovid  is  in  the  British  Museum,  and 
another,  by  Dora  Gordine,  is  in  the 
Victoria  and  Albert  Museum. 

[The  Times,  20  December  1939;  Transactions 
of  the  Oriental  Ceramic  Society,  vol.  xvii, 
1940  (portrait);  private  information.] 

Basil  Gray. 

EVANS,  Sir  (EVAN)  VINCENT  (1851- 
1934),  journalist,  is  reputed  to  have  been 
born  in  the  parish  of  Llangelynin,  Meri- 
oneth, 18  November  1851,  the  elder  son 
of  Lewis  Evans,  farmer,  who  removed  in 
1 856  to  Tynllyn,  Trawsfynydd,  in  the  same 
county,  by  his  first  wife.  The  registration 
of  the  birth  cannot  be  traced.  He  was  for 
some  years  a  pupil  teacher  in  the  national 
school  at  Trawsfynydd  and  later  an  as- 
sistant in  the  village  store.  In  1872  he 
removed  to  London,  where  he  remained 
until  his  death.  Some  clerical  employment 
brought  him  into  touch  with  the  Chancery 
Lane  Safe  Deposit  and  Offices  Company, 
Limited,  the  service  of  which  he  en- 
tered, becoming  first  secretary  and  then 
managing  director.  He  was  attracted  to 
journalism,  becoming  a  member  of  the 
parliamentary  press  gallery,  and  he  con- 
tinued throughout  his  life  his  connexion 
with  the  press  and  particularly  with  the 
South  Wales  Daily  News,  for  the  London 
letter  of  which  he  was  for  many  years 
largely  responsible.  He  was  intimate  with 
the  younger  members  of  parliament  from 
Wales  and  welcomed  the  advent  of  his 
neighbour  David  Lloyd  George  to  London 
on  his  election  as  member  for  Carnarvon 
Boroughs  in  1890. 

In  1881  Evans  became  secretary  and 
editor  of  the  publications  of  the  National 
Eisteddfod  Association  and  in  1884  a 
member  of  the  Honourable  Society  of 
Cymmrodorion,  the  council  of  which  he 
joined  in  1886.  He  became  secretary  in 
1887,  and  later  undertook  the  editorship 
of  the  society's  publications  and  may  be 
said  to  have  re-established  the  society. 
He  retained  his  offices  in  both  these 
institutions  until  his  death. 

The  strong  national  feeling  which  mani- 
fested itself  in  Wales  during  the  last  two 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  looked 
to  the  'London  Welsh'  for  guidance,  and 


261 


Evans,  E.  V. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Evans's  interests  and  associations  con- 
nected him  with  many  bodies,  and  in 
particular  with  the  university  colleges  at 
Aberystwyth  and  Bangor  of  the  university 
of  Wales,  of  which  he  was  a  governor,  and 
which  in  1922  conferred  upon  him  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  Among  other 
offices  he  was  a  governor  of  the  Welsh 
National  Museum  and  the  National 
Library  of  Wales;  president  in  1918  of 
the  Cambrian  Archaeological  Society; 
chairman  of  the  executive  committee 
of  the  Welsh  Bibliographical  Society; 
treasurer  of  the  Welsh  Folk-Song  Society ; 
and  he  took  a  large  part  in  organizing 
and  recruiting  the  London  Welsh  bat- 
talions during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 
Although  he  made  no  claim  to  scholarship, 
many  articles  of  useful  comment  and  care- 
ful compilation  were  published  by  him  in 
the  Cymmrodor  and  the  Transactions  of 
the  Cymmrodorion  Society. 

Evans,  who  was  knighted  in  1909  for 
his  services  to  Wales,  and  appointed  C.H. 
in  1922,  was  of  sturdy  build,  somewhat 
above  the  middle  height,  with  a  large  and 
striking  head,  typical  of  the  people  of 
the  uplands  of  Merioneth.  He  married  in 
1881  Annie  Ehzabeth  (died  1898),  daughter 
of  Thomas  Beale,  of  Oxford,  and  had  a 
son,  Mr.  Lewis  Noel  Vincent  Evans,  C.B., 
deputy  director  of  public  prosecutions, 
and  a  daughter.  Evans  died  in  London 
13  November  1934. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Evans  by  William 
Oliver  in  the  National  Museum  of  Wales 
at  Cardiff.  A  bust  by  Sir  W.  Goscombe 
John  is  at  the  National  Library  of  Wales, 
at  Aberystwyth. 

[The  Times,  15  November  1934 ;  Transac- 
tions of  the  Honourable  Society  of  Cyininro- 
dorion,  1933-1935 ;  private  information.] 
Howell  E.  James. 

EVANS,  Sir  (WORTHINGTON)  LAM- 
ING WORTHINGTON-,  first  baronet 
(1868-1931),  politician,  was  born  at  Broad- 
stairs  23  August  1868,  the  elder  son  of 
Worthington  Evans,  of  Isleworth,  a 
soUcitor  in  the  City  of  London,  by  his 
second  wife,  Susanna  Jane,  daughter  of 
James  Laming,  of  Birchington  Hall,  Kent. 
He  was  educated  at  Eastbourne  College, 
and  was  articled  to  his  father  at  the  age 
of  seventeen,  being  admitted  a  solicitor  in 
1890  and  eventually  becoming  head  of  the 
firm  of  Worthington  Evans,  Dauney,  & 
company.  He  retired  from  practice  in 
1910.  In  1905  he  was  appointed  a  member 
of  the  Board  of  Trade  committee  for  the 
reform  of  company  law  and  in  1906  he 


unsuccessfully  contested  the  borough  of 
Colchester  as  a  conservative,  but  at  the 
general  election  of  January  1910  Evans 
gained  the  seat  (which  in  1918  became 
the  Colchester  division),  and  he  held  it 
until  in  1929  he  was  returned  for  St. 
George's,  Hanover  Square,  by  a  very  large 
majority. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Evar 
served  first  at  York  as  inspector  of  ad| 
ministrative  services,  with  the  temporal 
rank  of  major.     In  the  following  yes 
he  was  appointed  parliamentary  privat 
secretary  to  the  financial  secretary  to  tl 
War  Office,  and  from  January  to  Decera| 
ber  1916  was  controller  of  the  foreij 
trade  department  of  the  Foreign  Office 
He  filled  offices  for  short  periods  from  191i 
to  1921 ;  and  from  February  1921  to  Octc 
ber  1922,  and  again  from  1924  to  192J 
he  was  secretary  of  state  for  war.  He  wa 
postmaster-general  from  1923  to  1924.  Ii 
1929  he  accompanied  Lord  Birkenhead 
on  a  visit  to  the  United  States  of  America. 
Mr.  Churchill  has  described  him  as  'an 
experienced  parliamentarian,  capable  of 
speaking  at  short  notice  and  of  taking  an 
effective  part  on  the  spur  of  the  moment 
in  hot  debate.  .  . .      He  was  essentially  a 
House    of    Commons    man.'     His    real 
interest  lay  in  finance. 

Evans  was  created  a  baronet  in  1916, 
when  he  assumed  by  royal  licence  the 
additional  surname  of  Worthington;  he 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1918, 
and  was  appointed  G.B.E.  in  1922.  He 
died  in  London  14  February  1931.  In 
1898  he  married  Gertrude  Annie,  younger 
daughter  of  William  Hale,  of  London,  and 
had  a  son,  William  Shirley  (born  1904), 
who  succeeded  him  as  second  baronet, 
and  a  daughter. 

There  is  a  plaque  of  Worthington-EvanS^ 
by  Maurice  Webb  in  St.  Margaret's 
church,  Westminster. 

[The  Times,  16  February  1931.] 

E.  I.  Carlyle. 

EVE,  Sir  HARRY  TRELAWNEY 
(1856-1940),  judge,  was  born  in  London 
13  October  1856,  the  only  son  of  Thomas 
Eve,  a  Jamaica  merchant.  He  was  educated 
privately  and  at  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 
He  early  chose  the  bar  as  his  career,  read' 
ing  in  the  chambers  of  Charles  Swinfen 
Eady  [q.v.],  who  had  a  large  practice.  Evj 
was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  " 
1881  and  took  silk  in  1895.  He  wa! 
returned  to  parliament  at  a  by-election  in 
January  1904  as  liberal  member  for  the 
Ashburton  division  of  Devon,  a  seat  which 


d-  , 
en  j 


262 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ewart 


he  retained  by  a  large  majority  at  the 
general  election  of  1906.  His  political 
career  was,  however,  destined  to  be  of 
short  duration,  for  in  1907  he  was  offered, 
and  accepted,  a  judgeship  in  the  Chancery 
division.  He  retired  in  1937  and  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  He  became  a 
bencher  of  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1899,  and  on 
his  elevation  to  his  judicial  office  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  college. 
He  married  in  1879  Beatrice  Wright,  only 
daughter  of  Henry  Strangways  Hounsell, 
M.D.,  of  Torquay,  and  had  one  son,  who 
was  killed  in  action  in  1917,  and  two 
daughters,  the  younger  of  whom  pre- 
deceased her  father.  He  died  at  Farnham, 
Surrey,  10  December  1940. 

Eve  was  a  thoroughly  sound  judge.  His 
grasp  of  equity  was  very  comprehensive, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  most  baffling  mysteries 
in  the  whole  history  of  judicial  appoint- 
ments that  he,  who  was  for  many  years 
the  senior  judge  in  the  Chancery  division, 
and  sat  on  many  occasions  in  the  Court  of 
Appeal,  was  always  passed  over  for  actual 
promotion  to  that  court. 

One  of  Eve's  earliest  decisions  was  in 
Cope  V.  Crossingham  in  1908.  It  concerned 
that  difficult  statutory  provision  section  4 
of  the  Trade  Union  Act  (1871),  which  pro- 
vides that  nothing  in  the  Act  shall  enable 
any  court  to  entertain  any  legal  proceeding 
for  the  object  of  'directly  enforcing' 
certain  trade  union  agreements.  Here  the 
members  of  a  branch  of  a  trade  union 
passed  a  resolution  that  they  would  secede 
from  the  parent  society  and  distribute  the 
funds  of  the  branch  among  themselves. 
This  resolution  was  contrary  to  the  rules 
of  the  trade  union,  and  its  trustees  sought 
a  declaration  that  the  resolution  was  ultra 
vires,  and  an  order  that  the  funds  should 
be  paid  over  to  them  according  to  the 
rules.  Eve  held  that  they  had  sufficient 
interest  in  the  property  of  the  branch  to 
maintain  the  action  and  were  not  prevented 
by  section  4  from  doing  so:  further,  he 
declared  the  proposed  distribution  of  the 
funds  to  be  ultra  vires,  but  on  the  other 
hand  he  refused  to  administer  the  funds 
of  the  union  by  making  any  order  for  the 
payment  over  of  the  funds  to  the  head 
trustees.  He  pointed  out  that  the  declara- 
tion would  prevent  misapplication  of  the 
funds ;  beyond  that  he  did  not  feel  it  his 
duty  to  go,  by  laying  down  the  exact 
method  of  appropriation.  Other  well- 
known  decisions  during  the  course  of  his 
career  were  in  Powell  v.  Hemsley  (1909), 
an  often-cited  authority  on  covenants  re- 
strictive of  the  user  of  land;  Re  Pryce 


(1917),  on  a  covenant  in  a  marriage  settle- 
ment to  settle  the  after-acquired  property 
of  the  wife;  Hill  v.  Peters  (1918),  on 
mortgage  priorities;  Wise  v.  Whiti)urn 
(1924),  on  the  determination  of  the 
moment  at  which  executors  cease  to  hold 
property  in  that  character  and  begin  to 
hold  it  as  trustees ;  Re  Bathe  (1925),  on  the 
validity  of  conditions  in  wills  in  partial 
restraint  of  marriage;  and  Cummins  v. 
Bond  (1926),  a  case  which  attracted  a  great 
deal  of  attention  and  in  which  Eve  decided 
that  a  spiritualistic  medium  who  had 
produced  a  script  entitled  'The  Chronicle 
of  Cleophas '  by  automatic  writing  was  the 
owner  of  the  copyright  in  it  and  entitled 
to  restrain  a  person  who  was  present  at 
the  seances  at  which  it  had  been  written 
from  publishing  it,  annotated  by  himself, 
in  book  form.  His  judgements  must 
always  loom  large  in  any  account  of  the 
vital  subject  of  charitable  trusts.  It  is, 
finally,  to  be  noted  as  one  of  his  outstand- 
ing merits  that,  although  his  judicial 
career  was  well  past  its  meridian  in  1926, 
when  the  property  legislation  of  1925  came 
into  force,  he  was  quick  in  absorbing  it 
and  never  unduly  conservative,  as  were 
some  of  his  colleagues  on  the  bench,  in  its 
interpretation. 

A  portrait  of  Eve  by  E.  C.  Wilkinson 
hangs  in  the  hall  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 

[The  Times,  11  December  1940.] 

H.  G.  Hanbury. 

EWART,  ALFRED  JAMES  (1872- 
1937),  botanist,  was  born  at  Liverpool  12 
February  1872,  the  second  of  the  four  sons 
of  Edmund  Brown  Ewart,  director  of  the 
chemical  laboratory  of  the  Liverpool  In- 
stitute, by  his  wife,  Martha  Williams.  The 
father,  who  was  of  Scottish  descent,  was  a 
nephew  of  the  politician  William  Ewart 
[q.v.],  after  whose  father  Gladstone  was 
named.  Alfred  was  educated  at  the  Liver- 
pool Institute  and  at  the  University 
College  (later  Liverpool  University),  where 
he  read  for  a  London  degree,  graduating 
B.Sc.  with  first  class  honours  in  botany 
in  1893.  The  following  year  he  was 
awarded  an  1851  Exhibition  scholarship 
and  proceeded  to  Leipzig  where  he  studied 
plant  physiology  under  Wilhelm  Friedrich 
Philipp  Pfeffer.  There  he  obtained  the 
degree  of  Ph.D.  in  1896  and  an  extension 
to  his  studentship  allowed  him  to  work  in 
the  laboratory  of  the  Botanical  Garden  at 
Buitenzorg,  Java,  under  Melchior  Treub. 
Returning  to  England  in  1897,  he  began  an 
association  with  Mason  College,  Birming- 
ham (converted  in  1900  into  Birmingham 


263 


Ewart 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


University),  which  lasted  until  his  de- 
parture for  Melbourne  in  1905.  During 
this  period  he  worked  at  intervals  at  the 
Botanic  Garden  at  Oxford,  where  he 
matriculated  as  a  non-collegiate  student 
in  1898,  graduating  B.Sc.  in  1906. 

For  the  first  sixteen  years  of  his  tenure 
of  the  Melbourne  chair  Ewart  held  the 
dual  office  of  professor  of  botany  and 
plant  physiology  and  government  botanist. 
Half  of  each  day  he  spent  in  the  national 
herbarium  at  South  Yarra,  and  the  re- 
mainder in  the  university  at  Carlton  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  city.  In  1921  the 
two  positions  were  separated,  and  in  1929 
Ewart  achieved  one  of  his  ambitions  when 
he  moved  his  department  to  a  new  build- 
ing dedicated  to  botany:  previously  he 
had  shared  the  laboratory  with  the  zoology 
school.  A  second  ambition  was  attained 
in  1930  with  the  publication  of  his  large 
illustrated  work  on  Flora  of  Victoria. 

Ewart's  contributions  to  botany  cover 
a  wide  field.  Trained  as  a  physiologist,  he 
is  remembered  as  the  translator  of  Pfeffer's 
Physiology  of  Plants  (3  vols.,  1900-1906) 
and  as  the  author  of  important  contribu- 
tions on  The  Physics  and  Physiology  of 
Protoplasmic  Streaming  in  Plants  (1903) 
and  'The  Ascent  of  Water  in  Trees' 
{Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal 
Society,  series  B,  vols,  cxcviii  and  cxcix, 
1906  and  1908).  After  his  migration  to 
Australia,  work  of  a  taxonomic  nature  and 
problems  of  applied  botany  had  to  occupy 
most  of  his  time.  He  did  much  for  the 
education  of  foresters  and  in  1925  pub- 
lished A  Handbook  of  Forest  Trees  for 
Victorian  Foresters.  Inevitably  problems 
of  weed  identification  and  control  took  a 
large  part  in  his  career  as  a  government 
botanist.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he 
made  a  useful  contribution  towards  the 
causes  of  the  poisoning  of  stock  and 
horses  in  Central  and  Western  Australia. 

Ewart  was  a  man  of  robust  physique 
and  somewhat  choleric  disposition.  Un- 
fortunately he  became  involved  in  some 
bitter  controversies  which  prevented  his 
taking  as  large  a  part  in  the  development 
of  botanical  work  in  Australia  as  might 
have  been  expected  from  one  of  his  ability 
and  standing.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  Linnean  Society  in  1898  and  F.R.S.  in 
1922,  and  was  an  active  member  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Victoria.  A  man  of 
simple  tastes,  he  delighted  in  country  life 
and  in  good  music.  He  was  twice  married : 
first,  in  1898  to  Florence  Maud,  daughter  of 
Frederick  William  Donaldson,  accountant; 
she  was  an  accomplished  violinist  whom 


he  met  in  Leipzig:  the  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1929 ;  secondly,  in  1931  to 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  David  Richard 
Bilton,  grazier,  of  Craigie,  Victoria.  There 
were  two  sons  of  the  first  marriage.  He 
died  in  Melbourne  12  September  1937. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (portrait) ;  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Linnean  Society  of  London, 
October  1937  to  May  1938 ;  Nature,  1  January 
1938 ;  private  information.] 

T.  G.  B.  OSBORN. 

EWING,  Sir  (JAMES)  ALFRED  (1855- 
1935),  engineer,  was  born  at  Dundee  27 
March  1855,  the  youngest  of  the  three 
sons  of  James  Ewing,  minister  of  St. 
Andrew's  Free  church,  Dundee,  by  his 
wife,  Marjory,  eldest  daughter  of  John 
Ferguson,  a  Glasgow  solicitor.  He  was 
educated  at  the  West  End  Academy  and 
at  Dundee  High  School.  'In  a  family',  he 
says,  'whose  chief  interests  were  clerical 
and  literary,  I  took  my  pleasure  in 
machines  and  experiments.  My  scanty 
pocket  money  was  spent  on  tools  and 
chemicals.  The  domestic  attic  was  put  at 
my  disposal.  It  became  the  scene  of  hair- 
raising  explosions.  There,  too,  the  domes- 
tic cat  found  herself  an  unwilling  in- 
strument of  electrification  and  a  partner 
in  various  shocking  experiences.'  In  1871 
Ewing  was  awarded  a  scholarship  in 
engineering  to  Edinburgh  University^ 
where  he  studied  under  H.  C.  Fleeming 
Jenkin  and  P.  G.  Tait  [qq.v.],  who  both' 
recognized  his  unusual  ability.  Jenkin 
was  then  engaged  with  Sir  William  Thom^ 
son  (later  Lord  Kelvin,  q.v.)  in  making 
and  laying  submarine  telegraphs  for  the 
Great  Western  Telegraph  Company,  and 
Jenkin  suggested  that  Ewing  should  assist 
in  this  work  during  the  summer.  Ewing 
accepted  this  offer  and  carried  out  three 
successive  cable-laying  expeditions  to 
Brazil  and  the  River  Plate,  returning  to 
Edinburgh  for  the  university  session  in  the' 
summer. 

In  1878  Ewing,  on  Jenkin's  recom- 
mendation, was  appointed  professor  of 
mechanical  engineering  and  physics  at  the 
imperial  university  of  Tokyo  for  three, 
subsequently  extended  to  five,  years.  In 
the  winter  of  1879  he  investigated  in  Japan 
the  phenomena  of  earthquakes,  and  de- 
\ised  instruments  for  measuring  and 
recording  them.  He  established  an  ob- 
servatory in  the  lowest  part  of  the  vale  of 
Gedo.  The  results  of  his  labours  were 
published  in  the  Memoirs  of  the  science 
department  of  the  university  of  Tokyo  in 


264 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ewing 


1883,  the  year  in  which  he  was  appointed 
professor  of  engineering  in  the  new 
university  of  Dundee.  His  researches  on 
magnetic  induction  and  in  organic 
chemistry  produced  much  fruitful  work. 

In  1890  the  professorship  of  mechanism 
and  applied  mechanics  at  Cambridge  fell 
vacant,  and  on  the  advice  of  John  Hopkin- 
son  [q.v.]  Ewing  successfully  applied  for 
the  chair.  During  his  tenure  the  school 
grew  at  almost  an  embarrassing  rate;  a 
tripos  was  instituted  (1892) ;  a  laboratory 
was  founded  (1894) ;  and  in  1899  a  wing 
was  opened  in  memory  of  Hopkinson.  In 
1898  Ewing  was  elected  into  a  professorial 
fellowship  at  King's  College.  He  was 
offered,  but  refused,  the  post  of  director 
of  the  National  Physical  Laboratory  in 
1899. 

In  1903  Ewing  was  called  to  a  wider 
sphere  of  action.  The  Admiralty  was 
about  to  introduce  for  naval  officers  a  new 
scheme  of  education  and  training  pro- 
moted by  W.  W.  Palmer,  Lord  Selborne, 
and  Sir  John  (later  Lord)  Fisher  [qq.v.], 
into  which  a  large  element  of  engineering 
knowledge  was  to  be  infused.  The  post  of 
director  of  naval  education  was  offered  to 
Ewing  and  accepted,  and  he  threw  him- 
self into  his  new  duties  with  characteristic 
enthusiasm.  He  organized  the  system  of 
scientific  and  engineering  training  and 
declared  his  belief  that  the  reorganization 
would  be  productive  of  immense  benefit 
in  promoting  the  efficiency  of  the  service. 
The  teaching  was  eminently  practical  and 
included  much  experimental  work,  pre- 
liminary to  the  exposition  of  theory.  He 
directed  the  preparation  of  several  text- 
books for  young  officers  and  continued 
to  supervise  the  work  of  naval  educa- 
tion until  1916.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  ordnance  board  from  1906  to  1908, 
when  Sir  Philip  Watts  [q.v.]  was  building 
dreadnoughts;  and  from  1903  to  1906  a 
member  of  the  explosives  committee 
which  improved  the  quality  and  the  manu- 
facture of  cordite. 

But  on  the  day  of  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  1914  Ewing  was  asked  by  Rear-Admiral 
(Sir)  H.  F.  Oliver,  then  director  of  the 
intelligence  division  of  the  naval  staff,  to 
decipher  some  wireless  'intercepts'  from 
German  stations,  there  being  no  depart- 
ment to  which  to  refer  them.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  'Room  40'  in  the  Old 
Buildings  of  the  Admiralty  where  the 
task  of  deciphering  the  German  messages 
under  Ewing's  supervision  was  facilitated 
by  the  opportune  discovery  in  1914  of  the 
*  highly  confidential'  signal  book  of  the 


German  navy  in  the  arms  of  a  drowned 
signalman  of  the  Magdeburg,  and  led  up 
to  the  battles  of  Dogger  Bank  and  Jutland, 
the  arrest  of  Roger  Casement  [q.v.],  the 
loss  of  his  armament  off  Tralee,  and  the 
revelation  of  the  Zimmermann  telegrams 
with  their  effect  on  the  policy  of  the 
United  States  of  America. 

In  May  1916  Ewing  was  offered  the 
principalship  and  vice-chancellorship  of 
Edinburgh  University.  It  was  intended 
that  he  should  continue  to  superintend 
'Room  40',  but  he  found  after  a  year  that 
the  claims  of  Edinburgh  were  too  insistent 
to  make  the  double  duty  practicable  or 
desirable.  Under  his  headship,  from  1916 
to  1929,  the  university  passed  through  an 
unexampled  period  of  development  and 
expansion.  When  he  received  the  freedom 
of  the  city  in  1929,  the  lord  provost.  Sir 
Alexander  Stevenson,  declared  that  since 
1916  no  fewer  than  thirteen  new  chairs 
had  been  established  besides  a  number  of 
lecturerships ;  a  new  degree  of  commerce 
had  come  into  being,  and  the  degree  of 
Ph.D.  instituted  for  postgraduate  research. 
The  increase  in  the  number  of  the  teach- 
ing staff  involved  an  extension  scheme  of 
new  buildings,  known  as  the  King's  build- 
ings, on  a  large  area  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  the  Old  College,  where  inde- 
pendent blocks  were  erected  for  chemistry 
and  zoology,  while  provision  was  made, 
and  plans  prepared,  for  geology  and 
engineering.  These  were  carried  out  after 
Ewing's  resignation  in  1929,  when  he 
retired  to  Cambridge  where,  in  1890,  as  a 
stranger,  he  had  been  'received  with  a 
dispassionate  readiness  which  was  as 
gratifying  as  it  was  surprising';  he  had 
been  elected  an  honorary  fellow'of  King's 
College  in  1903. 

Ewing  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1907  and 
K.C.B.  in  1911 ;  in  1887  he  was  elected 
F.R.S.  and  was  awarded  a  Royal  medal 
by  the  society  in  1895.  He  was  elected 
F.R.S.  (Edin.)  in  1878  and  was  president 
from  1924  to  1929.  He  received  honorary 
doctorates  in  science  from  the  universities 
of  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Durham,  and 
Sheffield,  and  in  law  from  Edinburgh, 
St.  Andrews,  and  Glasgow.  He  was 
awarded  the  Albert  medal  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Arts  in  1929.  He  was  president 
of  the  British  Association  in  1932,  and 
received  the  freedom  of  Dundee  in  1933. 
He  gave  the  James  Forest  lecture  to  the 
Institution  of  Civil  Engineers  in  1899  and 
in  1928 ;  the  Rede  lecture  at  Cambridge 
in  1904  on  'The  Structure  of  Metals' ;  the 
second  Kelvin  lecture  to  the  Institution 


265 


Ewing 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  Electrical  Engineers  in  1910 ;  and  the 
Hibbert  lecture  at  Cambridge  in  1933. 
For  many  years  he  was  associated  with  the 
Department  of  Scientific  and  Industrial 
Research;  in  1923  he  became  chairman 
of  the  Bridge  Stress  Committee,  besides 
belonging  to  several  other  committees. 

Besides  the  Treatise  on  Earthquake 
Measurement  (1883),  Ewing  published 
Magnetic  Induction  in  Iron  and  other 
Metals  (1891),  containing  his  final  defini- 
tion of  hysteresis  (3rd  ed.  1900) ;  The  Steam 
Engine  and  other  Heat  Engines  (1894,  4th 
ed.  1926) ;  The  Strength  of  Materials  (1899) ; 
The  Mechanical  Production  of  Gold  (1908) ; 
and  Thermodynamics  for  Engineers  (1920). 

Ewing  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1879 
at  the  British  Legation  in  Tokyo  to  Annie 
Maria  Thomasina  Blackburn  (died  1909), 
daughter  of  Thomas  Blackburn  Washing- 
ton, of  Claymont,  West  Virginia,  and  a 
great-great-grand-niece  of  George  Wash- 
ington, and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter; 
secondly,  in  1911  to  Ellen  Lina,  daughter 
of  John  Hopkinson  [q.v.]  and  sister  of 
Bertram  Hopkinson  [q.v.],  and  had  a  son. 
He  died  at  Cambridge  7  January  1935. 

A  large  portrait  of  Ewing  by  Henry 
Lintott  hangs  in  the  court  room, 
Edinburgh;  another,  by  the  same  artist, 
is  in  possession  of  Lady  Ewing.  A  por- 
trait by  Douglas  Shields  (c.  1903)  is  in 
the  board  room  at  the  Engineering 
Laboratory,  Cambridge.  A  bronze  bust 
by  Miss  Campbell  Muirhead  is  at  Toronto, 
in  the  possession  of  his  son. 

[The  Times  and  Scotsman,  8  January  1935 ; 
A.  W.  Ewing,  The  Man  of  Room  40.  The  Life 
of  Sir  Alfred  Ewing,  1939 ;  Preface  to  J.  A. 
Ewing,  An  Engineer's  Outlook,  1933;  L.  F. 
Bates,  Sir  Alfred  Ewing  (British  Council 
'Science  in  Britain'  series),  1946;  Winston 
Churchill,  The  World  Crisis,  1911-1918, 1931 ; 
Sir  J.  S.  Corbett,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great 
War.  Naval  Operations,  vol.  iii,  1923;  Lord 
Fisher,  Memories,  1919;  S.  J.  Hendrick,  Life 
and  Letters  of  W.  H.  Page,  vol.  iii,  1925; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait); 
Nature,  26  January  1935.] 

E.  I.  Caklyle. 

FAGAN,  JAMES  BERNARD  (1873- 
1933),  actor-manager,  producer,  and  play- 
wright, was  born  in  Belfast  18  May  1873, 
the  elder  son  of  (Sir)  John  Fagan,  surgeon, 
of  Belfast,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Catherine, 
daughter  of  Bernard  Hughes,  also  of 
Belfast.  He  was  educated  at  Clongowes 
Wood  College  and  Trinity  College,  Oxford, 
and  studied  for  the  bar,  but  soon  joined 
the  company  of  (Sir)  F.  R.  Benson  [q.v.]. 


making  his  first  appearance  on  the  stage  > 
in  October  1895.  There  followed  from] 
1897  to  1899  an  engagement  with  (Sir) 
Herbert  Beerbohm  Tree  [q.v.]  at  Herj 
Majesty's  Theatre,  where  he  acted  inj 
Katherine  and  Petruchio,  A  Man's  Shadow, 
Julius  Caesar,  The  Musketeers,  Carnac 
Sahib,  and  other  plays. 

In  1899  Fagan  began  his  career  as  a 
dramatist  with  The  Rebels,  and  among  his 
many  other  plays  may  be  specially  noted 
The  Prayer  of  the  Sword  (a  poetical  drama, 
1904),  Treasure  Island  (adapted  from 
R.  L.  Stevenson's  story,  1922),  And  So 
To  Bed  (a  Pepysian  comedy,  1926),  and 
finally  The  Improper  Duchess  (1931).  After 
fourteen  years  of  retirement  from  the 
stage  he  resumed  his  career  as  an  actor 
in  1913,  touring  in  his  own  play  The  Earth 
(first  produced  in  1909),  and  in  March 
1917  broke  new  ground  as  a  producer, 
when  he  was  responsible  in  this  capacity 
for  the  much-discussed  performance  at 
the  St.  Martin's  Theatre  of  Damaged 
Goods,  adapted  from  the  French  of  Eugene 
Brieux.  Thenceforward  Fagan  threw  him- 
self more  and  more  into  the  work  of  pro- 
ducer and  theatre  manager.  In  October 
1923  he  opened  the  Oxford  Playhouse  in 
the  Woodstock  Road,  where  he  gathered 
round  him  a  company  of  young  and  dis- 
tinguished players,  making  a  real  and  last- 
ing contribution  to  the  dramatic  history 
of  the  university.  This  theatre  was  trans- 
ferred in  1938  to  a  new  and  more  con- 
venient building  in  Beaumont  Street, 
but  its  original  conception  was  Fagan's, 
and  to  him  is  due  the  credit  of  its  founda- 
tion. In  1929  he  became  associated  as 
director  with  the  Festival  Theatre,  Cam- 
bridge, but  much  of  his  best  work  in  this 
department  was  seen  in  London  at  the 
Court  Theatre,  the  management  of  which 
he  took  over  in  1918,  and  elsewhere, 
notably  in  Tchekhov's  The  Cherry  Orchard 
(Lyric  Theatre,  Hammersmith,  1925),  in 
Mr.  Sean  O'Casey's  Juno  and  the  Paycock 
(Royalty  Theatre,  1925),  and  in  Strind- 
berg's  Spook  Sonata  (Globe  Theatre,  1927). 

In  middle  life  Fagan  was  robust  in 
figure  and  of  a  jovial  countenance.  His 
very  versatility  may  have  prevented  the 
attainment  of  supreme  excellence  in  any 
single  branch  of  the  art  which  he  practised 
with  such  enthusiasm  and  in  so  many 
spheres.  But  he  was  always  true  to  his 
best  ideals  of  acting,  authorship,  and  pro- 
duction, and  at  a  time  of  growing  com- 
mercialism in  the  theatre  he  manfully 
upheld  high  standards.  He  was  twice 
married:   first,   in   1897   to   the   actress 


266 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fairbairn 


Susan    Elizabeth    Kirby;    the    marriage 

was  dissolved;  secondly,  in  1914,  as  her 

second   husband,   to   Ada,    daughter   of 

Edward  Bevan  ap  Rees  Bryant ;  she  acted 

^Kinder  the  name  of  Mary  Grey.  There  was 

^^nie  daughter  of  the  second  marriage.  He 

^Hied  at  Hollywood,  California,  17  February 

I 


[The  Times,  18  February  1933 ;  Who's  Who 
the  Theatre,  1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Geoffrey  A.  Whitworth. 


FAIRBAIRN,  STEPHEN  (1862-1938), 
oarsman,  was  born  at  Toorak,  Melbourne, 
Australia,  25  August  1862,  the  fifth  of  the 
six  sons  of  George  Fairbairn,  who,  having 
emigrated  from  Berwickshire  in  1839, 
owned  a  large  sheep  station  and  (in  the 
'seventies)  started  the  first  canning  and 
meat-freezing  works  in  Australia.  The 
Scottish  theologian  Patrick  Fairbairn 
[q.v.]  was  Stephen's  uncle.  His  mother 
was  Virginia,  youngest  daughter  of  George 
Armytage,  of  Geelong,  Victoria,  a  native 
of  Derbyshire.  He  was  educated  at 
Geelong  Grammar  School,  where  he  earned 
distinction  in  all  forms  of  sport,  and  at 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  graduating  in 
1884.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Inner  Temple  in  1886  but  did  not  practise. 
In  1884  he  returned  to  Australia  where, 
but  for  an  interval  in  1886  and  1887  when 
he  was  in  England,  he  worked  on  a  sheep 
station  for  twenty  years.  He  came  back 
to  England  in  1905  and  thereafter  devoted 
himself  almost  exclusively  to  coaching 
various  rowing  clubs. 

Fairbairn  rowed  in  the  Cambridge  crews 
of  1882,  1883,  1886,  and  1887  and  won 
many  races  at  Henley  and  other  regattas : 
but  his  claim  to  fame  rests  on  his  methods 
of  coaching  and  the  success  of  the  crews 
which  he  coached.  Some  people  have 
tried  to  add  a  new  word  'Fairbairnism' 
to  the  English  language  as  denoting  a 
peculiar  style  of  rowing.  That,  however, 
comes  from  a  complete  misunderstanding 
of  him.  Fairbairn  invented  no  new  style 
and  had  no  desire  to  invent  a  style.  He 
wrote : '  There  are  certain  principles  under- 
lying rowing,  and  what  is  called  style  is 
the  endeavour  to  carry  them  out.  Varia- 
tions are  merely  failures  to  carry  out  the 
principles.  There  can  be  only  one  true 
style.'  There  is  little  doubt  that  had  he 
produced  his  perfect  crew  it  would  have 
been  indistinguishable  from  the  perfect 
crew  produced  by  any  other  methods. 
What  was  different  about  Fairbairn  was 
the  method  of  coaching  by  which  he  tried 
to  arrive  at  the  perfect  crew.   He  turned 


the  pupil's  mind  to  the  oar  in  the  water 
and  to  moving  the  boat,  regardless  of 
what  might  happen  to  various  parts  of 
the  body,  whereas  the  orthodox  coach 
would  concentrate  on  positioning  the  body 
in  order  to  produce  certain  resxilts  on  the 
oar  and  the  passage  of  the  boat. 

Fairbairn  coached  always  for  looseness 
and  ease.  A  favourite  remark  was:  'If 
you  can't  do  it  easily,  you  can't  do  it  at 
all.'  He  would  never  try  to  correct  by 
condemnation :  anything,  if  it  is  to  be  done 
successfully,  must  be  done  naturally  and 
easily:  set  before  the  performer  an  ideal 
after  which  to  strive :  if  in  his  striving  he 
does  some  odd  things,  never  mind:  be 
positive  in  your  coaching  and  encourage 
rather  than  criticize.  It  was  inevitable 
that  some  of  his  crews,  which  had  moved 
only  a  little  way  along  the  road  to  per- 
fection, showed  imgainly  attitudes  and 
exaggerations  of  ideals  which  earned  bit- 
ter condemnation  from  more  orthodox 
coaches. 

Fairbairn  was  an  enthusiast  and  was 
able  to  impart  his  enthusiasm  to  his 
pupils.  He  was  ever  progressive,  ever 
ready  to  try  out  some  new  idea  in  coach- 
ing or  some  new  device  such  as  long  slides 
or  swivel  rowlocks.  He  did  much  to  make 
rowing  popular,  particularly  in  the  clubs 
at  Putney,  and  in  1925  he  instituted  the 
'Head  of  the  River'  race  on  the  Putney 
to  Mortlake  course.  He  coached  many 
successful  crews  of  both  the  London 
Rowing  Club  and  the  Thames  Rowing 
Club,  but  his  old  college,  Jesus,  always 
took  first  place  in  his  affections,  and  for 
more  than  thirty-three  years  he  devoted 
himself  to  coaching  its  crews.  It  was  a 
small  college  with  a  small  boat  club,  but 
Fairbairn  brought  it  many  successes.  His 
crews  always  raced  hard  and  often  won 
against  crews  which  seemed  to  be  better 
or  more  experienced. 

Fairbairn  was  known  throughout  the 
rowing  world  as  'Steve',  and  even  those 
who  disagreed  with  his  unorthodox  ways 
admitted  his  genuine  love  of  rowing,  his 
boundless  enthusiasm,  his  kindliness,  and 
his  genius  for  coaching.  His  writings 
include  Rowing  Notes  (1926)  and  an  auto- 
biography, Fairbairn  of  Jesus  (1931).  He 
married  in  1891  Ellen,  daughter  of  Sydney 
Sherwood,  of  Aramac,  Queensland,  and  had 
two  sons.  He  died  in  London  16  May  1938. 

A  portrait  of  Fairbairn  by  James  Quinn 
is  in  the  possession  of  Jesus  College, 
Cambridge. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
H.  B.  Playford. 


267 


Falkner 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


FALKNER,  JOHN  MEADE  (1858- 
1932),  author  and  antiquary,  was  born  at 
Manningford  Bruce,  Wiltshire,  8  May 
1858,  the  eldest  of  the  three  sons  of  Thomas 
Alexander  Falkner,  of  Manningford  Bruce, 
later  curate  of  Holy  Trinity  church, 
Dorchester,  and  afterwards  some  time  of 
North  Newnton,  Wiltshire,  by  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Grace  Meade.  He  was  educated 
at  Marlborough  and  at  Hertford  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  graduated  in  modern 
history  in  1882,  and  in  1927  was  elected 
an  honorary  fellow.  After  leaving  the 
university,  filled  with  affection  for  Oxford 
and  the  south  of  England  and  expressing 
an  extreme-  distaste  for  the  north  and 
everything  connected  with  it,  he  went  to 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne  as  tutor  to  the  sons 
of  (Sir)  Andrew  Noble  [q.v.],  the  principal 
figure  in  the  large  firm  of  Messrs.  Armstrong 
&  company,  armament  manufacturers. 
With  the  Noble  family  his  association  was 
close,  and  he  soon  became  an  intimate  and 
beloved  member  of  their  household,  so 
that  when  the  tuition  of  his  sons  came  to 
an  end.  Noble  invited  Falkner  to  become 
his  private  secretary,  and,  on  the  firm 
being  transformed  in  1897  into  a  limited 
liability  company  as  Sir  W.  G.  Armstrong, 
Whitworth  &  company,  Falkner  was  in 
due  course  appointed  the  first  secretary 
of  the  board.  As  an  official  of  the  firm  he 
travelled  much  on  the  continent  in  order 
to  negotiate  contracts  for  ships  and  guns, 
and,  under  Noble's  guidance,  he  did  much 
useful  work.  In  1901  he  became  a  member 
of  the  board,  and  eventually  its  chairman, 
a  position  in  which  he  can  hardly  be  called 
a  success.  His  genius  as  well  as  his  tastes 
followed  other  lines. 

When  he  first  came  north  Falkner  spent 
all  his  holidays  walking  or  bicycling,  chiefly 
in  Oxfordshire  and  Berkshire,  and  he  came 
to  know  those  counties  so  well  that  he 
compiled  Murray's  handbooks  for  them 
(Oxfordshire,  1894;  Berkshire,  1902),  and 
wrote  an  admirable  popular  History  of 
Oxfordshire  (1899).  But  as  the  years  went 
by,  he  found  his  love  for  antiquities  stirred 
by  the  neighbouring  city  of  Durham,  and 
he  exchanged  his  Newcastle  lodgings  for 
a  house  in  Durham.  Here  he  interested 
himself  in  the  cathedral  service,  its  music 
and  ceremonies,  as  well  as  in  the  university 
library.  He  became  honorary  librarian  to 
the  dean  and  chapter,  a  post  much  to  his 
liking,  and  at  the  university  he  was  ap- 
pointed honorary  reader  in  palaeography. 

Falkner's  reputation  as  a  writer  of 
fiction  rests  upon  three  novels  or  romances, 
each  in  its  way  noteworthy.    The  first 

268 


appeared  in  1895,  and  the  other  two  in  the 
course  of  the  next  ten  years.  All  received 
a  good  deal  of  public  appreciation  and 
sold  quite  satisfactorily.  Yet  in  the 
curiously  discontinuous  way  which  was 
characteristic  of  him,  he  never  produced 
another  book.  He  was  said  to  have  begvm 
a  fourth  story,  but  lost  the  manuscript 
when  it  was  half  finished  and  never 
resumed  it.  His  first  novel,  The  Lost 
Stradivarius,  deals  with  the  discovery  of 
a  violin  which  had  been  hidden  in  a  secret 
cupboard  behind  the  panels  of  an  Oxford 
undergraduate's  sitting-room.  There  is 
much  ghostly  and  mysterious  detail  about 
the  plot,  which  is  wonderfully  well  worked 
out.  His  second  book  (1898)  was  called 
Moonfleet,  and,  although  it  is  perhaps  no 
his  best,  it  is  decidedly  the  most  popula: 
of  his  works.  Written  in  the  style  of 
Stevenson  or  Hardy,  about  smugglers  and 
preventive  men  and  abounding  in  hair- 
breadth escapes  and  exciting  adventures, 
it  has  delighted  every  generation  since 
it  first  appeared.  His  third  and  last  novel, 
The  Nebuly  Coat  (1903),  may  well  rank  as 
his  masterpiece.  The  theme  was  after  his 
own  heart :  the  experience  of  an  architect 
sent  to  inspect  a  church  which  is  in  danger 
of  collapse  owing  to  the  giving  way  of  the 
arches  which  support  the  tower.  Heraldry 
also,  as  the  title  suggests,  figures  largely 
in  the  narrative.  The  book  ends  with  a 
striking  description  of  the  fall  of  the  tower 
and  the  dismay  and  alarm  of  the  villagers. 
In  addition  to  his  novels,  Falkner  wrote 
a  good  deal  of  admirable  poetry  which 
appeared  in  various  periodicals.  After  his 
death  some  attempt  was  made  to  collect 
the  poems,  and  a  reprint  was  circulated 
privately. 

As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  Falk- 
ner's main  interests  were  ecclesiastical. 
He  may  indeed  be  said  to  have  adopted 
a  church  of  his  own.  In  his  Oxfordshire 
rambles  he  came  across  the  picturesque 
village  of  Burford,  by  which  he  was  much 
attracted,  and  the  church  was  for  long  the 
centre  of  his  interests.  He  and  his  former 
pupil,  Sir  John  Noble,  contributed  sub- 
stantial sums  in  alterations  and  additions 
for  the  beautifying  of  the  interior,  and 
when  he  died  at  Durham  22  July  1932, 
Falkner  was  buried  in  Burford  church- 
yard. 

In  person,  Falkner  was  an  exceptionally 
tall  man,  and  he  may  have  outgrown  his 
strength  in  youth,  as  for  many  years  his 
heart  gave  him  trouble.  Considering  all 
that  he  did  by  way  of  authorship,  study, 
and  research,  it  is  remarkable  how  his 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Farnell 


powers  lasted.  In  the  last  phase  of  his 
active  life  he  spent  much  of  his  time  at 
Bath,  a  city  of  which  the  beauty  and 
traditions  had  always  greatly  attracted 
him,  and  to  the  subject  of  which  he  devoted 
a  short  book,  hardly  more  than  a  pamphlet, 
entitled  Bath,  in  History  and  Social  Tradi- 
tion (1918). 

Falkner  married  in  1899  Evelyn  Violet, 
youngest  daughter  of  General  Sir  John 
Miller  Adye  [q.v.].  There  were  no  children 
of  the  marriage.  He  received  several 
foreign  decorations. 

[The  Times,  23  and  25  July  1932 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Alfred  Cochrane. 

FARNELL,  LEWIS  RICHARD  (1856- 
1934),  rector  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford, 
and  classical  scholar,  was  born  at  Salisbury 
19  January  1856,  the  sixth  child  and  third 
son  of  John  Wilson  Farnell,  by  his  wife, 
Harriot  Pritchard.  His  father  was  then 
established  as  a  draper  in  Salisbury,  but 
in  1858,  involved  in  the  ruin  of  a  brother, 
had  to  move  his  family  to  London  where 
he  eventually  became  manager  for  a 
Bicester  brewery.  Farnell  was  educated 
at  the  City  of  London  School  under  E.  A. 
Abbott  [q.v.]  and  entered  Exeter  College, 
Oxford,  as  an  open  classical  scholar  in 
1874.  At  Exeter  he  owed  much  to  the 
teaching  of  Ingram  Bywater  and  H.  F. 
Pelham  [qq.v.]  and,  after  obtaining  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1875)  and  in 
liter ae  humaniores  (1878),  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  the  college  in  1880.  Appointed 
classical  lecturer  in  1883,  he  spent  the  rest 
of  his  active  hfe  primarily  in  college  teach- 
ing and  administration,  being  sub-rector 
from  1883  to  1893,  senior  tutor  from  1893 
to  1913,  and  rector  from  1913  to  1928,  in 
which  year  he  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow.  From  1903  to  1914  he  was  imi- 
versity  lecturer  in  classical  archaeology, 
from  1908  to  1911  first  Wilde  lecturer  in 
natural  and  comparative  religion,  Hibbert 
lecturer  in  1911,  and  Gifford  lecturer  at 
St.  Andrews  University  in  1920-1921  and 
1924^1925.  From  1920  to  1923  he  was 
vice-chancellor. 

Despite  these  activities  Farnell,  who 
was  an  energetic  promoter  of  the  degree  of 
D.Litt.  and  was  one  of  the  first  to  take  it 
in  1901,  was  able  between  1880  and  1893 
to  make  a  series  of  continental  tours  during 
which  he  studied  classical  archaeology  in 
Berlin  and  at  Mimich  and  visited  many 
museums,  and  from  1896  to  publish  a  suc- 
cession of  important  books  concerning 
Greek  religion,  a  subject  to  which  he  had 
been  attracted  in  the  course  of  his  archaeo- 


logical studies.  Of  these  the  most  massive 
is  The  Cults  of  the  Greek  States  (5  vols., 
1896-1909),  completed  in  1921  by  a 
supplementary  volume,  Greek  Hero  Cults 
and  Ideas  of  Immortality  (being  his  Gifford 
lectures  for  1920).  In  these  volumes  the 
evidence  for  Greek  religion  is  exhaustively 
collected  and  interpreted  with  judgement, 
rituals  and  art-forms  being  used  to  illus- 
trate each  other.  Shorter  works,  but  all 
marked  by  wide  learning  and  clear  exposi- 
tion, are  Greece  and  Babylon  (1911),  The 
Higher  Aspects  of  Greek  Religion  (1912), 
and  The  Attributes  of  God  (1925,  being  his 
Gifford  lectures  for  1924-1925).  His  Out- 
line-History of  Greek  Religion  (1920)  is  a 
constructive  summary  of  high  value.  In 
retirement  he  produced  two  notable  books, 
The  Works  of  Pindar  (3  vols.,  1930-1932), 
based  upon  a  lifelong  study  of  that  author, 
and  a  delightfully  written  autobiography. 
An  Oxonian  Looks  Back  (1934).  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in 
1916  and  honorary  degrees  were  conferred 
upon  him  by  the  universities  of  Dublin, 
St.  Andrews,  and  Geneva. 

For  many  years  Farnell  played  a  lead- 
ing part  in  the  politics  of  his  university. 
He  led  or  supported  many  reforms  designed 
to  promote  learning  within  its  walls  and 
with  the  same  object  in  view  was  often 
found  championing  the  university  against 
the  colleges,  although  he  was  a  devoted 
alumnus  and  very  successful  head  of  his 
own  college  and  recognized  that  there 
were  others  besides  himself  who  realized 
his  ideal  of  a  college  tutor  as  one  who 
should  combine  'the  conscientious  dis- 
charge of  tutorial  fvmctions  with  original 
research  and  hterary  production'.  As 
vice-chancellor  in  the  difficult  post-war 
years  he  was  sometimes  criticized  for 
excessive  strictness,  but  calmer  considera- 
tion nearly  always  admitted  that  he  had 
been  right. 

In  1893  Farnell  married  Sylvia,  eighth 
child  and  youngest  daughter  of  Captain 
Christopher  Baldock  Cardew,  of  East  Liss, 
Hampshire;  she  was  a  granddaughter  of 
the  lord  chancellor  Richard  Bethell,  first 
Lord  Westbury  [q.v.].  They  had  three 
sons  and  one  daughter.  Farnell  died  at 
Parkstone,  Dorset,  28  March  1934.  His 
portrait  by  J.  St.  H.  Lander  is  in  Exeter 
CoUege  haU. 

[L.  R.  Farnell,  An  Oxonian  Looks  Back, 
1934;  R.  R.  Marett,  Lewis  Richard  Farnell, 
1856-1934  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy, vol.  XX,  1934;  Oxford  Magazine,  26 
AprU  1934 ;  College  records ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]    E.  A.  Barber. 


269 


Ferguson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


FERGUSON,  RONALD  CRAUFORD 
MUNRO-,  Viscount  Novar  (1860-1934), 
politician,  was  born  at  Kirkcaldy  6  March 
1860,  the  eldest  of  the  three  sons  of  Colonel 
Robert  Ferguson,  of  Raith,  Fife,  by  his 
wife,  Emma,  daughter  of  James  Henry 
Mandeville,  of  Merton,  Surrey.  He  was 
grandson  of  General  Sir  R.  C.  Ferguson 
[q.v.].  His  father  took  the  additional  sur- 
name of  Mimro  on  the  death  of  his  first 
cousin  Hugh  Andrew  Munro  in  1864  when 
he  inherited  the  estates  of  Novar,  Ross- 
shire,  and  Muirton,  Morayshire.  Ronald 
Munro-Ferguson  was  educated  at  home 
and  in  1875  joined  the  1st  Fife  Light 
Horse,  and  later,  after  the  course  at  Sand- 
hurst, was  gazetted  to  the  Grenadier 
Guards  in  which  he  served  for  five  years 
(1879-1884).  In  the  last-named  year  he 
was  returned  at  a  by-election  as  liberal 
member  for  Ross  and  Cromarty,  but  was 
defeated  at  the  general  election  of  1885  by 
a  crofter  candidate,  and  in  1886  he  un- 
successfully contested  Dumbartonshire. 
But  later  in  that  same  year  he  succeeded 
Gladstone  as  member  for  Leith  Burghs 
and  retained  the  seat  until  1914.  He  was 
private  secretary  to  Lord  Rosebery  when 
foreign  secretary  both  in  1886  and  in  1892 
and  accompanied  him  to  India  in  1886, 
and  when  Rosebery  became  prime  minister 
in  1894  Munro-Ferguson  was  appointed 
a  jiuiior  lord  of  the  Treasury.  In  1910  he 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 

Munro-Ferguson,  who  in  1889  had 
married  Lady  Helen  Hermione,  eldest 
daughter  of  F.  T.  Hamilton-Temple 
Blackwood,  first  Marquess  of  Dufferin  and 
Ava  [q.v.],  was  appointed,  on  Asquith's 
recommendation,  to  be  governor-general 
of  Austraha  and  G.C.M.G.  in  1914.  He 
reached  the  Commonwealth  in  May  and 
worked  amicably  with  the  prime  minister, 
(Sir)  Joseph  Cook,  and  his  successors, 
Andrew  Fisher  [q.v.]  and  Mr.  William 
Morris  Hughes.  On  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  August  the  energies  of  Australia  had  to 
be  diverted  to  military  matters,  to  which 
Munro-Ferguson  devoted  himself  in  every 
form  of  war  work.  In  this  his  past  military 
experience  was  of  great  service,  particu- 
larly in  the  training  and  dispatch  of 
the  Australian  Expeditionary  Force.  In 
travelling  to  visit  the  training  camps  he 
made  himself  very  popular  everywhere. 
The  nursing  and  supply  of  comforts  were 
the  especial  care  of  his  wife,  who  was 
appointed  G.B.E.  for  her  services  in  1918. 
Munro-Ferguson's  knowledge  and  experi- 
ence of  afforestation  led  him  to  encourage 
the  cultivation  of  Australian  timber  and 


he  considered  this  to  be  his  'best  legacy 
to  Melbourne'.  In  1919  his  term  as 
governor-general  was  extended  to  1920  on 
account  of  the  forthcoming  visit  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  on  his  return  to 
Scotland  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  j 
Viscoimt  Novar,  of  Raith.  In  the  absence  j 
of  any  effective  liberal  party  in  1922  he 
supported  the  Bonar  Law  and  Baldwin 
administrations,  and  accepted  the  office 
of  secretary  for  Scotland  from  1922  to 
1924.  In  1925  he  was  appointed  chairman 
of  the  committee  for  the  review  of  poli- 
tical honours. 

Novar  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  St.  Andrews 
(1911)  and  Edinburgh  (1923)  and  was 
appointed  K.T.  in  1926.  He  died,  with- 
out issue,  at  Raith  30  March  1934.  A 
portrait  of  him  by  J.  H.  Lorimer  is  at 
Raith  House. 

[The  Times,  31  March  1934.] 

E.  I.  Carlyle. 

FIFE,  Duchess  of  ( 1 867-1 931 ) ,  princess 
royal  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  [See 
Louise  Victoria  Alexandra  Dagmar.] 

FILON,  LOUIS  NAPOLEO>i 

GEORGE  (1875-1937),  mathematician, 
was  born  at  St.  Cloud,  near  Paris,  22 
November  1875,  the  only  son  of  Pierre 
Marie  Augustin  Filon,  litterateur  and  tutor 
to  the  Prince  Imperial,  by  his  wife,  Marie 
Jeanne  Madeline  Poirel.  When  he  was 
three  years  old  his  parents,  his  father  now 
blind  and  his  mother  in  delicate  health, 
came  to  England  and  settled  in  Margate. 
His  early  education  under  the  personal 
direction  of  his  father  centred  mainly 
round  the  classics.  He  went  to  Heme 
House  School  at  Margate  and  in  1894 
became  a  student  at  University  College, 
London,  where  he  graduated  B.A.  with 
first  class  honours  in  1896,  and  was  awarded 
a  gold  medal  for  Greek.  He  had  so  far 
shown  no  great  interest  in  mathematics 
and  came  to  it  only  because  it  was  at  that 
time  part  of  the  curriculum  for  the  B.A. 
degree.  This  brought  him  into  contact 
with  Karl  Pearson  [q.v.]  and  Micaiah  Hill 
for  whom  he  retained  throughout  life  an 
abiding  affection  and  reverence,  and  it 
was  their  influence  which  very  largely 
shaped  his  subsequent  career  as  a  mathe- 
matician and  scientist. 

In  1898  (the  year  in  which  he  was 
naturalized)  Filon  went  to  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  as  one  of  the  earliest '  advanced 
students ' ;  he  then  joined  the  staff  of  Uni- 
versity College,  London,  as  lecturer  in 


270 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Finberg 


pure  mathematics  in  1903.  In  1912  he 
succeeded  Pearson  in  the  Goldsmid  chair 
of  applied  mathematics  and  mechanics, 
to  the  work  of  which  he  devoted  himself 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  with  the  exception 
of  the  years  1914-1918,  when  he  saw 
active  service  in  France  and  later  com- 
manded the  2nd  battalion  London  Regi- 
ment. From  1929  until  his  death  he  was 
director  of  the  University  Observatory. 

The  results  of  Filon's  mathematical 
researches  are  embodied  in  over  fifty 
memoirs,  the  publication  of  which  was 
spread  pretty  evenly  over  forty  years  of 
a  busy  life.  They  are  concerned  with 
many  aspects  of  mathematics,  but  his 
outstanding  contributions  were  in  the 
field  of  classical  mechanics  and  particu- 
larly the  mechanics  of  continuous  media. 
It  is  a  field  that  had  been  well  culled  over 
before  his  time  and  the  problems  that 
were  obvious  and  easy  had  all  been  solved. 
Important  and  significant  problems  re- 
mained unsolved,  but  they  usually  pre- 
sented formidable  technical  difficulties. 
Filon  was  well  equipped  both  by  tempera- 
ment and  training  to  wrestle  with  such 
problems.  He  had  the  mathematical 
courage  that  will  tackle  any  problem,  a 
resourceful  mind  in  meeting  technical 
difficulties,  and  the  patient  and  methodi- 
cal perseverance  that  can  hang  on  until  a 
solution  is  reached.  His  greatest  achieve- 
ment was  the  theory  of  '  generalized  plane 
stress'  which  shows  how  the  average 
elastic  stresses  in  a  thick  plate  may  be 
determined  by  the  simpler  analysis  ap- 
propriate to  two-dimensional  problems. 
A  development  of  this  theory  shows  how 
the  optical  measurement  of  the  stresses 
in  a  transparent  celluloid  plate  may  be 
used  to  investigate  the  stresses  in  a  steel 
structure.  It  is  the  working  out  of  this 
idea  in  general  theory  and  in  particular 
cases  that  constitutes  Filon's  most  im- 
portant contribution  to  the  advance  of 
mechanics.  It  was  a  particular  source  of 
gratification  to  him  when,  in  association 
with  Professor  E.  G.  Coker,  he  was  able 
to  apply  the  method  to  the  exploration  of 
the  stresses  in  structures  actually  used  in 
engineering  practice. 

Filon  was  a  great  teacher  and,  even  at 
times  when  he  was  most  heavily  engaged 
with  other  activities,  he  gave  intense  care 
to  the  preparation  and  delivery  of  his 
lectures.  He  regarded  mechanics  as  a 
branch  of  physics  rather  than  of  mathe- 
I  matics.  He  insisted  on  the  application  of 
rigorous  logic  to  the  development  of  the 
theory  of  the  subject,  while  at  the  same 


time  insisting  that  theory  should  yield  its 
results  in  a  form  that  could  be  tested  by 
experiment.  Thus,  his  lectures  on  mecha- 
nics were  freely  illustrated  by  experi- 
ment and  he  established  a  mechanics 
laboratory  in  which  his  students  carried 
out  experiments  for  themselves.  In  pre- 
scribing this  unusual  but  profitable  experi- 
ence for  the  mathematical  undergraduate 
he  was  a  pioneer,  and  more  recent 
developments  have  shown  how  right  he 
was. 

Filon  took  an  active  part  in  the  affairs 
of  the  university  of  London  in  the  critical 
phase  of  its  development  and  unification. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  senate  (1920)  and 
the  court  and  served  as  vice-chancellor 
(1933-1935).  He  worked  consistently  and 
unremittingly  to  maintain  academic  free- 
dom and  to  develop  teaching  and  research. 
The  high  offices  in  which  he  served  and 
the  heavy  responsibilities  that  were  laid 
upon  him  never  led  him  to  neglect  his 
primary  duty  as  a  teacher.  For  years  he 
carried  a  full  lecturing  time-table  every 
morning  and  a  full  programme  of  com- 
mittees and  councils  every  afternoon,  and 
still  the  steady  stream  of  published  work 
flowed  on.  In  all  this  every  lecture  was 
prepared  and  every  document  studied 
with  the  closest  attention  to  detail,  and 
only  his  magnificent  constitution  enabled 
him  to  bear  the  strain  for  so  long.  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1910,  and  appointed 
C.B.E.  in  1933. 

Filon  was  vigorous  and  combative,  a 
man  of  strong  convictions,  yet  always  just 
and  generous,  and  a  constant  help  and 
inspiration  to  those  with  whom  he  worked. 
In  1904  he  married  Anne,  eldest  daughter 
of  Professor  Philippe  Godet,  of  the  uni- 
versity of  Neuchatel,  and  had  one  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  at  Croydon 
29  December  1937,  a  victim  of  a  typhoid 
epidemic  prevalent  there  at  that  time. 

[The  Times,  30  and  31  December  1937; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  7,  January  1939  (bibliography  and  por- 
trait) ;  Mathematical  Gazette,  February  1938 
(portrait) ;  Nature,  26  February  1938 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  G.  B.  Jeffery. 

FINBERG,  ALEXANDER  JOSEPH 

(1866-1939),  writer  on  the  history  of 
English  art,  was  born  in  London  23  April 
1866,  the  son  of  Alexander  Abraham 
Finberg,  compositor,  by  his  wife,  Susanna 
Wanstall.  He  was  educated  at  the  City 
of  London  College  and  King's  College, 
London,  and  studied  art  at  the  Lambeth 
School  of  Art  and  in  Paris.  He  did  black- 


271 


Finberg 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and-white  work  for  the  Graphic  and 
Illustrated  London  News,  and  became  art 
critic  to  several  papers,  including  the 
Manchester  Guardian  and  the  Saturday 
Review.  In  1905  Finberg,  who  for  many 
years  had  made  a  special  study  of  the 
work  of  J.  M.  W.  Turner  [q.v.],  was  com- 
missioned by  the  trustees  of  the  National 
Gallery  to  complete  the  arrangement  of 
the  sketches  and  water-colours  in  the 
Turner  bequest,  which  had  been  begun  by 
John  Ruskin.  While  he  was  engaged  upon 
this  task,  numerous  unknown  paintings  by 
Turner  were  brought  to  light,  and  they 
were  first  exhibited  at  the  Tate  Gallery  in 
1906.  The  interest  excited  by  them 
prompted  (Sir)  Joseph  Duveen  [q.v.]  to 
present  a  new  Turner  wing  to  the  gallery 
in  1908.  Finberg's  writings  on  Turner 
include  A  Complete  Inventory  of  the  Draw- 
ings of  the  Turner  Bequest  (2  vols.,  1909) ; 
The  History  of  Turner's  Liber  Studiorum 
with  a  new  Catalogue  Raisonni  (1924), 
which  superseded  that  of  W.  G.  Rawlinson 
[q.v.] ;  and  The  Life  of  J.  M.  W.  Turner 
(1939),  to  the  composition  of  which  he 
devoted  much  of  his  life  and  the  proofs  of 
which  he  had  finished  correcting  only  a 
few  days  before  his  death. 

The  Life  of  Turner  is  perhaps  Finberg's 
chief,  but  it  is  not  his  only,  monument. 
When  he  was  cataloguing  the  Turner 
bequest  he  discovered  among  the  draw- 
ings many  which  were  not  by  Turner.  He 
set  himself  to  identify  the  artists  of  these 
drawings,  but  was  greatly  hampered  by 
lack  of  books  of  reference.  For  whereas 
the  work  of  foreign  artists  was  receiving 
searching  attention  from  English  scholars, 
the  British  school  of  painting  was  un- 
deservedly neglected.  Accordingly,  after 
much  consideration,  Finberg  in  1911 
founded  the  Walpole  Society,  the  main 
object  of  which  was  'to  continue  the  work 
begun  by  Horace  Walpole's  Anecdotes  of 
Painting  in  England,  viz.,  "to  celebrate 
the  arts"  of  this  country'.  Until  1922  he 
acted  as  honorary  secretary  and  as  editor 
of  the  annual  volumes  of  the  society  which 
have  done  so  much  to  encourage  the  study 
and  promote  the  knowledge  of  the  history 
of  all  aspects  of  British  art,  not  least 
by  the  publication  of  such  indispensable 
sources  as  the  notebooks  of  George  Vertue 
[q.v.]. 

Finberg  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1899  to  Norah  Kathleen  (whom  he 
divorced  in  1913),  daughter  of  William 
Mutch,  cartridge  manufacturer,  of  Hollo- 
way  ;  secondly,  in  1914  to  Hilda  Felicite, 
yoimgest  daughter  of  Ferdinand  Baruch 


Ehrmann,  wine  merchant,  of  Islington^ 
He  had  two  sons  by  his  first  and  one  bj 
his  second  marriage.   He  died  at  Barne 
Conunon  15  March  1939. 

[The  Times,  16  March  1939 ;  C.  E.  Hughesj 
'A.  J.  Finberg',  in  the  Walpole  Society,  vol 
xxvii,  1938-1939.]     M.  R.  Toynbee. 

FmTH,   Sir   CliARLES   HARDING 

(1857-1936),  historian,  was  bom  at  Shef- 
field 16  March  1857,  the  eldest  son  of 
John  Firth,  of  Abbeydale,  Sheffield,  by 
his  second  wife,  Charlotte  Harding.  John 
Firth,  who  had  been  trained  as  an  archi- 
tect, belonged  to  the  great  steel-making 
firm  of  Thomas  Firth  &  Sons,  of  which  his 
brother  Mark  Firth  [q.v.]  was  the  head. 
In  1870  Charles's  mother  was  living  at 
Clifton  and  he  entered  Clifton  College  as 
a  day-boy.  Here  he  came  under  the 
influence  of  Thomas  William  Dunn,  after- 
wards headmaster  of  Bath  College,  to 
whom,  as  he  wrote  many  years  later,  he 
owed  'a  greater  debt  than  to  any  other 
man'.  When  Dunn  opened  a  boarding- 
house  in  the  school,  Firth  became  the 
head  of  it.  Diuin  not  only  taught  him 
accuracy  and  thoroughness  but  impressed 
on  him  for  life  Carlyle's  gospel  of  work. 
He  won  a  copy  of  Carlyle's  Cromwell  as 
a  school  prize.  The  headmaster,  John 
Percival  [q.v.],  recommended  him  to  try  for 
a  classical  scholarship  at  one  of  the  smaller 
Oxford  colleges,  where  competition  was 
less  keen  than  at  the  larger;  but  he  pre- 
ferred to  enter  New  College  as  a  com- 
moner and  to  read  modern  history.  In 
the  next  year,  1876,  on  being  elected  to  a 
Brackenbury  scholarship,  he  migrated  to 
Balliol  College.  Here  he  knew  as  imder- 
graduates  a  number  of  men  who  after- 
wards became  distinguished  scholars,  and 
with  several  of  them,  notably  R.  L.  Poole, 
T.  F.  Tout,  W.  P.  Ker,  and  S.  L.  (Sir 
Sidney)  Lee  [qq.v.],  he  began  lifelong 
friendships.  The  most  important  influence 
on  his  education  was  that  of  William 
Stubbs  [q.v.],  then  regius  professor  of 
modern  history,  five  of  whose  courses  of 
lectures  he  attended.  In  1877  he  won  the 
Stanhope  essay  prize  and  in  1878  obtained 
a  first  class  in  modern  history. 

After  taking  his  degree  Firth  spent 
some  months  in  Hanover  improving  his 
German;  subsequently  he  seldom  went 
abroad  and  never  for  more  than  a  few 
weeks.  For  a  time  he  lectured  at  his 
imcle's  foundation.  Firth  CoUege,  in  Shef- 
field, and  he  had  thoughts  of  giving 
expression  in  local  politics  to  a  radicalism 
which  he  did  not  retain  in  middle  age.  In 


272 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Firth 


1883  he  settled  in  Oxford,  to  live  there  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  He  was  already 
married,  and  it  was  partly  for  this  reason 
that  he  did  not  as  yet  become  a  fellow  of 
any  college:  at  that  time  most  of  the 
fellowships  still  carried  with  them  an 
obligation  to  reside  within  the  college 
walls.  Another  Balliol  man  said  later  that 
Firth  had  three  disadvantages,  bad  health, 
a  private  income,  and  a  special  subject, 
and  this  unhandsome  remark  hit  off  some 
of  the  reasons  for  his  unusual  career.  He 
was  sUghtly  lame,  and  so  could  not  take 
vigorous  exercise ;  asthma  often  kept  him 
indoors  in  the  winter.  His  means,  which 
in  later  life  were  considerable,  enabled  him 
to  acquire  a  magnificent  library,  kept 
from  1902  in  the  house  which  he  built  at 
2  Northmoor  Road .  It  was  preponderantly 
a  collection  on  the  English  seventeenth 
century.  His  interest  centred  in  this 
period  partly  because  it  was  the  heroic 
age  of  the  'Puritan'  business  class  from 
which  he  came  and  partly  through  the 
influence  of  S.  R.  Gardiner  [q.v.],  whose 
history  had  been  carried  down  to  the  out- 
break of  the  Civil  war  when  Firth 
returned  to  Oxford.  Firth  was  an  insa- 
tiable reader,  not  only  of  history  and 
historical  novels,  but  of  everything  that 
had  human  interest,  and  he  had  an  ex- 
tremely good  memory.  He  gave  Gardiner 
much  assistance  in  his  work  and  occupied 
himself  for  about  twenty  years  with 
editions,  articles,  and  monographs  within 
the  same  field.  He  soon  developed  the 
characteristics  of  his  mature  studies:  he 
delighted  and  excelled  in  the  handling  of 
historical  evidence,  and  especially  in 
identifying  the  sources  of  historical  works ; 
he  had  a  fine  appreciation  of  literature, 
including  popular  writings,  such  as  bal- 
lads. Although  always  attracted  most  by 
the  history  of  action,  particularly  mihtary 
and  naval  affairs,  travel  and  colonization, 
he  had  more  interest  and  a  better  judge- 
ment than  Gardiner  in  social  and  economic 
matters.  He  acquired  a  great  knowledge 
of  historical  portraits  and  neglected  no 
branch  of  genealogical  or  biographical  re- 
search. His  style  was  severely  restrained, 
but  on  occasion  his  intense  sympathy  with 
some  great  idea  would  force  it  into  elo- 
quence. Narrower  than  Gardiner  in  his 
command  of  languages  and  of  continental 
history,  and  less  apt  to  relate  his  im- 
mediate subjects  to  their  wider  context, 
he  surpassed  his  master  in  decisiveness 
and  in  the  construction  of  narrative. 

In   the    'eighties    and   'nineties   Firth 
edited  a  number  of  texts,  of  which  the 


most  important  are  the  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  of  Colonel  Hutchinson  (1885),  the  Life 
of  William  Cavendish,  Duke  of  Newcastle 
(1886),  the  Memoirs  of  Edmund  Ludlow 
(2  vols.,  1894),  and  the  Clarke  Papers 
(4  vols.,  1891-1901),  the  last  a  new  autho- 
rity of  great  value.  He  sometimes  anno- 
tated so  heavily  that  he  used  up  an 
amount  of  learning  which  would  have  suf- 
ficed for  an  independent  work ;  but  these 
studies  perfected  his  method.  From  the 
third  volume,  published  in  1885,  he  was 
a  contributor  to  this  Dictionary,  for 
which  he  wrote  altogether  about  225  lives, 
nearly  all  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He 
was  also  one  of  the  most  active  of  the 
group  of  scholars  who  launched  the  Eng- 
lish Historical  Review  in  1886.  In  1900  his 
Oliver  Cromwell  made  him  known  to  a  Avide 
reading  public  and  in  1902  he  published 
his  admirable  volume  Cromwell's  Army. 
That  was  the  year  of  Gardiner's  death, 
and  in  accordance  with  his  wish  Firth 
carried  on  his  great  history  from  the  point 
which  it  had  reached,  the  summer  of  1656, 
to  the  death  of  Oliver  Cromwell  two  years 
later. 

The  two  volumes  of  this  continuation 
{The  Last  Years  of  the  Protectorate),  which 
did  not  appear  until  1909,  are  Firth's 
best  work.  He  intended  to  go  further,  to 
the  Restoration  and  indeed  all  through  the 
reign  of  Charles  II,  but  these  plans  were 
never  carried  out.  The  intense  application 
of  earlier  years  had  perhaps  encroached  on 
his  staying-power,  and  the  university 
made  increasing  claims  on  his  time.  From 
1883  he  had  never  been  without  teaching 
work  in  Oxford:  from  1887  to  1893  he  was 
history  lecturer  at  Pembroke  College.  In 
1900-1901  he  was  Ford's  lecturer,  his  lec- 
tures being  the  substance  of  CromwelVs 
Army,  and  in  the  next  year  he  succeeded 
Gardiner  as  a  research  fellow  of  All  Souls. 
When  another  of  his  friends,  Frederick 
York  Powell,  died  in  1904  the  prime 
minister,  A.  J.  Balfour,  recommended  him 
for  appointment  as  regius  professor  of 
modern  history.  He  held  this  office,  which 
carried  with  it  a  fellowship  at  Oriel,  until 
1925.  In  his  inaugural  lecture  he  gave  an 
impressive  account  of  the  historian's 
science  and  art,  and  he  announced  a  pro- 
gramme for  training  historians  in  the  use 
of  original  authorities.  For  a  generation 
past  there  had  been  a  divergence  between 
the  'professorial'  point  of  view  and  the 
practice  of  the  teachers  of  history  in 
the  colleges,  whose  main  concern  was 
with  a  general  education,  fitting  men 
for  any  liberal  pursuit  and  tested  by  the 


273 


Firth 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


examinations  for  honours.  Most  of  the 
college  teachers  signed  a  printed  reply  to 
the  inaugural  lecture,  and  this  controversy 
began  a  series  of  disappointments  for  Firth. 
He  did  not  enjoy  lecturing;  he  chose 
limited  and  sometimes  exacting  subjects, 
and  his  audiences  were  small.  The  regula- 
tions for  the  'research  degrees'  of  B.Litt. 
(from  1895)  and  D.Phil.  (1917)  gave  effect 
to  some  of  his  ideas,  and  he  made  some 
progress  in  providing  graduates  with  in- 
struction in  historical  method.  He  per- 
suaded the  faculty  of  modern  history  to 
modify  the  honours  examinations,  for 
instance  by  allowing  candidates  to  submit 
'theses',  but  his  criticisms  of  the  system 
as  testing  mainly  facility  and  memory 
were  without  effect.  In  some  other  facul- 
ties he  found  happier  co-operation  than  in 
his  own.  From  its  foundation  in  1894  he 
had  been  active  in  building  up  the  honour 
school  of  English  language  and  literature ; 
he  worked  for  the  establishment  of  a 
school  of  medieval  and  modern  languages, 
and  took  part  in  the  lively  controversies 
over  the  Taylor  Institution.  The  study  of 
geography  and  the  education  of  women 
were  also  among  his  good  causes.  He  thus 
sat  on  many  university  boards  and  com- 
mittees, and  he  wrote  many  pamphlets 
and  leaflets,  some  of  them  historical  opus- 
cula  of  permanent  value. 

Outside  Oxford  Firth  held  a  good  many 
appointments,  some  mainly  honorific  but 
others  burdensome.  From  1910  to  1919  he 
was  a  valuable  member  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  public  records,  and  in  1913 
of  the  Admiralty  conunittee  on  the  battle 
of  Trafalgar.  He  served  as  president  of 
the  Royal  Historical  Society  (1913-1917) 
and  twice  (as  first  president  1906-1910 
and  again  1918-1920)  of  the  Historical 
Association,  of  which  he  was  a  founder. 
He  was  a  trustee  of  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery  from  1908  to  1929  and  a  member 
of  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission. 

Firth's  only  other  substantial  book  in 
these  later  years  was  The  House  of  Lords 
during  the  Civil  War  (1910).  In  1913-1915 
he  published  a  reprint  of  the  text  of 
Macaulay's  History  of  England,  very  fully 
illustrated,  the  best  example  of  his  great 
knowledge  of  portraits  and  engravings. 
He  continued  to  write  many  articles  and 
to  edit  many  documents,  extending  his 
range  in  time  from  the  sixteenth  century 
to  the  nineteenth.  He  gave  more  advice 
and  encouragement  to  other  writers  than 
any  other  English  historian  of  his  day: 
innumerable  prefaces  acknowledge  his 
generosity  to  British,  American,  and  con- 


tinental writers,  whether  beginners  or  e 
perts.    A  Bibliography  of  the  Writings 
Sir  Charles  Firth,  his  own  work,  was  pu 
lished  in  1928  and  is  very  nearly  comple 
to  that  date.    In  the  remaining  years  of 
his  life  he  published  a  pamphlet  on  Moder: 
Languages  at  Oxford,  1724-1929  (1929)  am 
articles  in  the  English  Historical  Revi 
the  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academ; 
History,  and  the  Review  of  English  Studie, 
Mr.  Godfrey  Da  vies,  the  most  intimate  o: 
his  younger  friends,  edited  three  post- 
humous works,  in  the  last  of  which  he  had 
more   than   an   editorial   part:    A    Com- 
mentary on  Macaulay^ s  History  of  England 
(1938) ;  Essays  Historical  and  Literary  (re- 
printed pieces,  1938) ;  and  The  Regimental 
History  of  CromwelVs  Army  (2  vols.,  1940). 

Firth's  many  honours  included  doctor- 
ates from  the  universities  of  Aberdeen, 
Durham,     Cambridge,     Sheffield,     Man- 
chester, and  Oxford,  and  a  knighthoo^ 
conferred  in  1922.  He  was  elected  a  fello' 
of  the  British  Academy  in  1903.   In  19 
he  resigned  his  chair  and  was  elected 
honorary  fellow  of  Oriel;  after  that 
worked  quietly  in  his  library,  except  f( 
a  brief  but  severe  illness  in  1929,  unti 
within  a  few  days  of  his  death  at  Oxford 
19  February  1936.    He  married  in  1880 
Frances,  daughter  of  Henry  Ashington, 
vicar  of  An  wick  with  Brauncewell,  Lin- 
colnshire. She  and  their  only  child,  a  son, 
survived  him.  His  most  important  manu- 
scripts and  printed  books  were  presented 
to  the  Bodleian  Library. 

The  most  characteristic  likeness  of  Firth 
is  the  photograph  reproduced  in  the  Oriel 
Record  for  June  1936.  He  was  of  middle 
height,  a  prosperous-looking  man,  rather 
heavily  built  and  slow-moving,  with  a 
well-trimmed  beard  and  moustache,  his 
expression  sometimes  thoughtful  and  in 
conversation  often  kindly  humorous.  He 
smoked  large  pipes  and  many  cigarettes. 
Very  much  at  home  in  the  common  rooms 
of  Oriel  and  All  Souls,  he  enjoyed  con- 
versation, speaking  slowly,  simply,  and 
quietly,  and  contributing  both  wit  and 
common  sense.  He  was  reticent  about 
himself  and  his  own  affairs  and  seldom 
expansive,  but  he  had  and  communicated 
a  sense  of  immovable  confidence.  He  was 
completely  loyal  to  his  friends  and  to  his 
side  in  any  contention.  He  gave  money 
generously  to  institutions  and  to  people  in 
need,  often  doing  his  alms  in  secret.  In 
later  life  he  had  no  religious  beliefs. 
Having  no  liking  for  speculative  thought, 
and  considering  how  often  minds  are 
the  mercy  of  physiological  processes 


274 


1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fisher,  H.  A.  L. 


external  accidents,  he  resigned  himself  to 
a  kind  of  materialism;  but  he  lived  up 
to  an  austere  standard  of  duty. 

[The  Times,  20  and  22  February  1936; 
G.  N.  Clark  in  English  Historical  Review,  April 
1936;  E.  S.  de  Beer  in  History,  June  1936; 
P[ercy]  S[impson]  in  Oriel  Record,  June  1936 ; 
Godfrey  Davies,  Charles  Harding  Firth,  1857- 
1936  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  xxii,  1936;  Thomas  William  Dunn,  A 
Memoir  (privately  printed),  1934;  personal 
knowledge.]  G.  N.  Clark. 

FISHER,  HERBERT  ALBERT 
LAURENS  (1865-1940),  historian,  states- 
man, and  warden  of  New  College,  Oxford, 
was  born  in  London  21  March  1865,  the 
eldest  son  of  Herbert  William  Fisher,  by 
his  wife,  Mary  Louisa,  daughter  of  John 
Jackson,  M.D.,  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany's service,  the  leading  English  physi- 
cian in  Calcutta.  One  of  his  younger 
brothers  was  Admiral  Sir  W.  W.  Fisher 
[q.v.].  Through  his  mother  he  was  a  first 
i  cousin  of  W.  W.  Vaughan  [q.v.].  His 
i\  parents  were  both  people  of  rare  culture. 
^i  His  father  was  by  profession  a  barrister, 
but  when  a  student  of  Christ  Church,  Ox- 
ford, he  had  been  tutor  to  Albert  Edward, 
I'rince  of  Wales,  and  afterwards  was  for 
many  years  his  private  secretary.  In  later 
life,  by  gift  of  the  Prince  as  Duke  of  Corn- 
I  wall,  he  accepted  the  ancient  office  of  vice- 
warden  of  the  Stannaries  of  which  he  was 
ithe  last  holder.  His  mother,  a  daughter 
of  the  fourth  of  the  beautiful  Pattle  sisters, 
had  been  the  model  for  the  heroine  in 
(i.  F.  Watts's  picture  of  'Una  and  the  Red 
I  Cross  Knight'.  Fisher  was  educated  at 
Winchester,  where  he  was  (1878-1884)  a 
commoner  and  took  many  prizes,  and  at 
New  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  a 
scholar.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in  clas- 
sical moderations  (1886)  and  in  literae  hu- 
maniores  (1888),  and  was  elected  a  fellow 
bf  his  college  in  the  latter  year. 
j  Fisher  was  a  first-class  scholar  in  pure 
classics,  and  his  chief  interest  as  a  young 
nan  was  in  ancient  history,  but,  under  the 
mpression,  soon  to  be  strikingly  falsified, 
hat  ancient  history  was  by  that  time  a 
;losed  field,  with  nothing  much  more  to  be 
liscovered,  he  turned  to  modern  history, 
t  was  that  subject  which  Fisher  went  on 
o  study  at  the  universities  of  Paris  and 
[f  Gottingen.  He  returned  particularly 
^pressed  by  the  historical  methods  of 
'aris,  ranging  from  the  intense  technical 
ccomplishment  of  the  ificole  des  Chartes 
D  the  wide  and  humane  genius  of  Taine 
nd  Renan.  The  field  of  the  Oxford  school 
f  modern  history  is  alarmingly  large,  and 


Fisher  felt  bound  to  prepare  carefully 
every  period  that  any  pupil  might  choose 
to  take.  At  the  same  time  he  managed  to 
find  leisure  for  writing.  His  first  work, 
more  dilficult  perhaps  than  rewarding,  was 
the  revision  for  a  new  edition  (1892)  of 
The  History  of  France  by  George  William 
Kitchin  [q.v.] ;  this  was  followed  in  1898 
by  a  study  of  The  Medieval  Empire.  Mean- 
time, he  was  working  his  way  towards  that 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  non-military 
side  of  the  Napoleonic  system  for  which 
he  was  afterwards  famous.  Studies  in 
Napoleonic  Statesmanship:  Germany  (1903) 
was  followed  by  Bonapartism  (1908),  The 
Republican  Tradition  in  Europe  (his 
Lowell  lectures  at  Boston,  U.S.A.,  de- 
livered 1910,  published  1911),  Political 
Unions  (1911),  and  Napoleon  in  the  '  Home 
University  Library'  series  (1913),  which 
has  been  described  by  a  French  writer  as 
the  best  short  life  of  Napoleon  in  any  lan- 
guage. Fisher  contributed  Volume  v 
(1485-1547)  to  Longman's  Political  His- 
tory of  England  (1906).  His  sketch  of  his 
brother-in-law.  Professor  Frederic  William 
Maitland  [q.v.],  published  in  1910,  showed 
for  the  first  time  his  special  gifts  as  a  bio- 
grapher. This  was  followed  by  an  edition 
(3  vols.,  1911)  of  The  Collected  Papers  of 
Maitland,  whose  lectures  on  The  Constitu- 
tional History  of  England  he  had  already 
edited  in  1908. 

In  1912  came  an  interruption  to  writing 
through  calls  to  two  more  urgent  tasks. 
He  was  appointed  a  member  of  the  royal 
commission  on  the  public  services  in  India, 
which  occupied  much  of  his  time  until  the 
publication  of  the  Report  of  the  commis- 
sion in  1917,  and  he  was  elected  vice- 
chancellor  of  the  university  of  Sheffield, 
where  he  took  up  residence  in  the  spring 
of  1914.  The  change  from  intellectual  to 
administrative  work  came  as  a  rest  and 
refreshment.  The  university  was  a  new 
one.  The  college  out  of  which  it  grew  had 
been  chiefly  known  for  its  departments  of 
applied  science,  metallurgy,  and  mining, 
but  in  1905  it  received  a  royal  charter  and 
was  inaugurated  with  four  faculties :  arts, 
pure  science,  medicine,  and  applied  science. 
As  with  most  of  the  provincial  univer- 
sities, much  ground  had  to  be  made  up  on 
the  arts  side ;  this,  of  course,  was  work  for 
which  Fisher  was  admirably  fitted,  but  he 
never  attempted  to  redress  the  balance  to 
the  detriment  of  applied  science ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  set  himself  to  encourage  the 
application  of  science  to  industry.  He  set 
up  a  University  Scientific  Advisory  Com- 
mittee the  function  of  which  was  to  put 


275 


Fisher,  H.  A.  L. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


manufacturers  into  communication  with 
scientific  and  expert  opinion.  Further,  he 
sponsored  the  formation  in  the  imiversity 
of  a  delegacy  for  the  promotion  of  research 
in  glass  technology,  an  enterprise  which 
bore  abundant  fruit.  It  may  be  said  that 
he  regarded  the  vmiversity  as  a  sort  of 
central  power  station  of  the  intellectual 
life  of  its  diocese.  A  tactful  and  ready 
speaker,  Fisher  soon  won  respect  and 
popularity  in  the  city  of  Sheffield  as  well 
as  in  the  university.  He  continued  to 
encourage  greater  co-operation  between 
the  scientific  and  literary  departments  of 
the  university,  when  the  nature  of  the 
problems  before  him  was  changed  by  the 
outbreak  of  the  European  war  in  August 
1914.  He  acted  at  once  with  the  lord 
mayor  and  the  master  cutler  in  the  great 
work  of  getting  the  cutlery  industries 
adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  war.  For 
instance,  when  a  demand  arose  for  iron 
helmets,  objects  practically  unknown  since 
the  seventeenth  century,  a  Sheffield  manu- 
facturer whom  he  had  approached  said, 
'Helmets?  Well,  I  make  dish-covers.  It 
is  the  same  idea.'  And  helmets  were  duly 
made. 

In  the  midst  of  these  activities  Fisher 
was  suddenly  invited  by  Lloyd  George  in 
December  1916  to  join  his  ministry  as 
president  of  the  Board  of  Education,  and 
without  fiurther  preparation  (he  was  re- 
tvu-ned  xmopposed  at  a  by-election  as 
liberal  member  of  parliament  for  the  Hal- 
lam  division  of  Sheffield)  entered  the 
House  of  Commons  as  a  minister.  He 
seemed  instantly  at  home.  He  knew  liis 
subject;  he  had  always  been  a  keen  and 
well-informed  poUtician ;  he  could  take  on 
the  work  of  a  Cabinet  minister  as  easily  as 
that  of  a  vice-chancellor.  His  maiden 
speech  in  the  House  (19  April  1917)  was 
actually  on  the  education  estimates  and 
occupied  a  full  two  hours.  Fisher  had  re- 
markable collaborators  in  the  Board  at 
that  time,  some  of  whom,  like  (Sir)  E.  K. 
Chambers  and  J.  W.  Mackail,  are  better 
known  for  their  independent  literary  work 
than  for  their  services  in  a  government 
office.  He  worked  hard  at  visiting  schools 
and  getting  to  know  the  various  parts  of 
the  vast  educational  machine  of  which  he 
had  not  had  experience.  He  was  impressed 
by  the  great  scope  given  by  the  British 
system  to  originality  and  experiment.  Of 
the  London  elementary  schools  he  once 
said  that  there  was  more  difference  be- 
tween the  worst  and  the  best  of  them  than 
there  was  between  the  best  of  them  and 
Eton  or  Winchester.   He  encouraged  the 

276 


enhghtened  tendencies  of  the  Board  when 
brought  into  danger  by  the  war-fever.  The 
Board  under  his  guidance  refused  to  con- 
sider that  to  forbid  the  teaclaing  of  Ger- 
man was  a  useful  form  of  patriotism ;  nor 
was  it  convinced  of  the  educational  value 
to  httle  boys  of  the  decapitation  of  spar- 
rows. But,  of  course,  he  will  be  chiefly 
remembered  for  his  Education  Act. 

One  of  the  paradoxes  of  war-time  is  that 
a  nation,  just  when  it  is  most  hard  pressed 
for  money,  is  often  more  ready  to  under- 
take expensive  reforms  than  in  periods  of 
peace  and  prosperity.  In  1916  this  country 
had  suddenly  realized  the  deficiencies  of 
its  national  education,  and  Fisher  made 
skilful  use  of  the  opportimity.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  introducing  a  system  of  per- 
centage grants,  by  which  three-fifths  of 
the  salary  expenditure  on  teachers  was  to 
be  found  by  the  Board  of  Education  and 
only  two-fifths  by  the  locality.  By  this 
scheme  the  average  salary  of  the  element- 
ary teacher  was  doubled,  and  later  on  the 
provision  for  pensions  was  greatly  in- 
creased. For  the  secondary  schools  also 
he  provided  some  improvement  in  salary 
and  pension,  and  made  easier  the  path  to 
the  imiversity  by  the  estabhshment  of  a 
system  of  state  scholarsliips  and  by  special 
grants  for  advanced  courses.  He  also  suc- 
ceeded in  substituting  for  the  fifty-five 
separate  entrance  examinations  which 
gave  access  to  as  many  different  black- 
coated  occupations  a  single  general  exa- 
mination, the  School  Certificate,  accepted 
byaU. 

Among  the  schemes  of  progress  laid  up 
in  the  pigeon-holes  of  the  Board  there 
were  two  noticeable  tendencies.  Was  it 
better  simply  to  raise  the  universal  age  of 
education  up  to  fifteen,  or  to  provide  part- 
time  continuation  schools  up  to  eighteen? 
The  former  plan  looked  attractively  demo- 
cratic and  equaUtarian;  but  Fisher  un- 
hesitatingly supported  the  latter.  A  grave 
flaw  in  the  British  system,  he  considered, 
was  that  after  enjoying  the  whole-time  i 
care  of  conscientious  teachers  up  to  four-  j 
teen,  a  boy  was  at  that  age  suddenly  flung  { 
loose  into  industry,  with  httle  care  for  his 
conduct  and  no  provision  for  his  intel- 
lectual interests.  Up  to  fourteen  nothing! 
but  education;  after  fourteen  no  educa-, 
tion  at  all.  Surely,  he  argued,  what  was] 
needed  was  a  more  gradual  shading  off;i 
a  provision  of  some  continued  chance  of  j 
studying  the  subjects,  not  necessarily  i 
technical,  in  which  a  boy  takes  an  interest,, 
and  some  continued  association  with; 
teachers  whom  he  has  learnt  to  hke  and 


and 

I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Fisher,  H.  A.  L. 


respect.  This  part  of  the  Fisher  Act,  for 
reasons  over  which  its  author  had  no  con- 
trol, was  never  put  into  force.  It  involved 
expense;  it  called  for  a  great  additional 
number  of  teachers ;  various  other  post- 
war difficulties  stood  in  its  way.  But  it 
remains  on  the  Statute  Book,  and  had  a 
preponderant  guiding  influence  on  the 
Butler  Act  of  1944. 

Fisher  remained  in  the  Cabinet  until  the 
fall  of  Lloyd  George's  government  in 
1922,  and  kept  his  seat,  which  he  had  held 
since  1918,  in  the  House  of  Commons  as 
national  liberal  member  for  the  Combined 
English  Universities  until  1926.  When 
there  was  a  question  of  his  becoming  a 
professor  of  history,  he  considered  that  he 
was  not  up  to  date  in  his  reading.  Perhaps 
he  did  not  realize  that  his  experience  of 
public  affairs  more  than  compensated  for 
that  deficiency.  There  are  already  signs  of 
this  in  the  Studies  in  History  and  Politics 
and  the  essay  An  International  Experi- 
ment, published  in  1920  and  1921  respec- 
ti\ely.  He  took  part  in  the  'International 
Experiment'  as  a  British  delegate  to  the 
Assembly  of  the  League  of  Nations  for 
two  years  (1920-1922). 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Fisher  took 
naturally  to  practical  politics.    He  had 
long  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  many  lead- 
ling  statesmen,  particularly  those  of  speci- 
ally intellectual  leanings,  such  as  Morley, 
iRosebery,  Balfour,  and  Asquith;  Lloyd 
iGeorge  was  of  a  different  type,  but  Fisher 
IfcU  rapidly  under  the  charm  of  his  lively 
i^enius,  and  an  affectionate  intimacy  be- 
bween  the  two  men  remained  until  Fisher's 
jieath.   When  after  six  years  as  minister 
{md  four  as  a  private  member  he  became 
ivarden  of  his  old  college  and  retired  from 
|.he  House,  he  could  not  help  casting  some- 
jimes  a  'longing,  lingering  look  behind' 
lowards   that    'pleasing   anxious   being' 
|vhich  he  had  enjoyed  so  long  in  parlia- 
nent.    An  historian  cannot  but  be  fas- 
inated  by  seeing  the  processes  by  which 
istory  is  made  and  taking  an  occasional 
and  in  making  it.  It  was  as  an  historian 
hat  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
.cademy  in  1907.  He  served  on  the  coim- 
il  from  1915  to  1918  and  again  from  1927 
D  1928,  and  was  president  from  1928  to 
932.     He    gave    only    one    presidential 
idress,  on  leaving  office  in  1932 ;  but  his 
aleigh  lecture   in   1928   on   The    Whig 
'istorians  began  with  a  section  on  the 
ork  of  the  Academy  in  that  year. 
Although     principally     an     historian, 
isher  had  a  remarkably  full  knowledge 
the  progress  of  all  the  various  studies 


which  are  called  'humane',  the  sort  of 
knowledge  that  beseemed  the  president  of 
the  British  Academy  and  was  often  tested 
in  the  editor  of  the  'Home  University 
Library'.  He  understood  foreign  nations. 
He  could  well  have  been  a  great  ambas- 
sador, like  Bryce,  or  a  distinguished 
governor-general,  like  Tweedsmuir.  The 
same  genuine  imderstanding  of  human 
nature  gives  value  to  his  biographies  of 
Bryce  {James  Bryce,  2  vols.,  1927)  and 
Vinogradoff  {Paul  Vinogradoff.  A  Memoir, 
1927). 

These  wider  interests  did  not  distract 
Fisher  from  his  duties  as  warden.  His 
knowledge  of  the  larger  world  made  him 
a  stimulating  friend  and  a  useful  guide  to 
undergraduates.  His  rebuke  to  one  who, 
without  being  exactly  vicious,  was  wasting 
his  time,  deserves  to  be  quoted  as  a  model. 
'Mr.  X,  there  are  forty -two  applicants 
who  have  had  to  be  refused  a  place  in  the 
college ;  I  think  some  of  them  would  make 
better  use  of  it  than  you.' 

Besides  various  lectures,  such  as  those 
on  The  Whig  Historians  and  The  Common 
Weal  (1924),  Fisher  wrote  during  these 
years  Our  Nezv  Religion  (1929),  a  study 
of  Christian  Science  and  the  life  of  its 
founder,  Mrs.  Eddy.  Seldom  can  destruc- 
tive criticism  have  been  delivered  with 
greater  urbanity.  A  piece  of  fancy,  per- 
haps the  most  brilliant  of  the  series,  is  his 
contribution  to  the  collection  called  If  it 
had  Happened  Otherwise  (edited  J.  C. 
Squire,  1931),  on  the  theme  'If  Napoleon 
had  escaped  to  America'.  He  had  the 
happiness  to  be  working  efficiently  up  to 
the  end  of  his  life,  and  his  last  serious 
work,  the  History  of  Europe  (3  vols.,  1935), 
is  not  only  his  longest  but,  by  common 
consent,  his  best.  It  is  particularly  in- 
teresting in  two  ways ;  for  one  thing,  he 
writes,  especially  in  the  modern  period,  as 
one  who  has  practical  knowledge  of  the 
workings  of  governments ;  for  another,  his 
book  seems  to  be  a  definitive  utterance  of 
a  certain  philosophy  or  faith,  of  which  a 
later  chaotic  generation  largely  lost  hold : 
the  spirit  of  liberalism  among  forms  of 
thought,  of  Great  Britain  among  nations, 
of  the  nineteenth  century  among  the  ages. 

Fisher  was  appointed  a  member  of  the 
Order  of  Merit  in  1937.  He  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1920  and 
was  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum. 
Honorary  degrees  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  universities  of  Edinburgh 
(1913),  Sheffield  (1918),  Manchester  (1919), 
Cambridge  (1920),  Liverpool  (1928),  and 
Oxford  ( 1 929) .  But  among  all  his  academic 


277 


Fisher,  H.  A.  L. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


honours,  of  none  was  he  prouder  than 
of  his  admission  in  1937  into  the  very 
small  band  of  British  historians  who  were 
honorary  members  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society.  In  the  same  year  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  corresponding 
member  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Letters. 

Fisher  married  in  1899  Lettice,  eldest 
daughter  of  Sir  Courtenay  Peregrine  Ilbert 
[q.v.],  parliamentary  draftsman,  and  had 
one  daughter.  He  died  in  London  18  April 
1940,  after  having  been  run  down  several 
days  previously  by  a  lorry  while  on  his 
way  to  preside  at  the  appeal  tribunal  on 
conscientious  objectors  to  military  service. 

A  portrait  of  Fisher  by  William  Nichol- 
son hangs  in  the  hall  of  New  College,  and 
a  drawing,  better  as  a  likeness,  by  Frances 
Catherine  Dodgson  (Mrs.  Campbell  Dodg- 
son)  in  the  smoking  room  of  the  senior 
common  room.  A  bust  (not  very  satis- 
factory) in  bronze  adorns  the  Milner  room 
at  the  College.  The  most  characteristic  por- 
traits are  two  photographs,  the  one  taken 
in  his  study  at  New  College  and  forming 
the  frontispiece  to  the  British  Academy 
memoir;  the  other  (at  New  College)  a 
transparency  in  colour. 

[The  Times,  19  April  1940 ;  Oxford  Maga- 
zine, 2  May  1940;  Gilbert  Murray,  Herbert 
Albert  Laurens  Fisher,  1865-1940  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi,  1940 ; 
H.  A.  L.  Fisher,  An  Unfinished  Autobiography, 
1940 ;  David  Ogg,  Herbert  Fisher,  1865-1940. 
A  Short  Biography,  1947;  H.  W.  B.  Joseph 
in  New  College  Record,  1939-1940;  personal 
knowledge.]  Gilbert  Murray. 

FISHER,  ROBERT  HOWIE  (1861- 
1934),  Scottish  divine,  was  born  at  Kil- 
marnock 27  April  1861,  the  elder  son  of 
Matthew  Fisher,  then  minister  of  Deer- 
ness,  Orkney,  and  later  minister  of  Cross 
and  Burness,  Orkney,  by  his  second  wife, 
Elizabeth  Cunningham,  daughter  of 
George  Chalmers,  of  Kilmarnock.  Both 
parents  came  of  good  Ayrshire  ancestry. 
Robert  Fisher  received  his  early  education 
from  a  local  'dominie'  to  whom  he  later 
paid  high  tribute;  he  was  a  pupil  at 
George  Watson's  College,  Edinburgh,  for 
only  two  years ;  at  Edinburgh  University 
his  lack  of  early  preparation  handicapped 
his  career,  but  did  not  prevent  him  from 
graduating  in  1884  as  the  first  man  of  his 
year  in  divinity.  In  1885  he  was  ordained 
minister  of  Skelmorlie,  Ayrshire,  and  was 
thence  successively  translated  to  Jedburgh 
(1890) ;  the  west  church  of  St.  Nicholas, 
Aberdeen  (1896) ;  Morningside,  Edinburgh 


(1900);  and  St.  Cuthbert's  parish  church, 
Edinburgh  (1914).  He  was  appointed 
chaplain  in  ordinary  to  the  king  in  1913, 
and  was  university  lecturer  on  pastoral 
theology  from  1911  to  1914  and  on  apolo- 
getics from  1913  to  1916.  He  was  Baird 
lecturer  in  1922,  and  his  lectures  were 
published  in  1924  under  the  title  of  Reli- 
gious Experience.  Although  he  was  nomi- 
nated in  the  last-named  year  to  the 
moderatorship  of  the  General  Assembly, 
ill  health,  which  caused  him  to  resign  his 
charge  in  1925,  prevented  his  acceptance 
of  this  high  post.  He  retired  to  Oxford 
where  he  died  2  November  1934. 

It  was  once  said  of  Fisher  that  had  he 
chosen  the  law  instead  of  the  ministry  for 
his  profession,  he  might  have  risen  to  the 
highest  judicial  office.  As  it  was,  he  came 
to  be  one  of  the  most  prominent  per- 
sonalities in  the  Church  of  Scotland  of  his 
day,  and  in  many  respects  his  position  was 
unique.  His  sermons,  delivered  in  a  voice 
of  exceptional  beauty,  were  illumined  by 
wide  knowledge  of  literature,  glowed  with 
ethical  passion,  and  were  inspired  by  a 
belief  that  the  doctrines  of  the  Christian 
faith  could  be  presented  to  the  modern 
mind  without  doing  despite  to  the  just 
demands  of  reason.  Laying  great  store  on 
visiting  his  parishioners,  he  gained  the 
affection  of  the  poor ;  and  what  provided 
the  salt  of  life  was  an  inexhaustible  fund 
of  wit  and  humour.  He  was  also  thcj 
author  of  books  on  The  Four  Gospels] 
(1899)  and  The  Beatitudes  (1912). 

Fisher's  most  notable  service  to  the 
Church  of  Scotland  was  his  editorship, 
from  1902  to  1925,  of  its  official  magazine. 
Life  and  Work.  He  was  an  ideal  editor. 
His  vivid  style  and  keen  sense  of  what  was 
interesting  made  Life  and  Work  the  lead- 
ing religious  organ  in  Scotland,  and  in  the 
two  pages  of  'Notes  and  Comments '  which 
he  always  contributed,  he  anticipated 
features  conspicuous  in  modern  journal- 
ism. Less  conspicuous,  but  hardly  less 
important,  was  his  contribution  in  the! 
Church  Union  Committee  which  brought! 
about  the  union  of  the  Church  of  Scotland! 
with  the  United  Free  Church  in  1929.  Hisi 
very  incisive  mind  helped  to  solve  diffi-i 
culties  and  in  the  course  of  twenty  years  j 
of  negotiation  he  never  failed  to  pour  oilj 
on  troubled  waters.  Reunion  lay  very! 
near  to  his  heart,  and  he  would  havei 
gladly  welcomed  an  even  wider  union,  had: 
that  been  feasible,  for  while  he  set  a  great] 
value  on  history,  he  was  strongly  con- 
vinced that  the  Church  should  not  bei 
the  slave  of  its  history,  and  the  episco- 


278 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fisher,  W.  W. 


pate  would  not  have  been  a  difficulty  to 
him. 

Fisher  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1886 
to  Margaret  Ada  (died  1899),  daughter  of 
Robert  Hutchison,  of  Carlowrie,  Kirklis- 
ton, West  Lothian,  and  had  a  son,  now 
Professor  M.  G.  Fisher,  K.C.,  and  two 
daughters;  secondly,  in  1906  to  Edith 
Mary,  daughter  of  Robert  Strathern,  W.S., 
and  widow  of  William  Percival  Lindsay, 
W.S. 

[Scotsman,  3  November  1934 ;  R.  H.  Fisher, 
The  Outside  of  the  Inside:  Reminiscences,  1919 ; 
private  information  ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Norman  Maclean. 

FISHER,  Sir  WILLIAM  WORDS- 
WORTH (1875-1937),  admiral,  was  born 
at  Blatchington  Court,  Seaford,  26  March 
1875,  the  fifth  son  and  eighth  child  of 
Herbert  William  P'isher,  vice-warden  of 
the  Stannaries.  His  eldest  brother  was 
H.  A.  L.  Fisher  [q.v.].  He  entered  the 
training  ship  Britannia  in  July  1888.  As 
midshipman  he  served  on  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  station  for  three  years,  in  the 
Raleigh,  flagship,  which  often  made  the 
longer  passages  under  sail  alone. 

As  sub-lieutenant  (1894)  and  later  as 
Ueutenant  (1896),  Fisher  served  in  the 
Mediterranean  before  qualifying  as  a  gun- 
nery lieutenant  in  1900.  The  next  year  he 
joined  the  Canopus  in  the  Mediterranean 
Fleet.  He  was  already  recognized  by  his 
contemporaries  as  a  man  of  great  ability 
and  outstanding  character,  possessing  ex- 
ceptional talents  as  a  leader  of  men.  In 
1903  he  was  appointed  a  senior  staff  officer 
at  Whale  Island,  but  having  left  after  a 
disagreement  with  Captain  (Sir)  P.  M. 
Scott  [q.v.],  he  was  appointed  to  the 
King  Edward  VII,  flagship,  in  January 
1905  at  the  request  of  the  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  Atlantic  Fleet,  Vice-Admiral 
Sir  W.  H.  May  [q.v.].  He  took  a  prom- 
inent share  in  the  renaissance  of  scientific 
naval  gunnery  then  in  progress ;  he  was 
promoted  commander  in  June  1906,  at 
the  age  of  thirty-one,  and  joined  the 
Albemarle,  flagship  of  the  rear-admiral 
of  the  Atlantic  Fleet,  as  executive  officer. 
Before  he  joined,  her  ship's  company  were 
slack  and  discontented,  but  the  new  com- 
mander in  the  space  of  a  few  months 
brought  about  a  great  improvement  and 
he  earned  glowing  reports  from  his  cap- 
tain, R.  F.  Scott  [q.v.],  later  of  Antarctic 
fame,  and  from  both  the  rear-admiral  and 
the  commander-in-chief.  In  1908  he  was 
executive  officer  of  the  Indomitable  when 
she  took  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  Canada, 


and  he  was  appointed  M.V.O.  on  comple- 
tion of  the  voyage.  In  May  1909  he  be- 
came flag  commander,  in  the  Dreadnought, 
to  Admiral  May,  commander-in-chief  of 
the  Home  Fleet,  a  position  principally 
concerned  with  the  gunnery  of  the  fleet  but 
also  involving  close  study  of  naval  tactics, 
to  the  development  of  which  the  com- 
mander-in-chief devoted  much  of  the  work 
of  the  Home  Fleet  during  his  two  years  in 
command.  Fisher  accompanied  the  ad- 
miral when  he  left  the  fleet  to  become 
commander-in-chief  at  Plymouth;  and 
was  promoted  to  captain  in  1912. 

Five  months  later  Fisher  was  appointed 
to  command  the  battleship  St.  Vincent  in 
the  Home  Fleet,  then  flagship  of  Rear- 
Admiral  (Sir)  S.  A.  Gough-Calthorpe 
[q.v.] ;  he  remained  in  her  for  four  and 
a  half  years.  By  the  time  war  broke  out 
in  1914  he  had  brought  the  St.  Vincent  to 
the  highest  pitch  of  efficiency,  and  more- 
over was  able  to  maintain  the  morale  of 
his  ship's  company  at  high  pitch  even  in 
the  somewhat  depressing  conditions  which 
the  strategic  situation  imposed  on  the 
Grand  Fleet.  The  St.  Vincent,  which 
ceased  to  be  a  flagship  in  1916,  was  in  the 
battle  of  Jutland.  In  May  1917,  six 
months  after  Sir  John  Jellicoe  [q.v.]  left 
the  fleet  to  become  first  sea  lord,  Fisher 
was  called  to  the  Admiralty  as  director  of 
the  recently  formed  anti-submarine  divi- 
sion, in  succession  to  Rear-Admiral  A.  L. 
Duff  [q.v.],  a  position  which  he  held  with 
marked  distinction  up  to  the  end  of  the 
war,  earning  golden  opinions  from  all, 
civilian  men  of  science  who  were  called  in 
at  his  suggestion,  as  well  as  British  and 
American  naval  officers.  His  great  share 
of  the  credit  for  the  final  defeat  of  the 
U-boat  campaign  was  recognized  by  the 
dedication  to  him  of  Sir  Henry  Newbolt's 
unofficial  Naval  History  of  the  War,  1914- 
1918  (1920). 

In  April  1919  Fisher  returned  to  the  sea 
in  command  of  the  Iron  Duke,  flagship  of 
the  Mediterranean  Fleet,  and  in  August 
1919,  when  the  new  commander-in-chief, 
Admiral  Sir  John  De  Robeck  [q.v.], 
arrived,  Fisher  became  his  chief  of  staff 
with  the  rank  of  commodore,  2nd  class. 
Throughout  the  troubled  times  in  the 
Near  East  he  was  De  Robeck's  right-hand 
man  and  a  particularly  valued  counsellor 
in  a  situation  which  was  never  free  from 
problems  and  difficulties.  In  1922  De  Ro- 
beck transferred  from  the  Mediterranean 
to  the  Atlantic  Fleet  and  Fisher  continued 
as  his  chief  of  staff,  first  with  the  rank  of 
commodore,  1st  class  and,  from  November 


279 


Fisher,  W.  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


1922,  as  rear-admiral.  When  De  Robeck 
hauled  down  his  flag  in  1924  Fisher  was 
appointed  rear-admiral  in  the  first  battle 
squadron  (flag  in  the  Barham)  and  re- 
turned once  more  to  the  Mediterranean 
for  an  uneventful  year. 

In  August  1926  Fisher  was  appointed 
director  of  Naval  InteUigence;  but  the 
following  April  he  joined  the  Board  of 
Admiralty  as  foiuiih  sea  lord.  It  was  pro- 
motion in  status,  but  the  work  was  not  to 
his  taste  and  he  was  delighted  when  he 
was  translated  in  1928  to  the  even  more 
responsible  post,  also  with  a  seat  on  the 
Board,  of  deputy  chief  of  the  Naval  Staff. 
He  had  become  a  vice-admiral  three 
months  earlier,  and  in  his  new  office  was 
directly  concerned  with  naval  policy  on 
the  highest  plane.  It  was  a  difficult  period 
for  the  sea  lords,  imder  successive  govern- 
ments conunitted  to  disarmament  and 
naval  limitation.  Fisher  was  much  exer- 
cised regarding  the  moral  and  constitu- 
tional obligations  of  the  sea  lords  in  such 
a  situation,  and  what  action  it  was  their 
duty  to  take  if  their  professional  judge- 
ment regarding  standards  of  security 
should  be  overruled  on  political  grounds. 

Fortunately,  reductions  were  not 
pressed  beyond  those  which  Fisher  felt 
that  he  could  conscientiously  accept.  To 
him,  and  to  the  divisions  of  the  Naval 
Staff  working  under  him,  fell  the  tasks  of 
working  out  the  voliuninous  technical  de- 
tails involved  in  the  negotiations  for  the 
Naval  Treaty  of  London  (1930)  and  of 
marshaUing  the  strategical  arguments 
against  any  over-drastic  limitations  urged 
for  political  ends.  That  the  treaty  was  not 
more  crippling  than  it  proved  to  be  when 
published,  his  brother  officers  attributed 
chiefly  to  Fisher's  able  advocacy. 

In  the  autumn  of  1930  Fisher  was  ap- 
pointed vice-admiral  commanding  the 
first  battle  squadron  (flag  in  the  Revenge 
and  the  Resolution)  and  second-in-com- 
mand of  the  Mediterranean  Fleet.  That 
appointment  was  something  of  a  dis- 
appointment to  him,  since  a  deputy  chief 
of  the  Naval  Staff  could  usually  expect  to 
become  a  commander-in-chief  on  resuming 
sea  service ;  but  he  gave  no  sign  of  it,  and 
no  commander-in-chief  could  have  had  a 
more  loyal  lieutenant  than  Admiral  Sir 
Alfred  Ernie  Montacute  (afterwards  Lord) 
Chatfleld  had  in  him  for  the  next  year  and 
a  half.  Together  they  devoted  much 
attention  to  anti-aircraft  gimnery  and  to 
the  hitherto  neglected  problems  of  night 
fighting  between  heavy  ships.  He  was 
now  able  to  exercise  to  the  full  his  talent 


for  leadership,  in  a  wider  sphere  than 
hitherto.  That  quality  stood  him,  and  the 
ships  of  the  battle  squadron  under  his 
command,  in  good  stead  in  1931,  when 
cuts  in  naval  pay  led  to  the  mutiny  in  the 
Home  Fleet  at  Invergordon  in  September. 
That  there  was  no  similar  breakdown  in 
the  morale  or  discipline  of  the  Mediter 
ranean  Fleet  was  due  in  no  smaU  measure 
to  Fisher's  personal  influence  on  aU  those 
under  his  command. 

In  July  1932  Fisher  was  promoted, 
admiral  and  the  following  October,  afte 
six  months  unemployed  at  home,  he  too' 
over  the  Mediterranean  command  from' 
Chatfield  (flag  in  the  Resolution  and  later 
the  Queen  Elizabeth).  Within  three  weeks 
he  was  able  to  say  that  he  had  seen  prac- 
tically every  officer  and  man  xmder  his 
command;  and  within  a  year  he  had 
visited  almost  every  part  of  his  station. 
He  continued  the  series  of  exercises  and 
experiments  in  night  fighting  begun  under 
his  predecessor,  and  was  able  to  demon- 
strate the  progress  achieved  in  that  im- 
portant province  in  a  spectacular  manner 
in  the  combined  fleet  exercises  of  1934. 
His  work  in  that  respect  bore  valuable 
fruit  in  the  battle  of  Cape  Matapan,  fought 
four  years  after  his  death.  Wherever  he 
went,  whatever  country  he  visited  round 
the  Mediterranean,  he  was  received  with 
every  honour  and  left  with  the  friendship 
and  appreciation  of  all.  An  example  of  his 
talents  in  this  direction  was  furnished  by 
the  affection,  born  of  his  insight,  under- 
standing, and  sympathy,  with  which  he 
was  regarded  by  the  people  of  Malta,  and 
of  one  small  Maltese  viUage  in  particular. 
In  the  summer  of  1935  Fisher  brought 
the  Mediterranean  Fleet  home  for  the 
jubilee  review  at  Spithead,  at  which  he 
was  the  senior  admiral  afloat.  Returning 
to  his  station  after  those  ceremonies  he 
soon  foimd  himself  immersed  in  more 
serious  events,  for  the  Italo-Abyssinian 
war  made  it  necessary  to  assemble  in  the 
Eastern  Mediterranean  under  his  com- 
mand practically  the  whole  of  the  Royal 
Navy  outside  the  Home  Fleet.  This  great 
fleet  had  to  be  concentrated  at  Alexandria 
and  maintained  for  months  on  end  in 
instant  readiness  for  attack,  with  few  if 
any  opportunities  for  relaxation  or  recrea- 
tion for  the  greatly  increased  numbers  of 
officers  and  men,  and  at  first  no  organized 
facilities  for  such  aUeviations.  That  the 
morale  and  spirit  of  all  men  of  the  fleet 
remained  of  the  highest  was  due  in  great 
measure  to  the  example,  wise  conduct, 
and  unrivalled  personal  influence  of  Fisher 
280 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


FitzPatrick 


as  commander-in-chief,  an  influence  which  Jenny,  daughter  of  Peter  FitzGerald,  of 


was  even  enhanced  by  the  personal  tra- 
gedy which  overtook  him  at  the  height  of 
the  crisis  by  the  death  in  a  flying  accident 
of  his  elder  son. 

It  was  not  imtil  the  end  of  March  1936 
that  tension  had  relaxed  enough  for  the 
government  to  authorize  a  change  of 
commander-in-chief.  Fisher  turned  over 
the  command  to  Admiral  Sir  Dudley 
Pound  and  after  only  three  and  a  half 
months'  rest  was  appointed  commander- 
in-chief  at  Portsmouth.  He  was  a  tired 
man  by  then  and  the  coronation  celebra- 
tions in  the  following  May,  with  another 
Spithead  review,  threw  an  even  greater 
strain  upon  him.  A  month  later,  taking  the 
salute  at  a  King's  Birthday  parade  on 
Southsea  Common,  he  collapsed  from 
fatigue  before  it  was  over.  A  few  days 
later,  24  June  1937,  he  died  in  London 
and  was  buried  at  sea  with  full  naval 
honours. 

Fisher  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1918, 
C.V.O.  in  1924,  K.C.B.  in  1929,  and  G.C.B. 
and  G.C.V.O.  in  1935.  He  married  in  1907 
Cecilia,  youngest  daughter  of  Francis 
Warre  Warre-Comish  [q.v.],  and  had  two 
sons  and  two  daughters. 

Fisher  was  one  of  the  most  eminent  sailors 
of  his  day ;  and  if  it  had  fallen  to  him  in 
time  of  war  to  command  a  fleet  or  conduct 
naval  operations  from  the  Admiralty,  it 
cannot  be  doubted  that  he  would  have 
shone  as  brilliantly  as  he  did  in  command 
of  his  battleship  in  1914-1917,  or  of  the 
Mediterranean  Fleet  in  the  crisis  of  1935- 
1936.  He  stood  out  not  only  by  great 
ability  but  chiefly  because  of  his  deep 
sympathy  with,  and  understanding  of,  his 
fellow  men  in  all  degrees  of  life ;  and  his 
great  qualities  in  that  respect  were  born 
largely  of  his  wide  interests  in  learning, 
art,  and  culture  outside  the  limits  of  his 
chosen,  and  well-loved,  profession. 

[The  Times,  26  June  1937;  Sir  William 
James,  Admiral  Sir  William  Fisher,  1943; 
Admiralty  records ;  private  information ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  H.  G.  Thursfield. 

FITZMAURICE,  Baron  (1846-1935). 
[See  Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Edmond 
George.] 

FITZ  PATRICK,  Sir  (JAMES)  PERCY 
(1862-1931),  South  African  statesman  and 
author,  was  bom  at  King  William's  Town, 
Cape  Colony,  24  July  1862,  the  eldest  son  of 
James  Coleman  FitzPatrick,  judge  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  Cape  Colony,  who  came 
from  Nenagh,  co.  Tipperary,  by  his  wife. 


Soho  House,  co.  Westmeath.  He  was  edu- 
cated in  England  at  St.  Gregory's  College, 
Downside,  near  Bath,  until  1878,  when  his 
father's  death  recalled  him,  at  the  age  of 
sixteen,  to  the  Cape,  where  in  1880  he 
entered  the  service  of  the  Standard  Bank 
of  South  Africa.  To  one  of  his  tempera- 
ment the  life  soon  became  irksome  and  in 
1884  he  moved  to  Barberton  in  the  Trans- 
vaal, then  the  principal  gold-field,  working 
there  first  as  a  storekeeper's  assistant  and 
later  as  a  transport-rider  and  editor  of  a 
weekly  journal.  Barberton,  however,  was 
soon  eclipsed  by  the  new  gold-fields  on  the 
Witwatersrand  and  FitzPatrick  moved 
there  in  1889.  Two  years  later  he  organ- 
ized the  journey  made  by  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  [q.v.]  through  Bechuanaland 
and  Mashonaland.  He  then  (1892)  joined 
the  firm  of  Hermann  Eckstein  &  company, 
taking  charge  of  the  intelligence  depart- 
ment and  becoming  a  partner  in  1898.  He 
retired  in  1907. 

The  Uitlander  agitation  against  Presi- 
dent Kruger's  government  was  now  in- 
creasing and  FitzPatrick  was  appointed 
honorary  secretary  of  the  'reform  com- 
mittee', often  acting  as  intermediary  be- 
tween it  and  Cecil  Rhodes  and  L.  S. 
Jameson  [qq.v.]  in  Cape  Town.  TJie 
Transvaal  from  Within,  a  book  which 
greatly  influenced  public  opinion,  was  a 
product  of  his  intimate  knowledge  of 
events  at  this  period.  After  the  Jameson 
Raid  FitzPatrick  was  arrested  together 
with  the  other  members  of  the  committee 
and  was  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprison- 
ment and  a  fine  of  £2,000;  but  he  was 
released  in  May  1896  on  condition  of 
neither  directly  nor  indirectly  inter- 
meddling in  the  politics  of  the  South 
African  Republic  for  three  years.  This 
ban  prevented  any  publication  of  The 
Transvaal  from  Within  before  September 
1899.  As  soon  as  it  had  been  lifted  Fitz- 
Patrick worked  to  promote  a  settlement 
and  played  a  part  in  bringing  about  the 
conference  at  Bloemfontein  between  Sir 
Alfred  Milner  [q.v.]  and  President  Kruger 
(31  May  1899).  He  was  in  England  when 
war  was  declared  in  October  and  he  re- 
mained there  for  some  time  as  an  extra 
official  adviser  on  South  African  affairs  to 
the  British  government.  Returning  to  the 
Transvaal  when  Milner  had  set  up  his 
administration  FitzPatrick  became  an  un- 
official member  of  the  legislative  council 
and  of  the  inter-colonial  council  respon- 
sible for  the  control  of  the  central 
South  African  railways.   He  continued  his 


281 


FitzPatrick 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


connexion  with  the  mining  industry,  be- 
coming president  of  the  Witwatersrand 
Chamber  of  Mines  (1902)  and  a  leading 
supporter  of  the  temporary  introduction 
of  Chinese  labour. 

In  the  general  election  of  1907  which 
followed  on  the  grant  of  responsible 
government  to  the  Transvaal  FitzPatrick 
was  returned  as  'progressive'  candidate 
for  south-central  Pretoria,  defeating  Sir 
Richard  Solomon  [q.v.]  in  a  memorable 
contest.  He  actively  promoted  the  move- 
ment for  the  union  of  the  four  South 
African  Colonies,  was  a  member  of  the 
Transvaal  delegation  to  the  National  Con- 
vention of  1908-1909  which  drew  up  the 
South  Africa  Act  of  1909,  and  made  with 
General  J.  B.  M.  Hertzog  the  settlement 
on  the  dual  language  question  which  it 
effected.  With  union  accomplished  (1910) 
he  boldly  advocated  'a  fresh  start'  in 
politics  and  the  formation  of  a  'best  man' 
government  to  bury  the  old  racial  anta- 
gonisms. But  General  Louis  Botha  [q.v.] 
formed  the  first  Union  Cabinet  on  party 
lines  and  himself  stood  against  FitzPatrick 
in  Pretoria  East.  Again  a  memorable  con- 
test ended  in  FitzPatrick's  victory,  and  he 
held  the  seat  in  the  Union  parliament  until 
1920.  However,  the  war  of  1914r-1918 
effected  that  conjunction  of  the  moderate 
men  of  both  sections  which  he  had  pro- 
posed. 

After  the  war  FitzPatrick  travelled 
abroad,  visiting  Mexico  and  California  in 
order  to  study  methods  of  citrus  culture. 
In  France  he  carried  through  the  purchase 
of  the  Delville  Wood  as  a  memorial  to  the 
South  Africans  who  had  given  theii  lives 
in  the  war  and  presented  the  site  as  a  free 
gift  to  the  nation.  To  him  also  is  due  the 
initiation  of  the  two  minutes'  silence  ob- 
served on  Armistice  Day.  His  last  years 
were  largely  devoted  to  developing  the 
Cape  Sunday's  River  Valley  as  an  irriga- 
tion and  citrus-growing  settlement.  Here 
he  lived  on  his  farm  Amanzi  at  Uitenhage 
where  every  Armistice  Day  a  charge  of 
dynamite  was  fired  as  the  signal  for  the 
two  minutes'  silence,  and  where  he  died 
after  a  long  illness  25  January  1931.  He 
married  in  1889  Elizabeth  Lillian  (died 
1923),  daughter  of  John  Cubitt,  of  Pre- 
toria, and  had  three  sons,  all  of  whom  died 
before  him,  and  one  daughter.  He  was 
knighted  in  1902  and  appointed  K.C.M.G. 
in  1911. 

FitzPatrick  will  be  well  remembered  as 
a  short-story  writer  and  as  a  raconteur  of 
his  experiences  as  a  transport-rider  and 
of  his  wide  knowledge  of  veld  lore.   His 


Jock  of  the  Bushveld  (1907),  a  classic  of  it 
kind,  followed  Through  Mashonaland  witl^ 
Pick  and  Pen  (1892)  and  The  Outspai, 
(1897).  His  South  African  Memories,  pul 
lished  in  1932,  after  his  death,  is  preface 
by  a  short  biography. 

[The  Times,  26  January  1931 ;  Biographical 
Introduction  to  Sir  J.  P.  FitzPatrick,  South 
African  Memories,  1932 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
H.  A.  Wyndham. 

FLEMING,  DAVID  HAY  (1849-1931), 
historian,  antiquary,  and  critic,  was  born 
at  St.  Andrews  9  May  1849,  the  third  and 
youngest  son  of  John  Fleming,  china  and 
stone- ware  merchant,  of  St.  Andrews,  who 
came  of  Deeside  ancestry,  by  his  wife, 
Ann,  daughter  of  David  Hay,  whose  fore-, 
bears  belonged  to  St.  Andrews.  Educate^ 
at  Madras  College,  St.  Andrews,  he  entere 
the  family  business,  but  an  early  taste  foi 
history  was  fostered  by  examination  o] 
the  civic  records,  and  by  the  success 
prosecution  of  his  mother's  claim  upon  a: 
estate  in  Chancery.  The  business  was  sol 
in  1883,  and  he  gave  himself  to  the  stud 
of  history. 

In  1885  Fleming  married  Robina  Agnes] 
daughter  of  James  Hart,  of  St.  Andrews, " 
and  for  the  next  twenty  years  he  remaine 
there.  A  series  of  learned  essays  on  th 
history  of  the  burgh  gave  him  a  reputatio; 
more  than  local,  but,  although  much  of 
his  work  was  embodied  in  the  Alphabetic 
Guide  Book  to  St.  Andrews  (1881)  which  (as 
the  Handbook)  went  through  six  further 
editions,  much  also  is  preserved  only  in 
pamphlets  and  in  contributions  to  the 
local  press.  His  knowledge  of  the  anti- 
quities of  St.  Andrews  was  profound,  and 
his  last  book,  St.  Andrews  Cathedral 
Museum  (1931),  describes  an  institution 
which  he  had  done  much  to  foster. 
Fleming's  main  interest  was  in  ecclesiasti- 
cal history.  He  was  baptized  into  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  but  in  1899  he  and  his 
wife  joined  the  Original  Seceders :  he  ruled 
his  life  according  to  the  strict  practice  of 
these  Churches  and  thought  it  his  duty  to 
justify  their  tenets  upon  historical  grounds. 
In  1891  a  review  in  the  Original  Secession 
Magazine  caught  the  eye  of  (Sir)  William 
Robertson  NicoU  [q.v.],  and  thereafter 
Fleming's  contributions  to  the  British 
Weekly  and  The  Bookman  made  him 
known  to  a  wide  public  as  the  champion 
of  the  Scottish  Reformation  and  of  the 
Covenanters.  He  transcribed  and  edited 
for  the  Scottish  History  Society  the 
Register  of  the  Ministers,  Elders  and  Dea- 
cons of  the  Christian  Congregation  of  St. 


k 

iff 


282 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fletcher,  C.  R.  L. 


Andrews  .  .  .  1559-1600  (2  vols.,  1889- 

1890),  and  in  1901  produced  a  valuable 

lition  of  Patrick  Walker's  Six  Saints  of 

Covenant.  Meanwhile,  his  Mary,  Queen 

b/  Scots,  from  her  Birth  to  her  Flight  into 

England  (1897),  concise  in  narrative  but 

iriched  with  admirable  notes,  had  firmly 

stablished  his  reputation.    To  Andrew 

mg  he  became  '  my  friend  and  constant 

rouncer'. 

In  1905  Fleming  moved  to  Edinburgh, 
irhere  he  became  an  active  member  of 
various  learned  societies.  In  1907  he  de- 
livered at  Princeton  Theological  Seminary 
the  Stone  lectures  which  were  published 
in  1910  as  The  Reformation  in  Scotland: 
Causes,  Characteristics,  Consequences,  a 
work  of  great  importance.  He  edited 
vol.  ii  (1529-1542)  of  the  Register  of  the 
Privy  Seal  of  Scotland  (1921),  and, 
although  the  hoped-for  continuation  of 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots  and  a  life  of  John 
Knox  never  appeared,  he  produced  pam- 
phlets for  the  Knox  Club  and  a  steady 
stream  of  articles  and  reviews  of  which 
only  some  are  collected  in  Critical  Reviews 
relating  chiefly  to  Scotland  (1912). 

Fleming  died  in  Edinburgh  7  November 
1931.  His  wife  died  in  1909 ;  they  had  no 
children.  He  bequeathed  to  the  city  of 
St.  Andrews  the  residue  of  his  estate  for 
the  foundation  and  maintenance  of  a  pub- 
lic reference  library  of  which  his  own  great 
collection  of  books  should  be  the  core.  He 
wrote,  deliberately  and  frankly,  in  defence 
of  Protestant  principles  as  he  understood 
them.  Some  of  his  criticism  was  acerb  and 
provocative,  but  he  was  personally  cour- 
teous and  all  his  work  is  marked  by  deep 
learning,  sound  scholarship,  and  accurate 
documentation.  His  rigid  Sabbatarianism 
did  not  prevent  him  from  being  a  good 
raconteur.  In  his  youth  he  was  a  bold 
horseman,  and  rode  on  his  own  horse  over 
the  hills  to  visit  his  kinsfolk  on  Deeside. 
His  contribution  to  Scottish  history  is  of 
great  value. 

[H.  M.  Paton,  David  Hay  Fleming.  His- 
torian and  Antiquary  (portraits  and  biblio- 
graphy), 1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  D.  Mackie. 


FLETCHER,  CHARLES  ROBERT 
LESLIE  (1857-1934),  historian,  was  born 
in  London  22  October  1857,  the  only  child 
of  Alexander  Pearson  Fletcher,  assurance 
company  general  manager,  by  his  wife, 
Caroline  Anna,  daughter  of  the  painter 
Charles  Robert  Leslie  [q.v,]  and  sister  of 
Sir  Bradford  Leslie  [q.v.].  He  was  a 
king's  scholar  at  Eton  (1868-1876)  arriv- 


ing, according  to  legend,  in  an  Aberdeen 
version  of  an  Eton  jacket  which  had  to  be 
promptly  discarded.  In  1876  he  went  as 
a  demy  to  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  ob- 
tained a  first  class  in  modern  history  in 
1880,  and  won  the  chancellor's  English 
essay  prize  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  All 
Souls  in  1881. 

From  1889  to  1906  Fletcher  was  fellow 
and  tutor  of  Magdalen  College.  In  that 
capacity  he  was  one  of  a  small  group  com- 
prising A.  L.  Smith  [q.v.].  A,  H.  Johnson, 
Edward  Armstrong  [q.v.],  and  (Sir) 
Richard  Lodge  [q.v.]  which  built  up  the 
history  school  at  Oxford.  As  a  tutor  and 
lecturer  he  was  extremely  stimulating.  He 
was  also  unconventional  in  his  methods 
and  never  concealed  his  strong  views:  he 
was  a  fierce  Protestant  Anglican,  a  con- 
firmed tory,  a  'red-hot  free-trader',  and, 
although  kind  enough  to  individual  women 
students,  an  anti-feminist  opposed  to 
women  having  degrees.  He  was  the 
founder  at  Magdalen  of  the  undergradu- 
ates' history  library  which  he  ruled  with 
a  rod  of  iron.  In  1905  he  became  a  dele- 
gate of  the  Clarendon  Press  and  was  per- 
petual delegate  from  1912  to  1927,  and 
until  his  death  he  took  a  lively  interest  in 
everything  connected  with  it — its  authors, 
its  staff,  its  workpeople.  His  main  activity 
was  in  the  promotion  and  criticism  of 
books  on  modern  history,  and  his  acute 
and  sympathetic  comments  were  of  great 
value,  especially  to  young  writers. 

In  1914-1915  and  again  from  1917  to 
1919  Fletcher  went  back  to  Eton  to  help 
in  the  teaching  of  history.  He  was  an 
inspiring  influence  there.  In  1915,  at  the 
age  of  fifty-seven,  he  joined  the  R.N.V.R. 
for  anti-aircraft  duties  in  London,  but  an 
attack  of  lumbago  consequent  on  scrub- 
bing a  floor  put  an  end  to  this  enterprise. 
He  died  at  his  Oxford  home  30  April  1934. 
In  1885  he  married  Alice  Katharine  (died 
1939),  elder  daughter  of  W.  W.  Merry 
[q.v.],  rector  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford, 
and  had  three  sons,  the  two  younger  of 
whom  were  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

Fletcher's  published  works  include  bio- 
graphies of  Gustavus  Adolphus  (1890)  and 
Edmond  Warre  (1922) ;  an  annotated  edi- 
tion of  Carlyle's  French  Revolution  (3  vols., 
1902),  containing  a  mass  of  information 
not  easily  obtainable  elsewhere  ;  Historical 
Portraits  (in  collaboration  with  Mr.  H.  B, 
Butler  and  (Sir)  Emery  Walker  [q.v.], 
1909-1919) ;  A  School  History  of  England 
(in  collaboration  with  Rudyard  Kipling 
[q.v.],  1911) ;  and,  most  popular  of  all.  An 
Introductory  History  of  England  (5  vols., 

288 


Fletcher,  C.  R.  L. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1904-1923),  with  its  famous  description  of 
the  'manor  of  Tubney'.  The  xmconven- 
tional,  conversational  style  of  this  work, 
which  at  the  time  of  its  publication  seemed 
'very  strange'  to  the  orthodox,  set  a 
fashion  for  some  subsequent  writers  of 
popular  history.  His  intimate  friends 
knew  him  as  a  racy,  original,  sparkling 
letter-writer ;  a  glimpse  of  this  he  gave  to 
the  public  in  a  collection  of  letters  entitled 
Mr.  Gladstone  at  Oxford  1890  (1908),  a 
Boswellized  account  of  the  statesman's 
conversation. 

[Oxford  Magazine,  10  May  1934;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

C.  H.  K.  Marten. 

FLETCHER,  Sir  WALTER  MORLEY 

(1873-1933),  physiologist  and  administra- 
tor, was  born  at  Liverpool  21  July  1873, 
the  sixth  and  youngest  son  of  Alfred 
Evans  Fletcher,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Eliza- 
beth, daughter  of  Richard  Morley,  of 
Leeds,  and  a  cousin  of  the  politician  and 
philanthropist  Samuel  Morley  [q.v.]  and 
of  H.  H.  Asquith.  Both  parents  were  from 
Yorkshire,  independently  minded  Con- 
gregationalists,  who  sought  to  imbue  all 
their  ten  children  with  a  religious  love  of 
beauty  and  a  desire  for  service  to  man- 
kind. The  father  had  gained  high  distinc- 
tion as  a  student  of  chemistry  at  Univer- 
sity College,  London,  and  after  being 
inspector  of  alkali  works  under  the  Local 
Government  Board  in  Liverpool  ulti- 
mately became  chief  inspector  in  London. 
Fletcher  went  in  1891  from  University 
College  School,  London,  to  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  with  a  sub-sizarship  to 
study  physiology  and  with  the  auxiliary 
aim  of  medical  qualification.  His  rapidly 
maturing  strength  of  mind  and  body  soon 
brought  him  success  and  friendships  in 
every  aspect  of  university  life,  whether 
intellectual,  social,  or  athletic.  TaU  and 
splendidly  built,  he  was  fast  over  the 
hurdles  and  a  powerful  hammer-thrower. 
His  quick  attractiveness  of  manner,  his 
vivid  enjoyment  of  aU  forms  of  artistic 
beauty,  and  his  eager  interest  in  the 
thoughts  of  others  made  men  glad  to  give 
him  their  lasting  friendship.  He  obtained 
first  classes  in  both  parts  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1894,  1895) ;  and  he  was 
Coutts  Trotter  student  in  1896  and  Wal- 
singham  medallist  in  1897.  As  the  years 
passed  it  seemed  that  he  might  find  all 
that  his  spirit  desired  by  remaining  at 
Trinity  and  working  in  the  physiological 
laboratories  under  (Sir)  Michael  Foster 
[q.v.]. 


Election  into  a  fellowship  of  his  college 
in  1897  was  followed  by  a  tutorship  from 
1905  to  1914 ;  and  administrative  work  for 
Trinity  and  the  university,  with  all  its 
human  interests,  progressively  absorbed 
fully  as  large  a  share  of  Fletcher's  mind 
as  did  his  laboratory  research  in  physio- 
logy. But  the  latter  was  very  fruitful.  He 
had  chosen  the  problems  of  the  'respira- 
tion' of  frog's  muscle,  using  an  apparatus 
recently  devised  by  the  botanist  Mr. 
Frederick  Frost  Blackman  for  measuring 
the  gaseous  exchange  of  leaves.  This  en- 
abled Fletcher  to  trace  the  discharge  of 
small  quantities  of  carbon  dioxide  during 
successive  brief  intervals  of  time,  instead 
of  simply  measuring  such  accumulated 
end  results  as  had  alone  been  accessible  to 
previous  workers.  He  proved  that  there  is 
no  sudden  discharge  of  carbon  dioxide  on 
the  contraction  of  an  isolated  muscle,  and 
that  the  main  discharge  occurs  during  the 
phases  of  recovery  of  power.  This  result 
was  opposed  to  all  the  accepted  teaching 
of  the  time.  The  next  step,  in  collabora- 
tion with  (Sir)  Frederick  Gowland  Hop- 
kins, was  to  measure  the  cycle  of  changes 
in  lactic  acid  during  and  after  contraction, 
and  to  relate  them  also  to  the  output  of 
carbon  dioxide  and  the  muscle's  ability  for 
work.  The  entire  group  of  experiments 
has  been  recognized  as  classical,  because 
it  laid  the  foundation  of  the  modern  ideas 
of  cellular  activity  that  look  on  much  of 
its  material  intake  and  output  as  never 
being  raised  to  high  levels  of  biochemical 
complexity  but  as  being  used  by  the  living 
cell  protoplasm  in  relatively  simple  ways 
which  are  thereby  individually  accessible 
to  analysis.  Fletcher  was  elected  F.R.S. 
in  1915,  and  was  Croonian  lecturer  of  the 
society  in  the  same  year.  At  intervals 
during  the  earlier  years  of  his  researches 
he  had  travelled  daily  to  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital  in  London,  and  so  com- 
pleted in  1900  the  medical  training  that 
equipped  him  for  the  Avider  tasks  of  public 
service  to  which  he  was  ultimately  called. 

When  the  Medical  Research  Committee 
was  created  in  1913  by  Lloyd  George 
under  the  National  Insurance  Act  of  1911, 
it  was  essential  for  its  success  that  the 
right  man  should  be  chosen  as  its  secre- 
tary. The  selection  in  1914  of  Fletcher  for 
this  new  post  in  London  proved  to  be  an 
ideal  appointment,  and  all  his  inmost  aims 
quickly  found  their  complete  satisfaction 
in  the  great  hope  of  guiding  scientific  work 
so  that  it  might  give  its  fullest  aid  for 
bettering  the  health  of  the  people.  On  the 
outbreak  of  war  the  resources  of  the  com- 


284 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Ford 


mittee  were  largely  diverted  towards  help 
for  the  services,  and  the  speed  with  which 
Fletcher  found  liimself  free  for  action  in 
arranging  such  work,  combined  with  his 
policy  of  friendly  co-operation  rather  than 
of  intrusiveness,  soon  proved  the  value  of 
an  organization  which  could,  without  offi- 
cial delays,  concentrate  scientific  workers 
upon  any  urgent  problem.  The  authority 
of  the  new  committee  became  recognized 
everywhere,  and  Fletcher's  services  were 
acknowledged  by  the  award  of  the  K.B.E. 
in  1918.  Civilian  problems  in  the  mean- 
time were  not  neglected  and  the  proof, 
obtained  by  work  which  the  committee 
had  promoted  during  the  war,  that  rickets 
is  a  deficiency  disease,  fully  preventable 
by  better  feeding,  seized  Fletcher's  ima- 
gination and  made  him  eager  for  the  rest 
of  his  life  to  study  and  plan  for  improve- 
ments in  human  nutrition. 

In  1920  Fletcher  saw  an  important 
change  effected  whereby  the  committee, 
renamed  the  Medical  Research  Council, 
was  freed  from  any  control  by  the  Ministry 
of  Health  and  placed  under  the  Privy 
Council  with  a  charter  of  its  own  and 
direct  financial  support  from  the  Treasury. 
Its  future  was  now  secure,  and  that  posi- 
tion together  with  its  high  reputation  was 
undoubtedly  due  in  the  main  to  Fletcher's 
administrative  skiU,  his  ardent  enthusi- 
asm, and  his  wise  use  of  the  scientific 
talent  in  Great  Britain  which  hitherto  had 
lacked  concentration  upon  problems  in 
medicine. 

Fletcher's  personal  aid  became  sought 
in  work  apart  from  that  of  the  council. 
From  1919  to  1922  he  was  a  member  of 
the  royal  commission  on  the  universities 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  The  buildings 
of  the  biochemical  laboratories  at  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  and  of  the  School  of 
Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine  in  Lon- 
don, together  with  endowments  for  the 
medical  sciences  in  these  and  other  places, 
were  in  large  measure  due  to  the  con- 
fidence placed  in  his  advice  by  the  Sir 
William  Dunn  trustees  and  the  Rocke- 
feller Foundation.  In  1928  he  travelled  to 
India  as  chairman  of  the  Indian  govern- 
ment committee  for  the  organization  there 
of  medical  research,  and  his  visit  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  gift  in  memory  of  Lady  Tata, 
the  wife  of  Sir  Dorabji  Tata  [q.v.],  of 
£250,000  for  research  upon  leukaemia.  He 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1929.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities 
of  Oxford,  Leeds,  Glasgow,  Birmingham, 
Edinburgh,  and  Pennsylvania. 

In  1904  Fletcher  married  Mary  Frances, 


second  daughter  of  Charles  James  Crop- 
per, of  EUergreen,  Kendal ;  she  was  great- 
great-granddaughter  of  the  philanthropist 
James  Cropper  [q.v.]  and  niece  of  Sydney 
Holland,  second  Viscount  Knutsford  [q.v.]. 
They  had  one  son  and  one  daughter. 

During  the  war  incessant  overwork  had 
resulted  in  a  serious  attack  of  pneumonia 
in  the  winter  of  1915-1916:  Fletcher  re- 
covered slowly  with  a  damaged  lung,  and 
from  this  came  occasional  bouts  of  ill 
health  and  at  last  the  sudden  infection 
that,  shortly  before  he  had  completed  his 
sixtieth  year,  prematurely  ended  the  life 
of  a  man  whose  long-lived  ancestry  and 
personal  strength  had  seemed  to  promise 
the  fullest  span,  rich  with  many  further 
years  of  excellent  service.  He  died  in 
London  7  Jime  1933,  and  was  buried  at 
Cambridge. 

A  posthumous  bronze  bust  of  Fletcher 
by  Miss  Dora  Clarke  is  in  the  library  of  the 
National  Institute  for  Medical  Research, 
London. 

[The  Times,  8  June  1933;  Nature,  1  July 
1933;  Cambridge  Review,  13  October  1933; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  2,  December  1933  (portrait) ;  personal 
knowledge.]  T.  R.  Elliott. 

FORBES-ROBERTSON,  Sir  JOHN- 
STON (1853-1937),  actor.  [See  Robert- 
son.] 

FORD,  FORD  MADOX  (1873-1939), 
author  and  critic,  was  registered  at  birth 
as  Ford  Hermann  Hueffer,  but  adopted 
the  additional  Christian  names  of  Joseph 
Leopold  Madox,  and  in  1919  changed  his 
surname  by  deed  poll  to  Ford.  He  was 
born  at  Merton,  Surrey,  17  December 
1873,  the  elder  son  of  Francis  Hueffer 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Catherine,  younger 
daughter  of  the  artist  Ford  Madox  Brown 
[q.v.].  A  noted  musical  critic,  Francis 
Hueffer  came  to  London  from  Germany  in 
1869  and  was  later  naturalized.  Mrs. 
Hueffer's  artist  sister,  Emma  Lucy  [see 
RossETTi,  Lucy  Madox]  married  W.  M. 
Rossetti  [q.v.].  The  Hueffers  were  thus 
closely  connected  with  the  pre-Raphaelite 
movement. 

Hueffer  was  educated  at  a  private  school 
at  Folkestone  and  at  University  College 
School.  In  1892  he  published  a  fairy-story 
entitled  The  Brown  Owl,  following  this 
with  books  on  Ford  Madox  Brown  (1896) 
and  Rossetti  (1902),  and  also  with  essays, 
poems,  and  novels,  the  best  known  being 
the  historical  trilogy  The  Fifth  Queen 
(1906),  Pnvy  Seal  (1907),  The  Fifth  Queen 


285 


Ford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Crowned  (1908),  and  the  modern  novel  The 
Good  Soldier,  which  was  not  pubUshed 
until  1915.  He  collaborated  with  Joseph 
Conrad  [q.v.]  in  the  writing  of  three  books, 
including  Romance  (1903). 

In  1908  Hueffer  founded  the  English 
Review,  a  periodical  of  remarkably  high 
literary  standard,  the  contributors  to 
which  included  such  writers  as  Hardy, 
Henry  James,  H.  G.  Wells,  and  Gals- 
worthy. Financial  difficulties,  however, 
forced  Hueffer  to  sell  the  Review  at  the 
end  of  a  year. 

In  1894  Hueffer  married  Elsie  (died 
1949),  daughter  of  William  Martindale, 
analytical  chemist,  of  London.  Two  daugh- 
ters were  born  of  the  marriage.  In  1910 
an  order  was  made  against  Hueffer  for 
restitution  of  conjugal  rights,  and  in  1931 
Mrs.  Hueffer  sued  the  Throne  newspaper 
for  having  described  Miss  Violet  Hunt  as 
'Mrs.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer'.  Judgement 
was  given  for  the  plaintiff  and  the  case, 
which  attracted  much  publicity,  had  an 
vmhappy  effect  upon  Hueffer's  reputation. 

From  1915  to  1919  Hueffer  held  a  com- 
mission in  the  Welch  Regiment  and  saw 
active  service  in  France,  where  he  was 
severely  gassed.  After  the  war  he  took  up 
farming  in  Sussex,  but  in  1922  he  moved 
to  France  and  the  next  year  settled  in 
Paris,  where  he  became  the  centre  of  a 
group  of  young  authors  such  as  Ezra 
Pound  and  Ernest  Hemingway,  whose 
work  appeared  in  the  Transatlantic  Re- 
view, founded  by  Ford  in  1924.  The  re- 
mainder of  his  life  was  divided  between 
Paris,  Provence,  and  the  United  States  of 
America,  where  in  1937  he  was  appointed 
lecturer  in  comparative  literature  at  Olivet 
College,  Michigan,  and  was  given  the 
honorary  degree  of  doctor  of  letters.  He 
died  at  Deauville,  France,  26  June  1939. 

Ford  was  a  fine  stylist  and  the  series  of 
books  written  round  the  character  called 
Tietjens  {Some  Do  Not,  1924,  No  More 
Parades,  1925,  A  Man  Could  Stand  Up, 
1926,  Last  Post,  1928)  rank  among  the  best 
novels  of  the  war  of  1914r-1918.  He  will 
be  remembered  also  for  his  gift  of  detect- 
ing talent  in  others  and  for  the  criticism 
and  encouragement  which  he  gave  to  two 
generations  of  writers. 

A  portrait  of  Ford  by  Janice  Biala  is 
in  the  possession  of  the  dean  of  Olivet 
College. 

[The  Times,  27  June  1939 ;  Douglas  Gold- 
ring,  South  Lodge  (containing  a  bibliography 
of  Ford's  writings),  1943,  and  The  Last  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelites:  The  Life  of  Ford  Madox  Ford, 
1948  ;  Stella  Bowen,  Drawn  from  Life,  1940;  j 


Violet  Hunt,  The  Flurried  Years,  1926 ;  F.  M. 
Ford,  Thus  to  Revisit,  1921,  Return  to  Yester- 
day, Reminiscences  1894-1914,  1931,  and  R  \ 
was  the  Nightingale,  1934 ;  S.  J.  Kunitz  and 
H.  Haycraft,  Twentieth  Century  Authors,  a 
Biographical  Dictionary  (New  York),  1942.] 
Georgina  Battiscombe. 

FORTESCUE,  Sm  JOHN  WILLIAM 

(1859-1933),  military  historian,  was  born 
in  Madeira  28  Deceniber  1859,  the  fifth  son 
of  Hugh  Fortescue,  third  Earl  Fortescue, 
by  his  wife,  Georgiana  Augusta  Charlotte 
Caroline,  eldest  daughter  of  Colonel 
George  Lionel  Dawson-Damer,  third  son 
of  John  Dawson-Damer,  first  Earl  of  Port- 
arlington.  He  was  descended  from  Chief 
Justice  Sir  John  Fortescue  [q.v.].  Brought 
up  in  country  surroundings  at  Castle  Hill, 
near  Barnstaple,  he  developed  a  great  love 
of  country  life  and  pursuits  with  a  country- 
man's eye  for  ground,  which  stood  him  in 
good  stead  in  explaining  the  battlefields 
which  he  described.  He  was  educated  at 
Harrow  under  H.  M.  Butler  [q.v.],  to 
whose  love  of  English  literature  he  owed 
much.  Short  sight  curtailed  his  athletic 
activities,  besides  debarring  him  from  a 
military  career;  he  therefore  entered 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1878,  in- 
tending to  read  for  the  bar,  but,  finding 
the  law  uncongenial,  in  1880  he  became 
private  secretary  to  Sir  William  Robinson, 
governor  of  the  Windward  Islands ;  two 
years  in  the  West  Indies  aroused  his  in- 
terest in  their  history  and  connexion  with 
the  army. 

After  completing  his  degree  at  Cam- 
bridge Fortescue  spent  four  years  in  New 
Zealand  (1886-1890)  as  private  secretary 
to  the  governor.  Sir  William  Jervois  [q.v.], 
during  which  he  began  writing  and  had 
several  articles  accepted  by  Macmillan's 
Magazine.  This  led  to  his  contributing  a 
volume  on  Dundonald  to  Macmillan's 
'Enghsh  Men  of  Action'  series  (1896), 
which  was  preceded  in  1895  by  a  history 
of  his  elder  brother  Lionel's  regiment,  the 
17th  Lancers.  Messrs.  Macmillan  then 
commissioned  him  to  write  a  popular  one- 
volume  history  of  the  British  army.  Find- 
ing it  impossible  to  do  justice  to  his 
subject  in  so  brief  a  compass  he  obtained 
the  publishers'  assent  to  a  more  ambitious 
venture  in  four  volumes.  The  first  two 
(1899),  which  reached  1713  and  1763, 
were  at  once  recognized  as  a  really  authori- 
tative contribution  to  the  subject,  but 
when  a  third  (1903)  and  a  fourth  (1906) 
only  reached  1792  and  1802  it  became 
evident  that  the  work  must  extend  far 
beyond  the  limits  contemplated.   Finally 


i 


286 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Foster,  G.  E. 


thirteen  volumes  appeared,  the  last  (con- 
tinuing to  1870)  in  1930.  Few  historians 
have  ventured  on  so  large  a  project,  still 
less  accomplished  it  single-handed. 

A  work  on  such  a  scale,  copiously  pro- 
vided with  elaborate  maps,  could  not  be 
remunerative  and  Fortescue  would  not 
have  been  able  to  complete  it  had  not 
King  Edward  VII  in  1905  appointed  him 
librarian  at  Windsor  Castle.  This  post, 
which  he  held  until  1926,  although  it  in- 
volved the  rearrangement  and  care  not 
only  of  the  books  but  of  the  pictures  and 
other  collections,  enabled  him  to  carry  on 
his  history,  which  owed  much  to  the  en- 
couragement of  the  King  and  his  successor. 
As  king's  librarian  he  accompanied  the 
King  and  Queen  to  India  in  1911  for  the 
coronation  durbar,  of  which  he  wrote  the 
official  account  (1912).  He  was  appointed 
C.V.O.  in  1917  and  K.C.V.O.  in  1926.  He 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1920,  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Oxford  and  Edinburgh,  and  was  awarded 
the  Chesney  gold  medal  of  the  Royal 
United  Service  Institution.  He  delivered 
the  Ford  lectures  (1911),  published  the 
same  year  as  British  Statesmen  of  the  Great 
War,  1793-1814,  and  the  Romanes  lecture 
(1929)  at  Oxford,  and  the  Lees-Knowles 
lectures  at  Cambridge  (1914). 

Fortescue  published  many  works  be- 
sides the  History  of  the  British  Army.  He 
edited  six  volumes  of  the  Correspondence 
of  King  George  the  Third  (1927-1928)  and 
seven  volumes  (the  first  with  W.  N.  Sains- 
bury,  q.v.)  of  the  Calendar  of  State  Papers, 
Colonial  Series,  America  and  West  Indies, 
covering  the  years  1677  to  1698  (1896- 
1905).  His  County  Lieutenancies  and  the 
Army,  1803-1814  (1909),  a  short  life  of 
Wellington  (1925),  perhaps  the  least 
unsatisfactory  of  the  biographies  of  the 
Duke,  and  many  other  volumes  were  off- 
shoots of  his  main  work.  The  Story  of  a 
Red  Deer  (1897),  ^v^itten  for  a  nephew  of 
nine  years  old,  shows  him  in  a  very  dif- 
ferent light  and  is  probably  his  most 
widely  read  work. 

In  1916  Fortescue  undertook  a  history 
of  the  war  which  was  then  in  progress ; 
based  on  official  sources,  it  was  to  be  of  an 
interim  character,  mainly  for  the  general 
public.  He  entered  upon  the  work  reluc- 
tantly, finding  it  hard  to  switch  from  the 
Peninsula  period  to  the  very  different  con- 
iitions,  ideas,  and  methods  of  1914,  with 
tvhich  he  was  less  familiar,  and  he  was  not 
orry  to  be  relieved  of  the  task. 

Fortescue  was  an  excellent  lecturer  with 


a  good  presence  and  delivery.  He  was 
among  the  few  I^ord  lecturers  at  Oxford 
to  attract  and  retain  a  large  undergraduate 
audience.  He  wrote  vigorously,  lucidly, 
and  graphically.  He  visited  every  battle- 
field which  he  could  reach,  and  could  grasp 
and  explain  their  important  features.  He 
was  indefatigable  in  research  and  no 
future  writer  on  British  military  history 
will  be  able  to  neglect  'Fortescue'.  He 
provided  a  basis  on  which  others  have 
built  and  illuminated  many  obscure 
corners.  He  held  very  definite  views  and 
never  hesitated  to  express  them,  some- 
times rather  more  forcibly  than  the  evi- 
dence warranted.  He  had  his  share  of 
foibles  and  preferences  and  it  is  easy  to 
find  fault  with  details,  but  his  work  re- 
mains one  of  solid  and  permanent  value, 
one  of  the  really  big  achievements  of  his 
generation. 

Fortescue  married  in  1914  Winifred,  elder 
surviving  daughter  of  Howard  Beech, 
rector  of  Barlavington,  Sussex.  Herself 
something  of  a  writer,  her  Perfume  from 
Provence  (1935)  contains  some  very  attrac- 
tive sketches  of  Proven9al  life,  written  with 
real  insight  and  humour.  He  died  without 
issue  at  Cannes  22  October  1933. 

[The  Times,  23  October  1933;  Sir  John 
Fortescue,  Author  and  Curator,  1933 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  C.  T.  Atkinson. 

FOSTER,     Sir     GEORGE     EULAS 

(1847-1931),  Canadian  statesman,  was 
born  of  United  Empire  Loyalist  stock  on 
a  farm  in  the  parish  of  Wakefield,  Carleton 
County,  New  Brunswick,  3  September 
1847,  the  second  son  and  seventh  child  of 
John  Foster,  of  Apohaqui,  New  Bruns- 
wick, whose  ancestors  came  originally 
from  Northumberland.  His  mother  was 
Margaret,  daughter  of  Eulas  Heine,  of 
Pennsylvanian  Dutch  descent.  He  was 
educated  at  the  common  and  superior 
schools  of  King's  County  and  at  the  uni- 
versity of  New  Brunswick ;  he  chose  teach- 
ing as  his  first  profession  and  in  1871  was 
appointed  to  the  chair  of  classical  litera- 
ture and  history  in  the  university  of  New 
Brunswick;  but  before  taking  up  this 
appointment  he  studied  at  the  universities 
of  Edinburgh  (1872-1873)  and  Heidelberg 
(1873).  But  his  zeal  for  temperance  re- 
form, which  never  abated,  led  him  to 
resign  his  professorship  in  1879  and  be- 
come a  professional  lecturer  for  this  cause. 
Foster's  success  in  this  role  led  to  his 
election  in  1882  as  member  for  King's 
County  to  the  federal  parliament  as  an 
independent  conservative,  and  he  made  his 


287 


Foster,  G.  E. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


mark  so  rapidly  as  a  first-rate  parlia- 
mentarian that  Sir  J.  A.  Macdonald  [q.v.], 
having  won  his  steady  allegiance,  made 
him  minister  of  marine  and  fisheries  in 
1885  when  he  was  sworn  of  the  Canadian 
Privy  Council,  and  promoted  him  in  1888 
to  the  Ministry  of  Finance.  The  chances 
which  he  had  of  succeeding  to  the  leader- 
ship of  the  conservative  party  were  pre- 
judiced by  his  first  marriage.  In  1896  he 
retired  from  the  ministry  and  from  the 
constituency  of  King's  County  and  at  the 
ensuing  general  election  was  returned  for 
York  County,  New  Brunswick. 

Excluded  from  parliament  by  the  loss 
of  his  seat  when  he  stood  for  St.  John 
City  in  1900,  Foster  became  engaged  in 
financial  business  and  made  a  platform 
campaign  in  Great  Britain  to  support 
Joseph  Chamberlain's  crusade  for  tariff 
reform  and  imperial  preference.  He  stood 
unsuccessfully  at  a  by-election  for  North 
Ontario  in  1903,  but  was  restored  to  the 
front  opposition  bench  at  Ottawa  as  mem- 
ber for  North  Toronto  in  1904 ;  he  became 
its  most  brilliant  debater,  and  when  his 
party  returned  to  power  in  1911  he  was 
appointed  minister  of  trade  and  com- 
merce, a  post  which  he  held  imtil  1921. 
He  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  cam- 
paign for  founding  the  Dominion  Bureau 
of  Statistics  and  the  National  Research 
Coimcil  and  served  on  a  royal  commission 
on  imperial  trade  which  investigated  the 
resources  of  the  British  Empire.  During 
the  war  of  1914-1918  he  rendered  invalu- 
able services  as  the  right-hand  man  of  Sir 
Robert  Borden  [q.v.];  he  served  on  the 
Canadian  delegation  at  the  Paris  Peace 
Conference  (1919)  and  represented  Canada 
at  the  first  Assembly  of  the  League  of 
Nations  (1920)  when  he  was  elected  vice- 
president;  he  also  attended  the  seventh 
(1926)  and  ninth  (1929)  assemblies.  He 
retired  in  1921  to  a  seat  in  the  senate, 
where  he  remained  a  very  influential  figure 
until  his  death  at  Ottawa  30  December 
1931. 

A  conservative  of  the  Right  and  an 
ardent  Imperialist  during  most  of  his 
career,  Foster  became  in  its  closing  stages 
an  equally  ardent  internationalist  and  on 
many  domestic  issues  moved  to  a  position 
of  advanced  liberalism.  He  had  a  better 
intellectual  equipment  for  politics  than 
most  of  his  Canadian  contemporaries,  but, 
great  as  his  services  were,  they  fell  short 
of  fulfiUing  the  high  promise  of  his  early 
career.  He  was  never  known  to  make  a 
poor  speech  and  could  always  gain  a  hear- 
ing, although  his  academic  cast  of  mind 


and  his  social  aloofness  were  barriers  to  his 
personal  popularity.  He  was  appointed 
K.C.M.G.  in  1914  and  G.C.M.G.  in  1918/ 
and  in  1916  he  was  sworn  of  the  Pri\ 
Covmcil  of  Great  Britain.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.C.L.  from  Acadis 
University  (1885)  and  of  LL.D.  from  the 
universities  of  New  Brunswick  (1894)ji 
Queen's,  Kingston  (1914),  and  Edinburgt 
(1920).  His  Canadian  Addresses,  edited  65 
Arnold  Winterbotham,  were  pubUshed  ii 
1914,  followed  in  1927  by  Citizenship:  Th 
Josiah  Wood  lectures,  1926. 

Foster  was  twice  married:  first,  in  188S 
to  Adeline  (died  1919),  eldest  daughter  oi 
Milton  Davies,  banker,  of  Hamilton,  On^ 
tario,  and  formerly  wife  of  Daniel  Blacl 
Chisholm,  barrister;  secondly,  in  1920 
Jessie  (died  1947),  daughter  of  Sir  Williai 
AUan,  of  Gateshead.  There  were  no  child| 
ren  of  either  marriage. 

A  portrait  of  Foster  by  Eyre  Mad 
(1926)  was  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  31  December  1931 ;  W.  Stewar 
Wallace,  The  Memoirs  of  the  Rt.  Hon.  Sii 
George  Foster,  1933 ;  Encyclopaedia  of  Canac 
1935 ;  Augustus  Bridle,  Sons  of  Canada  (with 
drawing  by  F.  S.  Challoner),  1916 ;  Canadian 
Men  and  Women  of  the  Time,  2nd  ed.  1912 ; 
A  Cyclopcedia  of  Canadian  Biography,  1886; 
Who's  Who  in  Canada,  1930;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  A.  Stevenson. 

FOSTER,  Sir  (THOMAS)  GREGORY, 
first  baronet,  of  Bloomsbury  (1866-1931), 
provost  of  University  College,  London, 
and  educationist,  was  born  in  London 
10  Jime  1866,  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas 
Gregory  Foster,  barrister,  of  Clapham  and 
Lincoln's  Inn,  by  his  wife,  Sophie,  daugh- 
ter of  John  Farquhar  Allday,  of  Birming- 
ham. He  was  educated  at  University 
College  School,  and  at  University  College, 
London,  where  he  graduated  with  honours 
in  English  language  and  hterature  (1888). 
In  1892  he  was  awarded  the  degree  of 
Ph.D.  by  Strasburg  University  for  a  thesis 
on  the  Old  English  poem  Judith  (pub- 
lished in  the  same  year).  He  was  a  sound 
philologist,  and  taught  for  the  EngUsh 
department  at  University  College,  first  as 
Quain  student  (1894-1899),  and  then  as 
assistant  professor  (1900-1904).  He  was 
also  professor  of  English  language  and 
hterature  at  Bedford  College  for  Women, 
London,  between  1897  and  1900. 

Foster  found  his  true  sphere  as  an  ad- 
ministrator in  1900,  when  he  was  appointed 
secretary  to  University  College.  In  1904 
he  was  elected  principal :  a  title  which,  in 
1907,  on  the  occasion  of  the  college  be- 
coming an  'incorporated  college'  of  Lon- 


288 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fotheringham 


don  University,  was  changed  to  provost. 
His  appointment  came  at  a  difficult  time. 
The  university  of  London  had  at  last 
become  a  true  university  instead  of  a 
glorified  examining  body.  The  colleges 
and  schools  had  as  yet  but  little  sense 
of  unity  and  co-operation.  There  were 
jealousies  and  rivalries  among  them,  while 
there  was  continual  friction  between  the 
external  and  the  internal  sides  of  the  uni- 
versity. Foster  during  his  long  term  of 
office  (1904-1929)  steered  the  college  with 
wisdom,  vigilance,  and  courage  through 
all  these  difficulties.  Many  important  new 
departments  of  study  were  established; 
the  college  buildings  were  increased  three- 
fold; and  the  number  of  students  was 
trebled.  It  would  be  difficult  to  overrate 
the  part  which  he  played  in  this  develop- 
ment. He  may  well  be  regarded  as  the 
second  founder  of  the  college.  His  last 
years  of  office  were  clouded  by  ill  health 
and  pain,  but  he  was  able,  nevertheless,  to 
take  an  active  part  in  the  celebration  of 
the  college  centenary  in  1926  and,  just 
before  his  retirement  in  1929,  he  was 
elected  vice-chancellor  of  London  Univer- 
sity, an  office  which  he  filled  with  dignity 
and  success  (1928-1930).  He  died  in 
London  24  September  1931. 

F6ster  was  knighted  in  1917  and  created 
a  baronet  in  1930.  He  was  twice  married: 
first,  in  1894  to  Fanny  Maude  (died  1928), 
daughter  of  James  Sledge,  of  Hove,  by 
whom  he  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters ; 
secondly,  in  March  1931  to  Elise  Johanna 
Emma  (died  October  1931),  daughter  of 
George  Peter  William  Augener.  He  was 
succeeded  as  second  baronet  by  his  elder 
son,  Thomas  Saxby  Gregory  (born  1899). 
A  portrait  by  Sir  William  Orpen,  which 
was  presented  to  him  on  his  retirement, 
is  in  the  possession  of  University  College, 
London. 

[The  Times,  25  September  1931 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  H.  E.  Butler. 

FOTHERINGHAM,  JOHN  KNIGHT 
(1874-1936),  historian  and  authority  on 
ancient  astronomy,  was  born  14  August 
1874  at  Tottenham,  Middlesex,  the  second 
son  of  David  Fotheringham,  minister  of 
St.  John's  Presbyterian  church,  Totten- 
ham, who  came  of  a  Forfarshire  family,  by 
his  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of  George  Ross, 
master  of  the  Lancastrian  School  at  Tot- 
tenham. Always  delicate,  he  was  fortu- 
nate in  a  devout  and  cultured  home,  and 
in  his  education  at  the  City  of  London 
School  and  at  Merton  College,  Oxford,  of 
which  latter  he  was  an  exhibitioner.   He 


obtained  a  second  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1894)  and  a  first  class  in  literae 
humaniores  (1896)  and  in  modern  history 
(1897),  and  was  a  senior  demy  of  Magdalen 
CoUege  from  1898  to  1902.  In  1903  he 
married  Mary  Eleanor,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Atkinson,  of  Crosby  Garrett,  Westmor- 
land, who  shared  his  studies,  and  survived 
him.  There  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage. 

For  a  man  so  learned  and  self-contained, 
life  was  not  easy.  Fotheringham  taught 
first  classics  (1904-1909),  then  ancient 
history  (1909-1912),  at  I^jng's  College, 
London,  and  he  held  a  readership  in 
ancient  historj'  in  London  University  from 
1912  to  1920,  living  sometimes  at  Oxford, 
sometimes  at  Muswell  Hill.  His  first  pub- 
lications were  articles  on  'The  Formation 
of  the  Julian  Calendar'  and  'The  Date  of 
the  Crucifixion',  both  contributed  to  vol. 
xxix  of  the  Journal  of  Philology  (1903). 
He  completed  volume  xi  (1801-1837)  of 
Longman's  Political  History  of  England 
(1906),  begun  by  G.  C.  Brodrick  [q.v.],  and 
collaborated  with  Mr.  Laurence  Frederic 
Rushbrook  Williams  in  a  life  of  Marco 
Sanudo  (1915). 

But  Fotheringham's  lifework  was  done 
in  ancient  astronomy  and  chronology :  The 
Bodleian  Manuscript  of  Jerome's  Version 
of  the  Chronicle  of  Eusebius  (1905)  gained 
him  the  degree  of  D.Litt.  of  Oxford  Uni- 
versity (1908) ;  and  the  critical  edition 
Eusebii  Pamphili  Chronica  Canones  latine 
vertit,  adauxit,  ad  sua  tempora  produxit  S. 
Eusebius  Hieronymus  (1923),  completed 
with  the  help  of  a  fellowship  at  Magdalen, 
which  he  held  from  1909  to  1916,  estab- 
lished the  text,  form,  and  appearance  of 
this  difficult  work,  and  the  respective 
shares  in  it  of  Eusebius  and  Jerome. 

In  1918,  when  war  had  suspended  his 
London  work,  Fotheringham  accepted  a 
small  post  under  H.  H.  Turner  [q.v.]  in 
the  University  Observatory  at  Oxford, 
and  imdertook  for  S.  H.  Langdon  [q.v.] 
the  astronomical  interpretation  of  the 
Assyrian  'Table  of  the  Movements  of  the 
Planet  Venus  and  their  Influences'.  With 
help  from  a  German  astronomer,  Carl 
Schoch,  he  corrected  the  calculations  of 
F.  X.  Kugler  {Sternkunde  und  Sterndienst 
in  Babel,  1907-1924)  and  published  with 
Langdon  and  Schoch  TJie  Venus  Tablets  of 
Ammizaduga  (1928),  which  established  the 
chronology  of  the  Babylonian  dynasties. 
But  as  the  movements  of  Venus  recur  in 
cycles,  subsequent  archaeological  research 
by  Dr.  Sidney  Smith  {Alalakh  and  Chrono- 
logy,  1940)   has  transferred   Babylonian 


289 


Fotheringham 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


events  to  a  later  cycle  than  that  accepted 
by  Langdon,  without  prejudice  to  the  cal- 
culations of  Fotheringham  and  Schoch. 
Another  astronomical  discovery — ^the  sec- 
ular acceleration  of  the  sim  and  of  the 
moon,  and  the  irregular  movements  known 
as  'trepidation' — although  repeatedly  re- 
corded by  Fotheringham,  was  still  imper- 
fectly published  at  his  death. 

After  failing  to  become  Radcliffe  ob- 
server at  Oxford  in  1924,  Fotheringham 
was  next  year  elected  to  a  readership  of 
ancient  astronomy  and  chronology,  which 
was  specially  created  for  him,  and  he  was 
appointed  an  honorary  assistant  at  the 
University  Observatory.  He  lectured 
regularly  and  dealt  pvmctiliously  with  a 
wide  range  of  inquiries.  In  1932  he  unsuc- 
cessfully sought  election  to  the  Savilian 
chair  of  astronomy,  vacant  since  the  death 
of  Turner  in  1930,  and  submitted  a  review 
of  the  position  of  astronomical  research  at 
Oxford,  with  proposals  for  future  studies. 
In  1933  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy.  He  died  at  his  home  on 
Cumnor  Hill  12  December  1936,  and  was 
buried  in  the  Presbyterian  cemetery  at 
Aston  Tirrold,  Berkshire. 

Fotheringham's  deep  and  varied  know- 
ledge, fine  scholarship,  and  kindly  tem- 
perament made  him  'a  very  lovable  man', 
devout  and  loyal  to  his  Presbyterian 
training. 

[The  Times,  14  December  1936 ;  J.  L.  Myres, 
John  Knight  Fotheringham,  1874-1936  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxiii, 
1937 ;  Isis,  vol.  xxvii,  1937  (bibliography  and 
portrait);  Archeion,  vol.  xix,  1937;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  L.  Myres. 

FOWLER,  ALFRED  (1868-1940),  as- 
trophysicist, was  born  at  Wilsden,  York- 
shire, 22  March  1868,  the  youngest  child 
and  seventh  son  of  Hiram  Fowler,  by  his 
wife,  Eliza  Hill.  About  1876  the  family 
removed  to  Keighley,  where  Alfred  at- 
tended various  schools  and  later  the  Trade 
and  Grammar  School.  In  1882  he  pro- 
ceeded, with  the  aid  of  a  Devonshire 
exhibition,  to  the  Normal  School  of 
Science  (later  absorbed  into  the  Imperial 
College  of  Science  and  Technology)  at 
South  Kensington,  where  he  gained  a  first 
class  diploma  in  mechanics  and  was  en- 
abled to  continue  his  studies  through  an 
appointment  as  'teacher  in  training'.  His 
first  duties  were  those  of  an  assistant  to 
(Sir)  J.  N.  Lockyer  [q.v.]  who  in  1879  had 
set  up  his  Solar  Physics  Observatory  at 
South  Kensington  and  was  conducting 
astronomical  research  there  in  close  asso- 


ciation with  spectrographic  work  at  the 
college.  Thus  at  the  beginning  Fowler 
saw  astronomy  and  spectroscopy  as  two 
aspects  of  a  single  subject,  and  his  subse- 
quent work  was  controlled  by  this  view. 

Fowler  remained  with  Lockyer  (from 
1888  onwards  as  demonstrator  in  astro- 
nomical physics)  until  the  latter's  retire- 
ment from  the  college  in  1901,  when  he 
became  assistant  professor  of  physics  and 
assumed  charge  of  the  astronomical  work. 
In  1915  he  was  appointed  professor  of 
astrophysics  and  in  1923  one  of  the  first 
Yarrow  research  professors  of  the  Royal 
Society  [see  Yakrow,  Sir  Alfred].  He 
continued  to  work  at  the  college,  however, 
although  without  undergraduate  teaching 
responsibilities,  until  his  retirement  in 
1934.  He  died  at  Ealing  24  June  1940. 
In  1892  he  married  Isabella,  daughter  of 
John  Orr,  a  designer  of  dress  materials, 
and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 

During  Fowler's  association  with  Lock- 
yer his  work  was  merged  in  that  of  the 
elder  man.  Together  they  amassed  much 
data  on  the  successive  spectra  emitted  by 
the  elements  as  the  exciting  stimulus  was 
intensified,  a  manifestation,  in  Lockyer's 
view,  of  the  step-by-step  dissociation  of 
the  elements  into  simpler  forms.  The  idea 
was  unpopular,  however,  and  only  when 
Niels  Bohr's  theory  of  spectra  appeared  in 

1913  was  its  essential  truth  realized.  On 
the  astronomical  side  the  outstanding 
work  was  the  study  of  the  sun's  atmo- 
sphere during  total  eclipses,  and  Fowler 
went  with  the  British  government  expedi- 
tions of  1893,  1896,  1898,  1900,  1905,  and 

1914  to  various  parts  of  the  world  for  this 
purpose. 

From  1901  onwards  Fowler  worked  on 
his  own  responsibility,  and  a  series  of 
papers  appeared  recording  the  identifica- 
tion of  previously  unknown  celestial 
spectra  with  spectra  obtained  in  the 
laboratory  from  sources  which  he  suc- 
ceeded with  marked  ability  in  distinguish- 
ing. Among  other  achievements  the 
absorption  bands  in  the  spectra  of  the  red 
stars  were  traced  to  titanium  oxide,  the 
bands  in  the  spectra  of  comets'  tails  to 
low  pressure  carbon  monoxide,  certain 
bands  in  sunspot  spectra  to  magnesium 
hydride,  and  the  absorption  at  the  shorter 
wave-length  end  of  celestial  spectra  to 
ozone  in  the  earth's  atmosphere.  Of 
especial  importance  was  the  laboratory 
production  of  the  spectrum  then  attri- 
buted to  'cosmic  hydrogen'  and  now  to 
ionized  helium :  this  proved  of  great  value 
in  establishing  the  Bohr  theory  of  spectra. 


290 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Fowler,  H.  W. 


As  that  theory  developed,  Fowler's  almost 
unrivalled  knowledge  of  spectra  became  of 
increasing  importance,  and  he  displayed 
a  natural  ability  in  classifying  spectrum 
lines  comparable  with  his  skill  in  identi- 
fying them. 

Fowler  played  an  active  part  in  the 
administrative  work  of  science,  and  he  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  organization 
of  the  International  Astronomical  Union 
(foimded  in  1919),  of  which  he  was  the 
first  secretary.  He  was  highly  successful 
also  as  a  director  of  research,  and  several 
distinguished  men  are  numbered  among 
his  pupils.  He  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in 
1935  and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1910.  He 
was  president  of  Section  A  of  the  British 
Association  in  1926,  of  the  Royal  Astro- 
nomical Society  from  1919  to  1921,  and  of 
the  Institute  of  Physics  from  1935  to  1937. 
His  numerous  other  distinctions  included 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Bristol,  Cambridge,  Durham,  and  Leeds, 
the  Bakerian  lecturership  of  the  Royal 
Society  (1914  and  1924),  the  gold  medal 
of  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society  (1915), 
and  a  Royal  medal  of  the  Royal  Society 
(1918). 

[The  Times,  25  June  1940 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  January 
1941  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Herbert  Dingle. 

FOWLER,  HENRY  WATSON  (1858- 
1933),  lexicographer,  was  born  10  March 
1858  at  Tonbridge,  where  his  father,  the 
Rev.  Robert  Fowler,  fellow  of  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge,  from  1854  to  1856, 
was  an  assistant  master.  Robert  Fowler 
was  the  son  of  a  'gentleman',  so  at  least 
he  is  described  in  his  marriage  certificate, 
j  to  the  hearty  amusement  of  the  man  who 
1  has  rendered  the  word  '  genteelism '  notori- 
j  ous.  The  elder  Henry  Fowler  was,  in  fact, 
I  a  master-carpenter  or  builder  at  Buckfast- 
leigh,  Devon.  The  same  certificate  de- 
I  scribes  Humphry  Watson,  the  father  of 
the  bride,  Caroline,  as  'yeoman';  he  was 
tenant  of  the  extensive  farm  buildings  at 
Dartington  Hall,  near  Totnes.  Robert 
Fowler,  after  four  years  (1856-1860)  at 
Tonbridge,  set  up  on  his  own  account  as 
a  very  successful  'military  tutor'  at  Tun- 
bridge  Wells.  Henry  was  the  eldest  of 
seven  sons  and  one  daughter.  From  his 
father's  death  in  1879  he  bore  the  main 
responsibility  for  the  family.  He  had  gone 
ap  to  Oxford  in  1877  with  a  senior  exhibi- 
tion from  Rugby  and  a  scholarship  at 
Balliol  College.  He  obtained  a  second  class 
n  classical   moderations   (1878)   and   in 


literae  humaniores  (1881),  but  in  conse- 
quence of  his  failure  to  pass  the  qualifying 
divinity  examination,  he  took  his  actual 
B.A.  degree  at  the  same  time  as  his  M.A. 
in  1886. 

After  a  brief  temporary  mastership  at 
Fettes,  Fowler  became  in  1882  an  assis- 
tant master  at  Sedbergh  under  H.  G.  Hart 
who,  like  himself,  had  in  his  day  been  head 
of  the  school  house  at  Rugby,  and  now 
strove  among  the  Yorkshire  fells  to  main- 
tain the  healthy  tradition  of  Thomas 
Arnold  and  Frederick  Temple  [qq.v.].  He 
chose  his  masters  with  great  care  and  set 
them  a  noble  example:  of  these,  two  of  the 
best  were  Henry  Fowler  and  his  brother 
Arthur  John  Fowler. 

In  term-time,  Henry  worked  steadily 
for  ten  hours  a  day,  Simdays  included.  In 
the  holidays  he  commonly  went  to  Nor- 
way or  Switzerland,  for  he  was  an  excel- 
lent walker,  climber,  skater,  and  football 
player.  This  lasted  for  seventeen  years  of 
unshaken  friendship,  but  then  came  an 
irreconcilable  difference  of  principle :  Hart 
held  it  a  strict  rule  that  housemasters 
should  prepare  their  boys  for  confirma- 
tion, and  Fowler's  conscience  would  not 
allow  this.  The  painful  interchange  of 
letters  which  ensued  does  equal  honour  to 
both  men,  and  the  personal  friendship 
remained  unbroken.  Fowler  retired,  in 
1899,  to  a  hermit's  life  in  London.  To  a 
friend,  who  urged  upon  him  a  line  of 
historical  research  for  which  his  mind  and 
attainments  seemed  especially  fitted,  he 
replied  emphatically,  'No,  my  dear  fellow, 
I'm  not  going  to  do  anything  useful 
again!'  He  enjoyed  his  new  freedom  in 
the  quiet,  remote  Paulton's  Square,  Chel- 
sea. He  read  voraciously  and  wrote  liter- 
ary essays,  which,  collected  into  volumes, 
remained  always  his  favourite  work  (More 
Popular  Fallacies,  1904 ;  Si  Mihi-!,  1907, 
republished  in  1929  as  If  Wishes  were 
Horses;  Between  Boy  and  Man,  1908 ;  and 
Some  Comparative  Values,  written  at  this 
period  but  not  published  until  1929). 

Fowler's  essays  in  periodical  form 
brought  in  a  steady  average  of  £30  a  year ; 
he  had  his  patrimony  of  £120,  neither 
increased  nor  diminished  by  the  seventeen 
years  of  schoolmastering ;  and  out  of  this 
he  spared  financial  help  to  his  landlady, 
whose  husband  was  an  invalid.  But  he 
found  his  true  vocation  at  last  under 
encouragement  from  the  Oxford  Univer- 
sity Press.  In  1905,  in  conjunction  with 
his  brother  Francis  George  Fowler  (1870- 
1918),  scholar  of  Peterhouse,  Cambridge, 
who  had  obtained  a  first  class  in  the 


291 


Fowler,  H.  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


classical  tripos  of  1892,  he  produced  a  four- 
volume  translation  of  Lucian,  which  was 
well  received  by  reviewers  and  public. 
This  success  paved  the  way  for  The  King's 
English  (1906).  The  brothers  were  next 
engaged  by  the  Oxford  University  Press 
to  produce  an  abridgement  of  the  Oxford 
Dictionary,  which  appeared  in  1911  as  the 
Concise  Oxford  Dictionary  of  Current  Eng- 
lish. After  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914, 
Henry,  who  had  already  belonged  to  the 
Inns  of  Court  Volunteers,  splendide  men- 
dax,  subtracted  thirteen  years  from  his 
actual  age  when  in  1915  he  joined  the 
Sportsmen's  battalion  as  a  private  of 
'forty -four'.  Frank,  at  forty-five,  fol- 
lowed his  example.  Henry's  wonderful 
physique  carried  him  through  the  training 
and  into  the  trenches  where  he  was  once 
under  fire  but  fired  no  shot  himself.  A 
crippling  attack  of  gout  invalided  him  in 
May  1916.  Frank  also  was  invalided,  and 
died  in  1918  of  a  consumption  probably 
contracted  in  the  army. 

Henry  had  married  in  1908,  on  his 
fiftieth  birthday,  Jessie  Marian,  daughter 
of  Richard  Sydenham  Wills;  she,  aged 
forty-six,  was  head  of  a  nursing  home  in 
Guernsey,  where  Henry  had  gone  to  live 
with  Frank  in  1903.  It  was  an  ideal  union 
in  spite  of  picturesque  and  dramatic  con- 
trasts, which  he  crystallized  later  in  a  little 
volume  of  poems.  Rhymes  of  Darby  to  Joan 
(1931).  He  and  Frank,  in  earlier  years  of 
collaboration,  had  led  as  bachelors  a 
scholarly  life  of  Spartan  regularity;  and 
now  Henry  lived  the  same  life  d  deux,  first 
at  Moulin  de  Haut  near  St.  Peter  Port  in 
Guernsey  and  then  in  an  equally  charming 
cottage  at  Hinton  St.  George,  Somerset. 
He  was  now  in  regular  employment  on 
different  branches  of  the  great  Oxford 
English  Dictionary ;  the  Pocket  Oxford  Dic- 
tionary of  Current  English  appeared  in 
1924.  Side  by  side  with  this,  he  compiled 
a  Dictionary  of  Modern  English  Usage 
(1926),  a  companion  volume  to  The  King's 
English,  and  his  most  original  work.  After 
a  few  years  his  wife  developed  cancer, 
which  gradually  defied  medical  skill  and 
made  heavy  demands  upon  his  affection: 
but  he  bore  the  double  burden  unflinch- 
ingly. Her  death  (October  1930)  left  him 
with  energies  noticeably  diminished.  He 
gave  up  his  swim  before  breakfast  and  his 
run  in  all  seasons  and  weathers.  He  had 
already  lost  one  eye  for  some  years  past 
and  now  the  other  began  to  fail  very 
seriously.  Yet  he  struggled  on  with  his 
work,  experience  making  up  to  some 
extent  for  waning  strength,  imtil  an  attack 


of  influenza,  unconfessed  for  ten  days, 
turned  to  pneumonia  and  caused  his  death 
from  sheer  exhaustion,  with  little  pain,  at 
Hinton  St.  George  26  December  1933.  His 
Oxford  Dictionary  work  was  continued 
with  fraternal  devotion  and  beaver-like 
persistence  by  A.  J.  Fowler,  his  junior  by 
ten  years,  who  had  retired  from  a  long  and 
valuable  career  at  Sedbergh  and  died  in 
1939. 

The  main  characteristics  of  Henry 
Fowler's  life  were  his  quiet,  unpretentious 
stoicism  and  his  moral  and  intellectual 
integrity.  Strangers  and  schoolboys  were 
often  impressed  by  a  certain  austerity 
which  concealed  his  deep  affections.  Both 
his  last  years  and  those  of  his  brother 
Arthur  were  darkened  by  a  wife's  lingering 
illness ;  but  the  elder  brother  earned  that 
praise  which  he  had  given  to  his  junior: 
'He  is  the  most  unselfish  man  I  know.' 
Religious  by  nature  and  early  training,  he 
broke  away  finally  from  all  dogma ;  yet  to 
the  last  it  might  be  said  of  him,  as  of  his 
older  fellow-Rugbeian  Henry  Sidgwick 
[q.v.],  that  he  was  a  Christian  in  all  but 
actual  faith.  In  literature  his  tastes  were 
catholic ;  but  the  one  genre  for  which  he 
disclaimed  all  sympathy  was  that  of  ''cruel 
satire',  with  emphasis  upon  the  adjective. 

[The  Times,  28  December  1933;  Meteor 
(Rugby  School  magazine),  7  March  1934 ;  Sed- 
berghian,  March  1934  and  November  1939; 
Punch,  10  January  1934 ;  G.  G.  Coulton,  //.  W. 
Fowler,  S.P.E.  Tract  No.  xliii,  1934  (por- 
traits), and  A  Victorian  Schoolmaster:  Henry 
Hart  of  Sedbergh,  1923 ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.  Fowler's  correspondence 
with  Hart  and  his  war  letters  of  1915—1916 
are  preserved  complete  in  the  library  of  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge.]  ^^ 

G.  G.  COTJLTON^I 

FOWLER,  Sm  JAMES  KINGSTON 
(1852-1934),  physician,  was  born  at  Wo- 
burn,  Bedfordshire,  11  March  1852,  the 
fifth  son  of  James  Fowler,  of  Woburn,  by 
his  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of  Henry  Sar- 
geant,  of  Bedford.  After  leaving  school, 
Fowler  entered  King's  College,  London,  in 
1870,  intending  to  proceed  to  Cambridge 
and  prepare  for  holy  orders,  but  he  sud- 
denly decided  to  study  medicine  and 
therefore  joined  King's  College  medical 
school.  He  qualified  in  1874  and  was 
house  physician  to  (Sir)  George  Johnson 
and  house  surgeon  to  Sir  William  Fergus- 
son  [qq.v.]  at  King's  College  Hospital. 
In  1876  he  went,  as  house  physician, 
to  Addenbrooke's  Hospital,  Cambridge, 
where  he  availed  himself  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  enter  Gonville  and  Caius  College 


292 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Foxwell 


as  an  undergraduate,  eventually  graduat- 
ing M.A.  (1879)  and  M.D.  (Cantab.  1884). 
Returning  to  London  in  1879  he  was  for 
a  short  period  on  the  staff  of  Westminster 
Hospital,  but  in  1880  left  on  being  elected 
assistant  physician  to  the  Brompton  Hos- 
pital for  Diseases  of  the  Chest  and  to  the 
Middlesex  Hospital,  where  the  wide  ex- 
perience of  morbid  anatomy  gained  as 
pathologist  and  curator  of  the  museum  he 
applied  with  great  success  to  the  study  of 
disease  in  the  living.  In  1891  he  became 
physician.  In  the  wards  he  was  a  success- 
ful teacher,  owing  to  his  methodical  and 
accurate  observation,  and  the  care  he  used 
to  indicate  the  reasoning  by  which  he 
arrived  at  his  diagnosis. 

Fowler  wrote  largely  on  professional 
subjects.  He  edited  A  Dictionary  of  Prac- 
tical Medicine,  published  in  1890.  In  col- 
laboration with  (Si'-)  Rickman  Godlee 
[q.v.]  he  published  in  1898  a  treatise  on 
The  Diseases  of  the  Lungs.  He  was  thus 
early  to  recognize  the  importance  of  the 
close  co-operation  of  physician  and  sur- 
geon in  the  treatment  of  chest  diseases. 
In  1921  he  published  a  monograph  on 
Pulmonary  Tuberculosis,  a  disease  on 
which  he  was  a  recognized  authority. 

In  .the  reconstitution  of  London  Uni- 
versity in  1900  Fowler  played  a  notable 
part.    He  was  a  senior  member  of  the 
senate  and  afterwards  dean  of  the  faculty 
of  medicine.   When  (Sir)  Otto  Beit  [q.v.] 
ifounded  the  Beit  memorial  fellowships, 
Fowler  was  made  honorary  secretary  and 
one  of  the  trustees  of  the  fund. 
I    Fowler  received  many  professional  and 
iother  distinctions  and  honours.    He  was 
a  censor  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
in  1908  and  1909  and  senior  censor  in 
1913.   The  honorary  degree  of  D.Sc.  was 
conferred  upon  him  by  Sheffield  Univer- 
ity  in  1908.  In  the  previous  year  he  was 
Dresident  of  the  Medical  Society  of  Lon- 
ion.  In  1910  he  was  appointed  K.C.V.O. 
ifter  attendance  with  (Sir)  Alfred  Pearce 
ould  on  Prince  Francis  of  Teck  in  his 
ast  illness.  He  was  one  of  the  first  mem- 
)ers  of  the  Colonial  Advisory  Medical  and 
ianitary  Committee  (formed  1909)  and 
hairman  of  the  Colonial  Medical  Appoint- 
nents  Board.  In  1913  he  was  made  chair- 
aan  of  the  West  African  yellow  fever 
ommission. 

Early  in  the  Mar  of  1914-1918  Fowler 
erved  on  the  staff  of  the  3rd  London 
'erritorial  Hospital,  but  in  1917  went  to 
he  Rouen  Base  Hospital  as  consulting 
hysician  with  the  honorary  rank  of 
olonel.  Army  Medical  Service.    He  was 


mentioned  in  dispatches,  and  appointed 
C.M.G.  in  1919,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1932  on 
his  retirement  from  his  Colonial  Office 
appointments. 

Fowler  was  unmarried.  He  made 
numerous  friends,  for  the  most  part  men 
of  distinction  in  walks  of  life  other  than 
the  medical.  Tall,  always  well  dressed  and 
well  groomed,  he  was  a  distinguished 
figure  in  any  company.  Through  his 
friendship  with  John,  second  Lord  Montagu 
of  Beaulieu  [q.v.]  he  was  appointed  warden 
of  Beaulieu  Abbey,  and  in  1911  wrote  a 
History  of  Beaulieu  Abbey,  which  is  well 
illustrated  and  gives  details  of  the  life  of 
the  Cistercian  monks.  In  1928  he  published 
a  smaller  work  on  Hayles  Abbey,  Glouces- 
tershire, of  which  he  was  custodian.  On 
retirement  he  lived  in  the  Warden's  House 
at  Beaulieu,  where  he  died  3  July  1934. 

[The  Times,  4  July  1934;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1934,  vol.  ii,  p.  91 ;  Lancet,  1934, 
vol.  ii,  p.  104 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  A.  Young. 

FOXWELL,  HERBERT  SOMERTON 
(1849-1936),  economist  and  bibliographer, 
was  born  at  Shepton  Mallet,  Somerset, 
17  June  1849,  the  eldest  of  the  four  sons 
of  Thomas  Somerton  Foxwell,  of  Shepton 
Mallet,  who  had  a  considerable  and  lucra- 
tive business  as  an  ironmonger  and  later 
as  a  slate  and  timber  merchant,  by  his 
second  wife,  Jane  Handcock,  who  was  of 
Irish  and  Channel  Islands  descent.  Her- 
bert Foxwell  was  educated  at  the  Wes- 
leyan  Collegiate  Institute  (later  Queen's 
College),  Taunton,  and  graduated  B.A.  of 
London  University  in  1867.  Proceeding  in 
the  Lent  term  of  1868  to  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  he  was  senior  in  the 
moral  sciences  tripos  of  1870  and  was 
elected  a  foundation  scholar  of  his  college, 
being  awarded  the  Whewell  scholarship  in 
international  law  in  1872. 

Foxwell  lived  at  Cambridge  throughout 
his  adult  life,  first  at  St.  John's,  and,  after 
his  marriage  in  1898,  in  Harvey  Road,  a 
few  doors  from  Dr.  John  Neville  Keynes. 
His  wife  was  Olive  May  (died  1930),  eldest 
daughter  of  William  Edward  Dorrington, 
of  a  firm  of  Manchester  shippers,  and  they 
had  two  daughters.  Foxwell  usually  spent 
the  summer  at  Barmouth,  where  he  was 
a  consistent  pedestrian  and  mountaineer. 
He  died  at  Cambridge  3  August  1936. 

FoxweU's  university  work  was  three- 
fold ;  at  Cambridge,  at  University  College, 
London,  and  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics  and  Political  Science.  His 
interests    were    also   threefold;    political 


208 


Foxwell 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


economj'^  in  general,  banking,  and  the  for- 
mation of  a  library  of  economic  literature. 
Beginning  with  extension  lecturing  in 
1874,  he  was,  that  same  year,  elected  a 
fellow  of  St.  John's,  and  first  as  lecturer 
and  later  (1912)  as  director  of  economic 
studies  was  closely  associated  with  the 
college  for  sixty  years.  During  the  absence 
from  Cambridge  (1877-1885)  of  Alfred 
Marshall  [q.v.],  he  took  the  main  share  in 
the  honours  teaching  of  economics  in  the 
university. 

Foxwell  was  appointed  professor  of 
political  economy  at  University  CoUege, 
London,  in  1881,  and  he  did  not  retire 
until  1927.  Until  1902  the  only  scope 
afforded  for  the  study  of  economics  in  the 
university  was  as  a  compulsory  subject  for 
the  M.A.  degree  in  philosophy  and  as  an 
optional  one  for  the  D.Sc.  For  many  years 
Foxwell  had  the  whole  range  of  economics 
as  his  field.  He  lectured  on  banking  and 
currency  from  the  first  session  of  the 
London  School  of  Economics  (1895-1896) 
until  his  retirement  in  1922.  In  1907  he 
and  Edwin  Cannan  [q.v.]  were  appointed 
professors  of  political  economy  in  the  uni- 
versity of  London. 

From  1878  Foxwell  was  a  fellow  of  the 
(Royal)  Statistical  Society,  and  in  1882  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  member  of  the 
historic  Political  Economy  Club.  In  1890 
he  was  closely  connected  with  the  initia- 
tion of  an  economics  club  at  University 
College,  and  in  1890-1891  was  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  British  Economic  Associa- 
tion, later  the  Royal  Economic  Society, 
and  was  its  president  from  1929  to  1931. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1905. 

When  Foxwell  began  lecturing  in  1874, 
the  economic  teaching  of  J.  S.  Mill  [q.v.] 
was  dominant  in  England,  but  a  new  and 
wider  approach  was  already  appearing  in 
the  work  of  a  brilliant  group  of  men  born 
in  the  period  from  1835  to  1855,  which 
included  W.  S.  Jevons,  A.  Marshall, 
William  Cimningham,  Arnold  Toynbee 
[qq.v.],  Charles  Wicksteed,  and  Dr.  J.  N. 
Keynes.  Foxwell  described  'The  Econo- 
mic Movement  in  England'  in  a  very  im- 
portant contribution  to  the  second  volume 
of  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics 
(October  1887).  Here  he  argued  that  eco- 
nomics is  not  a  self-contained  science,  the 
'laws'  of  which  are  normative  and  imi- 
versal,  as  was  implied  by  the  followers  of 
Ricardo  and  Mill,  but  is  part  of  the  wider 
study  of  the  development  of  institutions 
and  governments,  which  dominates  the 
economic  ideas  of  each  nation  and  genera- 


tion,  continually  growing  as   conditions 
change.    Although  not  opposed  to  pure 
analysis,  when  properly  limited  and  de- 
fined— for  he  was  a  wholehearted  admirej 
of  Jevons  and  appreciated  Marshall,  wh^ 
had  been  his  teacher — Foxwell' s  bent  wa 
historical.    Partly  for  this  reason  he  ws 
in  opposition  to  the  trend  of  'orthodo? 
English  economics,  especially  in  his  suj 
port  (about  1886)  of  bimetallism  and 
his  partial  sympathy  with  the  movement 
towards  imperial  preference  and  tariff  re 
form  (about  1903).    His  early  interest 
the  development  of  socialism  is  sho\ 
in  the  above  named  paper,  and  in  his  lor 
historical    introduction    to    the    EnglisI 
translation  of  Anton  Menger's  Tlie  Righ 
to  the  Whole  Produce  of  Labour  (1899). 
was  one  of  the  first  economists  to  realizij 
the  tragedies  of  irregularity  of  employ! 
ment,  the  subject  of  his  lecture,  'Irre^ 
larity  of  Employment  and  Fluctuations 
Prices',  published  in  The  Claims  of  Laboi 
(1886). 

Although  Foxwell  never  lost  his  interes 
in  general  economics,  the  subject  of  whici 
he  was  complete  master  was  banking, 
his  university  lectures  and  in  those  de 
livered  to  many  public  bodies  he  showe 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  practic 
of  banking,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  an^ 
its  relation  to  industry,  based  on  continus 
contact  with  bankers  and  other  busines 
men.  During  more  than  a  generation  thei 
can  have  been  few  men  seriously  interested 
in  the  wider  problems  of  banking  and  cur- 
rency who  did  not  come  under  his  influ- 
ence. Unfortunately,  the  only  book  which 
he  published  on  any  subject,  Papers  on, 
Current  Finance  (1919),  relates  only  to  the 
period  from  1909  to  1917,  save  that  re- 
printed in  it  is  an  article  of  1888  on  the 
inevitability  of  the  growth  of  monopoly 
under  competition. 

Foxwell  is  best  known,  however,  not  for 
his  economic  teaching,  but  for  the  libraries 
which  he  formed  on  economic  and  allied 
subjects,  covering  the  period  from  about 
1740  to  1848.  The  first  was  purchased  by 
the  Goldsmiths'  Company  in  1901,  and 
presented  in  1903  to  the  university  of 
London.  At  that  date  the  catalogue  con- 
tained 30,000  items,  but  purchases  and 
gifts  have  continued,  and  now  (1947), 
when  it  is  housed  in  the  university  build- 
ings in  Bloomsbury,  the  collection  has 
reached  some  56,000  items.  Its  earlier 
contents  are  described  by  Foxwell  in  the 
appendix  to  Sir  Robert  Harry  Inglis  Pal- 
grave's  Dictionary  of  Political  Economy, 
edited  by  Henry  Higgs,  vol.  i,  pp.  870-872 


294 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fraser,  D. 


(1925).  Immediately  after  the  disposal  of 
this  first  library  was  completed,  Foxwell 
started  upon  a  second  collection.  In  1929 
this  was  sold  to  Harvard  University,  4,000 
volumes  at  once  and  the  remainder  to  be 
delivered  after  his  death.  By  1939  it 
formed  a  very  important  part  of  the  Kress 
Library  of  Business  and  Economics  at  the 
Harvard  business  school.  It  then  con- 
tained some  42,000  books  and  pamphlets, 
and,  as  compared  with  the  Goldsmiths' 
library,  is  particularly  strong  on  the  his- 
torical side. 

Foxwell's  charm  won  him  a  wide  circle 
of  friends  and  his  apparent  immunity  from 
fatigue  enabled  him  to  indulge  his  passion 
for  books  without  ever  neglecting  his 
duties.  In  discussion  temperate,  but  in 
business  intractable,  he  was  embittered  in 
his  later  years  by  many  obstacles  in  the 
transfer  of  his  first  library  and  by  dis- 
appointment in  failing  to  attain  the  chair 
of  political  economy  at  Cambridge  in  1908. 

A  portrait  of  Foxwell  by  Charles  Hop- 
kinson  is  at  Harvard  Graduate  College 
of  Business  Administration.  Another  por- 
trait by  Agatha  Shore,  is  at  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge. 

[J.  Maynard  Keynes,  Herbert  Somerton  Fox- 
■wi'll,  1849-1936  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 

I  Academy,  vol.  xxiii,  1937 ;  Economic  Journal, 

I  December  1936  (bibliography  and  portraits) ; 

i  Journal  of  the  Royal  Statistical  Society,  vol. 

I  xcix,  1936 ;  Audrey  G.  D.  Foxwell,  Publica- 
tion No.  1  of  the  Kress  Library  of  Business 

!  and  Economics,  Harvard  University,  1939 ; 
personal  knowledge.]     Arthur  L.  Bowley. 

FRASER,  DONALD  (1870-1933),  mis- 
sionary, was  born  at  Lochgilphead,  Argyll, 
1   June   1870,  the  fifth  son  of  William 
Fraser,  minister  of  the  Free  church,  Loch- 
jgilphead,  by  his  wife,  Violet  Ferguson,  of 
lArdrishaig,  Argyll.    He  was  educated  at 
[Glasgow  High  School  and  University  and 
I  at  the  Free  Church  Hall  there.   While  a 
j  student  he  became  one  of  the  pioneers  of 
the  Student  Volunteer  Missionary  Union 
land  as  its  travelling  secretary  visited  the 
universities  and  colleges  of  the  British 
Isles  in  1893-1894.  He  imdertook  similar 
work  in  1894-1895  for  the  British  College 
(formerly  the  Inter-University)  Christian 
Union.  These  two  societies  luiited  in  1898 
to  form  the  Student  Christian  Movement 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.    Eraser's 
work  among  students  culminated  in  the 
Liverpool  Student  Volunteer  Missionary 
Union  conference  (January  1896)  where  he 
presided  over  715  students  together  with 
representatives  of  the  missionary  societies 
)f  all  the  non-Roman  Catholic  Churches. 


It  was  the  first  gathering  of  the  kind  in 
Great  Britain,  it  attracted  widespread 
attention  in  the  press,  and  Fraser  was  the 
outstanding  figure.  His  eloquence,  charm, 
and  spiritual  power,  combined  Avith  his 
youth,  made  a  deep  impression  upon  all 
those  present.  Immediately  afterwards  he 
visited  by  invitation  student  centres  in 
France,  Switzerland,  Holland,  Denmark, 
Sweden,  Norway,  and  Germany  in  order 
to  promote  the  Student  Christian  Move- 
ment. His  spiritual  gifts  and  administra- 
tive abihty,  together  with  his  tenacity  of 
purpose,  helped  him  everywhere  to  achieve 
success. 

In  1896  Fraser  was  appointed  a  mis- 
sionary of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland, 
was  ordained,  and  sailed  for  Africa.  On 
his  arrival  at  Cape  Town  he  attended  a 
student  conference  at  Stellenbosch  and 
was  there  persuaded  to  visit  the  schools 
and  colleges  of  Cape  Colony.  His  link  with 
students  was  never  broken ;  when  on  fur- 
lough he  always  renewed  his  contact  with 
the  Student  Christian  Movement,  and  to 
the  last  year  of  his  life  he  retained  the 
power  to  sway  student  audiences.  It  was 
at  the  close  of  1896  that  Fraser  reached 
Livingstonia  in  Nyassaland.  The  pioneer- 
ing stage  among  the  warUke  Ngoni  was 
closing  and  constructive  work  had  begun. 
Fraser  was  stationed  first  at  Ekwendeni, 
then  at  Hora,  but  when  in  1902  the 
Ngoni  trekked  southward  seeking  fresh 
pastures  he  went  with  them  and  built 
Loudon  (called  after  a  friend  of  David 
Livingstone)  where  he  remained  for 
twenty -three  years.  When  he  left  Loudon 
it  was  the  centre  of  an  area  of  2,000  square 
miles  with  200  sub-stations,  schools  with 
10,000  pupils,  and  a  Christian  community 
of  over  10,000.  Eraser's  personal  charm, 
restless  energy,  and  spiritual  fervour  won 
him  a  unique  place  as  a  leader.  He  was 
builder,  manufacturer,  farmer,  translator, 
and  pastor.  From  Loudon  radiated  influ- 
ences which  made  him  the  founder  of  a 
new  civilization  in  Nyassaland  and  the 
spiritual  father  of  a  people.  He  married 
in  1901  Agnes  Renton,  daughter  of  the 
Very  Rev.  George  Robson,  D.D.,  of  Perth : 
they  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 
His  wife  was  a  medical  graduate :  he  built 
a  hospital  for  her,  and  her  work  splendidly 
supplemented  his  own. 

The  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland 
elected  Eraser  moderator  for  1922-1923 
and  in  1925  recalled  him  to  Scotland  as 
one  of  its  foreign  mission  secretaries.  So, 
after  touring  South  Africa  in  a  United 
Churches  missionary  campaign,   he  left 


295 


Fraser,  D. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Africa  with  marked  reluctance,  but  feeling 
that  as  a  loyal  servant  of  the  Church  he 
could  not  refuse.  As  a  foreign  mission 
secretary  he  made  his  influence  widely 
felt,  although  he  was  increasingly  ham- 
pered by  attacks  of  illness,  the  result  of 
his  years  of  service  in  Africa.  He  had 
already  in  1921, 1922,  and  1923  united  ten 
denominations  in  Scotland  in  carrying  out 
joint  missionary  campaigns  throughout 
that  country.  He  was  chairman  of  the 
Conference  of  British  Missionary  Societies 
in  1922  and  1932,  and  a  member  of  the 
British  Broadcasting  Corporation  commit- 
tee on  religious  broadcasting.  He  wrote 
six  books  on  Africa  and  its  evangelization. 
Glasgow  University  conferred  upon  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.D.  in  1922.  He 
was  appointed  chaplain  to  the  king  in 
1929.  He  died  in  Glasgow  20  August  1933. 
Fraser  was  a  genial  companion ;  humility, 
humour,  and  the  courage  of  his  convic- 
tions marked  his  character. 

[A.  R.  Fraser,  Donald  Fraser  of  Livingstonia 
(portrait),  1934 ;  Tissington  Tatlow,  The  Story 
of  the  Student  Christian  Movement  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  1933 ;  Life  and  Work, 
October  1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Tissington  Tatlow. 

FRASER,  SIMON  JOSEPH,  four- 
teenth (sometimes  reckoned  sixteenth) 
Baron  Lovat  and  forty-first  MacShimi 
(1871-1933),  was  born  at  Beaufort  Castle, 
Beauly,  Inverness-shire,  25  November 
1871,  the  second  son  of  Simon  Fraser, 
thirteenth  Baron  Lovat,  by  his  wife,  Alice 
Mary,  fifth  daughter  of  Thomas  Weld- 
Blundell,  of  Ince  Blundell,  Lancashire. 
He  was  educated  by  the  Benedictines  at 
Fort  Augustus  Abbey  School,  at  the  Ora- 
tory School,  Edgbaston,  and  at  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford.  His  elder  brother  having 
died  in  infancy  he  succeeded  his  father  in 
1887.  From  1894  to  1897  he  served  m  the 
1st  Life  Guards.  He  returned  from  an 
expedition  to  the  Blue  Nile  in  1899  with 
stuffed  specimens  of  seventeen  hitherto 
vmknown  species  of  fauna,  three  of  which 
bear  his  name.  During  the  South  African 
war  he  raised,  served  in,  and  finally  com- 
manded the  Lovat  Scouts,  a  corps  of 
Highlanders  whose  field-craft  shattered 
the  legend  of  Boer  invisibility.  At  an 
Oxford  meeting  in  1902  he  foreshadowed 
the  formation  of  the  Officers'  Training 
Corps,  and  was  one  among  a  small  group 
which,  for  twelve  years,  urged  on  the 
government  the  needs  of  national  defence. 
He  helped  to  found  the  Round  Table  in 
1910,  and  originated  cotton-planting  in 


the  Sudan.  He  contributed  to  The  Grous^ 
in  Health  and  in  Disease  (2  vols.,  1911)] 
which  put  together  the  findings  of  an  imn 
portant  committee  on  which  he  served  af 
this  time.  He  commanded  the  Highland 
Mounted  Brigade  in  Gallipoli  in  19151 
then,  invalided  home,  held  various  com^ 
mands  in  France,  the  most  important  o^ 
which  was  the  directorship  of  forestry  oi 
the  western  front.  He  was  the  first  chair-l 
man  (1919-1927)  of  the  royal  commissioi 
on  forestry,  under-secretary  of  state  foi 
the  Dominions  (1927-1928),  and  chairmai 
(1928-1929)  of  the  Overseas  Settlement 
Committee.  In  the  difficult  years  fror 
1929  onwards  he  was  the  immensely  popu- 
lar convener  of  the  Inverness-shire  county 
council. 

Lovat' s  hospitable  nature  gave  him  an 
unrivalled  power  of  dealing  with  men ;  his 
services  to  the  British  Empire  as  soldier 
and  administrator,  to  his  own  country-j 
side  in  promoting  forestry,  fisheries,  anc 
the  welfare  of  the  crofter,  depended  largely 
on  his  capacity  for  getting  a  team  to  worl 
together;  that  he  should  be  its  captaii 
was  of  no  importance  to  him.  To  hi^ 
enthusiasm  and  experience  the  Forestr 
Commission  and  the  first  Empire  Forestry 
Conference,  held  in  Canada  in  1923,  owed 
everything;  Canada  idolized  him.  A 
staunch  Roman  Catholic,  he  formed,  with 
men  of  all  creeds,  a  host  of  effortless 
friendships.  He  was  appointed  K.T.  in 
1915,  and  received  many  other  decorations, 
British  and  foreign.  He  died  suddenly  at 
Little  Tew,  near  Chipping  Norton,  Oxford- 
shire, 18  February  1933.  He  married  in 
1910  Laura,  second  daughter  of  Thomas 
Lister,  fourth  Lord  Ribblesdale,  and  had 
two  sons  and  three  daughters.  He  was 
succeeded  as  fifteenth  baron  by  his  elder 
son,  Simon  Christopher  Joseph,  Master  of 
Lovat  (born  1911),  who  was  awarded  the 
D.S.O.  and  M.C.  during  the  war  of  1939- 
1945. 

A  portrait  of  Lord  Lovat  by  Somerlec 
Macdonald  is  at  Beaufort  Castle. 

[The  Times,  20  February  1933 ;  Sir  Francii 
Lindley,  Lord  Lovat.  A  Biography,  1935 ;  pri<j 
vate  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  A.  Knox. 

FRERE,  WALTER  HOWARD  (1863-^ 
1938),  bishop  of  Truro,  was  born  at  Cam- 
bridge 23  November  1863,  the  yoimger 
son  of  the  Rev.  Philip  Howard  Frere 
[q.v.],  agriculturist,  who  was  fellow,  tutor, 
and  bursar  of  Downing  College,  Cam- 
bridge, by  his  wife,  Emily,  daughter  of 
Henry  Gipps,  canon  of  Carlisle  Cathedral 


296 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Freshfield 


and  vicar  of  Crosthwaite,  Cumberland. 
He  was  grandson  of  William  Frere  [q.v.]. 
His  parents  died  during  his  early  child- 
hood and  he  was  brought  up  by  relations. 
He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse,  and 
won  a  scholarship  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  was  awarded  a  first  class 
in  the  classical  tripos  of  1885.  In  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  went  to  Wells  Theological 
College.  He  was  ordained  deacon,  with  a 
title  to  the  assistant-curacy  of  St.  Dun- 
stan's  church.  Stepney,  in  1887,  and  priest 
in  1889.  He  remained  at  Stepney  until 
1892,  when  he  joined  the  community  of 
the  Resurrection,  which  moved  from  Ox- 
ford to  Radley  in  1893  and  to  Mirfield  in 
1898:  he  became  the  second  superior,  suc- 
ceeding Charles  Gore  [q.v.]  in  1902.  He 
held  this  office  tmtil  1913  and  again  from 
1916  to  1922.  He  was  select  preacher  at 
Cambridge  in  1901  and  at  Oxford  in  1913 
and  1914.  He  was  one  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Anglican  Church  at  the  Malines 
'conversations'  of  1921-1925.  In  1923  he 
was  appointed  bishop  of  Truro  and  was 
consecrated  in  Westminster  Abbey  in 
November  of  that  year.  He  resigned  his 
see  in  1935  and  retired  to  Mirfield,  where 
he  died  2  April  1938 :  he  is  buried  in  the 
grayeyard  of  the  community. 

Frere  combined  wide  and  varied  learn- 
ing with  practical  ability  which  displayed 
itself  in  his  work  for  the  Mirfield  com- 
munity and  in  diocesan  administration. 
His  knowledge  of  ecclesiastical  history  and 
his  perception  of  the  application  of  its 
lessons  to  present-day  needs  were  con- 
spicuous in  his  influence,  for  example,  on 
such  bodies  as  the  archbishops'  cathedral 
commission  (1925),  while  his  acti\aty  as 
historian  and  liturgiologist  and  his  musical 
scholarship  made  him  a  leading  member 
of  the  Church  Historical,  Henrj''  Brad- 
shaw,  and  other  learned  societies.  His 
historical  writings  include:  The  Marian 
Reaction  (1896) ;  The  English  Church  in  the 
Reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I,  1558- 
1625  (vol.  V  of  W.  R.  W.  Stephens  and 
W.  Hvmt,  The  History  of  the  English 
Church,  1904) ;  and  Some  Links  in  the 
Chain  of  Russian  Church  History  (1918). 
His  editions  of  original  documents  include 
three  volumes  of  Visitation  Articles  and 
Injunctions  of  the  Period  of  the  Reformation 
(in  collaboration  with  W.  P.  M.  Kennedy, 
1910)  and  three  volumes  of  the  Registrum 
Matthei  Parker  (in  collaboration  with  Miss 
E.  M.  Thompson,  1907-1933).  In  1901 
appeared  his  New  History  of  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  a  revised  and  rewritten 
edition  of  the  well-known  work  of  Francis 


Procter  [q.v.].  Among  liturgical  works  his 
editions  of  The  Winchester  Troper  (1894) 
and  The  Use  ofSarum  (2  vols.,  1898-1901), 
and  his  Pontifical  Services  (1901)  are  note- 
worthy examples  of  his  methods. 

A  portrait  of  Frere  by  Harold  Knight, 
presented  to  him  in  1933,  is  at  Lis  Escop, 
Truro:  a  copy  is  at  Mirfield. 

[C.  S.  Phillips  and  others,  Walter  Howard 
Frere,  Bishop  of  Truro,  1947;  Cambridge  Review, 
29  April  1938 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  A.  Hamilton  Thompson. 

FRESHFIELD,  DOUGLAS  WILLIAM 

(1845-1934),  mountain  explorer  and  geo- 
grapher, was  born  at  Hampstead  27  April 
1845,  the  only  son  of  Henry  Ray  Fresh- 
field,  solicitor  to  the  Bank  of  England,  by 
his  wife,  Jane  Quentin,  daughter  of  Wil- 
liam Crawford,  member  of  parliament  for 
the  City  of  London.  He  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  University  College,  Oxford,  and 
was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple 
in  1870,  but  having  always  ample  means, 
he  never  practised. 

Frequent  visits  to  the  Alps  in  his  youth 
developed  in  Freshfield  a  passion  for 
mountain  travel  as  an  aspect  of  serious 
exploration.  To  him  it  was  not  a  sport, 
and  he  disclaimed  any  ambitions  in  mere 
rock  climbing.  While  still  a  schoolboy  he 
ascended  Mont  Blanc  and  in  the  'sixties 
and  'seventies  made  at  least  twenty  first 
ascents,  chiefly  in  the  less-known  Italian 
Alps.  He  also  travelled  widely  over  clas- 
sical ground  in  the  Near  East,  for  second 
only  to  his  love  of  mountains  was  his 
interest  in  classical  life  and  lore.  In  1868 
he  explored,  with  Charles  Comyns  Tucker, 
Adolphus  Warburton  Moore,  and  his  life- 
long friend  Fran9ois  Devouassoud,  the 
central  Caucasus  which,  except  for  the 
lower  heights,  were  then  unknown.  He 
made  the  first  ascent  of  Kazbek  (16,546  ft.), 
Elbruz  (18,470  ft.),  and  several  other 
peaks.  After  returning  to  the  Caucasus  in 
1887  and  1889  he  published  his  Explora- 
tion of  the  Caucasus  (1896),  which  remains 
a  standard  work.  In  1899  he  made,  with 
Dr.  Edmund  Johnston  Garwood,  the  cir- 
cuit of  Kangchenjunga  through  unmapped 
territory  in  Sikkim  and  Nepal,  recorded  in 
Round  Kangchenjunga  (1903).  Lastly,  in 
1905,  he  tried,  with  A.  L.  Mumm,  to 
ascend  Ruwenzori,  or  the  Mountains  of 
the  Moon,  but  was  baffled  by  weather  and 
mud  at  12,000  feet.  Later  in  life  he  visited 
many  mountains,  including  the  Pyrenees 
and  the  Japanese  Alps,  and  was  planning 
an  expedition  to  Chinese  Turkestan  (Sin- 
kiang)  in  1914. 


297 


Freshfield 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


At  home  Freshfield  had  many  interests 
in  the  advancement  of  geography,  especi- 
ally in  connexion  with  the  Royal  Geogra- 
phical Society,  of  which  he  was  president 
from  1914  to  1917,  Founder's  medallist 
in  1903,  and  elected  a  trustee  in  1924. 
Largely  owing  to  his  initiative,  (Sir)  J.  S. 
Keltic  [q.v.]  in  1884  was  commissioned 
to  investigate  and  report  on  geographi- 
cal teaching  in  Europe,  with  the  result 
that  Oxford,  and  later  Cambridge,  started 
geographical  teaching  which  eventually 
spread  to  all  other  universities  in  the 
country.  Freshfield  was  also  a  strong  sup- 
porter of  the  Geographical  Association.  It 
was  largely  due  to  his  advocacy,  in  the 
face  of  strenuous  opposition,  that  women 
were  admitted  to  the  fellowship  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society.  He  edited 
several  editions  of  Hints  to  Travellers  and 
from  1872  to  1880  the  Alpine  Journal. 
From  1893  to  1895  he  was  president  of 
the  Alpine  Club. 

Freshfield's  quick,  epigrammatic,  and 
often  satirical  wdt  made  him  a  doughty 
champion  of  the  causes  which  he  espoused, 
and,  although  essentially  a  Victorian  in 
outlook,  he  fought  the  tyranny  of  tradi- 
tion when  he  felt  that  its  maintenance 
hindered  progress.  His  numerous  books 
include  several  privately  printed  volumes 
of  verse.  The  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L. 
was  conferred  upon  him  by  the  univer- 
sities of  Oxford  (1916)  and  Geneva  (1923) 
and  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of 
University  College,  Oxford,  in  1925. 

Freshfield  married  in  1869  Augusta 
Charlotte  (died  1911),  eldest  daughter  of 
William  Ritchie,  advocate-general  of  Ben- 
gal, and  sister  of  Sir  R.  T.  W.  Ritchie 
[q.v.].  They  had  one  son,  who  died  in 
boyhood,  and  four  daughters.  Freshfield 
died  at  Wych  Cross  Place,  Forest  Row, 
Sussex,  9  February -1934. 

[The  Times,  10  February  1934 ;  Geographical 
Journal,  April  1934  (portrait);  Alpine  Jour- 
nal, vol.  xlvi,  1934  (portrait) ;  H.  R.  Mill,  The 
Record  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  1830- 
1930,  1930  (portraits);  A.  L.  Mumm,  The 
Alpine  Club  Register,  186&-1876,  1925;  pri- 
vate information.  See  also,  for  his  early 
climbs,  books  by  his  mother,  Jane  Freshfield, 
Alpine  Byways,  by  'A  Lady',  1861,  and  A 
Summer  Tour  in  the  Grisons,  1862.] 

R.  N.  RuDMOSE  Brown. 

FRY,  ROGER  ELIOT  (1866-1934),  art 
critic  and  artist,  was  born  at  Highgate 
14  December  1866,  the  younger  son  of  the 
judge  (Sir)  Edward  Fry  [q.v.],  by  his  wife, 
Mariabella,  daughter  of  John  Hodgkin 
(1880-1875,  q.v.).   Both  his  parents  were 


members  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  with 
Bristol  connexions,  and  on  his  mother's 
side  he  was  a  great-grandson  of  Luke 
Howard  (1772-1864,  q.v.),  meteorologist 
and  classifier  of  the  clouds. 

Edward  Fry's  true  ambition  had  always 
been  scientific,  and  Roger  Fry  was  brought 
up  in  an  atmosphere  of  science.  The  only 
lasting  result  of  his  days  at  Clifton  College 
was  his  friendship  with  J.  M.  E.  M'Taggart 
[q.v.],  the  future  philosopher,  whose  pre- 
cocious intelligence  did  something  to  ex- 
pand the  narrow  boundaries  of  Fry's 
Quaker  upbringing.  In  December  1884  he 
won  an  exhibition  in  science  at  King's 
College,  Cambridge.  He  there  made 
friends  with  Goldsworthy  Lowes  Dickin- 
son and  came  under  the  influence  of 
Edward  Carpenter  [qq.v.],  who  completed 
the  liberation  from  his  conventional  up- 
bringing which  M'Taggart  had  begun. 
J.  H.  Middleton  [q.v.],  then  Slade  pro- 
fessor of  fine  art,  encouraged  his  dawning 
interest  in  art.  In  1887  he  was  made  a 
member  of  the  society  laiown  as  the 
'Apostles',  and  he  was  awarded  first 
classes  in  both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences  S 
tripos  (1887,  1888).  ^ 

Although  science  and  the  discussion  of 
morals  seem  to  have  absorbed  most  of 
Fry's  intellectual  energy  while  at  Cam- 
bridge, during  his  last  year  he  had  begun 
to  visit  exhibitions  of  pictures  and  even 
to  paint  himself;  and  when  he  left  the 
university  he  disappointed  his  father  by 
a  desire  to  take  up  art  rather  than  science 
as  a  profession.  At  first  a  compromise  was 
arranged  by  which  he  continued  his  studies 
of  biology  but  also  learned  painting  under 
Mr.  Francis  Bate,  but  the  strain  of  this 
divided  loyalty  made  some  definite  break 
inevitable,  and  early  in  1891  he  left  for 
Italy.  His  letters  to  Lowes  Dickinson 
from  Rome  and  Florence,  in  which  he 
describes  his  impressions  of  Raphael  and 
Michelangelo,  are  the  first  indication  of 
his  true  bent.  After  his  return  there  fol- 
lowed some  years  of  indecision,  which  in- 
cluded a  period  of  study  at  the  Academie 
Julian  in  Paris  in  1892,  which  was  a 
failure.  His  enthusiasm  for  Italian  renais- 
sance art  made  it  difficult  for  him  to  paint 
in  a  contemporary  idiom,  and  uneasy  in 
the  company  of  painters ;  and  his  pictures 
were  rejected  by  the  New  English  Art 
Club.  In  1894  he  again  visited  Italy,  and 
this  time  studied  the  history  of  art  with 
far  greater  thoroughness.  He  read  the 
works  of  Giovanni  Morelli,  and  began  to 
take  part  in  the  activity  known  as  con- 
noisseurship,  then  being  practised  with 


298 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Fry 


great  brilliance  by  Mr.  Bernhard  Berenson. 
Although  Fry's  view  of  art  was  too  hu- 
mane and  intelligent  for  him  to  attach 
great  importance  to  this  approach,  he 
recognized  its  value  as  a  discipline,  and 
later  was  able  to  use  his  expertise  as  a 
means  of  livelihood.  Much  of  his  time  in 
the  next  two  years  was  spent  in  lecturing, 
and  he  developed  that  unique  power  of 
communicating  to  his  audience  his  own 
sense  of  discovery  and  excitement  which 
made  him,  by  common  consent,  the  most 
enthralling  lecturer  of  his  time.  His  paint- 
ing also  met  with  rather  more  success,  and 
in  1896  he  married  a  fellow  exhibitor  at 
the  New  English  Art  Club,  Helen,  daugh- 
ter of  Joseph  Coombe.  It  was  an  ideally 
happy  marriage,  but  within  eighteen 
months  his  wife  showed  the  first  signs  of 
mental  disease.  She  recovered  in  1899, 
and  became  the  mother  of  a  son  and  a 
daughter,  but  after  a  long  struggle,  in 
which  Fry  acted  with  great  courage,  she 
became  permanently  insane. 

From  1900  onwards  Fry  wrote  some 
occasional  articles  and  reviews  for  the 
Athenaeum,  and  in  1901  he  became  its 
regular  art  critic.  He  now  also  published 
his  first  long  studies  of  the  old  masters, 
a  small  book  on  Giovanni  Bellini  (1899), 
and  two  articles  on  Giotto  in  the  Monthly 
Review  for  December  1900  and  February 
1901,  the  former  of  which  deals  with  the 
church  of  San  Francesco  at  Assisi.  The 
Bellini  is  relatively  timid  in  style,  but 
already  shows  the  balance  of  technical 
and  theoretical  approach  which  was  to  be 
Fry's  strength.  During  the  next  five  years 
much  of  his  time  was  spent  in  writing  of 
its  nature  ephemeral,  but  in  1905  he  pro- 
duced a  work  of  lasting  value,  his  edition 
of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  Discourses.  The 
theme  suited  him  perfectly.  Like  Rey- 
nolds he  wished  to  show  that  the  classic 
tradition  of  European  painting  was  still 
an  essential  discipline  to  the  student,  and 
a  form  from  which  he  could  only  depart 
when  it  had  been  mastered.  Like  Reynolds 
he  believed  that  great  art  is  a  thing  of  the 
mind,  concerned  with  ideas  and  not  with 
imitation.  And  like  Reynolds  he  knew 
himself  to  be,  as  a  painter,  incapable  of 
carrying  out  the  principles  which  he  re- 
commended, and  so  could  speak  of  them 
with  a  sort  of  modest  detachment.  His 
introduction  and  notes  to  the  Discourses 
contain  the  most  carefully  expressed 
thought  in  all  his  writings.  His  notes 
on  the  illustrations  have  the  further 
merit  of  increasing  the  understanding  of 
a  school   of  painting,  the  seventeenth- 


century  Italians,  then  completely  out  of 
fashion. 

By  this  time  Fry  had  a  considerable 
reputation  as  a  scholar  and  expert,  and 
was  concerned  with  many  artistic  projects 
of  the  time.  He  took  an  active  part  in  the 
establishment  of  the  Burlington  Magazine 
and  the  foundation  of  the  National  Art- 
Collections  Fund  in  1903,  and  in  the  re- 
form of  the  Chantrey  Bequest  in  1904.  In 
June  1904  he  stood  for  the  Slade  pro- 
fessorship at  Cambridge,  but  was  rejected ; 
and  in  December  of  the  same  year  he  was 
invited  by  John  Pierpont  Morgan,  whom 
he  had  already  advised  as  a  collector,  to 
visit  the  United  States  of  America,  in  the 
hope  that  he  would  become  director  of 
the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  in  New 
York.  He  hesitated  for  some  time.  He 
could  not  bring  himself  to  live  entirely  in 
America;  and  the  directorship  of  the 
National  Gallery,  for  which  he  was  gener- 
ally regarded  as  the  most  suitable  candi- 
date, fell  vacant  early  in  1905.  Finally  he 
decided  to  accept  the  directorship  of  the 
Metropolitan,  and  almost  immediately 
afterwards  was  offered  that  of  the  National 
Gallery,  which  he  did  not  feel  able  to  ac- 
cept. He  remained  at  the  Metropolitan  un- 
til 1910,  spending  a  part  of  the  year  in  New 
York,  and  accompanying  Pierpont  Morgan 
on  his  buying  expeditions  in  Europe. 

This  American  episode  coincided  with 
the  turning-point  in  Fry's  life.  In  1906 
he  was  accepted  as  a  student  of  the  old 
masters  with  an  exceptionally  wide  range 
of  knowledge,  but  his  interest  in  modern 
painting  was  more  a  matter  of  duty  than 
of  conviction.  In  that  year,  however,  he 
saw  for  the  first  time  the  work  of  Cezanne 
and  immediately  recognized  that  this  was 
what  he  had  always  been  looking  for,  a 
painter  who  could  combine  the  colour  of 
the  Impressionists  and  their  sense  of  con- 
temporary vision  with  the  structural  co- 
herency of  the  old  masters.  From  Cezanne 
he  began  to  take  an  interest  in  those  other 
artists  who  were  in  reaction  against  the 
merely  sensational  elements  of  Impres- 
sionism, Gauguin,  Van  Gogh,  and  Matisse, 
and,  in  sculpture,  Maillol ;  and  made  them 
the  subject  of  articles  in  the  Burlington 
Magazine,  articles  which,  on  the  whole, 
the  last  forty  years  have  done  nothing  to 
invalidate.  This  new  application  of  the 
critical  principles  was  given  active  expres- 
sion when,  in  November  1910,  he  organ- 
ized at  the  Grafton  Galleries  an  exhibition 
of  the  modern  French  painters  whom  he 
admired,  under  the  title  of  Post-Impres- 
sionists. The  occasion  will  be  remembered 


299 


Fry 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


as  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  of  those  re- 
curring outbreaks  of  mass-hysteria  which 
have  marked  the  course  of  art  during  the 
last  seventy  years.  Fry  was  widely  re- 
ferred to  as  a  charlatan  or  a  maniac. 
Official  opinion  was  voiced  by  Sir  W.  B. 
Richmond  [q.v.]  who  wrote  that '  Mr.  Fry 
.  .  .  must  not  be  surprised  if  he  is  boy- 
cotted by  decent  society'.  But  far  from 
distressing  him  these  attacks  seem  to  have 
had  a  liberating  influence.  From  1910 
onwards  his  writings  gain  a  new  confidence 
and  vitality.  He  ceased  to  be  a  learned 
expert  and  became  the  champion  of 
modern  art:  a  second  Post- Impressionist 
exhibition  was  organized  at  the  Grafton 
Galleries  in  October  1912.  This  change  led 
to  a  break  with  those  members  of  the  art 
world  such  as  Henry  Tonks  [q.v.]  and 
Dugald  Sutherland  McCoU,  who,  while  Fry 
was  still  safely  engaged  in  the  study  of 
old  masters,  had  been  his  friends  .In  com- 
pensation he  became  a  centre  of  influence 
among  young  painters,  chief  amongst  them 
being  Mr.  Duncan  Grant  and  Mrs.  Clive 
(Vanessa)  Bell. 

Fry  had  long  been  impressed  by  the 
need  to  reintroduce  art  into  ordinary  life, 
and  had  expressed  his  concern  with  the 
subject  in  an  article  on  'Art  and  Social- 
ism' (H.  G.  Wells,  Socialism  and  the  Great 
State,  1912)  and  a  paper  on  'Art  and  Life' 
read  before  the  Fabian  Society  in  1917 
(both  reprinted  in  Vision  and  Design, 
1920).  These  show  that,  in  spite  of  a  dif- 
ferent critical  outlook,  he  was  the  true 
heir  of  John  Ruskin  and  WUliam  Morris. 
In  1913  he  gave  the  same  practical  ex- 
pression to  his  beliefs;  he  founded  the 
Omega  workshops  in  Fitzroy  Square  for 
the  manufacture  of  well-designed  articles 
of  daily  use.  The  articles  produced — 
chairs,  tables,  pottery,  even  stained-glass 
windows — ^were  designed  by  those  young 
artists  who  had  felt  the  influence  of  the 
Post-Impressionist  movement,  and  to 
some  extent  the  Russian  ballet,  and 
brought  into  interior  decoration  a  new 
boldness  of  colour  and  design.  The  Omega 
workshops  were  a  success,  until  the  out- 
break of  the  war  of  1914-1918,  and  even 
during  the  war  they  continued  to  absorb 
much  of  Fry's  time,  both  on  the  business 
side  and  in  the  actual  making  of  pottery. 
He  also  worked  at  his  own  painting,  which 
had  naturally  undergone  a  great  change 
since  his  discovery  of  the  Post-Impres- 
sionists. He  had  held  an  exhibition  at  the 
Alpine  Club  Gallery  in  January  1912,  and 
had  been  severely  criticized  for  his  aban- 
donment of  a  style  reminiscent  of  Thomas 


Girtin  in  favour  of  one  based  on  Cezanne 
and  Marchand.  During  the  Omega  period 
his  painting  was  decorative  and  unrealistic, 
but  he  admitted  that  he  was  only  happy 
when  drawing  his  inspiration  directly  from 
the  visible  world,  and  after  the  war  he 
settled  down  to  a  careful,  learned  natural- 
ism, in  which  his  sense  of  design  seldom 
involved  the  alteration  of  appearances. 
He  contributed  regularly  to  the  exhibi- 
tions of  the  London  group  of  which  he  was 
one  of  the  founders  and  a  strong  sup- 
porter. He  was  at  his  best  as  a  painter  of 
architecture,  where  the  subject  went  half- 
way to  meet  his  desire  for  structure,  and 
involved  a  critical  as  well  as  a  creative 
approach.  A  good  example  is  the  picture 
of  the  antique  sculpture  gallery  in  the 
Louvre  which  he  presented  to  the  Ash- 
molean  Museum  in  1933. 

It  was  after  the  war  that  Fry's  position 
as  a  critic  was  established  and  he  became 
incomparably  the  greatest  influence  on 
taste  since  Ruskin.  A  collection  of  his 
writings,  hitherto  largely  inaccessible  in 
the  pages  of  the  Burlington  Magazine  and 
other  reviews,  was  printed  under  the  title 
Vision  and  Design  (1920).  Although 
covering  a  period  of  twenty  years  they  are 
consistent  in  maintaining  that  the  response 
to  art  is  a  pure,  disinterested  activity, 
apart  from  life,  and  that  this  'aesthetic 
state'  can  be  induced  by  combinations  of 
form  and  colour  irrespective  of  what  these 
are  intended  to  represent.  Fry's  critical 
standpoint  was  subjected  to  searching 
attack  by  D.  S.  McCoU  and  by  Dr. 
Ivor  Armstrong  Richards  (Principles  of 
Literary  Criticism,  1924),  but  he  reaffirmed 
his  faith  in  it  in  a  second  collection  of 
papers,  published  in  1926  under  the 
title  Transformations,  where,  in  'Some 
Questions  in  Esthetics',  he  says  vm- 
equivocally  that  'our  reaction  to  works 
of  art  is  a  reaction  to  a  relation  and  not 
to  sensations  or  objects  or  persons  or 
events'.  In  addition  to  papers  on  general 
questions  of  aesthetics,  these  two  collec- 
tions contain  many  examples  of  the  kind 
of  criticism  in  which  Fry  was  at  his  best, 
those  in  which  his  conclusions  are  drawn 
directly  from  the  analysis  of  actual  works. 
The  most  sustained  and  convincing  ex- 
ample of  this  is  his  book  on  Cizanne  (1927), 
the  piece  of  writing  to  which,  since  the 
Reynolds  Discourses,  he  had  given  most 
pains.  Reading  it  we  cannot  but  regret 
that  a  sense  of  public  urgency  led  him  to 
write  practically  all  his  later  works  in  the 
form  of  lectures,  which,  enchanting  as 
they  were  to  their  hearers,  lack  just  those 


300 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Fuller 


qualities  of  structure  and  closely  wrought 
texture  which  he  so  greatly  admired  in  art. 
In  particular  they  suffer  when  a  subject  of 
impossible  scale  has  been  forced  upon  him, 
as  in  the  lectures  on  the  Flemish,  French, 
and  British  exhibitions  at  Burlington 
House,  reprinted  as  Flemish  Art  (1927), 
Characteristics  of  French  Art  (1932),  and 
Reflections  on  British  Painting  (1934). 
Nevertheless,  with  these  lectures  he  filled 
the  Queen's  Hall,  a  feat  probably  never 
before  performed  by  a  speaker  on  a  sub- 
ject not  concerned  with  politics  or  reli- 
gion. More  satisfactory  are  the  lectures 
expanded  into  short  studies  of  individual 
artists,  such  as  that  on  Henri  Matisse 
(1930). 

Fry  had  been  a  candidate  for  the  Slade 
professorship  at  Oxford  in  1910,  but  his 
outlook  was  too  bold  for  the  electors.  He 
applied  again  in  1927  at  the  height  of  his 
reputation,  and  was  again  rejected,  on  a 
frivolous  pretext.  Finally,  in  1933,  he 
accepted  the  Slade  professorship  at  Cam- 
bridge. His  inaugural  lecture  was  on  Art- 
History  as  an  Academic  Study,  and  there- 
after he  set  out  to  examine  the  art  of  the 
world  in  chronological  order,  from  pre- 
Dynastic  Egypt  to  the  present  day,  in  the 
light  of  two  aesthetic  qualities  to  which 
he  attached  particular  importance,  sensi- 
biUty  and  vitality.  He  had  got  as  far  as 
Greek  art  when  he  died  in  London  from 
heart  failure  following  a  fractured  thigh 
9  September  1934.  The  Cambridge  course 
was  afterwards  reprinted  as  Last  Lectures 
(1939).  Unfortmiately,  only  the  first  two 
lectures,  in  which  he  defined  the  qualities 
under  discussion,  had  been  revised:  the 
remainder  were  only  notes  and  in  printed 
form  do  not  do  justice  to  the  range  and 
brilliance  of  the  course. 

It  is  natural  that  Fry's  influence  should 
have  diminished  since  his  death.  Much  of 
it  was  due  to  his  personal  charm,  his 
sonorous  and  persuasive  voice,  and  an  air 
of  reasonableness  with  which  he  could 
invest  the  most  improbable  statements. 
His  attitude  of  mind,  tolerant,  rational, 
and  speculative,  is  out  of  keeping  with  the 
violent  thirst  for  belief  of  a  subsequent 
generation.  He  was  in  the  tradition  of  the 
Encyclopedists,  and  like  them  disguised 
as  science  a  liberal  measure  of  credulity. 
Although  in  some  of  his  work  he  carries 
on  the  tradition  of  Morris,  his  critical 
standpoint  was  that  of  Poe,  Gautier,  and 
Pater.  It  is,  however,  less  by  theory  or 
learning,  than  by  his  power  of  analysing 
his  unusually  vivid  and  informed  re- 
sponses that  Fry's  criticism  will  live. 


Fry  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of 
King's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1927,  and 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  was  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  Aberdeen  University 
in  1929. 

Portraits  of  Fry  are  numerous,  and  in- 
clude several  admirable  self-portraits  in 
private  possession,  one  of  which  is  repro- 
duced in  his  biography  by  Virginia  Woolf ; 
there  is  also  a  remarkable  etching  by 
W.  R.  Sickert,  which  is  a  caricature  of  Fry 
lecturing,  entitled  'Vision  Volumes  and 
Recession'. 

[Virginia  Woolf,  Roger  Fry.  A  Biography, 
1940;  Burlington  Magazine,  October  and 
November  1934 ;  Cambridge  Review,  10  Octo- 
ber 1934 ;  The  Times  Literary  Supplement,  21 
October  1989;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Kenneth  Clakk. 

FULLER,  Sir  (JOSEPH)  BAMP- 
FYLDE  (1854-1935),  Indian  administra- 
tor and  author,  was  born  at  Newton,  near 
Keynsham,  Somerset,  20  March  1854,  the 
eldest  son  of  Joseph  Fuller,  afterwards 
vicar  of  Ramsdale,  Hampshire,  by  his 
wife,  Anne  Isabella,  daughter  of  Charles 
Bampfylde,  rector  of  Hemington  and 
Dunkerton,  Somerset.  He  was  educated 
at  Marlborough  and  secured  first  place  in 
the  competitive  examination  for  the 
Indian  civil  service  in  1873.  He  went  out 
at  the  end  of  1875  to  the  North- West 
(afterwards  the  United)  Provinces,  and  his 
brilliance  led  to  early  promotion.  In  1882 
he  was  transferred  to  the  Central  Pro- 
vinces where  from  1885  to  1893  he  was  in 
charge  of  the  settlement  and  agricultural 
department.  Appointed  CLE.  in  1892,  he 
officiated  as  commissioner  in  1894.  After 
acting  in  1900  as  chief  commissioner  of  As- 
sam he  was  called  in  1901  to  headquarters 
to  be  secretary  of  the  revenue  and  agri- 
cultural department.  An  important  resolu- 
tion on  the  complex  subject  of  land  revenue 
then  issued  was  made  memorable  by  his 
mastery  of  the  subject  in  drafting  and  by 
final  shaping  at  the  hands  of  the  viceroy, 
Lord  Curzon. 

In  1902  Fuller  went  to  Assam,  first  as 
acting  and  then  as  substantive  chief  com- 
missioner, and  won  the  warm  regard  of 
the  tea-planting  community.  In  October 
1905,  on  the  short-lived  partition  of  Ben- 
gal coming  into  effect,  he  was  appointed 
lieutenant-governor  of  the  newly  consti- 
tuted province  of  Eastern  Bengal  and 
Assam.  The  storm  of  protest  and  denun- 
ciation raised  by  the  Hindus  of  Bengal 
and  by  Congress  poUticians  generally  now 
centred  largely  upon  him.  Measures  which 


301 


Fuller 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


he  deemed  necessary  to  overcome  lawless- 
ness and  intimidation  were  magnified  be- 
yond aU  recognition  by  an  unscrupulous 
press.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Mohamme- 
dans, who  formed  two-thirds  of  the  popula- 
tion under  his  charge,  rallied  to  his  support. 

Fuller,  who  was  appointed  K.C.S.I.  at 
the  beginning  of  1906,  held  charge  for 
only  ten  tmquiet  months.  The  viceroy, 
G.  J.  M.  K.  Elliot,  fourth  Earl  of  Minto 
[q.v.],  to  quote  his  biographer,  John 
Buchan,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
lieutenant-governor  'lacked  the  qualities 
of  patience  and  discretion  which  could 
alone  in  time  abate  the  partition  ferment'. 
Buchan  adds  that  in  July  1906  'an  inci- 
dent happened  which  was  not  quite  unwel- 
come to  either  Viceroy  or  Secretary  of 
State'  (John  Morley).  A  petulant  letter 
from  Fuller  hinting  that  he  might  have  to 
reconsider  his  position  if  his  advice  on  a 
particular  matter  were  not  accepted,  was 
seized  upon  as  a  pretext  for  informing  him, 
to  his  chagrin,  that  his  'resignation'  had 
been  accepted.  Before  the  exact  details  of 
this  incident  were  known  the  course 
adopted  was  stoutly  defended  in  parlia- 
ment by  the  secretary  of  state  in  reply  to 
critics  who  complained  that  the  'man  on 
the  spot'  had  been  ill  treated. 

FuUer,  eager  to  air  his  grievance  on 
return  home,  was  enthusiastically  wel- 
comed by  such  assemblies  as  the  annual 
Assam  and  Calcutta  dinners,  and  later  he 
was  vehemently  critical  of  the  policy  of 
annulment  of  the  Bengal  partition.  But 
he  was  far  too  likeable,  volatile,  and 
energetic  merely  to  assume  the  role  of 
a  disappointed  reactionary.  He  wrote 
voluminously  and  travelled  extensively  in 
the  Old  World  and  the  New,  thrice  going 
back  to  India.  At  Winchester,  where  he 
first  made  his  home,  he  served  on  the 
bench  of  magistrates  and  engaged  in  muni- 
cipal and  philanthropic  affairs.  In  the  war 
of  1914-1918  he  was  a  temporary  major 
in  the  Army  Ordnance  Department  from 
1915  to  1917,  and  director  of  timber  sup- 
plies at  the  War  Office  from  February  of 
the  last-named  year. 

Fuller's  non-controversial  Studies  of 
Indian  Life  and  Sentiment  (1910)  and  The 
Empire  of  India  (1913)  were  followed  by 
a  long  series  of  philosophical  books  begin- 
ning with  Life  and  Human  Nature  (1914) 
and  ending  only  a  few  months  before  his 
death  with  The  Tyranny  of  the  Mind 
(1935).  His  reminiscences  under  the  title 
of  Some  Personal  Experiences  appeared  in 
1930.  He  died  at  his  home,  the  Red 
House,  Marlborough,  29  November  1935. 


Fuller  was  thrice  married :  first,  in  1879 
to   Maria    Caldwell   (died    1880),   fourth  j 
daughter  of  Colonel  Henry  Aston,  of  the  \ 
Bombay  Staff  Corps ;  secondly,  in  1884  to  j 
Sarah  Augusta  (died  1923),  fourth  daugh- 
ter of  Arthur  Wellesley  Critchley ;  thirdly,  | 
in  1924  to  Gabrielle  Marie  Adele,  daughter  j 
of  Professor  Eugene  Rousselin.    He  had 
no  children. 

A  portrait  of  Fuller,  presented  by  ser- 
vice colleagues  in  the  Assam  commission, 
is  at  Government  House,  Shillong. 

[The  Times,  30  November  1935 ;  India.  Office 
List,  1934;  Sir  J.  B.  Fuller's  own  writings; 
Lord  Morley  Recollections,  vol.  li,  1917 ;  Mary 
Countess  of  Minto,  India:  Minto  and  Morley, 
1905-1910,  1934 ;  John  Buchan,  Lord  Minto: 
a  Memoir,  1924;  Lord  Ronaldshay  (after- 
wards Marquess  of  Zetland),  Life  of  Lord 
Curzon,  vol.  ii,  1928;  Claud  Lovat  Eraser, 
India  under  Curzon  and  after,  1911.] 

F.  H.  Brown. 

FULLER-MAITLAND,  JOHN  ALEX- 
ANDER (1856-1936),  musical  critic  and 
connoisseur.  [See  Maitland.] 

FURNISS,  HENRY  SANDERSON, 
Baron  Sanderson  (1868-1939),  principal 
of  Ruskin  College,  was  born  in  London 
1  October  1868,  the  elder  son  of  Thomas 
Sanderson  Furniss,  J. P.,  barrister,  of 
Stratford  St.  Mary,  Suffolk,  by  his  wife, 
Mary,  second  daughter  of  Edward  Fisher 
Sanderson,  of  New  York.  His  family  on 
both  sides  was  the  same  as  that  of  Bishop 
Robert  Sanderson  [q.v.]. 

Almost  blind  from  birth,  Furniss  over- 
came his  affliction  with  courage  and  tena- 
city. After  receiving  his  early  education 
from  private  tutors,  he  went  up  to  Oxford, 
and  with  the  aid  of  a  reader  and  amanu- 
ensis studied  modern  history  at  Hertford 
College  and  obtained  a  second  class  in 
1893.  In  1905  he  settled  at  Oxford,  and 
in  1907  he  was  invited  to  become  tutor 
and  lecturer  in  economics  at  Ruskin  Col- 
lege, which  had  been  founded  eight  years 
earlier  for  the  education  of  adult  workers. 
In  1916  he  became  principal,  and  imtil  his 
retirement  in  1925  he  devoted  himself  to 
the  development  of  adult  education  not 
only  in  the  college  itself,  but  in  the 
Workers'  Educational  Association  and  the 
Oxford  University  Delegacy  for  Extra- 
Mural  Studies. 

Furniss's  blindness  was  compensated  by 
a  retentive  memory,  and  he  not  only 
planned  the  teaching  work  of  Ruskin  Col- 
lege with  thoroughness  and  balance,  but 
knew  his  students  individually.  His  lec- 
tures, and  still  more  his  tutorials  in  eco- 


I 


802 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Galsworthy 


nomics  were  calculated  to  stimulate  in  his 
pupils  respect  for  careful  and  considered 
thinking.  He  had  no  patience  either  with 
windy  rhetoric  or  with  thin  academic 
word-spinning.  His  occasional  acidity  of 
comment  on  the  prejudices  of  persons  or 
the  shortcomings  of  institutions  was  re- 
lieved by  an  essential  kindness  and  genero- 
sity which  gained  him  the  affection  as  well 
as  the  respect  of  his  colleagues  and  his 
students. 

Visits  with  his  wife  to  Australia,  South 
Africa,  and  the  United  States  of  America 
for  the  benefit  of  his  health  brought  Fur- 
niss  into  contact  with  educational  and 
labour  movements  in  those  coimtries. 
Both  he  and  his  wife  had  been  brought  up 
in  conservative  circles,  but  had  moved  to 
liberalism  and  thence  to  labour,  and  in 
1918  he  stood  unsuccessfully  for  parlia- 
ment as  the  first  labour  candidate  for 
Oxford  University.  In  1930  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Sanderson,  of 
Hunmanby,  Yorkshire,  and  from  1931  to 
1936  he  was  representative  of  the  labour 
peers  on  the  parliamentary  executive  of 
the  labour  party.  Later  his  pacificism 
separated  him  somewhat  from  his  party, 
which  he  left  in  1938,  but  his  integrity 
and  sincerity  won  the  respect  of  all. 

In  1902  Sanderson  married  Averil 
Dorothy,  only  daughter  of  Henry  Frede- 
rick NichoU,  J.P.,  of  Twyford,  Berkshire: 
there  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 
He  died  suddenly  in  London  25  March 
1939.  Portraits  of  Sanderson  by  Sir  Wil- 
liam Rothenstein  and  A.  K.  Lawrence  are 
in  the  possession  of  Lady  Sanderson. 

[Lord  Sanderson,  Memories  of  Sixty  Years, 
1931,  and  Charles  Sydney  Buxton.  A  Memoir 
(privately  printed),  1914 ;  Manchester  Guar- 
dian, 27  March  1939 ;  Economic  Journal,  June 
1939 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  Barratt  Brown. 

GALSWORTHY,  JOHN  (1867-1933), 
playwright  and  novelist,  was  bom  at 
Kingston  Hill,  Surrey,  14  August  1867, 
the  elder  son  of  John  Galsworthy,  solici- 
tor, of  Old  Jewry,  London,  chairman  and 
director  of  several  companies,  by  his  wife, 
Blanche  Bailey,  daughter  of  Charles  Bart- 
leet,  needlemaker,  of  Redditch.  He  was 
descended  on  his  father's  side  from  an  old 
Devonshire  family  which  was  settled  at 
Wembury,  near  Plymouth  Sound,  where 
since  the  Middle  Ages  there  was  a  field 
called  Great  Galsworthy.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Harrow,  where  he  was  two  years 
a  monitor,  captain  of  football,  and  winner 
of  the  mile-and-a-half,  and  at  New  Col- 


lege, Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  second 
class  in  jurisprudence  (1889).  Called  to 
the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1890,  he  took 
up  marine  law,  and  for  the  sake  of  experi- 
ence travelled  in  merchant  ships  to  the 
Far  East.  He  narrates  how  once  in 
changing  ship  in  1893  he  was  somewhat 
repelled  by  his  first  sight  of  the  new  mate, 
angry,  black  with  coal  dust,  and  speak- 
ing imperfect  English,  who  proved  to  be 
Joseph  Conrad  [q.v.],  afterwards  his  life- 
long friend  and  fellow  novelist. 

Galsworthy  began  to  write  in  1897, 
when  he  published,  under  the  pseudonym 
of  John  Sinjohn,  a  collection  of  stories. 
From  the  Four  Winds.  His  first  novels, 
published  imder  the  same  pseudonym, 
were  Jocelyn  (1898),  Villa  Rubein  (1900), 
and  The  Island  Pharisees  (1904),  but  it 
was  in  1906  that  he  secured  a  double  suc- 
cess with  his  first  play,  The  Silver  Box, 
produced  by  Harley  Granville-Barker  at 
the  Court  Theatre,  and  his  novel  The  Man 
of  Property,  which  gave  the  lead  to  a  great 
sequence.  The  Indian  Summer  of  a  Forsyte 
(1918),  In  Chancery  (1920),  Awakening 
(1920),  and  To  Let  (1921),  which  after- 
wards appeared  as  The  Forsyte  Saga 
(1922).  The  Saga  gives  a  highly  critical, 
but  not  altogether  unsympathetic,  de- 
scription of  Victorian  upper-class  com- 
mercial society,  narrow  in  sympathies  but 
strong  in  will  and  in  the  prudential  vir- 
tues. The  same  type  recurs  in  most  of 
Galsworthy's  work,  for  example  in  The 
Country  House  (1907),  Fraternity  (1909), 
The  Patrician  (1911),  and  The  Freelands 
(1915).  Indeed,  the  books  as  a  whole  de- 
pict the  decadence  or  supersession  of  a 
strong,  though  not  very  amiable,  genera- 
tion by  something  more  free  and  easy- 
going, an  effect  which  is  deepened  by  his 
post-war  studies.  The  White  Monkey 
(1924),  The  Silver  Spoon  (1926),  and  Swan 
Song  (1928),  in  which  Soames  Forsyte,  the 
odious  'Man  of  Property'  of  1906  has  so 
mellowed  as  to  appear,  in  contrast  with 
the  younger  generation,  almost  a  hero  and 
capable  of  great  self-sacrifice.  These 
studies  were  republished  as  a  trilogy  under 
the  title  of  A  Modern  Comedy  in  1929. 

The  novels  are  remarkable  for  a  very 
sensitive  and  exact  observation  of  life  as 
well  as  for  ptu-ity  of  style.  By  tempera- 
ment and  perhaps  also  by  his  artistic  con- 
science Galsworthy  avoided  many  appeals 
to  a  reader's  sympathy  which  seemed  to 
him  not  consistent  with  objective  truth. 
He  belonged  to  no  political  party  and  pro- 
fessed to  have  no  political  convictions.  He 
does  not  indulge  in  poUtical  or  social  ideals, 


803 


Galsworthy 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


like  Mr.  Shaw  and  Wells,  nor  in  philo- 
sophic 'meliorism',  like  George  Eliot,  still 
less  in  high  spirits  and  fun,  like  Dickens, 
or  in  sheer  romance,  like  Conrad.  The 
public  causes  which  appealed  to  him  were 
either  literary,  like  the  reform  or  abolition 
of  the  dramatic  censorship,  the  foundation 
of  the  international  P.E.N.  Club,  of  which 
he  was  the  first  president,  and  the  English 
Association,  of  which  he  was  president  in 
1924;  or  else  such  as  responded  to  his 
ever-wakeful  sense  of  pity,  like  aid  to 
prisoners  and  protection  of  animals.  Pity 
for  the  unfortunate  is,  indeed,  the  main 
emotion  roused  by  most  of  Galsworthy's 
works,  but  the  only  thing  which  really 
sweeps  him  away  is  mere  sympathy  with 
young  love  and  beauty.  Here,  too,  he 
never  pretends  that  his  young  lovers  have 
any  especially  admirable  qualities;  they 
long  and  they  suffer,  and  that  is  enough. 
At  times  on  this  theme  he  rises  to  an 
almost  lyrical  beauty,  for  example  in  The 
Dark  Flower  (1913)  and  some  of  the  short 
stories,  such  as  'The  Apple  Tree'  {Five 
Tales,  1918). 

Galsworthy's  stagecraft,  as  evidenced 
by  the  immediate  success  of  The  Silver 
Box,  was  even  more  striking.  For  one 
thing,  in  his  dialogue  he  turned  right  away 
both  from  the  somewhat  stagey  style  of 
Sir  A.  W.  Pinero  [q.v.]  and  H.  A.  Jones 
[q.v.]  and  the  artificially  brilliant  epi- 
grams which  such  writers  as  Mr.  Shaw 
and  Oscar  Wilde  had  made  fashionable, 
much  as  in  an  earlier  generation  Thomas 
Holcroft  and  Thomas  Morton  had  turned 
from  the  wit  of  Sheridan.  The  extreme 
skill  with  which  he  composed  a  dialogue 
which  was  both  lifelike  and  varied,  being 
carefully  suited  to  each  individual  charac- 
ter, gave  him  an  additional  dramatic 
instrument  and  explains  the  highly  dra- 
matic quality  of  many  of  his  most  quiet 
and  imemphatic  scenes.  Secondly,  Gals- 
worthy's construction  was  daringly  simple, 
with  no  ingenious  intrigues  or  theatrical 
surprises.  A  theme  is  stated,  such  as  the 
different  treatment  of  rich  and  poor 
offenders  in  The  Silver  Box,  the  blind  way 
in  which  the  law  crushes  the  weak  criminal 
in  Justice  (1910),  the  clash  between  the 
new  rich  and  the  old  aristocracy  in  The 
Skin  Game  (1920),  and  is  allowed  to  work 
itself  out  logically  with  fair  play  and  no 
favour  to  either  side.  For,  in  the  plays  as 
in  the  novels,  Galsworthy  not  only  avoids 
unreally  sympathetic  heroes  and  heroines, 
but  equally  abstains  from  showing  any 
side  which  is  definitely  right  or  any  clear 
remedy   for  the  troubles   in   which   his 


characters  find  themselves.  This  some> 
times,  no  doubt,  produces  a  depressing 
effect,  felt  even  by  the  author.  On  coming 
away  from  a  very  moving  performance  of 
Justice  he  was  heard  to  murmur,  'I  will 
never  see  that  damned  play  again.'  It 
may  be  mentioned  that  in  an  early  draft 
of  Justice,  after  the  suicide  there  was  a  line 
spoken  by  the  simple-minded  religious  old 
clerk,  'He's  gone  to  gentle  Jesus.'  The 
line  had  value,  but  was  cut  out ;  the  pro- 
longed crushing  of  the  worm,  which  forms 
the  theme  of  the  play,  was  kept  con- 
scientiously unrelieved. 

Owing  to  this  simplicity  of  construction 
and  dialogue  Galsworthy's  plays  are  often 
considered  easy  to  act,  but  in  reality  they 
require  great  intelligence  and  skill;  the 
unthinking  actor  has  no  help  from  rhetoric 
or  'strong  curtains'.  In  one  play.  Escape 
(1926),  he  depaii«d  considerably  from  his 
ordinary  manner  by  giving  a  series  of 
exciting  adventures  to  his  prisoner  escaped 
from  Dartmoor;  but  the  sequence  is 
simple.  There  is  no  attempt  at  theatrical 
ingenuity.  Considering  how  completely 
Galsworthy  refused  to  play  down  to  the 
public  by  cheap  or  sensational  appeals,  it 
is  remarkable  what  great  and  widespread 
success  he  achieved  both  in  Great  Britain 
and  abroad.  In  Germany,  indeed,  he  was 
studied  with  an  enthusiasm  said  to  be  due 
to  the  acceptance  of  his  books  as  authentic 
documents  admitting  and  proving  in  de- 
tail the  decadence  of  Great  Britain;  but 
that  explanation  does  not  apply  to  the  rest 
of  Europe.  His  Collected  Plays  appeared 
in  1929. 

The  war  of  1914-1918  did  not  produce 
much  direct  effect  upon  Galsworthy's 
work,  although  it  would  be  an  exaggera- 
tion to  make  comparisons  with  Jane 
Austen's  imperviousness  to  the  Napoleoxiic 
conflict.  He  had  made  a  somewhat  pro- 
phetic though  ineffective  appeal,  when  the 
aeroplane  was  invented,  for  an  inter- 
national agreement  not  to  use  the  new 
instrument  for  military  purposes,  and 
during  the  war  he  wrote  various  addresses 
and  short  stories,  satirical  or  allegorical. 
But  in  such  matters  his  reluctance  to  take 
sides  or  to  make  up  his  mind  on  disputed 
problems  was  something  of  a  hindrance. 

Galsworthy's  one  volume  of  Collected 
Poems,  published  in  1934  after  his  death, 
is  enough  to  suggest  that  he  might  have 
been  a  considerable  poet  if  he  had  not 
already  found  an  instrument  for  the  ex- 
pression of  beauty  which  suited  him 
better. 

A   full   bibliography   of   Galsworthy's 


804 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Gann 


writings  down  to  1928  will  be  found  in 
H-  V.  Marrot's  A  Bibliography  of  the  Works 
of  John  Galsworthy  (1928) ;  those  published 
between  1928  and  1933  are  given  in  the 
same  writer's  The  Life  and  Letters  of  John 
Galsworthy  (1935).  The  following  works 
were  published  posthumously:  Over  the 
River  (1933),  Forsytes,  Pendices,  and 
Others,  an  early  fictional  work  (1935),  and 
a  volume  of  miscellaneous  essays  entitled 
Glimpses  and  Reflections  (1937). 

Galsworthy  refused  a  knighthood  in 
1918.  He  accepted  the  Belgian  decoration 
of  Les  Palmes  d'Or  in  1919,  received 
honorary  doctorates  from  the  universities 
of  St.  Andrews,  Manchester,  Dublin,  Cam- 
bridge, Sheffield,  Oxford,  and  Princeton, 
and  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his 
college  in  1926.  He  was  appointed  to  the 
Order  of  Merit  in  1929  and  awarded  the 
Nobel  prize  for  literature  in  1932. 

Galsworthy  married  in  1905  Ada  Pear- 
son, daughter  of  Emanuel  Cooper,  M.D., 
of  Norwich,  and  formerly  wife  of  his  first 
cousin,  Arthur  John  Galsworthy:  she  was 
a  most  understanding  helper  in  all  his 
work.  They  had  no  children.  He  died  at 
Hampstead  31  January  1933.  There  is  a 
crayon  portrait  of  Galsworthy  by  Sir 
William  Rothenstein  at  New  College, 
Oxford. 

[The  Times,  1  February  1933 ;  H.  V.  Marrot, 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Galsworthy,  1935 ; 
Andr6  Chevrillon,  Trois  Etudes  de  Litt&rature 
Anglaise,  1922,  translated  by  F.  Simmonds, 
1923 ;  Leon  Schalit,  John  Galsworthy,  1928, 
translated  as  John  Galsworthy,  a  Survey,  1929 ; 
H.  L.  Ould,  John  Galsworthy,  1934 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Gilbert  Murray. 

GAN^,  THOMAS  WILLIAM  FRAN- 
CIS (1867-1938),  archaeologist,  was  born 
at  Murrisk,  Westport,  co.  Mayo,  13  May 
1867,  the  son  of  William  Gann,  of  Mur- 
risk and  later  of  Whitstable,  by  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Rose  Garvey.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  the  King's  School,  Canterbury, 
and  the  medical  school  of  Middlesex  Hos- 
pital, London.  After  practising  some 
time  in  London  and  Yorkshire,  he  was 
appointed  in  1894  a  district  medical  officer 
in  British  Honduras,  where  for  nearly 
thirty  years  he  served  in  that  capacity  and 
occasionally  as  acting  district  commis- 
sioner. At  the  time  of  his  retirement  in 
1923  he  was  principal  medical  officer. 

Almost  from  the  moment  of  his  arrival 
in  the  colony  Gann's  interest  was  attracted 
by  the  pyramids,  mounds,  and  other  ves- 
tiges of  the  ancient  Maya  civilization, 
which  occur  in  great  abundance  in  British 
Honduras,  particularly  in  the  Cayo  and 


Corozal  districts,  in  which  he  was  stationed 
during  most  of  his  medical  career.  In  his 
spare  time  he  began  a  series  of  excava- 
tions, the  first  report  of  which  was  pub- 
lished as  early  as  1895  in  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  London. 
For  the  rest  of  his  life  he  was  constantly 
engaged  in  archaeological  work  and  in 
discovering  new  groups  of  ruins. 

Among  the  most  outstanding  of  Gaim's 
discoveries  were  some  mural  paintings 
buried  in  a  small  mound  at  Santa  Rita,  in 
northern  British  Honduras.  These  were 
among  the  finest  examples  of  that  type  of 
decorative  art  yet  foimd  in  the  Maya  area, 
and  have  supplied  many  data  on  costume 
and  religious  customs  of  the  late  period 
to  which  they  belong.  Other  excavations 
in  that  vicinity  and  across  the  border  in 
the  Mexican  territory  of  Quintana  Roo 
brought  to  light  many  burials  and  much 
mortuary  furniture  of  various  periods. 
Gann  discovered  or  first  described  a  num- 
ber of  important  Maya  sites,  notably 
Lubaantun,  in  southern  British  Honduras, 
with  its  magnificent  masonry  (1904) ; 
Coba,  in  Quintana  Roo,  a  large  and  ex- 
tremely important  site,  the  investigation 
of  which  radically  altered  ideas  concerning 
the  history  of  Yucatan  (1926) ;  Ichpaatun, 
Quintana  Roo,  a  walled  city  with  a  stele 
bearing  an  early  date  (1926);  Tzibanche, 
also  in  Quintana  Roo,  a  large  site  with  a 
peculiar  style  of  architectyire  (1927) ;  and 
Noh  Mul  and  nearby  Louisville,  northern 
British  Honduras,  which  yielded  respec- 
tively much  pottery  and  a  series  of  fine 
portraits  modelled  in  stucco  (1936  and 
1938). 

Gann  was  the  first  to  excavate  and 
describe  the  queerly  shaped  objects  of 
flint  and  obsidian,  known  as  eccentric 
flints,  which  are  so  typical  of  the  Maya 
lapidary  art.  The  collections  gathered  by 
him  are  in  the  British  Museum,  at  the 
Liverpool  Institute  of  Archaeology  (the 
full  damage  to  which  has  yet  to  be  ascer- 
tained), the  Museum  of  the  American 
Indian,  Heye  Foundation,  New  York,  and 
the  Middle  American  Research  Institute, 
New  Orleans.  He  bequeathed  the  most 
notable  collection  of  Maya  jades  in 
private  hands,  together  with  other  archaeo- 
logical material,  to  the  British  Museum. 

Gann  detailed  his  archaeological  work 
in  forty  books  and  articles.  A  full  biblio- 
graphy, compiled  by  the  present  writer, 
appeared  in  Boletin  Bibliogrdfico  de  Antro- 
pologia  Americana,  vol.  iv  (Mexico,  1940). 
Six  popular  books,  written  in  an  interest- 
ing, facile  style,  containing  a  mixture  of 


305 


Gann 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


travel,  adventure,  and  archaeology,  to- 
gether with  articles  in  the  Illustrated 
London  News  and  the  Morning  Post  and 
talks  arranged  by  the  British  Broadcasting 
Corporation,  did  much  to  acquaint  the  pub- 
lic, both  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  of  America,  with  the  little  known 
Maya  civilization.  He  was  lecturer  in 
Central  American  archaeology  at  the  uni- 
versity of  Liverpool  (1919-1938),  and  ad- 
viser to  the  British  Museum  expeditions 
to  British  Honduras.  He  married  in  1930 
Mary,  only  daughter  of  Robert  Wheeler, 
of  Hazlemere,  Buckinghamshire;  in  his 
subsequent  archaeological  work  she  ably 
assisted  him.  There  were  no  children  of 
the  marriage.  He  died  in  London  24 
February  1938. 

[The  Times,  25  February  1938;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  Eric  S.  Thompson. 

GARDNER,  PERCY  (1846-1937), 
classical  archaeologist  and  numismatist, 
was  born  at  Hackney  24  November  1846, 
the  third  child  and  eldest  son  of  Thomas 
Gardner,  of  the  Stock  Exchange,  by  his 
wife,  Ann,  daughter  of  Peter  Pearse.  He 
was  educated  at  the  City  of  London 
School,  which  he  left  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
in  order  to  enter  the  stockbroking  busi- 
ness. This  work,  however,  proved  uncon- 
genial, and  at  the  end  of  two  years  he  was 
released.  In  1865  he  matriculated  at 
Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  and  immedi- 
ately found  his  level  with  undergraduates 
who  had  enjoyed  a  full  classical  training 
at  school.  He  had,  however,  a  strong 
speculative  bent  and  found  the  Cambridge 
emphasis  on  exact  scholarship  barren  and 
pedantic.  In  his  spare  time,  almost  un- 
aided, he  read  philosophy,  and  in  1869 
obtained  a  first  class  in  both  the  classical 
and  the  moral  sciences  triposes.  Next  year 
he  won  the  Whewell  university  scholar- 
ship in  international  law.  After  a  period 
of  depression  and  uncertainty  he  was  ap- 
pointed in  1871  assistant  in  the  depart- 
ment of  coins  and  medals  at  the  British 
Museum,  and  there  he  discovered  his  life's 
work,  the  scientific  study  of  Greek  coins 
and  art  in  relation  to  Greek  history.  He 
collaborated  with  R.  S.  Poole  [q.v.]  and 
B.  V.  Head  [q.v.]  in  producing  the  British 
Museum  catalogues  of  Greek  coins,  the 
volumes  for  which  he  was  eventually  re- 
sponsible being  those  on  Sicily  (1876), 
Thrace  (1877),  the  Seleucids  (1879),  Thes- 
saly  to  Aetolia  (1883),  and  the  Pelopon- 
nesus (1887).  Other  numismatic  works  of 
this  period  are  Samos  and  Samian  Coins 


(1882),  T/jc  Types  of  Greek  Coins  (1883), 
a  general  work  based  upon  his  details 
researches,  and  A  Numismatic  Com: 
tary  on  Pau^anias  in  collaboration  wit 
F.  Imhoof-Blxmier  (1887),  in  which  h 
revealed  the  contribution  made  by  coini 
to  the  study  of  ancient  sculpture. 

Meanwhile,  in  1872,  Christ's  College  had 
elected  Gardner  into  a  fellowship,  which  in 
1874  he  forfeited  on  his  marriage  to  Agnes 
(died  1933),  daughter  of  John  Reid  and 
sister  of  J.  S.  Reid  [q.v.].  In  1877  he  had 
what  was  perhaps  the  most  exciting  ex- 
perience of  his  life  when  he  paid  his  first 
visit  to  Greece,  witnessed  the  actual  pro- 
gress of  the  German  excavations  at  Olym- 
pia,  and  saw  the  newly  revealed  treasures 
of  Mycenae.  Under  this  stimulus  he  be- 
came an  enthusiastic  promoter  of  the 
Hellenic  Society,  founded  in  1879,  and 
edited  the  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies  from 
1880,  the  year  in  which  he  was  apporntei 
to  the  Disney  chair  of  archaeology  al 
Cambridge,  imtil  1896. 

In  1887  Gardner  was  elected  to  the 
recently  founded  Lincoln  and  Merton  pro- 
fessorship of  classical  archaeology  at  Ox- 
ford, where  he  lived  and  worked  for  the 
remainder  of  his  long  life.  A  researcher 
par  excellence  and  accustomed  while  at  the 
British  Museum  to  almost  daily  contact 
with  the  world  of  international  learning 
and  discovery,  he  was  inevitably  some- 
what impatient  of  the  Oxford  of  that  day, 
with  its  concentration  on  the  teaching  and 
formation  of  youth  at  the  expense  of 
knowledge  pursued  for  its  own  sake.  The 
story  of  his  early  struggles  for  the  admis- 
sion of  archaeology  as  a  subject  in  the 
classical  schools  is  told  in  Classical 
Archaeology  at  Oxford  (1889)  and  Oxford 
at  the  Cross  Roads  (1903).  The  latter  work 
also  contains  an  eloquent  plea  for  the 
reinstatement  of  learning  and  research  as 
the  primary  fimction  of  a  tmiversity. 
Gradually,  however,  his  scholarship,  devo- 
tion, and  energy  prevailed.  He  freed  the 
Anuidel  marbles  in  the  University  Gal- 
leries from  modern  restorations,  built  up 
an  archaeological  library  and  cast  collec- 
tion, and  founded  a  school  of  pupils,  some 
of  whom  became  most  distinguished 
archaeologists.  The  modern  department 
of  archaeology  at  the  Ashmolean  Museum, 
its  international  reputation  as  a  centre  for 
the  study  of  Greek  vase-painting  and 
Romano-British  antiquities,  is  his  monu- 
ment. Gardner's  literary  output  kept  pace, 
meantime,  with  his  teaching  activities. 
New  Chapters  in  Greek  History  appeared 
in  1892,  A  Manual  of  Greek  Antiquities 


I 


806 


D.N.B.  1931-1940      Gardner,  P.  and  E.  A. 


(with  F.  B.  Jevons)  in  1895,  The  Sculp- 
tured Tombs  of  Hellas  in  1896,  The  Gram- 
mar of  Greek  Art  (republished  as  The 
Principles  of  Greek  Art  in  1914),  and  A 
History  of  Ancient  Coinage  700-300  B.C. 
in  1918.  He  was  a  most  thorough,  pains- 
taking, and  helpful,  if  not  pre-eminently 
stimulating,  teacher.  He  was  no  less 
appreciative  of  the  work  of  his  women, 
than  of  his  men,  pupils,  but  he  remained 
unrepentantly  hostile  to  the  admission  of 
women  to  full  membership  of  the  uni- 
versity. 

Gardner's  general  position  as  an  archaeo- 
logist can  best  be  gathered  from  his  last 
substantial  work,  New  Chapters  in  Greek 
Art  (1926).  For  him  classical  Greek  art 
between  600  b.c.  and  300  b.c.  was  the 
ideal  norm:  on  the  one  hand,  he  mis- 
trusted any  tendency  to  specialize  in  pre- 
historic studies,  while,  on  the  other,  the 
great  advances  in  realistic  portraiture, 
historical  relief-sculpture,  and  landscape- 
painting  made  by  artists  of  the  Roman 
age  were,  in  his  eyes,  little  more  than 
degenerate  and  puerile  de\'iations  from 
the  fixed  standards  of  earlier  times.  By 
his  own  admission,  his  approach  to  ancient 
monuments  was  always  more  historical 
than  aesthetic,  and  he  feared,  ground- 
lessly,  as  it  proved,  that  the  detailed  study 
of  artistic  style  pursued  by  some  of  the 
ablest  of  his  pupils  might  lead  to  neglect 
of  the  spirit  and  content  of  Greek  sculp- 
tures and  vase-paintings.  But  by  insisting 
that  archaeological  work  must  ever  be 
firmly  anchored  in  historical,  literary,  and 
linguistic  knowledge  he  rendered  enduring 
service  to  the  essential  unity  of  classical 
studies. 

Brought  up  in  a  devout  Christian  home, 
Gardner  possessed  a  strong  moral  and 
spiritual  nature.  In  his  younger  manhood 
he  was  much  attracted  by  Positivism  and 
asserted  that  he  had  read  every  word  of 
Auguste  Comte's  exposition  of  his  posi- 
tivist  philosophy.  He  became  increasingly 
aware,  however,  of  a  religious  need  which 
Positivism  failed  to  satisfy.  This  religious 
need  was  eventually  satisfied  for  him  by 
'evolutional',  not  static,  Christianity ;  and 
the  last  half  of  his  life  was  devoted  to 
critical  and  constructive  study  and  exposi- 
tion of  the  Christian  religion.  This  bore 
fruit  in  some  ten  publications  between 
1899  and  1931,  of  which  the  earliest, 
Exploraiio  Evangelica  (1899),  was  un- 
doubtedly the  greatest  of  Gardner's 
achievements  in  this  sphere.  His  scientific 
criticism  of  religion,  united  to  his  strong 
and  practical  faith  in  the  supreme  value 


of  Christianity  both  for  the  individual  and 
for  society,  gave  his  religious  life  a  dual 
aspect  which  was  reflected  in  his  will, 
whereby  he  gave  £200  to  Ripon  Hall  and 
an  equal  amount  to  the  Salvation  Army. 

Gardner  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1897 
and  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in 
1903 ;  he  was  a  corresponding  member  of 
several  continental  academies,  as  well  as 
a  member  of  various  foreign  archaeological 
institutions.  He  retired  from  his  professor- 
ship in  1925  and  died  at  Oxford  17  July 
1937.  He  had  no  children. 

ERNEST  ARTHUR  GARDNER 
(1862-1939),  classical  scholar  and  archaeo- 
logist, youngest  brother  of  the  preceding, 
the  sixth  and  youngest  child  of  Thomas 
Gardner,  was  born  at  Clapton  16  March 
1862.  He  was  educated  at  the  City  of 
London  School  under  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott 
[q.v.]  and  at  Gonville  and  Caius  College, 
Cambridge,  which  he  entered  as  a  scholar 
in  1880.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in  both 
parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1882  and 
1884).  He  was  a  fellow  of  his  college  from 
1885  to  1894  and  Craven  student  from 
1887  to  1890. 

By  the  time  that  Gardner  started  upon 
his  career  British  scholars  had  already 
embarked  on  scientific  field-archaeology 
in  classical  lands.  He  became  the  first 
student  of  the  British  School  of  Archaeo- 
logy at  Athens  and  its  director  from  1887 
to  1895.  He  excavated  at  Naucratis  in 
Egypt  in  1885-1886  and  later  at  Paphos 
in  Cyprus  and  on  many  sites  in  Greece, 
including  Megalopolis.  In  1896  he  was 
elected  Yates  professor  of  archaeology  in 
the  university  of  London,  where  he  soon 
established  a  school  of  classical  archaeo- 
logy at  University  College :  he  also  became 
Yates  lecturer  in  1927.  In  addition  to 
teaching  he  organized  a  number  of  suc- 
cessful vacation  tours  to  Greece  and  the 
eastern  Mediterranean  and  collaborated 
with  his  brother  Percy  in  arranging  vaca- 
tion courses  in  archaeology  for  school- 
teachers and  others  in  this  country.  He 
was  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Journal  of 
Hellenic  Studies  from  1897  to  1932  and 
president  of  the  Hellenic  Society  from 
1929  to  1932.  He  was  also  active  in  uni- 
versity administration,  serving  as  dean  of 
the  faculty  of  arts  from  1905  to  1909  and 
from  1913  to  1915,  as  vice-chancellor  from 
1924  to  1926,  and  as  public  orator  from 
1910  to  1932.  As  lieutenant-commander 
in  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve  he 
saw  active  service  at  Salonika  from  1915 
to  1917  and  was  awarded  the  gold  cross 


807 


Gardner,  P.  and  E.  A.      d.n.b.  1931-1940 


of  the  Greek  Order  of  the  Redeemer  in 
1918. 

The  wide  scope  of  Gardner's  archaeo- 
logical interests  is  attested  by  his  numerous 
publications.  The  earliest  of  these  are  the 
chapter  on  inscriptions  in  Naucratis  I 
(1886)  and  Naucratis  II  (1888).  His  Hand- 
book of  Greek  Sculpture  (1896-1897),  of 
which  a  revised  and  enlarged  edition  ap- 
peared in  1915,  is  still  used  by  students, 
although  knowledge  has  advanced,  and 
canons  of  taste  and  criticism  have  shifted 
very  considerably  since  that  day.  The 
Catalogue  of  the  Greek  Vases  in  the  Fitz- 
william  Museum,  Cambridge,  appeared  in 
1897,  Ancient  Athens  in  1902,  Six  Greek 
Sculptors  and  Religion  and  Art  in  Ancient 
Greece  in  1910.  In  1905  he  collaborated 
with  E.  S.  Roberts  in  the  Introduction  to 
Greek  Epigraphy,  of  which  he  wrote  part  ii, 
'The  Inscriptions  of  Attica'.  His  later 
works  include  The  Art  of  Greece  (1925)  and 
Greece  and  the  jSSgean  (1933). 

Gardner  retired  from  his  chair  in  1929, 
but  retained  his  lecturership  until  1933. 
Among  the  distinctions  which  he  received 
were  the  honorary  fellowship  of  Gonville 
and  Caius  College  (1926)  and  the  honorary 
degree  of  Litt.D.  of  Trinity  College,  Dub- 
lin. In  1887  he  married  Mary  (died  1936), 
daughter  of  Major  John  Wilson,  of  the 
Scots  Greys,  and  had  one  son  and  two 
daughters,  the  elder  of  whom  predeceased 
her  father.  He  died  at  Maidenhead  27 
November  1939. 

A  full-length  portrait  of  Ernest  Gardner, 
in  his  robes  as  vice-chancellor,  by  Sidney 
Carline,  belongs  to  the  League  of  the 
Empire. 

[The  Times,  19  July  1937,  29  November 
1939;  George  Hill,  Percy  Gardner,  1846  to 
1937  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  xxiii,  1937;  Percy  Gardner,  Autobiogra- 
phica,  1933;  Oxford  Magazine,  21  October 
1937 ;  personal  knowledge.  There  is  a  biblio- 
graphy of  Percy  Gardner's  archaeological 
work  at  the  end  of  his  New  Chapters  in  Greek 

ArtJ]  JOCELYN  M.  C.  TOYNBKE. 

H.  D.  A.  Major. 

GARROD,  Sir  ARCHIBALD  ED- 
WARD (1857-1936),  physician  and  bio- 
chemist, was  born  in  London  25  November 
1857,  the  fourth  and  youngest  son  of  Sir 
Alfred  Baring  Garrod  [q.v.],  physician  to 
King's  College  Hospital  and  an  authority 
on  diseases  of  the  joints,  by  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Ann,  daughter  of  Henry  Col- 
chester, of  Ipswich.  Garrod  was  educated 
at  Marlborough  and  Christ  Church,  Ox- 
ford, where  he  obtained  a  first  class  in 
natural  science  in  1880,  and  received  his 


medical  training  at  St.  Bartholomew'] 
Hospital,  where  he  qualified,  and  after 
wards  paid  a  visit  to  Vienna. 

Shortly   after   returning   to   Englan 
Garrod  was  appointed  to  the  medical  sta 
of  St.  Bartholomew's,  becoming  casualt; 
physician  in  1889  and  assistant  physici; 
in  1903.   He  also  joined  the  visiting  sta; 
of  the  West  London  Hospital,  the  Hospital 
for  Sick  Children,  Great  Ormond  Street 
becoming  fuU  physician  there  in  1899,  an 
the  Alexandra  Hospital  for  Children  wit 
Hip  Disease.  Promotion  at  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's was  slow  on  account  of  the  unusual 
amount  of  talent  there  at  this  time,  and 
it  was  not  until  1912  that  he  was  appointed 
fuU  physician.  He  took  an  active  part  in 
the  war  of  1914-1918,  in  which  he  served 
first  on  the  staff  of  the  1st  London  General 
Hospital  at  Camberwell  and  later,  in  1915, 
he  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of  temporary 
colonel  in  the  Army  Medical  Service,  and 
went  to  Malta,  where  he  was  consulting 
physician   to   the    Mediterranean   forces 
until  1919.    For  his  services  he  was  ap- 
pointed C.M.G.  in  1916  and  K.C.M.G. 
1918. 

On  returning  to  St.  Bartholomew's 
1919  Garrod  was  chosen  as  the  first 
director  of  the  new  Medical  Unit.  He  had 
not,  however,  held  this  new  position  for 
more  than  a  year  when  in  1920  he  was 
nominated  regius  professor  of  medicine  at 
Oxford  in  succession  to  Sir  William  Osier 
[q.v.] ;  here  he  remained  for  seven  years. 
After  leaving  Oxford  he  spent  some  years 
in  Suffolk  and  then  moved  to  Cambridge, 
where  he  died  after  a  short  iUness  28  March 
1936.  He  married  in  1886  Laura  Elisabeth, 
eldest  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  first 
baronet  [q.v.],  surgeon  to  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital,  and  had  three  sons,  all 
medical  men;  two  were  kiUed  in  action 
and  one  died  of  influenzal  pneumonia  at 
Cologne.  He  also  had  one  daughter,  who 
is  Disney  professor  of  archaeology  at 
Cambridge. 

In  1900  Garrod  gave  the  Bradshaw 
lecture  to  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
on  'Urinary  Pigments  in  their  Pathologi- 
cal Aspects ' ;  and  to  the  same  college  in 
1908  the  Croonian  lectures  dealing  with 
the  incidence  and  heredity  of  'Inborn 
Errors  of  Metabolism',  which  were  pub- 
lished in  a  revised  version  in  1909  under 
the  same  title.  To  the  Medical  Society  of 
London  he  read  the  Lettsonian  lecture  on 
'Glycosuria'  in  1912;  he  was  Linacre  lec- 
turer at  Cambridge  in  1923,  and  in  1924 
he  gave  the  Harveian  oration  to  the  Roj'al 
College  of  Physicians  on  the   'Debt  of 


i 


h 


808 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gaster 


Science  to  Medicine'.  At  Charing  Cross 
Hospital  in  1927  he  gave  the  Huxley  lec- 
ture on  'Diathesis',  in  which  the  basic 
principles  and  several  kinds  of  disposition 
were  discussed;  this  was  published  in  fuller 
form  as  The  Inborn  Factors  in  Disease 
(1931). 

Garrod's  other  works  include  An  Intro- 
duction to  the  Use  of  the  Laryngoscope 
(1886) ;  A  Treatise  on  Rheumatism  and 
Rheumatoid  Arthritis  (1890) ;  a  translation 
of  Bernard  Naunyn's  monograph  on  Chole- 
lithiasis (1896) ;  and,  in  collaboration  with 
(Sir)  W.  P.  Herringham  [q.v.]  and  W.  J. 
Gow,  A  Handbook  of  Medical  Pathology, 
for  the  Use  of  Students  in  the  Museum  of 
St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital  (1894).  It  is 
noteworthy  that  his  earlier  works  were 
mainly  of  a  clinical  character,  whereas  his 
later  books  were  more  of  a  biochemical 
nature.  The  high  opinion  held  by  Osier  of 
his  successor  is  shown  by  his  invitation  to 
Garrod  in  1907  to  join  the  editorial  board 
of  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Medicine  (on 
which  he  remained  until  1927)  and  to  help 
in  the  formation  of  the  Association  of 
Physicians  of  Great  Britain.  He  was  co- 
editor  in  1913  with  F.  E.  Batten  and 
Hugh  Thursfield  of  the  first  edition  of 
Diseases  of  Children,  to  which  he  contri- 
buted articles  on  '  Disease  as  it  Affects 
Children',  'Diseases  of  Ductless  Glands', 
and  'Disorders  of  Metabolism'.  He  con- 
tributed also  to  the  Journal  of  Pathology 
land  to  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society.  He  joined  the  British  Medical 
Association  in  1888  and  in  1922  was  vice- 
-president of  the  section  of  medicine.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Medical  Research 
(  ouncil  from  1923  to  1928. 

Garrod  received  many  distinctions  be- 
sides those  already  named.  In  1910  he  was 
[elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
'which  he  was  vice-president  from  1926  to 
11928.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Aberdeen,  Dublin, 
JGllasgow,  Malta,  and  Padua. 

I  [The  Times,  30  March  1936;  Obituary 
Wotices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  6, 
fanuary  1938  (portrait);  British  Medical 
Journal,  1936,  vol.  i,  p.  731  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 
936,  vol.  i,  p.  807  (portrait).] 

J.  D.  ROLLESTON. 


GASTER,  MOSES  (1856-1939),  scholar 
nd  rabbi,  was  born  in  Bucharest  16  or  17 
September  1856,  the  eldest  son  of  Abra- 
am  Emanuel  Gaster,  who  was  attached 
0  the  Netherlands  legation  in  Bucharest, 
y  his  wife,  Phina  Judith  Rubinstein.  He 
raduated  at  the  university  of  Bucharest, 


whence  he  proceeded  to  the  Rabbinical 
Seminary  at  Breslau,  receiving  the  rab- 
binical diploma  in  1881.  He  received  the 
degree  of  Ph.D.  In  1880  he  returned  to 
Rumania  and  became  in  1881  a  lecturer 
at  the  university  of  Bucharest  on  the 
history  of  Rumanian  literature  and  on 
comparative  mythology,  but  although  his 
work  here  and  as  an  inspector  of  schools 
and  as  a  member  of  the  council  for  the 
examination  of  teachers  gained  the  ap- 
proval of  the  government,  his  activities 
on  behalf  of  the  Jews  in  Rumania  who 
were  entitled  to  Rumanian  citizenship 
under  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  led  the  govern- 
ment to  expel  him  from  Rumania  at  short 
notice.  The  decree  was  indeed  revoked 
and  a  reconciliation  ultimately  followed, 
but  Gaster  never  returned  to  his  native 
country  as  a  resident,  and  for  the  rest  of 
his  life  was  domiciled  in  England,  where 
he  had  connexions  with  Friedrich  Max 
Miiller  and  Adolf  Neubauer  [qq.v.].  He 
was  naturalized  in  1893. 

Gaster  was  Anglo- Jewry's  most  versa- 
tile scholar,  as  is  attested  by  only  a  selec- 
tion from  his  writings.  Besides  the  first 
translation  of  the  Jewish  liturgy  into 
Rumanian  (1883),  he  published  Jewish 
Sources  and  Parallels  to  the  Early  English 
Metrical  Romances  of  King  Arthur  and 
Merlin  (1888) ;  The  Sword  of  Moses  (1896), 
an  early  Hebrew  magical  work  which  he 
discovered;  The  Chronicles  of  Jerahmeel 
(1899);  Hebrew  Illuminated  Bibles  of  the 
Ninth  and  Tenth  Centuries  (1901);  'The 
Hebrew  Version  of  the  "  Secretum  Secre- 
torum"'  (Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society,  1907-1908) ;  Rumanian  Bird  and 
Beast  Stories  (1915);  The  Exempla  of  the 
Rabbis  (1924) ;  The  Samaritans  (Schweich 
lectures,  1925) ;  The  Tittled  Bible  (1929) ; 
Samaritan  Eschatology  (1932);  and  Md'- 
aseh  Book  (on  Jewish  tales  and  legends, 
1934).  His  Chrestomatie  Romdnd  (2  vols., 
1891)  is  still  the  basic  work  for  the  study 
of  Rumanian  language  and  literature.  His 
learning  was  recognized  outside  Jewry  by 
a  vice-presidency  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society  and  of  the  English  Folk  Lore 
Society,  of  which  he  was  also  sometime 
president,  a  fellowship  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Literature  (1930),  honorary 
membership  of  the  Rumanian  Academy 
(1929),  and  the  Rumanian  Orders  of  the 
Crown  and  Bene  Merenti. 

In  1886  Gaster  was  appointed  to  deliver 
the  Ilchester  lectures,  on  Greco-Slavonic 
literature,  in  Oxford  (published  in  1887) 
and  in  1891  he  was  re-appointed.  In  1887 
he  was  asked  to  fill  the  historic  chief 


800 


Gaster 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


rabbinate  of  the  Sephardi  Jews  in  England, 
of  which  community  he  wrote  a  history 
(privately  printed  in  1901) ;  and  in  1890 
he  was  chosen  to  be  principal  of  the  Judith 
Lady  Montefiore  CoUege  at  Ramsgate,  a 
theological  institution  administered  by 
the  community,  but  in  1896  serious  dif- 
ferences arose  about  its  management  and 
he  resigned.  He  retained  his  rabbinate 
luitil  failing  eyesight  compelled  his  retire- 
ment at  the  end  of  1918. 

These  scholarly  activities  were  only  one 
side  of  Caster's  life.  He  was  a  most  pro- 
minent member  of  Anglo-Jewry  and  held 
active  office  in  many  of  its  principal 
institutions.  For  some  time  after  his 
arrival  in  England  he  continued  his  sup- 
port of  the  Choveve  Zion  movement  in 
which  he  had  been  active  when  in  Ruma- 
nia, but  with  the  rise  of  Theodor  Herzl  and 
his  new  Zionist  movement  he  ranged  him- 
self on  that  side,  being  a  foxmder  and 
president  of  the  English  Zionist  Federa- 
tion and  vice-president  of  four  Zionist 
congresses  held  in  Basel  and  London  be- 
tween 1898  and  1900.  It  was  at  his  house 
in  London  that  the  talks  were  initiated 
between  prominent  Zionists  and,  on  behalf 
of  the  Foreign  Office,  Sir  Mark  Sykes 
[q.v.],  which  led  up  to  the  issue  of  the 
Balfour  declaration  of  November  1917. 

In  public  causes  Gaster  was  a  vigorous 
and  outspoken  leader,  often  involved  in 
controversy,  in  which  he  showed  himself 
aggressive  and  courageous,  but  always 
with  the  saving  virtue  of  a  strong  sense  of 
humour.  Both  in  the  pulpit  and  on  the 
platform  he  was  an  arresting  orator.  To 
the  young  and  to  the  newcomer  he  was 
exceedingly  generous,  going  to  any  trouble 
to  assist  a  beginner  and  always  ready  with 
advice  and  help. 

Gaster  married  in  1890  Leah  Lucy,  only 
child  of  Michael  Friedlander,  principal  of 
Jews  CoUege,  London,  and  had  seven  sons 
and  six  daughters.  He  died  in  a  motor-car 
between  Oxford  and  Reading,  whither  he 
was  going  to  address  a  gathering  of  Ruma- 
nian students,  5  March  1939. 

The  best  portrait  of  Gaster  is  that  by 
Moses  Maimon  at  the  Spanish  and  Portu- 
guese Synagogue  in  Bevis  Marks,  London. 
Another  (whereabouts  vmknown)  was  by 
Leopold  Pilichowski;  a  third  is  in  the 
possession  of  Caster's  daughter  Mrs.  N. 
Laski. 

[The  Times,  6  and  16  March  1939 ;  Trans- 
actions of  the  Jewish  Historical  Society  of 
England,  vol.  xiv,  1940;  Jewish  Chronicle, 
10  March  1939 ;  Encyclopaedia  Judaica ;  Pub- 
lications of  the  American  Jewish  Historical 


Society,  No.  xxxvii,  1947 ;  Occident  and  Orier 
Gaster   Anniversary    Volume,    edited    by 
Schindler  and  A.  Marmorstein  (select  biblio 
graphy  and  portrait),  1936.] 

Albert  M.  Hyamson. 

GEDDES,     Sir     ERIC     CAMPBELl 

(1875-1937),  politician,  administrator,  an^ 
man  of  business,  was  born  at  Agra,  India 
26  September  1875,  the  eldest  son 
Auckland  Campbell  Ceddes,  civil  engineei 
of  Edinburgh,  by  his  wife,  Christina  Helei| 
Macleod,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Alexande 
Anderson,  of  Old  Aberdeen.  He  wa 
educated  at  Merchiston  Castle  School 
Edinburgh,  Edinburgh  Academy,  and  th« 
Oxford  Military  College,  Cowley,  where  h^ 
was  athletic  and  high-spirited  rather  tha 
studious,  but  he  decided  not  to  join  tl 
Royal  Engineers,  and  left  for  the  Unite 
States  of  America  at  the  age  of  seventeei 
gaining  in  four  years  a  varied  experienc 
as  a  brakesman  on  freight  trains  on  tl 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  railroad,  as  a  lumbei 
man,  and  as  a  labourer  in  steel  works.  In 
1895  he  returned  to  Scotland  with  nothing 
more  material  in  his  possession  than  that 
which  he  had  taken  away. 

Geddes  then  went  to  India,  where  he 
was  manager  of  a  forestry  estate.  This 
involved  the  running  of  fifty  miles  of  light 
railway,  and  it  gave  him  an  opening  in  the 
railway  world,  for  his  railway  was  amalga- 
mated with  the  Rohilkhand  and  Kumaon 
Railway  of  which  he  became  traffic  super- 
intendent. Relying  on  greater  prospects 
which  he  saw,  he  returned  in  1906  to 
England  and  took  a  relatively  lower  post 
on  the  North  Eastern  Railway,  of  which 
in  1914,  before  the  age  of  forty,  he  was 
deputy  general  manager  and  nominated 
as  futtire  general  manager. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Geddes 
took  charge  of  the  mobilization  movement 
in  Northern  Command,  and  raised  a  batta-    I 
lion  from  the  employees  of  the  North    I 
Eastern  Railway,  later  known  as  the  17th 
Royal  Northumberland  Fusiliers.   It  was 
thus  that  his  great  opportunity  came  to 
him  in  1915,  when  as  deputy  director- 
general  of  munitions  supply  he  was  asked 
to  report  on  the  obstacles  which  were  im- 
peding the  flow  of  munitions  to  the  front. 
Here  he  won  the  complete  confidence  and 
friendship  of  Lloyd  George.  Consequently 
in  1916  he  was  appointed  director-general^ 
of  transportation  on  the  staff  of  the  comJB 
mander-in-chief  of  the  British  army  inn 
France,    and    later    inspector-general   of 
transportation  for  all  theatres  of  war,  with 
the  honorary  rank  of  major-general  (1917). 
By  the  spring  of  1917  it  was  felt  that  the 


310 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Geddes,  P. 


capacity  of  ports,  railways,  roads,  and 
canals  was  generally  equal  to  the  demands 
made  upon  them,  but  at  this  time  an  even 
more  serious  question  of  transportation 
was  causing  grave  anxiety,  and  in  May 
1917  Geddes  was  appointed  controller  of 
the  navy  and  an  additional  member  of  the 
Board  of  Admiralty  with  the  temporary 
and  honorary  rank  of  vice-admiral;  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  [q.v.],  however,  insisted 
that  he  should  be  liable  to  recall  to  his 
staff,  and  thus  Geddes  became  one  of  the 
few  to  hold  senior  naval  and  military  rank 
at  the  same  time.  In  July  1917  he  was 
elected  unionist  member  of  parliament  for 
the  borough  of  Cambridge  at  a  by-election, 
and  in  September  of  that  year  he  was 
appointed  first  lord  of  the  Admiralty  and 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 

Thanks  to  Jellicoe's  dispositions  in 
the  introduction  of  the  convoy  system  the 
losses  of  merchantmen  by  submarine  had 
fallen  by  the  end  of  1 917  to  less  than  half  of 
those  suffered  in  April.  Eventually  Geddes 
overcame  the  suspicion  with  which  the 
navy  had  received  him,  and  after  the 
general  election  in  1918,  at  which  he  re- 
tained his  seat,  Sir  David  (afterwards 
Earl)  Beatty  urged  Lloyd  George,  in  the 
interest  of  the  ser\ace,  to  retain  Geddes  as 
first  lord,  but  this  was  not  to  be,  for  Lloyd 
George  appointed  him  to  the  Imperial  War 
Cabinet,  and  from  1919  to  1921  Geddes 
was  the  first  minister  of  transport  with 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  subject. 
Thus  it  was  that  Geddes  conducted  the 
legislation  of  1921  which  provided  for 
the  amalgamation  of  all  the  railways 
of  Great  Britain  into  four  groups,  and 
for  the  settlement  of  the  claims  of  the 
railways  on  the  government  in  respect 
of  its  possession  of  them  during  the 
war. 

Perhaps  the  work  for  which  Geddes  will 
best  be  remembered  is  his  chairmanship 
of  the  committee  on  national  expenditure, 
commonly  known  as  the  'Geddes  Axe' 
committee.  National  expenditure  in  1921 
was  still  at  far  too  high  a  level,  and  the 
report  made  recommendations  of  detailed 
cuts  amounting  to  £86,750,000,  and  in- 
dicated further  sources  of  economy  which 
together  would  yield  the  hundred  millions 
which  were  the  aim.  On  the  break-up  of 
the  coalition  in  1922  Geddes  left  the 
House  of  Commons  after  a  brief  but  highly 
effective  period  of  service  as  minister  of 
the  Crown. 

Geddes  now  turned  to  industry  and 
transport..  His  principal  chairmanship 
was  that  of  the  Dunlop  Rubber  Company, 


which  under  his  administration  rose  from 
serious  difficulties  to  its  place  as  one  of 
this  country's  outstanding  industrial  enter- 
prises with  interests  in  all  parts  of  the 
world.  The  other  great  development 
which  owes  much  to  his  imagination  and 
leadership  is  civil  aviation.  He  was  the 
first  chairman  of  Imperial  Airways  and  he 
soon  realized  that  the  proper  field  of  de- 
velopment was  the  wide  communications 
of  the  Empire  rather  than  the  ferry  ser- 
vices across  the  Channel.  Although  he  did 
not  live  to  see  it  in  operation,  the  'all-up 
Empire  air  mail'  was  his  conception  and 
it  ranks  as  one  of  the  greatest  steps  ever 
taken  for  knitting  together  the  Colonies 
and  the  Dominions. 

Geddes's  achievements  in  war  were  un- 
doubtedly very  great.  His  capacity  for 
hard  work,  physical  and  mental,  was  ab- 
normal: he  asked  a  great  deal,  but  never 
more  than  he  gave.  The  independence  of 
character  commonly  associated  with  Scots- 
men never  left  him,  and  if  it  did  not 
always  make  for  harmony,  he  could  inspire 
his  collaborators  with  enthusiasm. 

Geddes  was  knighted  in  1916  and  was 
subsequently  appointed  K.C.B.  (mil.)  in 
1917,  G.B.E.  in  the  same  year,  and  G.C.B. 
(civ.)  in  1919,  a  curious  instance  of  a  pro- 
motion from  the  military  to  the  civil  ranks 
of  the  order;  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  was  conferred  upon  him  by  Shef- 
field University  in  1920.  He  was  never  so 
happy  as  when  he  was  out  of  doors  at  his 
country  house,  Albourne  Place,  Hassocks, 
Sussex,  where  he  died  22  June  1937.  He 
married  in  1900  in  India  Ada  Gwendolen, 
daughter  of  the  Rev.  Arthur  Spokes, 
schoolmaster,  and  they  had  three  sons. 

A  portrait  of  Geddes  by  R.  G.  Eves 
(1922)  hangs  in  the  office  of  the  Dunlop 
Rubber  Company  in  London.  Another 
portrait,  by  Irvine  McNalty,  belongs  to 
Mr.  Acland  Geddes,  of  The  Manor  House, 
Wye,  Kent. 

[The  Times,  23  June  1937 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Georgk  Beharrell. 

GEDDES,  Sir  PATRICK  (1854^1932), 
biologist,  sociologist,  educationist,  and 
town-planner,  was  bom  at  Ballater,  Aber- 
deenshire, at  the  gateway  to  the  High- 
lands, 2  October  1854,  the  yovmgest  son 
of  Alexander  Geddes,  a  Gaelic-speaking 
native  of  Strathspey,  who  was  a  quarter- 
master in  the  Black  Watch  and  later  a 
captain  in  the  militia,  by  his  wife,  Janet 
Stevenson.  Patrick  was  educated  at  Perth 
Academy.  Then,  having  served  a  year  in 
a  bank  at  his  father's  request  and  having 


811 


Geddes,  P. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


also  laid  aside  his  own  thoughts  of  a  career 
as  an  artist,  he  freed  himself  for  his  chief 
aim,  the  study  of  life.  Early  in  the 
'seventies  he  imdertook  a  hard  apprentice- 
ship with  T.  H.  Huxley  [q.v.].  This 
shocked  his  Presbyterian  father;  yet  the 
son  never  lost  the  Scottish  traditions  of 
family  worship  and  of  faith  as  a  lifelong 
quest.  From  Huxley,  Geddes  went  to 
Henri  de  Lacaze-Duthiers,  with  whom  he 
studied  zoology.  In  Paris  he  met  with 
social  science  and  awoke  to  the  vitality  of 
France,  and  saw,  for  the  first  time,  the 
aftermath  of  war,  international  and  civil, 
and  the  meaning  of  reconstruction.  When 
senior  demonstrator  at  University  College, 
London,  from  1877  to  1878,  he  came  to 
know  Charles  Darwin  and  A.  R.  Wallace 
[qq.v.]. 

While  exploring  in  Mexico,  when  he  was 
twenty-five,  Geddes  endured  the  supreme 
crisis  of  his  intellectual  life :  an  attack  of 
blindness  which,  although  it  slowly  passed, 
broke  the  promise  of  a  career  in  biology 
by  making  it  impossible  for  him  to  con- 
tinue microscopy.  During  his  first  months 
at  Edinburgh  University  as  demonstrator 
in  botany,  the  oculist's  orders  cut  down 
his  indoor  work  to  two  hours  a  day.  The 
career  of  a  talented  but  orthodox  biologist 
might  have  survived  such  restrictions :  not 
that  of  a  thinker  and  teacher  whose  very 
unorthodoxy  required  a  mass  of  support- 
ing concrete  research  and  concentrated 
induction.  Two  great  compensating  ex- 
periences emerged  from  this  trial.  The 
first  was  the  development  of  abstract 
thinking  and  the  beginning  of  methods  of 
diagrammatic  thought,  without  which  this 
intensely  concrete  observer  might  never 
have  reached  philosophic  achievement. 
The  second,  his  rediscovery  of  mankind 
and  their  home,  about  him,  led  to  the 
founding  of  self-governing  university  halls, 
linked  to  rebuilding  and  the  redemption 
of  neighbourhood  and  community,  in 
Edinburgh's  'Royal  Mile'. 

The  great  spiritual  adventure  of  Ged- 
des's  life  came  in  1886  with  his  marriage 
to  Anna,  eldest  daughter  of  Frazer  Mor- 
ton, an  Ulster  Scot  and  a  merchant  in 
Liverpool,  who  grafted  upon  the  intel- 
lectual challenge  of  her  forebears'  faith  her 
own  musical  and  mental  gifts.  Three 
months  after  their  marriage  the  couple 
made  their  home  in  the  heart  of  Old  Edin- 
burgh, making  friends  with  all  classes,  and 
there  they  dwelt  until  they  moved  to 
Ramsay  Garden  on  the  Castle  hill,  built 
co-operatively  under  Geddes's  leadership. 
In  1892    Geddes   acquired  the  Outlook 


Tower  in  Castlehill,  and  established  there 
'the  world's  first  Sociological  Laboratory'. 

From  1889  to  1914  Geddes,  whose  chief 
biological  interest  now  lay  in  botany,  was 
professor  of  that  subject  (during  summer 
sessions)  at  University  College,  Dundee, 
with  a  final  session  in  1919.  Nevertheless, 
he  collaborated  with  his  old  student  (Sir) 
J.  Arthur  Thomson,  the  zoologist,  in 
writing,  from  1889  {The  Evolution  of  Sex) 
to  1931  (Life:  Outlines  of  General  Biology, 
2  vols.).  From  1889  he  was  free  for  nine 
months  of  the  year  to  devote  much  of  his 
energy  to  other  spheres.  These  centred 
more  and  more  on  civics  and  on  the  plan- 
ning of  country  and  town,  initially  in 
Great  Britain,  in  Cyprus  in  1897,  and 
from  1914  to  1923  mainly  in  India,  where, 
as  professor  of  civics  and  sociology  at  the 
imiversity  of  Bombay  (1920-1923),  he 
organized  the  postgraduate  school.  City 
Development  appeared  in  1904.  In  socio- 
logy he  collaborated  with  Victor  Branford. 
From  1911  Geddes's  Cities  and  Town 
Planning  Exhibition  was  shown  in  British 
cities,  on  the  continent,  and  in  India.  In 
planning  he  pointed  out  the  disastrous 
error  of  ruinously  expensive  rectilinear 
street-widening,  and  he  provided  for 
neighbourly  life  in  'garden  and  sun-court'. 
'Survey  before  alteration',  and  'diagnosis 
before  treatment'  with  'conservative  sur- 
gery' where  need  required  it,  were  his 
principles;  and  he  regarded  the  citizens 
first,  with  a  care  not  only  for  their  physical 
but  also  for  their  spiritual  health. 

When  Anna  Geddes  died  in  1917,  only 
three  months  after  the  death  at  the  front 
of  their  elder  son,  a  wise  friend  wrote  that 
the  disaster  was  irreparable:  although 
Geddes  was  the  pilot,  'it  was  she  who 
steered  the  ship'.  Overstrain  brought  an 
illness  from  which  he  nearly  died  and  from 
which  he  never  really  recovered.  In  1924 
he  settled  at  Montpellier,  where  he  buUt 
an  unofficial  student  residence  which  he 
named  'the  Scots  College',  in  memory  of 
the  Scots  College  in  Paris.  In  1928  he 
married  Lilian  (died  1936),  second  daugh- 
ter of  John  Armour  Brown,  of  Paisley.  He 
died  at  Montpellier  17  April  1932,  and  was 
survived  by  his  younger  son,  Arthur,  a 
geographer,  and  by  his  only  daughter,  who 
married  one  of  his  collaborators,  Sir  Frank 
Mears,  P.R.S.A.  He  was  knighted  in  1932 ; 
a  previous  offer  of  knighthood  had  been 
refused,  but  the  honour  was  accepted  in 
1931,  imder  the  labour  government,  as  his 
endeavours  were  now  entirely  non-profes- 
sional and  altruistic. 

One    of   his    own    remarks    sums    up 


812 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


Geddes's  view  of  life :  '  Our  greatest  need 
to-day  is  to  grasp  life  as  a  whole,  to  see 
its  many  sides  in  their  proper  relations; 
but  we  must  have  a  practical  as  well  as 
a  philosophic  interest  in  such  an  integrated 
view  of  life.'  Never  granted  a  degree,  he 
remained  a  student  all  his  life,  eager  to 
learn,  quick  to  appreciate  but  also  quick 
to  reject  teaching  wherever  the  form 
seemed  to  him  to  stifle  the  spirit.  He  was 
a  pioneer  in  many  ways.  He  was  an  evolu- 
tionist; but  he  reacted  from  Huxley's 
Neo-Darwinism,  which  stressed  the  eli- 
mination of  'unfit'  variants,  to  search 
afresh  into  the  nature  of  variation.  He 
conceived  of  species  as  tending  to  dif- 
ferentiate either  towards  greater  anabol- 
ism  or  katabolism — as  in  plants  with 
emphasis  either  on  vegetation  or  on  repro- 
duction. He  stressed  the  importance  of 
the  development  of  sex  as  a  more  pro- 
foundly important  step  in  evolution  than 
had  yet  been  realized.  Within  a  species  he 
regarded  the  female  as  the  more  anabolic, 
the  male  as  the  more  katabolic.  His  in- 
terest in  the  forms  of  life  was  inseparable 
from  his  interest  in  the  functioning  of  life 
in  its  environment.  Of  his  own  botanical 
assistants,  more  than  one  turned  to  geo- 
graphy, notably  Andrew  John  Herbert- 
son;  and  among  his  friends  were  the 
social  geographers  Elisee  Reclus  and  Kro- 
potkine .  In  his  Outlook  Tower  he  arranged 
stories  of  regional  interpretation,  from 
city  and  region  (Edinburgh)  through  land 
(Scotland)  and  cultural  environment  (the 
English-speaking  world)  to  continent 
(Europe)  and  world.  His  concept  of  the 
relationship  Environment — Function — 
Organism  led  naturally  to  the  concept  of 
Place — Work — Folk  (a  rediscovery  of  Le 
Play's  formula  Lieu,  Travail,  Famille). 
Ever  alive  to  the  infinite  variety  of  life 
about  him,  Geddes  brought  together  the 
apparent  chaos  of  contacts  by  the  '  chart- 
ing' of  factors  in  order  to  bring  out  their 
relationships.  Of  this  'charting'  Thomson 
wrote :  '  To  those  who  find  such  notations 
useful' — and  Thomson  was  one  of  these — 
'they  appear  as  the  most  remarkable 
organa  which  the  mind  of  man  has  devised 
for  disclosing  all  the  possible  relations  of 
any  subject.' 

In  the  near  future  Geddes's  influence 
will  greatly  depend  upon  what  is  being 
edited  by  the  Outlook  Tower  Association. 
This  has  already  provided  the  foundation 
for  Philip  Boardman's  Patrick  Geddes, 
Maker  of  the  Future  (University  of  North 
Carolina  Press  and  Oxford  University 
Press,  1944).  Of  Geddes's  own  work,  there 


has  so  far  appeared  Patrick  Geddes  in 
India :  selections  from  Town  Planning  Re- 
ports edited  by  J.  Tyrwhitt,  in  collabora- 
tion with  H.  V.  Lanchester  and  A.  Geddes, 
with  a  foreword  by  L.  Mumford  (1947). 

A  bust  of  Geddes  by  Charles  Pibworth 
is  in  the  Scottish  National  Portrait  Gal- 
lery, Edinburgh. 

[Philip  Boardman,  Patrick  Geddes,  Maker 
of  the  Future,  1944;  Nature,  14  May  1932; 
personal  knowledge.  Ten  works  in  prepara- 
tion include  a  revision  of  his  Cities  in  Evolu- 
tion, 1915 ;  The  Charting  of  Life;  Place,  Work 
and  Folk,  Geddes's  major  synthesis ;  and 
Olympus,  an  interpretation  of  phase  and  sex 
in  human  life.  It  is  also  hoped  to  revise  his 
biological  theses,  and  to  prepare  a  volume  of 
his  letters.]  Arthur  Geddes. 

GEORGE  V  (1865-1936),  King  of 
Great  Britain,  Ireland,  and  the 
British  Dominions  beyond  the  seas, 
Emperor  of  India,  was  born  at  Marl- 
borough House,  London,  3  June  1865,  the 
second  child  of  the  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Wales,  later  King  Edward  VII  and  Queen 
Alexandra.  He  was  baptized  at  Windsor 
Castle  on  7  July  following  by  the  names 
of  George  Frederick  Ernest  Albert.  Like 
Richard  I,  Henry  VIII,  Charles  I,  and 
other  notable  sovereigns  he  was  not  born 
to  the  expectation  of  kingship:  his  elder 
brother.  Prince  Albert  Victor  Christian 
Edward,  Duke  of  Clarence  (q.v.,  known 
as  Prince  Eddy),  was  his  senior  by  seven- 
teen months,  and  Prince  George  remained 
a  younger  son  for  the  first  twenty-six  years 
of  his  life.  Nor  at  that  moment  in  the 
history  of  the  monarchy  could  it  have  been 
asserted  with  confidence  that  he  would 
have  attained  to  the  throne  even  had  he 
been  the  elder.  There  were  many  still- 
living  who  remembered  the  peculiar  con- 
tribution to  the  history  of  their  times  made 
by  the  sons  of  George  III ;  and  although 
twenty-one  years  of  ideal  married  life  had 
done  much  to  endear  Queen  Victoria  to 
her  subjects,  the  period  of  muffled  seclu- 
sion which  had  elapsed  since  the  death  of 
the  Prince  Consort  was  already  beginning 
to  be  the  subject  of  murmuring,  and  the 
reported  manner  of  life  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  lent  support  to  the  nascent  repub- 
lican sentiment. 

But  of  disquieting  possibilities  such  as 
these  the  young  princes  and  their  three 
sisters  were  unaware  as  their  childhood 
pursued  its  course  in  an  atmosphere  of 
sustained  happiness  and  affection.  In  his 
attachment  to  his  children  the  Prince  of 
Wales  was  only  surpassed  by  their  mother ; 
her  happiest  hours   were  spent    in   the 


313 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


nursery,  and  Prince  George's  mind  was 
formed  from  earliest  infancy  under  the 
spell  of  her  charm  and  merriment.  To  her, 
as  also  to  the  memory  of  his  father,  he 
remained  devoted  throughout  life. 

An  intellectual  circle  it  was  not,  neither 
did  the  arts  find  place  within  the  sphere 
of  its  interests,  beyond  a  certain  pro- 
ficiency at  the  piano  on  the  part  of  the 
mother.  But  all  the  ingredients  for  happi- 
ness were  there,  the  family  was  sufficiently 
numerous  to  mitigate  the  disadvantages 
of  isolation,  and  with  the  simple  pleasures 
of  childhood  the  early  years  passed  in  un- 
eventful contentment.  No  undue  stress 
was  laid  upon  book-learning,  of  which  in 
his  youth  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  received 
a  surfeit.  They  lived  while  in  London  at 
Marlborough  House;  their  seaside  visits 
were  based  upon  Osborne  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight ;  August  and  September  would  find 
them  at  Abergeldie  adjoining  the  Balmoral 
estate  in  Scotland.  But  for  the  most  part 
it  was  Sandringham  House  in  Norfolk  that 
they  regarded  as  home,  the  house  which 
his  father  had  built  and  for  which  King 
George  himself  all  his  life  retained  a  par- 
ticular affection.  Here  in  an  extensive 
domain  of  heath  and  pine  in  the  bracing 
east  coast  air  they  roamed  and  played 
and  rode,  leading  the  normal  country  life 
of  the  days  before  motors,  sharing  the 
pride  of  other  Norfolk  families  in  their 
county  and  their  home. 

Within  the  family  circle  Prince  George 
was  distinguished  by  an  irrepressible  fund 
of  spirits:  'so  affectionate,  though  some- 
times rather  naughty',  as  Queen  Victoria 
noted  in  her  diary.  In  later  years  he  would 
credit  his  youthful  self  with  a  hot  temper, 
the  germ  perhaps  of  that  occasional  irasci- 
bility which  marked  his  nature  without 
disguising  the  essential  kindliness  beneath. 
He  showed  from  the  first  more  character 
than  his  elder  brother.  His  open  manner 
and  twinkling  eye  brought  him  in  boyhood 
friendships  that  endured  through  life. 
With  the  same  loyalty  he  retained  an 
abiding  affection  for  the  Rev.  John  Neale 
Dalton,  his  tutor  between  the  ages  of  six  and 
eighteen.  Dalton  left  to  become  a  canon 
of  Windsor;  his  death  in  1931  terminated 
an  unbroken  intimacy  of  sixty  years. 

At  the  age  of  twelve  (1877)  Prince 
George,  together  with  his  brother,  joined 
the  old  wooden  training  ship  Britannia  at 
Dartmouth  as  a  naval  cadet.  Younger 
than  his  fellows  (indeed  the  youngest 
cadet  ever  admitted)  and  small  even  for 
his  age,  he  underwent  the  full  curriculum, 
in  addition  to  further  instruction  in  the 


hmnanities  from  Dalton  who  continued 
in  attendance  as  tutor.  The  brothers  were 
allowed  to  share  a  special  cabin,  but  their 
only  other  distinction,  as  the  King  was 
wont  to  recall  in  later  years,  was  that  their 
services  were  at  the  command  of  all  who 
desired  a  princely  fag.  Thus  with  the 
theory  of  navigation  the  future  Prince  of 
Wales  acquired  the  practice  of  Ich  Dien. 
To  the  seamanship  he  took  kindly  from 
the  first,  enjoying  in  particular  the  hand- 
ling of  a  boat,  in  which  sphere  later  on  his 
proficiency  was  to  become  marked. 

After  the  prescribed  course  of  two  years 
the  brothers  passed  out  in  the  siunmer  of 
1879.  Prince  George,  whose  nature  always 
responded  to  the  call  of  the  sea,  had  already 
set  his  heart  upon  a  naval  career,  and  this 
aspiration  found  favour  both  with  his 
father  and  the  Queen.  Both  brothers  were 
posted  in  August  to  the  Bacchante,  a 
fully -rigged  cruiser-corvette  with  auxiliary 
engines  and  a  complement  of  four  hundred 
and  fifty.  This  proved  to  be  their  home  for 
the  next  three  years.  In  it  they  first  made 
an  eight  months'  cruise  to  the  West  Indies 
by  way  of  Gibraltar  and  a  preliminary 
excursion  into  the  Mediterranean.  Prince 
Eddy's  sixteenth  birthday  was  celebrated 
when  they  were  at  Port  of  Spain,  Trinidad 
(8  January  1880) ;  the  occasion  was  marked 
by  their  being  both  rated  as  midshipmen. 
This  brought  them  level  with  two  of  King 
George's  lifelong  friends  among  their  ship- 
mates, John  Scott  (later  seventh  Duke  of 
Buccleuch)  and  Rosslyn  Wemyss  (later 
Lord  Wester  Wemyss,  q.v.)  who  was 
destined  to  rise  to  the  top  of  his  profession. 

From  this  short  cruise  the  princes  re- 
turned in  May  1880.  After  two  months' 
leave  they  set  off  again  in  the  Bacchante, 
which  was  now  to  form  part  of  a  flying 
squadron  of  five  ships  of  the  line  detached 
for  an  extended  training  cruise  round  the 
Horn  to  Vancouver  and  thence  to  China 
and  Japan,  the  passages  being  made  largely 
under  sail.  Dalton  accompanied  them  as 
governor,  being  entered  on  the  ship's 
books  as  acting  chaplain;  and  he  it  was 
who  subsequently  edited  from  the  princes' 
diaries  and  letters  two  ponderous  volumes, 
published  in  1886,  entitled  The  Cruise  of 
H.M.S.  'Bacchante'  1879-1882.  In  the 
course  of  some  1,500  pages  every  detail 
of  both  cruises  is  recorded,  together 
with  a  mass  of  interesting  information 
about  the  topography  and  development 
of  the  places  visited ;  but  the  work  is  con- 
ceived in  so  improving  a  style  as  to  iron 
out  all  traces  of  individuality  in  the  two 
princes. 


3U 


D.N.B.  1931-1040 


George  V 


The  squadron  assembled  off  Vigo, 
whence  on  31  October  (1880)  course  was 
set  for  the  River  Plate ;  Monte  Video  was 
reached  on  22  December.  Resuming  the 
cruise  on  19  January  (1881)  they  reached 
the  Falkland  Islands  on  the  24th.  Here 
they  were  intercepted  by  a  signal  from 
home  bidding  them  abandon  the  projected 
passage  to  the  Pacific  and  sail  instead  to 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  there  to  show  the 
flag  at  a  moment  when  British  prestige  in 
South  Africa  was  at  a  low  ebb.  They 
accomplished  this  4,000-mile  voyage  in 
three  weeks,  arriving  at  the  Cape  on 
16  February,  eleven  days  before  the  third 
successive  humiliation  inflicted  by  the 
Boers  upon  the  British,  at  Majuba  Hill. 

The  squadron  was  not  in  the  event 
called  upon  to  land  a  force.  On  9  April  it 
sailed  once  more,  this  time  on  a  5,000-mile 
trip  across  the  Indian  Ocean  to  Australia. 
Visits  were  paid  to  Albany  (15  May), 
Adelaide,  Melbourne,  Ballarat  (where  the 
brothers  descended  a  gold  mine),  Sydney, 
and  Brisbane.  They  left  the  shores  of 
Australia  on  20  August  with  regret  after 
enjoying  the  hospitality  of  its  inhabitants 
for  three  months.  They  now  set  off  for 
Fiji,  where  they  passed  a  week  (3-9  Sep- 
tember) before  embarking  on  another 
voyage  of  4,000  miles  to  Japan.  Yoko- 
hama was  reached  on  21  October,  and 
after  a  month  in  the  country  they  crossed 
to  Shanghai  (22  November)  and  thence 
passed  down  the  coast  to  Hong-Kong 
(20  December),  and  so  to  Singapore 
(9  January  1882).  Returning  by  Colombo 
to  Suez  (1  March),  they  were  able  to  enjoy 
a  month's  sightseeing  in  Egypt,  after 
which  they  crossed  to  Jaffa  (28  March) 
and  made  their  way  on  horseback  through 
the  Holy  Land,  covering  thus  close  on 
600  miles  in  the  course  of  six  weeks.  On 
6  May  they  rejoined  the  Bacchante  at 
Beirut  and  crossed  to  Athens,  where  for 
ten  days  the  brothers  were  the  guests  of 
their  maternal  uncle.  King  George  of  the 
Hellenes,  before  returning  home  through 
the  Mediterranean. 

Immediately  upon  their  return  to  Ports- 
mouth both  princes  were  confirmed  by 
Archbishop  Tait  in  Whippingham  church 
(8  August)  in  the  presence  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria. Exactly  three  years  had  passed 
since  she  had  taken  leave  of  Prince  George, 
then  a  child  of  fourteen.  Now  at  seven- 
teen he  was  on  the  threshold  of  manhood, 
more  travelled  by  far  than  his  father  at 
forty ;  incomparably  more  so  than  herself 
at  sixty -three  or  than  any  of  her  prede- 
cessors on  the  throne.  Throughout  45,000 


miles  of  voyaging  he  had  shared  cheerfully 
and  unselfishly  in  the  hard  fare  and  ardu- 
ous duties  of  a  yoimg  officer  at  sea,  in 
standards  of  comfort  which  would  now  be 
regarded  as  primitive.  He  had  measured 
himself  against  the  responsibihty  of  every 
junior  officer  for  the  hves  of  the  men  in 
his  cutter.  When  the  journey  had  first 
been  mooted  the  Queen  had  noted  (Diary, 
15  May  1879):  'Mr.  Smith  and  others  are 
afraid  lest  something  might  happen  if 
both  boys  went':  her  will  had  prevailed, 
but  something  very  nearly  had  happened 
when  the  Bacchante  narrowly  escaped  ship- 
wreck in  a  storm  off  Southern  Australia. 
From  the  first  the  understanding  had  been 
(Diar>',  7  February  1877)  that  'Georgie 
should  only  enter  the  Navy  if  he  liked  it'. 
Now  he  had  tasted  the  salty  life  of  the  sea 
and  found  it  good. 

For  the  next  year  Prince  George  re- 
mained ashore.  After  a  holiday,  of  which 
the  most  enjoyable  part  was  the  shooting 
at  Abergeldie,  the  two  brothers  were  taken 
to  Lausanne  in  order  to  improve  their 
French.  Upon  their  return  in  the  follow- 
ing June  (1883)  their  ways  parted:  the 
elder  entered  the  army;  the  younger, 
bereft  of  Dalton's  affectionate  tutelage, 
joined  the  corvette  Canada  for  service  on 
the  North  America  station.  Her  captain, 
Francis  Durrant,  became  his  governor  and 
remained  his  friend.  He  stayed  with  his 
aunt  Princess  Louise,  whose  husband  (the 
Marquess  of  Lome)  [qq.v.]  was  governor- 
general  of  Canada ;  and  a  visit  to  Niagara 
just  warranted  the  modest  claim  made  in 
later  years  that  he  had  set  foot  on  the  soil 
of  the  United  States  of  America.  Before 
his  return  to  England  in  July  1884  he  had 
visited  his  future  dominions  in  the  West 
Indies  for  the  second  time.  On  his  nine- 
teenth birthday  (3  June  1884)  he  had  been 
promoted  sub-lieutenant,  and  on  4  August 
he  was  invested  with  the  Order  of  the 
Garter  by  Queen  Victoria  at  Osborne. 

In  September  Prince  George  joined  the 
Royal  Naval  College  at  Greenwich,  'where 
the  work  is  very  hard ;  nine  hours  a  day ' 
(Queen's  diary,  7  December).  After  six 
months  he  secured  a  first  class  in  seaman- 
ship, gvmnery,  and  torpedo  work,  and  he 
next  proceeded  to  Portsmouth  for  his 
course  in  pflotage.  Here,  as  in  the  Britan- 
nia, his  advancement  owed  Uttle  to  his 
august  station,  for  Captain  (afterwards 
Admiral  of  the  Fleet  Lord)  Fisher  wrote : 
'Prince  George  only  lost  his  first  class  at 
Pilotage  by  20  marks.  The  yarn  is  that  one 
of  his  examiners,  an  old  salt-horse  sailor, 
didn't  think  it  would  do  to  let  him  fancy 


815 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


he  knew  all  about  it.'  These  obstacles 
negotiated,  he  was  promoted  lieutenant. 

To  his  satisfaction  Prince  George  was 
now  appointed  as  fifth  lieutenant  to  the 
Thunderer,  under  Captain  (Sir)  Henry 
Stephenson,  whom  he  had  known  all  his 
life,  as  equerry  to  his  father,  as  captain  of 
the  royal  yacht,  and  as  captain  of  a  ship 
accompanying  the  Bacchante  on  her  long 
cruise.  To  him  the  Prince  gave  unstinted 
loyalty  and  devoted  service,  and  from  him 
he  received  in  return  disinterested  counsel 
in  the  spirit  of  the  father's  dictum,  'you 
can  do  him  no  greater  service  than  being 
very  strict  with  him'. 

Prince  George  remained  until  November 
1888  on  the  Mediterranean  station,  where 
his  uncle  Prince  Alfred,  Duke  of  Edinburgh 
[q.v.],  was  commander-in-chief.  At  the 
jubilee  Queen  Victoria  appointed  him  her 
personal  naval  aide-de-camp  on  21  June 
1887.  He  was  in  London  for  this  occasion, 
and  again  on  1  June  1889  when  he  received 
the  freedom  of  the  City  at  Guildhall.  A 
month  later  he  attained  his  first  indepen- 
dent command  on  commissioning  torpedo 
boat  No.  79.  In  May  1890  he  was  advanced 
to  the  command  of  a  gunboat  of  the  first 
class,  the  Thrush,  which  he  at  once  took 
across  the  Atlantic  to  Montreal  after  tow- 
ing a  torpedo  boat  out  to  Gibraltar  on 
the  way.  Still  a  lieutenant,  he  brought  his 
ship  home  in  the  following  year  and  was 
promoted  commander  in  August  1891  on 
paying  her  off. 

Although  he  commanded  the  cruiser 
Melampus  in  the  autumn  manoeuvres  of 
1892,  the  curtain  had  now  fallen  on  Prince 
George's  cherished  naval  career,  save  for 
a  brief  reappearance  in  1898  when  he  took 
the  first-class  cruiser  Crescent  for  a  three 
months'  cruise.  A  stroke  of  fate,  as  cala- 
mitous at  the  time  as  it  proved  fortunate 
in  the  event,  substituted  for  the  career  of 
his  choice  the  prospect  of  a  lifelong  burden 
which  few  would  choose.  On  14  January 
1892  the  Duke  of  Clarence  died  of  pneu- 
monia. Overnight  Prince  George  found 
himself  second  in  succession  to  the  throne. 

The  death  of  his  brother  fell  like  a  ham- 
mer-blow upon  Prince  George.  For  the 
first  eighteen  years  of  his  life  he  had  hardly 
been  separated  for  a  day  from  Prince  Eddy, 
with  whom  he  had  shared  a  community  of 
interest  both  within  the  circle  of  a  singu- 
larly united  family  and  in  the  turbulent 
days  of  their  first  introduction  to  naval 
life.  He  was  himself  only  just  recuperating 
from  typhoid  fever.  While  he  had  still  been 
confined  to  bed  the  betrothal  had  been 
announced  between  the  Duke  of  Clarence 


and  their  cousin,  Princess  Victoria  Mary 
(May)  of  Teck.  Six  weeks  later  the  Duke 
had  in  turn  fallen  ill,  and  within  six  days 
had  died. 

In  the  Queen's  birthday  honours  hst 
(1892)  Prince  George  was  created  Duke  of 
York,  with  the  subsidiary  titles  of  Earl  of 
Inverness  and  Baron  Killarney.  He  was 
introduced  into  the  House  of  Lords  on 
17  June  by  his  father  and  his  uncle  the 
Duke  of  Connaught.  A  suite  of  apart- 
ments was  arranged  for  him  in  St.  James's 
Palace,  together  with  an  unpretentious 
cottage  in  the  grounds  of  Sandringham; 
to  these  the  appellations  York  House  and 
York  Cottage  were  respectively  assigned. 

The  next  year  (1893)  brought  him  to 
another  important  milestone,  his  betro- 
thal (3  May)  to  the  Princess  who  was  to  have 
been  his  sister-in-law.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  Prince  Francis  Paul  Charles  Louis  Alex- 
ander, Duke  of  Teck,  a  member  of  the 
royal  house  of  Wiirttemberg  long  resident 
in  England,  and  of  Princess  Mary  Adelaide 
Wilhelmina  Elizabeth  of  Cambridge, 
granddaughter  of  King  George  HI  and 
thus  first  cousin  to  Queen  Victoria.  The 
marriage  took  place  in  the  Chapel  Royal, 
St.  James's  Palace,  on  6  July.  'I  cannot 
say  how  pleased  I  am',  wrote  the  Queen 
to  her  daughter,  the  Empress  Frederick. 
'The  more  I  see  of  her  the  more  I  like 
her.  .  .  .  She  is  really  a  very  dear  good 
sensible  girl,  and  very  wise,  and  so  dis- 
tingude.  I  feel  very  happy  about  them.' 
This  union,  which  the  Queen  with  cha- 
racteristic discernment  had  commended, 
brought  to  the  future  King  the  greatest 
blessing  of  his  life.  Their  close  companion- 
ship, which  was  to  last  to  the  end  of  his 
reign,  exemplified  a  lofty  standard  of 
family  life  in  an  age  of  loosening  domestic 
ties;  and  his  Consort,  by  her  gentle  tact 
and  wisdom,  her  studied  detachment  from 
politics,  her  informed  interest  in  the  royal 
collections,  and  her  supreme  dignity  and 
presence,  was  destined  to  reveal  herself  to 
the  realm  and  empire  as  a  queen  of  stature 
rarely  equalled,  never  surpassed. 

The  seven  years  which  followed  were  to 
prove  the  quietest  period  that  the  Duke 
was  to  know.  In  November  1894  he  visited 
St.  Petersburg  for  the  funeral  of  his  uncle 
the  Emperor  Alexander  HI  (who  had 
married  the  Princess  of  Wales's  sister)  and 
the  wedding  of  his  ill-fated  successor 
Nicholas  II.  Between  the  latter  and  him- 
self there  was  a  startling  physical  resem- 
blance and  a  brotherly  affection ;  the  bride, 
moreover,  being  a  granddaughter  of  Queen 
Victoria,  was   also  his   first  cousin.    In 


I 


316 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


August  1897  and  again  in  April  1899  the 
Duke  and  Duchess  paid  visits  to  Ireland, 
where  they  were  received  with  enthusiasm. 
For  the  rest,  there  were  continual  engage- 
ments and  claims,  all  of  which  were  met 
with  cheerfulness.  Now,  as  ever,  the  Duke 
delighted  to  devote  his  leisure  to  various 
forms  of  outdoor  sport,  chief  among  them 
being  yachting  and  shooting.  During 
these  years  too  were  born  his  first  four 
children:  Prince  Edward,  later  King 
Edward  VIII  and  Duke  of  Windsor 
(23  June  1894) ;  Prince  Albert,  later  Duke 
of  York  and  King  George  VI  (14  December 
1895) ;  Princess  Mary,  later  Princess  Royal 
and  Countess  of  Harewood  (25  April  1897) ; 
and  Prince  Henry,  later  Duke  of  Glou- 
cester (31  March  1900);  to  these  were 
subsequently  added  a  further  two  sons: 
Prince  George,  later  Duke  of  Kent  (20 
December  1902),  who  was  killed  on  active 
service  25  August  1942 ;  and  Prince  John 
(12  July  1905)  who  died  18  January  1919. 

On  22  January  1901  the  death  of  Queen 
Victoria  brought  to  a  close  an  epoch  both 
in  time  and  in  social  outlook.  The  Duke 
now  became  Duke  of  Cornwall  as  of  right, 
and  eligible  for  the  Principality  of  Wales 
when  it  should  please  his  father  to  confer 
it  upon  him.  His  new  position  necessarily 
involved  an  increase  in  his  public  duties 
as  the  only  son  of  a  sexagenarian  king. 
Tension  between  sovereign  and  heir  neither 
began  nor  ended  in  the  Victorian  age ;  and 
a  comparison  between  the  dispositions  of 
King  Edward  VII  and  his  son  can  have 
afforded  little  hope  of  an  amelioration  in 
this  traditionally  uneasy  relationship .  But 
it  had  been  given  to  Queen  Alexandra  to 
forge  throughout  her  family  a  powerful 
bond  of  mutual  love,  and  she  was  now  to 
witness  its  happy  fulfilment.  Unlike  though 
they  were  in  disposition,  between  King 
Edward  VII  and  his  son  there  existed  on 
both  sides  a  degree  of  trust  and  affection 
rare  in  their  respective  stations,  and  not  a 
passing  cloud  disturbed  the  harmony  of 
their  intercourse  throughout  the  reign. 
Every  day  the  Prince  of  Wales  would 
discuss  current  topics  with  the  King ;  nor, 
after  his  own  accession,  did  a  day  pass 
without  its  recollection  of  a  father  to 
whose  memory  he  remained  jealously  de- 
voted to  the  end. 

The  outset  of  a  new  reign  involves 
changes  and  adjustments  in  the  royal 
household.  From  the  ensuing  redistribu- 
tion the  Duke  of  Cornwall  and  York  (as 
he  now  for  a  short  while  became)  drew  the 
services  of  Sir  Arthur  Bigge  (later  Lord 
Stamfordham,  q.v.),  and  an  association 


thus  began  which  was  to  end  only  with 
the  latter's  death  thirty  years  later.  Bigge 
had  served  a  fifteen  years'  apprenticeship 
under  Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  [q.v],  whom  in 
1895  he  had  succeeded  as  private  secre- 
tary to  Queen  Victoria.  He  thus  brought 
to  his  work  for  the  new  heir  to  the  throne 
an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  politics 
and  personalities  of  the  preceding  twenty 
years;  and  this  knowledge  of  affairs, 
coupled  with  a  selfless  devotion  and  an 
immense  capacity  for  work,  proved  an 
asset  to  his  master  of  which  it  is  impossible 
to  overestimate  the  importance.  King 
George's  household  was  at  all  times  a 
happy  and  efficient  structure,  reflecting 
his  perspicacity  in  the  right  choice  of  men : 
but  the  acquisition  of  Bigge  was  an  un- 
covenanted  stroke  of  fortune  which  the 
King  and  the  ministers  of  a  whole  genera- 
tion were  destined  to  bless. 

As  early  as  1893,  a  few  months  after  his 
marriage,  the  Duke  had  received  an  invita- 
tion from  the  various  colonies  in  Australia 
to  make  a  tour  in  those  parts,  and  the  New 
Zealand  government  had  raised  the  ques- 
tion afresh  after  the  diamond  jubilee  of 
1897.  For  his  part  he  would  willingly  have 
acceded,  but  various  circumstances  had 
operated  to  postpone  the  plan.  In  August 
1900,  however,  Queen  Victoria  had  signi- 
fied her  consent,  urged  thereto  by  an  im- 
portant development  in  the  structure  of 
the  empire  which  called  for  a  demon- 
stration of  her  imperial  interest.  On  18 
September  a  proclamation  was  issued 
in  London  announcing  that  from  New 
Year's  Day  1901  the  constituent  colonies 
in  Australia,  together  with  Tasmania, 
would  be  federated  into  a  single  imit:  it 
was  the  first  session  of  this  new  Common- 
wealth parUament  that  was  to  provide  the 
occasion  for  the  royal  tour.  Early  in  De- 
cember the  Queen  sanctioned  the  exten- 
sion of  the  itinerary  to  include  a  visit  to 
Canada.  Preparations  were  well  advanced 
when  the  Queen  died.  It  was  decided  that 
the  tour  should  take  place  as  planned,  but 
that  mourning  should  be  worn  and  festivi- 
ties correspondingly  curtailed. 

Leaving  Portsmouth  in  the  Ophir  on 
16  March  1901  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
followed  the  route  through  the  Mediter- 
ranean. At  Gibraltar  they  inspected  the 
embryo  harbour  works  then  under  con- 
struction and  the  subject  of  controversy 
at  home.  At  Malta  they  found  a  comfort- 
able assurance  of  security  in  the  fact  that 
no  land-battery  could  be  constructed  with- 
in a  range  of  sixty  miles:  nevertheless  a 
vigilant    Admiralty    was    experimenting 


317 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


with  the  new  Breiman  torpedo,  of  which 
a  demonstration  was  witnessed.  In  the 
words  of  Sir  Donald  Mackenzie  Wallace: 
'Whether  this  ingenious  instrument  would 
prove  a  formidable  weapon  in  real  warfare 
the  experts  alone  can  decide,  but  it  is 
certainly  a  very  pretty  toy  to  play  with 
in  time  of  peace.'  The  inconveniences  of 
distance  were  already  being  mitigated 
by  wireless  telegraphy,  which  enabled  a 
message  to  be  received  from  as  far  as  180 
miles  away  with  the  aid  of  a  ship  stationed 
midway ;  it  was  evident  that  it  might  pre- 
sently 'in  certain  circumstances  be  of 
enormous  assistance  to  the  navy'. 

After  calling  at  Suez  and  Aden  the  royal 
party  reached  Colombo  on  12  April,  and 
here  in  the  course  of  an  address  the  Duke 
first  alluded  to  the  need  for  increased  trade 
with  the  mother  country  which  was  to 
prove  the  keynote  of  his  observations 
throughout  the  tour.  Thence  they  pro- 
ceeded via  Singapore  to  call  for  the  second 
time  in  his  life  at  Albany,  Western  Aus- 
tralia, before  passing  along  the  southern 
coast  to  Melbourne.  Here  on  9  May,  amid 
scenes  of  the  greatest  enthusiasm,  he 
opened  parliament  in  the  Exhibition 
Building  in  the  presence  of  15,000  specta- 
tors. After  paying  tribute  to  the  sponta- 
neous participation  of  the  land  and  sea 
forces  of  Australia  in  the  South  African 
war,  he  expressed  the  King's  heartfelt 
satisfaction  and  thankfulness  for  the 
achievement  of  political  union  among  the 
Australian  colonies.  Here,  as  also  at  Bris- 
bane and  Sydney  which  they  next  visited, 
an  enthusiastic  ovation  was  accorded 
them,  and  the  Duchess  won  all  hearts  by 
her  simple  dignity  and  practical  interest 
in  all  that  they  were  shown.  From  Sydney 
they  crossed  to  New  Zealand,  where  parti- 
cular attention  was  devoted  to  the  welfare 
of  the  Maori  population.  On  the  return 
journey  calls  were  made  at  Hobart  and 
Adelaide ;  and  so  across  the  Indian  Ocean 
to  Mauritius  and  Durban.  At  Pieter- 
maritzburg  the  Duke  held  a  military  in- 
vestiture in  the  presence  of  Lord  Kitchener, 
then  conducting  the  final  stages  of  the 
South  African  war. 

After  calling  at  Cape  Town  course  was 
set  across  the  Atlantic  for  Quebec,  where 
the  Duke  and  Duchess  landed  on  16  Sep- 
tember. In  the  course  of  the  ensuing  five 
weeks  they  crossed  and  recrossed  Canada 
in  a  train  specially  built  by  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway,  making  many  stops  on 
the  way.  In  a  series  of  felicitous  speeches 
the  Duke  thanked  the  Canadian  people  for 
the  timely  help  accorded  to  the  home 


country  in  her  hour  of  need,  and  was  once 
more  impressed  by  the  fervent  loyalty  to 
the  throne  which  he  had  observed  on  his 
first  visit  eighteen  years  earUer. 

Leaving  Newfoundland  on  25  October, 
the  Duke  was  received  at  Portsmouth  by 
the  King  on  1  November  and  experienced 
the  joy  of  seeing  his  children  once  more. 
It  had  not  been  easy  for  the  King  to  spare 
his  services  for  so  long  a  period  at  a  time 
when  only  the  Duke  of  Connaught  was 
available  to  assist  in  the  functions  in- 
separable from  the  opening  of  a  new  reign. 
In  a  letter  written  on  his  sixtieth  birthday 
(9  November)  King  Edward  wrote  to  his 
son:  'In  creating  you  to-day  Prince  of 
Wales  and  Earl  of  Chester  I  am  not  only 
conferring  on  you  ancient  titles  which  I 
bore  for  upwards  of  59  years,  but  I  wish 
to  mark  my  appreciation  of  the  admirable 
manner  in  which  you  carried  out  the  ardu- 
ous duties  to  the  Colonies  which  I  entrusted 
you  with.  I  have  but  little  doubt  that  they 
will  bear  good  fruit  in  the  future  and  knit 
the  Colonies  more  than  ever  to  the  Mother 
Country.  God  bless  you,  my  dear  boy, 
and  I  know  I  can  always  count  on  your 
support  and  assistance  in  the  heavy  duties 
and  responsible  position  I  now  occupy.' 

On  5  December,  in  the  course  of  a 
memorable  speech  at  Guildhall,  the  Prince 
of  Wales  paid  tribute  to  the  intense  loyalty 
which  animated  the  inhabitants  of  the 
territories  which  he  had  visited ;  and  with 
this  loyalty,  he  said,  were  evidences  of 
their  readiness  to  share  the  burden  and 
responsibility  of  membership  of  the  Em- 
pire. In  a  passage  which  attained  world- 
wide attention  he  then  spoke  of  'the 
impression  that  seems  generally  to  prevail 
among  our  brethren  across  the  seas,  that 
the  old  country  must  wake  up  if  she  in- 
tends to  maintain  her  old  position  of  pre- 
eminence in  her  colonial  trade  against 
foreign  competitors'. 

During  the  nine  years  of  his  father's 
reign  the  Prince  of  Wales  devoted  himself 
to  the  public  duties  incumbent  upon  the 
heir  to  the  throne.  He  was  now  the  only 
son,  and  the  Duke  of  Connaught  was 
still  pursuing  a  distinguished  military 
career,  largely  overseas.  Active  and  intel- 
ligent though  King  Edward  VII  was,  he 
was  no  longer  young;  moreover,  he  was 
in  the  habit  of  passing  a  quarter  of  the 
year  on  the  continent.  In  political  affairs 
the  Prince  had  much  to  learn.  The  King, 
his  own  experience  fresh  in  his  mind,  saw 
to  it  that  state  papers  were  at  his  son's 
disposal :  ministers  would  come  to  see  him, 
and  he  formed  the  habit  of  listening 


I 


818 


:toS 

J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


George  V 


debates  in  both  Houses.  How  great 
was  his  debt  during  these  formative  years 
to  the  sage  and  experienced  Bigge  he 
acknowledged  at  Christmas  1907  in  a 
letter  which  does  credit  to  both:  'I  was 
much  touched  by  your  kind  letter  received 
this  morning.  You  have  nothing  to  thank 
us  for,  it  is  all  the  other  way.  I  fear  some- 
times I  have  lost  my  temper  with  you,  and 
often  been  very  rude,  but  I  am  sure  you 
know  me  well  enough  by  now  to  know 
that  I  did  not  mean  it.  .  .  .  For  all  these 
past  services  I  offer  you  my  thanks  from 
the  bottom  of  my  heart.  I  am  a  bad  hand 
at  saying  what  I  feel,  but  I  thank  God  I 
have  a  friend  like  you.' 

The  Prince  lived  during  these  years  at 
Marlborough  House  when  in  London.  For 
country  retreats  he  had  Frogmore  House 
in  the  Home  Park  at  Windsor,  Abergeldie 
Castle  near  Balmoral,  and  York  Cottage 
at  Sandringham — always  his  favourite 
home.  Here  through  many  a  winter  day 
he  perfected  his  shooting,  the  sport  at 
which  he  early  reached  and  long  retained 
pre-eminence.  In  these  middle  years  too 
he  sometimes  fished,  occasionally  rode  to 
hounds,  and  often  played  golf  and  lawn 
tennis.  Cricket  and  football  he  always 
enjoyed  as  a  spectator.  But  above  all  he 
delighted  in  sailing  his  famous  yacht 
Britannia,  the  closely  contested  supremacy 
of  which  he  noted  with  statistical  pride  in 
his  diary.  Long  experience,  coupled  with  an 
Englishman's  love  of  the  sea,  had  wrought 
in  him  the  ideal  yachtsman,  and  he  revelled 
in  a  sport  in  which  he  did  not  need  the 
advice  of  any  man.  For  indoor  recreation 
he  relied  upon  his  lifelong  interest  in  the 
postage  stamps  of  the  British  Empire. 
Here,  as  with  shooting  and  yachting,  he 
was  an  expert  in  his  own  right,  his  know- 
ledge in  this  specialized  field  being  scienti- 
fic and  detailed.  It  remained  his  hobby 
until  the  end  of  his  life  and  served  as  a 
relief  from  the  cares  of  state,  particularly 
during  the  years  of  war.  Thus,  whether 
indoors  or  out,  he  was  as  amply  furnished 
with  internal  resources  as  most  men,  and 
this  boon  contributed  not  a  little  to  his 
buoyancy  of  spirits  in  a  position  neces- 
sarily lonely. 

As  Prince  of  Wales  he  paid  several  visits 
to  the  courts  of  Europe,  spent  twelve  days 
in  Ireland  in  January  1905,  and  enjoyed 
yet  another  visit  to  Canada  in  July  1908. 
But  his  most  important  overseas  under- 
taking was  the  tour  which  he  and  the 
Princess  carried  out  in  India  under  the 
guidance  of  Sir  Walter  Lawrence  [q.v.]  in 
the  winter  of  1905-1906.  Reaching  Bom- 


bay in  the  Renown  on  9  November  they 
were  immediately  involved  in  a  series  of 
visits  which  took  them  from  the  Khyber 
Pass  to  Rangoon  and  Mandalay,  across  by 
sea  to  Madras  and  up  to  the  Afghan  fron- 
tier again  before  re-embarking  at  Karachi 
on  19  March.  As  the  guest  of  Lord 
Kitchener  the  Prince  had  followed  the 
course  of  the  manoeu^Tes  in  the  Frontier 
country:  'Lord  Kitchener  is  a  perfect 
host',  he  wrote  in  his  diary;  'I  have  the 
greatest  admiration  for  him  as  a  strong 
man  and  a  good  soldier.'  He  enjoyed  the 
four  and  a  half  months  of  this  visit,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  formed  lasting  friend- 
ships and  laid  the  foundation  of  that  pride 
and  affection  which  always  marked  his 
references  to  India  and  its  inhabitants. 

The  death  of  King  Edward  VII  on 
6  May  1910  was  an  overwhelming  sorrow 
which  the  pressure  of  immediate  events 
was  powerless  to  alleviate.  The  funeral 
on  the  20th  was  attended  by  the  rulers  of 
Norway,  Denmark,  Belgium,  Germany, 
Spain,  Portugal,  Greece,  and  Bulgaria.  As 
they  dispersed  to  their  countries  (from 
which  all  but  the  first  three  were  destined 
to  be  evicted)  it  was  in  no  cheerful  spirit 
that  the  new  King  turned  to  face  responsi- 
bilities which  he  had  never  sought.  The 
political  climate  was  such  as  to  tax  even 
his  experienced  and  popular  father:  he 
felt  himself  alone,  ill-equipped  to  handle 
a  complex  situation,  and  little  known  to 
his  four  hundred  million  subjects.  He  was, 
moreover,  vexed  by  the  circulation  of  a 
story  concerning  his  alleged  marriage  in 
1890  to  a  lady  in  Malta,  a  criminal  libel 
which  brought  the  maximum  term  of  im- 
prisonment to  its  utterer  on  1  February 
1911.  It  was  a  strange  charge  to  bring 
against  a  sovereign  of  unimpeachable  vir- 
tue, whose  crowning  benediction  was  a 
happy  domestic  life. 

For  the  first  twelve  months  of  his  reign 
the  King  was  sufficiently  occupied  in  ac- 
quiring the  habit  of  sovereignty.  There 
were  political  problems  to  master,  acquain- 
tances to  be  made,  rulings  to  be  given 
upon  domestic  rearrangements.  For  these 
purposes  he  welcomed  the  respite  from 
public  and  social  functions  which  the  long 
term  of  public  mourning  afforded.  But 
the  midsummer  pomps  of  1911  were  the 
prelude  to  a  period  of  activity.  The  corona- 
tion ceremony  in  Westminster  Abbey  on 
22  June  was  a  triumph  of  careful  prepara- 
tion. Its  pageantry  and  ritual  made  a 
profound  impression  upon  all,  and  not 
least  upon  the  central  figure,  who  was 
touched  to  deep  emotion  by  the  solemnity 


319 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  the  occasion  and  heartened  by  the  be- 
wildering ovations  of  his  crowded  capital. 
In  the  following  week  Their  Majesties 
carried  out  two  pubUc  drives  through 
London,  attended  a  thanksgiving  service 
at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  gave  a  party  at 
the  Crystal  Palace  to  100,000  London 
schoolchildren,  and  reviewed  at  Spithead 
the  largest  naval  fleet  ever  assembled.  A 
fortnight  after  the  coronation  the  King 
and  Queen  set  out  for  Dublin,  where  they 
were  accorded  an  enthusiastic  reception 
during  a  five-day  visit.  Recrossing  to 
Wales,  they  spent  a  similar  period  in  the 
Principality,  their  most  memorable  func- 
tion being  the  investiture  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  at  Carnarvon  Castle  on  13  July: 
'the  dear  boy  did  it  all  remarkably  well 
and  looked  so  nice',  the  King  recorded  in 
his  diary.  From  Wales  they  passed  on  to 
Holyrood,  there  to  be  greeted  by  the 
plaudits  of  loyal  Scottish  subjects. 

Back  in  London,  at  a  time  of  strong 
political  ferment,  the  King's  thoughts 
were  engaged  upon  the  state  visit  to  his 
Indian  Empire  upon  which  he  had  set  his 
heart.  On  11  November  1911  he  set  out 
from  Portsmouth  with  the  Queen  in  the 
Medina,  escorted  by  four  cruisers,  and 
with  this  flotilla  (containing  little  short  of 
4,000  officers  and  men)  arrived  at  Bombay 
on  2  December.  At  the  ancient  capital  of 
Delhi  he  was  accommodated  in  an  enor- 
mous camp  of  40,000  tents,  and  here  as 
King  Emperor  he  held  on  the  12th  a  state 
Durbar  of  matchless  magnificence.  With 
his  coronation  robes  he  wore  a  crown  of 
diamonds  provided  by  the  Indian  govern- 
ment in  order  to  obviate  the  necessity  of 
transporting  the  traditional  regalia  over- 
seas. Enthroned  upon  a  platform  set  in 
a  spacious  amphitheatre.  His  Majesty  re- 
ceived the  homage  of  the  ruling  princes 
and  British  governors,  and  announced  the 
substantial  boons  customary  upon  such 
occasions.  He  then  made  a  dramatic 
announcement,  the  secret  of  which  had 
been  well  kept.  Speaking  in  a  clear  voice 
he  declared  that  the  seat  of  government 
was  to  be  transferred  from  Calcutta  to 
Delhi  and  that  there  was  to  be  established 
a  governorship  of  Bengal  similar  to  those 
of  Madras  and  Bombay. 

These  ceremonies  concluded,  the  King 
turned  to  the  enjoyment  of  ten  days'  tiger 
shooting  in  Nepal,  after  which  he  'took 
leave  of  the  kind  Maharajah,  his  sons  and 
all  his  people,  with  much  regret.  They 
have  spoilt  us  with  kindness  and  given  us 
the  best  sport  in  the  world.'  Their  Majes- 
ties spent  nine  days  in  Calcutta  before 


re-embarking  at  Bombay  on  10  January 
1912.  How  much  this  visit  had  meant 
to  the  King  is  clear  from  his  diary : '  To-day 
I  regret  to  say  is  our  last  day  in  India. 
The  Legislative  Council  presented  an 
address  of  farewell.  I  quite  broke  down 
in  reading  my  answer.  .  .  .  Our  second 
visit  to  India  is  now  over  and  we  can  thank 
God  that  it  has  been  an  unqualified  success 
from  first  to  last.  It  was  entirely  my  own 
idea  to  hold  the  Coronation  Durbar  at 
Delhi  in  person,  and  at  first  I  met  with 
much  opposition.  But  the  result  has 
hope  been  more  than  satisfactory  and  has 
surpassed  all  expectations.  I  am  vain 
enough  to  think  that  our  visit  will  have 
done  good  in  India.  We  have  been  fully 
repaid  for  our  long  journey.' 

The  King,  in  assuming  the  troubled  in 
heritance  bequeathed  to  him  by  his  father, 
had  found  himself  immediately  confronted 
with  a  constitutional  crisis  of  the  gravest 
character.  In  order  to  meet  the  cost  of 
the  old  age  pensions  and  the  increased 
estimates  necessitated  by  the  threat  o1 
German  naval  competition,  the  liber; 
government  had  been  faced  with  the  tas! 
of  levying  additional  taxation.  The  budget 
of  1909  had  consequently  raised  the 
income-tax  from  Is.  to  Is.  2c?.  and  imposed 
a  novel  supertax  of  6c?.,  together  with 
certain  land  taxes.  The  House  of  Lords, 
which  had  not  endeared  itself  to  the 
Commons  by  rejecting  several  of  their 
proposed  measures  of  reform,  on  30  Nov- 
ember had  taken  the  unprecedented  step 
of  throwing  out  the  budget  in  toto,  thus 
setting  the  stage  for  a  trial  of  strength 
between  the  two  chambers.  The  issue  was 
barely  joined  before  the  throne  was  de- 
prived of  a  sovereign  of  exceptional  poU- 
tical  acumen,  and  a  crucial  responsibility 
devolved  upon  his  untried  and  inexperi- 
enced successor. 

The  new  King  was  unaware  that  within 
a  month  of  his  father's  death  important 
meetings  and  conversations  had  taken 
place  between  the  King's  private  secre- 
tary. Lord  KnoUys,  Archbishop  Davidson, 
Balfour,  and  Esher,  concerning  the  possi- 
bility of  King  Edward  being  pressed  by 
Asquith  to  give  a  contingent  guarantee 
for  the  creation  of  peers :  he  only  learned 
this  in  December  1913  [Royal  Archives, 
suh  Home  Rule  iii.  63].  But  it  was  known 
that  King  Edward  had  caused  an  intima- 
tion to  be  conveyed  by  KnoUys  (15  De- 
cember 1909)  that  in  no  event  would  he 
consent  to  an  ad  hoc  creation  until  after  a 
second  general  election,  in  which  the  issue 
should  have  been  placed  squarely  before 


820 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


the  people.  It  is  a  reasonable  inference, 
but  no  more,  that  had  the  condition  been 
fulfilled  and  the  need  arisen,  King  Edward 
would  not  have  withheld  the  use  of  his 
prerogative.  The  first  election  took  place 
immediately  upon  the  Lords'  rejection  of 
the  budget,  upon  the  text  that  the  Com- 
mons alone  were  to  control  finance  and 
that  any  non-financial  bill  sent  up  to  the 
Lords  in  three  successive  sessions  should 
receive  the  royal  assent.  With  this  man- 
date the  liberals  were  again  returned  to 
power  (28  January  1910)  with  a  majority 
reduced  from  335  to  the  still  effective 
figure  of  123.  The  Lords  now  (28  AprU) 
accepted  the  budget.  But  they  had  been 
playing  for  high  stakes  and  were  faced 
with  the  parliament  bill,  which  limited 
their  powers  for  the  future.  It  was  at  this 
juncture  (6  May)  that  King  Edward  died. 

In  the  political  truce  which  followed  it 
was  at  Asquith's  suggestion  that  the  ques- 
tion at  issue  was  referred  to  a  constitu- 
tional conference  consisting  of  four  liberals 
and  four  conservatives.  The  conference 
met  from  June  luitil  November  without 
achieving  agreement,  and  the  prime  minis- 
ter proceeded  to  fulfiil  the  condition  which 
the  late  King  had  postulated.  In  Decem- 
ber. 1910,  for  the  second  time  within  a 
twelvemonth,  the  country  was  once  more 
consulted,  and  again  returned  the  liberals, 
with  a  majority  of  125.  To  anticipate  the 
course  of  events  it  may  here  be  added  that 
on  10  August  1911,  in  an  atmosphere  of 
political  excitement  unsurpassed  in  modern 
times,  the  Lords  accepted  the  parliament 
bill  by  the  narrow  majority  of  seventeen 
votes. 

But  before  the  December  election  the 
new  King  had  been  placed  in  an  unenvi- 
able position.  Asquith  was  unexcelled  in 
the  use  of  language  at  once  precise  and 
enigmatic.  On  14  April  19 10  he  had  told  the 
House  of  Commons :  '  In  no  case  would  we 
recommend  dissolution  except  under  such 
conditions  as  will  ensure  that  in  the  new 
parliament  the  judgement  of  the  people  as 
expressed  in  the  election  will  be  carried 
into  law.'  On  11  November  he  explained 
the  political  situation  to  the  King,  point- 
ing out  that  should  the  Lords  remain 
obdurate  a  final  settlement  could  only  be 
brought  about  by  the  willingness  of  the 
Crown  to  exercise  its  prerogative.  He  told 
the  King  that  he  would  not  ask  for  any 
guarantees  before  the  election  [Roval 
Archives,  K.  2552  (2).  72] :  for  the  moment 
he  contented  himself  with  stating  the  case, 
and  left  it  for  consideration  [Spender  and 
Asquith,  vol.  i,  p.  296]. 


None  the  less,  five  days  later  Asquith 
and  Crewe  felt  constrained  to  seek  from 
the  King  at  Buckingham  Palace  (16  Nov- 
ember) a  secret  and  'hypothetical  under- 
standing' that  sufficient  peers  would  be 
created  should  need  arise  in  the  parliament 
that  was  yet  to  be  elected.  'His  Majesty 
said  that  his  only  wish  was  to  do  what  was 
right  and  constitutional  and  best  for  the 
coimtry  in  the  present  circumstances.  The 
King  then  felt  with  reluctance  that  it 
would  be  impossible  not  to  act  upon  their 
advice  and  therefore  agreed  to  the  under- 
standing' [Royal  Archives,  ut  sup.].  In 
the  carefully  chosen  words  of  Crewe 
(House  of  Lords,  8  August  1911),  'We 
ascertained  His  Majesty's  view  that,  if  the 
opinion  of  the  country  were  clearly  ascer- 
tained upon  the  parliament  bill,  in  the 
last  resort  a  creation  of  peers  might  be  the 
only  remedy,  and  might  be  the  only  way 
of  concluding  the  dispute.  His  Majesty 
faced  the  contingency  and  entertained  the 
suggestion  as  a  possible  one  with  natural, 
and  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  use  the 
phrase,  in  my  opinion  with  legitimate 
reluctance.  But  it  is  altogether  inaccu- 
rate, and  I  might  use  a  stronger  phrase, 
to  say  that  at  that  time  we  asked  His 
Majesty  for  guarantees.  The  whole  posi- 
tion was  obviously  hypothetical.' 

Shades  of  meaning  were  here  involved 
to  which  the  King's  mind  was  a  stranger. 
It  can  hardly  be  matter  for  surprise  that 
he  should  feel  that  he  was  being  expected 
to  underwrite  the  words  uttered  in  April 
by  the  prime  minister,  and  to  implement 
in  advance  the  construction  which  plain 
men  would  place  upon  them  in  the  con- 
stituencies. He  felt  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
that  he  might  have  been  trusted  to  take 
the  right  step  should  the  occasion  have 
arisen.  Asquith,  for  his  part,  held  the 
Crown  in  high  veneration:  as  the  case 
presented  itself  to  him  it  was  not  a  matter 
of  trusting  the  King,  but  of  coercing  the 
conservative  peers,  who  were  in  no  mood 
to  be  persuaded  though  one  rose  from  the 
dead.  Even  when  at  a  later  date  (18  July) 
the  secret  was  by  agreement  divulged, 
there  were  those  who  declined  to  believe 
that  the  sovereign  would  indeed  subject 
the  constitution  to  so  severe  a  strain. 

The  King  harboured  no  resentment 
either  against  Crewe,  who  remained  to 
the  end  one  of  his  closest  personal  friends, 
or  against  Asquith,  for  whom  he  reserved 
a  high,  if  watchful,  esteem.  When,  in  the 
hour  of  Asquith's  political  adversity,  the 
King,  of  his  own  mere  motion,  created  his 
former  prime  minister  one  of  the  now  less 


321 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


powerful  peers  (February  1925)  he  inter- 
preted with  characteristic  insight  the 
corporate  feehng  of  the  nation,  and  took 
a  personal  pleasure  in  doing  so. 

The  Parliament  Act,  in  drawing  the 
teeth  of  the  House  of  Lords,  created  for 
the  King  a  difficulty  unforeseen,  by  him 
at  any  rate,  at  the  time.  Its  preamble 
announced  the  intention  to  set  up  a  new 
second  chamber ;  but  since  this  could  not 
be  done  at  once  the  Act  made  provision 
for  restricting  the  powers  of  the  House  of 
Lords  in  the  meanwhile.  Although  not 
intended  to  affect  the  position  of  the  sove- 
reign, it  nevertheless  removed  the  first 
check  upon  the  operations  of  the  Com- 
mons ;  and  this  elimination  of  one  branch 
of  the  legislature  necessarily  increased  the 
responsibility  of  the  King  when  a  bill, 
thrice  rejected  by  the  upper  House,  came 
up  for  the  royal  assent.  No  longer  could 
the  Lords  force  a  dissolution,  even  in  the 
few  cases  where  they  had  that  power 
before  the  passing  of  the  Act ;  henceforth 
the  sovereign  alone  must  decide  whether  a 
bill  which  comes  from  a  single  chamber  is  of 
such  gravity  that,  with  all  the  attendant 
risks  of  bringing  the  Crown  into  party  poli- 
tics, an  appeal  to  the  country  against  the 
advice  of  his  ministers  would  be  justified. 

This  dilemma  was  not  long  in  making 
itself  felt.  Already  by  the  spring  of  1912 
preparations  of  a  military  nature  in  the 
province  of  Ulster  were  affording  grounds 
for  misgiving,  and  the  debates  which  fol- 
lowed the  introduction  of  the  home  rule 
bill  on  11  April  were  carried  on  in  an  atmo- 
sphere of  passion.  The  same  autumn 
(27  September)  Bonar  Law,  staying  at 
Balmoral,  took  occasion  to  indicate  the 
thankless  position  in  which  it  appeared 
that  the  King  woidd  find  himself.  The 
government,  he  argued,  admitted  its  re- 
sponsibility for  carrying  out  the  preamble 
of  the  Parliament  Act,  and  in  the  mean- 
while the  constitution  was  in  suspense :  it 
was  doubtful  whether  the  government  still 
had  the  support  of  the  country :  it  would 
once  more  rely  upon  the  exercise  of  the 
royal  prerogative  to  overcome  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  peers.  It  was  the  identical 
quandary  expressed  in  different  terms, 
and  it  seemed  that  the  King  would  again 
find  himself  compromised. 

The  home  rule  bill,  forced  through  the 
Commons  by  the  aid  of  the  closure  and 
the  support  of  the  Irish  and  labour  mem- 
bers, was  first  rejected  by  the  Lords  on 
13  January  1913.  Re-submitted,  it  was 
thrown  out  afresh  on  15  July.  Then 
followed  ten  months  during  which  the 


King  observed  with  dismay  a  worsening 
situation  in  which,  to  the  disorders  atten- 
dant upon  the  suffragette  menace,  it 
seemed  certain  that  an  uprising  in  Ireland 
was  to  be  added.  To  imagine  that  in  a 
time  of  crisis  it  is  the  ministers  alone  whc 
tender  advice  to  the  sovereign  would  be 
overlook  the  operations  of  the  Post  Offit 
and  the  press.  From  all  sides  he  was  urgec 
to  take  this  course  or  that :  to  dismiss 
ministers,  to  impose  a  dissolution,  tc 
demand  a  referendum,  to  issue  a  stat 
paper  defining  his  position  and  intentions^ 
to  grant  (or  alternatively  to  withhold)  thf 
royal  assent.  Whatever  the  nature  of  thd 
advice  there  was  evident  in  all  quarters 
recognition  of  his  impartiality,  a  desire 
safeguard  his  constitutional  position, 
disposition  to  seek  a  possible  solution,  an<j 
a  loyal  sympathy  in  the  dilenuna  in  whicl 
he  was  placed. 

His  course  was  not  made  easier  by  thd 
rosy  optimism  with  which  the  prime  minis^ 
ter  appeared  to  confront  the  rising  storm^ 
The  King  listened  with  inward  sympathj 
to  those  who  counselled  strong  action,  bu^ 
schooled  himself  in  the  exercise  of 
stronger  forbearance.  An  anxious  winter' 
gave  way  to  the  yet  more  vexed  summer 
of  1914,  and  still  his  voice  was  heard,  now 
by  one  leader  and  now  by  another,  urging 
patience  and  restraint  in  public  utterance, 
suggesting  fresh  lines  of  accommodation, 
a  renewal  of  private  negotiation,  con- 
cession here,  conciliation  there.  Whether 
Ireland  was  to  have  home  rule  or  not,  he 
had  told  Asquith  on  13  December,  was  for 
the  politicians  to  settle.  But  as  king  he 
held  that  it  was  his  duty  by  every  means 
in  his  power  to  prevent  the  outbreak  of 
civil  strife  in  any  part  of  his  kingdom; 
that  was  his  responsibility  and  he  should 
do  his  best  to  fulfil  it. 

Space  forbids  a  detailed  examination  of 
the  part  played  by  the  King  throughout 
the  long-drawn-out  crisis,  but  a  month, 
that  of  February  1914,  may  be  chosen  as 
a  sample.  On  the  2nd  Stamfordham  wrote 
a  letter  of  reassurance  on  the  King's  behalf 
to  Bonar  Law,  saying  that  His  Majesty 
was  not  so  pessimistic  as  he,  and  that  as 
to  any  special  communication  to  his  minis- 
ters the  King's  action  would  be  guided  by 
time  and  circumstance.  On  the  5th  the 
King  saw  Asquith  at  Windsor  and  had  a 
serious  conversation  about  possible  trouble 
in  the  army,  such  as  eventually  occurred 
at  the  Curragh,  and  repeated  that  he 
could  not  allow  bloodshed  among  his  loyal 
subjects  without  exerting  every  means  in 
his  power  to  avert  it.    On  the  11th  he 


322 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


wrote  personally  congratulating  Asquith 
upon  his  moderate  and  conciliatory  speech 
in  the  House.  On  the  12th  Stamfordham 
was  sent  to  ask  Asquith  whether  he 
thought  that  it  would  be  helpful  for  the 
King  to  urge  moderation  upon  Bonar  Law 
and  Sir  Edward  Carson  [q.v.]  in  entertain- 
ing the  government  proposals.  On  the 
20th  he  had  members  of  the  opposition  to 
dinner.  On  the  25th  Stamfordham  wrote 
on  his  behalf  to  Bonar  Law  regretting  the 
rasping  tone  of  his  speech  the  night  before ; 
and  on  the  following  day  to  Asquith  de- 
ploring the  acrimonious  nature  of  the 
debates.  On  the  27th  the  King  had  the 
members  of  the  government  to  dinner  and 
held  long  conversations  with  the  prime 
minister.  Next  morning  he  sent  Stam- 
fordham to  tell  Carson  that  His  Majesty 
had  delivered  to  Asquith  the  kindly  per- 
sonal messages  with  which  Carson  had 
entrusted  him;  that  Asquith  had  been 
touched  and  would  like  to  reopen  negotia- 
tions with  him ;  and  to  express  the  King's 
hope  that  Carson  would  refrain  from 
making  a  bitter  speech  on  the  following 
Tuesday.  And  so  it  went  on  for  month 
after  month,  the  King,  with  a  degree  of 
patience  formerly  to  seek  in  his  natural 
habit  of  mind,  propounding  every  means 
that  ingenuity  could  devise  for  effecting 
a  reconciliation. 

On  21  March,  after  a  number  of  officers 
at  the  Curragh  had  resigned  rather  than 
take  part  in  the  coercion  of  Ulster,  the 
King  addressed  to  the  prime  minister  a 
letter  of  sharp  protest  that  he  had  been 
left  to  learn  of  the  incident  from  the  public 
press  next  day.  It  was  not,  as  it  happened, 
Asquith's  fault;  and  it  proved  fortunate 
in  the  event  since  it  subsequently  cleared 
the  King  from  the  imputation  of  com- 
plicity which  in  the  heat  of  the  moment 
had  been  directed  against  him  in  certain 
quarters. 

On  1  May  the  King,  on  his  own  initia- 
tive, invited  Mr.  James  Lowther  (later 
Viscount  Ullswater)  to  Buckingham  Palace 
and  there  prevailed  upon  him  to  address 
to  the  prime  minister  an  offer  to  invite  the 
various  leaders  to  meet  under  his  presi- 
dency, as  Speaker,  with  a  view  to  arriving 
at  a  solution.  On  22  June  (Coronation 
Day)  the  King  wrote  a  personal  letter  to 
Asquith  recalling  to  his  memory  a  sentence 
in  the  message  which  he  had  addressed  to 
his  subjects  on  that  occasion  three  years 
previously.  'Whatever  perplexities  or 
difficulties  may  lie  before  me  and  my 
people',  he  had  then  written,  'we  shall 
all  unite  in  facing  them  resolutely,  calmly 


and  with  public  spirit,  confident  that 
under  Divine  guidance  the  ultimate  out- 
come may  be  to  the  common  good.'  'The 
perplexities  and  difficulties ',  he  now  wrote, 
'have  not  grown  less  with  time,  and  there 
is  greater  need  than  ever  that  they  should 
be  met  and  dealt  with  in  that  spirit  upon 
which  I  then  felt  I  could  confidently  de- 
pend. I  know  that  I  can  count  upon  your 
support  in  the  fulfilment  of  my  hopes  and 
prayers  of  three  years  ago.' 

The  prospect  of  a  conference  was  dis- 
cussed on  16  July  between  Stamfordham 
and  Asquith,  with  the  result  that  on  the 
following  day  the  latter  submitted  to  the 
King  a  request  that  he  might  be  allowed 
to  announce  that  His  Majesty  would  invite 
representatives  of  all  parties  to  Bucking- 
ham Palace  for  a  full  and  free  discussion 
of  the  outstanding  issues.  On  the  18th 
invitations  were  sent  by  Stamfordham  to 
Lansdowne  and  Bonar  Law,  Carson  and 
Craig,  Redmond  and  Dillon ;  Asquith  and 
Crewe  represented  the  government,  and  the 
Speaker  presided.  The  speech  with  which 
His  Majesty  welcomed  the  members  on 
the  21st  was  a  model  of  simple  eloquence. 
'For  months',  the  King  said,  'we  have 
watched  with  deep  misgivings  the  course 
of  events  in  Ireland.  The  trend  has  been 
surely  and  steadily  towards  an  appeal  to 
force,  and  to-day  the  cry  of  civil  war  is 
on  the  lips  of  the  most  responsible  and 
sober  minded  of  my  people.  We  have  in 
the  past  endeavoured  to  act  as  a  civilising 
example  to  the  world,  and  to  me  it  is 
unthinkable,  as  it  must  be  to  you,  that 
we  should  be  brought  to  the  brink  of  a 
fratricidal  war  upon  issues  apparently  so 
capable  of  adjustment  as  those  you  are 
now  asked  to  consider,  if  handled  in  a 
spirit  of  generous  compromise.  My  appre- 
hension in  contemplating  such  a  dire 
calamity  is  intensified  by  my  feelings  of 
attachment  to  Ireland  and  of  sympathy 
for  her  people  who  have  always  welcomed 
me  with  warmhearted  affection.  Gentle- 
men, you  represent  in  one  form  or  another 
the  vast  majority  of  my  subjects  at  home. 
You  also  have  a  deep  interest  in  my  Domi- 
nions overseas,  who  are  scarcely  less  con- 
cerned in  a  prompt  and  friendly  settlement 
of  this  question.  I  regard  you  then  in  this 
matter  as  trustees  for  the  honour  and 
peace  of  all.  Your  responsibilities  are  in- 
deed great.  The  time  is  short.  You  will 
I  know  employ  it  to  the  fullest  advantage 
and  be  patient,  earnest  and  conciliatory 
in  view  of  the  magnitude  of  the  issues  at 
stake.  I  pray  that  God  in  His  infinite 
wisdom  may  guide  your  deliberations  so 


828 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


that  they  may  result  in  the  joy  of  peace 
and  settlement.' 

These  hopes  were  not  to  be  fulfilled. 
After  four  meetings  the  conference  broke 
down  upon  a  point  insignificant  in  com- 
parison with  the  issues  involved.  But  the 
King  had  done  his  best ;  and  if  during  the 
lapse  of  valuable  time  the  forces  unleashed 
in  Ireland  had  become  too  strong  for  their 
leaders,  it  was  due  to  no  inactivity  on  his 
part.  Events  of  yet  greater  moment  super- 
vened to  avert  the  immediate  conse- 
quences, and  the  controversy  was  laid 
aside,  as  it  was  hoped,  for  the  duration  of 
the  European  war.  In  a  letter  to  the  King 
dated  17  September  Asquith  wrote:  'He 
hopes  he  may  be  allowed  to  express  his 
respectful  sympathy  with,  and  admiration 
of,  the  patience  and  the  strict  observance 
of  constitutional  practice,  together  with 
the  tact  and  judgment,  which  in  a  time 
of  exceptional  difficulty  and  anxiety.  Your 
Majesty  has  never  for  a  moment  failed  to 
exercise.' 

War  on  the  cosmic  scale  of  that  which 
was  now  about  to  break  out  involves  every 
citizen  in  strain  and  distress  from  which 
the  sovereign  is  not  immune.  The  rhythm 
of  his  work  is  intensified ;  the  inspection 
of  hospitals  brings  the  horror  of  the  con- 
flict continually  before  his  eyes;  he  is 
apprised  of  perils  without,  and  doubts  and 
dissensions  within,  of  which  his  subjects 
are  unaware.  But  from  the  constitutional 
point  of  view  war  provides  few  occasions 
for  the  intervention  of  a  king  who  finds 
himself  at  the  head  of  a  united  and  harmo- 
nious nation,  intent  upon  the  pursuit  of 
a  common  purpose.  For  months  King 
George  had  nursed  the  hope  that  agree- 
ment upon  the  Irish  question  would  have 
been  reached.  Patiently  he  had  studied 
the  timing  of  his  final  attempt  to  produce 
a  settlement.  Now,  when  his  conference 
had  failed,  it  could  hardly  be  otherwise 
than  with  a  sense  of  momentary  relief  that 
he  observed  the  dramatic  unfolding  of 
events.  Overnight  the  nation  which  had 
been  sliding  rapidly  into  disruption  and 
civil  war  had  braced  itself  to  meet  a  sterner 
issue,  standing  united  once  more  before 
the  threat  from  without. 

Of  its  implications  the  King  was  in  no 
doubt.  As  early  as  8  December  1912  he 
had  written  from  Sandringham  to  the 
foreign  secretary:  'My  dear  Grey,  Prince 
Henry  of  Prussia  paid  me  a  short  visit 
here  two  days  ago.  In  the  course  of  a  long 
conversation  with  regard  to  the  present 
European  situation,  he  asked  me  point 
blank,  whether  in  the  event  of  Austria  and 


Germany  going  to  war  with  Russia  and 
France,  England  would  come  to  the  assis- 
tance of  the  two  latter  powers.  I  answered 
undoubtedly  yes  under  certain  circum- 
stances. He  professed  surprise  and  regret 
but  did  not  ask  what  the  circumstances 
were.  He  said  he  would  tell  the  Emperor 
what  I  told  him.  Of  course  Germany  must 
know  that  we  could  not  allow  either  of  our 
friends  to  be  crippled.  I  think  it  is  only 
right  that  you  should  know  what  passed 
between  me  and  the  Emperor's  brother 
on  this  point.' 

Now,  on  26  July  1914,  the  day  on  which 
the  Admiralty  cancelled  leave  and  bade 
the  fleet  stand  by  at  Portland,  it  happened 
that  the  King  received  another  visit  from 
Prince  Henry,  then  on  a  holiday  in  England. 
At  that  moment  Belgivun  had  not  been 
invaded  and  the  Cabinet  was  working 
against  wind  and  tide  to  avert  a  European 
conflict.  The  King  told  the  prince  that 
England  still  hoped  not  to  be  drawn  in, 
and  the  Emperor,  to  whom  his  brother 
reported  the  conversation,  interpreted  it 
as  an  assurance  of  British  neutrality,  come 
what  might.  The  incident  is  dealt  with  in 
a  letter  from  Lord  Wigram  to  The  Times 
of  2  June  1938.  The  German  claim  subse- 
quently based  upon  the  interview  was 
demolished  by  the  archivist  of  the  House 
of  HohenzoUern,  Dr.  Kurt  Jagow,  in  the 
Berliner  Monatshefte  for  July-August  1938 
[see  The  Times,  30  June  1938,  under  'The 
Word  of  a  King',  with  leading  article]. 

Most  of  the  war  the  King  spent  at 
Buckingham  Palace,  visiting  Windsor  for 
a  month  at  Easter  and  six  weeks  in  the 
late  summer;  Balmoral  was  too  remote, 
but  at  times  he  enjoyed  a  few  days  at 
Sandringham,  occasionally  taking  out  his 
gun  to  shoot  game  which  he  sent  to  the 
hospitals.  Early  in  1915  he  made  a  gift 
to  the  Exchequer  of  £100,000,  an  example 
which  was  later  followed  by  others.  On 
6  April  1915  he  gave  orders  that  no  wine, 
spirits,  or  beer  should  be  consumed  in  the 
royal  household,  observing  a  like  abstin- 
ence himself;  and  from  February  1917 
strict  adherence  to  the  new  rationing 
regulations  was  imposed  throughout  the 
palace,  from  the  royal  table  downwards. 
The  war  had  not  long  started  when,  within 
the  space  of  little  more  than  a  week,  there 
fell  in  action  three  members  of  his  personal 
suite  to  whom  he  was  especially  devoted. 
Lord  Charles  Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Lord 
Crichton,  and  Lord  John  Hamilton,  to- 
gether with  his  first  cousin  Prince  Maurice 
of  Battenberg.  His  own  two  eldest  sons 
were  hostages  to  fortune,  the  Prince  of 


824 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


George  V 


Wales  in  the  army  from  the  outset,  Prince 

I  Albert  in  the  battle  of  Jutland  in  May 
1916.  The  removal  in  deference  to  an  un- 
reasoning popular  outcry  in  October  1914 
of  his  brilliant  cousin  by  marriage,  Prince 
Louis  of  Battenberg  (afterwards  Marquess 
of  Milford  Haven,  q.v.),  from  his  office  of 
first  sea  lord,  involved  the  King  in  a  con- 
flict of  loyalties.  The  dramatic  loss  of 
Lord  Kitchener  in  June  1916  he  felt  as 
something  more  than  a  national  calamity, 
for  he  had  long  held  him  in  personal  affec- 
tion as  well  as  the  highest  professional 
esteem. 

The  formation  of  Asquith's  coalition 
government  in  May  1915  brought  the  first 
labour  minister  into  the  King's  service  in 
the  person  of  Arthur  Henderson  [q.v.]  at 
the  Board  of  Education.  The  next  change 
of  government,  in  December  1916,  in- 
volved the  extrusion  of  Asquith  by  Lloyd 
George,  to  whose  talents  the  King  fre- 
quently paid  generous  and  encouraging 
tribute,  although  on  personal  grounds  he 
missed  the  sturdy  and  unruffled  presence 
of  his  first  prime  minister.  The  fissures 
and  stresses  which  gave  birth  to  the  new 
administration  have  been  recorded  in  the 
leading  political  biographies,  and  in  great 
detail  in  Lord  Beaverbrook's  Politicians 
and  the  War  (1928).  Asquith  resigned  on 
6  December  and  Bonar  Law  was  invited 
to  form  a  government.  At  the  instance 
of  the  latter  the  King  on  the  following 
day  held  a  conference  attended  by  Asquith, 
Balfour,  Bonar  Law,  Lloyd  George,  and 
Henderson ;  but  since  Asquith  felt  unable 
to  serve  under  his  leadership,  Bonar  Law 
abandoned  the  attempt  and  the  King 
accordingly  entrusted  the  task  to  Lloyd 
George.  In  reply  to  the  King's  letter  offer- 
ing him  the  Garter  Asquith  wrote :  'I  trust 
that  Your  Majesty  will  permit  me,  in  all 
gratitude  and  hiunility,  to  decline.  I  have 
had  the  honour  of  serving  Your  Majesty 
as  Prime  Minister  continuously  from  the 
first  day  of  your  reign.  Through  times  of 
much  difficulty  and  peril  Your  Majesty 
has  honoured  me  with  unstinted  confidence 
and  unwavering  support.  I  desire  no 
higher  distinction.' 

On  20  June  191 7  the  following  announce- 
ment appeared  in  the  press:  'The  King 
has  deemed  it  desirable,  in  the  conditions 
brought  about  by  the  present  war,  that 
those  princes  of  his  family  who  are  his 
subjects  and  bear  German  names  and  titles 
should  relinquish  these  titles,  and  hence- 
forth adopt  British  surnames.'  In  conse- 
quence of  this  decision  four  new  peerages 
were  created.  The  Duke  of  Teck  and  his 


brother.  Prince  Alexander,  became  Mar- 
quess of  Cambridge  and  Earl  of  Athlone ; 
Princes  Louis  and  Alexander  of  Batten- 
berg became  Marquesses  of  Milford  Haven 
and  Carisbrooke;  members  of  the  Teck 
and  Battenberg  families  adopted  the 
surnames  Cambridge  and  Mountbatten 
respectively.  At  a  meeting  of  the  Privy 
Council  held  on  17  July  His  Majesty 
announced  his  intention,  embodied  in  a 
royal  proclamation  of  the  same  date,  of 
adopting  on  his  own  behalf  and  that  of 
all  his  subjects  descended  from  Queen 
Victoria  the  name  of  Windsor  for  the 
Royal  House  and  Family.  The  'sublime 
Inspiration',  as  Lord  Rosebery  called  it, 
came  to  Lord  Stamfordham,  who  was 
unaware  at  the  time  that  King  Edward  III 
had  been  styled  'Sir  Edward  de  Windsor, 
King  of  England'  in  a  deed  dated  1375 
[Record  Office,  C.  2121],  Finally,  by  letters 
patent  dated  11  December  1917,  the 
Princely  title  and  its  attendant  appella- 
tion Royal  Highness  were  confined  to  the 
children  of  a  sovereign  and  of  the  sons 
of  a  sovereign  (with  the  addition  of  the 
special  case  of  the  eldest  living  son  of  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Prince  of  Wales).  To 
the  grandchildren  of  the  sons  of  a  sove- 
reign in  the  direct  male  line  was  assigned 
the  style  and  title  of  the  children  of  dukes. 
The  extent  of  the  burden  shouldered  by 
the  King  during  the  war  years  was  not 
apparent  to  the  public  owing  to  the  secrecy 
which  necessarily  cloaked  his  movements. 
The  record  of  his  activities  reveals  that  he 
paid  300  visits  to  military  hospitals,  each 
a  taxing  ordeal  for  a  sensitive  nature ;  nor 
was  the  personal  distribution  of  58,000 
decorations  accomplished  without  fatigue. 
He  inspected  300  naval  and  military  forma- 
tions and  a  like  nimiber  of  factories  en- 
gaged upon  war  work.  He  paid  five  visits 
to  the  Grand  Fleet  and  seven  to  his 
armies  in  France  and  Belgium.  In  October 
1915,  after  the  abortive  battles  of  Neuve 
Chapelle  and  Loos,  murmurs  demand- 
ing a  change  in  the  high  command  made 
themselves  heard  (prime  minister's  secre- 
tary to  Stamfordham,  7  October),  and  the 
King  was  able  during  his  tour  later  in  the 
month  to  ascertain  the  views  of  the  leading 
generals  in  the  field.  It  was  early  in  De- 
cember that  Sir  John  French  was  replaced 
by  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  a  change  effected  by 
Asquith  upon  his  sole  responsibility  [Spen- 
der and  Asquith,  vol.  i,  p.  191].  This  same 
tour  in  France  came  to  an  untimely  end 
when  a  restive  mount,  frightened  by  the 
cheering  of  the  troops,  reared  and  fell 
backwards  on  the   King  fracturing  his 


825 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


3 

t  Hi^ 


pelvis.  Such  visits  to  his  armies  in  the 
field  had  a  stimulating  effect  upon  the 
troops,  none  more  so  than  that  under- 
taken at  his  own  instance  at  the  end  of 
March  1918,  a  week  after  the  opening  of 
the  final  German  onslaught. 

The  labours  of  the  King  during  the  war 
had  been  pursued  with  an  absence  of 
publicity  congenial  to  him,  but  the  con- 
clusion of  hostilities  brought  him  to  the 
front  once  more.  The  agony  and  triumph 
of  the  past  four  years  were  over  and  with 
the  sudden  release  of  tension  the  relief  of 
millions  found  expression  in  widespread 
demonstrations  of  affection  and  loyalty 
to  the  throne.  Alike  on  Armistice  Day 
and  in  the  later  celebrations  of  Peace  Day 
in  1919  it  was  to  the  palace  that  all  steps 
were  turned  in  the  exuberance  of  a  com- 
mon emotion.  In  a  series  of  public  appear- 
ances the  King  and  Queen  were  greeted 
with  a  demonstrativeness  of  affection  to 
which  the  past  afforded  no  parallel,  and 
the  scenes  witnessed  in  the  course  of  six 
drives  through  the  capital  in  the  days 
immediately  succeeding  the  armistice 
were  re-enacted  at  the  close  of  the  month 
both  in  Edinburgh  and  in  Paris.  Particu- 
larly notable  was  the  address  delivered  to 
both  Houses  of  Parliament  on  19  Novem- 
ber in  which  the  King  dwelt  on  the  dedica- 
tion of  the  whole  British  race  to  the 
demands  of  war  and  called  for  a  heightened 
sense  of  individual  and  national  duty  in 
the  years  ahead.  'For  centuries  past',  he 
declared, '  Britain  has  led  the  world  along 
the  path  of  ordered  freedom.  Leadership 
may  still  be  hers  among  the  peoples  who 
are  seeking  to  follow  that  path. ' 

If  hostilities  had  ceased  on  the  continent 
the  case  was  otherwise  in  Ireland,  where 
the  best  that  the  government  could  claim 
was  that  it  had  murder  by  the  throat. 
The  Home  Rule  Act  of  December  1920, 
although  repudiated  by  the  South,  had 
been  accepted  by  Northern  Ireland,  and 
the  Ulster  parliament  was  to  be  opened  in 
June  1921.  Despite  the  untoward  aspect 
of  Irish  affairs  the  Cabinet  felt  that  an 
occasion  of  such  high  imperial  significance 
should  be  marked  by  the  presence  of  the 
sovereign  in  person.  The  King  would  have 
been  other  than  himself  had  he  not  readily 
acceded.  'As  is  naturally  to  be  expected', 
Stamfordham  wrote  to  the  prime  minister 
of  Northern  Ireland  on  9  Jxme,  'there  is  a 
very  strong  difference  of  opinion  about  the 
King  going  to  Belfast,  and  many  Irishmen, 
including  those  residing  in  that  country, 
tell  me  that  His  Majesty  is  running  con- 
siderable risk  in  going.  Once  the  Govern- 


ment had  expressed  the  wish  that 
Majesty  should  go,  you  may  be  quite 
certain  that  the  King  would  not  look  back 
for  one  instant:  and  as  to  personal  ris 
I  can  frankly  say  that  this  has  not  enterei 
into  His  Majesty's  calculations — it  woul( 
be  entirely  contrary  to  his  nature  for  it  to 
do  so.'  At  the  last  minute  the  Ulster 
government  expressed  the  desire  that  the 
Queen  should  go  too,  and  the  invitation 
was  accepted  with  equal  alacrity.  Their 
Majesties  crossed  to  Belfast  on  22  June 
and  there,  in  the  City  Hall,  the  King  de- 
livered a  speech  striking  in  its  dramatic 
timing  and  sincerity  of  utterance.  'I  am 
emboldened'.  His  Majesty  declared,  'to 
look  beyond  the  sorrow  and  the  anxiety 
which  have  clouded  of  late  my  vision 
of  Irish  affairs.  I  appeal  to  all  Irishmen 
to  pause,  to  stretch  out  the  hand  of 
forbearance  and  conciliation.  It  is  my 
earnest  desire  that  in  Southern  Ireland 
too  there  may  ere  long  take  place  a  parallel 
to  what  is  now  passing  in  this  hall.  The 
future  lies  in  the  hands  of  my  Irish  people 
themselves.  May  this  historic  gathering 
be  the  prelude  of  a  day  in  which  the  Irish 
people,  under  one  parliament  or  two,  as 
those  parliaments  may  themselves  decide, 
shall  work  together  in  common  love  for 
Ireland  upon  the  sure  foundation  of 
mutual  justice  and  respect.' 

'None  but  the  King',  wrote  Lloyd 
George,  'could  have  made  that  personal 
appeal.'  It  was  the  more  unfortunate  that, 
on  the  evening  before  it  was  uttered,  the 
lord  chancellor  (Birkenhead)  shovild  have 
held  threatening  language  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  and  that  on  the  same  day  the 
secretary  of  state  for  war  should  have 
announced  in  the  Commons  that  more 
troops  and  every  soldier  available  would 
be  sent  to  Ireland. 

Three  days  later  the  King  sent  Stam- 
fordham to  urge  the  prime  minister  to 
make  fresh  overtures  to  Southern  Ireland 
while  the  iron  was  hot.  General  Smuts, 
then  providentially  in  London  for  the 
Imperial  Conference,  crossed  to  Dublin  on 
5  July;  and  assuredly  there  was  no  one 
who,  from  personal  experience  and  eleva- 
tion of  character,  was  better  qualified  to 
act  as  intermediary.  The  subsequent  inter- 
views in  London  between  Lloyd  George 
and  Mr.  de  Valera  were  followed  by  a 
series  of  communications  which  continued 
into  the  autumn,  the  Cabinet  insisting 
that  allegiance  to  the  throne  and  member- 
ship of  the  Commonwealth  should  be 
postulates  to  any  conversations 

A  critical  point  had  been  reached  whe: 


en.  ... 

1^ 


326 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


tiLIoyd  George,  then  in  Scotland,  summoned 
|a  Cabinet  meeting  at  Inverness  on  7  Sep- 
ftember  to  approve  the  dispatch  of  a  note 
)uched  in  aggressive  language  and  pos- 
sibly naming  a  time  limit  for  the  truce 
Iwhich  had  been  in  operation  since  11  July. 
[it  happened  that  the  King  was  then  stay- 
Sing  at  Moy,  twelve  miles  from  Inverness. 
iHis  Majesty  received  the  prime  minister 
^at  breakfast  on  the  morning  of  the  Cabinet 
meeting,  and  the  proposed  draft  was  dis- 
cussed between  them.  The  King  suggested 
numerous    alterations    in    the    text,    the 
elimination  of  all  threats  and  contentious 
phrases,  and  the  inclusion  of  an  invitation 
to  the  Sinn  Fein  representatives  to  meet 
the  prime  minister  at  once.    The  latter 
then  drew  up  a  fresh  draft  in  the  concilia- 
tory tone  which  the  King  had  advocated, 
and  this  was  accepted  by  the  Cabinet  later 
in  the  morning.  The  Irish  delegates  came 
to   London   in   mid-November,   and   the 
articles   of  agreement   inaugurating   the 
Irish  Free  State  were  signed  on  6  De- 
cember.    'I   humbly   congratulate   Your 
Majesty',  wrote  the  prime  minister,  'on 
the  triumph  of  the  famous  Ulster  speech 
from  the  throne.' 

It  is  the  characteristic  of  King  George's 
reign  that  his  constitutional  troubles  came 
early.  High  seas  had  been  running  when 
the  sailor  King  had  put  out:  the  Irish 
strife,  the  parliament  bill,  the  embittered 
struggle  over  Welsh  disestablishment,  the 
bizarre  war  conducted  by  the  suffragettes 
against  the  community,  these  all  had  been 
overwhelmed  in  the  crowning  convulsion 
of  the  European  conflict,  with  the  passing 
of  which  it  seemed  that  the  storm  had 
spent  its  force.  Difficulties  remained,  both 
in  the  national  and  international  spheres, 
but  with  one  or  two  exceptions  they  were 
such  as  called  for  no  personal  intervention 
on  the  part  of  the  King.  To  the  ceaseless 
round  of  duty  which  is  the  inescapable  lot 
of  the  sovereign,  he  addressed  himself  with 
a  devotion  which  bore  fruit  in  the  increas- 
ing regard  and  affection  of  all  ranks  of  his 
subjects.  In  a  period  of  disillusionment 
and  moral  disintegration  the  King  and 
Queen  were  observed  by  all  men  to  set  a 
course  of  public  service  and  to  uphold  the 
traditional  standards  of  family  life.  The 
marriage  of  Princess  Mary  in  1922  proved 
an  occasion  of  rejoicing  to  the  entire 
nation,  and  the  later  marriages  of  his 
younger  sons  brought  the  King  three 
daughters  each  of  whom  in  turn  greatly 
endeared  herself  to  him.  Always  at  his 
easiest  with  children,  he  reserved  the 
tenderest  affection  foy  Princess  Elizabeth, 


whose  infant  presence  never  failed  to 
ensure  his  happiness  during  the  closing 
decade  of  his  life. 

The  'coupon'  election  of  December  1918 
had  given  to  Lloyd  George's  coalition  a 
further  lease  of  life  until  November  1922, 
when  the  conservative  party  was  returned 
and  the  King  sent  for  Bonar  Law.  An 
ailing  man  at  the  time,  he  sank  beneath 
the  load  in  the  following  May,  giving  it  to 
be  understood  that  he  would  prefer  not  to 
tender  advice  as  to  his  successor.  The  King 
decided  to  summon  Stanley  (later  Earl) 
Baldwin,  then  little  known,  in  preference 
to  the  brilliant  and  experienced  Lord 
Curzon.  To  mitigate  the  disappointment 
he  caused  Curzon  to  be  invited  to  return 
from  the  country  in  order  to  learn  from 
Stamfordham  the  reason  for  the  choice. 
( It  is  not  the  case  that  the  King  summoned 
Curzon  with  the  intention  of  offering  him 
the  premiership  but  was  persuaded  to  the 
contrary.)  Curzon  was  mortified  upon 
his  arrival  to  find  the  purpose  of  the 
interview  to  be  other  than  that  which 
his  eagerness  had  led  him  to  expect;  but 
he  bore  the  intimation  with  nobility  and 
the  King  spoke  words  of  healing  and 
gratitude  to  him  at  their  meeting  on 
29  May.  That  the  blow  should  have  been 
so  bitter  reveals  the  fallibility  of  human 
memory  and  judgement  where  self-interest 
is  most  strongly  engaged ;  for  on  24  May 
1919  Curzon  himself,  in  a  letter  to 
the  King  concerning  his  precedence  as 
lord  president,  had  written:  'The  Prime 
Minister,  who  is  commonly  a  member  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  will  in  all 
likelihood  almost  invariably  be  so  in  the 
future,  has  already  been  placed  before  the 
Lord  President.'  If  ever  there  would  recur 
circumstances  in  which  the  prime  minister 
might  reasonably  be  a  peer  it  was  not  now, 
when  labour  was  the  official  opposition, 
and  being  unrepresented  in  the  Lords 
would  be  unable  to  hear  policy  expounded 
by  the  head  of  the  government. 

Five  months  after  taking  office  Baldwin 
sought  a  dissolution  in  order  to  obtain 
a  mandate  for  protection,  which  Bonar 
Law  had  pledged  himself  not  to  intro- 
duce. The  King  deprecated  a  second 
election  within  the  twelvemonth,  but  the 
prime  minister  'said  that  he  had  com- 
mitted himself  (King's  diary,  12  Novem- 
ber 1923)  and  the  King  yielded.  After  the 
election  in  December,  for  the  first  time 
a  House  of  Commons  was  returned  in 
which  there  were  three  parties,  each  pre- 
pared to  form  a  government,  yet  none 
commanding  a  majority.  Parliament  met 


327 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


on  15  January ;  a  week  later  the  govern- 
ment was  defeated  and  Baldwin  resigned. 
The  King  sent  for  Ramsay  MacDonald 
[q.v.]. 

At  this  first  attainment  of  labour  to 
office  there  were  many  croakers.  The 
King  was  not  among  them.  '  Thank  God ', 
he  once  wrote  to  a  friend,  'I  am  an  opti- 
mist, and  I  believe  in  the  commonsense 
of  the  people  of  this  country.'  It  was  by 
the  twin  landmarks  of  character  and  prin- 
ciple that  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
judging  men,  and  in  the  mirror  of  working- 
class  opinion  he  had  always  found  the 
reflection  of  his  own  unassuming  dignity 
and  friendliness .  '  To-day ' ,  recorded  Stam- 
fordham  on  22  January  1924,  'the  King 
saw  Mr.  Ramsay  MacDonald  and  entrusted 
to  him  the  formation  of  a  new  Government, 
which  he  undertook.  He  assured  the  King 
that,  though  he  and  his  friends  were  in- 
experienced in  governing  and  fully  realised 
the  great  responsibilities  which  they  would 
now  assume,  nevertheless  they  were  honest 
and  sincere,  and  his  earnest  desire  was  to 
serve  his  King  and  country.  They  may 
fail  in  their  endeavours,  but  it  will  not  be 
for  want  of  trying  to  do  their  best.  The 
King  told  Mr.  Ramsay  MacDonald  that 
he  might  count  upon  his  assistance  in 
every  way.  His  Majesty  asked  only  for 
frankness  between  them.  His  Majesty 
went  on  to  say  that,  little  expecting  to 
occupy  his  present  position,  he  served  in 
the  Navy  for  fourteen  years  and  thus  had 
opportunities  of  seeing  more  of  the  world 
and  mixing  with  his  fellow  creatures  than 
would  otherwise  have  been  the  case ;  while 
during  the  past  fourteen  years  he  had 
naturally  gained  much  political  knowledge 
and  experience  of  the  working  of  the 
machine  of  government  under  four  different 
Prime  Ministers.  Mr.  Ramsay  MacDonald 
spoke  very  openly  and  said  he  was  sure 
the  King  would  be  generous  to  him  and 
understand  the  very  difficult  position  he 
was  in.' 

With  the  members  of  the  new  admini- 
stration the  King  was  at  once  at  home. 
That  they  might  get  to  know  each  other's 
outlook  on  the  world  he  gave  it  to  be 
imderstood  that  he  would  like  to  see  them 
in  turn,  at  their  convenience,  for  a  quiet 
talk,  and  his  diary  records  twenty  such 
interviews  in  the  month  of  February. 
'He  is  an  extreme  socialist',  he  noted  of 
the  minister  of  health,  'and  comes  from 
Glasgow.  I  had  a  very  interesting  con- 
versation with  him.'  The  household 
arrangements  worked  smoothly  because 
both  parties  intended  that  they  should. 


The  King  made  it  known  informally  that 
the  question  of  court  dress  was  one  for  the 
ministers  to  settle  as  might  seem  best  to 
them ;  and  judging  that  it  would  conduce 
to  the  greater  convenience  of  their  guests, 
Their  Majesties  initiated  a  series  of  after- 
noon parties  at  the  Palace.  In  his  turn  the 
prime  minister,  unlike  Peel  in  1839,  him- 
self desired  the  King  to  take  the  political 
appointments  in  the  royal  household  and 
deal  with  them  as  His  Majesty  thought  fit. 
It  was  agreed  that  after  placing  the  cus- 
tomary whips  at  the  disposal  of  the  govern- 
ment the  King  should  nominate  the  lord 
chamberlain,  lord  steward,  master  of  the 
horse,  the  captains  of  the  bodyguard  and 
yeomen,  and  three  of  the  lords  in  waiting: 
but  in  order  to  safeguard  the  constitutional 
position  the  submissions  continued  to  be 
made  by  the  prime  minister,  and  the  offi- 
cials concerned  undertook  not  to  speak  or 
vote  against  the  government  or  participate 
in  political  activities  outside. 

'Some  day',  declared  an  eminent  scien- 
tist as  late  as  1920,  'we  may  have  the 
Prime  Minister,  or  even  the  Monarch  him- 
self, addressing  by  word  of  mouth,  and  at 
one  and  the  same  time,  all  the  different 
parts  of  the  entire  British  Empire.'  This 
daring  forecast  came  true  on  St.  George's 
Day  1924,  when  the  King  opened  the 
British  Empire  Exhibition  at  Wembley; 
and,  thus  established,  the  precedent  was 
followed  on  several  occasions  towards  the 
close  of  the  reign.  Over  a  long  period  of 
time  he  had  stood  for  peace  and  goodwill 
among  the  family  of  nations  under  his 
care,  and  it  was  natural  that  he  should  be 
in  their  thoughts  at  Christmas  time.  In 
a  series  of  admirably  turned  broadcasts 
each  Christmas  Day  from  1932  onwards 
his  voice  found  a  welcome  in  British  homes 
throughout  the  world,  establishing  a  new 
intimacy  between  sovereign  and  subject 
and  kindling  in  all  hearts  the  proud  sense 
of  kinship  one  with  another.  He  essayed 
no  flights  of  oratory,  being  content  to 
greet  each  family  with  a  personal  message 
of  kindliness  and  to  assert  a  simple  faith 
in  the  continued  guidance  of  a  divine 
Providence.  Recordings  of  these  homely 
addresses  will  enable  posterity  to  judge 
the  nature  of  the  man,  and  go  far  to  ex- 
plain the  singular  hold  which  he  estab- 
lished upon  the  affections  of  a  quarter  of 
the  population  of  the  world. 

Under  a  three-party  system  the  lot  of 
a  minority  government  is  unenviable,  for 
a  nod  exchanged  between  the  opposition 
leaders  can  terminate  its  life  at  any  mo- 
ment :  nor  for  the  sovereign  is  the  position 


328 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


free  from  ambiguity,  for  the  dissolution 
and  re-election  of  parliament  may  only 
prolong  the  position  of  stalemate.  To  a 
conservative  vote  of  censure  on  the  Camp- 
bell case  the  liberals  moved,  on  8  October 
1924,  an  amendment  calling  for  the  milder 
step  of  a  committee  of  inquiry  into  the 
withdrawal  of  the  prosecution.  But  Mac- 
Donald  chose  to  stand  at  bay  on  the  first 
issue.  He  had  only  held  office  for  nine 
months,  but  he  had  shown  that  labour  was 
capable  of  bearing  rule,  proved  himself  an 
acceptable  minister  to  the  King,  done  well 
in  the  vexed  sphere  of  foreign  affairs,  and 
equipped  his  Cabinet  with  political  experi- 
ence. His  numerical  strength  was  insuffi- 
cient to  effect  the  introduction  of  socialism 
in  the  present  parliament,  and  he  was  not 
ill  content  to  declare  his  innings  closed. 
The  King  accordingly  returned  from  Bal- 
moral on  the  morning  after  the  govern- 
ment's defeat  (9  October)  and  received  the 
prime  minister,  who  sought  a  dissolution. 
That  the  Campbell  case  was  in  itself  in- 
sufficient justification  for  a  third  general 
election  within  two  years  was  manifest, 
but  the  circumstances  were  unusual.  To 
decline  the  first  request  of  a  young  and 
inexperienced  party  might  have  exposed 
the  King's  impartiality  to  question ;  and 
moreover  it  was  clear  that  any  extension 
of  the  government's  lease  could  only  be 
for  a  term  of  weeks.  The  King  therefore 
granted  the  dissolution,  but  took  the  step 
of  recording  his  reasons  in  a  memorandum 
addressed  to  the  prime  minister.  After 
the  election  on  29  October  he  sent  for 
Baldwin,  whose  government  was  destined 
to  last  for  more  than  four  years. 

As  early  as  June  1916  Asquith  had 
announced  that  an  Imperial  Conference 
would  be  held  after  the  war  to  consider 
the  recasting  of  the  government  of  the 
Empire.  When  the  Dominions  were  en- 
rolled as  separate  members  of  the  League 
of  Nations  the  time  had  come  to  define 
that  elusive  constitution  which  was  the 
casual  offering  of  the  British  race  to  the 
science  of  politics.  It  was  Lord  Balfour 
who,  with  a  courageous  sweep  of  onward 
vision,  devised  the  formula  adopted  as  the 
Nicene  Creed  of  the  Commonwealth  in 
1926  and  embodied  in  the  Statute  of  West- 
minster in  1931 .  No  longer  was  parliament 
in  the  home  country  to  control  the  over- 
seas Dominions:  henceforward  the  King 
alone  was  to  constitute  the  bond  in 
a  voluntary  association  of  free  peoples, 
whose  co-operation  would  be  effective 
only  in  so  far  as  it  was  wiUingly  accorded. 
The  abdication  of  the  sovereign  in  1936 


still  further  loosened  the  attachment  of 
the  Irish  Free  State:  the  furnace  of  a 
second  war  served  but  to  anneal  the 
Unks  with  the  remainder  of  the  British 
Empire.  If  Great  Britain  was  fortunate 
in  1926  in  having  at  hand  a  statesman  of 
the  stature  of  Balfour,  she  was  no  less 
fortunate  in  the  possession  of  a  King 
fitted  alike  by  character  and  by  experience 
to  retain  the  allegiance  of  her  sister 
nations. 

The  General  Strike  in  May  1926  was  a 
challenge  to  constitutional  government 
which  the  Cabinet  met  with  firmness  and 
the  nation  with  good  humour.  To  an 
informal  suggestion  that  recourse  might 
be  had  to  the  precedent  of  the  Buckingham 
Palace  conference  of  1914  the  King  replied 
that  he  would  take  no  such  action  except 
upon  the  advice  of  his  prime  minister.  He 
grasped  the  significance  of  a  football  match 
at  Plymouth  between  the  police  and  the 
strikers;  and  when  the  Cabinet  was  con- 
sidering 'freezing'  trade  union  funds  he 
observed  with  dry  common  sense  that  men 
denied  the  use  of  their  own  money  were 
apt  to  turn  to  other  people's.  He  took 
exception  to  the  announcement  in  the 
official  British  Gazette  that  aU  ranks  of  the 
armed  forces  of  the  Crown  would  receive 
the  full  support  of  the  government  in  any 
action  taken  in  the  honest  endeavour  to 
aid  the  civil  power.  When  after  nine  days 
the  strike  collapsed,  'Let  us  forget',  he 
wrote  in  a  message  to  his  people,  'what- 
ever elements  of  bitterness  the  events  of 
the  past  few  days  may  have  created,  and 
forthwith  address  ourselves  to  the  task 
of  bringing  into  being  a  peace  which  will 
be  lasting  because,  forgetting  the  past,  it 
looks  only  to  the  future  with  the  hopeful- 
ness of  a  united  people.' 

Hitherto  King  George  had  been  blessed 
with  good  health.  He  was  no  stranger  to 
a  passing  attack  of  rhemnatism,  was  a 
little  careful  about  his  food,  and  was  not 
immune  from  the  common  cold :  indeed  an 
intractable  bout  of  influenza  in  the  spring 
of  1925  had  even  induced  him  to  commis- 
sion the  royal  yacht  for  a  month's  cruise 
in  the  Mediterranean,  averse  though  he 
was  from  foreign  travel.  But  apart  from 
his  typhoid  fever  in  1891  he  had  escaped 
lightly  until,  at  the  age  of  sixty-three,  he 
contracted  an  illness  of  the  gravest  charac- 
ter. On  21  November  1928  he  took  to  his 
bed  at  Buckingham  Palace  with  a  strepto- 
coccal infection  which  necessitated  a  severe 
operation  for  the  drainage  of  the  chest  on 
12  December. 

A  week  earlier  the  King  had  been  able 


829 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


to  execute  a  warrant  appointing  six 
counsellors  of  state:  the  Queen,  his  two 
eldest  sons,  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
lord  chancellor,  and  prime  minister. 
'Whereas  We  have  been  stricken  by  ill- 
ness and  are  unable  for  the  time  being  to 
give  due  attention  to  the  affairs  of  Our 
Realm',  the  preamble  stated,  any  three 
of  the  counsellors  were  empowered  to  dis- 
charge the  royal  office :  but  they  were  not 
to  dissolve  parliament,  nor  confer  titles, 
'nor  act  in  any  manner  or  thing  in  which 
it  is  signified  by  Us  or  appears  to  them  that 
Our  special  approval  should  be  previously 
obtained.'  The  council  was  held  in  a 
manner  identical  with  that  adopted  when 
Queen  Victoria  was  en  retraite  after  the 
death  of  the  Prince  Consort  {Letters,  series 
ii,  vol.  i,  p.  6):  the  council  assembled  in 
the  audience  chamber  adjoining  the  bed- 
room, the  home  secretary  read  the  order 
paper  standing  in  the  communicating 
doorway,  the  King  assented  and  signed 
the  document  with  his  own  hand. 

Throughout  the  sombre  December  days 
crowds  kept  vigil  outside  the  palace  rail- 
ings ;  thousands  upon  thousands  read  the 
biilletins  and  turned  silently  away.  For 
several  weeks  death  hovered  about  the 
sick  chamber  and  kept  in  doubt  the  issue 
upon  which  the  hopes  of  millions  turned. 
At  length  patience  and  courage  had  their 
reward,  and  on  9  February  1929  the  patient 
was  taken  by  ambulance  to  Craigweil 
House,  near  Bognor.  Here  he  remained 
imtil  15  May,  when  he  made  the  journey 
to  Windsor. 

The  wound,  however,  was  not  yet  healed 
and  the  King  was  in  considerable  discom- 
fort when,  during  the  first  week  in  June, 
he  had  to  deal  with  a  change  of  ministry. 
Baldwin's  government  had  reached  the 
end  of  its  course  while  he  had  been  ill: 
the  labour  party  had  been  returned  (again 
in  a  minority)  at  the  general  election  on 
30  May,  and  on  8  June  the  new  ministers 
journeyed  to  Windsor  to  receive  their  seals 
of  office.  If  it  was  a  strange  complexion  of 
political  parties,  it  was  a  singular  council 
that  assembled  once  more  outside  the  bed- 
room in  which  the  King  was  seated  in  his 
dressing-gown.  On  the  previous  afternoon 
he  had  braced  himself  to  receive  separately 
each  member  of  the  outgoing  ministry, 
and  had  accepted  the  custody  not  only  of 
their  seals  of  office  but  also  of  the  great 
seal  of  the  realm.  Sidney  Webb  (later  Lord 
Passfield)  received  two  separate  seals,  for 
the  Dominions  and  for  the  Colonies,  not- 
withstanding that  he  was  at  the  time  a 
member  of  neither  House.  The  King  him- 


self broke  the  customary  silence  with 
kindly    comment,    observing    that    Mis 
Bondfield    became    ipso   facto    a    pri^ 
coiuicillor  as  minister  of  labour,  and  ws 
the  first  woman  to  attain  either  status. 

On  1  July  the  King  returned  to  LondonJ 
and  on  the  7th  drove  with  the  Queen  tc 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral  for  a  service  of  nations 
thanksgiving  upon  his  nominal  recovery^ 
But  he  was  not  yet  out  of  the  wood.  Eight 
days  later  he  was  subjected  to  a  furthei 
small  operation  which  delayed  until  the 
end  of  August  his  departure  to  Sandring- 
ham  for  recuperation  in  the  health-giving 
and  familiar  surroundings  of  home.  In  the 
new  year  (21  January  1930)  his  voice  wa 
once  more  heard  on  the  wireless  when  h4 
opened  the  London  Naval  Conference,  an< 
he  broadcast  again  in  the  following  Novem- 
ber at  the  inauguration  of  the  Indiai 
Round  Table  Conference.  During  the 
years  that  remained  to  him  he  passed  foi 
a  fit  man,  although  he  was  induced  to  take 
things  more  easily  and  to  spare  himself! 
undue  exertion. 

It  was  largely  on  account  of  the  unem-" 
ployment  position  that  the  labour  party 
had  come  into  power,  but  it  found  itself 
in  the  grip  of  forces  far  transcending  the 
strength  of  one  party  in  one  country. 
When  it  took  office  there  were  just  over 
a  million  unemployed  in  Great  Britain; 
despite  aU  the  government's  efforts  the 
figure  had  doubled  in  the  next  twelve 
months,  and  risen  afresh  to  2,800,000  by 
September  1931,  when  the  cost  of  unem- 
ployment benefits  exceeded  contributions 
by  more  than  a  million  pounds  a  week.  As 
early  as  October  1930  the  grave  financial 
prospect  had  been  engaging  the  attention 
of  the  Cabinet,  and  early  in  June  1931  a 
royal  commission  had  recommended  the 
unpalatable  step  of  saving  £24,000,000, 
partly  by  increasing  workmen's  contribu- 
tions. A  crisis  was  precipitated  by  the 
publication  on  31  July  of  the  report  of  the 
Economy  Committee  under  the  chairman- 
ship of  Sir  George  (later  Lord)  May,  calling 
for  the  raising  of  an  extra  £120,000,000  if 
the  next  year's  budget  was  to  be  balanced ; 
and  events  proved  that  even  this  was  an 
under-estimate  by  fifty  millions.  The 
situation  thus  revealed  spread  alarm 
among  foreign  nations  which  had  de- 
posited their  gold  reserves  for  safety  in 
London,  and  a  rapid  series  of  withdrawals 
brought  the  Bank  of  England  to  the  edge 
of  bankruptcy. 

The  position  was  already  threatening 
when  on  20  August  the  King  went  north  to 
Balmoral :  his  own  inclination  was  to  have 


830 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


George  V 


)Ostponed  his  departure,  but  in  order  not 
disturb  public  confidence  the  prime 
inister  advised  his  adhering  to  his  pro- 
ramme.  He  arrived  there  on  the  Friday 
lorning,  but  on  the  Saturday  the  reports 
rom  London  were  so  grave  that  he  decided 
return  that  evening,  and  he  was  back  at 
Juckingham  Palace  by  breakfast  time  on 
Sunday  (23  August).  At  10.30  he  saw 
lacDonald,  who  reported  that  while  he 
id  some  of  his  colleagues  favoured  a  ruth- 
less policy  of  retrenchment,  Henderson 
and  a  substantial  proportion  of  the  Cabinet 
were  unyielding  in  their  opposition.  He 
accordingly  felt  that  he  would  have  no 
option  but  to  resign,  but  the  King  urged 
him  to  remain  in  office  and  cheered  him 
with  words  of  encouragement  and  support. 
At  12.30  the  King  saw  Sir  Herbert  (later 
Viscount)  Samuel,  leader  of  the  liberal 
party,  and  was  impressed  by  his  clear 
arguments  in  favour  of  an  all-party  govern- 
ment under  MacDonald's  leadership.  At 
8  the  King  saw  Baldwin,  who  patrioti- 
cally undertook  to  sink  party  differences 
and  serve  under  MacDonald ;  or,  failing 
that,  to  carry  on  the  government  with  the 
aid  of  the  liberals,  having  previously  ob- 
tained the  King's  consent  to  a  dissolution 
as  soon  as  the  financial  situation  had  been 
restored. 

At  10.15  the  same  evening  the  prime 
minister  returned  to  the  palace  to  tender 
the  resignation  of  the  Cabinet  in  view  of 
its  continued  internal  dissension.  The 
King  urged  him  to  reconsider  his  own  posi- 
tion in  view  of  the  support  which  the  other 
parties  were  willing  to  lend  him  and  the 
confidence  which  a  united  front  would 
inspire  among  foreign  creditors  at  a  moment 
when  the  banking  resources  of  the  country 
were  to  be  measured  rather  in  hours  than 
in  days.  The  prime  minister  asked  the 
King  to  hold  a  conference  of  the  three 
party  leaders  next  morning.  At  10  o'clock 
on  the  24th  the  King  accordingly  received 
MacDonald,  Baldwin,  and  Sir  Herbert 
Samuel  and  requested  them  to  come  to  some 
arrangement  for  carrying  on  the  govern- 
ment ;  after  half  an  hour  His  Majesty  with- 
drew, and  an  hour  later  was  gratified  to 
learn  that  they  had  come  to  a  provisional 
agreement.  At  4  MacDonald  returned 
and  accepted  the  conunission  to  form 
an  all-party  administration.  'If  you  will 
permit  me  to  say  so',  he  wrote  on  the  29th 
in  answer  to  a  generous  letter  from  the 
King,  'Your  Majesty's  own  conduct  has 
been  a  great  inspiration  and  guidance  to 
my  colleagues  and  myself,  not  only  during 
these  recent  days  of  great  trouble  and 


heart-searching,  but  throughout  the  years 
when  we  have  had  the  honour  of  being 
your  special  servants.' 

Interpreting  the  mood  of  the  nation,  the 
King  spontaneously  gave  up  £50,000  of  his 
civil  list  and  the  other  members  of  the 
Royal  Family  made  corresponding  sacri- 
fices, thus  identifying  themselves  with 
those  of  all  classes  upon  whose  incomes 
drastic  cuts  were  now  imposed.  The  flight 
of  capital  had  been  checked,  but  not  wholly 
stemmed.  The  economic  blizzard  was  be- 
ginning to  strike  other  countries,  which 
were  calling  home  their  capital  in  order  to 
strengthen  their  own  position ;  moreover, 
the  fundamental  issue  of  a  protective  tariff 
could  only  be  solved  by  a  general  election, 
the  result  of  which  continued  to  disturb 
foreign  confidence.  It  was,  however,  the 
mutiny  in  the  Atlantic  Fleet  at  Inver- 
gordon  in  the  middle  of  September,  conse- 
quent upon  the  reduction  in  naval  rates  of 
pay,  which  immediately  started  a  fresh 
run  on  the  Bank,  causing  the  government 
to  abandon  on  20  September  the  gold 
standard  to  which  Great  Britain  had  re- 
turned in  May  1925.  The  general  election 
on  27  October  resulted  in  an  overwhelming 
endorsement  by  the  nation  of  the  King's 
action  in  promoting  an  all-party  govern- 
ment. 

In  considering  advice  from  Lord  Rose- 
bery  as  prime  minister  it  would  have  been 
open  to  Queen  Victoria  to  observe  that  she 
had  been  on  the  throne  before  he  was 
born.  In  like  manner  Time,  the  sovereign's 
friend,  had  dealt  kindly  with  King  George, 
whose  shadow  had  lengthened  as  his  day 
drew  in.  Those  who  had  moved  in  public 
affairs  throughout  the  preceding  quarter  of 
a  century  had  learned  to  repose  trust  in  his 
disinterested  judgement :  deprived  though 
he  had  been  of  Stamfordham  in  March 
1931,  few  among  his  advisers  could  claim 
a  greater  store  of  political  experience,  and 
his  later  ministers  were  apt  not  only  to 
tender  but  to  seek  advice.  The  extent  to 
which  he  had  become  the  father  of  his 
people  was  disclosed  during  the  silver 
jubilee  celebrations  in  1935,  on  the  eve  of 
his  seventieth  birthday.  He  had  observed 
the  preparations  with  a  detached,  even  a 
deprecatory  eye,  and  he  was  frankly  taken 
aback  by  the  welcome  which  awaited  him- 
self and  the  Queen  on  their  return  to 
London  after  the  customary  Easter  resi- 
dence at  Windsor.  On  6  May  Their  Majes- 
ties drove  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  through 
sunlit  streets  gay  with  flags  and  packed 
with  cheering  crowds.  Although  advanc- 
ing years  had  taken  their  toll  and  he  was 


881 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


no  longer  the  man  he  had  been,  none 
discerned  in  the  happy  joy-bells  the  knell 
of  a  passing  reign.  The  numerous  jubilee 
functions  were  hardly  concluded  when,  on 
7  June,  MacDonald  resigned  the  leadership 
of  the  all-party  government  and  the  King 
took  leave  with  regret  of  one  who  had  been 
his  valued  prime  minister  for  over  a 
quarter  of  his  reign.  He  replaced  the  con- 
duct of  affairs  with  confidence  in  the  hands 
of  Baldwin  and  withdrew  to  Sandring- 
ham  for  a  rest.  Here,  six  months  later, 
after  an  illness  short  and  peaceful  in  its 
close,  he  died  20  January  1936. 

Happy  alike  in  the  manner  and  the 
moment  of  his  passing.  King  George  was 
well  spared  the  events  of  the  ensuing  years. 
Many  and  moving  were  the  tributes  paid 
to  his  memory  throughout  the  world  while 
the  life  of  the  Empire  was  stilled  in  the 
silence  of  a  deep  and  intimate  sorrow.  For 
four  days  and  nights  his  coffin  lay  in  a 
sublime  setting  beneath  the  ancient  rafters 
of  Westminster  Hall  and  800,000  of  his 
subjects  waited  in  the  wintry  weather  to 
witness  a  scene  breath-taking  in  its  august 
majesty.  On  28  January  the  funeral  took 
place  at  Windsor,  where  in  due  course  a 
tomb  of  rare  beauty  and  symbolic  sim- 
pUcity  was  erected  in  the  nave  of  St. 
George's  Chapel. 

In  person  King  George  was  slightly 
below  the  middle  height,  neatly  made,  and 
impeccably  dressed  in  the  style  before  last. 
His  voice  was  strong  and  resonant,  his 
prominent  eyes  arrestingly  blue.  Moderate 
in  diet,  he  drank  hardly  at  all  but  smoked 
heavily.  His  mode  of  life  was  of  an  extreme 
regularity,  his  occupations  being  predict- 
able to  the  day,  almost  indeed  to  the  hour, 
given  the  precedent  of  the  previous  years. 
His  naval  training  had  implanted  habits 
of  discipline.  Punctual  himself,  he  dis- 
countenanced unpunctuality  in  others. 
Rules  were  made  to  be  obeyed,  and  he  was 
not  slow  to  check  infractions  of  traditional 
observances  and  duties,  by  whomsoever 
they  were  committed.  His  disapproval  of 
the  High  Court  of  Parliament  assuming 
the  appearance  of  a  dormitory  during  the 
course  of  an  all-night  sitting  was  marked 
by  a  letter  which,  but  for  the  vigilance  of  a 
subordinate  official,  would  have  raised  the 
hoary  spectre  of  the  rights  of  his  faithful 
Commons.  So  valued  a  counsellor  as 
Balfour,  when  betrayed  by  pressure  and 
•inadvertence  into  undertaking  a  foreign 
mission  without  previously  notifying  the 
sovereign,  incurred  a  brisk  reminder  that 
the  throne  was  not  unoccupied.  He  did 
not  lack  moral  courage,  as  when  he  bluntly 


told  Lloyd  George  that  he  knew  nothin| 
of  the   army,   or   reminded   Birkenhet 
on  one  occasion,  and  Joynson-Hicks  oi 
another,  that  Cabinet  ministers  were  e3 
pected  to  conform  to  a  dignified  standai 
of  dress  when  appearing  on  a  public  plat 
form.  Such  occasions,  however,  were  rare 
and  he  never  suffered  them  to  impair  th^ 
ease  and  cordiality  of  his  personal  inter- 
course.   Towards  his  labour  ministers  in 
particular  he  revealed  a  generous  con- 
sideration. 

Although  not  pietistically  inclined,  the 
King  was  all  his  life  a  soimd  churchman 
and  early  formed  the  habit  of  daily  Bible 
reading.  He  attended  Sunday  morning 
service  wherever  he  might  be ;  when  travel- 
Ung  in  India  his  train  used  to  be  stopped 
for  the  purpose.  Both  archbishops  of 
Canterbury  (Davidson  and  Lang)  were 
among  his  closest  personal  friends;  he 
secured  promising  men  as  preachers  and 
week-end  guests,  and  took  pains  to  inform 
himself  independently  about  candidates 
recommended  for  higher  preferment. 
Among  the  fighting  services  the  navy 
never  lost  the  hold  which  it  had  early 
established  upon  his  affections.  He  loved 
the  ships  and  their  men;  he  knew  the 
leading  officers,  read  the  leading  books. 
If  the  army  ranked  second  it  was  by  the 
narrowest  of  margins.  Nearly  every  sum- 
mer with  the  Queen  he  would  enjoy 
a  week  at  the  Royal  Pavilion  at  Alder- 
shot  and  be  among  the  soldiers  from  early 
morning  until  nightfall.  He  would  ride  out 
to  watch  the  training,  visit  barracks  in  the 
afternoon,  and  give  dinner  parties  every 
evening  in  order  to  get  to  know  the 
younger  officers  and  their  wives.  The 
occasion  (12  June  1922)  when  the  Irish 
regiments,  disbanded  after  the  formation 
of  the  Free  State,  handed  to  him  their 
colours  to  be  laid  up  in  Windsor  Castle 
was  one  of  the  most  affecting  experiences 
of  his  life.  It  was  with  pride  and  admira- 
tion that  he  observed  the  rise  of  the  Royal 
Air  Force,  and  he  manfully  opposed  its 
suggested  abolition,  during  the  disarma- 
ment phase  in  the  early  'thirties.  At  the 
notion  of  entering  an  aeroplane  himself 
he  would  shake  his  head. 

It  was  with  humility  that  King  George 
recognized  his  shortcomings  in  the  field 
of  the  humanities.  He  would  deplore  the 
technical  nature  of  his  education,  ruefully 
wishing  that  he  had  been  taught  Latin 
instead  of  trigonometry.  In  French  he 
was  reasonably  proficient,  in  German  less 
so.  To  the  perusal  of  state  documents  he 
applied  himself  with  diligence  tempered 


882 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


George  V 


with  distaste;  he  was  concerned  on  one 
occasion  to  find  that  Baldwin  himself 
had  not  studied  certain  papers  issued 
by  the  Cabinet,  and  his  secretaries  had 
to  read  the  newspaper  carefully  if  they 
were  to  escape  being  similarly  ensnared. 
His  private  reading  amounted  to  some 
forty  books  a  year,  largely  contem- 
porary biographies.  Writing  he  found 
uncongenial .  '  Naturally  my  language  does 
not  approach  yours  in  style  or  finish',  he 
wrote,  in  sending  to  Stamfordham  a  clear 
account  of  a  certain  interview.  It  is  true 
that  his  letters  and  the  diary  which  he 
kept  throughout  his  life  owed  little  to  the 
graces  of  composition  or  calligraphy ;  but 
no  one  could  write  a  more  generous  message 
of  encouragement  to  an  overdriven  prime 
minister  or  an  exiled  governor-general, 
and  his  letters  gained  in  sincerity  what 
they  lacked  in  stylistic  virtuosity.  One 
of  the  most  unrewarding  fruits  of  human 
toil  is  the  weekly  letter  home  of  a  school- 
boy son :  he  had  four  such,  and  to  each  he 
would  return  a  hand-wrought  reply  even 
at  moments  of  greatest  pressure. 

In  London  the  King  was  commonly  to 
be  seen  in  the  summer  riding  in  Rotten 
Row  with  a  friend  before  breakfast.  He 
often  went  to  the  theatre  and  he  enjoyed  a 
musical  play  and  the  more  familiar  operas. 
He  did  not  like  to  miss  a  good  Rugby 
match  at  Twickenham,  a  cup-tie  final  at 
Wembley,  a  test  match  at  Lord's,  or  the 
lawn  tennis  championship  at  Wimbledon : 
at  such  spectacles  and  many  others 
throughout  the  season  no  figure  was  more 
familiar  or  more  welcome.  His  nature  also 
responded  to  such  revelations  of  human 
endurance  as  the  various  attempts  upon 
Moiint  Everest  or  the  polar  regions,  and 
he  was  apt  to  send  for  individual  members 
of  the  expeditions  upon  their  return  in 
order  to  ply  them  with  questions. 

In  private  life  the  King's  interests  lay 
in  the  pursuits  associated  with  the  EngUsh 
country  gentleman.  Apart  from  those 
already  alluded  to,  his  love  of  racing  far 
outstripped  the  meagre  successes  of  his 
own  stable,  and  he  was  asi  faithful  to  New- 
market, Epsom,  and  Aintree  as  to  Ascot 
itself.  Farming  he  both  encouraged  and 
practised,  although  it  was  never  numbered 
among  his  more  personal  hobbies.  It  is 
noteworthy,  however,  that  his  experi- 
mental plot  of  flax  at  Sandringham  was  in 
1931  the  only  example  of  its  cultivation 
in  England,  and  it  was  to  a  large  extent 
due  to  the  King's  persistence  in  this  field 
in  the  period  between  the  wars  that  home- 
grown  flax  was   enabled   to   contribute 


towards  the  needs  of  the  war  of  1939-1945. 
When  in  the  country  he  was  attentive  to 
his  social  duties  and  every  year  would  pay 
a  round  of  calls  on  his  neighbours,  tenants, 
and  village  friends,  many  of  whom  he  had 
known  all  his  life.  He  almost  always  had 
guests  in  the  house  and  was  a  gifted  host. 
He  had  a  remarkable  memory  and  was  a 
good  raconteur.  His  recollections  of  past 
events  were  interesting  and  often  of  an 
unreserved  frankness ;  concerning  current 
affairs  he  observed  a  more  guarded  dis- 
cretion. Beneath  a  bluff  and  bantering 
manner  he  was  a  man  of  marked  kindness 
and  geniality,  of  the  type  that  likes  to  see 
others  happy.  Although  he  was  modest 
about  his  own  accomplishments,  he  pos- 
sessed in  fact  the  range  of  qualities  best 
calculated  to  appeal  to  Englishmen  of 
all  classes,  not  least  in  his  mistrust  of 
cleverness,  his  homespun  common  sense, 
his  dislike  of  pretension,  his  ready  sense 
of  the  ludicrous,  and  his  devotion  to 
sport. 

King  George  was  served  by  a  household 
knit  together  in  the  fellowship  of  a  com- 
mon loyalty.  Some  had  been  chosen  from 
among  the  friends  of  his  childhood,  not  a 
few  from  his  associates  in  the  navy ;  others, 
recruited  with  care  as  his  establishment  in- 
creased, were  assimilated  into  a  circle  from 
which  retirement  was  rare.  The  daily  round 
was  governed  by  protocol  and  precedent. 
This  unwritten  code  was  respected  at  every 
level,  with  the  result  that  contentment 
reigned,  and  unhastening  order  prevailed 
alike  on  occasions  of  ceremonial  pageantry 
and  in  the  well-regulated  routine  of  domes- 
tic life.  In  former  times  it  was  the  custom 
to  speak  of  the  prince  and  his  '  family ' :  of 
King  George  it  may  truly  be  said  that  he 
had  two  families,  and  that  he  was  hardly 
less  devoted  to  his  household  than  to  his 
children.  Affection  was  thus  harnessed  to 
the  service  of  duty  in  a  court  remarkable 
alike  for  the  precision  of  its  arrangements 
and  the  harmony  of  its  personal  relation- 
ships. 

King  George  sat  for  the  following  artists 
in  the  years  shown.  Sir  Luke  Fildes  (1912, 
for  the  state  portrait,  Windsor).  (Sir) 
Arthur  Cope  (1912,  for  H.M.  Queen  Mary, 
the  United  Service  Club,  and  the  Royal 
Naval  College,  Dartmouth  [destroyed  by 
enemy  action  in  1942] ;  1926,  for  Windsor ; 
1928,  for  the  Royal  Academy):  his  por- 
trait for  the  Royal  Yacht  Squadron, 
Cowes,  was  lost  by  fire  in  1929.  (Sir)  John 
La  very  (1918,  for  the  conversation  piece, 
with  the  Queen,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and 
Princess  Mary,  National  Portrait  Gallery). 


833 


George  V 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


A.  T.  Nowell  (1920,  for  the  Leys  School, 
Cambridge).  Charles  Sims  (1924,  for  a 
portrait  which  proved  unsuccessful).  Rich- 
ard Jack  (1926,  for  Fulham  Town  Hall 
and  the  Junior  Constitutional  Club). 
Oswald  Birley  (1928,  for  the  National 
Museum  of  Wales,  Cardiff;  1930,  for  the 
Royal  Yacht  Squadron,  Cowes;  1932,  for 
the  Royal  Welch  Fusiliers,  Wrexham; 
1933,  for  Lincoln's  Inn  and  the  Royal 
Artillery  Mess,  Chatham ;  1934,  for  Wind- 
sor). John  Berrie  (1931,  for  the  King's 
Liverpool  Regiment;  1935,  for  the  Can- 
berra War  Memorial,  Australia).  Harring- 
ton Mann  (1932,  for  the  Junior  United 
Service  Club).  F.  W.  El  well  (1932,  for  the 
throne  room  at  Holyrood). 

His  Majesty  also  gave  sittings  to  the 
following  sculptors.  Sir  George  Frampton 
(1913,  for  the  marble  bust  in  Guildhall, 
London).  (Sir)  Bertram  Mackennal  (1913, 
for  two  marble  statues  for  India,  presum- 
baly  Delhi  and  Madras) :  he  also  designed  the 
head  on  the  coinage,  the  reverse  of  which 
was  the  work  of  G.  Kruger  Gray.  (Sir)  W. 
Reid  Dick  (1933,  for  the  bust  in  marble  at 
Buckingham  Palace  and  in  bronze  at  the 
Mansion  House,  London) :  he  also  executed 
the  memorials  in  Sandringham  and  Crathie 
churches,  the  recumbent  effigy  in  St. 
George's  Chapel,  Windsor,  and  the  statue 
outside  the  east  end  of  Westminster 
Abbey.  Kathleen  Scott  (Lady  Kennet) 
(1935,  for  the  bronze  bust  for  the  Hearts 
of  Oak,  Euston  Road). 

[John  Gore's  King  George  V:  a  Personal 
Memoir,  1941,  will  remain  the  standard 
authority  on  the  life  of  the  liing,  especially 
in  its  more  intimate  aspect.  This  truthful 
and  revealing  book  was  promoted  by  King 
George  VI  and  Queen  Mary  while  the  memory 
of  its  subject  was  fresh  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  had  known  him:  no  information  was 
withheld  from  its  author,  who  received  assis- 
tance from  many  of  the  King's  friends.  The 
political  background  may  be  conveniently 
followed  in  D.  C.  Somervell's  The  Reign  of 
King  George  the  Fifth,  1 935,  and  John  Buchan's 
The  King's  Grace,  1 935.  Much  further  informa- 
tion is  contained  in  the  memoirs  and  bio- 
graphies of  the  leading  figures  of  the  reign. 
John  Stephenson,  A  Royal  Correspondence, 
1938;  Sir  Donald  Mackenzie  Wallace,  The 
Web  of  Empire,  1 902 ;  H.  F.  Rurke,  The  Histori- 
cal Record  of  the  Coronation  of  King  George  V 
and  Queen  Mary,  1911 ;  John  Fortescue,  Nar- 
rative of  the  Visit  to  India  of  King  George  V  and 
Queen  Mary,  1912;  Stanley  Reed,  The  King 
and  Queen  in  India,  1912 ;  J.  A.  Spender  and 
C.  Asquith,  Life  of  Lord  Oxford  and  Asquith, 
2  vols.,  1932 ;  Harold  Nicolson,  Curzon,  the 
Last  Phase,  1919-1925  (1934),  pp.  353  ff. ; 
L.  S.  Amery,  Thoughts  on  the  Constitution, 
1947,  pp.  21,  22 ;  Journal  of  the  Royal  Society 


of  Arts,  December  1920  and  October  1944 ; 
Royal  Archives ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Owen  Morshead. 


GERMAN,  Sir  EDWARD  (1862-1936), 
composer,     whose     original    name    was 
Edward   German  Jones,  was  born  at 
Whitchurch,    Shropshire,    17    February 
1862,  the  elder  son  and  second  chUd  of 
John  David  Jones,  by  his  wife,  Betsy  Cox. 
His  father  held  the  post  of  organist  at  the 
Congregational  chapel,  and  in  his  early 
years  the  son  frequently  deputized  for  the 
father.    Edward  was  educated  at  Bridge 
House  School,  Chester,  and  on  leaving 
there   in    1878    began  to   study  for   an 
engineering  career.   Teaching  himself  the 
violin,  he  soon  led  the  orchestra  of  the 
Whitchurch  choral  society  and  his  ability 
impressed  the  conductor,  Professor  Walter 
Hay,  of  Shrewsbury.   Supported  by  Hay, 
he  persuaded  his  parents  to  have  him 
trained  for  the  musical  profession,  and 
after  studying  under  Hay's  direction,  he 
entered  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music  in 
September    1880.     About   this   time   he 
adopted  his  two  christian  names  and  gave  | 
up  the  surname  of  Jones.  In  1885  he  wonj 
the  Charles  Lucas  medal  for  composition,} 
and  became  a  sub-professor  of  the  violin.  | 
An  operetta,  The  Two  Poets,  was  produced 
at  the  St.  George's  Hall  in  December  1886,  | 
and  was  taken  on  tour  with  moderate  suc- 
cess.   Later  he  changed  its  name  to  Thei 
Rival  Poets,  and  under  this  title  it  achieved] 
much  popularity.    In  1887  his  first  sym- 
phony was  performed  at  a  Royal  Academy] 
concert  in  the  St.  James's  Hall. 

German  succeeded  W.  G.  McNaught  as] 
professor  of  the  violin  at  Wimbledon 
School,  and  through  the  help  of  Albertoj 
Randegger  began  conducting  in  the' 
autumn  of  1888  at  the  Globe  Theatre  for 
the  production  of  Richard  the  Third  in 
1889.  His  incidental  music  to  this  was 
very  favourably  received,  and  shortly  after 
he  met  (Sir)  Henry  Irving  [q.v.],  who  com- 
missioned him  to  write  the  music  for  the 
production  of  Henry  the  Eighth  at  the 
Lyceum  Theatre  in  1892 :  the  three  dances 
have  become  famous.  There  followed  a 
succession  of  compositions  incidental  to 
theatre  productions,  mostly  Shakespear- 
ian: they  include  the  overture  and  inci- 
dental music  to  English  Nell,  by  Edward 
Rose  and  Anthony  Hope  (Prince  of 
Wales's  Theatre,  1900).  The  Emerald  Isle, 
left  unfinished  by  the  death  of  Sir  Arthur 
Sullivan  [q.v.],  was  completed  by  German, 
and  produced  at  the  Savoy  Theatre  in 
1901.     Merrie    England    (1902)    and    A 


884 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gertler 


Princess  of  Kensington  (1903)  followed, 
and  later  (1907),  Tom  Jones.  In  1904 
appeared  his  'Welsh  Rhapsody'.  In  1907 
he  toured  the  United  States  of  America, 
conducting  and  directing  productions. 
Collaborating  with  Sir  W.  S.  Gilbert  [q.v.], 
he  produced  Fallen  Fairies  in  1909,  and 
two  years  later  he  was  commissioned  to 
write  the  coronation  march  and  hymn  for 
King  George  V  and  Queen  Mary.  There- 
after little  of  note  took  place  until  1919, 
when  he  wrote  'Theme  and  Six  Diver- 
sions '  for  the  Royal  Philharmonic  Society. 
From  1922  to  1928,  German  was  busily 
engaged  in  conducting  and  examining,  and 
during  those  years  his  compositions  were 
constantly  being  performed.  In  1928  he 
was  knighted.  From  that  time  on  he  lived 
in  comparative  retirement  (receiving,  how- 
ever, the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Phil- 
harmonic Society  in  1934)  and  died  in 
London  11  November  1936.  He  was  un- 
married. 

Highly  popular  with  his  fellow  musi- 
cians, German's  work  and  personality 
were  much  admired  by  such  men  as  Sul- 
livan, Elgar,  Parry,  Stanford,  and  Mac- 
kenzie. Revolutionary  changes  in  musical 
thought  were  taking  place  during  his  life- 
time. Although  striving  to  keep  an  open 
mind  on  the  new  tendencies,  German  ad- 
mitted that  they  contained  a  great  deal 
which  he  did  not  and  could  not  under- 
stand. During  his  trip  to  America  he  was 
interviewed  by  the  press  on  the  question 
and  is  reported  to  have  said:  'Young 
Elngland  is  full  of  splendid  promise,  but 
there  is  danger  ahead  in  sacrificing  the 
beauties  of  art  to  mere  sensation.'  Of  his 
own  work  it  has  been  said  that  he  takes 
a  high  place  among  'those  few  specially 
gifted  composers  who  were  able  to  com- 
bine artistic  achievement  with  strong 
popular  appeal'. 

[The  Times,  12  November  1936;  Musical 
Times,  December  1936 ;  VV.  H.  Scott,  Edward 
German,  1932 ;  Grove'' s  Dictionary  of  Music 
and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol.  ii,  edited  by  H.  C. 
Colles ;  private  information.] 

Edric  Cundell. 

GERTLER,  MARK  (originally  Marks) 
(1891-1939),  painter,  was  born  in  Spital- 
fields  9  December  1891  (though  he  himself 
always  gave  1892  as  the  date),  the  third 
and  youngest  son  of  Louis  Gertler,  of 
Przemysl,  by  his  wife,  Kate  Berenbaum. 
In  1893  the  family  returned  to  Austria,  to 
five  years  of  desperate  poverty.  In  1898, 
back  in  London,  they  settled  in  White- 
chapel.    Gertler,  still  speaking  only  Yid- 


dish, attended  a  rabbi's  school  until 
summoned  in  1899  to  the  Deal  Lane 
elementary  school.  Wliile  there,  excited 
by  a  poster  advertising  a  beef  extract  and 
some  'stiU  lifes'  by  a  pavement  artist,  he 
began  drawing  'still  lifes'  on  the  pave- 
ment of  his  home  yard.  His  family  gave 
him  water  and  oil  colours  and,  inspired 
by  reading  a  life  of  W.  P.  Frith  [q.v.],  he 
determined  to  be  an  artist,  and  attended 
classes  at  the  Regent  Street  Polytechnic. 
In  December  1907  he  began  work,  for  five 
shillings  a  week,  with  Messrs.  Clayton  & 
Bell,  glass-painters,  of  Regent  Street,  but 
in  October  1908  the  Jewish  Educational 
Aid  Society,  on  the  advice  of  (Sir)  William 
Rothenstein,  sent  him  to  the  Slade  School 
of  Fine  Art,  where  in  1909  he  won 
the  Slade  scholarship.  In  1912  he  won 
the  British  Institute  scholarship,  left  the 
Slade,  joined  the  New  English  Art  Club, 
and  received  some  commissions,  including 
a  portrait  of  Sir  George  Darwin  [q.v.], 
which  was  presented  in  1923  to  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

Already  a  marked  figure  among  students 
and  at  the  Cafe  Royal  for  his  talents, 
vivacity,  and  exotic  beauty,  Gertler  early 
became  known  to  (Sir)  Edward  Marsh, 
Mr.  Gilbert  Cannan,  and  D.  H.  Lawrence 
[q.v.],  and  also  to  Lady  Ottoline  Morrell 
[q.v.],  at  whose  homes  in  London  and  at 
Garsington,  Oxfordshire,  he  met  (Giles) 
Lytton  Strachey  [q.v.],  Roger  Fry  [q.v.], 
and  many  leading  intellectuals:  for  some 
years  he  painted  much  at  Garsington.  In 
January  1914  he  showed  ten  pictures  at 
the  Chenil  Gallery,  but  hard  work  and 
sociability  impaired  his  health  and  in  the 
autumn  he  retired  temporarily  to  Mr. 
Cannan's  windmill  at  Cholesbury,  Buck- 
inghamshire. Mr.  Cannan's  novel  Mendel 
(1916)  is  based,  in  many  parts  verbatim, 
on  Gertler's  accoimt  of  his  life;  he  was 
always  a  brilliant  raconteur,  especially  of 
Whitechapel  episodes.  In  1915  he  left 
home  and  established  himself  at  Penn 
Studio  in  Hampstead,  where  he  worked 
for  fifteen  years.  In  1920  he  spent  the  first 
of  several  periods  in  a  sanatorium.  But 
painting  was  the  breath  of  life  to  him  and 
he  worked  steadily  on,  holding  frequent 
one-man  shows  at  the  Goupil,  Leicester, 
and  Lefevre  galleries,  contributing  regu- 
larly to  the  London  Group  exhibitions, 
and,  from  1932,  teaching  at  the  West- 
minster Technical  Institute.  He  had, 
however,  periods  of  great  depression  and 
on  23  Jime  1939  he  committed  suicide  at 
his  home  in  Highgate.  He  married  in  1930 
Marjorie  Greatorex,  daughter  of  George 


835 


Gertler 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 
I 


Edmund  Hodgkinson,  a  London  solicitor, 
and  had  a  son. 

Although  he  was  deeply  impressed  by 
Cezanne,  and  later  by  Picasso,  Gertler's 
best  works  are  profoundly  original,  marked 
by  large  and  firm  design,  executed  with 
masterly  craftsmanship  in  rich  and  har- 
monious colour.  Portraits  are  among 
them,  but,  although  he  painted  habitually 
from  models,  the  necessity  of  securing  a 
likeness  militated  against  the  more  gener- 
alized vision  of  form  and  colour  which 
inspired  him. 

Five  works,  including  'The  Artist's 
Mother',  are  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  others 
in  the  Manchester,  Bradford,  Belfast, 
Pietermaritzburg,  and  Tel-Aviv  collec- 
tions. 

[Mark  Gertler  {British  Artists  of  To-Day), 
1925;  Mark  Gertler,  'Fragment  of  Autobio- 
graphy' ;  personal  knowledge.] 

T.  Baxston. 

GIBBS,  VICARY  (1853-1932),  genea- 
logist and  gardener,  was  bom  at  Hamp- 
stead  12  May  1853,  the  third,  but  second 
surviving,  son  of  Henry  Hucks  Gibbs, 
afterwards  first  Lord  Aldenham  [q.v.].  He 
was  great-great-nephew  of  the  judge  Sir 
Vicary  Gibbs  [q.v.]  whose  dry  humour  he 
was  supposed  to  have  inherited.  His 
mother  was  Louisa  Anne,  third  daughter 
of  William  Adams,  of  Thorpe,  Surrey,  fel- 
low of  the  College  of  Advocates,  Doctors' 
Commons.  George  Edward  Cokayne 
[q.v.],  the  original  compiler  of  The  Com- 
plete Peerage,  who  in  1873  changed  his 
name  from  Adams,  was  his  mother's 
brother,  and  also  married  his  father's 
sister. 

Gibbs  was  educated  at  Eton  and  at 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  where  he  obtained 
a  third  class  in  classical  moderations 
(1874).  In  1880  he  was  called  to  the  bar 
by  Lincoln's  Inn.  He  became,  however, 
a  partner  in  the  family  business  of  Antony 
Gibbs  &  Sons,  merchants  and  bankers.  In 
1892  he  was  elected  conservative  member 
of  parliament  for  the  St.  Albans  division, 
but  in  1904  he  voluntarily  vacated  his 
seat,  on  the  ground  that  his  business  had 
accepted  an  Admiralty  contract,  and  was 
defeated  at  the  ensuing  by-election. 

By  a  family  arrangement  Gibbs  con- 
tinued to  live  at  Aldenham  House,  near 
Elstree,  and  there  he  developed  gardens 
the  fame  of  which  was  world-wide.  His 
tastes  were  against  formal  horticulture, 
and  he  gradually  acquired  a  magnificent 
collection  of  the  rarer  trees  and  flowering 
shrubs,   especially   of  American   thorns. 


The  beauties  of  his  garden  were  freely 
shared,  for  he  regularly  issued  catalogues 
of  his  surplus  plants  at  moderate  prices. 
He  had  himself  a  keen  eye  for  variations 
of  foliage  and  habit. 

For  many  years  Gibbs  had  been  collect- 
ing material  for  a  new  edition  of  The 
Complete  Peerage,  which  he  dedicated  to 
his  uncle.  The  first  volume  was  published 
in  1910,  and  four  volumes  had  appeared 
by  1916.  In  1920  Gibbs  relinquished  the 
editorship  to  Henry  Arthur  Doubleday, 
whose  name  appears  on  the  title-page 
of  the  original  issue  of  vol.  v  (1921). 
After  the  appearance  of  vol.  v  he  ceased 
to  bear  the  major  part  of  the  expenses  of 
the  enterprise;  these  he  had  defrayed  in 
full  up  to  1919.  He  continued,  however, 
to  give  valued  advice  luitil  his  death,  and 
excerpts  from  the  copious  material  which 
he  had  prepared  wiU  appear  over  his 
initials  in  all  the  later  volumes.  By  1945 
the  work  had  been  carried  down  to  vol.  x 
(Oakham  to  Richmond).  The  revised  edi- 
tion treats  of  medieval  peerages  with  a  far 
higher  degree  of  scholarship  than  did 
Cokayne's  original  work,  which  relied  too 
much  on  printed  sources,  especially  on 
Dugdale's  Baronage ;  it  also  bears  witness 
in  its  less  austere  footnotes  to  the  re- 
markable range  of  Gibbs' s  reading  and 
information.  He  delighted  in  appropriate 
quotations  which  give  a  thumbnail  por- 
trait or  a  vignette  of  contemporary  man- 
ners and  often  reflect  his  characteristic 
sardonic  humour.  Genealogists  and  his- 
torians are  doubly  in  debt  to  his  learning 
and  his  generosity. 

Gibbs  died,  unmarried,  at  his  London 
house  13  January  1932.  A  portrait  by 
J.  B.  Wirgman  is  in  the  possession  of 
Lord  Aldenham,  and  another,  by  R.  G. 
Evans,  is  the  property  of  the  National 
Provident  Institution. 

[The  Times,  14  and  22  January  1932 ;  Han- 
sard, Parliamentary  Debates,  1904;  private 
information.]  Michael  Maclagan. 

GILBERT,  Sir  ALFRED  (1854-1934), 
sculptor,  was  born  in  London  12  August 
1854,  the  elder  son  of  Alfred  GUbert, 
musician,  by  his  wife,  Charlotte,  daughter 
of  James  Cole,  of  Tarrington,  Hereford- 
shire. He  was  educated  at  the  Mercers' 
School,  London,  and  Aldenham  Grammar 
School,  in  Hertfordshire^  whence  his  father 
intended  that  he  should  go  to  Oxford. 
However,  in  1872  he  persuaded  his  father 
to  allow  him  to  enter  for  the  examination 
of  the  Royal  CoUege  of  Surgeons,  which  he 
passed.  Thereafter,  while  waiting  to  enter 


886 


1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Gilbert 


for  an  open  scholarship  at  the  Middlesex 
Hospital,  he  began  to  attend  Heatherley's 
Art  School,  in  Newman  Street.  When  he 
failed  to  win  the  scholarship,  he  continued 
to  work  at  Heatherley's,  feeling  that  he 
had  discovered  his  true  vocation,  and  later 
went  on  to  the  Royal  Academy  Schools. 
During  this  period  he  was  also  receiving 
instruction  from  (Sir  Joseph)  Edgar 
Boehm,  the  Queen's  sculptor  [q.v.].  In 
1875  he  married  his  cousin,  Alice  Jane, 
daughter  of  Francis  Gilbert,  of  Ottawa, 
Canada ;  and  in  the  same  year  he  moved 
to  Paris,  where  he  entered  the  ^ificole  des 
Beaux  Arts.  He  studied  there,  vmder  P.  J. 
Cavelier,  for  three  years,  contriving  to  live 
on  the  sale  of  works  of  sculpture  and  the 
giving  of  lessons  in  Latin  and  Greek.  At 
the  end  of  this  period  he  took  his  family, 
by  now  consisting  of  his  wife,  a  son,  and 
a  daughter,  to  Rome  and  other  cities  of 
Italy,  to  complete  his  studies.  It  was  in 
Italy  that  he  produced  the  early  works 
upon  which  his  reputation  was  founded: 
'The  Kiss  of  Victory',  'Perseus  Arming', 
and  '  Icarus ',  which  last  was  a  commission 
from  Sir  Frederic  (later  Lord)  Leighton 
[q.v.]. 

In  1884  Gilbert  brought  his  family  to 
England,  where  he  had  decided  to  make 
his  home.  As  a  result  of  his  'Icarus'  he 
was  elected  A.R.A.  in  1887,  and  there  fol- 
lowed a  period  of  considerable  prosperity 
and  fame.  Through  the  influence  of 
Boehm  he  obtained  the  commission  to 
design  a  memorial  to  Lord  Shaftesbury; 
the  result  of  this  was  the  Shaftesbury 
memorial  fountain  and  its  crowning  statue, 
vulgarly  known  as  Eros,  which  was  im- 
veiled  in  Piccadilly  Circus  in  1893,  Its 
symbolic  nature,  as  opposed  to  the  more 
conventional  forms  of  memorial  statuary, 
aroused  a  certain  amoimt  of  criticism.  A 
characteristic  lavishness  led  him  to  exceed 
the  cost  for  which  he  had  contracted,  with 
the  result  that  he  paid  a  large  proportion 
out  of  his  own  pocket. 

In  1892  Gilbert  was  elected  R.A.  His 
next  important  commission  was  to  design 
and  construct  a  memorial  to  the  Duke  of 
Clarence  who  died  in  that  year.  This  took 
the  form  of  an  elaborate  sarcophagus, 
flanked  with  statuary,  which  was  to  be 
placed  in  the  Albert  Chapel,  St.  George's, 
Windsor.  In  1897  he  was  appointed 
M.V.O.  In  1901  he  was  nominated  pro- 
fessor of  sculpture  at  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools.  Although  his  artistic  reputation 
was  now  at  its  zenith,  his  financial  affairs 
had  slipped  into  a  very  precarious  state. 
Lavish    expenditure    on    his    work,    his 


friends,  and  the  house  which  he  had  built  • 
for  himself  in  Maida  Vale  reduced  him  to 
a  state  of  bankruptcy.  He  was  forced  to 
sell  his  house  and  pay  out  all  his  remaining 
funds  to  his  creditors.  As  a  solution  to  his 
difficulties,  he  decided  in  1904  to  leave 
England  altogether,  choosing  to  settle  in 
Bruges,  where  he  was  in  fact  to  remain 
until  1926.  In  1908  he  resigned  his  pro- 
fessorship at  the  Royal  Academy  and  his 
membership  of  that  and  other  English 
societies. 

During  the  twenty  years  or  so  which 
Gilbert  spent  in  Bruges,  he  was  not  en- 
tirely cut  off  from  his  friends  in  England. 
Many  of  them  visited  him,  and  he  exe- 
cuted commissions  for  clients  in  England. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  remained 
in  Bruges.  Thereafter  he  made  two  visits 
to  Italy.  In  1926  he  returned  to  England, 
at  the  express  wish  of  King  George  V,  who 
desired  him  to  complete  the  Clarence 
memorial.  He  was  received  back  in  Eng- 
land with  acclamation,  and  in  the  same 
year  was  awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  British  Sculptors.  He 
was  also  commissioned  to  execute  a 
memorial  to  Queen  Alexandra  at  Marl- 
borough Gate,  St.  James's,  which  was 
unveiled  by  King  George  in  1932.  In  this 
year  Gilbert  was  knighted  and  resumed 
his  membership  of  the  Royal  Academy. 

Gilbert  died  in  London  4  November 
1934.  By  his  first  wife,  who  predeceased 
him  in  1916,  he  had  three  sons,  the 
yovmgest  of  whom  was  killed  in  a  naval 
engagement  in  1917,  and  two  daughters. 
He  married  secondly  in  1921  Stephanie 
de  Bourg,  a  widow,  by  whom  he  had  no 
children. 

Some  of  Gilbert's  works  have  already 
been  mentioned.  He  made  many  portrait 
statues,  among  which  should  be  noted  the 
statue  at  Winchester  of  Queen  Victoria 
(1887),  and  the  John  Howard  centenary 
statue  at  Bedford  (1894).  He  also  exer- 
cised his  gift  in  the  production  of  smaller 
works  of  delicate  craftsmanship,  of  which 
the  Preston  mayoral  chain,  of  silver-gflt 
and  enamel  (1892),  provides  a  good  ex- 
ample. His  versatility  is  shown  by  the 
juxtaposition  of  these  works ;  it  was  per- 
haps the  result  of  his  lifelong  admiration 
for  the  ideals  of  Italian  Renaissance  crafts- 
manship, which  he  embodied  sufficiently 
for  Rodin  to  describe  him  as  the  'English 
Cellini'.  While  this  is  an  exaggeration,  it 
must  be  admitted  that  Gilbert  combined 
the  capacities  for  delicate  and  monu- 
mental work  to  an  unusual  degree :  if  his 
sentiment  is  sometimes  inclined  to  cloy, 


337 


Gilbert 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  blame  must  fall  as  much  upon  the 
change  in  taste  as  upon  himself. 

A  chalk  drawing  of  Gilbert  by  J.  M'L. 
Hamilton  (1887)  is  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery.  Of  a  painting  by  G.  F. 
Watts  (1889),  exhibited  at  the  Royal  Aca- 
demy in  1896;  another  painting,  by  J. 
Seymour  Lucas  (1891),  showing  him  at 
work ;  a  water-colour  drawing  by  H.  F.  W. 
Ganz  (1907),  showing  him  in  his  studio  at 
Bruges;  and  a  crayon  drawing  by  Mrs. 
a'Beckett  Terrell,  reproduced  in  The 
Times  of  5  November  1934,  the  present 
whereabouts  are  uncertain.  He  is  com- 
memorated by  a  tablet  in  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral. 

[The  Times,  5  November  1934 ;  Isabel  Mc- 
Alister,  Alfred  Gilbert,  1929;  Art  Annual, 
Easter  1903 ;  E.  Machell  Cox,  Commemorative 
Catalogue  of  an  Exhibition  of  Models  and 
Designs  by  the  late  Sir  Alfred  Gilbert  R.A.  held 
at  the  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum  Autumn 
1936,  1937 ;  H.  F.  W.  Ganz,  Alfred  Gilbert  at 
Work,  1934.]  James  Laver. 

GILES,  HERBERT  ALLEN  (1845- 
1935),  Chinese  scholar  and  author,  was 
born  at  Oxford  8  December  1845,  the 
fourth  son  of  the  editor  and  translator 
John  Allen  Giles  [q.v.],  afterwards  rector 
of  Sutton,  Surrey,  by  his  wife,  Anna  Sarah 
Dickinson.  He  was  educated  at  Charter- 
house and  then  joined  the  China  consular 
service,  reaching  Peking  early  in  1867.  He 
became  vice-consul  at  Pagoda  Island 
(1880)  and  at  Shanghai  (1883);  he  was 
consul  at  Tamsui  (1885)  and  at  Ningpo 
(1891).  He  left  China  late  in  1892,  his 
resignation  dating  from  1893,  and  he  lived 
at  Aberdeen  imtil  1897  when  he  moved  to 
Cambridge  on  his  appointment  to  succeed 
Sir  T.  F.  Wade  [q.v.]  as  professor  of 
Chinese  there,  and  he  held  the  chair  until 
his  resignation  in  1932.  His  first  task  was 
to  catalogue  the  collection  of  Chinese 
books  which  his  predecessor  had  given  to 
the  vmiversity,  a  task  which  he  performed 
perhaps  too  rapidly  and  with  insufficient 
knowledge  of  bibliography.  His  principal 
achievement  as  professor  was  to  win  a 
place  for  Chinese  as  a  subject  both  in  the 
previous  examination  and  in  the  oriental 
languages  tripos.  His  consular  career  had 
been  without  special  opportunity  for  dis- 
tinction and  his  professorship  (which  was 
at  first  unpaid  and  later  rewarded  with 
a  meagre  honorarium)  was  a  disappoint- 
ment, except  that  it  gave  him  abundant 
leisure  for  writing ;  for  his  pupils  were  very 
few  and  he  failed  to  win  popularity  for 
Chinese  in  university  circles. 


Giles's  title  to  fame  rests  on  his  pub- 
lished writings.  With  a  considerable  com- 
mand of  the  Chinese  language,  an  unerring 
instinct  for  what  the  public  would  read, 
and  a  clear  and  graceful  English  style,  he 
began  very  early  to  publish  a  stream  ofj 
books  which  flowed  unabated  for  moi 
than  fifty  years,  ranging  from  technics 
works  for  students,  like  Chinese  withot 
a    Teacher   (1872),   his   large   Dictionar 
(1892,  2nd  ed.  1912),  and  his  Chinese  BiO' 
graphical  Dictionary  (1898),  to  populal 
books  like  Strange  Stories  from  a  Chinesi 
Studio  (1880),  Gems  of  Chinese  Literaturi 
(1884),  and  Chuang  TzO,  (1889).    But  al 
were  based  alike  on  a  direct  knowledge  ol 
the    country,    people,    and    language    o% 
China;  and  it  was  truly  said,  when  he 
received  the  triennial  gold  medal  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society  in  1922,  that  'bej 
yond   all   other  living   scholars   he   ha(i 
humanized  Chinese  studies '.  He  was  prob^ 
ably  the  most  potent   influence   in  re- 
placing the  old  English  regard  for  thin^ 
Chinese  as  merely  queer  or  silly  by  ai 
intelligent  perception  of  the  depth  anc 
beauty  of  the  culture  of  China ;  but  he  die 
not  profess  the  gifts  of  the  profoimd  anc 
minute  researcher. 

In  private  life  Giles  was  punctual  anc 
methodical,  bright  in  talk  and  faithful 
friendship.  An  old  Chinese  admirer  de^^^ 
scribed  him  as  'of  the  fanatical  typeJ 
always  furiously  taking  sides  no  matte^ 
right  or  wrong',  and  this  characteristic 
inevitably  involved  him  in  occasional  con^ 
troversy. 

Giles  received  honorary  degrees  fror 
the  universities  of  Aberdeen  (1897)  anc 
Oxford  (1924)  and  was  twice  awarded  the 
Prix  Stanislas  Julien  by  the  French  Aca-| 
demy,  of  which  he  was  a  corresponding 
member  (1924)  and  in  which  he  had  him-i 
self  endowed  a  prize  in  1916.  He  was  twice' 
married:  first,  in  1870  to  Catherine  Maria 
(died  1882),  daughter  of  Thomas  Harold 
Fenn,  of  Nayland,  Suffolk;  secondly,  in 
1883  to  EHse  Williamina  (died  1921), 
daughter  of  Alfred  Edersheim  [q.v.].  By 
his  first  wife  he  had  six  sons  and  three 
daughters,  and  one  daughter  by  his 
second.  Two  of  the  sons  followed  him  in 
the  China  service,  both  reaching  the  rank 
of  consul-general,  a  third  became  a  distin- 
guished sinologist  and  keeper  of  the  de- 
partment of  oriental  printed  books  and 
manuscripts  at  the  British  Museum,  and 
yet  another  rose  to  be  a  colonel  in  the 
Royal  Engineers.  Only  the  fourth  and 
fifth  sons  survived  their  father  and  the 
third  daughter  predeceased  him.    Giles 


888 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gill 


died  at  Cambridge  13  February  1935  in 
ninetieth  year. 

[The  Times,  14  February  1935 ;  Cambridge 
riew,  22  February  1935;  Journal  of  the 
loyal  Asiatic  Society,  July  1935 ;  Cambridge 
"Chronicle,  14  December  1982 ;  personal  know- 

ige.] 

GILES,  PETER  (1860-1935),  phUo- 
|ogist  and  master  of  Emmanuel  College, 
imbridge,  was  born  at  Strichen  in  the 
listrict  of  Buchan,  Aberdeenshire,  20 
)ctober  1860,  the  eldest  son  of  Peter  Giles, 
'a  factor,  by  his  wife,  Margaret  Eddie 
Brown,  who,  on  her  mother's  side,  was  of 
Highland  descent  from  Inverness-shire. 
He  was  educated  first  at  the  parish  school 
of  Strichen.  In  1878  he  proceeded  with 
a  bursary  to  King's  College  in  the  univer- 
sity of  Aberdeen,  and  in  1882  with  a  classi- 
cal scholarship  to  Gonville  and  Caius 
College,  Cambridge.  Here  he  obtained 
first  classes  in  both  parts  of  the  classical 
tripos  (1884,  1887)  with  the  star  for  dis- 
tinction in  comparative  philology  and 
history  in  part  ii ;  in  the  historical  tripos 
he  was  awarded  a  second  class  (1885),  was 
Browne  medallist  (1884),  and  Whewell 
scholar  for  international  law  and  Light- 
foot  scholar  for  ecclesiastical  history 
(1885).  In  1887  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
his  college,  but  in  1890  he  migrated  to 
Emmanuel  College  as  fellow  and  classical 
tutor.  In  1891  he  was  elected  university 
reader  in  comparative  philology,  and  in 
1911  master  of  Emmanuel:  these  posts  he 
retained  until  his  death.  He  was  vice- 
chancellor  of  Cambridge  University  from 
1919  to  1921. 

Giles  possessed  wide  learning,  but  his 
chief  interest  was  in  comparative  philo- 
logy, a  field  at  Cambridge  in  which  he 
followed  John  Peile,  master  of  Christ's 
College  [q.v.].  In  1886  at  Freiburg  (and 
again  in  1887  at  Leipzig)  he  attended  the 
lectures  of  Karl  Brugmann,  who  was  then 
expounding  the  doctrines  of  the  Neo- 
Grammatiker.  This  led  Giles  to  carry  on 
Peile's  work  and  to  produce  his  main  book, 
the  Short  Manual  of  Comparative  Philology 
for  the  Use  of  Classical  Students  (1895,  2nd 
ed.  1901).  In  1888  The  Principles  of  Sound 
and  Inflexion  as  illustrated  in  the  Greek  and 
Latin  Languages  by  J.  E.  King  and 
Christopher  Cookson  had  already  brought 
the  new  ideas  to  England,  but  Giles's  book 
was  the  first  to  apply  them  in  a  wider 
survey.  He  wrote  many  papers  on  lin- 
guistic, classical,  and  miscellaneous  sub- 
jects (including  several  articles  for  this 
Dictionary),  which  are  fully  enumerated 


in  the  British  Academy  memoir.  His  views 
on  linguistics  appear  most  clearly  in  an 
essay  which  he  contributed  to  the  com- 
memorative volume  Darwin  and  Modem 
Science  (edited  by  A.  C.  Seward,  1909). 
Much  time  was  devoted  to  an  edition  of 
Theocritus  in  collaboration  with  Dr.  A.  B. 
Cook,  but  pressure  of  other  work,  largely 
administrative,  in  the  university  as  well 
as  in  the  college,  caused  this  to  be 
abandoned. 

Giles  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Aberdeen  (1903)  and 
Harvard  (1927),  and  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Gonville  and  Caius 
College  (1913)  and  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  (1927).  He  married  in  1893 
Elizabeth  Mary,  eldest  daughter  of 
Thomas  William  Dunn,  headmaster  of 
Bath  College,  and  had  one  son  and  four 
daughters,  one  of  whom  predeceased  her 
father.  He  died  at  Cambridge  17  Septem- 
ber 1935. 

A  portrait  by  Alfred  Hayward,  painted 
in  1934,  hangs  in  Emmanuel  College:  a 
replica  was  presented  to  Giles's  family. 

[R.  M.  Dawkins,  Peter  Giles,  1860-1935  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxi, 
1935 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] R.  M.  Dawkins. 

GILL,  (ARTHUR)  ERIC  (ROWTON) 
(1882-1940),  stone-carver,  engraver,  typo- 
grapher, and  author,  was  born  at  Brighton 
22  February  1882,  the  eldest  son  and 
second  child  of  Arthur  Tidman  Gill, 
minister  of  the  Countess  of  Huntingdon's 
connexion,  by  his  wife.  Cicely  Rose  King. 
He  was  for  seven  years  a  pupil  at  Arnold 
House,  Brighton.  In  1897  he  moved  with 
the  family  to  Chichester.  He  spent  two 
years  at  the  Art  School  there,  and  the 
planned  and  ordered  city  deeply  impressed 
his  mind.  In  1899  he  was  articled  in 
London  to  W.  D.  Caroe  [q.v.].  But  he 
soon  felt  distaste  for  current  notions  of 
architecture,  and  in  his  leisure  turned  with 
relief  to  lessons  in  masonry  and  lettering — 
the  latter  under  Edward  Johnston,  then 
just  beginning  the  masterly  revival  of  a 
languishing  craft.  By  1903,  when  he 
abandoned  his  architect's  office,  he  was 
proficient  enough  to  earn  a  living  by 
letter-cutting,  which  was  to  be  a  dominant 
interest  throughout  his  life. 

Meanwhile  Gill  had  gone  to  share  John- 
ston's rooms  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  remaining 
there  until  his  marriage  in  1904  to  Mary 
Ethel,  daughter  of  Henry  Holding  Moore, 
head  verger  of  Chichester  Cathedral.  He 
now    moved    to    Battersea,    thence    to 


839 


Gill 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hammersmith,  and  in  1907  back  to  Sussex, 
where  he  settled  at  Ditchling.  His  trade 
was  still  lettering — stone  inscriptions  (with 
heraldic  emblems  on  occasion),  painted 
signs,  drawn  or  engraved  titles  for  books. 
He  began  engraving  in  1906  or  1907.  In 
1909  he  made  his  first  stone  figure,  for  him 
an  experiment,  but  for  Coimt  Kessler  and 
Roger  Fry  [q.v.],  his  friends  and  patrons, 
an  eventful  achievement  which  broke  with 
convention  by  being  not  modelled  but 
carved  direct  from  the  stone.  He  was 
encouraged  to  continue,  and,  aided  by 
Mr.  Augustus  John,  held  his  first  exhibi- 
tion in  1911  at  the  Chenil  Gallery,  Chelsea. 

Gill's  thought  had  developed  mean- 
while. For  the  world  as  he  now  saw  it  the 
prime  necessity  was  religion,  the  rule  of 
God;  and  there  was  only  one  institution 
which  professed  to  rule  the  whole  world 
in  God's  name.  In  February  1913  he  was 
received  into  the  Roman  Catholic  church 
(later  he  was  to  become  a  Dominican  ter- 
tiary). In  the  same  year  he  was  commis- 
sioned to  carve  the  Stations  of  the  Cross 
in  Westminster  Cathedral,  an  important 
work  which  occupied  him  tmtil  1918.  He 
exhibited  at  the  Goupil  Gallery  in  1914, 
and  from  1919  onwards  executed  a  num- 
ber of  war  memorials  (village  crosses  at 
Bisham,  Harting,  Trumpington ;  lettering 
on  a  magnificent  scale  at  New  College, 
Oxford,  1921 ;  a  relief  of  the  'Driving  out 
of  the  Money-changers'  at  Leeds  Univer- 
sity, 1923).  For  St.  Cuthbert's  church, 
Bradford,  he  car\'ed  another  set  of  Sta- 
tions (1920-1924).  During  this  period  he 
was  also  actively  connected  with  St. 
Dominic's  Press,  Ditchling,  for  which  he 
made  some  of  his  earliest  illustrations, 
while  to  its  periodical.  The  Game,  he  con- 
tributed not  only  engravings  but  essays  on 
social  matters  and  on  the  philosophy  of 
art.  He  also  extended  his  drawing  from 
working  sketches  (always  beautiful  things 
in  themselves)  to  portraits  and  studies 
from  the  life. 

In  August  1924  Gill  left  Ditchling  for 
Capel-y-ffln  in  the  Black  Mountain.  For 
the  next  four  years  he  did  little  sculpture, 
although  this  included  two  of  his  finest 
works,  the  colossal  torso  'Mankind'  (1928, 
later  acquired  by  the  Tate  Gallery)  and  his 
own  favourite  work,  a  'Deposition'  in 
black  marble  (1925,  now  at  the  King's 
School,  Canterbury).  An  altar-piece  for 
Rossall  School  chapel  (1927)  remains  his 
principal  carving  in  wood.  He  engraved 
a  good  deal  for  the  Golden  Cockerel  Press 
and  designed  the  first  two  of  his  ten  print- 
ing types,   'Perpetua'   (1925)  and  'GiU 


Sans-serif  (1927).  GiU's  reputation  was 
now  assured.  His  lettering  in  stone,  with 
its  impersonal  grandeur  and  its  finality, 
was  the  noblest  that  had  been  seen  for 
centuries.  His  sculpture,  mainly  in  low 
relief  but  also  in  the  round,  was  in  the 
forefront  of  modern  work,  though  more 
different  than  was  commonly  recognized 
from  that  of  famous  contemporaries,  the 
balance  and  rhjrthm  admired  for  their  own 
sake  by  connoisseurs  being  for  him  the 
mere  flowering  of  rationality  in  the  apt 
expression  of  an  intelligible  idea.  His 
drawings  were  of  great  purity  and  pre- 
cision, and  his  illustrations  reveal  an  un- 
equalled sense  of  the  nature  of  a  book  and 
the  proper  sympathy  between  engravings 
and  type. 

In  October  1928  Gill  moved  to  Pigotts, 
near  High  Wycombe.  In  1929  he  pub- 
lished his  first  fvdl-length  book,  Art-Non- 
sense, a  collection  of  essays,  lectures,  and 
pamphlets  written  since  1918.  To  the 
next  three  years  belong  not  only  his  most 
ambitious  illustrations,  the  vivacious 
sequence  of  'Canterbury  Tales'  and  his 
masterpiece  the  'Four  Gospels',  but  also 
his  best-known  sculptures,  those  at  Broad- 
casting House.  He  enriched  the  practice 
of  printing  with  five  more  types  and  its 
theory  with  the  searching  Essay  on  Typo- 
graphy (1931). 

In  1934  Gill  visited  Palestine  to  carve 
ten  panels  on  the  Palestine  Museum  at 
Jerusalem.  Between  1935  and  1938  he 
was  chiefly  engaged  on  the  great  relief  of 
the  'Creation  of  Adam'  for  the  League  of 
Nations  coimcil  hall  at  Geneva,  but  foimd 
time  besides  for  one  of  his  most  important 
books.  The  Necessity  of  Belief  (1936).  His 
mastery  in  the  visual  arts  had  long  been 
recognized,  and  about  this  time  was  win- 
ning him  public  honours:  he  became 
honorary  A.R.I.B.A.  (1935),  A.R.A. 
(1937),  and  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  from  Edinburgh  University 
(1938).  But  he  now  had  also  a  growing 
influence  as  a  penetrating  thinker  and 
powerful  writer  on  the  problems  of  the 
modern  world.  Akin  to  Ruskin  and  Morris 
in  some  regards,  he  nevertheless  drew  less 
from  them  than  from  W.  R.  Lethaby  [q.v,] 
and  Ananda  Coomaraswamy,  and  again 
from  Thomist  philosophy  and  the  social 
encyclicals  of  modern  Popes.  Against 
puritans  he  defended  the  holiness  of  all 
natural  things,  against  sensualists  the  pri- 
macy of  the  spiritual,  against  emotionalists 
the  prerogatives  of  the  inteUect.  Charac- 
teristic theses  were:  'Look  after  goodness 
and  truth,  and  beauty  will  look  after  her- 


840 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gilmour 


self' ; '  In  a  normal  society  the  artist  is  not 
a  special  kind  of  man,  but  every  man 
;  is  a  special  kind  of  artist ' ;  '  The  artist  is 
[the  responsible  workman'.  The  concep- 
[tion  of  responsibility  indeed  coloured  his 
[whole  thought ;  and  its  absence  from  much 
[of  modern  life  was  the  root  of  his  lifelong 
'opposition  to  commercialism  and  indus- 
[trialism  and  his  later  opposition  to  war. 

Admiring  past  cultures.  Gill  detested 
exploitation  of  them  to  veneer  and 
romanticize  the  present.  In  architecture, 
clothing,  typography  he  combated  pictur- 
esque intrusions  and  demanded  the 
rational  and  consistent:  he  took  pleasure 
in  designing  such  things  as  a  coin  or  cap- 
badge  or  postage  stamp  or  the  name-plate 
of  a  locomotive  in  conformity  with  the 
nature  and  use  of  each.  In  1938  he  col- 
laborated with  a  professional  architect  in 
building  a  church  at  Gorleston-on-Sea, 
planned  round  a  central  altar  and  with 
arches  crossed  to  make  an  octagon — an 
impressive  experiment  which  with  longer 
life  he  might  have  developed  far. 

The  year  1940  found  Gill  busied  with 
writing,  lecturing,  and  the  carving  of  a 
reredos  for  a  chapel  in  Westminster 
Cathedral.  But  an  affection  of  the  limgs 
which  had  long  been  troubling  him  forced 
him  to  enter  Harefield  hospital  near  Ux- 
bridge,  and  there  he  died  17  November, 
survived  by  his  wife  and  their  son  and 
three  daughters.  He  was  buried  in  the 
village  churchyard  at  Speen,  Buckingham- 
shire. 

Gill's  Autobiography,  published  just 
afterwards,  took  its  place  forthwith  among 
English  classics.  It  includes  a  self-portrait 
(1927)  and  two  photographs.  Another 
self-portrait  accompanies  Mr.  James 
Laver's  study  of  Gill  in  Portraits  in  Oil 
and  Vinegar  (1925),  and  Artwork,  Autunm 
1930,  has  a  water-colour  portrait  by  David 
Jones. 

[Eric  Gill,  Autobiography,  1940;  Letters  of 
Eric  Gill,  edited  by  Walter  Shewring,  1948 ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Walter  Shewring. 

GILMOUR,  Sir  JOHN,  second  baronet, 
of  Lundin  and  Montrave  (1876-1940), 
politician,  was  born  at  Montrave  in  the 
parish  of  Scoonie,  Fife,  27  May  1876,  the 
second,  but  eldest  surviving,  son  of  (Sir) 
John  Gilmour,  first  baronet  (whom  he 
succeeded  in  1920),  by  his  wife,  Henrietta, 
second  daughter  of  David  Gilmour,  of 
Quebec.  He  was  educated  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Glenalmond,  Edinburgh  University, 
and  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge. 


Gilmour  began  his  lengthy  career  of 
public  service  as  an  officer  of  the  Fife  and 
Forfar  Yeomanry  during  the  South  Afri- 
can war,  in  which  he  served  with  distinc- 
tion, and  as  an  administrator  in  1901, 
being  a  member  of  the  county  coimcil  of 
Fife  until  1910.  He  unsuccessfully  con- 
tested East  Fife  in  1906,  as  tmionist  candi- 
date, in  opposition  to  H,  H.  Asquith,  the 
sitting  member.  In  January  1910  he 
entered  parliament  as  member  for  East 
Renfrewshire,  holding  the  seat  until  1918, 
when  he  transferred  to  the  PoUok  division 
of  Glasgow,  for  which  constituency  he  sat 
imtil  his  death.  Gilmour's  parliamentary 
duties  were  interrupted  by  service  in  the 
field,  where  he  was  awarded  the  D.S.O. 
(with  bar).  However,  his  appointment  in 
1919  as  Scottish  unionist  whip  gave  a  pros- 
pect of  higher  responsibilities  when  his 
party  should  return  to  power.  He  retained 
the  post  until  1922,  and  held  it  again  in 
1924.  In  1921  he  was  appointed  a  jvmior 
lord  of  the  Treasury,  in  1922  was  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council,  and  in  1924  became 
secretary  for  Scotland,  the  status  of  the 
office  being  raised  to  a  secretaryship  of 
state  in  1926.  This  office  he  held  until 
1929.  When  the  all-party  government 
came  into  power  in  1931  Gilmour  became 
minister  of  agriculture  and  fisheries.  In 
1932  he  was  transferred  to  the  Home 
Office,  and  held  the  position  of  home 
secretary  until  he  relinquished  it  in  1935, 
when  he  was  appointed  G.C.V.O.  His 
next,  and  last,  office  was  that  of  minister 
of  shipping,  which  he  held  from  1939  until 
his  death  the  next  year. 

In  1937,  during  the  interval  between 
his  tenure  of  the  Home  Office  and  of 
the  Ministry  of  Shipping,  Gilmour  pre- 
sided over  a  departmental  committee 
appointed  to  inquire  into  the  organization 
of  the  various  Scottish  departments  of 
government.  The  reorganization  of  these 
departments  in  1939  followed  upon  the 
recommendations  of  his  committee. 

As  the  owner  of  a  considerable  landed 
estate  and  a  noted  breeder  of  stock,  Gil- 
mour had  a  deep  interest  in  agriculture 
and  practical  knowledge  of  it.  He  was 
master  of  the  Fife  foxhoxmds  from  1902 
to  1906,  captain  of  the  Royal  and  Ancient 
Golf  Club  at  St.  Andrews  in  1927,  and  a 
brigadier  of  the  Royal  Company  of  Archers 
(King's  Bodyguard  for  Scotland).  From 
1926  to  1929  he  was  lord  rector  of  Edin- 
burgh University,  and  he  received  the 
freedom  of  the  cities  of  Edinburgh  and 
Dundee  in  1928  and  of  Glasgow  in  1929. 
In    1938    and    1939    he   was    lord    high 


341 


Gilmour 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


commissioner  of  the  General  Assembly  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland,  of  which  Church 
he  was  a  loyal  and  devoted  member. 

Gilmour  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1902  to  Mary  Louise  (died  1919),  eldest 
daughter  of  Edward  Tiley  Lambert,  of 
Telham  Court,  Battle,  Sussex,  and  had 
one  son  and  one  daughter;  secondly,  in 
1920  to  Violet  Agnes,  youngest  daughter 
of  Edward  Tiley  Lambert,  and  had  one 
daughter.  He  died  in  London  30  March 
1940,  and  was  succeeded  as  third  baronet 
by  his  son,  John  Edward  (born  1912). 

Gilmour  had  most  of  the  qualities  which 
make  the  good  administrator.  He  pos- 
sessed a  sound  judgement,  was  quick  to 
grasp  the  essentials  of  a  problem,  had 
power  of  decision  and  tenacity  of  purpose. 
Fluency  of  speech  and  luilimited  courage 
made  him  an  effective  debater.  Although 
a  strong  party  man,  he  was  devoid  of 
bitterness  and  was  popular  with  members 
of  all  parties.  When,  therefore,  Scotland 
regained  its  secretaryship  of  state,  which 
had  been  in  abeyance  since  1746,  members 
of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  combined 
to  mark  the  occasion  by  the  presentation 
of  Gilmour's  portrait,  finely  painted  by 
James  Guthrie,  to  the  Scottish  Office, 
where  it  now  hangs. 

[The  Times,  1  April  1940;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  Lamb. 

GIROUARD,  Sir  (EDOUARD) 
PERCY  (CRANWILL)  (1867-1932),  rail- 
way engineer  and  colonial  administrator, 
was  born  at  Montreal  26  January  1867. 
He  was  of  French  Canadian  origin,  the  son 
of  Desire  Girouard  [q.v.],  a  judge  of  the 
High  Court  of  Canada,  by  his  second  wife, 
Essie,  daughter  of  Joseph  Cranwill.  He 
was  educated  privately  and  at  the  Royal 
Military  College  of  Canada,  Kingston, 
Ontario,  and  in  1886  took  up  engineering 
in  the  service  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way. In  1888  he  received  a  commission 
in  the  Royal  Engineers,  and  from  1890  to 
1895  was  railway  traffic  manager  at  the 
Royal  Arsenal,  Woolwich.  In  1896  he  was 
seconded  to  the  Egyptian  army,  and  as 
director  of  the  Sudan  railways  (1896- 
1898)  played  an  important  part  in  Kit- 
chener's conquest  of  the  Sudan.  He  served 
with  the  Dongola  Expeditionary  Force  in 
1896,  was  mentioned  in  dispatches,  and 
received  the  brevet  of  major  and  the 
D.S.O.  In  1898  he  was  appointed  president 
of  the  Egyptian  Railway  and  Telegraph 
Administration,  and,  on  the  outbreak 
of  the  South  African  war,  director  of 
railways    for   the    South   African    Field 


Force,  with  the  local  rank  of  lieutenant- 
colonel,  being  promoted  brevet-colonel  in 
1904.  Never  before  the  South  African 
campaign  had  a  British  army  been  re- 
quired to  control  a  vast  network  of  rail- 
ways, largely  through  hostUe  country,  and 
with  innumerable  columns  or  other  de- 
tached forces  using  it  as  a  base  along  many 
thousands  of  miles.  An  accovmt  of  the 
manner  in  which  this  task  was  carried  ou" 
is  given  by  Girouard  himself  in  his  Histo 
of  the  Railways  during  the  War  in  Soul 
Africa,  1899-1902  (1903). 

In     1900     Girouard     was     appointei 
K.C.M.G.,  and  on  the  conclusion  of  the; 
war  in  1902  was  nominated  commissione: 
of  railways  in  the  Transvaal  and  Orangi 
River  Colony,  a  position  which  he  resigned 
in  1904.    On  returning  home  he  becami 
staff  officer  to  the  chief  engineer  at  Chat' 
ham,  and  in  1906  assistant-quartermaster 
general.  Western  Command.    In  1907  h( 
was  appointed  to  succeed  Sir  Frederic! 
(later  Lord)  Lugard  as  high  commissioner, 
and  in   1908   as  governor,   of  Northen 
Nigeria.   In  this  vast  new  territory  ther* 
were  then  no  railways  and  Girouard's  firs" 
concern  was  to  plan  and  supervise  th 
construction  of  a  line  from  Baro  on  th( 
Niger   to    Kano,   the   principal    city    o: 
Northern  Nigeria.   This  line  of  350  mili 
was   subsequently   extended  to  the  ti 
fields  of  the  Bauchi  Plateau  and  to  tb 
seaports  of  Lagos  and  Port  Harcourt.  Th( 
railway  has  been  a  governing  factor 
the  development  of  Nigeria  and  has  bee: 
described  as  'the  cheapest,  most  rapi 
and  in  every  way  the  most  satisfacto: 
line  in  tropical  Africa'  (Lord  Lugard 
The  Dual  Mandate  in  British   Tropid 
Africa,  p.  448). 

Girouard  also  took  a  keen  interest 
the  conditions  of  land  tenure  in  Northe 
Nigeria  and  it  was  due  to  his  initiative" 
that  the  Northern  Nigeria  lands  commit- 
tee was  constituted  in  London  in  1908, 
followed  by  legislation  which  virtually 
nationalized  the  lands  of  Northern  Nigeria 
and  provided  a  model  for  land  policy  in 
other  African  territories.  His  further  pro- 
posals for  instituting  a  system  of  land 
taxation  were  subsequently  rejected  in 
favour  of  an  income-tax. 

In  native  administration  Girouard  was 
a  faithful  follower  of  the  principles  of 
'  indirect  ride '  laid  down  by  Lugard.  These 
he  applied  and  developed,  both  in  Nigeria 
and  in  the  British  East  Africa  Protecto- 
rate, to  which  he  was  transferred  as 
governor  in  1909.  These  principles  are 
well  simMnarized  by  him  in  the  1909-1910 


342 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Glazebrook 


Colonial  Report  for  the  British  East  Africa 
Protectorate,  and  Lugard  observed  that 
few  had  shown  greater  insight  into  prob- 
lems of  native  administration  than 
Girouard. 

In  1912  Girouard  resigned  his  governor- 
ship and  became  a  director  of  the  Elswick 
works  of  Armstrong,  Whitworth  &  com- 
pany. In  1915  he  was  appointed  director- 
general  of  munitions  supply,  but  resigned 
in  1917  in  order  to  return  to  Elswick.  He 
married  in  1903  Mary  Gwendolen  (died 
1916),  only  daughter  of  Sir  Richard  Solo- 
mon [q.v.],  and  had  one  son.  The  mar- 
riage was  dissolved  in  1915.  He  died  in 
London  26  September  1932. 

[The  Times,  27  September  1932;  A.  C. 
Burns,  History  of  Nigeria,  3rd  ed.  1942; 
C.  W.  J.  Orr,  The  Making  of  Northern  Nigeria, 
1911 ;  M.  Perham,  Native  Administration  in 
Nigeria,  1937 ;  Lord  Lugard,  The  Dual  Man- 
date in  British  Tropical  Africa,  1922 ;  Colonial 
Reports  for  Nigeria,  1907-1909,  and  Colonial 
Reports  for  the  British  East  Africa  Protectorate, 
1909-1912.]  C.  K.  Meek. 

GLAZEBROOK,  Sir  RICHARD  TET- 

LEY  (1854-1935),  physicist,  was  born  at 
West  Derby,  Liverpool,  18  September 
1854,  the  eldest  son  of  Nicholas  Smith 
Glazebrook,  surgeon,  by  his  wife,  Sarah 
Anne,  second  daughter  of  Richard  Tetley, 
also  of  Liverpool,  He  was  cousin  of  M.  G. 
Glazebrook  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Dulwich  College,  Liverpool  College,  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was 
elected  a  scholar  in  1875  and  a  fellow  in 
1877.  He  graduated  as  fifth  wrangler  in 
the  mathematical  tripos  of  1876,  and  at 
once  began  to  study  physics  under  James 
Clerk  Maxwell  [q.v.]  and  to  carry  out 
researches  on  the  theory  of  light  in  the 
Cavendish  laboratory.  When  J.  W.  Strutt, 
third  Lord  Rayleigh  [q.v.],  succeeded  Clerk 
Maxwell  as  Cavendish  professor  of  experi- 
mental physics  in  1880,  Glazebrook  and 
(Sir)  Napier  Shaw  both  became  demon- 
strators and  later  lecturers,  with  particular 
responsibility  for  the  teaching  of  practical 
physics.  In  1883  Glazebrook  was  ap- 
pointed secretary  of  a  British  Association 
committee  on  electrical  standards,  and, 
following  Rayleigh,  carried  out  many 
accurate  measurements.  In  1891  he  be- 
came assistant  director  of  the  Cavendish 
laboratory. 

In  1895  Glazebrook  became  senior  bur- 
sar of  Trinity  College  and,  as  such,  showed 
much  business  ability.  In  1898  he  left 
Cambridge  in  order  to  assume  the  office  of 
principal  of  University  College,  Liverpool, 


and  in  the  next  year  was  appointed  the 
first  director  of  the  National  Physical 
Laboratory,  then  being  formed  under  the 
management  of  the  Royal  Society.  In 
that  institution  he  found  his  true  field  of 
work,  to  the  benefit  of  science  and  of  the 
nation  in  both  peace  and  war. 

The  laboratory  was  placed  in  Bushy 
House,  Teddington,  the  ground  floor  being 
fitted  for  experiments  and  the  upper  floors 
being  made  into  a  residence  for  the  direc- 
tor. The  laboratory  space  was,  of  course, 
quite  inadequate,  and  Glazebrook's  first 
task  was  to  secure  extension,  which  short- 
age of  funds  made  difficvdt.  In  planning 
the  work,  priority  was  given  to  the  con- 
struction of  units  and  standards,  needed 
for  both  science  and  industry.  The  experi- 
ments of  Rayleigh  and  Glazebrook,  at 
Cambridge,  formed  a  basis  for  electrical 
measurements,  while  thermometry  was 
later  on  transferred  from  Kew  Observa- 
tory. Many  other  branches  of  physics 
were  taken  up  during  the  first  few  years, 
and  in  1908  (Sir)  Alfred  Yarrow  [q.v.]  pre- 
sented a  large  tank  for  experiments  on 
models  of  ships,  experiments  which  soon 
gave  much  help  to  the  shipbuilding 
industry. 

In  1909  R.  B.  (later  Lord)  Haldane 
[q.v.],  then  secretary  of  state  for  war, 
asked  the  laboratory  to  undertake  re- 
search in  aeronautics,  and  the  prime 
minister  appointed  an  advisory  committee 
on  that  subject.  Thus  was  initiated  the 
work  to  which  Glazebrook  devoted  so 
much  time  and  energy  during  his  director- 
ship and  after  his  retirement.  At  the 
laboratory  wind-tunnels  were  erected  in 
which  experiments  on  models  of  aero- 
planes could  be  made  in  currents  of  air. 
Mathematical  and  experimental  studies  of 
the  conditions  of  stability  were  carried 
out,  to  enable  designers  to  plan  aeroplanes 
that  would  fly  steadily.  This  work  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  superiority  of 
British  aircraft  in  the  early  days  of  the 
war  of  1914-1918. 

Another  generous  gift,  this  time  from 
Sir  J.  C.  Wemher  [q.v.]  in  1910,  made 
possible  a  building  for  metallurgy.  Delay 
was  caused  to  this  and  other  developments 
by  a  serious  attack  of  typhoid  fever  which 
kept  Glazebrook  away  from  the  labora- 
tory for  several  months. 

The  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  at  first 
dislocated  the  work  of  the  laboratory, 
which  was  deprived  of  a  quarter  of  its 
staff.  But  new  demands  for  research  soon 
arose;  the  stability  results  had  to  be 
adapted  to  fresh  types  of  aeroplane  as 


348 


Glazebrook 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


they  came  forward,  and  gauges  for  the 
manufacture  of  munitions  had  to  be  tested 
for  accuracy.  Apparatus,  formerly  ob- 
tained from  Germany,  had  to  be  examined, 
tested,  and  put  into  manufacture,  and 
countless  other  applications  of  science  had 
to  be  fitted  into  the  war  effort.  As 
director,  Glazebrook  was  responsible  for 
the  general  supervision  of  all  this  work, 
and  it  is  generally  agreed  that  he  did  it 
supremely  well. 

Glazebrook  reached  the  age  limit  in 
1919  and  retired.  He  had  then  done  a  full 
life's  work;  other  men  would  have  been 
content  to  rest,  but  Glazebrook  filled  his 
remaining  years  with  endless  activities. 
From  1920  to  1923  he  was  Zaharoff  pro- 
fessor of  aviation  at  the  Imperial  College 
of  Science  and  Technology  and  director  of 
the  aeronautics  department,  and  there- 
after remained  chairman  of  the  aeronauti- 
cal research  committee,  which  in  particular 
investigated  aeroplane  engines,  greatly 
improving  their  reliability.  He  became  a 
member  of  the  statutory  commission  for 
the  imiversity  of  Cambridge  in  1924,  and 
was  for  a  time  chairman  of  a  Home  Office 
committee  on  the  lighting  of  factories  and 
workshops.  He  was  also  chairman  of  the 
executive  committee  of  the  National 
Physical  Laboratory  from  1925  to  1932, 
and  did  much  good  work  for  the  Royal 
Society,  of  which  he  was  elected  a  fellow 
in  1882  and  was  foreign  secretary  from 
1926  to  1929 ;  the  society  awarded  him  the 
Hughes  medal  in  1909  and  a  Royal  medal 
in  1931.  He  received  the  gold  medal  of 
the  Royal  Aeronautical  Society  in  1933. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1910,  and  after 
being  knighted  in  1917,  K.C.B.  in  1920 
and  K.C.V.O.  in  1934.  Honorary  degrees 
were  conferred  upon  him  by  the  univer- 
sities of  Manchester,  Oxford,  Edinburgh, 
and  Heidelberg.  His  chief  recreations 
were  climbing  in  the  Alps  during  his 
annual  holiday,  and  golf  at  other  times. 

On  his  retirement  from  the  National 
Physical  Laboratory  Glazebrook  returned 
to  live  for  a  time  at  Cambridge,  but  most 
of  his  work  was  then  in  London  and  he 
found  he  must  follow  it.  First  he  moved 
to  Notting  Hill  Gate,  but  in  1924  he  built 
himself  a  house  at  Limpsfield  Common, 
Surrey. 

Glazebrook  combined  scientific  know- 
ledge and  abiUty  with  business  sagacity, 
soxmd  judgement  of  men,  and  general 
mental  vigour.  He  was  one  of  the  fore- 
most figures  in  the  world  of  science  in  his 
time.  Withal  he  had  a  kindly,  lovable 
nature,  and  was  held  in  affectionate  regard 


by  his  many  friends.  He  married  in  1883 
Frances  Gertrude,  daughter  of  John  Wil- 
liam Atkinson,  of  Leeds.  They  had  one 
son  and  three  daughters.  He  died  at 
Limpsfield  Common  15  December  1935. 

A  bas-relief  of  Glazebrook  by  John  E. 
Cluysenaar  is  at  the  National  Physical 
Laboratory.  His  portrait  in  oils  (1919) 
by  his  cousin  Hugh  de  T.  Glazebrook  was 
presented  to  him  by  the  staff  when  he 
retired.  He  left  it  to  Lady  Glazebrook  for 
life,  with  reversion  to  the  laboratory. 

[The  Times,  17  December  1935;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  6, 
December  1936  (portrait) ;  Proceedings  of  the 
Physical  Society,  vol.  xlvlii,  1936;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  C.  D.  Dampiek. 

GLENAVY,  first  Bakon  (1851-1931), 
Irish  lawyer  and  politician.  [See  Camp- 
bell, James  Henry  Mussen.] 

GODLEY,  (JOHN)  ARTHUR,  first 
Baron  Kilbracken  (1847-1932),  civil 
servant,  was  bom  in  London  17  June 
1847,  the  eldest  child  and  only  son  of  the 
politician  John  Robert  Godley  [q.v.],  of 
KiUegar,  co.  Leitrim,  by  his  wife,  Char- 
lotte, second  daughter  of  Charles  Wynne 
Griffith- Wynne,  of  Voelas,  Denbighshire, 
and  Cefnamlwch,  Carnarvonshire.  He  was 
a  first  cousin  of  A.  D.  Godley  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  Radley  (1857-1861)  and 
afterwards  at  Rugby,  imder  Frederick 
Temple  [q.v.].  In  1866  he  went,  as  an 
exhibitioner,  to  Balliol  CoUege,  Oxford, 
where  he  gained  a  reputation  as  a  brilliant 
classical  scholar.  He  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1868)  but 
was  prevented  by  illness  from  entering  for 
literae  humaniores.  He  won  the  Hertford 
(1868)  and  the  Ireland  (1870)  scholarships, 
and  the  chancellor's  Latin  verse  (1867), 
the  Gaisford  Greek  verse  (1869),  and  the 
Gaisford  Greek  prose  (1870)  prizes.  On 
leaving  Oxford  he  studied  law  for  a  short 
time,  but  in  1872  he  was  appointed  assis- 
tant private  secretary  to  Gladstone,  whdtf 
was  then  prime  minister,  and  held  thiJH 
post  until  the  fall  of  the  liberal  govern- 
ment in  1874.  Gladstone  was  struck  with 
his  abilities,  and  notwithstanding  the 
difference  in  age  and,  later,  on  certain 
political  questions,  a  warm  and  lasting 
friendship  was  established  between  the 
two  men.  On  Gladstone's  retirement  from 
the  leadership  of  the  liberal  party,  Godley 
acted  as  private  secretary  to  Lord  Gran- 
ville [q.v.] ;  he  had  already  resumed  his 
legal  studies,  and  he  won  the  Eldon  law 
scholarship  in  1874  and  was  called  to  the 


344 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Goodenough 


Ibar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1876,  but  never 
)ractised.  From  1874  to  1881  he  was  a 
lellow  of  Hertford  College.  On  Gladstone's 
eturn  to  power  in  1880,  Godley  was  re- 
illed,  this  time  as  his  principal  private 
Bcretary.  In  1882  he  was  made  a  com- 
lissioner  of  inland  revenue,  and  in  1883 
icceeded  Sir  Louis  Mallet  [q.v.]  as  per- 

ment  under-secretary  of  state  for  India. 
^In  the  words  of  a  colleague,  'he  set  him- 
self to  mould  the  comparatively  juvenile 
Office,  to  reform  and  simplify  its  pro- 
cedure, and  to  establish  its  efficiency  on 
a  firm  basis.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  India  Office,  as  it  was  known  in 
later  years,  was  largely  his  creation.'  In 
the  course  of  the  twenty-six  years  during 
which  he  held  office,  Godley's  recognized 
experience  and  judgement  gave  him  a 
position  of  unusual  influence;  this  was 
increased  by  great  charm  of  manner,  wit, 
and  powers  of  expression,  both  in  speech 
and  in  writing.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1882,  K.C.B.  in  1893,  and  G.C.B.  in  1908. 
On  his  retirement  in  1909  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Kilbracken,  of 
Killegar. 

Godley  was  a  devoted  Rugbeian,  and 
served  for  thirty  years  (1902-1932)  as 
chairman  of  the  governing  body.  He  was 
also  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  and 
a  director  of  the  P.  and  O.  and  other  com- 
panies. He  was  elected  to  an  honorary 
fellowship  at  Hertford  College  in  1910  and 
at  Balliol  in  1912.  In  1931  he  published 
his  Reminiscences.  After  his  retirement  he 
joined  the  conservative  party,  but  took 
little  part  in  public  affairs,  save  for  his 
membership  in  1913  of  the  royal  commis- 
sion on  Indian  finance  and  currency.  He 
died  at  Svunmerfleld  House,  near  Malvern, 
27  June  1932. 

Godley  married  in  1871  Sarah  (died 
1921),  only  daughter  of  Sir  Walter  Charles 
James,  second  baronet,  afterwards  first 
Lord  Northbourne,  and  had  two  sons,  the 
younger  of  whom  died  in  childhood,  and 
three  daughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  pre- 
deceased her  father.  He  was  succeeded  as 
second  baron  by  his  elder  son,  Hugh  John 
(born  1877). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Kilbracken  by 
R.  E.  Morrison  at  Rugby. 

{Reminiscences  of  Lord  Kilbracken,  1931 ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Eveline  C.  Godley. 

GOLDSMID-MONTEFIORE, 
CLAUDE  JOSEPH  (1858-1938),  Jewish 
biblical  scholar  and  philanthropist.    [See 

MONTEFIOBE.] 


GOODENOUGH,  FREDERICK 

CRAUFURD  (1866-1934),  banker,  was 
born  in  Calcutta  28  July  1866,  the  third 
son  of  Frederick  Addington  Goodenough, 
of  Calcutta,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Lambert. 
He  was  grandson  of  Edmund  Goodenough, 
headmaster  of  Westminster  School  and 
later  dean  of  Wells,  and  great-grandson  of 
Samuel  Goodenough,  bishop  of  Carlisle 
[qq.v.].  Frederick  Goodenough  was  edu- 
cated at  Charterhouse  and  Zurich  Univer- 
sity. He  studied  law,  served  his  articles, 
and  was  admitted  a  solicitor.  He  entered 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  as  assistant 
secretary  and  subsequently  joined  the 
Union  Bank  of  London  in  the  same  capa- 
city. He  was  appointed  secretary  of  Bar- 
clay &  company,  Ltd.,  on  its  incorporation 
as  a  joint  stock  company  in  1896,  and  in 
1903  became  general  manager.  In  1913 
he  was  elected  to  a  seat  on  the  board  and 
was  appointed  chairman  in  1917. 

Goodenough,  judged  by  any  standard, 
adorned  a  generation  rich  in  men  of  dis- 
tinction in  banking  and  finance.  Possessed 
of  great  determination,  with  a  clear  grasp 
of  affairs  and  administrative  ability  of  a 
high  order,  he  was  admirably  equipped  to 
mould  and  shape  the  bank  of  which  he 
was  the  chief  architect  and  which,  indeed, 
was  the  ruling  passion  of  his  working  life. 
He  saw  it  as  a  great  national  institution 
far  transcending  the  stereotyped  concep- 
tion of  a  business  enterprise,  and  so  he 
made  it.  A  convinced  imperialist,  he 
grasped  the  need  for  an  Empire  bank  and, 
in  spite  of  a  good  deal  of  head-shaking — 
not  always  kindly — amongst  his  contem- 
poraries in  the  City,  pressed  forward  with 
his  project  for  the  formation  of  Barclays 
Bank  (Dominion,  Colonial,  and  Overseas) 
which  was  to  confound  all  the  gloomy 
prognostications  of  its  detractors  and  to 
vindicate  in  the  most  brilliant  way  the 
vision  and  faith  of  its  author. 

The  heavy  and  insistent  calls  of  a  life 
devoted  to  business,  and  the  handicap  of 
poor  eyesight,  did  not  prevent  Good- 
enough  from  rendering  his  full  measure  of 
service  in  public  and  charitable  work.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Council  of  India  from 
1918  to  1930;  he  was  joint  treasurer  of 
Westminster  Hospital ;  and  for  his  services 
to  Oxford  University,  notably  in  con- 
nexion with  the  Bodleian  Library  appeal, 
he  received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L. 
in  1933.  The  deep  sincerity  of  his  belief 
in  the  Empire  and  his  admiration  for  Ox- 
ford led  him  to  the  task  of  founding  in 
1930  London  House,  a  hall  of  residence 
in  London  chiefly  for  Dominion  students 


S45 


Goodenough 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


in  the  metropolis.  His  object  was  to 
create  bonds  of  friendship  between  this 
country  and  the  British  Commonwealth 
and  Empire  and  to  bring  to  London  some- 
thing of  the  aroma  of  the  older  miiver- 
sity.  In  this  characteristically  bold  and 
imaginative  project  his  concern  for  the 
cause  of  education  achieved  its  highest 
expression,  but  he  also  gave  it  practical 
effect  in  other  spheres :  he  was  a  governor 
of  the  Charterhouse  foundation  and  a 
member  of  the  governing  body  of  the 
school,  and  he  was  a  vice-president  of 
the  Institute  of  Bankers  in  the  activities 
of  which  he  took  a  lively  interest. 

Apart  from  aU  the  preoccupations  of 
business  and  public  life,  Goodenough's 
heart  lay  in  the  peace  of  the  English 
coimtry-side.  His  was  no  formal  attach- 
ment, but  a  familiar  love  of  the  rural  set- 
ting, its  work,  its  interests,  and  its  ways. 
But  even  the  quietude  of  country  life  with 
its  measured  tread  did  not  deflect  him 
from  exercising  to  the  full  the  driving 
force  at  his  command.  Many  years  before 
his  time,  the  vicissitudes  of  fortune  had 
led  to  the  loss  of  landed  estate  at  Filkins 
in  Oxfordshire  held  by  earlier  generations 
of  the  family,  and  for  the  restoration  of 
these  properties  Goodenough  devoted 
patient  endeavour  during  a  large  part  of 
his  lifetime.  He  accomplished  his  purpose 
and  had  the  well-merited  satisfaction  of 
enjoying  possession  for  the  last  seventeen 
years  of  his  life. 

Goodenough's  keen  interest  in  agriculture 
made  him  a  worthy  champion  in  its  cause 
at  a  time  when  the  public  consciousness  of 
the  significance  of  this,  the  greatest  of  all 
British  industries,  had  not  been  awakened. 

A  commanding  figure,  Goodenough  was 
a  formidable  man  to  meet,  but  behind  the 
stern  exterior  there  lay  a  charm  of  manner, 
and  the  young  bank  clerk  who  approached 
him  with  trepidation  found  his  fears 
allayed  by  a  disarming  smUe,  which  was 
all  the  more  prized  because  it  was  rare 
and  fleeting.  But  throughout  his  life, 
strict  disciplinarian  though  he  was,  he  was 
animated  by  a  desire  to  help  others ;  and 
many  of  the  younger  generation  of  his 
time  have  cause  to  be  grateful  to  him  for 
his  helping  hand  and  his  sound  advice. 

Goodenough  married  in  1898  Maive, 
fifth  daughter  of  Nottidge  Charles  Mac- 
namara,  F.R.C.S.,  of  Calcutta  and  London, 
and  had  three  sons  and  two  daughters,  the 
younger  of  whom  predeceased  her  father. 
He  died  in  London  after  a  brief  illness 
1  September  1934. 

[Personal  knowledge.]  E.  Fisher. 


GORDON,      CHARLES      WILLIAM 

(1860-1937),  divine,  and  author  under  th 
pseudonym  of  Ralph  Connor,  was  bo; 
at  Indian  Lands,  Glengarry  county.  On 
tario,  13  September  1860,  the  fourth  o; 
the  six  sons  of  Daniel  Gordon,  a  Freej 
Church  minister  who  had  emigrated  toj 
Canada  from  Blair  Atholl,  by  his  wife, 
Mary  Robertson.    He  was  educated  ai 
public   schools,  the   high   school   at   St.j 
Mary's,  Ontario,  and  at  the  university  o: 
Toronto,  where  he  graduated  in  1883.  He! 
then  taught  for  a  year  and  a  half  at  th 
high  school  at  Chatham,  Western  Ontario,! 
before  entering  Knox  College,  Toronto 
After  graduating  there  in  1887  he  speni 
a  further  year  studying  theology  at  Edin 
burgh  University ;  he  was  ordained  in  189i 
to  the  ministry  of  the  Presbyterian  Churc 
and  carried  on  missionary  work  amon 
miners   and   lumbermen   in   the    Roc 
Mountains.  After  raising  money  in  Grea 
Britain  for  western  missions  (1893-1894) 
he  settled  down  in  1894  as  minister  o: 
St.  Stephen's  church,  Winnipeg,  where  he] 
remained  until  1936.   During  part  of  thi 
war  of  1914-1918  he  acted  first  as  chaplain^ 
to  the  43rd   Cameron  Highlanders  and 
later  as  a  senior  chaplain  in  Flanders.  In 

1917  he  served  on  a  special  commission 
sent  by  the  British  and  Canadian  govern- 
ments to  the  United  States  of  America  to 
present  the  Allied  view  of  the  war,  and  in 

1918  on  a  special  commission  from  the 
Canadian  government  to  Great  Britain. 
He  returned  to  Canada  in  1919.  In  1921 
he  was  elected  moderator  of  the  general 
assembly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  of 
Canada  and  helped  to  form  in  1925  the 
United  Church  of  Canada.  He  was  ap- 
pointed C.M.G.  in  1935  and  he  received 
honorary  degrees  from  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity and  from  Queen's  University,  Kings- 
ton, Ontario.  He  married  in  1899  Helen, 
daughter  of  the  Rev.  John  King,  of  Mani- 
toba College,  Winnipeg,  and  had  one  son 
and  six  daughters.  He  died  at  Winnipeg 
31  October  1937. 

Gordon  published  his  first  book.  Black 
Rock,  in  1898,  and  as  'Ralph  Connor' 
became  the  'best-seller'  among  Canadian 
authors.  He  records  in  his  autobiography, 
Postscript  to  Adventure  (1938),  that  two  of 
his  early  books.  The  Sky  Pilot  (1899)  and 
The  Man  from  Glengarry  (1901),  reached 
a  sale  of  over  five  million  copies.  He  adds 
modestly  (in  a  book  which  is  perhaps  not 
excessively  modest) : '  I  have  often  tried  to 
analyse  the  reaction  upon  my  mind  of  this 
unique  experience.  ...  I  have  attempted 
to  explain  this  reception  by  a  variety  of 


340 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940      Gordoii,  J.  C.  and  I.  M. 


easons:  Black  Rock  and  Sky  Pilot  gave 

authentic  picture  of  life  in  the  great 

id  wonderful  new  country  in  Western 

mada,  rich  in  colour  .  . .  the  buffalo  and 

lis  hunters  . .  .  the  land  of  the  trapper  . . . 

le  Mounted  Police,  and  that  virile  [*ic] 

ice  of  men  and  women.  .  .  .  The  pictures 

irere  from  personal  experience.   Another 

luse  .  .  .  and  a  very  influential  one  .  .  . 

ras  the  fact  that  though  in  fiction  form 

they  possess  a  definitely  religious  motif. 

.  .  .  And  it  was  this  religious  motif  that 

started  that  vast  host  of  religious  folk  who 

up  to  this  time  had  regarded  novel-reading 

as  a  doubtful  indulgence  for  Christian 

people.' 

Besides  the  four  books  mentioned  Gor- 
don wrote  twenty -nine  others,  chiefly 
novels  and  devotional  works,  but  he  never 
again  reached  the  level  of  his  early  years. 
He  himself  admits  that  he  hardly  at- 
tempted literary  style  or  form.  His  recur- 
ring theme  is  that  every  human  being  has 
some  good  characteristics;  his  heroes  are 
shown  working  miraculous  'conversions' 
through  understanding  this  simple  fact. 
His  own  popularity  as  young  preacher, 
army  chaplain,  and  conciliator  in  labour 
disputes  probably  sprang  from  a  like  sim- 
plicity. He  is  sensational,  superficial, 
romantic.  In  his  earlier  books,  recalling 
what  he  had  seen  and  heard  in  youth,  he 
can  vividly  describe  fights  in  lumber 
camps,  horse-racing,  college  football 
games,  and  log-driving.  These  are  still 
popular  children's  books. 

[C.  W.  Gordon,  Postscript  to  Adventure:  the 
Autobiography  of  Ralph  Connor  (with  a  preface 
by  his  son,  J.  K.  Gordon),  1938;  V.  B. 
Rhodenizer,  A  Handbook  of  Canadian  Litera- 
ture, Ottawa,  1930.]       Carlton  Stanley. 

GORDON,        JOHN        CAMPBELL, 

seventh  Earl  of  Aberdeen  and  first 
Marquess  of  Aberdeen  and  Temair 
(1847-1934),  statesman,  was  born  in  Edin- 
burgh 3  August  1847,  the  third  and 
youngest  son  of  George  John  James 
Hamilton-Gordon,  fifth  Earl  of  Aberdeen, 
by  his  wife,  Mary,  second  daughter  of 
George  BaiUie,  of  Jerviswoode,  of  a  family 
well  known  in  Covenanting  annals.  His 
childhood  was  spent  largely  in  the  Ranger's 
House,  Blackheath,  and  after  studying  at 
St.  Andrews  University  he  finished  his 
education  at  University  College,  Oxford. 
Four  successive  deaths  between  1860 
and  1870  brought  Gordon  unexpectedly  to 
the  peerage.  (He  changed  his  name  back 
from  Hamilton-Gordon  in  1900.)  His 
grandfather,  the  prime  minister,  George 


Hamilton-Gordon  [q.v.],  the  fourth  earl, 
died  in  1860,  his  father  in  1864;  in  1868 
he  lost  his  second  brother  by  a  rifle  acci- 
dent, while  in  1870  his  eldest  brother,  an 
adventurous  young  man  with  a  passion 
for  the  sea,  was  swept  overboard  while 
working  in  the  American  mercantile 
marine  under  an  assumed  name.  It  was 
not  until  1872  that  the  youngest  brother's 
succession  to  the  title  was  confirmed.  A 
regular  attendant  thenceforth  at  the  House 
of  Lords,  in  1878,  after  his  marriage, 
he  voted  against  Beaconsfield's  govern- 
ment over  the  Afghan  war.  He  became 
a  constant  liberal  and  in  1879  was  one 
of  the  party  at  Lord  Rosebery's  house  at 
Dalmeny  for  Gladstone's  first  Midlothian 
campaign.  Appointment  as  lord -lieutenant 
of  Aberdeenshire  in  1880  was  followed  in 
1886  by  an  offer,  which  was  accepted,  to 
go  to  Dublin  as  lord-lieutenant,  a  task 
requiring  courage  as  the  memory  of  the 
Phoenix  Park  murders  was  still  fresh.  One 
of  his  first  acts  was  to  renew  relations  with 
the  lord  mayor  and  corporation  of  Dublin, 
and  shortly  afterwards  he  and  Lady  Aber- 
deen travelled  through  the  disturbed 
southern  counties.  On  the  defeat  of  the 
government  in  1886,  a  great  demonstra- 
tion of  affection  and  regret  at  their  de- 
parture revealed  the  impression  which 
they  had  made  during  their  six  months' 
stay  at  Dublin  Castle. 

In  1893,  after  the  return  of  the  liberals 
to  office,  Aberdeen  went  to  Canada  as 
governor-general.  The  five  years'  term 
was  at  first  not  easy,  being  marked  by 
three  changes  in  the  premiership  in  two 
years,  but  with  the  victory  of  (Sir)  Wilfred 
Laurier  [q.v.]  in  1895  tension  was  relaxed. 
Aberdeen  returned  home  in  1898,  and  in 
1906  he  was  appointed  once  more  to  the 
lord-Ueutenancy  at  Dublin,  this  time  for 
the  longest  term  in  its  history.  For  nine 
years  he  laboured  for  a  better  under- 
standing between  the  two  countries,  and 
his  efforts  seemed  to  be  bearing  fruit. 
Royal  visits  in  1907  and  1911  were  of 
good  omen,  and  when  the  home  rule  bill 
became  law  in  1914  and  Aberdeen's  im- 
pending retirement  was  announced,  very 
numerous  requests  for  an  extension  of  his 
term  were  received  from  towns  and  other 
influential  quarters,  and  a  leading  Irish 
member  of  parliament  wrote  that  he  had 
converted  the  lord-lieutenancy  from  a 
hateful  into  a  popular  institution  and  had 
thereby  strengthened  loyalty  to  the  throne. 
On  his  retirement  in  1915  he  was  advanced 
a  step  in  the  peerage  as  Marquess  of  Aber- 
deen and  Temair  (gazetted  in  1916). 


347 


Gordon,  J.  C.  and  I.  M.      d.n.b.  1931-1940 


From  early  days  Aberdeen  had  been 
interested  in  social  welfare,  and  in  1874 
he  had  served  on  a  royal  commission  on 
railway  accidents  (he  had  a  lifelong  in- 
terest in  railway  matters)  and  had  helped 
to  bring  to  light  the  excessive  hours 
worked  by  railwaymen;  later  he  took 
part  in  a  similar  inquiry  into  loss  of  life 
at  sea.  Ably  seconded  in  this  side  of  his 
work  by  Lady  Aberdeen,  he  put  into  effect 
several  new  ideas  for  the  welfare  of  the 
farmers  and  labourers  at  Haddo  House 
and  the  House  of  Cromar,  which  he  built 
at  Tarland,  near  Aboyne.  The  general 
tendency  of  the  time  was  to  combine  small 
holdings  into  larger  farms ;  but  in  1920  he 
was  able  to  say  that  during  his  fifty  years 
as  laird  the  holdings  on  his  estates  had 
increased  from  935  to  958  and  that  588 
houses  had  been  buUt.  Another  successful 
venture  was  evening  classes  for  farm  ser- 
vants. This  work  in  Aberdeenshire  alter- 
nated with  such  efforts  as  the  founding  of 
the  London  Playing  Fields  Society  and 
unceasing  political  and  religious  work. 
He  was  in  constant  association  with  the 
seventh  Lord  Shaftesbury  [q.v.]  and  later 
with  Henry  Drummond  [q.v.]. 

Aberdeen  had  three  sons  and  two 
daughters ;  the  yoiuiger  daughter  died  in 
infancy  and  the  youngest  son  was  killed 
in  a  motor-car  accident  in  1909.  The  elder 
daughter  married  John  Sinclair,  after- 
wards first  Lord  Pentland  [q.v.].  In  1920 
he  handed  over  the  management  of  his 
Haddo  estates  to  his  heir.  Lord  Haddo, 
and  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life  at  the 
House  of  Cromar,  where  he  died  7  March 
1934.  He  was  succeeded  as  eighth  earl  and 
second  marquess  by  his  eldest  son,  George 
(born  1879). 

Aberdeen  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil in  1886,  was  appointed  G.C.M.G.  in 
1886,  K.T.  in  1906,  and  G.C.V.O.  in  1911. 
Honorary  degrees  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  universities  of  Aberdeen  and 
Oxford  and  by  numerous  miiversities  in 
Canada  and  the  United  States  of  America. 
He  served  as  lord  high  commissioner  of 
the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland  from  1881  to  1885  and  again  in 
1915.  He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  University  College,  Oxford,  in  1932  and 
was  lord  rector  of  St.  Andrews  University 
from  1913  to  1916. 

In  1877  Lord  Aberdeen  married  ISH- 
BEL  MARIA  MARJORIBANKS  (1857- 
1939),  born  in  London  14  March  1857,  the 
youngest  daughter  of  Sir  Dudley  Coutts 
Marjoribanks,  afterwards  first  Lord 
Tweedmouth,  by  his  wife,  Isabella,  eldest 


daughter  of  Sir  James  Weir  Hogg  [q.v. 
and  sister  of  Quintin  Hogg  [q.v.].    Hei 
character  and  ideals  were  moulded  by  h 
mother,  whose  influence  was  the  stronge 
in    her    life.     Educated    privately,    sh 
entered  upon  her  adult  life  with  the  ea 
dowment  of  a  liberal  education  and  a  sens 
of  social  responsibility.   In  her  home  sh 
came  into  contact  with  many  great  pohti 
cal  and  religious  leaders,  of  whom  Glad 
stone  impressed  himself  most  strongly  oi 
her  mind,  and  she  was  early  inspired  t 
devote  herself  to  religious  and  humani. 
tarian  pursuits.    She  became  a  devot© 
and  ardent  liberal  and,  in  later  yean 
president  of  the  Women's  Liberal  Federi 
tions  both  in  England  and  in  Scotland, 
After  her  extremely  happy  marriage,  '  W( 
Twa'  became  the  affectionate  synon 
for  married  felicity  and  abounding  soci 
service.    The  home  of  Lord  and  Lad^ 
Aberdeen  became,  wherever  it  was,  th 
centre  of  generous  hospitality  and  thi 
birthplace  of  fruitful  enterprises.   One  oi 
the  earliest  of  these  was  the  Haddo  Hous 
Association,  developing  later  into  the  On- 
ward and  Upward  Association.  Beginning 
as  an  educational  and  recreational  project 
for   the    tenants    of   the    Aberdeenshire 
estates,  it  soon  extended  its  membership 
throughout  Great  Britain  and  the  Domi- 
nions.   During  her  husband's  first  lord- 
lieutenancy,  the  setting  up  of  cottage  and 
village  industry  under  the  Irish  Industries 
Association,  the  Women's  National  Health 
Association,   founded  in   1907,   with  its 
pioneer  work  for  mother  and  child  welfare, 
a  remarkably  successful  crusade  against 
tuberculosis,  and  the  exhibitions  of  town 
and  country  planning,  all  owed  much  to 
her  energy  and  guidance,  and  she  con- 
tributed in  a  marked  degree  to  the  growth 
of  confidence  among  the  Irish  people  in 
the  intentions  of  the  British  government. 
In  Canada  the  same  vigour  was  evident. 
Not  only  did  she  institute  a  Dominion- 
wide  health  service  by  the  foundation  in 
1898  of  the  Victorian  Order  of  Nurses,  but 
she   came  into   close   contact  with  two 
movements  which  were  thereafter  to  hold 
her  affection:  the  Red  Cross  Society  and 
the  National  Council  of  Women.  In  1893 
she  was  elected  president  of  the  Inter- 
national Coimcil  of  Women  (formed  at 
Washington  in  1888),  and  almost  immedi- 
ately she  became  its  acknowledged  leader. 
Under    her    guidance    its    efforts    were 
directed  to  the  improvement  of  the  social 
and  economic  position  of  women  and  the 
promotion  of  peace.    She  was  the  leader 
and  spokesman  of  a  deputation  of  the 


848 


i 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gore 


council  to  a  meeting  of  the  League  of 
Nations  commission  at  the  Peace  Con- 
ference of  Versailles  in  1919  and  she  suc- 
cessfully advocated  the  opening  of  all 
posts  on  the  secretariat  of  the  League  of 
Nations  to  women  on  equal  terms  with 
men.  At  the  jubilee  celebrations  of  the 
movement,  held  in  Edinburgh  in  1938, 
tribute  was  paid  by  representative  men 
and  women  of  many  lands  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  her  leadership  which  had  brought 
the  International  CouncU  to  a  place  of 
power  and  influence. 

Many  honours,  British  and  foreign,  were 
bestowed  on  Lady  Aberdeen.  She  was  one 
of  the  first  women  to  be  nominated  a  justice 
of  the  peace.  In  1931  she  was  appointed 
G.B.E.,  and  she  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  Aberdeen  University 
and  the  Queen's  University,  Kingston, 
Ontario.  In  1928  she  received  an  honour 
which  she  perhaps  esteemed  as  highly  as 
any,  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Edinburgh. 

Lady  Aberdeen's  activities  were  never 
allowed  to  interfere  with  her  domestic 
duties.  She  entered  fully  and  intimately 
into  the  upbringing  of  her  children.  A 
woman  of  deep  religious  conviction,  she  felt 
herself  under  divine  guidance  in  all  her 
undertakings.  To  the  end  of  her  life  she 
maintained  vigour  of  mind  and  body ;  she 
died  at  Aberdeen  18  April  1939,  and  was 
buried  in  the  cemetery  at  Haddo  House. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Lord  Aberdeen  by 
Charles  Furse  at  Dublin  Castle,  another, 
by  James  Sant,  at  Haddo  House,  and  a 
third,  by  Baron  Barnekow,  in  the  Town 
and  County  Hall,  Aberdeen.  A  cartoon 
by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  6 
February  1902. 

[The  Times,  8  March  1934  and  19  April 
1939;  Lord  and  Lady  Aberdeen,  We  Twa, 
1925,  and  More  Cracks  with  We  Twa,  1929 ; 
Lady  Aberdeen,  Musings  of  a  Scottish  Granny, 
1936,  and  Through  Canada  with  a  Kodak, 
1892;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] G.  F.  Barbour. 

Matthew  Urie  Baird. 

GORE,  CHARLES  (1853-1932),  bishop 
successively  of  Worcester,  Birmingham, 
and  Oxford,  the  youngest  son  of  Charles 
Alexander  Gore  (son  of  the  second  Earl  of 
Arran),  commissioner  of  woods  and  forests, 
by  his  wife.  Lady  Augusta  Lavinia  Pris- 
cUla,  second  daughter  of  John  William 
Ponsonby,  fourth  Earl  of  Bessborough 
[q.v.],  and  widow  of  William  Thomas 
Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Earl  of  Kerry,  was 
bom  at  Wimbledon  22  January  1853.  He 
was  educated  at  Harrow  and  at  Balliol 
College,  Oxford  (scholar,  1870):  he  ob- 


tained a  first  class  in  classical  moderations 
(1872)  and  in  literae  humaniores  (1875), 
and  a  fellowship  at  Trinity  College  (1875). 
Both  at  Harrow,  where  he  was  deeply 
influenced  by  H.  M.  Butler  [q.v.]  and  still 
more  by  B.  F.  Westcott  [q.v.],  and  at 
Oxford  he  showed  qualities  and  interests 
which  marked  his  whole  life — devotion  to 
the  Christian  faith  in  its  Anglo-Catholic 
expression,  a  radical  temper,  power  of 
vigorous  speech  and  argument,  hatred  of 
social  injustice.  No  man  was  ever  more 
clearly  called  to  the  ministry  of  the 
Church.  After  his  ordination  as  deacon 
(1876)  and  priest  (1878)  he  divided  his 
time  for  two  or  three  years  between  teach- 
ing, lecturing  (notably  on  Plato),  and 
other  college  duties  at  Trinity;  curacies 
in  vacation,  and  at  week-ends  at  Christ 
Church,  Bootle,  and  St.  Margaret's, 
Princes'  Road,  Liverpool;  and  meetings 
of  a  group  nicknamed  the  'Holy  Party' 
which  included  his  old  friend  H.  S.  Hol- 
land, F.  Paget  [qq.v.],  John  Richardson 
Illingworth,  and  others  and  which  was 
already  ripening  the  seed  of  Lux  Mundi. 

A  purely  academic  life  never  attracted 
him  and  in  1880,  at  the  invitation  of  J.  F. 
Mackarness  [q.v.],  bishop  of  Oxford,  Gore 
began,  as  vice-principal  of  Cuddesdon  Col- 
lege, 'to  form  the  characters  of  young 
clergymen',  a  task  for  which  he  was  ad- 
mirably fitted.  The  distinction  of  his  per- 
sonality and  the  range  of  his  influence 
were  already  well  known,  and  when  the 
Pusey  Memorial  Library  (generally  known 
as  the  Pusey  House)  was  established,  the 
committee,  with  H.  P.  Liddon  [q.v.]  as  its 
leading  figure,  wisely  invited  him  to  be- 
come the  first  'principal  librarian'  with 
the  duty  of  studying  and  teaching  theo- 
logy and  of  acting  as  friend  and  adviser 
of  Anglican  undergraduates.  Although 
Gore  was  not  altogether  willing  to  return 
to  Oxford  he  was  fortunately  persuaded, 
largely  through  Holland's  urgency,  to 
accept  the  invitation  (1883).  His  work 
was  to  begin  in  October  1884.  In  the 
interval  he  paid  his  first  visit  to  India, 
where  he  was  concerned  in  the  work  of  the 
Oxford  Mission  to  Calcutta  to  which  he 
rendered  great  service  then  and  later. 

The  years  at  the  Pusey  House  (1884- 
1893)  were  perhaps  the  most  important  of 
Gore's  life.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  man  save  J.  H.  Newman  has 
exercised  so  strong  an  influence  on  the 
religious  life  of  the  university.  It  was 
brought  to  bear  not  only  or  even  mainly 
through  sermons,  lectures,  and  books  but 
through  personal  relations  with  men  of  aU 


849 


Gore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


kinds  and  ages.  During  these  years  too  his 
main  contributions  to  the  making  of  modem 
AngUcanism  took  definite  shape.  He  was 
active  on  behalf  of  the  Christian  Social 
Union  (founded  in  1889) ;  although  never 
a  socialist  in  any  strict  sense  of  that  term, 
he  was  profoundly  convinced  that  socialist 
ideals  could  find  countenance  in  the  Gospel 
and  he  hoped  to  win  the  Chvwch  and  the 
labour  movement  to  share  his  conviction. 
Again,  it  was  natural  that  to  a  man  so 
determined  to  live  and  to  draw  others  to 
live  according  to  the  spirit  and  precepts 
of  that  Gospel  the  revival  of  commimity 
life  in  the  Church  of  England  should  make 
strong  appeal.  In  1892  the  community  of 
the  Resurrection  (established  at  Mirfield 
in  1898),  an  outgrowth  of  the  society 
bearing  that  same  name,  and  also  the 
work  of  Gore,  came  into  definite  being  as 
a  brotherhood  of  celibate  priests  living 
under  a  simple  rule  and  'having  all  things 
in  common':  of  this  community  he  was 
superior  until  1901.  Meanwhile  through- 
out these  busy  years  he  was  deep  in  study 
and  controversy,  fighting  on  more  than  one 
front.  A  small  book  on  Roman  Catholic 
Claims  (1888)  was  widely  read:  a  much 
larger  work,  The  Ministry  of  the  Christian 
Church  (1888,  entitled  The  Church  and  the 
Ministry  in  the  fourth  and  new  editions, 
1900  and  1919),  is  still  a  standard  'apology 
for  the  principle  of  the  apostolic  succes- 
sion'. Interpretations  of  the  creeds  or  of 
Christian  history  which  he  judged  alike 
unorthodox  and  luifounded  were  opposed 
with  an  energy  which  to  some  degree 
explains  the  sorrowful  amazement  felt  by 
Liddon  and  other  friends  of  Gore  on  the 
appearance  in  1889  of  his  famous  essay 
in  Lvx  Mundi  on  'The  Holy  Spirit  and 
Inspiration'. 

Then  and  always  Gore  was  an  Anglo- 
Catholic.  But  then  and  always  he  was 
'certain  that  (he)  must  be  in  the  true  sense 
a  free  thinker'.  He  might  and  did  draw 
the  line  between  orthodoxy  and  unortho- 
doxy  sharply,  even  arbitrarily.  But  he 
held  that  he  drew  it  at  the  dictation  not 
of  tradition  but  '  of  the  best  judgment  of 
(his)  own  reason'.  He  had  become  con- 
vinced when  he  wrote  his  essay  that  many 
of  the  critical  conclusions  about  the  Old 
Testament  must  be  accepted  and  could 
not  be  dismissed  by  quoting  against  them 
the  apparent  authority  in  a  few  instances 
of  Christ's  words  in  the  Gospels.  No  one, 
however,  was  more  certain  than  he  of  the 
credibility  of  the  Evangelists.  Therefore 
he  was  driven  to  conclude  that  the  true 
humanity  of  Christ  entailed  certain  limita- 


tions of  consciousness.  He  maintained  t! 
conclusion  not  only  in  later  editions  o 
Lux  Mundi  and  in  his  Bampton  lectures 
on  The  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  Go 
(delivered  and  published  in  1891),  but 
the  elaborate  Dissertations  on  Subjects  con 
nected  with  the  Incarnation  (1895),  appeal 
ing  especially  to  St.  Paul  (Philippians  ii.  7 
as  evidence  for  a  certain  Kendsis  or  self 
emptying  by  Christ  at  His  Incarnation 

The  distress  of  Liddon  and  his  frieni 
was  unmeasured,  and  not  less  was  Gore's' 
OAvn  unhappiness  when  he  became  fully 
aware  of  their  feelings.  He  was  ready  to 
explain  but  not  to  retract.  During  a 
second  visit  to  India  (1890)  he  offered  to 
resign  his  position  at  the  Pusey  House, 
but  this  suggestion  was  for  several  reasons 
vmacceptable.  He  was,  however,  becoming 
restless  and  anxious  to  give  more  time  to 
reading  and  to  the  affairs  of  the  com- 
munity. In  1893  he  moved  to  the  small 
benefice  of  Radley,  where  for  a  year  he 
was  a  devoted  but  often  disappointed 
coiuitry  parson.  In  1894,  after  refusing 
the  deanery  of  Winchester,  he  was  wisely 
offered  by  Lord  Rosebery  and  wisely  ac- 
cepted a  Westminster  canonry.  His 
preaching  and  lecturing  drew  crowds  to 
the  Abbey:  in  London  and  in  Oxford  he 
became  a  great  personal  force.  Some  of 
his  best  work  in  biblical  and  doctrinal 
exposition  was  done  at  this  time:  The 
Body  of  Christ:  an  Enquiry  into  the  Institu- 
tion and  Doctrine  of  Holy  Communion 
(1901 :  fourth  ed,  1907  with  several  subse- 
quent reprints)  is  a  good  example  of  his 
vigorous,  lucid  theological  teaching.  Mem- 
bership of  the  Synthetic  Society,  which  he 
helped  to  found  in  1895,  brought  him  into 
close  touch  with  minds  of  many  casts,  and 
in  his  house  he  was  hospitable  to  all  kinds 
of  people.  Schemes  for  church  reform  and 
vigorous  pressing  of  his  strict  opinion  on 
the  'ethics  of  subscription'  engaged  him 
in  much  public  discussion.  A  visit  to 
America  with  (Dr.)  C.  A.  Alington  in  1897 
was  a  welcome  change.  On  all  hands  he  was 
now  recognized  as  a  power  in  the  Church, 
and  when  he  accepted  Lord  Salisbury's 
offer  of  the  see  of  Worcester  there  was 
general  expectation  that  the  new  bishop 
would  show  the  qualities  of  'fearless 
honesty,  apostolic  zeal,  and  personal 
sanctity'  ascribed  to  him  by  his  West- 
minster colleague  Herbert  Hensley  Hen- 
son.  His  courage  had  indeed  just  been 
shown  by  his  denunciation  of  the  manage- 
ment of  concentration  camps  in  South 
Africa. 

The  nomination  became  public  on  9; 


850 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gore 


November  1901.  The  consecration  ar- 
ranged for  25  January  1902  had  to  be 
postponed  until  23  February  owing  to 
objections  on  doctrinal  grounds  raised  by 
the  Church  Association  at  the  confirma- 
tion. The  vicar-general  rejected  these,  but 
ppeal  was  made  to  the  King's  Bench  and 
re  refused  to  bend  to  Archbishop 
Temple's  desire  to  anticipate  the  court's 
decision:  it  was  given  in  his  favour  on 
10  February. 

Gore's  Worcester  episcopate  was  brief. 
The  diocese  was  unwieldy :  a  generous  gift 
of  £10,000  by  Canon  T.  H.  Freer  en- 
couraged the  revival  of  a  project  of  divi- 
sion, creating  Birmingham  a  separate  see. 
Gore  added  £10,000  (almost  his  whole 
private  fortune)  and  promised  £800  per 
annum  of  the  Worcester  stipend :  the  bill 
went  through  parliament  rapidly  with 
Joseph  Chamberlain's  warm  support,  and 
Gore  was  enthroned  bishop  of  Birming- 
ham with  general  acclaim  (March  1905). 
It  was  a  happy  translation.  Birmingham 
promised  a  task  more  practicable  and 
more  congenial  than  Worcester.  The  pro- 
mise was  fulfilled.  He  established  excel- 
lent relations  with  civic  authorities,  with 
Free  churchmen,  and  with  evangelicals  as 
weU  as  with  men  of  his  own  churchman- 
ship.  His  eloquence,  wide  interests,  and 
care  for  the  true  progress  of  a  great  city 
won  him  a  remarkable  position  in  its  pub- 
lie  life.  As  a  disciplinarian  he  was  strong 
and  generally  successful  in  his  diocese, 
although  his  characteristic  attempt  to  pre- 
vent his  friend  Henson  from  preaching  for 
Dr.  John  Henry  Jowett  in  Carr's  Lane 
chapel  was  a  failure,  and  probably  iU 
judged :  fortunately  a  lawsuit  was  avoided. 
In  politics  he  was  sternly  opposed  to  the 
education  bill  of  1906,  but  a  strong  sup- 
porter of  the  trade  boards  bill  (1909)  and 
of  the  famous  budget  of  that  year.  His 
advocacy  of  the  appointment  of  a  royal 
commission  to  inquire  into  the  affairs  of 
the  two  ancient  universities  caused  some 
resentment  among  their  members.  At  this 
period  and  indeed  ever  after  its  foundation 
(1903)  which  he  had  inspired,  his  interest 
in  the  Workers'  Educational  Association 
was  unfailing. 

In  1908  Gore  had  hinted  that  he  might 
be  ready  to  go  to  India  as  bishop  of  Bom- 
bay. The  offer  was  made  but  he  finally 
refused  it  largely  because  he  was  then 
engaged  in  a  stiff  struggle  with  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  liberal  government's  licensing 
bill.  But,  perhaps  unfortunately,  he  did 
not  resist  the  pressure  put  upon  him, 
chiefly  by  Randall  Davidson,  the  arch- 


bishop of  Canterbury,  and  H.  S.  Holland, 
to  succeed  Francis  Paget  in  the  see  of 
Oxford.  He  left  Birmingham  in  1911  amid 
wide  regret,  for  a  rural  diocese  far  larger 
in  area  and  in  the  number  of  its  parishes, 
far  more  conservative,  and  less  readily 
responsive  to  a  masterful  personal  influ- 
ence. An  effort  to  divide  it  failed.  He  had 
to  deal  with  many  questions  of  discipline 
and  of  criticism  where  his  decisive  temper 
often  clashed  with  the  suspended  judge- 
ments characteristic  of  academic  minds: 
thus  his  relations  with  the  university  were 
not  easy.  Active  as  he  was,  he  was  in- 
evitably more  remote  at  Cuddesdon  than 
at  Worcester  (for  he  had  refused  to  occupy 
Hartlebury  Castle)  or  at  Birmingham. 
And  controversy  was  incessant.  His  in- 
quiry (1913)  into  the  affairs  of  the  Bene- 
dictine community  at  Caldey  led  to  most 
of  its  members  joining  the  Church  of 
Rome :  it  was  '  his  way  even  when  . . .  most 
friendly  to  go  straight  to  the  point',  and 
he  cannot  be  fairly  blamed.  The  indeci- 
sion and  sometimes  the  inactivity  of  other 
bishops  in  dealing  with  ritual  irregularities 
or  credal  vagaries  angered  him:  great  as 
was  his  admiration  for  Randall  Davidson 
as  a  man,  and  over-persuaded  as  he  often 
was  by  him,  he  was  impatient  of  his 
balancing  diplomacy.  When  William  San- 
day  [q.v.]  threw  his  weight  as  a  biblical 
scholar  on  to  the  Uberal  side  of  the  con- 
troversy about  miracles  (1913)  and  when 
Gore's  support  of  Welsh  disestablishment 
alienated  much  diocesan  opinion  he  seri- 
ously contemplated  resignation.  The  Ki- 
kuyu  strife  (1913  onwards)  involving  the 
relations  of  the  Church  of  England  with 
Free  churchmen  was  indeed  partly 
quenched  by  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
and  by  the  archbishop's  'opinion'  (1915); 
but  the  latter  was  unsatisfactory  to  Gore, 
while  the  war  brought  new  burdens. 

Yet  Gore's  Oxford  episcopate  was  no 
failure.  His  influence  both  as  a  spiritual 
force  and  as  an  organizer  was  great  and 
lasting.  His  sermons,  his  confirmations, 
and  his  personal  counsels  were  deeply 
valued.  A  mission  to  the  university  con- 
ducted by  him  early  in  1914  made  a  pro- 
found impression ;  the  National  Mission  of 
1916  and  the  Life  and  Liberty  movement 
(1917)  owed  much  to  his  support.  He  paid 
two  visits  to  the  troops  in  France  (1914, 
1915)  and  another  to  America  to  speak 
about  war  aims  (1918).  The  change  of 
scene  was  a  refreshment  after  diocesan 
labours  and  the  'crisis'  of  the  Hereford 
bishopric.  Gore  had  taken  the  lead  in 
protesting  that  Henson  fell  'outside  the 


351 


Gore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


limits  of  tolerable  conformity'  recently 
recognized  by  Convocation,  but  withdrew 
his  protest  when,  after  Henson's  letter  to 
the  archbishop  (published  18  January 
1918),  he  felt  that  the  line  drawn  by  Con- 
vocation had  not  been  broken. 

The  actual  occasion  of  Gore's  resigna- 
tion of  his  see  (1  July  1919)  was  the 
decision  of  the  Representative  Church 
Council  to  make  baptism  (without  con- 
firmation) the  qualification  for  a  vote  in 
elections  to  the  Church  Assembly.  But 
the  reasons  for  his  decision  were  many. 
He  was  now  sixty-six  and  tired:  he  had 
long  been  carrying  on  a  triple  struggle  to 
check  what  he  regarded  as  disloyalty  to 
the  creeds  on  the  part  of  liberal  church- 
men, to  prevent  the  disruption  of  the 
Church  which  would,  he  feared,  residt 
from  compromise  with  the  Free  Churches 
upon  the  rule  of  episcopal  ordination,  and 
to  restrain  the  'Romanizing'  tendencies 
of  the  extremer  Anglo-Catholics  (see  The 
Basis  of  Anglican  Fellowship,  1914).  He 
had  not  found  among  the  bishops  or  else- 
where that  vigorous  effort  of  corporate 
thinking  and  action  along  these  lines 
which  he  had  consistently  urged.  Above 
all  he  wanted  time  for  thought  and  writing. 
He  took  a  small  house  in  London  and 
entered  upon  thirteen  more  years  of  vari- 
ous activity.  He  lectiu-ed  in  theology  at 
King's  College,  London,  and  was  dean  of 
the  theological  faculty  there  (1924-1928), 
preached  regularly  at  Grosvenor  Chapel, 
and  travelled  widely  both  for  holidays  and 
as  a  representative  of  the  Church.  Li  1923 
and  1925  he  was  in  the  Near  East  for  the 
archbishops'  Eastern  Churches  committee 
and  in  the  same  years  at  the  Malines 
'conversations'  imder  Cardinal  Mercier's 
chairmanship  he  showed  that  he  was  still 
a  critic  of  Roman  Catholic  claims.  The 
attempted  revision  of  the  Prayer  Book 
(1927-1928)  had  his  support,  but  some  of 
his  last  battles  were  fought  against  sug- 
gestions of  the  Lambeth  Conference  of 
1930  on  South  Indian  Church  reunion 
schemes  and  on  the  use  of  contraceptives. 

Gore's  writings  in  these  years  stunmed 
up  the  main  interests  and  influences  of  his 
life.  Chief  among  them  is  his  trilogy 
Belief  in  God  (1921),  Belief  in  Christ{1922), 
The  Holy  Spirit  and  the  Church  (1924) :  a 
single  volume  The  Reconstruction  of  Belief 
(1926)  includes  the  whole.  The  book  is 
a  witness  to  the  Uberal  orthodoxy  of  its 
author  and  his  many  followers.  Li  1929- 
1930  his  Gifford  lectures  at  St.  Andrews 
University  gave  a  broad  and  attractive 
survey  of  The  Philosophy  of  the  Good  Life 


(published  in  1930).  The  New  Commentary 
on  Holy  Scripture  (1928),  produced  under 
his  editorship,  provided  a  widely  used 
compendium  of  knowledge  and  generally 
moderate  criticism.  In  Christ  and  Society 
he  again  enforced  the  social  implications 
of  Christianity,  and  his  little  volume  on 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  (1929),  exhibits  to  the 
full  his  power  of  simple  and  persuasive 
exposition.  This  incomplete  list  is  a  re- 
markable record  of  literary  vigour  in  the 
crowded  life  of  an  old  man. 

After  a  last  visit  to  India  in  1930-1931, 
Gore's  health  failed.  He  died  in  London 
17  January  1932.  His  ashes  rest  in  the 
church  of  his  commimity  at  Mirfield. 

Gore's  influence  on  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land was  unequaUed  in  his  generation.  He 
exercised  it  through  a  mind  and  character 
of  singular  force  and  through  a  complete 
and  evident  single-mindedness.  Men 
knew  where  he  stood.  There  were  limits 
to  his  sympathies,  but  none  to  the  devo- 
tion with  which  he  served  the  truth  as  he 
saw  it.  His  opinions  on  theology,  criti- 
cism, and  'applied  Christianity'  were 
formed  early  and  changed  Uttle.  He  led 
a  great  body  of  AngUcans  to  accept  some 
fundamental  results  of  biblical  inquiry, 
and  no  one  did  more  to  convince  Chris- 
tians that  their  faith  should  direct  and 
interpret  the  life  of  society.  In  his  later 
years  he  repudiated  the  charge  that  he 
had  foUowed  the  familiar  course  from 
liberalism  to  conservatism  in  thought ;  yet 
he  hardly  measured  the  degree  in  which 
New  Testament  criticism  may  fairly  in- 
fluence the  interpretation  of  the  creeds, 
and  he  was  inclined  to  overstrain  some 
favourite  arguments.  This  tendency  can 
be  seen  in  the  immense  weight  which  he 
rested  upon  Old  Testament  prophecy  and 
upon  certain  texts  which  seemed  to  him 
to  justify  his  view  of  the  early  Christian 
ministry.  His  insistence  on  the  duty  of 
mental  decision  and  of  facing  the  conse- 
quences of  it  was  salutary,  but  those  who 
disagreed  with  his  conclusions  often 
thought  that  he  treated  the  arguments 
leading  to  their  own  with  some  lack  of 
sympathy  and  that  he  was  too  ready  to 
prescribe  the  limits  of  legitimate  diversity 
both  in  belief  and  in  ecclesiastical  order. 

In  person.  Gore  was  of  middle  stature, 
gaunt  and  wiry:  in  manner,  sometimes 
reserved  and  austere,  often  warmly  affec- 
tionate and  delightfully  humorous.  For 
comfort  he  cared  little,  but  he  enjoyed  all 
good  things,  not  least  music,  pictures,  and 
architecture :  he  was  always  an  admirable 
traveller,  enthusiastic  in  sightseeing  and 


852 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gosset 


interested  in  his  fellows.  All  his  life  he 
was  a  great  teacher  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men.  His  friends  and  hearers 
found  unfailing  pleasure  in  his  many  fami- 
liar turns  of  speech,  in  a  voice  peculiarly 
expressive  of  a  natural  and  absolute  sin- 
cerity, and  in  some  engagingly  charac- 
teristic attitudes  of  mind  and  body.  All 
recognized  in  him  a  great  Christian  man. 
Gore  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of 
his  two  Oxford  colleges  (Balliol  and 
Trinity)  in  1922  and  1903  respectively  and 
of  King's  College,  London,  in  1922.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  imi- 
versities  of  Edinburgh  (1896),  Oxford 
(1904),  Cambridge  (1909),  Birmingham 
(1909),  Durham  (1919),  and  Athens  (1924). 
There  are  portraits  of  him  by  Sir  John 
La  very  at  Hartlebury  Castle ;  by  Bernard 
Munns  at  Bishop's  Croft,  Birmingham ;  by 
Gljmi  Philpot  at  Cuddesdon  College;  and 
by  A.  U.  Soord  at  Mirfleld.  Drawings  of 
his  head  by  John  Mansbridge  can  be  seen 
at  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  Mirfield, 
Balliol  College,  and  Birmingham.  There 
is  a  statue  by  T.  Stirling  Lee  near  the  west 
door  of  Birmingham  Cathedral. 

[The  Times,  18  January  1932;  G.  L. 
Prestige,  Life  of  Charles  Gore,  1935 ;  A.  Mans- 
bridge, Edward  Stuart  Talbot  and  Charles  Gore, 
1935;  G.  Crosse,  Charles  Gore,  1932;  W.  R. 
Inge,  Bishop  Gore  and  the  Church  of  England, 
1908  (reprinted  in  Outspoken  Essays,  vol.  i, 
1919) ;  G.  K.  A.  Bell,  Randall  Davidson,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  2  vols.,  1935;  H.  H. 
Henson,  Retrospect  of  an  Unimportant  Life, 
2  vols.,  1942-1943 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alwyn  Dunelm.  (A.  T.  P.  Williams.) 

GOSSET,  WILLIAM  SEALY  (known 
as  'Student')  (1876-1937),  statistician 
and  industrial  research  scientist,  was  born 
at  Canterbury  13  June  1876,  the  eldest 
son  of  Colonel  Frederic  Gosset,  R.E.,  of 
Watlington,  Oxfordshire,  by  his  wife, 
Agnes  Sealy,  daughter  of  Edward  Urch 
Vidal.  He  was  in  turn  a  scholar  of  Win- 
chester College  and  of  New  College,  Ox- 
ford, where  he  obtained  a  first  class  in 
mathematical  moderations  in  1897  and  in 
natural  science  (chemistry)  in  1899.  In 
the  latter  year  he  joined  the  scientific 
staff  of  Arthur  Guinness,  Son  &  company 
in  Dublin  and  a  few  months  before  his 
death  was  appointed  head  brewer. 

The  original  appointment  followed  a 
poUcy  just  initiated  by  Messrs.  Guinness 
of  attaching  to  their  staff  several  univer- 
sity scientists.  A  mass  of  statistical  data 
was  available  bearing  on  the  relations 
between  brewing  methods,  the  character- 
istics of  raw  materials  (barley  and  hops), 


and  the  quality  of  the  finished  product. 
Gosset  was  the  first  to  realize  the  value  of 
this  imused  material  to  his  firm  and  in 
attempting  its  analysis  was  soon  drawn 
into  the  study  of  the  theory  of  proba- 
bility and  error.  His  1904  report  to  the 
brewery  showed  him  already  grappling 
with  some  of  the  problems  needing  solution 
in  applying  statistical  methods  to  experi- 
mental and  routine  work  of  large-scale 
industry. 

In  1905  Gosset  made  contact  with  Karl 
Pearson  [q.v.]  and  studied  during  the  ses- 
sion of  1906-1907  in  his  laboratory  at 
University  College,  London.  This  period 
saw  Gosset  working  on  his  first  three 
papers,  later  published  in  Biometrika,  on  the 
Poisson  limit  to  the  binomial  theorem  and 
the  sampling  distributions  of  the  mean, 
standard  deviation,  and  correlation  co- 
efficient. 

Gosset  found  in  the  Biometric  School 
of  Sk  Francis  Galton,  W.  F.  R.  Weldon, 
and  Karl  Pearson  [qq.v.]  a  statistical 
technique  developed  for  handling  com- 
paratively large  samples.  Forced  in  his 
brewery  work  to  draw  conclusions  leading 
to  executive  action  from  the  analysis  of 
relatively  small  numbers,  he  introduced  a 
new  mathematical  approach  to  the  subject 
which  opened  the  way  to  much  of  the 
rapid  advance  in  statistical  technique 
which  soon  followed. 

Besides  dealing  with  problems  of  the 
chemist  and  biologist  Gosset  was  con- 
cerned, as  a  user  of  barley,  with  agricul- 
tural experimentation  in  which  he  carried 
out  pioneer  work  in  collaboration  with 
Edwin  Sloper  Beaven.  He  also  played  a 
prominent  part  in  the  joint  effort  of 
Messrs.  Guinness  and  the  Irish  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  to  improve  the  Irish 
barley  crop.  Later  he  came  into  close  con- 
tact with  Professor  Ronald  Aylmer  Fisher, 
then  at  Rothamsted.  In  1935  he  left 
Dublin  in  order  to  take  charge  of  a  new 
Guinness  brewery  in  London. 

Between  1907  and  1937  Gosset  pub- 
hshed  twenty -two  statistical  papers  which 
were  re-issued  by  Biometrika  in  1942  imder 
the  title  of  ^Student's'  Collected  Papers 
(edited  by  E.  S.  Pearson  and  J.  Wishart). 
His  writings  are  characterized  by  a  soimd 
common  sense  based  on  practical  experi- 
ence; in  his  theoretical  work  he  showed 
a  power  of  brilUant  guessing  where  his 
mathematics  just  failed  to  reach  a  solu- 
tion. His  influence  spread  widely  in  later 
years,  not  only  through  his  written  papers, 
but  by  a  correspondence  that  linked  htm 
to  experimenters  all  the  world  over. 


353 


Aa 


Gosset 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


I 


In  1906  Gosset  married  Marjory  Sur- 
tees,  youngest  daughter  of  James  Surtees 
Phillpotts,  sometime  headmaster  of  Bed- 
ford Grammar  School ;  she  was  a  sister  of 
Dame  Bertha  Newall  [q.v.].  They  had 
one  son  and  two  daughters.  He  died  at 
Beaconsfield  16  October  1937. 

[The  Times,  19  October  1937;  Biometrika, 
January  1939  (bibliography  and  portrait); 
Annals  of  Eugenics,  January  1939  (portrait) ; 
Nature,  13  November  1937;  personal  know- 
ledge.] E.  S.  Pearson. 

GOUGH-CALTHORPE,  Sir  SOMER- 
SET ARTHUR  (1864-1937),  admiral  of 
the  fleet.  [See  Calthobpe.] 

GRAHAM,  HUGH,  Baron  Atholstan 
(1848-1938),  newspaper  proprietor,  was 
born  of  Scottish  parents  at  Athelstan  in 
eastern  Quebec  18  July  1848,  the  eldest 
son  of  Robert  Walker  Graham,  by  his  wife, 
Marion,  daughter  of  Colonel  Thomas  Mc- 
Leay  Gardner.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  his 
scanty  education  at  Huntingdon  Academy 
terminated  when  an  imcle,  E.  H.  Parsons, 
the  editor  of  the  Evening  Telegraph  of 
Montreal,  gave  him  employment,  first  as 
office  boy,  later  as  business  manager. 
After  gaining  a  varied  experience  in  jour- 
nalism, he  took  the  daring  step  of  f  oimding, 
in  January  1869,  with  meagre  resources, 
an  evening  paper,  the  Montreal  Star.  In 
its  initial  stages  it  speciaUzed  too  much 
in  sensational  news  and  scandals  to  win 
favour  with  the  educated  public  of  Mon- 
treal but,  after  it  had  acquired  a  good 
circulation  among  the  workers,  Graham, 
who  had  great  business  ability,  gradually 
transformed  it  into  a  reputable,  influential, 
and  prosperous  paper.  Later  he  estab- 
lished two  weekhes,  the  Family  Herald 
and  Weekly  Star,  which  had  a  nation-wide 
circulation  in  the  rural  areas,  and  the 
Montreal  Standard,  which  catered  for  the 
urban  population  of  Montreal;  he  also 
acquired  control  of  the  Montreal  Herald, 
a  liberal  daily,  and  became  president  of 
the  Montreal  Star  Publishing  Company. 
A  man  of  great  vitality  and  immense 
energy,  he  retained  active  direction  of  his 
newspapers  untfl  he  was  weU  beyond  his 
eightieth  year,  when  he  disposed  of  them. 
His  education  being  deficient,  he  made  no 
pretence  of  being  a  writer  or  editor,  and 
the  outstanding  factors  in  his  remarkable 
success  as  a  newspaper  pubUsher  were  his 
almost  vmcanny  abiUty  to  appreciate  and 
even  foresee  what  the  pubUc  would  regard 
as  important  news  and  his  energetic  skill, 


which  he  reinforced  by  a  willingness  to 
spend  money  freely  for  his  purposes,  in 
catering  for  its  appetite  as  he  gauged  it 
from  time  to  time. 

Since  Graham  was  a  strong  protectionist 
and  keen  imperialist,  the  political  influ- 
ence of  his  papers  was  usually,  but  not 
always,  exercised  on  behalf  of  the  Cana 
dian  conservative  party.  Indeed  in  poUti' 
cal  circles  he  was  regarded  as  erratic  and 
undependable  and  his  habit  of  sending 
commimications  to  political  leaders  in  a 
curious  cipher  of  his  own  invention  ex 
posed  him  to  the   charge   of  being 
intriguer.    But  he  never  wavered  in  hi 
ardour  for  the  closer  consoUdation  of  th( 
British  Commonwealth,  and  it  led  him  to 
take  a  leading  part  in  the  organization  oi 
the  Empire  Press  Union,  of  the  Canadiai 
section  of  which  he  was  president  foi 
many  years. 

In  his  later  life  Graham  used  his  great 
wealth  generously  for  philanthropic  pur 
poses.  Among  these,  he  was  best  known 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  free  soup-kitchen 
every  winter  for  the  poor  of  Montreal  and 
the  support  of  hospitals  and  medical  re- 
search. He  was  knighted  in  1908  and  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Atholstan, 
of  Huntingdon,  Quebec,  and  Edinburgh, 
in  1917 ;  he  was  the  first  Canadian  jour 
nahst  to  receive  this  latter  honour.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.: 
from  Glasgow  University  in  1909.  He 
married  in  1892  Annie  Beekman,  second 
daughter  of  Edward  Hamilton,  of  Mon 
treal,  and  had  one  daughter.  He  died  at 
Montreal  28  January  1938. 

A  portrait  of  Atholstan  by  Alphonse 
Jongers  is  in  the  possession  of  his  daugh- 
ter, the  Hon.  Mrs.  B.  M.  HaUward,  of 
Montreal. 

[The  Times,  29  January  1938;  Canadian 
Men  and  Women  of  the  Time,  edited  by  Henry 
James  Morgan,  2nd  ed.  1912;  Who's  Who  in 
Canada,  1937—1938 ;  private  information.] 
John  A.  Stevenson. 

GRAHAM,  ROBERT  BONTINE 
CUNNINGHAME  (1852-1936),  traveUer. 
poet,  horseman,  scholar,  Scottish  national- 
ist, laird,  and  socialist,  was  born  in  London 
24  May  1852,  the  eldest  of  the  three  sons 
of  Wflliam  Cunninghame  Bontine,  of 
Gartmore,  Perthshire,  and  Ardoch,  Dum- 
bartonshire, a  major  in  the  Scots  Greys, 
and  a  great-grandson  of  Robert  Cun- 
ninghame Graham,  the  song  writer  [q.v.], 
by  his  wife,  Anne  Ehzab^th,  yovmgest 
daughter  of  Admiral  Charles  Elphinstone 
Fleeming,  of  Cimibernauld  and  Biggar, 


354 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Graham,  R.  B.  C. 


Dumbartonshire.  By  an  entail  dating  from 
1770  the  eldest  son  had  to  bear  the  sur- 
name and  arms  of  Bontine  during  the  life- 
time of  his  father.  Robert's  real  name 
reflects  his  descent  from  two  ancient 
families,  the  Cunninghams,  earls  of  Glen- 
cairn,  and  the  Grahams,  earls  of  Menteith, 
through  whom  he  could  claim  descent 
from  Robert  II  and  his  second  consort, 
and,  in  view  of  the  illegitimacy  of  the 
Stewart  line,  to  antiquaries  such  as 
Andrew  Lang  he  was  the  'imcrowned 
king  of  Scots'.  To  his  neighbours  he  was 
'Gartmore',  to  South  Americans  he  was 
'Don  Roberto',  but  revolutionary  circles 
in  London  in  the  'eighties  knew  him  as 
'Comrade'. 

Cimninghame  Graham  spent  two  years 
at  Harrow  and  a  year  at  a  private  school 
in  Brussels,  but  his  real  time  and  place 
were  with  Tudor  courtly  adventurers.  At 
the  age  of  seventeen  he  paid  the  first  of 
several  visits  to  Spanish  America  and  rode 
with  gauchos  over  the  South  American 
plains  (where  in  1873  he  visited  the  relics 
of  the  social  experiment  of  the  Jesuits  in 
Paraguay)  and,  later,  with  Indians  in 
Mexico,  where  he  formed  a  close  friendship 
with  'Buffalo  BiU'.  So  W.  H.  Hudson 
[q.v.],  dedicating  jEZ  Ombii  to  him  in  1902, 
called  him  ' Singulaiisimo  escritor  ingles' 
because  he  'alone  of  European  writers  has 
rendered  something  of  the  vanishing  colour 
of  that  remote  life'.  He  was  in  fact  in 
Paraguay  when  that  land  had  lost  most  of 
its  male  population  in  the  four  years'  war 
waged  by  Francisco  Solano  Lopez  upon 
Brazil,  Argentine,  and  Uruguay,  and  he 
gave  an  account  of  the  man  in  his  Portrait 
of  a  Dictator  (1933).  In  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  he  was  there  again,  buying  remounts 
for  the  British  government;  in  1935  he 
went  there  once  more,  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
three,  and  at  Buenos  Aires,  greatly  re- 
spected by  the  people,  he  died  20  March 
1936.  In  honour  of  him,  a  new  city  in  the 
Argentine  was  named  Don  Roberto. 

As  befitted  'the  most  picturesque  Scot' 
of  his  time,  Cunninghame  Graham's  career 
at  home  was  even  more  romantic.  At  the 
general  election  of  1886  he  was  elected  as 
a  Hberal  for  North-West  Lanarkshire 
(which  had  rejected  him  in  the  previous 
year),  and  he  is  said  to  have  been  the  first 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  be 
suspended  for  using  the  word  'damn'  in 
the  House.  His  sense  of  fellowship  and 
compassion,  which  included  the  lower 
animals,  easily  moved  him  to  indignation 
at  cruelty  and  injustice.  His  political 
sense  was  both  erratic  and  acute.  It  went 


to  the  underdog  wherever  he  foimd  him. 
A  single  visit  to  Ireland  converted  him  to 
devotion  to  Parnell,  whose  funeral  he  was 
the  only  non-Irish  member  to  attend.  He 
quickly  developed  into  an  ardent  socialist 
devoted  to  William  Morris  [q.v.],  and  a 
friend  of  John  Burns,  although  he  was 
estranged  from  Burns  when  the  latter 
avowed  himself  a  pacificist  in  1914.  He 
contested  unsuccessfully  the  Camlachie 
division  of  Glasgow  in  1892,  and  in  1918, 
again  unsuccessfully,  Western  Stirling  and 
Clackmannan.  When  the  national  party 
of  Scotland  was  foiuided  in  1928  he  was 
elected  its  first  president.  In  the  same 
year  at  the  election  for  the  lord  rectorship 
of  Glasgow  University  he  polled  only  66 
votes  fewer  than  Stanley  Baldwin. 

In  height,  appearance,  and  bearing, 
Cunninghame  Graham  looked  a  Spanish 
Don.  When  at  the  Old  Bailey  in  1887  he 
was  sent  to  prison  after  the  riot  in  Tra- 
falgar Square  in  which  he  had  been 
severely  wounded  by  a  policeman's  baton 
and  Burns  had  saved  his  life,  a  reporter 
who  saw  him  in  the  dock  thus  described 
him : '  a  striking  figure,  with  a  breezy  head 
of  hair  and  moustachios  to  match,  and  a 
sharply  pointed  beard,  lighter  than  his 
hair.  He  took  off  his  hat,  laid  down  his 
stick,  pulled  off  his  coat  and  settled  down.' 
The  reporter,  unaware  of  the  truth,  de- 
scribed him  as  having  the  appearance  of 
a  Spanish  noble,  and  this  was  native  to 
him,  for  his  maternal  grandmother  (Cata- 
lina  Paidina  Alessandro)  was  a  Spanish 
lady  who  gave  birth  to  his  mother  in  the 
admiral's  cabin  in  a  ship  on  the  West 
Indies  station.  He  himself,  as  a  boy,  lived 
much  at  Ryde  with  his  grandmother  who 
could  remember  Goya,  and  who  taught 
him  Spanish  and  brought  him  up  in  the 
Spanish  way.  He  used  a  Mexican  saddle 
when  riding  in  Rotten  Row,  and  he  was 
as  much  at  home  in  Spain  and  Morocco  as 
in  Scotland.  His  understanding  of  old 
Spanish  life  and  of  the  Conquistadores  is 
shown  in  nine  volumes  of  historical  and 
biographical  studies.  He  wrote  a  little- 
known  classic  of  travel,  Mogreb-el-Acksa 
(1898),  an  account  of  a  dangerous  journey, 
when  he  travelled  through  southern 
Morocco ;  a  local  cadi  imprisoned  him,  and 
he  was  released  only  after  a  painful  experi- 
ence. But  perhaps  his  best  work  is  to  be 
found  in  his  many  volumes  of  stories, 
essays,  and  sketches.  His  style  is  in  the 
tradition  of  the  prose  of  King  James's 
Bible,  candid,  direct,  and  vivid ;  his  images 
are  homely  and  apt.  Nobody  who  has 
read  such  moving  character  studies  as  'In 


855 


Graham,  R.  B.  C. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


a  German  Tramp'  and  'A  Hegira'  from 
Thirteen  Stones  (1900),  and  'Beattock  for 
Moffat'  from  Success  (1902),  his  noble  tri- 
bute to  William  Morris  on  the  occasion  of 
the  poet's  funeral  at  Lechlade,  'With  the 
North- West  Wind '  from  The  Ipand  (1899), 
his  sombre  narrative  of  the  passing  of 
James  Keir  Hardie  [q.v.]  in  Brought  For- 
ward (1916),  or  the  picture  of  a  Spanish 
dancer,  Aurora  La  Cujini,  in  Charity  (1912) 
but  must  respect  and  admire  him  for  his 
contribution  to  English  letters. 

In  1879  Cunninghame  Graham  married 
Gabriela,  daughter  of  Don  Francisco  Jose 
de  la  Balmondiere.  Born  in  Chile,  of  a 
French  father  and  a  Spanish  mother,  she 
was  poet,  water-eolourist,  botanist,  and 
mystic.  She  died,  childless,  in  1906,  and 
he  himself  dug  her  grave  in  the  grounds 
of  the  ruined  Augustinian  priory  on  the 
isle  of  Inchmahome  in  the  Lake  of  Men- 
teith.  He  was  buried  beside  her,  and  there 
is  a  memorial  to  him  on  a  mound,  reputed 
to  be  the  spot  where  King  Robert  the 
Bruce  died,  adjoining  the  main  road  at 
CastlehiU,  Dumbartonshire,  a  site  which 
he  himself  had  presented  to  the  National 
Trust  of  Scotland. 

Cunninghame  Graham  used  to  say  that 
he  had  been  the  'victim'  of  at  least  a 
hundred  artists.  The  best  portrait  is  said 
to  be  the  full  length  by  (Sir)  John  La  very 
(1906)  in  the  Corporation  Art  Gallery, 
Glasgow.  An  earUer  portrait  by  Lavery, 
also  a  fine  picture,  which  shows  him  on  his 
horse  Pampa,  is  in  the  Museo  de  Bellas 
Artes,  Buenos  Aires.  A  painting  by  G.  P. 
Jacomb-Hood  (1887),  two  small  portraits 
by  Lavery,  and  a  bust  and  a  small  eques- 
trian statuette  by  FeUx  Weiss  are  in  the 
possession  of  Vice -Admiral  A.  B.  Cunning- 
hame Graham  of  Ardoch,  and  a  drawing 
by  (Sir)  William  Rothenstein  is  published 
in  English  Portraits  (1898).  There  are  two 
copies  of  a  bronze  head  and  shoulders  by 
Albert  Toft  (1891)  in  Edinburgh  and 
Glasgow,  and  there  are  three  copies  of  a 
head  by  Jacob  Epstein  (1923)  in  Aber- 
deen, Jerusalem,  and  in  the  artist's  private 
possession. 

[The  Times,  23  March  1936 ;  H.  F.  West, 
Robert  Bontine  Cunninghame  Graham,  1932; 
A.  F.  Tschiflfely,  Don  Roberto,  1937;  personal 
knowledge.]  H.  M.  Tomlinson. 

GRAHAM,  WILLIAM  (1887-1932), 
labour  leader,  was  born  at  Peebles  29  July 
1887,  the  eldest  son  and  child  in  the  family 
of  seven  children  of  George  Graham, 
master-builder,  of  Peebles  and  afterwards 
of  Edinburgh,  by  his  wife,  Jessie  Newton. 


A  scholarship  from  the  Peebles  public 
school  took  him  to  George  Heriot's  Hospi- 
tal School  in  Edinburgh.  Leaving  at  the 
age  of  sixteen,  he  spent  two  years  (1903- 
1905)  as  a  junior  clerk  in  the  War  Office, 
but  relinquished  the  civil  service  for  a  post 
on  a  Selkirk  newspaper  at  £1  a  week. 
Moving  to  Edinburgh,  he  earned  sufficien 
by  free-lance  journalism  to  enter  the  um 
versity  in  1911;  here  he  graduated  M 
(1915),  with  honours  in  economic  science 
and  LL.B.  (1917),  with  honours  in  econO' 
mic  history,  statistics  and  mathemati 
economics,  forensic  medicine,  and  admi: 
strative  law. 

Joining  the  independent  labour  part; 
in  1906,  and  later  the  University  Fabia 
Society,  Graham  combined  his  work  am 
studies  with  socialist  propaganda  and  wi 
elected  to  the  Edinburgh  town  council  i; 
1913  while  still  a  student.  From  1915 
1918  he  was  a  lecturer  in  economics  f( 
the  Workers'  Educational  Association 

At  the  general  election  of  1918  Graha 
won   Central  Edinburgh  for  the  labo 
party  and  represented  this  constituenc; 
continuously  until  1931.   He  was  quickl; 
marked  out  as  a  coming  man.   A  mastei 
of  figures,  with  a  logical  and  well-train© 
mind,   and  an  exceptional  memory,  h 
speeches  were  models  of  clarity  and  reason; 
ing,  devoid  of  any  oratorical  flourish.  H 
gifts  found  full  scope  on  the  royal  com- 
missions on  income  tax  (1919)  and  on  th 
universities    of    Oxford    and    Cambrid 
(1920-1921);  on  the  Speaker's  conferen 
on  devolution  (1919-1920) ;  on  Lord  Co! 
wyn's  committee  on  railway  agreemen 
(1920) ;  on  the  departmental  commit 
on  grants  to  local  authorities  (1922);  on 
the  joint  committee  on  the  British  Broad- 
casting Corporation's  charter  (1925-1926) ; 
and  on  the  departmental  committee  on 
native  welfare  in  Kenya  (1926).   He  also 
served  on  the  Medical  Research  Council 
(1920-1928)  and  was  chairman  of  the  In- 
dustrial Fatigue  Research  Board  (1921). 

Outstanding  among  labour  party  ex- 
perts on  finance,  Graham  was  appointed 
in  1924  financial  secretary  to  the  Treasury 
in  the  first  labour  government  and  was 
notable  as  chief  assistant  to  Philip  Snow- 
den  [q.v.],  being  responsible  for  piloting 
two  intricate  pensions  biUs  through  the 
House  of  Commons.  Upon  the  fall  of  the 
government  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  While  in  opposition  from  1924 
to  1929  he  was  an  assiduous  member 
the  public  accounts  committee. 

In  the  second  labour  government  (1929 
1931)  Graham  reached  Cabinet  rank  as 


<24    . 
as   I 


356 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Grahame 


president  of  the  Board  of  Trade  and  was 
responsible  for  the  negotiations  between 
the  mine-owners  and  the  miners  which 
preceded  the  introduction  of  the  coal- 
mines bill  and  afterwards  for  its  conduct 
I  through  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
Appointment  of  the  overseas  trade  de- 
velopment committee,  the  missions  of 
Lord  Kirkley  to  South  Africa  and  Rhode- 
na,  Sir  Ernest  Thompson's  mission  to 
papan  and  China,  and  Sir  Arthur  Balfour's 
mission  to  Egypt,  as  well  as  inquiries  into 
the  cotton,  iron  and  steel,  and  fisheries 
industries,  were  all  carried  out  on  Gra- 
ham's initiative.  At  the  League  of  Nations 
Assembly  in  1929  he  sought  to  secure  a 
'tariff  truce',  as  a  preliminary  to  an  agree- 
ment for  freer  trade,  but  the  financial 
crisis  frustrated  his  efforts.  He  took  a  con- 
siderable part  in  the  discussions  at  The 
Hague  and  at  Geneva  over  the  revision  of 
German  reparation  payments  in  kind  and 
in  endeavouring  to  establish  greater  inter- 
national co-operation. 

Occasionally,  during  Snowden's  indis- 
position, Graham  rendered  valuable  aid  at 
the  Treasury  and  served  on  various  im- 
portant Cabinet  committees,  including 
that  set  up  to  consider  the  recommenda- 
tions on  government  economy  made  by 
the  committee  under  the  chairmanship  of 
Sir  George  (afterwards  Lord)  May  in  1931. 
Unconvinced  of  the  necessity  for  the  cuts 
in  services  and  salaries  that  were  de- 
manded by  the  committee's  report,  Gra- 
ham stood  with  those  of  his  colleagues 
who  opposed  the  10  per  cent,  reduction 
in  unemployment  benefit  which  caused 
the  resignation  of  the  government.  He 
declined  office  in  Ramsay  MacDonald's 
all -party  administration  (1931)  and  lost 
his  seat  at  the  general  election  of  that 
year. 

The  break  with  his  colleagues  affected 
Graham  greatly  and  very  shortly  after 
accepting  a  post  as  economic  adviser  to 
the  firm  of  Messrs.  Schwab  &  Snelling,  he 
suddenly  fell  ill  and  died  at  his  home  at 
Hendon  8  January  1932  at  the  age  of 
forty-four.  He  married  in  1919  Ethel 
Margaret,  only  daughter  of  Henry  Beard- 
more  Dobson,  cashier,  of  Harrogate ;  there 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

Graham  was  an  unusual  type  of  labour 
member,  belonging  to  the  fourth  genera- 
tion of  a  family  with  traditions  of  public 
service.  His  sound  Edinburgh  training 
prepared  him  for  hard  study,  wide  econo- 
mic reading,  and  the  power  of  easy  factual 
exposition.  His  writings  were  mainly  in 
reviews  and  the  general  press,  but  in  1921 


he  published  The  Wages  of  Labour,  and  on 
various  occasions  indicated  his  adhesion 
to  the  guild  system  as  a  challenge  to 
capitalist  industrialism.  In  1927  he 
received  from  Edinburgh  University  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 

[The  Times,  9  January  1932;  private  in- 
formation ;  T.  N.  Graham,  Willie  Graham,  1 948 ; 
personal  knowledge.]        J.  S.  Middleton. 

GRAHAME,  KENNETH  (1859-1932), 
author  and  secretary  of  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land, was  born  in  Edinburgh  8  March 
1859,  the  second  son  of  an  advocate, 
James  Cunningham  Grahame,  by  his  wife, 
Bessie,  daughter  of  John  Ingles,  of  Hilton, 
Lasswade.  He  was  doubly  descended  from 
Robert  the  Bruce.  'Anthony  Hope',  the 
novelist  [Sir  A.  H.  Hawkins,  q.v.],  was 
his  first  cousin.  After  education  at  St. 
Edward's  School,  Oxford,  he  spent  two 
years  in  the  Westminster  offices  of  his 
uncle,  John  Grahame,  a  parliamentary 
agent. 

In  1879  Grahame  began  work  as  a  clerk 
in  the  Bank  of  England.  He  was  com- 
petent and  conscientious,  but  his  literary 
bent  foimd  some  outlet  in  the  writing  of 
poems  and  reflections  in  a  small  ledger. 
Much  of  his  spare  time  was  filled  up  by 
training  in  the  London  Scottish,  with 
which  he  served  for  seven  years.  Sundry 
visits  to  the  ship  of  his  uncle.  Commander 
Ingles,  at  Portsmouth,  fostered  his  peren- 
nial interest  in  things  nautical. 

In  1886  Grahame  met  F.  J.  Furnivall 
[q.v.],  who  discouraged  his  poetic  aspira- 
tions but  urged  him  to  write  prose  for  the 
reviews.  This  he  did,  and  gained  an  inter- 
view with  W.  E.  Henley  [q.v.],  who 
printed  a  number  of  essays  and  sketches 
and  tried  to  induce  Grahame  to  leave  the 
Bank  for  literature. 

Too  level-headed  to  do  this,  Grahame 
nevertheless  continued  writing,  and  in 
1893  published  his  first  book,  Pagan 
Papers,  essays  reprinted  from  Henley's 
National  Observer,  which  was  well  re- 
viewed. Grahame  wrote  for  The  Yellow 
Book  between  1894  and  1897,  and  in  1895 
published  The  Golden  Age,  essays  from  this 
magazine  and  the  earlier  Pagan  Papers, 
which  revealed  in  this  thirty-six-year-old 
bachelor  a  remarkably  delicate  apprecia- 
tion of  the  child  mind.  It  won  from  A.  C. 
Swinburne  the  description  of  '  one  of  the 
few  books  which  are  well-nigh  too  praise- 
worthy for  praise',  and  was  a  favourite 
with  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  the  Emperor 
William  II. 

Grahame's  business  career  had  a  success 


357 


Grahame 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


parallel  to  that  of  his  writings.  He  became 
secretary  of  the  Bank  in  1898,  and  filled 
that  office  with  credit  untU  his  retirement 
for  reasons  of  health  in  1908.  He  was 
twice  near  death — ^from  pneumonia  in 
1899  and  from  a  lunatic's  revolver-shot  at 
the  Bank  in  1903.  In  1899  he  married 
Elspeth  (died  1946),  elder  daughter  of 
Robert  William  Thomson,  of  Edinburgh 
and  Stonehaven,  and  step-daughter  of 
J.  F.  Moulton,  Lord  Moulton  [q.v.].  Their 
only  child,  Alastair,  born  in  1900,  was 
killed  by  a  train  near  Oxford  in  1920, 
while  an  undergraduate  at  Christ  Church. 

Dream  Days  (1898)  dealt  with  the  same 
characters  as  The  Golden  Age.  Then,  in 
1908,  Grahame  produced  The  Wind  in  the 
Willows,  much  of  it  written  to  the  boy 
Alastair  at  Littlehampton  in  letter  form. 
This  book  made  a  fortune  for  its  author, 
and  raised  him  to  a  status  of  mastery  as 
a  writer  of  children's  books  comparable 
with  that  of  Lewis  CarroU,  Edward  Lear, 
and  J.  M.  Barrie.  The  famous  animal 
characters.  Mole,  Badger,  Rat,  Toad,  and 
the  rest,  remain  equally  popular  with  child 
and  adult  readers.  The  book  was  drama- 
tized by  Mr.  A.  A.  Milne  in  1929  as  Toad 
of  Toad  Hall. 

Grahame  died  suddenly  at  his  home  at 
Pangboume  6  July  1932.  He  was  a  large, 
fair,  genial,  and  dignified  man,  kindly, 
shy,  and  generous,  who  loved  wit  and  good 
company  and  was  beloved  by  many.  His 
insight  into  child  mentahty  has  probably 
never  been  surpassed,  and  his  subtle  and 
evocative  prose  was  an  admirable  vehicle 
for  the  poetry  and  pathos  of  his  thought. 

A  drawing  of  Grahame  by  J.  S.  Sargent 
(1912)  is  in  the  Bodleian  Library. 

[The  Times,  7  July  1932;  C.  L.  Hind, 
Authors  and  1, 1921 ;  P.  R.  Chalmers,  Kenneth 
Grahame:  Life,  Letters  and  Unpublished  Work, 
1933;  D.  M.  Fyrth,  J^tude  litt&raire  Kenneth 
Grahame,  1937.] 

Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

GRANT,  Sir  (ALFRED)  HAMILTON, 

twelfth  baronet,  of  Dalvey  (1872-1937), 
Indian  civil  sers'^ant,  was  born  in  Edin- 
burgh 12  June  1872,  the  fifth  and  youngest 
son  of  Sir  Alexander  Grant,  tenth  (some- 
times reckoned  eighth)  baronet,  principal 
of  Edinburgh  University  [q.v.],  by  his 
wife,  Susan,  second  daughter  of  the  meta- 
physician James  Frederick  Ferrier  [q.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  Fettes  and  BaUiol 
College,  Oxford,  and  entered  the  Indian 
civil  service  in  1895.  He  was  posted 
originally  to  the  Pimjab  commission,  but, 
when  the  North-West  Frontier  Province 


was   established  by  Lord   Curzon  as 
separate  unit,  Grant  was  transferred  thei 
as  a  member  of  the  foreign  and  pohtic 
department  (later  the  Indian  poHtical  ser-j 
vice)  and  held  among  other  posts  that  ol 
secretary  to  Sir  Harold  Arthur  Deane,  the 
first  chief  commissioner,  and  to  Sir  Georgel 
Roos-Keppel  [q.v.],  who  succeeded  Deane 
on  the  latter's  death.    He  also  accom- 
panied the  mission  of  Sir  Louis  Dane  tc 
Kabul  in  1904-1905  and  was  appointee 
CLE.  in  1908.    In  1912  he  went  to  the 
foreign  department  of  the  government  o| 
India  as  deputy-secretary  and  in  1914  wa 
appointed  foreign  secretary,  which  post  hi 
held  with  distinction  throughout  the  yeai 
of  the  war  of  1914-1918.  In  1915  he  wa 
appointed  C.S.I. 

During  the  war  years  many  difficvdt 
problems  of  poUcy  connected  with  India's 
foreign  relations  fell  to  be  decided,  largelj 
upon  the  advice  which  Grant  gave  to  the 
viceroy  and  the  government  of  India,  anc 
perhaps  the  most  critical  situation  wa 
that  which  arose  in  1919,  when  Amii 
Amanullah  made  an  vmprovoked  attacl 
upon  India  and  precipitated  the  thirdi 
Afghan  war.  Although  the  initial  attack 
was  easily  defeated  and  the  strategic 
threat  to  India  was  never  dangerous,  the 
government  of  India  was  for  political  and 
internal  reasons  anxious  to  end  the  fight- 
ing as  soon  as  possible  and  to  procure  a 
resumption  of  friendly  relations  with 
Afghanistan.  The  Amir  was  equally  de- 
sirous of  a  solution  and  the  difficulty  lay 
in  finding  some  device  to  save  Amanul- 
lah's  face  with  his  own  people.  It  was 
largely  due  to  Grant's  imagination  and  to 
his  intimate  knowledge  of  and  sympathy 
with  the  Afghan  point  of  view  that  a  solu- 
tion was  foiuid.  He  realized  that  the  con- 
trol of  Afghan  external  relations  exercised 
by  His  Majesty's  government  in  virtue  of 
a  treaty  concluded  after  the  second  Afghan 
war  was  a  continual  source  of  irritation 
to  the  Afghans,  since  it  compromised  their 
international  independent  status,  and  was 
at  the  same  time  of  little  practical  benefit 
to  His  Majesty's  government.  He  was 
appointed  chief  British  representative  of 
the  delegation  which  met  Afghan  repre- 
sentatives at  Rawalpindi  in  the  summer 
of  1919  in  order  to  enter  upon  preliminary 
negotiations  for  a  treaty  of  friendship.  In 
the  course  of  these  negotiations  Grant, 
largely  on  his  personal  initiative  and  in 
anticipation  of  the  full  concurrence  of  His 
Majesty's  government,  imdertook  that 
Afghan  external  relations  should  in  future 
be  entirely  free  from  any  foreign  control. 


858 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Graves 


It  was  on  this  basis  that  a  treaty  was 
lly  concluded  in  November  1921,  and 
subsequent  relations  between  His 
jesty's  government  and  the  Afghan 
vernment  have  been  conducted  with 
markable  good  will  on  both  sides.  This 
ncession  was  hailed  in  Afghanistan 
s  an  Afghan  victory  over  the  British 
and  was  bitterly  criticized  both  in  the 
British  press  and  by  many  British  officers 
of  experience  on  the  North-West  Frontier 
of  India  as  an  imdignified  surrender  of 
principle  and  prestige.  Time  has,  how- 
ever, shown  that  Grant's  intuition  was  not 
at  fault  and  results  have  fully  justified  the 
advice  that  he  gave. 

Grant  was  appointed  K.C.I.E.  in  1918 
and  in  1919  succeeded  Roos-Keppel  as 
chief  commissioner  of  the  North-West 
Frontier  Province,  holding  this  post  until 
his  retirement  from  the  service  in  1922 
after  being  appointed  K.C.S.I.  After  re- 
tirement he  became  interested  in  com- 
mercial finance  and  served  as  director  of 
a  number  of  companies  in  London,  which 
dealt  with  the  development  of  Canadian 
silver  mines  and  also  with  oil  production. 
He  was  well  known  and  popular  as  a 
member  of  White's  Club,  where  his  skill 
as  a  bridge  player  and  unfailing  resource 
and  humour  as  a  raconteur  earned  him 
a  notable  reputation.  As  a  young  man  he 
represented  Oxford  at  Rugby  football  and 
in  later  life  maintained  a  robust  interest 
in  sport  of  all  kinds,  including  golf.  He 
succeeded  his  brother  as  twelfth  baronet 
in  1936  and  died  in  London  23  January 
1937. 

Grant  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1896 
to  Mabel  Bessie  (died  1910),  fifth  daughter 
of  Colonel  Thomas  Heaton  Lovett,  of  Bel- 
mont (now  Henlle  Hall),  Shropshire,  and 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter;  secondly, 
in  1914  to  Margaret  Lucia,  youngest 
daughter  of  Lieutenant  Alexander  Coch- 
ran, R.N.,  of  Ashkirk,  Selkirkshire,  and 
had  a  son  and  two  daughters.  His  elder 
son  predeceased  him  and  he  was  succeeded 
as  thirteenth  baronet  by  his  grandson, 
Duncan  Alexander  (bom  1928). 

A  portrait  of  Grant  by  Graham  Glen 
belongs  to  Lady  Grant;  a  better  one  is 
at  Government  House,  Peshawar. 

[The  Times,  25  January  1937;  Official 
records ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Aubrey  Metcalfe. 

GRAVES,      ALFRED      PERCEVAL 

(1846-1931),  author  and  educationist,  was 
bom  in  Dublin  22  July  1846,  the  second 
son  of  Charles  Graves  [q.v.],  afterwards 


bishop  of  Limerick,  by  his  wife,  Selina, 
eldest  daughter  of  John  Cheyne  [q.v.], 
physician-general  to  the  forces  in  Ireland. 
The  Graves  family  had  for  several  genera- 
tions contributed  with  distinction  to 
scholarship  and  to  the  learned  professions 
in  Ireland,  notably  in  the  persons  of 
Richard  Graves  (1763-1829),  Richard 
Hastings  Graves,  Robert  James  Graves 
[qq.v.],  and  Graves's  father,  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  and  at  the  time  of 
Alfred's  birth  fellow  of  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  and  professor  of  mathematics 
there.  Between  the  ages  of  ten  and  four- 
teen Graves  was  educated  at  Windermere 
College,  and  was  then  prepared  at  home 
by  private  tutors  for  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  where,  after  winning  a  classical 
scholarship,  he  obtained  the  equivalent  of 
honours  in  classics  and  in  English  litera- 
ture, history,  and  language.  His  first 
book.  Songs  of  Killarnejj,  appeared  in  1873 
when  he  was  employed  as  a  Home  Office 
clerk  and  private  secretary  at  £300  a  year. 
In  1874  he  married  Jane  (died  1886), 
eldest  daughter  of  James  Cooper  Cooper, 
of  Cooper  Hill,  co.  Limerick,  a  member  of 
a  family  renowned  for  its  beauty.  In  1875, 
after  six  years  in  the  Home  Office,  he 
began  his  long  and  useful  career  as  an 
inspector  of  schools.  After  serving  succes- 
sively in  Manchester  and  Huddersfield,  he 
was  for  many  years  stationed  at  Taunton, 
and  while  there  published  his  Songs  of  Old 
Ireland  (1882)  and  Songs  of  Erin  (1892), 
both  in  collaboration  with  his  friend  (Sir) 
C.  V.  Stanford  [q.v.].  Graves,  who  wrote 
and  adapted  the  words  to  old  Irish  folk 
tunes  chiefly  derived  from  the  collection 
of  George  Petrie  [q.v.],  parted  with  his 
musical  rights  to  the  publisher  for  £80, 
and  he  used  to  say  that  for  his  song 
'Father  O'Flynn'  (which,  written  in  1875, 
and  included  in  Songs  of  Old  Ireland, 
attained  world-wide  fame  after  it  was  sung 
by  (Sir)  C.  Santley  [q.v.]  at  a  concert  in 
the  early  'eighties)  he  had  had  but  £1 .  12s., 
his  original  fee  when  it  was  published  in 
the  Spectator.  In  1891  he  married  as  his 
second  wife  Amalie,  eldest  daughter  of 
Heinrich  Ritter  von  Ranke,  professor  of 
medicine  at  Munich  University,  and  great- 
niece  of  the  historian  Leopold  von  Ranke, 
who  had  married  Graves's  aunt  many 
years  previously. 

In  1895  Graves  was  appointed  to  the 
metropolitan  district  of  Southwark  and 
removed  to  London,  where  he  foimded  the 
educational  councils  in  several  boroughs 
both  within  and  without  his  own  district. 
He  now  made  some  mark  as  a  humorist 


359 


Graves 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


by  his  contributions  to  Punch,  a  journal 
with  which  his  younger  brother  Charles 
was  closely  associated ;  but  he  gained  the 
greater  part  of  his  position  in  the  world  of 
letters  as  a  poet  of  Irish  nature  and 
country  life,  and  an  essayist  on  Irish 
musical  and  literary  subjects.  He  was  a 
leading  figure  in  the  recently  founded 
London  Irish  Literary  Society,  of  which 
he  was  twice  president,  and  as  an  editor 
and  anthologist  performed  service  in  the 
cause  of  the  understanding  and  apprecia- 
tion of  Ireland — ^her  poets,  her  folk-lore, 
and  her  music.  His  'translations',  how- 
ever, both  from  the  Irish  and  the  Welsh 
were  based  on  other  people's  translations, 
for  he  had  but  a  smattering  of  Gaelic  and 
no  Welsh ;  but  in  his  Celtic  Psaltery  (1917) 
he  rendered  with  success  the  spirit  of  the 
early  Irish  Christian  poetry. 

In  1910  Graves  retired  from  the  civil 
service,  but  remained  active  in  the  educa- 
tional world  as  chairman  of  the  repre- 
sentative managers  of  the  London  County 
Council  schools  (1911-1919).  He  pro- 
moted the  supply  of  playing  fields  for 
children  in  urban  schools  and  the  educa- 
tional use  of  the  cinema.  He  had  made 
his  home  at  Wimbledon,  but  his  last  years 
were  largely  passed  at  Harlech  in  North 
Wales,  where  he  organized  and  wrote  the 
greater  part  of  the  books  of  the  historical 
pageants  of  1920, 1922,  and  1927.  Here  he 
also  wrote  his  autobiography.  To  Return 
To  All  That  (1930),  which  was  in  the 
nature  of  a  reply  to  an  autobiography  by 
his  fourth  son  Robert,  entitled  Good-bye 
To  All  That  (1929). 

Graves  died  at  Harlech  27  December 
1931  and  is  buried  there.  He  was  survived 
by  his  second  wife  and  by  his  ten  children, 
three  sons  and  two  daughters  of  each 
marriage. 

[The  Times,  28  December  1931;  A.  P. 
Graves,  To  Return  To  All  That  (portrait  and 
bibliography),  1930;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Joseph  Hone. 

GREENE,  HARRY  PLUNKET  (1865- 
1936),  singer,  was  born  at  Old  Connaught 
House,  CO.  Wicklow,  24  June  1865,  the  son 
of  Richard  Jonas  Greene,  barrister,  of 
Dublin,  by  his  wife,  Louisa  Lilias,  fourth 
daughter  of  John  Plunket,  third  Lord 
Plunket,  and  granddaughter  of  William 
Conyngham  Plunket,  first  Lord  Plun- 
ket, lord  chancellor  of  Ireland  [q.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  Clifton  College,  and 
afterwards  studied  singing  at  Stuttgart 
and  Florence  and  in  London.  He  was  pro- 
fessor of  singing  at  the  Royal  Academy  of 


Music  (1911-1919)  and  at  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Music  (1912-1919).  He  married  in 
1899  Gwendolen  Maud,  younger  daughter 
of  Sir  C.  H.  H.  Parry  [q.v.],  and  had  two 
sons  and  a  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
19  August  1936. 

Greene's  contribution  to  music  in  this 
country  was  due  in  equal  proportions  to 
his  timely  arrival  as  an  adept  interpreter 
for  Sir  C.  V.  Stanford  [q.v.].  Parry,  Sir 
Arthur  Somervell,  and  that  generation  of 
English  composers,  and  to  his  native 
charm  of  character  and  vivid  poetic  ima- 
gination. He  made  his  first  appearance  in 
England  as  a  bass-baritone  in  1888,  and 
soon  established  his  reputation  as  a  singer, 
first  by  his  'joint  partnership',  from  1893 
onwards,  in  recitals  with  the  pianist 
Leonard  Borwick  in  the  classical  repertory 
of  German  Lieder  and  Brahms  songs,  and 
secondly  as  a  specialized  interpreter  of  the 
regular  series  of  cantatas  and  oratorios 
which  Parry  wrote  for  the  Three  Choirs 
festivals,  especially  'Job'  at  Gloucester  in 
1892. 

Music  in  that  generation  was  only  just 
becoming  a  profession  for  men  of  educa- 
tion and  social  position.  Sir  F.  A.  G. 
Ouseley  [q.v.]  had  set  a  precedent  despite 
discouragement  from  the  dean  of  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  who  would  not  permit  a 
baronet  and  a  gentleman  commoner  to 
read  for  a  degree  in  music.  Parry  further 
enlarged  the  bounds,  but  in  the  executive 
ranks  of  the  profession,  partictdarly  among 
singers,  Greene  was  an  arrival  from  a  new 
and  welcome  sphere,  to  be  joined  later  by 
such  men  as  Gervase  Elwes  [q.v.]  and 
James  Campbell  Mclnnes.  Each  of  these 
brought  special  gifts  into  the  common  pur- 
pose of  establishing  the  rising  generation 
of  British  musicians.  Greene  was  the  first 
in  the  field,  and  was  in  particular  the 
'creator'  of  the  Stanford  Irish  song-cycles 
in  which  his  native  charm  of  manner  was 
irresistible  (before  political  differences  had 
clouded  the  outlook)  and  he  was  a  partner 
on  equal  terms  in  the  Charles  Stanford- 
Henry  Newbolt  combination  of  patriotic 
and  sea  songs  which  were  of  a  far  higher 
degree  of  merit  than  anything  that  had 
previously  been  set  down. 

The  effect  of  Greene  on  his  generation 
was  remarkable:  it  was  due  to  his  charm 
and  humour  combined  with  his  magni- 
ficent presence,  his  perfect  diction  in 
speech  and  song,  now  beguihng  and  now 
commanding,  and,  above  all,  to  his  fresh- 
air  outlook  which  banished  the  hackneyed 
insincerities  of  the  shop-ballad  and  raised 
the  standard  of  public  taste.  In  this  cam- 


860 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Greet 


paign  he  was  particularly  influential  as  an 
adjudicator  in  the  competition  festival 
movement,  both  in  this  country  and  in 
Canada. 

Greene  was  a  writer  of  considerable  dis- 
tinction not  only  on  music  {Interpretation 
in  Song,  1912)  but  on  his  favourite  recrea- 
tion of  fishing  (Where  the  Bright  Waters 
Meet,  1924).  He  also  wrote  Charles  Villiers 
Stanford  (1935). 

A  portrait  of  Greene  by  James  Gunn 
was  commissioned  by  many  of  his  friends 
on  his  seventieth  birthday  and  is  at  pre- 
sent in  the  keeping  of  his  family. 

[The  Times,  20  August  1936 ;  Grovels  Dic- 
tionary of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol. 
ii,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes ;  H.  P.  Greene,  From 
Blue  Danube  to  Shannon,  1934;  personal 
knowledge.]  Steuart  Wilson. 

GREET,    Sir    PHILLIP    BARLING 

BEN  (1857-1936),  actor-manager,  was  the 
younger  son  of  Captain  William  Greet, 
R.N.,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Barling.  He  was 
bom  24  September  1857  on  board  the 
Crocodile,  recruiting  ship,  which  his  father 
commanded,  then  lying  off  the  Tower. 
Intended  for  the  navy  himself  and  edu- 
cated at  the  Royal  Naval  School,  New 
Cross,  he  became  a  master  at  a  private 
school  at  Worthing,  but  was  attracted  to 
the  stage.  On  this  he  made  his  first 
appearance  in  November  1879  with  J.  W. 
Gordon's  stock-company  at  Southampton, 
afterwards  joining  Sarah  Thorne  at  the 
Theatre  Royal,  Margate.  There  he  re- 
mained for  three  years,  making  his  London 
d^but  at  the  Gaiety  Theatre  in  March  1883 
as  Caius  Lucius  in  Cymbeline  with  Miss 
Wallis.  In  the  same  year  he  joined  Minnie 
Palmer  in  My  Sweetheart,  plajdng  the 
comic  '  dude '-character  of  Dudley  Har- 
court,  with  the  catch  phrase,  'Dash  it 
all!'  In  the  following  year  he  made  his 
first  appearance  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre 
•with  Lawrence  Barrett,  and  was  the  Apo- 
thecary in  Mary  Anderson's  production 
there  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  thus  beginning 
a  lifelong  friendship  with  Mary  Anderson 
herself. 

In  1886  Greet  went  into  management 
and  entered  upon  his  principal  lifework 
with  a  series  of  open-air — or,  as  he  called 
them,  'pastoral' — ^performances  of  Shake- 
speare's plays.  Apart  from  this,  he  toured 
the  United  Kingdom  and  the  United 
States  of  America  with  a  repertory  com- 
pany in  which  a  large  number  of  players 
who  were  afterwards  well  known  made 
their  first  important  appearances.  In 
1902,  in  association  with  William  Poel 


[q.v.],  Greet  revived  the  morality  Every- 
man at  the  Imperial  Theatre.  It  had  been 
originally  presented  in  1901  by  the  Eliza- 
bethan Stage  Society  at  an  open  grave  in 
the  Charterhouse.  Greet  played  it  after- 
wards in  countless  theatres,  churches, 
halls,  and  open  spaces  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic.  Thereby  he  did  much  for  the 
creating  of  a  new  interest  in  the  study 
and  presentation  of  pre-Shakespearian 
drama.  From  this  time  until  1914  he  was 
a  consrtant  visitor  to  the  United  States, 
which  he  toured  from  coast  to  coast  and 
which  he  revisited  in  the  years  1929  to 
1932. 

In  1914  Greet  returned  to  England  and 
joined  Lilian  Baylis  [q.v.]  at  the  Old  Vic. 
There  his  company  became  the  nucleus  of 
the  Old  Vic  and  Sadler's  Wells  organiza- 
tion, destined  to  win  larger  success  than 
even  he  had  anticipated.  In  1918,  at  the 
desire  of  the  committee  of  the  Board  of 
Education  on  Shakespeare  for  schools,  he 
formed  a  company  which  gave  perform- 
ances in  London  County  Coxmcil  schools 
and  other  educational  centres,  thus  ini- 
tiating a  movement  which  during  four 
years  was  the  means  of  presenting  Shake- 
speare's plays  before  over  a  million  child- 
ren. From  1924  to  1926  he  was  associated 
with  Mr.  W.  E.  Stirling  in  the  presentation 
of  English  plays  in  Paris  and  was  awarded 
the  diploma  and  gold  medal  for  English 
productions  at  the  Exhibition  of  1926. 
From  1933  to  1935  he  acted  as  master  of 
the  greensward  at  Mr.  Sydney  Carroll's 
open-air  theatre  in  Regent's  Park,  the 
promotion  of  which  was  very  largely  in- 
spired by  his  example.  In  February  1929 
his  fiftieth  year  on  the  stage  was  cele- 
brated at  a  complimentary  dinner  given 
to  him  by  actors  and  actresses  who  had 
appeared  in  his  companies,  and  in  June  he 
was  knighted  for  his  services  'to  drama 
and  to  education'. 

Although  he  made  no  claims  to  great 
eminence  as  an  actor.  Greet  appeared  in 
character-parts  with  no  little  success.  As 
a  producer  he  was  patient  and  pains- 
taking, combining  practicality  with  good 
taste.  Although  he  owed  much  to  the 
ideas  of  others — particularly  to  Poel  in 
such  productions  as  Everyman — his  ex- 
perience of  the  popular  stage  kept  his  own 
adventures  within  feasible  limits.  He  was 
a  sympathetic  interpreter  more  than  a 
profound  scholar ;  but  his  love  of  the  stage 
was  a  genuine  enthusiasm.  He  was  an 
assiduous  playgoer,  always  preferring  to 
pay  for  his  seat  in  the  pit  or  some  other 
unreserved  part  of  the  house,  than  accept 


861 


Greet 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


a  complimentary  stall.  He  died,  umnar- 
ried,  in  London  17  May  1936. 

[The  Times,  18  May  1936 ;  Cicely  Hamilton 
and  Lilian  Baylis,  The  Old  Vic,  1926 ;  Sybil 
and  Russell  Thorndike,  Lilian  Baylis,  1938 ; 
E.  J.  Dent,  A  Theatre  for  Everybody,  1945 ; 
Russell  Thorndike,  Sybil  Thorndike,  1929; 
personal  knowledge.]      S.  R.  Littlewood. 

GREGORY,  ISABELLA  AUGUSTA, 

Lady  Gregoky  (1852-1932),  plajmvright 
and  poet,  the  youngest  daughter  of  Dudley 
Persse,  of  Roxborough,  co.  Galway,  by  his 
second  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Richard  Barry,  was  born  at  Roxborough 
15  March  1852.  Her  father  at  one  time 
owned  an  estate  of  more  than  4,000  acres. 
Sir  H.  P.  Lane  [q.v.],  the  art  collector  and 
critic,  was  her  nephew.  She  was  educated 
privately.  In  1880  she  married,  as  his 
second  wife.  Sir  W.  H.  Gregory  [q.v.] 
whose  house  and  property,  Coole  Park, 
Gort,  were  situated  a  few  miles  from  her 
father's  estate.  Her  husband  died  in  1892 
leaving  her  with  one  son,  who  became  a 
distinguished  painter  and  was  killed  in 
action  as  an  airman  in  Italy  in  January 
1918. 

In  1 898  Lady  Gregory  became  acquainted 
in  London  with  W.  B.  Yeats  [q.v.]  who 
was  beginning  to  write  plays  and  had  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  opening  a  little  theatre 
in  London  for  the  production  of  his  own 
and  his  friends'  plays,  plays  of  a  romantic 
kind  in  contrast  to  the  realistic  drama  of 
Ibsen.  Lady  Gregory  up  to  this  time  had 
taken  little  interest  in  the  theatre,  but  she 
had  always  been  deeply  interested  in  her 
country,  not  in  the  usual  patronizing 
manner  of  a  big  landowner's  daughter; 
indeed,  vmlike  most  of  her  class,  she  was 
drawn  to  the  humbler  of  her  neighbours, 
to  the  dwellers  in  cottages,  the  inmates  of 
workhouses.  Yeats  set  her  gathering  folk- 
lore, and  later  in  the  year  of  their  meeting 
he  visited  her  at  Coole,  together  with  her 
neighbour  Edward  Martyn,  who,  like 
Yeats,  had  a  play  which  he  wanted  to 
have  produced.  In  an  afternoon's  talk  it 
was  decided,  by  Lady  Gregory's  influence, 
to  have  the  plays  performed  in  Dublin. 
A  little  later  G.  A.  Moore  [q.v.]  joined  the 
group,  money  was  guaranteed  for  the  first 
performance,  and  on  8  May  1899  with  the 
production  of  Yeats's  The  Countess  Cath- 
leen  the  Irish  Literary  Theatre  came  into 
being. 

If  Lady  Gregory  began  by  having  little 
interest  in  drama,  save  that  she  was  a 
great  admirer  of  Yeats's  work,  she  quickly 
became,  not  the  most  dominant  member 


of  this  group,  for  Yeats  was  bound  to  be 
that,  but  the  element  which,  more  or  less, 
kept  it  together.  The  first  three  years' 
performances  in  Dublin  were  given  by 
companies  of  players  imported  from  Eng- 
land: later  a  purely  Irish  amateur  com- 
pany was  formed  and  the  nature  of  the 
plays  changed.  The  Irish  peasant  as 
serious  dramatic  material  was  discovered 
by  J.  M.  Synge  [q.v.]  and  by  Padraic 
Colum  and  others ;  he  was  no  longer  merely 
ia  creature  of  comic  fiction  or  heroic  politi- 
cal drama,  and  here  Lady  Gregory  sud- 
denly disclosed  her  talent  as  a  dramatist. 
Hitherto  her  only  literary  work  had  been 
editing  her  husband's  Autobiography  ( 1 894) 
and  in  Mr.  Gregory's  Letter-Box  (1898)  the 
letters  of  his  grandfather,  W.  Gregory 
(1766-1840,  q.v.) .  On  27  December  1904  the 
Abbey  Theatre,  Dublin,  was  opened.  Lady 
Gregory  was  a  co-director  with  Yeats  and 
SjTige,  and  she  continued  to  be  a  director 
until  the  day  of  her  death.  She  showed 
very  marked  administrative  ability  in  all 
branches  of  the  theatre's  work,  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that,  without  her 
enthusiasm  and  determination,  the  theatre 
would  not  have  survived  its  early  years  of 
struggle. 

Lady  Gregory  wrote  twenty-seven  ori- 
ginal plays,  adapted  four  of  Moliere's, 
translating  them  into  Irish  country  speech, 
translated  a  play  by  Goldoni  as  Mirando- 
lina,  and  collaborated  with  Douglas  Hyde 
and  with  Yeats.  About  the  beginning  of 
the  century  she  became  interested  in 
Gaelic,  learned  the  language,  and  put 
together  old  sagas  which  she  published  in 
English  imder  the  titles  Cuchulain  of 
Muirthemne  (1902)  and  Gods  and  Fighting 
Men  (1904).  Other  noteworthy  non- 
dramatic  works  are  Poets  and  Dreamers 
(1903)  and  A  Book  of  Saints  and  Wonders 
(1907).  But  her  chief  claim  to  literary 
eminence  lies  in  her  dramatic  work.  She 
had  a  rich  sense  of  humour  and  her  early 
one-act  plays.  Seven  Short  Plays  (1909), 
are  masterpieces  in  dialogue  and  construc- 
tion. Perhaps  in  her  later,  longer  comedies, 
The  Image  (1910)  and  Damefs  Gold  (1913) 
for  instance,  she  was  apt  to  over-elaborate 
her  dialogue.  She  wrote  two  series  of  what 
she  styled  'folk-history  plays'  (1912  and 
1923),  that  is  to  say,  plays  of  Irish  history 
seen  through  the  eyes  of  Irish  country- 
people  and  told  in  country  speech,  in  the 
dialect  which  she  called  'Kiltartan'  after 
a  village  near  her  owti  home.  The  adjective 
has  passed  into  Irish  speech.  These  plays 
did  not  have  the  popularity  which  they 
deserved.  More  popular  were  her  delight- 


862 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Gregory,  J.  W. 


ful  fantastic  plays,  half  realistic,  half  of 
fairyland:  The  Golden  Apple  (1916),  The 
Dragon  (1920),  Aristotle's  Bellows  (1923). 
Nobility,  tragic  nobility,  attracted  her, 
and  so  she  wrote  a  play  about  Don 
Quixote,  Sancho's  Master  (1928),  and  a 
Passion  play,  The  Story  Brought  by  Brigit 
(1924). 

Lady  Gregory  died  at  Coole  Park  22 
May  1932.  A  portrait  by  A.  Mancini 
is  in  the  Dublin  Municipal  Gallery  of 
Modem  Art,  and  there  is  a  portrait  of  her 
by  (Sir)  Gerald  Festus  Kelly  in  a  private 
collection.  A  bust  by  Jacob  Epstein  is  in 
the  Dublin  Municipal  Gallery,  and  the 
Abbey  Theatre  has  an  early  portrait  by 
'A  E'  and  a  drawing  by  J.  B.  Yeats. 

{The  Times,  24  May  1932 ;  Lady  Gregory, 
Our  Irish  Theatre,  1914 ;  Lady  Gregory's  Jour- 
nals, 1916-1930,  edited  by  Lennox  Robinson, 
1946;  A.  E.  Malone,  The  Irish  Drama  (con- 
taining a  list  of  Lady  Gregory's  plays  to  that 
date),  1929 ;  George  Moore,  Hail  and  Farewell. 
Ave,  1911 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Lennox  Robinson. 

GREGORY,  JOHN  WALTER  (1864- 
1932),  geologist  and  explorer,  was  born  in 
London  27  January  1864,  the  only  son  of 
John  James  Gregory,  a  wool  merchant, 
of  Bow,  London,  by  his  wife,  Jane  Lewis. 
He  was  educated  at  Stepney  Grammar 
School,  which  he  left  at  the  age  of  fifteen. 
After  eight  years  in  the  wool  business, 
during  which  he  graduated  at  the  vmiver- 
sity  of  London,  he  joined  (1887)  the  staff 
of  the  British  Museum  (Natural  History) 
as  an  assistant  in  the  geological  depart- 
ment and  so  he  remained  imtil  1900.  He 
was  professor  of  geology  and  mineralogy 
at  Melbourne  University  from  1900  to 
1904  and  of  geology  at  Glasgow  University 
from  1904  until  1929  when  he  retired  to 
Essex.  Throughout  his  active  life  he  found 
time  and  opportunity  to  travel  in  all  the 
continents,  thus  to  supplement  his  great 
book-learning  on  the  geology,  geography, 
and  peoples  of  the  world  with  first-hand 
observation.  In  addition  to  the  important 
expedition  of  Sir  M.  W.  Conway  [q.v.] 
to  Spitsbergen  (1896)  others  took  him  to 
Western  Canada  (1891),  Austria,  Cyre- 
naica  (1908),  Chinese  Tibet  (1922),  and 
Peru  (1932)  to  examine  mountains,  to  East 
(1892-1893, 1919),  West  (1912),  and  South 
Africa,  Australia,  China,  and  Russia  to 
study  plains  and  plateaux,  to  New  Zea- 
land, Norway,  and  Dalmatia  to  see  fjords, 
and  to  the  West  Indies  for  acquaintance 
with  the  smaller  isles.  He  was  even- 
tually drowned  in  the  rapids  of  the  Uru- 


bamba  River  called  the  Pongo  de  Maini- 
que  (lat.  11°  48'  S.;  long.  72°  51'  W.)  in 
Peru  2  Jime  1932. 

Gregory's  published  work  (consisting  of 
over  twenty  books  and  more  than  300 
papers)  covers  fields  of  research  involving 
museum,  laboratory,  and  the  country- 
side. At  first  he  wrote  mainly  on  palae- 
ontology, and  became  the  authority  on 
bryozoa,  corals,  and  echinoids,  but  soon 
his  pen  was  busy  with  many  other  aspects 
of  geology  and  geography.  In  particular, 
he  sought  the  origin  of  things  and  brought 
his  erudition,  experience,  and  courage  to 
bear  when  he  presented  some  explanation 
of  phenomena  or  championed  a  theory  on 
rift  valleys  in  East  Africa,  mountain 
chains  in  the  Old  or  New  World,  deserts 
of  Australia,  fjords,  ocean  basins,  land 
bridges,  and  submarine  canyons.  He  dis- 
cussed economic  questions  like  water- 
supply  and  ore  and  coal  deposits  and  the 
more  dangerous  questions  of  mankind, 
their  races,  population,  distribution,  migra- 
tion, and  immigration.  Besides  a  great 
output  of  specialist  works  he  wrote  a  few 
popular  books  on  geology  and  geography 
which  were  widely  read.  Mankind's  partial 
knowledge  of  the  earth's  surface  and  its 
crust  has  resulted  in  many  controversies, 
few  of  which  he  did  not  investigate  and 
embellish  with  thoughtful  arguments.  His 
Geography,  Structural,  Physical,  and  Com- 
parative (1909)  marks  a  new  departure  in 
such  text-books,  and  his  works  on  bryozoa 
are  standard  works  of  reference.  Two 
other  important  books  also  deserve  men- 
tion: The  Great  Rift  Valley  (1896)  and  The 
Rift  Valleys  and  Geography  of  East  Africa 
(1921). 

Although  slight  in  build  and  apparently 
diffident  in  manner,  Gregory  was  wiry  and 
tireless  in  body,  tenacious  and  indomitable 
in  purpose,  and  an  indefatigable  worker 
with  a  rare  memory.  As  a  teacher  he  was 
supreme  and  students  thronged  to  hear 
him,  whilst  his  stoutness  of  heart,  enthusi- 
asm, and  geniality  made  him  almost  fana- 
tically beloved  by  some  who  knew  him 
best.  No  one  came  to  him  in  vain  for 
stimulus  or  inspiration. 

Gregory  received  many  academic  and 
scientific  honours.  These  included  honor- 
ary degrees  from  the  tmiversities  of  Lon- 
don, Melbourne,  and  Lima,  the  fellowship 
of  the  Royal  Society  (1901),  and  the 
medals  of  various  societies.  He  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Geological  Society  from  1928 
to  1930  and  of  Section  C  of  the  British 
Association  in  1907  and  1931  and  of  Sec- 
tion  E   in   1924.     He   married   in   1895 


863 


Gregory,  J.  W. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Audrey,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Ayrton 
ChapUn,  of  Woodham  Walter,  Essex,  and 
had  a  son  (who  accompanied  him  to 
Chinese  Tibet)  and  a  daughter. 

[The  Times,  14  June  1932  and  2  May  1933 ; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  1,  December  1932  (portrait);  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  V.  Harrison. 

GREIFFENHAGEN,  MAURICE 

WILLIAM  (1862-1931),  painter,  was  born 
in  London  15  December  1862,  the  third 
and  yoimgest  son  of  August  Greiffenhagen, 
by  his  wife,  Helen  CundeU.  The  family 
was  of  Danish  origin,  though  the  artist's 
grandparents  had  left  Denmark  and 
settled  in  Archangel  before  his  father  was 
born.  Greiffenhagen  received  his  early 
education  at  University  CoUege  School :  in 
1878  he  passed  into  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools,  where  he  won  the  Armitage  prize, 
the  cartoon  medal,  and  several  other 
awards.  He  exhibited  first  at  the  Royal 
Academy  in  1884,  and  continued  to  be  an 
exhibitor  until  his  death:  his  early  ex- 
hibited paintings  include  some  subject- 
pictures  as  well  as  portraits  in  oils,  but  it 
was  not  long  before  he  came  to  concentrate 
on  the  latter.  During  the  first  part  of  his 
career  he  did  a  considerable  amount  of 
illustration  work,  for  books  and  periodi- 
cals; his  best-known  examples  in  this 
sphere  are  his  illustrations  to  the  novels 
of  Rider  Haggard,  which  began  to  appear 
in  1887.  He  also  contributed  to  the  Daily 
Chronicle,  the  Lady^s  Pictorial,  and  occa- 
sionally to  Punch. 

In  1906  Greiffenhagen  became  head- 
master of  the  life  department  of  the  Glas- 
gow School  of  Art,  a  position  which  he 
held  until  1929.  Throughout  this  period 
his  permanent  home  was  in  London,  and 
his  work  in  Glasgow  was  carried  out  on 
regular  visits  to  that  city.  Apart  from  his 
teaching,  Greiffenhagen' s  work  thereafter 
fell  into  two  main  categories,  of  which  the 
first  was  the  more  important ;  these  were 
portrait-painting  and  large-scale  decora- 
tive work.  As  a  portrait-painter  he  made 
a  considerable  reputation ;  his  robust  sense 
of  design  and  firm  technique  produced 
particularly  striking  results  in  his  portraits 
of  men.  His  talent  for  decorative  work 
found  its  fullest  expression  in  the  histori- 
cal panels  which  he  designed  for  exhibition 
pavilions  at  Paris  and  Dunedin  (1925)  and 
Antwerp  (1930).  He  also  designed  a  travel- 
poster,  'The  Gateway  of  the  North',  for 
the  London,  Midland,  and  Scottish  Rail- 
way, in  which  his  strong  sense  of  colour 


was  seen  to  great  advantage.  He  was 
elected  A.R.A.  in  1916  and  R.A.  in  1922, 
and  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  Glasgow  University  in  1926.  Paint- 
ings by  him  were  acquired  by  the  Tate 
Gallery,  the  Walker  Art  Gallery,  Pitts- 
burg, and  other  museums  and  art  galleries. 

Greiffenhagen  married  in  1889  Beatrice 
(died  1949),  daughter  of  John  Latham,  of 
London,  and  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of 
whom  was  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918. 
He  died  in  London  26  December  1931. 

A  self-portrait  of  Greiffenhagen  was  in 
the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  28  December  1981;  Ulrich 
Thieme  and  Felix  Becker,  Allgemeines  Lexicon 
der  Bildenden  Kunstler,  vol.  xiv,  1921 ;  private 
information.]  James  Laver. 

GRENFELL,  Sm  WILFRED  THOMA- 
SON  (1865-1940),  medical  missionary  and 
author,  was  born  at  Parkgate,  Cheshire, 
28  February  1865,  the  second  of  the  four 
sons  of  the  Rev.  Algernon  Sidney  Gren- 
feU,  headmaster  and  proprietor  of  Mostyn 
House  School,  Parkgate,  by  his  wife, 
Jane  Georgina  Hutchinson,  daughter  of 
a  colonel  in  the  Indian  army.  He  was 
educated  at  Marlborough,  and  resided  at 
Queen's  College,  Oxford,  for  the  Michael- 
mas term  of  1888,  during  which  he  played 
Rugby  football  for  the  luiiversity.  He 
studied  medicine  at  the  London  Hospital 
medical  school  and  London  University, 
imder  Sir  Frederick  Treves  [q.v.],  and 
qualified  M.R.C.P.  and  M.R.C.S.  in  1886. 
While  studying  medicine  he  came  under 
the  influence  of  Dwight  Lynam  Moody, 
the  American  revivalist,  and  of  the 
brothers  J.  E.  and  C.  T.  Studd,  and  for 
a  time  conducted  a  Sunday  school  class, 
to  which  he  gave  instruction  in  the  art  of 
boxing.  He  was  at  the  same  time  secre- 
tary in  succession  of  the  cricket,  football, 
and  rowing  clubs  in  London  University ; 
and  he  thus  became  at  an  early  age  an 
exponent  of  that  'muscular  Christianity' 
which  Charles  Kingsley  had  made  popular. 

In  1887,  the  year  after  qualification, 
GrenfeU  joined  the  Royal  National  Mis- 
sion to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen  as  a  medical 
missionary ;  and  after  serving  for  five  years 
in  this  capacity  from  Iceland  to  the  Bay 
of  Biscay,  he  became  a  master  mariner, 
and  fitted  out  the  mission's  first  hospital 
ship.  In  1892  he  visited  Labrador,  and  he 
was  so  greatly  shocked  by  what  he  later 
described  as  'the  poverty  and  ignorance 
and  semi-starvation  among  English- 
speaking  people  of  our  own  race '  that  he 
decided  to  devote  the  rest  of  his  life  to  the 


864 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Greville 


betterment  of  the  lot  of  the  people  of 
Labrador.  In  1893  he  established  at  Battle 
Harbour  the  first  hospital  of  what  came 
to  be  known  as  the  Labrador  Medical 
Mission ;  and  as  time  went  on  he  not  only 
built  other  hospitals,  but  he  also  opened 
nursing  stations,  schools,  orphanages,  and 
social  welfare  centres.  When,  over  forty 
years  later,  he  retired,  he  had  built  up  an 
organization  that  included  six  hospitals, 
seven  nursing  stations,  four  hospital  ships, 
four  boarding  schools,  fourteen  industrial 
centres,  twelve  clothing  distribution  cen- 
tres, a  co-operative  lumber  mill,  and  a 
seaman's  institute  at  St.  John's,  New- 
foimdland.  What  his  lifework,  as  an 
example  of  practical  Christianity,  meant 
to  the  people  of  Labrador,  whether  whites, 
or  Indians,  or  Eskimos,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  exaggerate. 

At  first  the  Labrador  Medical  Mission 
was  financed  by  the  Royal  National  Mis- 
sion to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen ;  but  from  an 
early  date  most  of  the  necessary  funds 
were  raised  by  Grenfell  himself.  He  made 
speaking  tours  through  both  Canada  and 
the  United  States  of  America;  and  he 
roused  such  interest  and  support  on  these 
trips  that  the  Labrador  Medical  Mission 
came  to  be  almost  better  known  in 
America  than  it  was  in  England.  In  1912 
the  Mission  to  Deep-Sea  Fishermen 
withdrew  its  support ;  and  GrenfeU  then 
organized  the  International  Grenfell 
Association,  with  branches  in  England, 
the  United  States,  Canada,  and  Newfoiuid- 
land;  and  it  was  this  association  that 
stood  behind  Grenfell's  work  during  the 
latter  part  of  his  life. 

Not  only  by  his  lecture  tours,  but  also 
by  his  books,  Grenfell  aroused  interest  in 
his  work,  and  gained  support  for  it.  Be- 
ginning with  Vikings  of  To-day  (1895),  he 
published  between  1905  and  1938  a  suc- 
cession of  books  about  Labrador  and  a 
number  of  religious  books,  which,  although 
not  outstanding  for  their  literary  qualities, 
have  an  engaging  simplicity  and  modesty 
that  endeared  them  to  many  people. 

Recognition  of  Grenfell's  work  came  to 
him  in  the  form  of  numerous  honours. 
The  imiversity  of  Oxford  elected  him  her 
first  honorary  M.D.  (1907),  and  he  received 
honorary  degrees  from  St.  Andrews  Uni- 
versity and  many  universities  and  colleges 
both  in  the  United  States  and  in  Canada ; 
in  1915  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  the  College  of  Surgeons  of  America,  and 
in  1920  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons  of  England;  he  was  appointed 
G.M.G.  in  1906  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1927; 


in  1928  he  was  elected  lord  rector  of  St. 
Andrews  University;  in  1935  he  was 
awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal 
Empire  Society;  and  in  1936  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Queen's 
College,  Oxford. 

In  1935  ill  health  compelled  Grenfell's 
retirement  from  active  work ;  and  he  died 
at  Charlotte,  Vermont,  9  October  1940. 
In  1909  he  married  Anne  Elizabeth  Cald- 
well (died  1938),  daughter  of  Colonel 
Edmund  Burke  MacClanahan,  of  Lake 
Forest,  lUinois,  and  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter. 

[The  chief  source  of  information  is  Gren- 
fell's autobiography  first  published  in  1919 
under  the  title  A  Labrador  Doctor,  and  repub- 
lished in  1932,  in  a  revised  and  expanded 
form,  xinder  the  title  Forty  Years  for  Labrador. 
See  also :  James  Johnston,  Grenfell  of  Labra- 
dor, 1908 ;  A.  G.  Hall,  Doctor  Wilfred  Grenfell, 
1919;  F.  L.  Waldo,  With  Grenfell  on  the 
Labrador,  1920,  and  Grenfell,  1924;  D.  Wal- 
lace, The  Story  of  Grenfell  of  the  Labrador, 
1922 ;  B.  J.  Mathews,  Wilfred  Grenfell,  1924 ; 
E.  H.  Hayes,  Forty  Years  on  the  Labrador, 
1930;  Joyce  Reason,  Deep-sea  Doctor,  1942; 
Genevieve  May  Fox,  Sir  Wilfred  Grenfell 
(New  York),  1947.]  W.  S.  Wallace. 

GREVILLE,  FRANCES  EVELYN, 
Countess  of  Warwick  (1861-1938),  was 
born  in  London  10  December  1861,  the 
elder  daughter  and  co-heiress  of  Colonel 
Charles  Henry  Maynard  (only  son  of 
the  last  Viscount  Maynard),  by  his  second 
wife,  Blanche  Adeliza,  second  daughter  of 
Henry  FitzRoy,  of  Salcey  Lawn,  North- 
amptonshire. She  was  educated  at  home. 
In  1881  she  married  Francis  Richard 
Charles  Guy  Greville,  Lord  Brooke,  who 
succeeded  his  father  as  fifth  Earl  of  War- 
wick in  1893  and  died  in  1924.  They  had 
three  sons,  of  whom  the  eldest  became 
sixth  Earl  of  Warwick  and  died  in  1928, 
and  the  second  died  in  infancy,  and  two 
daughters. 

Lady  Warwick  was  a  celebrated  late 
Victorian  and  Edwardian  beauty  and  a 
member  of  the  'Marlborough  House  set' 
which  grew  up  about  the  Prince  of  Wales 
(afterwards  King  Edward  VII)  as  a  reac- 
tion from  the  inflexible  and  limited  social 
life  of  Queen  Victoria's  covul;.  She  in- 
herited Easton  Lodge,  Dunmow,  Essex, 
from  her  grandfather  and  at  first  made  it 
a  country  retreat  for  fashionable  Edward- 
ians.  After  her  husband  had  inherited 
Warwick  Castle,  Lady  Warwick  gave  a 
ball  there  in  1895,  the  extravagance  of 
which  was  criticized  in  The  Clarion.  As 
a  result  of  this  she  met  the  editor,  Robert 


865 


Greville 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Blatchford,  and  under  his  influence  she 
was  converted  to  sociaUsm.  She  recalled 
at  the  time  that  the  motto  of  her  husband's 
family  was  Vix  ea  nostra  voco.  Her 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  labour  and  its 
champions  was  as  complete  as  her  early 
conquests  in  society.  She  established  a 
school  at  Dimmow  to  encourage  rural 
occupations,  and  the  first  college  for  train- 
ing women  in  horticulture  and  agriculture 
at  Studley  Castle,  Warwickshire.  At  the 
general  election  of  1923  she  stood  as  labour 
candidate  for  Warwick  and  Leamington, 
but  was  defeated  by  the  conservative, 
Mr.  Anthony  Eden,  brother-in-law  of  her 
eldest  son.  In  1925  Lady  Warwick  wished 
the  labour  party  to  accept  Easton  Lodge 
as  an  international  labour  luiiversity, 
but  the  plan  was  considered  impracticable 
and  her  offer  was  refused.  Easton,  how- 
ever, became  an  unofficial  meeting-place 
for  labour  reformers,  and  Lady  Warwick's 
interest  in  the  improvement  of  conditions 
among  the  working  class  continued  to  the 
end  of  her  life.  She  was  also  soUcitous  for 
the  preservation  of  birds  and  animals,  and 
she  formed  a  sanctuary  at  Easton  where 
she  collected  a  multitude  of  birds,  domestic 
animals,  and  horses  about  her.  She  used 
her  social  position,  her  fortxme,  and  her 
continuous  vitality  for  all  her  charitable 
and  social  interests  and  achieved  resvilts 
equal  to  those  of  any  woman  of  her  class 
in  her  time. 

Lady  Warwick  wrote  with  ease  and  an 
amiable  interest  in  both  the  past  and  the 
present.  Of  her  numerous  books  Warwick 
Castle  and  its  Earls  (1903)  records  the 
historical  backgroimd  of  her  married  life : 
A  Woman  and  the  War  (1916),  Life's  Ebb 
and  Flow  (1929),  and  Afterthoughts  (1931) 
revealed  her  conversion  from  the  luxurious 
standards  of  Edwardian  society  to  care  for 
the  working  classes.  Her  intelligent  com- 
prehension of  problems  made  her  a  valu- 
able advocate  of  the  labour  cause,  and  her 
kindness  of  heart  no  less  than  her  opinions 
won  for  her  regard  from  those  ranks  of 
society  which  she  sought  to  help. 

Lady  Warwick  died  at  Easton  Lodge 
26  July  1938.  A  portrait  by  Carolus- 
Duran  is  at  Warwick  Castle ;  another,  by 
J.  S.  Sargent,  is  in  America. 

[The  Times,  27  July  1938 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Hectok  Bolitho. 

GREY,  Sm  EDWARD,  third  baronet, 
and  Viscount  Grey  of  Fallodon  (1862- 
1933),  statesman  and  bird-lover,  was  bom 
in  London  25  April  1862,  the  eldest  of  the 


seven  children,  four  sons  and  three 
daughters,  of  Colonel  George  Henry  Grey, 
by  his  wife,  Harriet  Jane,  yoxmgest 
daughter  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Charles 
Pearson.  He  was  grandson  of  Sir  George 
Grey,  second  baronet  (1799-1882,  q.v.), 
and  succeeded  him  in  the  baronetcy  and 
the  ownership  of  Fallodon,  Northumber- 
land. His  great-grandfather  was  Captain 
Sir  George  Grey,  R.N.,  a  yoimger  son  of 
General  Sir  Charles  Grey,  of  Fallodon  and 
Ho  wick,  afterwards  first  Earl  Grey  [q.v.], 
who  was  also  father  of  Charles,  second 
Earl  Grey  [q.v.],  the  prime  minister  of  the 
Reform  Bill. 

Grey's  father  had  served  with  the  Rifle 
Brigade  in  the  Crimea  and  the  Indian 
Mutiny,  and  was  chosen  as  one  of  the  first 
equerries  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Having 
sold  out  of  the  army.  Colonel  Grey  adopted 
a  country  life,  he  and  his  wife  living  in 
a  very  happy  joint  household  with  the 
older  generation.  Sir  George  and  Lady 
Grey,  at  Fallodon.  The  colonel  managed 
the  home  farm.  Grey,  therefore,  was 
brought  up  from  infancy  at  FaUodon. 

FaUodon  has  no  rare  and  pecuhar 
beauty.  It  was  a  dignified  and  comfort- 
able country  house  of  moderate  dimensions, 
standing  among  woods  in  the  centre  of  a 
smaU  estate,  in  a  piece  of  unspoilt  Enghsh 
coxmtryside.  The  sea  is  visible  two  miles 
away  to  the  east  through  a  much-loved 
gap  in  the  FaUodon  trees :  on  that  lonely 
shore  of  tufted  dunes,  reefs  of  tide-washed 
rocks,  and  bays  of  hard  sand,  between 
Dvmstanborough  and  Bamborough  castles, 
Grey  would  he  by  the  hour,  both  as  boy 
and  man,  watching  the  various  tribes  of 
sea  birds,  or  the  woodcock  immigrants 
landing  tired  from  their  voyage  across  the 
North  Sea.  On  the  other  side  of  Fallodon, 
to  the  west,  rise  the  heather-moors, 
crowned  by  Ros  Castle  Camp,  Grey's 
favomrite  point  of  view,  whence  the  Great 
Cheviot  hill  and  most  of  north  Northum- 
berland are  clearly  visible.  In  the  bums 
coming  down  out  of  these  moors  to  the 
sea,  Grey  taught  himself  as  a  boy  the  rudi- 
ments of  the  art  of  fishing,  on  which  he 
became  so  famous  an  authority. 

At  nine  years  old  Grey  was  sent  to  a 
small  preparatory  school  of  thirty  boys 
near  Northallerton.  Two  years  later  (1873) 
he  was  sent  to  a  larger  and  better  school, 
Temple  Grove,  East  Sheen,  where  he 
stayed  imtil  1876:  it  was  kept  by  a 
remarkable  man,  Ottiwell  Charles  Water- 
field,  for  whom  Grey  had  a  great  admira- 
tion. He  rushed  up  the  school  and  after 
one  year  found  himself  in  the  first  class. 


866 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Grey 


In  December  1874  his  father  died  sud- 
denly at  Sandringham,  where  he  was  in 
attendance  on  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Thus 
at  twelve  years  old  Grey  passed  out  of  his 
father's  care,  and  came  more  than  ever 
imder  the  strong  and  gentle  influence  of 
his  grandfather.  Sir  George  Grey  had  just 
retired  from  parliament  and  he  devoted 
much  of  the  last  eight  years  of  his  life  to 
his  grandchildren  at  Fallodon.  'He  took 
my  father's  place  with  us',  wrote  Grey. 

In  September  1876  Grey  went  to  Win- 
chester. He  got  up  the  school  rapidly  at 
first,  but  being  kept  back  from  promotion 
into  'Sixth  Book'  after  he  had  clearly 
deserved  it,  he  lost  interest  in  the  regular 
work  of  the  school.  But  he  read  poetry 
and  pursued  an  intellectual  life  of  his  own, 
'  seemed  rather  solitary ',  and  was  regarded 
as  the  ablest  boy  in  the  school  if  he  had 
chosen  to  exert  himself,  according  to  the 
testimony  of  his  junior  in  Du  Boulay's 
house,  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  [q.v.].  While  at 
Winchester  he  became  very  skilled  in 
fishing  the  clear  waters  of  the  Itchen, 
where  he  learnt  the  art  of  the  dry  fly 
which  he  afterwards  did  much  to  intro- 
duce into  northern  streams.  He  became 
devoted  to  Winchester  and  its  customs 
and  in  the  last  four  years  of  his  fife  one 
of  his  greatest  pleasures  was  to  revisit  it 
as  a  feUow,  even  when  he  was  too  blind 
to  see  it. 

Grey  went  up  to  BaUiol  College,  Oxford, 
in  1880.  His  relations  with  Oxford  are,  per- 
haps, imique.  After  having  been  sent 
down  for  incorrigible  idleness  in  1884,  he 
was  in  1928  elected  chancellor  of  the  imi- 
versity.  'The  life  I  led',  he  wrote  of  his 
time  at  Oxford,  'was  one  of  pure  pleasure 
and  one  of  a  kind  that  I  could  not  have 
enjoyed  at  any  other  time  of  life.  It  led 
to  nothing,  but  it  left  no  scars,  nothing  to 
be  regretted  or  effaced.  It  cleared  the  way 
for  serious  things.'  He  spent  his  time  on 
expeditions  into  the  country  on  foot  and 
in  dog-cart,  on  games  of  'real'  tennis  at 
which  he  afterwards  twice  (1896  and  1898) 
became  amateur  champion,  a  little  mild 
ragging,  and  very  limited  gambUng.  He 
admired  Jowett,  who  appreciated  his 
latent  abiUties  but  was  imable  to  induce 
him  to  exert  them. 

The  death  of  Sir  George  Grey  in  1882 
brought  the  formative  influence  of  his 
grandfather  over  Grey's  thought  and 
character  to  an  end,  but  the  place  was 
taken  at  the  most  critical  jvmcture  of  his 
life,  the  time  of  his  departure  from  Oxford, 
by  an  equally  remarkable  man,  Mandell 
Creighton  [q.v.],  then  engaged  on  writing 


his  History  of  the  Papaxy  in  the  rectory  of 
Embledon,  the  parish  in  which  Fallodon 
stood.  The  rector  instilled  into  the  young 
squire  the  same  kind  of  moderate  demo- 
cratic liberalism  and  sense  of  public  duty 
which  he  had  first  learnt  from  his  grand- 
father, and  which  Creighton  now  purveyed 
through  a  more  modern  and  a  more  intel- 
lectual medium. 

Grey  had  been  idle  at  Oxford.  He  was 
never  idle  again.  He  was  sent  down  from 
Balliol  in  January  1884.  Yet  that  year 
and  the  next  may  be  called  the  formative 
years  of  his  life,  both  in  intellectual  de- 
velopment and  in  power  of  action.  The 
moment  he  left  the  university  he  pro- 
ceeded to  discover,  by  characteristically 
amateurish  and  luipretentious  experiment, 
his  genius  for  bird-observation  in  general 
and  for  wild-duck  culture  in  particular. 
He  put  himself,  as  his  note-books  show, 
through  a  systematic  course  of  reading  in 
history,  thought,  and  poetry  by  the  best 
English  authors.  He  entered  official  life  in 
London  and  political  life  in  Northumber- 
land, winning  at  the  age  of  twenty-three 
a  resounding  electoral  tritunph.  And  to- 
wards the  end  of  1885  he  married. 

In  July  1884  Grey  was  initiated  into 
public  service  as  private  secretary  to  Sir 
Evelyn  Baring,  afterwards  first  Earl  of 
Cromer  [q.v.],  and  in  October  he  became 
private  secretary  to  H.  C.  E.  Childers 
[q.v.],  then  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 
In  the  summer  of  1884  he  had  made  his 
first  pubUc  speech  as  chairman  at  a  liberal 
demonstration  in  Alnwick  held  to  protest 
against  the  action  of  the  House  of  Lords 
in  delaying  the  passage  of  the  comity 
franchise  biU.  The  impression  which  he 
made  was  so  favourable  that  next  year 
he  was  chosen  to  contest  the  Berwick-on- 
Tweed  division  in  the  liberal  interest. 
Since  his  grandfather's  defeat  in  1852  it 
had  been  a  conservative  stronghold,  but 
the  extension  of  the  franchise  vmder  the 
new  Act  enabled  him  to  carry  the  seat, 
and  he  never  lost  it,  even  during  the  long 
period  of  liberal  depression  resulting  from 
the  home  rule  controversy.  The  mutual 
affection  that  grew  up  between  the  young 
member  and  the  fishermen,  shepherds, 
and  others  of  his  neighbours  who  sup- 
ported him,  was  one  of  the  chief  things 
that  kept  him  in  political  life,  in  many 
respects  contrary  to  his  inclinations.  In 
the  local  language  they  'thought  that  tar- 
rable  of  Sir  Edward',  and  he  felt  that  he 
could  not  desert  them.  He  had  determined, 
if  ever  he  lost  the  seat,  not  to  re-enter 
parliament  for  any  other  constituency. 


367 


Grey 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


In  October  1885  Grey  married  (Frances) 
Dorothy,  eldest  daughter  of  Shalcross 
FitzHerbert  Widdrington,  a  squire  of 
Newton-on-the-Moor,  sixteen  miles  south 
of  Fallodon.  Her  father  was  a  moderate 
conservative,  but  the  chief  influence  on 
her  mind  had  been  that  of  Creighton,  The 
political  opinions  of  husband  and  wife 
therefore  coincided  sufficiently,  but  she 
cared  little  for  politics  and,  directly  or 
indirectly,  always  tended  to  draw  him 
back  out  of  public  life,  into  the  occupa- 
tions of  country-lover,  bird-watcher,  and 
amateur  naturalist — ^the  life  which  they 
both  at  heart  passionately  preferred.  The 
influence  of  his  political  friends  H.  H. 
Asquith  and  R.  B.  (afterwards  Viscount) 
Haldane  [qq.v,]  had  to  be  exerted  to  the 
utmost  to  keep  him  in  politics,  by  appeal- 
ing to  his  strong  sense  of  public  duty. 
Political  ambition  he  had  none. 

The  fact  that  the  liberals  were  out  of 
office  from  1886  to  1906  for  all  except 
three  years,  enabled  Edward  and  Dorothy 
Grey  to  realize  their  ideal  of  life  while  he 
remained  an  opposition  member.  They 
enlarged  the  famous  Fallodon  ponds  and 
the  variety  of  kinds  of  duck  inhabiting 
them  which  Grey  had  begun  to  introduce 
in  1884.  The  birds  were  not  pinioned  but 
were  wooed  into  an  extraordinary  tame- 
ness.  The  'fox-proof  fence'  protected  the 
ponds.  The  other  place  where  the  Greys 
found  their  happiness,  as  much  as  at  Fal- 
lodon, was  the  tiny  cottage  in  a  meadow 
by  the  banks  of  the  Itchen  in  Hampshire, 
where  trout  fishing  and,  still  more,  bird- 
observation  could  be  carried  on  in  soU- 
tude.  No  road  led  up  to  it :  as  Grey  said, 
anyone  who  wanted  to  come  there  in  a 
wheeled  vehicle  must  come  in  a  wheel- 
barrow. Even  when  Grey  was  in  office, 
week-ends  coxild  be  snatched  here. 

Grey,  like  his  friends  Asquith  and  Hal- 
dane, supported  home  rule  for  Ireland,  but 
thought  that  Gladstone  neglected  English 
questions  overmuch.  They  were  also  more 
interested  in  the  British  Empire  than  most 
liberals.  From  1892  to  1895  the  liberals 
were  in  office,  and  in  August  of  the  former 
year  Grey  was  sent  to  the  Foreign  Office 
as  pariiamentary  under-secretary,  first 
under  Lord  Rosebery,  and  then  under 
Lord  Kimberley,  when  Rosebery  became 
prime  minister  on  Gladstone's  retirement 
in  1894.  The  fact  that  his  successive  chiefs 
were  both  in  the  House  of  Lords  threw  on 
Grey  the  task  of  answering  for  foreign 
affairs  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was 
this  apprenticeship  that  first  drew  his 
mind    away   from   domestic   to    foreign 


affairs,  while  his  manner  of  speaking  in 
the  Commons  won  him  a  national  reputa- 
tion that  rendered  his  return  to  private 
life  more  difficult.  On  28  March  1895 
Grey  made  in  parliament  a  pronoimce- 
ment,  known  as  'the  Grey  declaration', 
to  the  effect  that  French  encroachment  on 
the  upper  waters  of  the  Nile  would  be 
viewed  by  England  as  an  'unfriendly  act'. 
The  declaration,  to  which  some  of  the 
liberal  ministers  demurred,  proved  very 
serviceable  at  the  time  of  the  subsequent 
Fashoda  incident. 

In  1895  the  liberal  party  lost  power  and 
remained  in  opposition  for  another  decade. 
In  1897  Grey  visited  the  British  West 
Indian  Islands  as  a  member  of  a  royal 
commission  appointed  to  inquire  into  their 
economic  circimastances.  The  commission 
in  its  report  pointed  out  the  danger  which 
threatened  those  British  Colonies  where 
sugar  was  almost  the  only  interest,  and 
suggested  various  remedies,  some  of  which 
were  adopted. 

The  South  African  war  divided  the 
liberal  opposition  into  supporters  and 
opponents  of  the  war  policy  of  Alfred 
Milner  and  Joseph  Chamberlain  [qq.v.]. 
Rosebery,  Asquith,  Haldane,  and  Grey 
were  the  leading  imperialist  liberals,  and 
Grey  went  even  further  than  his  friends 
in  support  of  the  war,  thereby  sowing  the 
seeds  of  that  distrust  felt  for  him  as 
foreign  minister  in  later  years  by  the  more 
radical  sections  of  the  party. 

The  leadership  of  the  divided  liberal 
party  at  this  time  lay  with  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman  [q.v.],  who  was  a 
critic  of  the  war.  Rosebery  had  already 
retired  from  the  leadership,  but  some 
thought  that  he  might  retiu*n  to  it.  In 
December  1901  Rosebery  made  his  famous 
speech  at  Chesterfield  urging  the  govern- 
ment to  negotiate  with  the  Boers.  By 
hastening  peace,  which  foUowed  next  year, 
the  speech  helped  to  solve  the  difficulties 
of  the  Uberal  party,  but  for  the  moment 
it  seemed  to  aggravate  them,  because 
the  reappearance  of  Rosebery  as  a  rival 
leader  incensed  the  followers  of  Campbell- 
Bannerman.  The  year  1902  was  a  year 
of  rival  leagues  and  dinners,  'war  to  the 
knife  and  fork',  within  the  liberal  ranks. 
Already,  before  Chesterfield,  a  Liberal  Im- 
perial Council  had  been  formed  with  Grey 
as  president ;  after  Chesterfield  the  Liberal 
League  took  its  place  with  Rosebery  as 
president,  and  Asquith,  Grey,  and  Sir 
Henry  Fowler  as  vice-presidents.  If  Rose- 
bery had  gone  on  with  frequent  speeches 
and  active  leadership,  the  split  in  the 


368 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Grey- 


party  might  have  become  complete  and 
permanent.  But  he  sank  back  after  the 
Chesterfield  effort,  as  Grey  had  foretold. 

With  the  return  of  peace  the  chief  cause 
of  liberal  dissensions  was  removed ;  then 
A.  J.  Balfour's  education  bill  of  1902  and 
Chamberlain's  protectionist  campaign 
united  imperialists  and  'pro-Boers'  in 
hearty  opposition.  Grey  was  active  and 
enthusiastic  both  as  a  free  trader  and  a 
defender  of  the  rights  cf  nonconformists  in 
education.  So  was  every  liberal  of  every 
hue,  while  the  unionist  party  was  split  from 
top  to  bottom.  In  this  new  and  joyous 
excitement  the  very  existence  of  the 
Liberal  League  was  forgotten  by  its  vice- 
presidents,  and  by  all  men  except  its 
lordly  president  who  thought  it  a  force  in 
politics  long  after  it  had  ceased  to  be  so. 

In  June  1904  Grey  spoke  in  the  House 
welcoming  the  agreement  that  Lord  Lans- 
downe  [q.v.]  had  made  with  France  about 
Morocco  and  Egypt.  Grey's  experience  in 
the  Foreign  Office  from  1892  to  1895  had 
made  him  aware  of  dark  and  dangerous 
currents  in  German  policy.  He  therefore 
now  welcomed  friendship  with  France  as 
necessary  for  the  security  of  Great  Britain 
and  as  affording  the  best  hope  of  Euro- 
pean peace.  On  this  subject,  that  soon 
proved  to  be  of  grave  import,  he  differed 
from  Rosebery  who  dissented  from  Lans- 
downe's  policy. 

The  question  whether  Grey  would  take 
office  on  the  return  of  the  liberals  to  power 
was  becoming  urgent  as  the  Balfour 
government  tottered  to  its  fall.  Grey 
would  have  much  preferred  private  life 
devoted  to  the  study  of  birds  in  the  society 
of  his  wife  who  cared  little  for  politics.  As 
a  director  since  1898,  and  as  chairman 
since  1904,  of  the  North-Eastem  Railway 
he  had  just  the  kind  and  amovmt  of  public 
work  that  he  Uked.  He  had  broken  with 
Rosebery  not  only  on  foreign  poUcy  but 
on  home  rule,  a  cause  which  Rosebery  now 
abandoned.  But  he  still  had  little  con- 
fidence in  Campbell-Bannerman.  An 
agreement  had  been  made  by  Asquith, 
Haldane,  and  Grey  in  September  1905, 
before  the  formation  of  the  liberal  govern- 
ment, to  take  office  only  on  condition  that 
Campbell-Bannerman,  when  he  became 
prime  minister,  should  go  to  the  House  of 
Lords,  leaving  Asquith  to  lead  the  Com- 
mons. When  the  time  came,  Campbell- 
Bannerman  refused  to  go  to  the  Lords, 
and  in  consequence  Grey  declined  to  take 
the  Foreign  Office  which  Campbell- 
Bannerman  offered  him.  His  obstinacy 
lasted  for  three  days  (4-7  December  1905), 


holding  up  the  formation  of  the  govern- 
ment and  threatening  the  unity  of  the 
party  on  the  eve  of  the  general  election. 
Asquith  and  Haldane  had  been  more 
quick  to  see  their  error,  and  at  the  last 
moment  Grey  yielded  to  their  solicita- 
tions, and  accepted  his  destiny  at  the 
Foreign  Office,  at  the  head  of  which  he 
remained  imtil  December  1916.  He  thus 
held  the  seals  of  office  continuously  for  a 
longer  period  than  even  Grenville  or 
Castlereagh. 

From  the  moment  of  taking  office  Grey's 
relations  with  Campbell-Bannerman  be- 
came most  cordial.  Contrary  to  his  ex- 
pectations, he  found  the  prime  minister 
a  very  able  leader  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons and  a  strong  supporter  of  his  own 
policy  of  friendship  with  EYance.  He  also 
admired  and  warmly  supported  Campbell- 
Bannerman's  boldly  liberal  poUcy  in 
granting  immediate  self-government  to 
South  Africa,  and  resented  Milner's  op- 
position. 

In  the  first  days  of  February  1906,  just 
two  months  after  his  becoming  foreign 
secretary,  occurred  the  tragedy  of  his  pri- 
vate life,  the  death  of  Lady  Grey,  as  the 
result  of  a  carriage  accident  in  Northumber- 
land. It  is  quite  possible  that  if  this  had 
not  happened  he  would  not  have  remained 
for  eleven  years  in  office.  Work  there 
was  now  an  anodyne. 

In  January  1906,  before  his  wife's  death 
and  while  the  general  election  was  occu- 
pying the  attention  of  other  Englishmen, 
Grey  had  to  meet  alone  the  first  great 
crisis  of  his  policy,  laying  down  the  lines 
to  which  he  adhered  until  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1914.  Germany  hoped  and  France 
feared  that  the  change  of  government  in 
England  would  reduce  Lansdowne's  agree- 
ment with  France  to  a  nulUty.  By  that 
agreement  Great  Britain  had  undertaken 
to  support  France  'diplomatically'  as  to 
Morocco.  How  much  that  'diplomatic' 
support  would  be  worth  was  now  the  ques- 
tion. Germany,  taking  Morocco  as  a  test, 
was  trying  by  threats  to  break  the  newly 
formed  Anglo-French  Entente.  The  situa- 
tion was  highly  critical,  for  Russia,  weak- 
ened by  her  defeat  in  the  Japanese  war, 
was  inclining  to  desert  France  and  enter 
into  the  German  orbit.  If  France  were 
now  to  find  British  support  purely  aca- 
demic, she  would  be  compelled  to  follow 
Russia  into  the  German  orbit,  and  Eng- 
land would  be  friendless  in  face  of  a  hostile 
Europe.  In  the  winter  of  1905-1906  the 
French  ambassador  in  London,  Paul  Cam- 
bon,  asked  Grey  whether  in  the  case  of 


369 


Bb 


Grey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


German  aggression  England  would  defend 
France  in  arms.  Grey,  with  the  full  con- 
currence of  Campbell-Bannerman,  let  both 
France  and  Germany  know  that  in  his 
opinion  England  would  fight  in  such  cir- 
cumstances, although  he  could  not  pledge 
his  coiintry  until  the  circumstances  arose 
on  which  the  country  would  judge.  France 
had  no  positive  pledge,  but  Germany  had 
full  warning. 

Grey  at  the  same  time  permitted  the 
continuance  in  more  official  form  of  'mili- 
tary conversations',  initiated  by  Lans- 
downe,  between  French  and  British 
mihtary  chiefs  as  to  the  steps  to  be  taken 
by  Great  Britain  to  aid  France  in  the 
hypothetical  case  of  this  country  being 
ready  to  aid  France  to  repel  a  German 
attack.  Campbell-Bannerman  sanctioned 
these  'conversations',  but  failed  to  report 
them  to  the  Cabinet,  as  he  and  Grey 
should  no  doubt  have  done.  Neither  prime 
minister  nor  foreign  secretary  saw  the  full 
pohtical  significance  of  these  technical 
talks,  which  was  better  appreciated  in 
Paris  and,  fortunately,  also  in  Berlin.  It 
was  due  to  the  further  continuance  of 
these  'military  conversations'  in  later 
years,  followed  by  Haldane's  army  re- 
forms, that  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  arrived  in  France  in  1914  just  in 
time  to  save  Paris. 

In  March  1906  the  conference  of  powers 
at  Algeciras  dealt  with  the  Morocco  ques- 
tion and  reached  a  compromise  that  saved 
peace  but  did  not  grant  the  full  German 
demands.  Germany  did  not  push  the 
matter  to  war  because  England  had  rallied 
to  France,  because  Russia  had  for  that 
reason  also  rallied  to  her  ally,  and  because 
President  Theodore  Roosevelt  threw  the 
diplomatic  weight  of  the  United  States  of 
America  against  the  extravagant  demands 
of  Germany.  A  personal  friendship  and 
an  intimate  correspondence  now  grew  up 
between  Grey  and  Roosevelt,  cemented 
by  their  common  interest  in  bird-life. 
Grey's  determination  to  secure  the  friend- 
ship of  the  United  States  as  the  first 
of  British  interests  was  an  essential  part  of 
his  policy  both  in  peace  and  in  war. 

Grey  was  the  principal  author  of  the 
Anglo-Russian  agreement  of  August  1907. 
Before  he  took  office  he  had  hinted  at  the 
desirability  of  such  an  agreement  in  a 
speech  in  the  City  on  21  October  1905. 
The  agreement,  although  always  unpopu- 
lar with  the  advanced  elements  in  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  liberal  party,  had  the  warm 
approval  of  Campbell-Bannerman  as  prime 
minister  and  of  John  (afterwards  Viscoimt) 


Morley  [q.v.]  as  secretary  of  state  for 
India.  Morley  gave  Grey  valuable  assist- 
ance in  overcoming  the  objections  to  any 
understanding  with  Russia  traditional 
among  the  older  school  of  British  authori- 
ties in  India. 

There  were  two  motives  in  Grey's  mind 
for  this  logical  extension  of  Lansdowne's 
pohcy  into  a  new  sphere.  First,  that 
Anglo-Russian  understanding  would  be  a 
work  of  liberalism  and  peace.  The  in- 
terests of  the  two  Empires  touched  at  so 
many  sore  points,  Tibet,  Afghanistan,  and 
Persia,  that  Grey  believed  that  only  a 
friendly  agreement,  directly  negotiated  by 
the  two  governments,  could  avoid  a  clash. 
The  second  reason  for  such  an  agreement 
was  brought  strongly  home  to  him  during 
his  first  months  in  office  by  the  Moroccan 
crisis  between  Germany  and  France.  He 
had  to  consider  what  would  be  the  conse- 
quence to  this  country  and  to  Europe  of 
war  between  Great  Britain  and  Russia 
with  such  a  power  as  Germany  on  the 
flank,  and  how  it  would  be  possible  to 
remain  friends  with  France  while  remain- 
ing at  enmity  with  her  ally.  Friction  with 
Great  Britain  in  Asia  might  at  any 
moment  push  the  Tsar  Nicholas  II  back 
into  the  policy  of  Bjorko,  where  only  a 
year  before  he  had  come  to  terms  with  the 
German  Emperor  in  a  pact  that  was  in- 
tended to  operate  to  the  disadvantage  of  j 
Great  Britain. 

It  was  relatively  easy  to  agree  that  both  j 
Russia  and  England  should  abstain  from 
interference   in   Tibet   and   that   Russia; 
should  not  interfere  in  Afghanistan.   The 
real  difficulty  was  Persia,  where  Russia 
had  already  violated  Persian  independence 
in  the  northern  spheres  where  lay  Teheran, 
the  capital.   This  area  was  recognized  by] 
the   agreement   as   being  the   sphere   of 
Russian  influence.   The  British  sphere  of  I 
influence  was  delimited  to  the  south-east  f 
of  Persia   around   Seistan   and  the   ap- 
proaches to  British  India.  A  neutral  zone  j 
was  left  between  the  two,  extending  down  i 
to  the  Persian  Gulf.  Both  coimtries  recog- 
nized the  independence  of  Persia,  but  put  j 
very    different    interpretations    on    the] 
phrase.     Whereas   the    British    sent   noj 
troops  into  their  sphere  of  influence,  the  | 
Russians  continued  to  impinge  on  Persian 
independence  in  the  north.    UntU  1914 1 
Grey  was  continually  protesting  to  the 
Russian  government,  but  in  vain.  Unless 
Great  Britain  was  prepared  to  go  to  war,  j 
she  could  not  eject  the  Russians  from  the; 
position  which  they  had  occupied  in  north 
Persia  before  the  agreement.  The  conduct 


370 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Grey 


of  Russian  officers  in  north  Persia,  and 
also  the  civil  war  of  rival  terrorisms  raging 
in  Russia  itself  between  the  tsardom  and 
the  revolutionaries,  made  the  agreement 
increasingly  unpopular  in  England,  parti- 
cularly with  the  radicals  of  Grey's  own 
party. 

If  the  Balkan  question  had  not  existed 
to  divide  Russia  and  Germany,  the  Anglo- 
Russian  agreement  might  soon  have 
broken  down.  But  although  its  geogra- 
phical scope  was  Asiatic  only,  it  paved 
the  way  for  Anglo-Russian  friendship  in 
Europe.  As  an  integral  part  of  the  Triple 
Entente  the  agreement  was  successful, 
owing  to  the  popular  passion  in  Russia  on 
behalf  of  the  Slav  races  in  the  Balkans. 
On  that  question  English  policy  in  Grey's 
hands  was  merely  that  of  a  neutral  peace- 
maker. But  it  was  none  the  less  the 
Balkan  and  Austro-Hungarian  question, 
in  which  Grey  took  neither  side,  that 
attached  Russia  to  the  Entente  and  in- 
duced her  government  only  partially  to 
violate  the  Asiatic  agreement  with  Great 
Britain. 

While  many  liberals  and  labour  men 
disliked  the  policy  of  the  Ententes  with 
France  and  Russia,  later  criticism  has 
taken  the  opposite  line,  and  Grey  has 
often  been  blamed  for  not  turning  these 
imderstandings  into  alliances,  in  which 
case,  it  is  argued,  Germany  would  never 
have  dared  to  go  to  war.  Grey's  answer 
to  this  was  twofold.  In  the  first  place,  he 
had  not  the  power  to  make  formal  alliances 
either  with  France  or  Russia.  He  could 
not  pledge  Britain  to  fight  before  the 
actual  occasion  arose  because  the  Cabinet, 
and  the  House  of  Conunons,  and  the 
country  were  opposed  to  any  such  com- 
mitment. In  the  second  place,  he  would 
not  have  made  these  alliances  even  if  he 
could  because  he  feared  that  if  France 
and  Russia  were  sure  of  British  support 
imder  whatever  conditions  war  arose,  their 
policy  towards  Germany  might  become 
provocative  and  involve  this  country  in 
a  war  which  British  and  American  opinion 
would  regard  as  unjustified. 

On  the  one  hand  Grey  was  ensuring  that 
in  case  of  war  Great  Britain  woidd  not  be 
without  friends,  and  on  the  other  hand  he 
was  earnestly  working  and  hoping  to  pre- 
serve peace.  He  therefore  made  large  con- 
cessions to  Germany  in  order  to  remove 
all  groimds  for  her  constant  complaint  of 
'encirclement'.  The  Bagdad  railway 
agreement  of  1913  acknowledged  Ger- 
many's right  to  extend  her  influence  in 
Asiatic  Turkey,  delimiting  it  only  at  the 


approaches  to  the  head  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  where  British  interests  had  been 
established  long  ago.  Grey  was  also  pre- 
pared to  make  an  agreement  allowing 
Germany  a  large  share  of  the  Portuguese 
Colonies  in  Africa,  particularly  Angola, 
in  case  they  were  put  up  for  sale  by 
Portugal,  as  at  that  time  seemed  not 
improbable.  But  Grey  refused  to  make  a 
secret  treaty  to  this  effect.  When  war 
broke  out  in  August  1914,  the  contingent 
agreement  about  the  Portuguese  Colonies 
had  been  initialed  by  Grey,  but  he  refused 
to  sign  it  imtil  Germany  agreed  that  it 
should  be  published.  Until  war  broke  out. 
Grey,  unlike  his  predecessors,  refused  to 
make  secret  treaties  or  secret  clauses  for 
treaties.  His  subsequent  secret  treaties 
were  war-time  measures. 

In  1911  Grey  renewed  the  alliance  with 
Japan  which  Lansdowne  had  made  in  1902 
and  renewed  and  extended  in  1905.  The 
question  of  the  Congo  atrocities  had  been 
raised  uaider  Lansdowne,  but  only  came 
to  a  head  in  Grey's  period  of  office.  The 
Congo  had  long  been,  under  an  old  inter- 
national agreement,  almost  the  private 
estate  of  Leopold  II,  King  of  the  Belgians. 
Through  the  agency  of  various  companies, 
he  had  turned  it  into  a  vast  slave-farm, 
contrary  to  the  treaties  under  which  he 
held  his  powers.  This  state  of  things  was 
exposed  by  the  gallant  and  disinterested 
efforts  of  a  private  individual,  Edmund 
Dene  Morel.  The  British  pubUc  had  taken 
fire,  and  the  foreign  secretary  too.  But 
the  foreign  secretary  knew  that  fire  was 
not  enough.  His  plan  was  to  encourage 
the  Belgian  state  to  take  over  the  Congo 
from  King  Leopold;  but  he  would  only 
recognize  the  transfer  on  condition  of 
wholesale  reform,  and  in  particular  the 
abolition  of  forced  labour.  British  treaty 
rights  in  the  Congo  were  m  his  hands  the 
lever  to  secure  humanitarian  demands. 
Neither  Germany  nor  France  nor  any 
great  power  save  the  distant  United  States 
cared  about  the  matter.  But  thanks  to 
Grey's  firmness  and  tact,  thanks  also  to 
the  better  elements  in  the  Belgian  people 
and  parliament,  and  to  the  high  character 
of  King  Albert,  Leopold's  successor  on  the 
throne,  Congo  reform  was  an  accompUshed 
fact  before  the  war  of  1914-1918,  and 
Belgium  and  England  had  not  fallen  out. 

In  the  rather  similar  affair  of  the  Putu- 
mayo  atrocities  in  South  America,  Grey's 
pubhcation  of  the  Putumayo  Blue  Book 
in  July  1912,  based  on  the  reports  of 
Roger  Casement  [q.v.],  was  a  personal  act 
of  the  foreign  secretary,  not  suggested  by 


371 


Grey 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


the  custom  of  his  office  but  by  his  own 
indignation. 

The  severity  and  deadly  importance  of 
Grey's  daily  work  at  the  Foreign  Office 
prevented  him  from  taking  a  very  active 
part  in  domestic  politics.  He  was  fully 
in  accord  with  the  policy  of  Asquith's 
government  over  the  budget  of  1909  and 
the  subsequent  struggle  with  the  Lords. 
Indeed  he  was  more  democratic  than  his 
colleagues  in  that  he  wished  to  abolish  the 
hereditary  element  in  the  upper  chamber : 
he  had,  however,  on  that  point  to  be  con- 
tent with  the  preamble  of  the  Parliament 
Act  of  1911  which  has  never  been  imple- 
mented ;  it  was  inserted  partly  to  appease 
him.  He  did  not  like  the  style  of  Lloyd 
George's  oratorical  appeals,  the  very  oppo- 
site of  his  own  restrained  and  almost  con- 
versational method  of  public  speech.  But 
the  personal  relations  of  the  two  men  were 
friendly  enough  at  this  period.  He  opposed 
Lloyd  George  in  the  Cabinet  on  the  ques- 
tion of  the  naval  estimates,  successfully 
supporting  Reginald  McKenna's  demand 
for  more  ships  in  the  Cabinet  crisis  of  1909. 

Meanwhile  crisis  followed  crisis  in 
Europe.  In  1908  Austria-Hungary  an- 
nexed Bosnia-Herzegovina  with  its  million 
Serb  inhabitants.  Grey  in  the  name  of 
international  law  and  right  demanded  that 
the  matter  should  be  brought  before  a 
conference  of  the  powers.  He  received  no 
support  and  the  idea  of  the  Concert  of 
Europe  received  another  set-back. 

In  1911  came  the  Agadir  crisis.  The 
Algeciras  agreement  of  1906  had  proved 
only  a  temporary  settlement ;  it  had  now 
been  violated  by  France,  or  so  Germany 
claimed.  French  influence  and  arms  had 
penetrated  into  Morocco,  to  restore  order 
in  an  oriental  state  falling  into  chaos. 
French  action  was  not  vmreasonable,  but 
neither  was  Germany's  demand  that  she 
must  receive  compensation  elsewhere  in 
Africa.  Her  demand  for  practically  all  the 
French  Congo,  however,  was  excessive, 
and  Germany  had  begun  the  negotiations 
with  the  warUke  gesture  of  sending  the 
warship  Panther  to  Agadir.  War  seemed 
highly  probable.  But  Lloyd  George's  un- 
expected speech  in  strong  support  of 
Grey's  stand,  although  it  caused  wild  in- 
dignation in  Germany,  in  fact  smoothed 
the  road  to  peace.  The  Germans  saw  that 
a  imited  Britain  would  fight  if  France 
were  attacked.  An  agreement  was  reached 
by  which  France,  in  return  for  a  free  hand 
in  Morocco,  ceded  two  large  strips  of  Con- 
golese territory  to  the  Germans.  In  fact 
Germany  had  received  good  terms,  but 


her  original  demands  had  been  so  high  and 
she  had  sought  to  impose  them  by  such 
violent  methods  on  France  and  Britain, 
that  a  fair  agreement  at  the  end  seemed 
like  a  German  defeat. 

The  situation  remained  most  alarming. 
The  great  powers  of  Europe  were  ranged 
in  two  armed  camps  with  Italy  balancing 
between.  British-German  antagonism, 
owing  to  the  building  of  the  German  fleet 
in  rivalry  to  the  British,  came  to  the  fore- 
front of  the  picture.  In  1912  Grey  con- 
sented that  his  friend  Haldane  should  go 
to  Germany  to  try  to  arrange  with  the 
Emperor  and  his  advisers  for  a  Umitation 
in  the  growth  of  the  German  fleet,  as  the 
only  possible  road  to  better  relations  with 
Britain.  Haldane's  mission  was  a  com- 
plete failure. 

Grey  had  constantly  pressed  the  great 
powers  to  compel  the  Turks  to  make  real 
reforms  in  Macedonia,  but  without  sue 
cess.  The  result  was  the  war  of  1912,  when 
an  alliance  of  the  Balkan  national  states 
liberated  Macedonia  and  Thrace  by  force 
of  arms.  The  immediate  consequence  ofj 
the  defeat  of  Turkey  was  a  grave  danger 
of  a  general  European  war  in  1913. 
Austria-Hungary,  furious  at  the  growth  of 
Serbia's  power,  meditated  an  attack  upon 
her,  while  the  Russian  government  and 
people  were  determined  not  to  let  her  b 
crushed.  Grey  strove  for  peace  in  a  spirit' 
of  real  neutrality,  and  France  and  Ger 
many  both  backed  him  up  on  this  occa- 
sion. Consequently  a  general  European  war 
was  just  averted.  But  the  price  was  the 
exclusion  of  Serbia  from  the  outlet  on 
the  Adriatic  which  her  arms  had  won  from 
the  Turks.  Grey  had  actively  supported 
this  'inferior  settlement',  as  he  himself 
called  it,  because  the  alternative  was  a 
general  European  war.  How  little  then 
was  there  on  his  part  a  policy  of '  encircle- 
ment', or  rooted  hostility  to  the  claims  of 
the  central  powers. 

The  next  time  that  trouble  arose  be 
tween  Austria  and  Serbia,  over  the  murderl 
of  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand  at 
Serajevo  on  28  June  1914  and  the  Austrian 
ultimatum  of  23  July,  Grey's  efforts  to 
have  the  matter  again  referred  to  Euro- 
pean arbitrament  were  ima vailing,  because 
on  this  occasion  Germany  refused  a  con 
ference  and  backed  Austria  through  thick 
and  thin.    The  story  of  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  August  is  too  well  known  and  has 
been  too  often  discussed  to  require  repeti- 
tion here. 

Up  to  the  last  moment  the  Cabinet  was 
divided  on  the  issue  of  going  to  war  to 


f 

I 

t 


872 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Grey 


protect  France,  and  the  country  at  first 
was  no  more  united.  Grey,  who  was  clear 
on  the  subject,  advanced  with  very  careful 

I  steps  in  the  Cabinet,  which  came  roimd  to 
his  side  very  gradually,  but  almost  imani- 
mously  when  Germany  made  it  clear  that 
she  would  attack  Belgium.  A  similar 
change  of  opinion  took  place  in  the  public 
mind.  Grey's  speech  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  3  August  was  therefore  entirely 
successful ;  it  was  purposely  restrained  in 
tone,  with  no  emotional  appeal,  which 
might  have  provoked  more  opposition 
than  was  aroused  by  his  careful  statement 
of  the  issue.  It  was  the  greatest  and  most 
tragic  moment  of  his  life.  He  felt  the 
tragedy  to  the  full.  'I  hate  war,  I  hate 
war',  he  said  passionately  to  a  friend.  It 
was  due  to  the  way  in  which  Grey  had 
handled  the  crisis  that  Great  Britain 
entered  the  war  as  a  imited  people  and 
that  American  opinion  was  largely  on  her 
side. 

Perhaps  Grey  'hated  war'  too  much, 
and  had  too  little  interest  in  military 
affairs,  to  be  as  good  a  foreign  minister  in 
war-time  as  in  peace.  Yet  even  that  is  by 
no  means  certain.  On  the  most  important 
issue  of  all,  the  relations  of  Great  Britain 
with  the  United  States,  he  took  the  right 
line  and  adhered  to  it  in  spite  of  much 
outcry  and  opposition,  and  achieved  com- 
plete ultimate  success.  The  question  was 
how  far  to  press  the  blockade  in  disregard 
of  American  interests  and  demands.  It 
was  a  narrow  and  winding  path  that  he 
had  to  tread  to  avoid  catastrophe.  His 
personal  friendships  with  Walter  Page,  the 
American  ambassador  in  London,  and 
with  President  Wilson's  adviser,  Colonel 
House,  and  with  the  British  ambassador 
at  Washington,  Sir  Cecil  Spring-Rice  [q.v.], 
kept  him  well  informed  as  to  American 
opinion.  He  was  deliberately  prepared  to 
make  some  sacrifice  of  this  country's  direct 
military  interest,  as  in  the  case  of  cotton 
export  to  Germany  early  in  the  war,  in 
order  to  prevent  a  quarrel  with  America. 
If  he  had  not  considered  American  opinion 
as  it  then  was,  the  United  States  would 
never  have  come  into  the  war  on  the  side 
of  the  Allies,  and  might  have  put  an  em- 
bargo on  the  export  of  munitions  on  which 
Great  Britain's  own  war  effort  depended. 
The  Contraband  Department  set  up  by 
the  Foreign  Office  imder  Mr.  Alwyn  Parker 
functioned  excellently.  In  February  1916 
it  became  a  department  of  state  under 
Lord  Robert  Cecil  who  was  of  one  mind 
with  Grey. 

Grey's  war-time  policy  in  the  Balkans 


was  less  well  informed  and  less  definite. 
But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  anything 
except  the  mihtary  success  denied  to 
Great  Britain  at  the  Dardanelles  in  1915 
could  have  brought  Bulgaria  in  on  the 
right  side.  Grey's  refusal  of  Greek  military 
aid  in  September  1914  and  March  1915, 
subsequently  condemned  by  Lloyd  George, 
was  rendered  absolutely  necessary  by 
Russia's  veto. 

The  most  severely  criticized  part  of 
Grey's  policy  is  the  secret  Treaty  of  Lon- 
don (26  April  1915)  which  he  made  with 
Italy,  as  the  price  of  her  entering  the  war 
on  the  side  of  the  Allies.  The  promise  to 
Italy  of  large  portions  of  the  Dalmatian 
coast  inhabited  by  Yugo-Slavs  caused 
trouble  after  the  war.  Grey  regarded  the 
Italian  terms  as  extortionate,  but  he  de- 
fended his  acceptance  of  them  because  on 
no  other  terms  would  the  Italian  foreign 
minister.  Baron  Sonnino,  agree  to  his 
country's  joining  the  Allied  side,  and  if 
Italy  had  adopted  the  alternative  of  enter- 
ing the  sphere  of  influence  of  the  central 
powers  the  Allies  would  probably  have 
lost  the  closely  balanced  war.  Serbia  in 
any  case  had  been  promised  enormous 
expansion  of  territory  if  the  Allies  should 
win. 

Meanwhile  Grey's  health  and  particu- 
larly his  eyesight  were  rapidly  deteriorat- 
ing. He  deliberately  sacrificed  the  chance 
of  preserving  his  eyesight  to  continuance 
of  his  duty  as  foreign  secretary  in  war- 
time, although  he  would  have  been  only 
too  glad  to  lay  down  the  burden.  In  July 
1916  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Viscount  Grey  of  Fallodon,  in  order  to 
reduce  his  work  by  retirement  from  the 
House  of  Commons.  At  length  in  Decem- 
ber 1916  final  release  came  by  the  break-up 
of  Asquith's  government  and  reconstruc- 
tion under  Lloyd  George.  In  that  com- 
plicated and  embittered  affair  Grey  took 
very  little  part.  His  attitude  towards 
Lloyd  George's  aspirations  was  not  the 
same  as  that  of  the  closer  bodyguard  of 
Asquith.  As  between  the  two  men,  he 
greatly  preferred  his  old  friend  the  out- 
going prime  minister,  but  he  had  the 
suspicion  that  the  country  desired  a  change 
and  that  the  fulfilment  of  its  desire  might 
perhaps  help  on  the  war.  The  way  for  the 
change  of  ministry  had  indeed  been  pre- 
pared by  a  campaign  of  abuse  of  which  he 
had  his  share,  but  which  fell  off  him  like 
water  from  the  back  of  one  of  his  Fallodon 
ducks ;  he  did  not  waste  his  small  ration 
of  eyesight  in  studying  the  productions  of 
the  gutter  press. 


373 


Grey 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


One  reason  why  Grey  had  no  regrets 
was  that  he  left  foreign  affairs  in  the  hands 
of  Balfour  and  Robert  Cecil.  He  had  been 
alarmed  at  Lloyd  George's  bellicose 
method  of  brushing  aside  President  Wil- 
son's feelers  for  peace,  but  he  knew  that 
Balfour  and  Cecil  would  never  quarrel 
with  America. 

During  the  seventeen  years  that  passed 
between  Grey's  resignation  and  his  death, 
he  was  never  again  in  the  forefront  of 
affairs.  In  September  1919  he  consented 
at  the  request  of  the  British  government 
to  go  as  ambassador  on  a  special  mission 
to  the  United  States,  in  order  to  persuade 
President  Wilson  to  compromise  with  the 
Senate  so  as  to  bring  America  into  the 
League  of  Nations.  But  Wilson  was  ill  and 
had  quarrelled  with  House  and  would  not 
even  see  Grey.  The  part  played  by  Grey 
in  his  later  years  as  president  of  the 
League  of  Nations  Union  from  November 
1918  onwards,  his  activities  on  the  Liberal 
Council  formed  in  1926  in  opposition  to 
Lloyd  George's  later  proceedings,  and 
some  of  his  speeches  in  the  House  of 
Lords  were  not  unimportant,  but  he  was 
too  blind  and  often  too  ill  to  lead  a  party 
or  to  aspire  to  office. 

Grey's  blindness  steadily  increased  as 
the  years  went  on.  To  put  it  in  terms  of 
his  favourite  sport,  first  he  had  to  give  up 
the  dry  fly,  then  ordinary  trout  fishing, 
then  salmon,  imtil  finally  in  1932  he  wrote 
from  Fallodon  to  a  friend:  'I  cannot  see 
whether  I  put  my  worm  into  the  water  or 
on  to  the  bank.  With  my  ducks  I  can  at 
any  rate  feel  when  they  take  it  out  of  my 
hand,  and  distinguish  some  of  them  when 
they  are  very  close.'  He  was  equally  cut 
off  from  books,  of  which  as  life  advanced 
he  had  grown  very  fond.  Fortunately  he 
knew  much  of  the  best  poetry  by  heart, 
particularly  his  favourite  Wordsworth. 
He  could  read  to  himself  continuously 
only  in  braille. 

Other  disasters  fell  thick  upon  Grey. 
Fallodon  was  burnt  down  in  May  1917. 
Only  the  furniture,  pictures,  and  books  on 
the  groimd  floor  were  saved.  After  living 
in  the  kitchen  wing  until  the  war  was  over, 
he  rebuilt  the  house,  with  the  old  bricks 
and  in  the  same  general  style  as  before  but 
with  two  stories  instead  of  three  and  with 
some  change  in  the  groimd  plan  of  the 
rooms.  In  February  1923  the  cottage  on 
the  Itchen  was  burnt,  and  was  not  rebuilt. 
These  two  breaches  with  the  past  grieved 
him  sorely.  In  1922  his  second  marriage 
gave  him  a  brief  period  of  real  happiness. 
His   second  wife  was  Pamela  Adelaide 


Genevieve,  youngest  daughter  of  Percy 
Scawen  Wjoidham,  of  Clouds,  near  Salis- 
bury, sister  of  George  Wyndham  [q.v.], 
and  widow  of  Edward  Priaulx  Tennant, 
first  Lord  Glenconner.  But  in  1928  Lady 
Grey  died ;  in  the  same  year  his  yoiuigest 
brother  Charles,  of  whom  he  had  become 
almost  as  fond  as  formerly  of  his  next 
brother  George,  was  killed  by  a  buffalo  in 
Africa,  as  George  in  1911  had  been  killed 
by  a  lion.  And  besides  these  private 
strokes.  Grey  lived  to  see  his  hopes  for 
the  pacification  of  the  world  shattered, 
America  withdrawn  into  herself,  Europe 
armed  to  the  teeth,  and  Germany  under 
the  Nazi  regime.  He  foresaw  a  grim  future 
for  mankind,  the  more  so  as  he  had  less 
than  no  sympathy  with  the  increasing 
mechanization  of  life. 

But  Grey's  private  afflictions  and  public 
disappointments  never  broke  his  courage 
or  soured  his  serene  and  constant  spirit. 
Neither  in  his  letters  nor  in  his  talk  was 
there  any  cry  of  personal  pain  or  even  of 
impatience.  He  was  unfailing  in  his  quiet, 
humorous  observation  of  life,  and  his  de- 
termination to  make  the  daily  best  of 
what  was  left.  All  who  saw  him  went 
away  cheered  and  elevated  by  the  strong, 
even  current  of  his  talk,  delightful,  easy, 
humorous,  sustained  without  effort  high 
above  the  level  of  his  griefs.  Visitors  to 
Fallodon  were  always  made  happy.  The 
spring  in  him  was  never  dry. 

Grey's  principal  achievement  in  these 
later  years  was  the  production  of  his 
books,  a  task  which  owed  much  to  the 
encouragement  of  his  wife.  In  Twenty-five 
Years,  1892-1916  (2  vols.,  1925)  he  told 
the  story  of  his  public  career ;  blind  as  he 
was,  he  could  not  have  searched  the  neces- 
sary documents  without  the  devoted 
scholarly  assistance  of  his  friend  John 
Alfred  Spender.  The  publication  of  Fallo- 
don Papers  (1926)  and  The  Charm  of  Birds 
(1927)  put  him  in  touch  with  a  wide  public 
on  that  side  of  thought  and  feeling  for 
which  he  cared  the  most.  His  book  on 
Fly  Fishing,  the  art  in  which  he  was  so 
great  a  master  and  which  gave  him  so 
many  hours  of  happiness,  had  first  ap- 
peared in  1899.  Taken  together,  these 
books  place  him  in  the  category  with 
Izaak  Walton,  White  of  Selborne,  Richard 
Jefferies,  and  his  own  friend  W.  H.  Hud- 
son [q.v.]. 

In  the  summer  of  1933  Grey's  health 
gave  way  altogether  and  those  who  saw 
him  at  Fallodon  that  August  felt  him  to 
be  a  dying  man,  although  he  could  stfll 
stroll  on  the  lawn  and  sit  among  the  ducks. 


874 


DJJ.B.  1931-1940 


Griffith 


He  had  no  long  period  of  confinement  in- 
doors. On  7  September  he  died.  His  ashes 
were  placed  beside  those  of  his  first  wife 
under  Fallodon  trees  which  they  had 
planted  together  in  their  youth.  Grey  was 
childless,  and  his  peerage  became  extinct. 
His  three  younger  brothers  having  pre- 
deceased him  without  issue,  he  was  suc- 
ceeded as  fourth  baronet  by  his  second 
cousin,  Charles  George  (born  1880).  He 
left  Fallodon  to  Captain  Cecil  Graves,  son 
of  his  eldest  sister. 

Grey  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Coimcil  in 
1902  and  elected  F.R.S.  in  1914.  In  1912 
he  was  appointed  K.G.,  being  the  first 
commoner  to  receive  that  honour  since  it 
was  bestowed  upon  Castlereagh  in  1814. 

The  best  portrait  of  Grey  is  that  repre- 
senting him  in  his  robes  as  chancellor  of 
Oxford  University,  by  Harold  Speed,  in 
the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Club.  Another 
portrait  by  Speed  is  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery,  as  is  also  a  sketch  in  oils 
by  Sir  James  Guthrie,  a  study  for  his 
group  of  'Some  statesmen  of  the  Great 
War'.  A  cartoon  by  'Spy'  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  5  February  1903. 

[The  unrivalled  source  for  the  study  of 
Grey's  foreign  policy  is  British  Documents  on 
the- Origin  of  the  War,  1898-1914  edited  bv 
G.  P.  Gooch  and  H.  W.  V.  Temperley,  13  vols!, 
1926-1938.  His  Twenty-five  Years  gives  his 
own  account  of  his  public  work.  G.  M.  Tre- 
Velyan,  Grey  of  Fallodon,  1937,  gives  many 
references  to  authorities  both  for  his  public 
and  private  life,  as  well  as  quotations  from 
unpublished  letters  and  documents.  An  auto- 
biography covering  his  early  years,  quoted  in 
Grey  of  Fallodon,  has  never  been  published.] 
G.  M.  Trevelyan. 

GRIFFITH,  FRANCIS  LLEWELLYN 

(1862-1934),  Egyptologist,  was  born  at 
Brighton  27  May  1862,  the  yoxmgest  of 
the  six  sons  of  John  Griffith,  headmaster 
of  Brighton  College  and  later  vicar  of 
Sandridge,  Hertfordshire,  by  his  wife, 
Sarah  Eliza,  daughter  of  Richard  Foster, 
banker,  of  Cambridge.  Frank  Griffith  was 
mainly  taught  by  his  father  imtil  in  1875 
he  went  to  Sedbergh  School,  whence  after 
two  and  a  half  years  he  was  transferred  to 
Highgate  School,  and  there,  apparently 
under  the  influence  of  a  master,  he  ac- 
quired that  interest  in  ancient  Egypt 
which  became  his  ruling  passion.  At 
Queen's  College,  Oxford,  where  he  had 
gained  an  open  scholarship  in  1879,  he 
divided  much  of  his  time  between  Egypto- 
logy, in  which  he  was  self-taught,  and 
natural  history.  There,  too,  he  came  into 
contact  with  A.  H.  Sayce  [q.v.],  who  gave 


him  much  encouragement.  He  refused  to 
read  for  final  honours  but  became  never- 
theless a  sound  classical  scholar. 

In  1882  Griffith  was  articled  to  a  brother, 
a  solicitor  in  Brighton,  but  on  graduating 
in  1884  he  was  appointed  official  student 
of  the  Egypt  Exploration  Fund,  thanks  to 
financial  help  from  an  aunt  and  an  old 
family  friend,  and  in  1884-1885  he  gave 
valuable  assistance  to  (Sir)  Flinders  Petrie 
at  the  site  of  Naucratis.  During  the  next 
three  years,  often  working  single-handed 
and  making  exploratory  journeys,  he 
gained  a  special  knowledge  of  Lower 
Egypt,  and  in  1886  a  journey  through 
Upper  Egypt  with  Petrie  brought  a  rich 
harvest  of  copies  of  rock  graffiti  and  tomb 
inscriptions. 

In  1888  Griffith  was  appointed  an 
assistant  in  the  department  of  British  and 
medieval  antiquities  and  ethnography  at 
the  British  Museum,  where  he  remained 
for  eight  years,  being  allowed  to  devote  to 
Egyptology  every  moment  which  he  could 
spare  from  routine  duties.  His  publica- 
tions of  inscriptions  and  his  pleas  for  the 
better  recording  of  monuments  led  to  the 
creation  in  1890  of  a  branch  of  the  fund 
called  the  Archaeological  Survey.  Griffith 
was  appointed  its  superintendent  (from 
1926  to  his  death  director)  and  supervised, 
with  the  closest  attention  to  detail,  the 
publication  of  twenty-five  volumes  of 
records.  From  1892  to  1901  he  was 
assistant  professor  of  Egyptology  at  Uni- 
versity College,  London;  from  1896  to 
1908  he  was  honorary  lecturer  in  Egypto- 
logy at  Manchester  University ;  in  1901  he 
was  made  reader  in  Egyptology  at  Ox- 
ford ;  in  1924  he  was  appointed  honorary 
professor  there ;  and  after  his  retirement 
in  1932  he  continued  for  a  year  as  deputy 
professor  and  in  1933  was  given  the  rank 
of  professor  emeritus.  In  1916  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  own  col- 
lege, and  in  1924  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy.  Learned  bodies  in  France,  Ger- 
many, Denmark,  Austria,  Egjrpt,  and  the 
United  States  of  America  also  recognized 
his  achievements  by  electing  him  to  mem- 
bership, and  he  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Leipzig  (1909)  and 
Aberdeen  (1925).  On  his  seventieth  birth- 
day in  1932  a  stout  volume  of  Studies  by 
over  seventy  colleagues  was  presented  to 
him ;  it  contains  a  bibliography.  He  died 
at  Boars  HiU,  near  Oxford,  14  March 
1934. 

During  nearly  half  a  century  Griffith 
showed  himself  a  prolific  and  accurate 
scholar.  His  admirable  edition  of  a  unique 


375 


Griffith 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


sign-list  in  Two  Hieroglyphic  Papyri  from 
Tanis,  and  the  publication  of  some  of  the 
harvest  from  Upper  Egypt  in  1886  as  The 
Inscriptions  of  SiHt  and  DSr  Rifeh  (both 
in  1889)  gave  him  an  assured  position  in 
the  field  of  international  Egyptology.  In 
1892  he  began  to  edit  a  series  of  annual 
Archaeological  Reports  containing  surveys 
of  the  progress  of  Egyptology  in  all  coiin- 
tries.  These  continued  until  shortly  before 
the  foimdation  in  1914  of  the  Journal  of 
Egyptian  Archaeology,  to  which  he  con- 
tributed exhaustive  bibliographies.  In  A 
Collection  of  Hieroglyphs  (1898)  his  interest 
in  natural  history,  first  acquired  at  Sed- 
bergh,  led  him  to  identify  accurately  many 
animals  and  plants  depicted  by  the  signs. 

Perhaps  Griffith's  most  remarkable 
characteristic  was  a  genius  for  decipher- 
ment, which  led  him  to  study  with  much 
success  a  number  of  scripts  and  languages 
only  imperfectly  understood.  The  first- 
fruits  of  this  gift  appeared  in  Hieratic 
Papyri  from  Kahun  and  Gurob  (2  vols., 
1897-1898),  in  which  a  mass  of  early 
papyri  found  by  Petrie,  many  of  them 
extremely  cursive,  were  interpreted  with 
a  skill  and  accuracy  which  even  to-day 
leave  very  little  to  add.  His  Stories  of  the 
High  Priests  of  Memphis  (1900)  first  estab- 
lished demotic  on  a  firm  scientific  basis, 
and  placed  him  at  the  head  of  living 
students  of  that  script.  This  was  followed 
by  The  Demotic  Magical  Papyrus  of  Lon- 
don and  Leiden  (with  Sir  Herbert  Thomp- 
son, 3  vols.,  1904-1909)  and  the  Catalogue 
of  the  Demotic  Papyri  in  the  John  Rylands 
Library,  Manchester  (3  vols.,  1909),  by  far 
the  most  important  work  in  the  whole 
subject.  He  threw  much  light  on  the 
scanty  and  obscure  remains  of  Old  Coptic, 
and  later  devoted  himself  with  valuable 
results  to  the  interpretation  of  Meroitic, 
a  language  of  pagan  Nubia;  and  in  The 
Nubian  Texts  of  the  Christian  Period  (Ber- 
lin Academy,  1913)  he  made  a  great 
advance  on  his  predecessors'  work  in 
another  Nubian  tongue.  His  interest  in 
Nubian  matters  led  him  in  1910  and  after 
to  undertake,  with  his  second  wife,  expedi- 
tions known  as  the  Oxford  University 
Excavations  in  Nubia.  The  results  from 
Faras  and  Sanam  were  published  in  the 
University  of  Liverpool  Annals  of  Archaeo- 
logy and  Anthropology  (viii-xv,  1921- 
1928);  after  digging  at  El-Amarna  in 
1923-1924  he  laid  bare  three  temples  and 
many  inscriptions  at  Kawa  in  Dongola 
province  in  1930-1931. 

Griffith  was  twice  married :  first,  in  1896 
to  Kate  (died  1902),  daughter  of  Charles 


Timothy    Bradbury,    cotton-spinner,    oi 
Ashton-imder-Lyne.      She     collaboratec 
with  him  in  translating  Egyptian  texts  foij 
A  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literaturi 
(1897).    On  her  father's  death  in  19C  ' 
Griffith  inherited  a  considerable  fortune 
which  enabled  him  to  create  the  Griffitl 
Egyptological  Fund  by  a  gift  of  £8,000  tol 
the   university  of  Oxford.    He   married  i 
secondly  in  1909  Nora  Christina  Cobban, 
daughter  of  Surgeon-Major  James  Mac- 
donald,  of  Aberdeen,  and  sister  of  Sir 
J.  R.  L.  Macdonald  [q.v.].  Born  7  Decem- 
ber 1870,  she  had  been  her  future  hus- 
band's pupa  at  Oxford,  and  a  student  of 
antiquities  and  texts  in  Aberdeen  museums 
and  in  Egypt  itself.   For  a  time  she  was 
conservator  of  the  Archaeological  Museum, 
King's  College,  Aberdeen.   Gifted  with  a 
strong  intellect,  a  remarkable  memoryJ 
and  much  skill  with  the  pencil,  she  becam^ 
her  husband's  devoted  helper  in  all  hi 
activities.    After   his   death   she   sparec 
neither  labour  nor  expense  in  completinj 
two  of  his  unfinished  projects:  a  larg 
corpus  of  over  500  graffiti  from  temple 
from  Philae  southwards  to  Maharraka 
entitled  Catalogue  of  the  Demotic  Graffiti  ojj 
the    Dodecaschoenus    (1935,    1937)    ('] 
Temples  Immerges  de  la  Nubie'),  all  thi 
foUo  plates  of  which  she  herself  had  drawn  j 
and  Griffith's  part  (the  demotic)  of  Th 
Adler  Papyri  (1939).    She  organized  anc 
largely  financed  further  work  of  excava- 
tion in  Nubia  in  1934-1935  and  1935-1936. 
She  died  at  Boars  Hill  21  October  1937. 

Griffith  bequeathed  the  finest  private 
Egyptological  library  in  existence,  all  his 
papers,  and  his  own  considerable  fortune, 
subject  to  his  wife's  life  interest  (there 
were  no  children  by  either  marriage),  to 
the  university  of  Oxford,  for  the  creation 
and  endowment  of  an  institute  for  Egypto- 
logical study  and  other  departments  of 
Near  Eastern  research.  To  this  was  added 
the  bequest  of  his  widow's  own  very  con- 
siderable estate.  The  Griffith  Institute, 
built  as  an  annexe  to  the  Ashmolean 
Museum,  contains  besides  a  large  number 
of  books  on  other  oriental  languages  a 
mass  of  unpublished  archaeological  re- 
cords, and  is  the  chief  centre  in  Great 
Britain  for  research  and  instruction  in  the 
languages  and  literatures  of  the  ancient 
Near  East. 

Griffith  was  an  ideal  scholar,  benevolent, 
full  of  praise  for  good  work  and  of  en- 
couragement for  beginners,  with  a  passion 
for  his  subject,  an  astonishing  gift  of  intui- 
tion leading  to  correct  conclusions,  and  an 
unlimited  capacity  for  patient  drudgery. 


376 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Griffiths 


Humility  was  an  outstanding  trait :  in  the 

I  war  of  1914-1918  no  task  was  too  menial 
for  him  in  the  Oxford  hospitals.  He  was 
tall  and  spare,  of  great  energy,  a  tireless 
walker,  and  in  later  life  a  lover  of  outdoor 
games. 
There  is  a  portrait  of  Griffith  by  Ken- 
neth Green  (1932)  in  the  Griffith  Institute. 

[A.  H.  Gardiner,  Journal  of  Egyptian 
Archaeology,  vol.  xx,  1934;  W.  E.  Crum, 
Francis  Llewellyn  Griffith,  1862-1934  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xx, 
1934;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Battiscombe  Gtjnn. 

GRIFFITHS,     ERNEST     HOWARD 

(1851-1932),  physicist,  was  born  at  Brecon 
15  June  1851,  the  son  of  the  Rev.  Henry 
Griffiths,  principal  of  the  Memorial  Col- 
lege, Brecon,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Blake,  a 
descendant  of  Admiral  Blake.  He  was 
educated  at  the  Owens  College,  Man- 
chester, where  he  held  a  Whitworth 
scholarship,  and  at  Sidney  Sussex  College, 
Cambridge.  Having  obtained  a  pass  degree 
in  1873,  he  engaged  in  work  as  a  private 
tutor  and  became  a  very  successful  vmi- 
versity  coach.  The  social  side  of  the 
university  greatly  appealed  to  him;  he 
wiis  fond  of  music  and  rowing ;  he  drove 
tandem,  and  later  took  to  yachting.  In 
1897  he  was  elected  a  fellow,  and  in  1904 
an  honorary  fellow  of  his  college. 

Griffiths's  scientific  work  belongs  to  the 
period  when  the  usual  objective  of  the 
physicist  was  to  carry  the  accuracy  of 
physical  measurements  to  another  place 
of  decimals.  Although  he  had  been  occu- 
pied with  the  determination  of  the 
mechanical  equivalent  of  heat  by  the  elec- 
trical method  since  1887,  it  was  not  until 
1891  that  he  published  his  first  work,  'On 
the  Determination  of  some  Boiling  and 
Freezing  Points  by  means  of  the  Platinum 
Thermometer'  (Philosophical  Transactions 
of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  clxxxii).  His 
interest  in  this  subject  arose  out  of  an 
inquiry  from  C.  T.  Heycock  and  F.  H. 
Neville  who  were  searching  for  an  instru- 
ment for  the  measurement  of  the  freezing- 
points  of  alloys  better  than  the  so-called 
•fixed  zero'  mercury  thermometers  then 
available.  He  constructed  a  number  of 
platinum  resistance  thermometers  and 
proceeded  to  calibrate  them  by  reference 
to  fixed  points.  He  was  imable  to  reconcile 
his  results  with  those  of  H.  L.  Callendar, 
who  had  given  an  empirical  formula  for 
temperatures  measin-ed  by  a  platinum 
resistance  thermometer  calibrated  directly 
in  terms  of  a  gas  thennometer.   To  clear 


up  the  discrepancy,  Callendar  and  Griffiths 
joined  forces  to  redetermine  the  boiling- 
point  of  sulphur,  and  they  showed  that 
the  value  given  by  H.  V.  Regnault,  which 
had  been  accepted  by  Griffiths,  was  about 
4°  too  high  (Philosophical  Transactions, 
ibid.).  In  the  course  of  this  investigation 
they  improved  the  technique  for  deter- 
mining the  boihng-point  of  sulphur,  and 
also  converted  the  resistance  boxes  of  their 
day  from  crude  appliances  suitable  for 
technical  electrical  measurements  into 
instruments  of  precision. 

Henry  Augustus  Rowland's  classical 
paper  on  the  determination  of  the  mechani- 
cal equivalent  of  heat  had  been  published 
in  1880,  and  Griffiths  published  in  1893 
a  paper  on  '  The  Value  of  the  Mechanical 
Equivalent  of  Heat,  deduced  from  some 
Experiments  performed  with  the  view  of 
establishing  the  Relation  between  the 
Electric  and  Mechanical  Units;  together 
with  an  Investigation  into  the  Capacity 
for  Heat  of  Water  at  Different  Tempera- 
tures'  (Philosophical  Transactions,  vol. 
clxxxiv).  In  this  work  Griffiths,  who  had 
built  a  small  laboratory  in  his  own  groimds, 
was  assisted  by  G.  M.  Clark.  His  final 
contribution  to  this  subject  will  be  found 
in  Sir  R.  T.  Glazebrook's  Dictionary  of 
Applied  Physics  (s.v.  'Mechanical  Equi- 
valent of  Heat',  1922). 

Other  investigations  carried  out  at 
Cambridge  were  'The  Latent  Heat  of 
Evaporation  of  Benzene'  (with  Miss 
Dorothy  Marshall  in  Philosophical  Maga- 
zine, vol.  xli,  1896);  'The  Influence  of 
Temperature  on  the  Specific  Heat  of  Ani- 
line' (Philosophical  Magazine,  vol.  xxxix, 
1895) ;  and  'The  Latent  Heat  of  Evapora- 
tion of  Water'  (Philosophical  Transactions, 
vol.  clxxxvi,  1895).  He  regarded  the  last 
as  one  of  his  best  pieces  of  work  and  in 
later  years  he  submitted  it  as  a  thesis  for 
the  degree  of  D.Sc.  at  the  university  of 
Wales. 

In  1901  Griffiths  was  appointed  prin- 
cipal of  the  University  College  of  South 
Wales  and  Monmouthshire,  at  Cardiff, 
with  a  chair  of  experimental  philosophy. 
In  this  capacity  he  was  elected  to  a  fellow- 
ship at  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  for  one  year, 
in  rotation  with  the  other  principals  in 
Wales,  in  1905,  1909,  1913,  and  1917. 
Departure  from  Cambridge  involved  leav- 
ing incomplete  an  investigation  into  the 
accurate  measurement  of  the  freezing- 
points  of  dilute  aqueous  solutions,  con- 
stants then  of  great  importance  in  the 
thermodynamic  and  electrolytic  theory  of 
solutions.  In  his  early  years  at  Cardiff  he 


377 


Griffiths 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


was  greatly  hampered  by  the  absence  of 
laboratory  facilities.  He  had  to  devote 
much  time  to  the  plamiing  of  the  new 
college  buildings  in  Cathays  Park,  and  it 
was  not  until  1909  that  the  Viriamu  Jones 
memorial  research  laboratory  was  com- 
pleted. In  this  building  Griffiths  was 
deeply  interested,  and  he  insisted  that  it 
should  be  built  of  non-magnetic  materials. 
Although  he  was  three  times  vice-chancel- 
lor of  the  university  of  Wales,  his  life  at 
Cardiff  was  marked  by  many  disappoint- 
ments, and  problems  of  administration  to 
one  of  his  temperament  proved  irksome. 
But  amid  official  work  he  was  able,  in 
conjunction  with  Dr.  Ezer  Griffiths,  to 
carry  out  an  investigation  of  the  thermal 
capacities  of  metals  from  liquid  air  tem- 
peratures up  to  100°  C.  and  compare  the 
results  with  the  modern  quantum  theories 
(Philosophical  Transactions,  vols,  ccxiii 
and  ccxiv,  1913  and  1914). 

In  1918  Griffiths  retired,  and  the  death 
in  the  same  year  of  his  wife,  Elizabeth 
Martha,  daughter  of  George  Dall  Clark,  of 
Bowdon,  Cheshire,  whom  he  had  married 
in  1877  and  by  whom  he  had  no  issue, 
meant  for  him  a  somewhat  lonely  life. 
But  he  retained  his  spirit  of  optimism,  and 
during  the  last  years  of  his  life  at  Cam- 
bridge his  main  interests  were  his  old 
college  and  the  British  Association,  of 
which,  when  it  met  at  York  in  1906,  he 
was  president  of  the  mathematical  and 
physical  sciences  section,  and  in  1913,  at 
Birmingham,  of  the  educational  science 
section.  In  1920  he  became  general 
treasurer  of  the  association,  but  resigned 
in  1928.  He  served  on  the  executive  com- 
mittee of  the  National  Physical  Labora- 
tory and  took  a  keen  interest  in  its  work 
on  electrical  standards. 

Griffiths  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1895  and 
received  the  Hughes  gold  medal  in  1907. 
He  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Aberdeen,  Manchester,  and 
Liverpool.  He  died  at  Cambridge  3  March 
1932. 

A  portrait  of  Griffiths  by  Gabriel 
Thompson  hangs  in  University  College, 
Cardiff. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  1,  December  1932  (portrait); 
Nature,  26  March  1932;  Proceedings  of  the 
Physical  Society,  vol.  xliv,  1932 ;  The  Times, 
4  March  1932 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Ezer  Griffiths. 

GROSSMITH,  GEORGE,  the  younger 
(1874f-1935),  actor-manager  and  play- 
wright, was  born  in  London  11  May  1874, 


the  elder  son  of  the  entertainer  and  singer 
in  light  opera  George  Grossmith  [q.v.],  by 
his  wife,  Emmeline  Rosa,  only  daughter 
of  Edward  Noyce,  M.D.  He  was  nephew 
of  the  comedian  W.  W.  Grossmith  [q.v.]. 
He  was  educated  at  University  College 
School  and  in  Paris,  and  it  was  originally 
intended  that  he  should  enter  the  army, 
but  he  failed  in  his  examination  at  Wool- 
wich. He  first  appeared  on  the  stage  at 
the  Criterion  Theatre,  in  July  1892,  in 
Haste  to  the  Wedding,  a  musical  play 
adapted  by  (Sir)  W.  S.  Gilbert  [q.v.],  with 
music  composed  by  Grossmith's  father. 
Engagements  followed  at  several  London 
theatres  until  November  1894,  when  for 
the  first  time  he  was  seen  at  the  Gaiety 
Theatre  in  The  Shop  Girl.  In  the  autumn 
of  1895  he  made  his  first  appearance  in 
New  York  in  this  play.  He  appeared  at 
the  Comedy  Theatre  in  1899  in  one  of  his 
own  plays.  Great  Caesar,  and  at  the  Globe 
Theatre  in  1900  in  another.  The  Gay  Pre- 
tenders. After  acting  for  a  short  period  at 
other  theatres  and  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  he  returned  to  the  Gaiety  in 
1901,  under  the  management  of  George 
Edwardes,  with  whom  he  remained  in 
association  until  1913,  appearing  in  a  suc- 
cession of  popular  musical  plays,  notably 
in  The  Toreador  (1901),  The  Orchid  (1903), 
The  Spring  Chicken  (1905),  The  Girls  of 
Gottenburg  (1907),  and  Our  Miss  Gibbs 
(1909).  During  this  period  he  also  ap- 
peared at  the  Hicks  (later  Globe)  Theatre 
in  1908  in  A  Waltz  Dream,  at  the  Alham- 
bra  Theatre  in  1914,  and  in  the  United 
States.  In  1914  he  entered  into  manage- 
ment with  Edward  Laurillard,  his  pro- 
ductions with  whom  included  Potash  and 
Perlmutter  (Queen's  Theatre,  1914),  To- 
night's the  Night  (Gaiety,  1915),  and  Theo- 
dore and  Co.  (Gaiety,  1916). 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Grossmith 
was  commissioned  in  the  Royal  Naval 
Volunteer  Reserve  (1916)  and  later  served 
with  the  Royal  Naval  armoured  cars. 
After  the  end  of  the  war  he  became 
manager,  with  Laurillard,  of  the  Winter 
Garden  Theatre,  which  they  opened  in 
May  1919  with  Kissing  Time;  this  was 
followed  by  a  number  of  other  successful 
musical  plays  there  and  at  the  Adelphi 
Theatre,  which,  with  other  theatres,  they 
also  controlled.  This  partnership  ended 
in  1921,  when  Grossmith  entered  into 
partnership  with  J.  A.  E.  Malone.  Gros- 
smith appeared  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre 
in  April  1923,  under  his  own  management, 
as  Lord  Quex  in  a  revival  of  The  Gay  Lord 
Qiiex  by  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  [q.v.],  his  first 


I 


878 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Guest,  F.  E. 


venture  into  serious  comedy.  At  the 
Palace  Theatre  in  March  1925  he  scored 
one  of  the  greatest  successes  of  his  career 
in  No,  No,  Nanette,  and  he  also  appeared 
there  in  Princess  Charming  in  1926.  In 
1929  he  again  visited  America  and  ap- 
peared in  several  plays.  He  made  his  last 
appearance  on  the  stage  at  His  Majesty's 
Theatre,  during  October  1934,  as  Talma 
in  Josephine. 

In  1931  Grossmith  became  managing- 
director  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  but  re- 
signed the  position  after  twelve  months, 
and  in  1932  he  became  chairman  of 
London  Film  Productions,  Ltd.;  he  had 
himself  appeared  on  the  screen  in  several 
pictures  from  1929  to  1931. 

Grossmith  wrote  (both  alone  and  in  col- 
laboration) or  adapted  more  than  thirty 
plays,  many  of  which  were  eminent 
successes,  including  The  Spring  Chicken, 
Rogues  and  Vagabonds,  The  Girls  of  Gotten- 
burg,  Havana,  The  Dollar  Princess,  Every- 
body's Doing  It,  The  Bing  Boys  are  Here, 
Theodore  and  Co.,  A  Night  Out,  The 
Cabaret  Girl,  and  Primrose. 

Grossmith  originated  the  'dude'  or 
'dandy'  in  musical  comedy  when  he 
appeared  as  Lord  Percy  Pimpleton  in 
Mofocco  Bound  at  the  Shaftesbury 
Theatre  in  1893,  and  he  continued  to  play 
that  type  of  character  for  nearly  thirty 
years  with  almost  imvarying  success.  To 
Grossmith  must  also  be  accorded  the  credit 
of  introducing  the  modern  type  of  revue 
to  London  with  Rogues  and  Vagabonds 
at  the  Empire  Theatre  in  1905 ;  and  he  was 
also  the  first  to  introduce  '  cabaret '  enter- 
tainment to  this  country,  at  the  Whitehall 
Rooms,  Hotel  Metropole,  in  1922. 

Always  a  fluent  French  speaker,  Gros- 
smith appeared  in  Paris,  in  revue  at  the 
Folies  Bergere  in  1910,  and  also  acted 
with  Rejane,  the  famous  French  actress, 
at  her  theatre  in  1911.  He  was  created 
a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  and 
an  officer  of  Public  Instruction  by  the 
French  government,  and  also  received 
decorations  from  the  Greek  government 
and  from  the  pope. 

In  appearance  Grossmith  was  lanky  and 
of  angular  physique.  He  made  capital  out 
of  his  physical  peculiarities,  which,  com- 
bined with  the  curious  carriage  of  his  arms 
and  hands,  and  the  fixed  smile  of  his  large 
mouth,  helped  to  create  a  stage  personality 
which  few  could  forget.  Although  he  had 
no  voice  for  singing,  he  had  the  faculty  of 
putting  his  songs  across  the  footlights  in 
an  inimitable  manner,  and  he  was  a  very 
nimble  dancer. 


Grossmith  married  in  1895  Gertrude, 
youngest  daughter  of  Henry  Rudge,  actor, 
of  Edgbaston ;  she  was  known  on  the  stage 
as  Adelaide  Astor.  They  had  a  son  and 
two  daughters,  the  elder  of  whom,  Ena, 
adopted  her  father's  profession  with  some 
success.  He  died  in  Ix)ndon  6  June  1935. 

A  portrait  of  Grossmith  in  uniform  by 
Weedon  Grossmith  was  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Academy  in  1917. 

[George  Grossmith,  'G.  G.\  1933;  Morning 
Post  and  News  Chronicle,  7  June  1935 ;  Who's 
Who  in  the  Theatre,  1933 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  Parker. 

GUEST,     FREDERICK     EDWARD 

(1875-1937),  politician  and  promoter  of 
aviation,  was  born  in  London  14  June 
1875,  the  third  of  the  five  sons  of  Ivor 
Bertie  Guest,  first  Baron  Wimborne,  by 
his  wife.  Lady  Cornelia  Henrietta  Maria, 
eldest  daughter  of  John  Winston  Spencer- 
ChurchiU,  seventh  Duke  of  Marlborough 
[q.v.],  and  sister  of  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  [q.v.].  He  was  brother  of  Sir 
Ivor  Churchill  Guest,  first  Viscoimt  Wim- 
borne [q.v.]. 

Guest  was  educated  at  Winchester.  In 
1894  he  obtained  a  commission  in  the  East 
Surrey  Regiment,  and  in  1897  he  joined 
the  first  Life  Guards.  In  the  South  African 
war  he  received  the  Queen's  medal  with 
five  clasps.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  he  at  once  offered  himself  for  service, 
and  was  appointed  an  extra  aide-de-camp 
to  Lord  French.  He  was  awarded  the 
D.S.O.  in  1917  and  was  appointed  C.B.E. 
in  1919.  He  was  a  chevalier  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour. 

A  few  years  before  the  war  Guest  had 
turned  to  politics  which  had  long  attracted 
him.  His  first  speech  was  made  in  1905 
in  support  of  his  cousin  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill,  whom  he  had  followed  over  to 
the  liberal  party,  and  whose  private  secre- 
tary he  became.  Guest,  after  four  unsuc- 
cessful attempts  to  enter  parliament,  was 
returned  for  East  Dorset  at  the  general 
election  of  December  1910,  and  held  the 
seat  until  1922,  when  he  was  defeated.  In 
1917  he  became  chief  whip  to  the  liberal 
members  of  the  coalition  government,  and 
in  1921  he  was  appointed  secretary  of  state 
for  air.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
in  1920.  In  1923  Guest  was  returned  for 
the  Stroud  division  of  Gloucestershire,  but 
his  want  of  sympathy  with  the  liberal 
party  increased.  He  often  abstained  from 
voting,  or  voted  with  the  conservatives. 
At  the  general  election  of  1924  he  was 
returned  for  North  Bristol  largely  through 


879 


Guest,  F.  E. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  support  of  conservative  voters.  So 
markedly  independent  was  his  attitude 
that,  at  the  general  election  of  1929,  he 
found  another  liberal,  with  the  sanction  of 
Lloyd  George,  standing  against  him  at 
Bristol.  The  result  was  the  return  of  the 
labour  candidate.  A  year  later  he  joined 
the  conservative  party,  announcing  his 
decision  in  a  letter  to  Baldwin.  He  was 
returned  at  the  general  election  of  1931  for 
the  Drake  division  of  Plymouth,  and  was 
re-elected  in  1935. 

In  addition  to  his  political  work  Guest 
carried  on  other  activities  as  secretary  of 
state  for  air  in  1922,  when  he  took  a  close 
interest  in  flying.  He  made  the  impor- 
tant appointment  of  Sir  W.  S.  Brancker 
[q.v.]  to  the  position  of  director  of  civil 
aviation,  and  it  was  with  Guest's  approval 
that  the  director  organized  the  air  pilots 
of  the  Empire  into  a  body  which  should 
establish  their  professional  status  and  pro- 
tect it.  When  in  1930  Brancker  lost  his 
life  in  the  accident  to  the  airship  R.  101, 
Guest  succeeded  him  as  deputy  master  of 
the  newly  established  Guild  of  Air  Pilots 
and  Air  Navigators,  a  position  which 
the  possession  of  a  pilot's  licence  entitled 
him  to  assume.  He  became  master  in 
1932. 

However  often  he  was  at  variance  with 
the  party  organizers,  'Freddie',  as  his 
many  friends  called  him,  remained  about 
the  most  popular  man  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  A  good  sportsman,  he  was  a 
polo  enthusiast  in  his  younger  days,  fond 
of  travel  and  big-game  shooting,  and, 
throughout  his  life  a  man  of  many  in- 
terests, he  was  the  most  charming  and 
attractive  of  companions. 

Guest  married  in  1905  Amy,  daughter 
of  Henry  Phipps,  an  ironmaster  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  had  two 
sons  and  one  daughter.  He  died  at  Sun- 
bury-on-Thames,  after  an  iUness  of  some 
months,  28  April  1937. 

[The  Times,  29  April  1937.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

GUEST,  Sir  IVOR  CHURCHILL, 
third  baronet,  and  first  Viscount  Wim- 
BORNE  (1873-1939),  politician,  was  born 
in  London  16  January  1873,  the  eldest  of 
the  five  sons  of  Ivor  Bertie  Guest,  first 
Baron  Wimbome.  He  was  brother  of 
F.  E.  Guest  [q.v.]. 

From  Eton  Guest  went  to  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  His  interest  early  centred 
in  poUtics,  and  after  contesting  Plymouth 
unsuccessfully  as  a  conservative  in  1898, 
he  was  returned  unopposed  for  that  con- 


stituency at  a  by-election  in  Februar 
1900,  and  held  the  seat  at  the  genera 
election  later  in  that  year.  Before  this  he 
had  served  in  South  Africa  as  a  captaii 
in  the  Dorset  Imperial  Yeomanry.  The 
tariff  reform  proposals  of  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain [q.v.]  caused  Guest  to  cross  the  floor 
of  the  House  with  his  cousin  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill  and  others  who  adhered  to  free 
trade.  As  a  result  of  this  at  the  general 
election  of  1906  Guest  was  returned  as  a 
liberal  for  Cardiff  Boroughs  by  a  majority 
then  unprecedented.  From  1906  to  1909 
he  was  chairman  of  the  royal  commission 
on  coast  erosion  and  afforestation.  In  1910 
he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  and 
accepted  a  peerage  to  strengthen  the 
government  representation  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  sat  until  his  father's  death 
in  1914  as  Baron  Ashby  St.  Ledgers.  He 
was  paymaster-general  from  1910  to  1912. 

Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
Wimborne  was  appointed  to  the  staff  of 
Lieutenant-General  Sir  Bryan  Mahon 
[q.v.],  then  commanding  a  division  at  the 
Curragh.  Shortly  afterwards  he  was 
offered  by  Asquith  the  post  of  lord-lieu- 
tenant of  Ireland.  His  interest  in  Irish 
affairs  led  him  to  accept  the  viceroyalty 
and  he  held  it  during  practically  the  whole 
war  (1915-1918).  His  love  of  sport  and 
generous  hospitality  made  him  popular, 
but  events  were  too  strong  for  him,  and 
the  rebellion  of  Easter  1916  followed.  It 
was  Wimbome's  idea  that  the  leaders, 
who  were  known  to  the  police,  should  be 
arrested  before  trouble  broke  out,  but  un- 
fortunately the  approval  of  this  sensible 
precaution  by  the  absent  chief  secretary, 
Augustine  Birrell  [q.v.],  could  not  be  ob- 
tained in  time,  and  nothing  was  done. 
After  the  event  there  was  a  public  inquiry, 
at  which  the  viceroy's  evidence  created 
a  favourable  impression,  and  he  consented 
to  withdraw  the  resignation  which  he  had 
sent  in.  However,  in  1918  he  was  asked 
by  the  government  to  report  on  the  sub- 
ject of  conscription  for  Ireland,  and  on  his 
refusal  to  support  this  measure  his  place 
was  taken  in  May  by  Lord  French.  Wim- 
borne was  advanced  to  a  viscountcy  in  the 
following  June. 

On  his  return  to  England  Wimbome 
ceased  to  take  any  share  in  politics,  and 
turned  his  attention  to  business  activities. 
His  sympathy  with  the  labour  party  en- 
abled him  at  the  time  of  the  General  Strike 
in  1926  to  accelerate  a  settlement  by 
helping  to  get  the  leaders  into  touch  with 
the  government.  In  the  crisis  of  1931  he 
supported  the  all-party  government,  and 


380 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Guthrie 


he  was  elected  the  first  president  of  the 
national  hberal  party. 

Wimborne  was  a  discriminating  con- 
noisseur of  the  arts.  He  was  always  fond 
of  sports  and  games.  He  had  a  tennis 
court  of  his  own  at  Canford  Manor,  and 
could  play  a  good  game ;  he  hunted,  and 
raced  for  a  short  time.  But  he  was  best 
known  as  a  polo  player,  and  as  a  patron 
of  polo.  He  was  captain  of  a  team  known 
as  the  'Quidnimcs',  which  could  hold  its 
own  with  any  of  the  best  clubs,  and  in 
1914  he  financed  a  team  which  went  out 
to  the  United  States  of  America.  It  must 
have  been  a  satisfaction  to  him  that  it 
secured  one  of  the  rare  British  victories 
in  the  depressing  series  of  British  matches 
with  America. 

In  1902  Wimborne  married  Alice 
Katherine  Sibell,  yoimger  daughter  of 
Robert  Wellesley  Grosvenor,  second  Lord 
Ebury :  a  son  and  two  daughters  were  born 
of  the  marriage.  Wimborne  died  in  Lon- 
don 14  June  1939,  and  was  succeeded  as 
second  viscoimt  by  his  son,  Ivor  Grosvenor 
(bom  1903),  who  was  elected  member  of 
parhament  for  Brecon  and  Radnor  in  1935. 

A  portrait  of  Wimborne  by  Sir  William 
Orpen  is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  15  June  1939.] 

Alfred  Cochkane. 

GUNTHER,  ROBERT  WILLIAM 
THEODORE  (1869-1940),  zoologist  and 
antiquary,  was  bom  at  Surbiton,  Surrey, 
23  August  1869,  the  only  son  of  the  zoo- 
logist Albert  Charles  Lewis  Gotthilf 
Giinther  [q.v.],  by  his  first  wife,  Roberta, 
sixth  and  youngest  daughter  of  Baillie 
John  Mcintosh,  of  St.  Andrews,  and  sister 
of  WiUiam  Carmichael  M'Intosh,  also  a 
well-known  zoologist  [q.v.].  His  mother 
died  ten  days  after  his  birth,  and  his  father 
married  again  in  1879.  He  was  educated 
at  University  College  School,  London,  and 
at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
continued  the  biological  tradition  of  his 
family  by  obtaining  in  1892  a  first  class 
in  animal  morphology,  as  the  school  of 
zoology  was  then  called.  In  1893  he  went 
to  the  Stazione  Zoologica  at  Naples,  where 
he  made  a  useful  study  of  the  relative  move- 
ments of  land  and  sea.  He  then  became 
lecturer  (1894)  and  tutor  (1896)  in  natural 
science  at  Magdalen  College,  and  in  1897 
he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  which  he 
held  imtil  1928.  He  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Linnean  Society  in  1900  and  was 
vice-president  in  1927-1928.  The  univer- 
sity of  St.  Andrews  conferred  upon  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  in  1925. 


Gunther's  guiding  motive  was  his 
veneration  for  the  science  of  the  past,  and 
it  is  as  an  antiquary  that  he  will  be  re- 
membered. After  the  war  of  1914-1918 
he  devoted  himself  to  the  collection  and 
preservation  of  instruments  and  writings 
relative  to  the  history  of  science,  and  it 
was  largely  through  his  agency  that  the 
Lewis  Evans  collection  of  scientific  instru- 
ments was  presented  to  the  university  of 
Oxford  in  1924.  For  the  welfare  of  this 
collection,  of  which  he  became  the  first 
curator,  he  used  all  his  considerable  powers 
of  persuasion  and  polemic.  He  induced 
the  university  to  house  it  in  a  part  of  the 
Old  Ashmolean  Building  and  he  was  most 
successful  in  extracting  from  rather  apa- 
thetic university  institutions  their  scienti- 
fic treasures  which  might  otherwise  have 
been  lost  or  dispersed,  or  at  least  would 
not  have  been  available  for  study.  The 
creation  in  1935  of  the  Museum  of  the 
History  of  Science,  in  which  various  col- 
lections are  now  incorporated,  and  the 
obtaining  for  it  of  the  whole  of  the  Old 
Ashmolean  Building — Oxford's  principal 
monument  of  seventeenth-century  science 
— was  Gimther's  worthiest  work. 

From  1934  to  1939  Gimther  was  univer- 
sity reader  in  the  history  of  science.  He 
pubUshed  many  works  on  this  subject, 
amongst  which  may  be  mentioned  his 
Early  British  Botanists  and  their  Gardens 
(1922),  the  fourteen  books,  some  original 
and  some  reprints,  which  constitute  the 
series  Early  Science  in  Oxford  (1920-1945), 
and  his  massive  and  beautifully  produced 
The  Astrolabes  of  the  World  (2  vols.,  1932). 
Some  of  these  are  marred  by  inaccuracies, 
due  to  the  author's  haste  to  cover  the  vast 
field  which  he  saw  open  before  him  and  to 
his  individualism  that  disinclined  him  to 
consult  those  with  specialized  knowledge, 
but  none  the  less  they  supply  information 
that  can  nowhere  else  be  obtained. 

Gimther  died  suddenly  at  South  Stoke, 
Oxfordshire,  9  March  1940.  He  married 
in  1900  Amy,  daughter  of  Eustace  Neville- 
Rolfe,  of  Heacham,  Norfolk,  consul- 
general  for  southem  Italy  (1895-1908), 
and  had  two  sons.  The  elder,  Eustace 
Rolfe  Gvmther,  a  most  promising  oceano- 
grapher,  died  as  the  result  of  an  accident 
in  May  1940. 

[Nature,  6  April  1940;  Proceedings  of  the 
Linnean  Society  of  London,  1.52nd  session, 
1939-1940,  part  iv ;  private  information.] 
F.  Sherwood  Taylor. 


GUTHRIE,       THOMAS       ANSTEY 
(1856-1934),  humorous  writer  imder  the 


881 


Guthrie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


pseudonym  of  F.  Anstey,  was  born  in 
London  8  August  1856,  the  eldest  of  the 
three  sons  of  Thomas  Anstey  Guthrie, 
military  tailor,  of  Cork  Street,  Burlington 
Gardens,  by  his  wife,  Augusta  Amherst 
Austen.  The  Guthries  came  from  Forfar- 
shire two  or  three  generations  back.  He 
was  educated  at  a  private  school  at  Sur- 
biton  (the  original  of  Crichton  House  in 
Vice  Versa),  at  King's  CoUege  School,  and 
at  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  where  he  read 
law.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1880,  but  never  prac- 
tised, and  eagerly  took  the  chance  of 
becoming  a  writer  given  him  by  the  great 
success  of  Vice  Versa  in  1882.  In  1886  he 
began  a  connexion  with  Punch  and  in  1887 
was  'called  to  the  Table'  at  the  Punch 
office.  He  there  began  sketches  and  stories 
and  the  series  of  'Voces  Populi',  'Mr. 
Punch's  Young  Reciter',  'Mr.  Punch's 
Model  Music-hall  Songs  and  Dramas', 
'  Mr.  Pimch's  Pocket  Ibsen '  (all  of  which 
were  published  in  book  form),  developing 
an  exquisite  talent  for  burlesque  and 
parody,  for  recording  and  subtly  trans- 
mitting the  quality  of  current  entertain- 
ment and  of  the  day-to-day  talk  of 
Londoners.  From  Vice  Versa  onwards  he 
continued  to  write  imaginative  fiction  in 
which  no  flights  of  fancy  were  barred.  He 
plainly  enjoyed  the  hurdles  at  which  he 
set  himself  in  having  to  make  plausible 
the  most  astonishing  transformations.  But 
in  his  humorous  reporting  he  stuck  faith- 
fully to  reality  and  his  parodies  contain 
description  and  criticism  which  no  social 
historian  of  the  'eighties  and  'nineties 
should  neglect. 

In  the  twenty-five  years  following  Vice 
Versa  Anstey  Guthrie  produced  a  succes- 
sion of  fantastic  novels,  notably  The  Brass 
Bottle  (1900)  and  Only  Toys!  (1903),  and 
made  one  or  two  excursions  into  more 
serious  writing  with  The  GianVs  Robe 
(1884)  and  The  Pariah  (1889).  But  his 
pubhc  knew  very  well  the  kind  of  books 
which  it  wanted  from  him.  Two  or  three 
of  his  works  were  successfully  produced  on 
the  stage,  The  Man  from  Blankley^s  (1893), 
The  Brass  Bottle,  and  Vice  Versa  as  a 
Christmas  play. 

Anstey  Guthrie  wrote  no  novel  after  In 
Brief  Authority  (1915),  but  in  1925  he 
issued  the  last  of  his  volumes  of  collected 
Punch  sketches.  The  Last  Load.  It  did  not 
sell  a  thousand  copies.  By  that  time  a  new 
public  had  grown  up  which  found  his 
reliance  on  magic  demoded ;  and  when  in 
1931  the  Book  Society  was  encouraged 
by  the   enthusiasm   of  George   Gordon, 


president  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  to 
issue  an  omnibus  volume  of  Anstey 's  work 
entitled  Humour  and  Fantasy,  although 
Anstey  was  gratified  he  was  not  in  the 
least  surprised  to  learn  that  the  volume 
had  not  met  the  taste  of  1931.  His  later 
literary  work  was  largely  devoted  to  trans- 
lating and  adapting  the  plays  of  Moli^re 
for  the  English  stage.  He  died  in  Kensing- 
ton 10  March  1934. 

Anstey  Guthrie's  autobiography,  pre- 
pared for  the  press  by  his  sister  and  his 
sister's  son.  Dr.  Eric  Millar,  of  the  British 
Museum,  was  published  posthumously  in 
1936  under  the  title  of  ^  Long  Retrospect ; 
a  bibliography  of  his  writings  is  printed 
at  the  end  of  that  volume. 

Anstey  Guthrie  was  a  man  of  most 
equable  disposition,  of  a  sociable  nature 
and  with  many  friends,  who  was  all  his 
life  grateful  for  having  been  endowed  with 
a  literary  talent  which  had  enabled  him 
to  live  a  much  more  agreeable  and  free  life 
than  he  had  ever  expected  when  he  had 
set  out  to  qualify  for  the  law.  Being 
singularly  free  from  the  weaknesses  and 
temptations  that  beset  literary  men,  he 
was  unruffled  by  his  gradual  eclipse,  and  sur- 
moimted  the  formidable  test  of  character 
of  achieving  in  his  twenties  an  immense 
literary  success  and  of  never  repeating  it. 
He  never  appealed  to  the  American  public 
and  his  English  public  was  never  big;  it 
was  discriminating  and  faithful  and  suffi- 
cient, and  he  was  grateful  for  it.  He  was 
a  man  of  few  wants,  a  dog-lover  and  a  life- 
long bachelor,  whose  pleasures  were  foreign 
travel  with  old  friends,  and  in  his  later 
years  he  made  exquisite  miniature  repro- 
ductions of  great  paintings.  He  lived  aU 
his  life  in  London.  In  appearance  he  was 
slightly  built  with  a  prominent  mous- 
tache ;  although  he  became  bald,  he  never 
looked  old,  even  when  advanced  in  his 
seventies. 

A  painting  of  Anstey  Guthrie  at  work 
in  his  home  in  Kensington  by  L.  Campbell 
Taylor  (1928-1929)  is  in  the  possession  of 
Dr.  Eric  Millar,  who  also  owns  a  crayon 
drawing  by  Laura  Aiming  Bell. 

[F.  Anstey,  A  Long  Retrospect,  1936;  pri- 
vate information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Douglas  Woodruff. 

HADDON,  ALFRED  CORT  (1855- 
1940),  anthropologist,  was  born  in  London 
24  May  1855,  the  second  child  and  elder 
son  of  John  Haddon,  head  of  a  firm  of 
type-founders  and  printers,  sprung  from 
farmer  stock  near  Naseby  and  with  a 
strong  Baptist  tradition.  From  his  mother, 


882 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Haddon 


Caroline  Waterman,  who  published  books 
for  children  under  the  name  of  '  Caroline 
Hadley',  Alfred  Haddon  imbibed  a  great 
insight  into  natural  history  and  skill  in 
drawing  patterns.  His  education  was 
broken,  as  his  father's  means  diminished, 
and  he  attended  various  schools  in  London, 
but,  struggle  as  he  might  to  follow  his 
father's  business  and  to  take  part  in  the 
religious  activities  of  his  family,  his  bent 
was  always  natural  history.  He  eked  out 
the  family  fortunes,  after  attending  even- 
ing classes  at  King's  College,  London,  by 
teaching;  but  all  the  time  he  was  col- 
lecting specimens  and  teaching  himself 
zoology.  At  length,  his  father  having  de- 
cided that  his  son  would  never  be  a  busi- 
ness man,  he  was  allowed  to  prepare  for 
the  university  and  in  1875  he  entered 
Christ's  College,  Cambridge.  His  chosen 
masters  were  F.  M.  Balfour  [q.v.],  to 
whom  he  dedicated  his  first  book.  An 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Embryology 
(1887),  and  (Sir)  Michael  Foster  [q.v.].  In 
1878  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (comparative  anatomy), 
and  in  1879  he  was  given  a  grant  by  the 
university  to  work  for  six  months  at  the 
Stazione  Zoologica  at  Naples,  after  which 
he  was  appointed  curator  of  the  Zoological 
Museum  at  Cambridge  and  a  university 
demonstrator  in  zoology. 

Haddon  did  not,  however,  at  this  time 
stay  long  in  Cambridge,  for  in  1880  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  zoology  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Science  and  assistant 
naturalist  to  the  Science  and  Art  Museum 
in  Dublin.  While  doing  pioneer  work  there 
in  the  scientific  classification  of  sea- 
anemones,  he  developed  an  ethnographical 
interest  in  western  Irish  life.  In  1888- 
1889,  having  given  up  his  post  at  the 
museum  owing  to  pressure  of  teaching,  by 
the  aid  of  a  grant  of  £500  he  went  to  the 
Torres  Strait  to  study  marine  biology,  and 
returned  with  many  specimens,  but  deter- 
mined to  record  as  much  as  possible  of  the 
life  of  the  people  before  contact  with 
Europeans  had  extinguished  native  cus- 
tom. The  saving  of  vanishing  data  became 
his  watchword,  and  important  papers  read 
before  the  British  Association  (1889)  and 
at  the  Royal  Institution  (1890,  published 
in  Nature,  30  October)  brought  him  into 
touch  with  (Sir)  J.  G.  Frazer  and  (Sir) 
W.  H.  Flower  [q.v.]  and  added  to  his  links 
with  T.  H.  Huxley  [q.v.].  Since  his  work 
io  Dublin  occupied  only  a  part  of  the  year, 
Haddon  accepted  a  part-time  lecturership 
in  physical  anthropology  at  Cambridge 
(1894-1898)    and    planned    the    famous 


Cambridge  anthropological  expedition  of 
1898-1899  to  the  Torres  Strait,  New 
Guinea,  and  Sarawak.  On  his  way  back 
he  stayed  with  Charles  Hose  [q.v.]  in 
Borneo  and  made  many  observations  for 
comparative  purposes.  In  1900  he  was 
appointed  university  lecturer  in  ethnology 
at  Cambridge,  and  in  1901  election  into 
a  fellowship  at  Christ's  College  permitted 
him  to  resign  his  Dublin  chair:  although 
he  had  to  lecture  in  London  (1904-1909) 
in  order  to  add  to  his  income,  it  enabled 
him  to  exercise  a  valuable  influence  at  the 
Horniman  Museum,  while  his  friendships 
with  (Sir)  G.  Laurence  Gomme,  Henry 
Woodd  Nevinson,  Edward  Clodd  [q.v.], 
and  George  Amos  Dorsey  widened  his 
sphere  of  influence  in  this  country  and 
opened  the  way  to  a  series  of  visits  to  the 
United  States  of  America.  In  1909  he  was 
able  to  reduce  his  outside  work  on  appoint- 
ment to  a  readership  in  ethnology  at 
Cambridge. 

The  meeting  of  the  British  Association 
in  Australia  in  1914  and  a  grant  from  the 
Percy  Sladen  Trust  enabled  Haddon  to 
visit  the  Torres  Strait  and  Papua  once 
more,  in  the  company  and  with  the  help 
of  his  younger  daughter  Kathleen  (later 
Mrs.  Rishbeth),  who  published  several 
books  on  string  figures:  Haddon  himself 
had  given  his  data  to  Mrs.  C.  Fumess 
Jayne,  who  published  them  as  String 
Figures  (1906).  A  piece  of  string  was  Had- 
don's  scheme  for  making  friends  with 
Papuan  and  other  children  who  eventually 
drew  their  mothers  and  even  their  fathers 
into  his  circle.  Returning  to  Europe,  Had- 
don worked  at  his  Torres  Strait  Reports 
and  in  1917  took  up  educational  and  wel- 
fare work  with  the  British  army  in  France 
until  he  was  compelled  to  withdraw  by 
temporary  ill  health.  After  the  war,  he 
acted  as  temporary  curator  of  the  Cam- 
bridge University  Museum  of  Archaeology 
and  Ethnology  and  organized  his  own 
South  Sea  collections.  With  his  help  the 
museum,  where  he  continued  to  work  until 
his  death,  became  a  primary  centre  for 
anthropological  study  and  research. 

The  financial  strain  which  had  been 
faced  by  his  wife  with  unwavering  courage 
and  by  Haddon  himself  with  boundless 
effort  was  now  eased  by  the  settlement  in 
life  of  his  children,  and  in  1925  he  retired 
on  completing  his  seventieth  year.  That 
same  year  Christ's  College  celebrated  his 
birthday  by  a  dinner  in  hall,  the  first 
occasion  on  which  women  dined  in  a  men's 
college  hall  in  Cambridge,  an  appropriate 
event  for  a  champion  of  women's  education, 


383 


Haddon 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


1941  (portrait) ;  List  of  over  600  books  andfl 
articles  by  A.  C.  Haddon  compiled  by  MissV 
E.  S.  Fegan  and  deposited  in  the  Haddon 
library  at  the  Museum  of  Archaeology  and 
Ethnology,  Cambridge;  A.  H.  Quiggin,  Had- 
don the  Head  Hunter  (select  bibliography), 
1942;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] H.  J.  FtEURE, 

HADFIELD,  Sir  ROBERT  ABBOTT, 

baronet  (1858-1940),  metallurgist  and 
industrialist,  was  born  at  Attercliffe,  then 
a  village  adjoining  Sheffield,  28  November 
1858,  the  only  son  of  Robert  Hadfield,  of 
Sheffield,  by  his  wife,  Marianne  Abott,  the 
daughter  of  a  breeder  of  shire  horses  in 
Oxfordshire.  He  came  of  a  family  long 
associated  with  Edale  in  Derbyshire, 
which  had  given  to  Sheffield  a  member  of 
parliament  (George  Hadfield,  q.v.)  and  a 
master  cutler.  The  elder  Robert  Hadfield 
entered  the  steel  trade,  and  in  1872  set  up 
a  works  for  the  production  of  steel  cast- 
ings, then  a  novelty  in  England.  Large 
hydraulic  cylinders  and  steel  projectiles, 
until  then  only  made  in  France,  were 
among  the  products,  and  the  foundations 
of  a  great  armament  industry  were  thus 
laid. 

Hadfield  was  educated  at  the  Collegiate 
School  in  Sheffield,  where  he  became  in- 
terested in  chemistry  and  made  experi- 
ments at  home  on  the  melting  of  steel,  so 
that  when,  after  a  few  months  in  the  steel 
firm  of  Messrs.  Jonas  and  Colver,  he 
entered  his  father's  works,  his  first  act  was 
to  establish  a  laboratory.  A  problem 
arising  in  the  works  led  him  to  make  a 
systematic  study  of  the  alloys  of  iron  with 
manganese  and  with  silicon.  In  1882  he 
discovered  that  whilst  increasing  the  pro- 
portion of  manganese  beyond  the  usual 
limit  made  steel  brittle  and  useless,  a 
further  increase  reversed  the  effect,  and  i 
a  steel  with  12-14  per  cent,  of  manganese 
had  remarkable  properties.  Although  ap- 
parently soft,  a  file  would  slip  over  its 
surface  without  abrading  it.  Quenching 
in  water  from  a  white  heat  made  the  new 
alloy  softer,  whilst  all  previously  known 
steels  were  hardened  by  such  treatment. 
An  indentation  could  be  made  with  a 
chisel,  but  the  steel  could  not  be  cut 
except  by  an  emery  disk.  This  steel  has 
found  wide  application  in  crushing  and 
grinding  machinery,  in  tramway  and  rail- 
way crossings,  and  wherever  resistance  to 
abrasion  is  reqmred.  Its  lack  of  brittle- 
ness  also  led  to  its  adoption  for  helmets  in 
the  war  of  1914f-1918. 

The    silicon    steels    which   were   next 
examined  proved  to  have  interesting  elec- 


although  he  disliked  the  movement  called 
feminism.  For  his  eightieth  birthday 
(1935),  Mr.  Louis  Clarke,  the  curator 
of  the  museum,  presented  on  behalf  of 
many  friends  a  case  containing  10,000 
anthropological  photographs,  most  of 
them  from  Haddon's  own  negatives, 
which  he  placed  in  the  Haddon  library 
at  the  museum.  The  Reports  of  the  Cam- 
bridge Anthropological  Expedition  to  Torres 
Straits,  of  which  volumes  ii  to  vi  had 
appeared  between  1901  and  1912,  were 
completed,  after  much  consideration,  in 
1935  by  the  publication  of  volume  i.  But 
characteristically  there  was  no  cessation 
in  planning  new  work.  In  the  next  five 
years  Haddon  published  (with  Miss  L.  E. 
Start)  Iban  or  Sea  Dayak  Fabrics  and  their 
Patterns  (1936),  the  result  of  years  of  study 
of  textile  designs,  and  Canoes  of  Oceania 
(with  Mr.  James  Hornell,  3  vols.,  1936- 
1938),  and  he  completed  Smoking  and 
Tobacco  Pipes  in  New  Guinea,  an  im- 
portant study  of  cultural  diffusion  which 
was  published  posthumously  in  1946.  His 
death  took  place  at  Cambridge  a  few 
weeks  later  20  April  1940. 

As  a  humanist,  a  great  teacher,  a 
scientific  pioneer,  and  a  keen  champion 
of  the  underprivileged,  Haddon  left  a 
gracious  memory,  salted  with  wit  and  illu- 
minated by  many  friendships.  The  Torres 
Strait  expedition  of  1898-1899  marked  an 
epoch  in  anthropological  research,  and  it 
is  characteristic  of  Haddon  that  it  brought 
together  a  group  of  distinguished  students 
who  all  kept  their  affectionate  respect  for 
their  leader  during  their  lifetime. 

Haddon  married  in  1881  Fanny  Eliza- 
beth (died  1937),  daughter  of  Thomas 
Rose,  draper,  of  Bedford,  and  sister  of  his 
Cambridge  friend  John  Holland  Rose,  the 
historian.  They  had  a  son  and  two 
daughters.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1899 
and  received  the  honorary  doctorate  of 
science  from  the  universities  of  Manchester 
and  Perth  (Western  Australia).  He  was 
president  of  Section  H  (anthropology)  of 
the  British  Association  in  1902  and  1905, 
and  in  1902-1904  of  the  Royal  Anthro- 
pological Institute  of  Great  Britain  which 
appointed  him  Huxley  memorial  lecturer 
in  1920  and  awarded  him  the  first  Rivers 
memorial  medal  in  1924. 

Haddon's  portrait  was  painted  by  P.  A. 
de  Laszlo  in  1924  and  hangs  in  the  hall  of 
Christ's  College ;  the  artist  painted  a  copy 
for  the  Haddon  library,  and  presented  a 
third  to  the  family. 

[The  Times,  22  April  1940 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  January 


884 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Hadfield 


trical  properties,  including  a  high  resis- 
tance. (Sir)  William  Barrett  found  that 
with  3-4  per  cent,  of  silicon  and  as  little 
as  possible  of  other  elements  the  magnetic 
hysteresis  was  exceptionally  low,  and  in 
1899  these  properties  were  described  in  a 
joint  paper  communicated  to  the  Royal 
Society  of  Dublin.  The  new  steel  was 
difficult  to  roll,  and  it  was  some  years 
before  it  was  produced  commercially.  Its 
effect  has  been  to  reduce  greatly  the 
weight  and  bulk  of  electrical  transformers. 

From  this  time  onwards  Hadfield  con- 
tinued his  researches  on  the  alloys  of  iron, 
but  no  other  novel  steel  resulted,  although 
important  additions  were  made  to  the 
knowledge  of  alloy  steels.  BUs  work  was 
always  patient  and  systematic,  a  wide 
range  of  alloys  being  prepared  and  their 
physical  and  mechanical  properties  studied 
in  detail.  He  often  collaborated  with 
physicists  interested  in  the  properties  of 
metals,  supplying  them  with  series  of 
alloys  of  graduated  composition  and 
having  tests  conducted  in  his  own  labora- 
tories. In  this  way,  in  collaboration  first 
with  Sir  James  Dewar  [q.v.]  and  then  with 
the  staff  of  the  Cryogenic  Laboratory  at 
Ley  den,  he  studied  the  properties  of 
metals  at  low  temperatures  down  to  that 
of  liquid  hydrogen,  the  behaviour  of  man- 
ganese steel  again  proving  to  be  ano- 
malous. He  was  led  by  these  researches 
to  enter  into  the  controversies  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  process  of  hardening  of  steel, 
maintaining  the  'carbonist'  view  of  his 
friend  John  Oliver  Arnold  against  the 
insistance  of  most  metallurgists  on  the 
importance  of  allotropy.  The  modern 
theory  incorporates  both  views. 

In  1888,  on  the  death  of  his  father, 
Hadfield  became  chairman  and  managing 
director  of  the  company  at  the  early  age 
of  thirty.  He  was  brought  into  contact 
with  manufacturing  problems,  and  made 
important  experiments  on  the  production 
of  sound  steel  ingots.  The  great  develop- 
ment of  the  armament  side  of  the  business 
led  him  to  give  special  attention  to  the 
deformation  of  steel  at  high  velocities,  and 
he  made  many  experiments  on  armour- 
piercing  shells.  Much  work  on  corrosion 
was  carried  out  in  his  laboratories,  and 
ie  was  active  in  calling  attention  to  the 
jconomic  effects  of  wastage  by  corrosion. 
Interest  in  the  subject  was  stimulated, 
Jut  no  novel  results  were  obtained. 

Hadfield  was  keenly  interested  in  the 
listory  of  metallurgy.    In  the  course  of 

\isit  to  Ceylon  he  studied  a  collection  of 
iinhalese  objects  of  the  fifth  century  a.d. 


and  demonstrated  the  method  by  which 
they  had  been  hardened.  He  made  a  fuller 
study  of  the  Delhi  iron  pillar,  dated  about 
A.D.  300.  His  most  extensive  work  in  this 
field  was  his  examination  of  the  alloys  of 
iron  prepared  by  Michael  Faraday  and 
James  Stodart  between  1818  and  1822, 
preserved  at  the  Royal  Institution.  Of 
these  he  published  a  detailed  series  of 
analyses  and  micrographic  studies,  ulti- 
mately collected  into  a  book,  Faraday  and 
his  Metallurgical  Researches  . . .  (1931).  In 
1925  he  had  published  Metallurgy  and  its 
Influence  on  Modern  Progress,  containing 
a  review  of  the  past  and  present  condition 
of  the  science  and  an  account  of  his  own 
researches,  with  reflections  on  the  needs 
of  education  and  research. 

Hadfield  was  throughout  his  life  one  of 
the  hardest  of  workers,  and  his  capacity 
for  sustained  work  was  equalled  by  his 
ability  to  save  labour  by  systematic  organi- 
zation. He  was  an  enlightened  employer, 
and  in  1891  he  was  one  of  the  first  to 
introduce  an  eight-hour  day  into  his 
works.  He  was  proud  of  the  reputation  of 
his  firm,  and  built  up  within  it  a  strong 
organization  for  experimental  work.  New 
scientific  devices,  such  as  the  thermo- 
electric pyrometer,  were  quickly  intro- 
duced. After  an  extremely  serious  illness 
and  an  operation  which  would  have  in- 
capacitated most  men  he  resumed  work, 
and  until  the  last  years  of  his  life  showed 
little  sign  of  age.  He  died  at  his  house  on 
Kingston  Hill,  Surrey,  30  September  1940. 

Hadfield  had  an  exceptionally  wide 
circle  of  scientific  friends  and  correspon- 
dents and  maintained  particularly  close 
connexions  with  his  French  colleagues. 
His  hospitality  contributed  much  to  the 
success  of  international  scientific  meetings 
held  in  Great  Britain,  especially  during  his 
presidency  of  the  Faraday  Society  from 
1914  to  1920.  For  many  years  he  rarely 
missed  a  council  meeting  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute,  of  which  he  was  president 
from  1905  to  1907.  His  reputation  as  a 
scientific  investigator  rests  mainly  on  his 
discovery  of  manganese  steel,  but  his  in- 
fluence on  the  development  of  alloy  steels, 
both  through  the  activities  of  his  own 
company  and  its  research  staff"  and  also 
through  his  enthusiasm  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  metallurgical  studies,  was  very 
considerable.  He  was  knighted  in  1908 
and  created  a  baronet  in  1917.  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1909  and  received  several 
academic  and  numerous  other  honours, 
including  the  freedom  of  the  City  of 
London  in  1917  and  of  Sheffield  in  1939. 


885 


Hadfield 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hadfield  married  in  1894  Frances  Belt, 
daughter  of  Colonel  Samuel  Morris 
Wickersham,  of  Philadelphia,  but  had  no 
issue.  Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  the  Hadfields  founded  a  hospital  at 
Wimereux,  and  Lady  Hadfield's  devoted 
services  during  the  whole  war  were  recog- 
nized by  her  appointment  as  C.B.E.  in 
1918.  The  Hadfleld-Spears  ambulance  was 
again  active  in  France  in  1939. 

[The  Times,  2  October  1940;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  10, 
December  1940  (portrait);  private  informa- 
tion.] C.  H.  Desch. 

HADOW,  GRACE  ELEANOR  (1875- 
1940),  principal  of  the  Society  of  Oxford 
Home-Students  (afterwards  St.  Anne's 
Society)  and  pioneer  in  social  work,  was 
born  at  South  Cemey  vicarage,  near  Ciren- 
cester, 9  December  1875.  She  was  the 
yovmgest  child  and  fourth  daughter  of 
William  Elliot  Hadow,  vicar  of  South 
Cerney,  a  noted  preacher  in  his  own  dis- 
trict, by  his  wife,  Mary  Lang,  second 
daughter  of  Henry  Cornish,  of  Tavistock. 
Sir  William  Henry  Hadow  [q.v.]  was  the 
eldest  child  and  was  godfather  to  Grace. 

Miss  Hadow  had  no  systematic  early 
education,  but  her  swift  questing  mind  led 
her  to  read  widely,  and  to  take  full  ad- 
vantage of  every  opportmiity  for  learning 
and,  largely  through  her  close  association 
with  her  eldest  brother,  she  quickly  de- 
veloped a  keen  and  scholarly  interest  in 
literature,  music,  and  drama.  In  her 
twenty-fifth  year  she  won  her  way  to 
Somerville  College,  Oxford,  and  in  1903 
was  placed  in  the  first  class  in  the  final 
honour  school  of  English  language  and 
Uterature.  After  holding  temporary  aca- 
demic posts  at  Bryn  Mawr,  Pennsylvania, 
and  at  Somerville  CoUege,  she  was  ap- 
pointed tutor  in  English  at  Lady  Margaret 
Hall,  Oxford,  in  1906,  and  lecturer  in  1909. 
In  1917  she  became  head  of  a  subsection 
of  the  welfare  department  of  the  Ministry 
of  Munitions  and  in  1920  secretary  of 
Barnett  House,  Oxford,  where  she  had 
further  scope  for  her  creative  powers  in 
social  work,  especially  in  rural  districts. 
From  its  inception  in  1915  the  Women's 
Institute  movement  owed  much  to  her, 
and  from  Barnett  House  she  launched  the 
movement  for  rural  community  councils 
by  starting  one  in  Oxfordshire.  In  1929 
she  became  principal  of  the  Society  of 
Oxford  Home-Students.  She  combined 
with  remarkable  success  the  work  of  the 
head  of  an  academic  body  with  that  of 
a  pioneer  in  social  work.    The  academic 


status  of  the  society  rose,  a  fine  library  1 
was  built,  and  a  site  for  futxure  centralj 
buildings  secured.  She  established  happy! 
relations  with  her  220  scattered  studentsj 
and  their  many  hostesses,  and  she  was! 
known  by  her  colleagues  not  only  as  aj 
great  principal  but  as  a  great  friend. 

Meanwhile  Miss  Hadow's  social  andl 
educational  work  continued.  Her  wittyj 
and  brilliant  speech,  her  ability  as  a  chair- 
man, her  constructive  ideas  and  zeal  in 
carrying  them  out  were  valued  not  only 
by  such  bodies  as  the  National  Federation 
of  Women's  Institutes,  of  which  she  was 
vice-chairman  from  1916  to  1940,  or  by 
the  Conference  on  Commonwealth  Rela- 
tions held  in  Sydney  in  1988  of  which  she 
was  a  conspicuous  member,  but  by  the 
innumerable  Uttle  village  commiuiities  to 
which  she  selflessly  devoted  her  shining 
gifts,  and  which  so  largely  owed  their 
existence  to  her.  She  died  in  London  191 
January  1940. 

Miss   Hadow's    chief  publications   ar 
The  Oxford  Treasury  of  English  Literaturi 
(edited  with  W.  H.  Hadow,  3  vols.,  1906 
1908) ;  Ideals  of  Living   (an  anthology  J 
1911);  and  Chaucer  and  his  Times  (1914)| 

[The  Times,  22  January  1940 ;  H,  C.  Deneke 
Grace  Hadow,  1946 ;  The  Ship  (Year  Book  o| 
the  Society  of  Oxford  Home-Students,  01c 
Students'  Association),  No.  29,  1939  (SupplC'J 
ment) ;  personal  knowledge.]         L.  Grier. 

HADOW,  Sir  (WILLIAM)  HENR^ 
(1859-1937),  scholar,  educationist,  and" 
critic  and  historian  of  music,  was  born  at 
Ebrington,  Gloucestershire,  27  December 
1859,  the  eldest  son  of  WiUiam  Elliot 
Hadow,  curate,  afterwards  vicar,  of  Eb- 
rington, by  his  wife,  Mary  Lang,  second 
daughter  of  Henry  Cornish,  of  Tavistock. 
After  more  than  seven  years  at  Malvern 
College  he  went  up  in  1878  to  Worcester 
College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  succes- 
sively scholar,  lecturer  (1884),  fellow, 
tutor,  and  dean  (1889),  and  finally  honor- 
ary fellow  (1909).  He  obtained  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1880)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1882),  and  after  taking  his 
B.A.  degree  studied  music  in  both  Ger- 
many and  England  and  took  the  B.Mus. 
degree  in  1890.  He  lectured  in  both  clas- 
sics and  music,  and  examined  in  the  final 
schools  of  literae  humaniores,  modern  lan- 
guages, and  English.  He  was  a  brilliant 
lecturer,  speaking  always  without  notes 
(in  his  lectures  on  Aristotle  even  without 
a  text),  and  possessing  a  remarkable  fund 
of  apt  and  often  witty  illustration.  He 
composed  chamber  music  and  songs  (some 


386 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hadow,  W.  H. 


of  high  merit),  and  stimulated  the  per- 
formance of  music  in  Oxford  at  a  time 
when  the  art  was  still  of  little  account  in 
the  eyes  of  authority.  But  his  practical 
knowledge  of  music  was  most  important 
as  the  foimdation  of  his  critical  and 
historical  writings.  The  two  small  volumes 
of  Studies  in  Modern  Music  (1892  and 
1895)  opened  a  new  era  in  musical  criti- 
cism. By  setting  music  against  a  back- 
ground of  general  culture  Hadow  broke 
down  the  barrier  between  the  professional 
critic  and  the  layman,  and  made  clear  the 
position,  which  he  maintained  throughout 
his  Ufe,  that  music  has  a  rightful  place  in 
a  hberal  education.  Sonata  Form  (1896) 
was  ostensibly  a  text-book ;  but  its  lumi- 
nous exposition  in  simple  terms  is  adorned 
with  the  grace  of  style  which  marked  all 
Hadow's  writing.  In  1897  came  A  Croa- 
tian Composer,  in  which  the  Slavonic 
origin  of  Josef  Haydn  is  asserted.  Later 
research  disputes  Hadow's  conclusions, 
but  the  value  of  his  work  on  Haydn's 
melodic  style  remains.  His  masterpiece. 
The  Viennese  Period  (vol.  v  of  the  Oxford 
History  of  Music,  of  which  he  was  general 
editor),  was  published  in  1904.  Between 
1906  and  1908  he  joined  with  his  sister 
Grace  Hadow  [q.v.]  in  producing  the  three 
volumes  of  the  Oxford  Treasury  of  English 
Literature. 

In  later  years  Hadow  wrote  short  books 
on  Music  (1924),  Church  Music  (1926), 
English  Music  (1931),  and  Richard  Wagner 
(1934) ;  in  1928  he  published  a  volume  of 
Collected  Essays.  He  was  an  enthusiastic 
admirer  of  the  Tudor  music  brought  to 
light  by  Dr.  Edmund  Horace  Fellowes  and 
others.  'They  call  William  Byrd  the  Eng- 
lish Palestrina ',  he  once  remarked ; '  I  shall 
not  rest  until  Palestrina  is  called  the 
Italian  Byrd!' 

In  1909  the  current  of  Hadow's  life  was 
turned  into  a  very  different  channel.  He 
became  principal  of  Armstrong  College, 
Newcastle,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
1919.  Here  he  proved  himself  as  able  in 
administration  as  he  had  been  in  scholar- 
ship, and  from  1916  to  1918  was  vice- 
chancellor  of  the  university  of  Durham. 
In  1918,  the  year  in  which  he  was  knighted, 
he  was  made  director  of  education  for  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  on 
lines  of  communication  in  France,  and 
shortly  afterwards  was  appointed  assistant 
director  of  staff  duties  (education)  at  the 
War  Office.  For  his  war-time  services  he 
was  appointed  C.B.E.  in  1920. 

From  1919  to  1930  Hadow  was  vice- 
chancellor  of  the  imiversity  of  Sheffield. 


The  times  were  difficult,  and  external 
duties  entailed  frequent  absences ;  but 
Hadow's  masterly  powers  of  chairmanship 
expedited  the  dispatch  of  business,  and 
he  foimd  time  to  serve  many  and  varied 
causes  in  his  new  environment.  As  a 
public  speaker  he  was  unrivalled,  whatever 
the  audience  or  topic.  During  his  tenure 
of  office  at  Sheffield  the  chair  of  music  was 
established  (1927)  and  steps  were  taken 
towards  the  institution  of  degrees  in  music. 

The  fourteen  years  from  1920  to  1934 
saw  Hadow  as  a  leading  influence  in 
national  education.  During  this  period  he 
was  chairman  of  the  consultative  com- 
mittee of  the  Board  of  Education;  and 
under  his  chairmanship  no  less  than  six 
valuable  reports  were  issued.  One  of  these. 
The  Education  of  the  Adolescent  (1927), 
became  known  as  the  'Hadow  Report', 
and  was  for  many  years  the  indispensable 
handbook  of  teachers  and  administrators. 
In  neither  the  theory  nor  the  practice  of 
education  was  Hadow  a  specialist ;  but  his 
work  on  this  conmiittee  and  on  others  was 
far-reaching  in  its  effects.  Music,  a  subject 
especially  dear  to  his  heart,  he  was  enabled 
to  raise  from  the  humblest  place  in  the 
syllabus  to  one  of  fuU  equality  with  the 
rest.  His  breadth  of  outlook  and  the  range 
of  his  knowledge  persuaded  many  who 
would  have  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  profes- 
sional appeals ;  the  continuous  and  grow- 
ing attention  now  paid  to  the  training  of 
the  amateur  in  intelligent  listening  is  due 
first  and  foremost  to  Hadow's  efforts. 

When  about  to  retire  from  Sheffield  in 
1930,  Hadow  married  a  lifelong  friend, 
Edith,  second  daughter  of  John  Trout- 
beck,  precentor  of  Westminster  Abbey; 
she  predeceased  him  by  less  than  a  month. 
He  died  in  London  8  April  1937. 

Hadow's  honorary  degrees  were  numer- 
ous: he  was  D.Mus.  of  Oxford  (1909), 
Durham  (1910),  and  Wales  (1921) ;  LL.D. 
of  St.  Andrews  (1923),  Liverpool  (1925), 
and  Birmingham  (1930) ;  D.Litt.  of  Bristol 
(1925),  Leeds  (1930),  and  Sheffield  (1930). 

In  Hadow  a  brilliant  and  rapid  mind 
and  an  exceptional  memory  were  accom- 
panied by  great  charm  of  manner  and  a 
ready  wit.  His  academic  range  was  re- 
markable enough ;  even  more  striking  was 
the  adaptabihty  with  which  he  turned 
from  scholarship  to  administration.  He 
had  the  wisdom  to  set  others  on  the  road 
rather  than  attempt  everything  himself; 
and  the  number  of  those  inspired  by  his 
initiative,  coimsel,  and  encouragement 
must  indeed  be  large. 

There  is  a  pencil  drawing  of  Hadow  by 


387 


Hadow,  W.  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Sir  William   Rothenstein  (1920)  in   the 
university  of  Sheffield. 

[The  Times,  10  April  1937;  Grove's  Dic- 
tionary of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  ii  and  supplementary  volume,  edited  by 
H.  C.  Colles;  Musical  Times,  May  1937; 
Music  and  Letters,  July  1937;  Sheffield  Uni- 
versity Magazine,  June  1938 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]      F.  H.  Shera. 

HALDANE,  ELIZABETH  SANDER- 
SON (1862-1937),  bom  in  Edinburgh  27 
May  1862,  was  the  only  daughter  of 
Robert  Haldane,  of  Cloan,  Auehterarder, 
Perthshire,  by  his  second  wife,  Mary 
Ehzabeth,  second  daughter  of  Richard 
Burdon-Sanderson,  of  West  Jesmond  and 
Otterburn  Dene,  Northumberland,  whose 
second  son  was  Richard  Burdon  Haldane, 
Viscovmt  Haldane,  and  the  fourth,  John 
Scott  Haldane  [qq.v.]. 

Elizabeth  Haldane  was  educated  in  a 
highly  cultivated  atmosphere  at  home, 
where  she  shared  her  brothers'  tutors  and 
entered  into  their  discussions  on  philo- 
sophy, science,  and  poUtics,  which  doubt- 
less helped  to  develop  her  xmusual  mental 
attainments.  About  the  age  of  fifteen  she 
attended  a  private  school  in  Edinburgh 
where  her  pre-eminence  in  literature, 
mathematics,  and  languages  became 
rapidly  apparent. 

After  the  death  of  her  father  in  1877, 
Miss  Haldane,  with  her  mother,  spent  a 
winter  in  Paris,  where  she  formed  con- 
genial friendships  and  gained  a  wider  out- 
look on  life,  which  ultimately  led  to  her 
writing  the  life  of  Descartes.  Her  home 
life  was  afterwards  spent  partly  in  London 
and  partly  at  Cloan,  where  her  devotion 
to  her  mother  somewhat  curtailed  her 
early  activities,  but  in  these  comparatively 
quiet  years  she  gained  that  experience 
and  knowledge  which  were  to  fit  her  so 
admirably  for  deaUng  later  with  wider 
spheres  of  interest,  and  stimulated  her 
efforts  for  the  welfare  of  humanity,  a  trait 
inherited  from  both  her  parents. 

During  this  early  period  Miss  Haldane 
organized  reading  circles,  and  foxinded  the 
Auehterarder  institute  and  library  of 
which  she  remained  the  honorary  secre- 
tary for  fifty -three  years.  This  brought 
her  into  contact  with  Andrew  Carnegie 
[q.v.],  who  personally  appointed  her  ia 
trustee  of  the  United  Kingdom  Trust,  the 
first  woman  to  be  so  distinguished.  Her 
unbroken  attendance  at  meetings  of  the 
trust  from  1914  to  1937  constitutes  a  fine 
record,  and  it  is  an  illustration  of  her  inde- 
fatigable interest  in  all  that  she  xmdertook. 


She  was  prominently  associated  with  the 
formation  (1890)  of  the  Scottish  Women's 
Benefit  Society,  the  members  of  which 
were  later  admitted  to  the  Ancient  Order 
of  Foresters,  the  pioneers  of  old  age  pen- 
sions for  women  in  Scotland.  She  worked 
for  some  time  in  London  luider  Octavia 
Hill  [q.v.]  in  her  well-known  efforts  to 
improve  the  housing  conditions  of  the 
poor,  and  in  1884  she  helped  to  establish  a 
similar  organization  in  Edinburgh.  In  the 
pioneer  days  of  the  Westminster  Health 
Society  (founded  in  1903)  she  proved  a 
tower  of  strength  on  the  National  Coun- 
cil for  Maternity  and  Child  Welfare,  and 
Carnegie  House  owes  its  existence  largely 
to  her  influence. 

The  Institute  of  Industrial  Psychology, 
Aldwych  House,  where  vocational  goiid- 
ance  tests  were  carried  out,  interested  Miss 
Haldane  profoundly,  while  on  the  artistic 
side  she  was  equally  enthusiastic.  The 
salvation  by  the  Carnegie  Trust  of  the 
Sadler's  Wells  Theatre  and  Ballet  was 
inspired  by  her,  and  she  maintained  her 
interest  in  its  activities.  In  the  years 
before  the  war  of  1914-1918,  when  her 
brother  Richard  was  secretary  of  state  for 
war,  she  played  a  large  part  in  encourag- 
ing the  extension  of  the  nursing  services, 
especially  in  connexion  with  the  Terri- 
torial Associations.  During  the  war  she 
was  mentioned  in  dispatches  and  received 
the  Reine  Elisabeth  medal  for  work  on 
behalf  of  Belgian  soldiers  and  the  housing 
of  Belgian  refugees. 

Miss  Haldane  was  the  first  woman  to  be 
made  a  J.P.  in  Scotland  (1920),  the  first 
to  receive  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  St.  Andrews  University  (1911),  and 
the  first  to  become  a  member  of  the  Scot- 
tish Savings  Committee  (1916).  She  was 
appointed  C.H.  in  1918.  She  was  vice- 
chairman  of  the  Territorial  Forces  Nursing 
Service  and,  among  a  host  of  other  ap- 
pointments, she  was  a  member  of  Queen 
Alexandra's  Imperial  Military  Nursing 
Service  Board,  the  General  Nursiag  Coun- 
cil (1928),  the  board  of  management  of  the 
Edinburgh  Royal  Infirmary,  the  Scottish 
Universities'  Committee  (1909),  the  royal 
commission  on  the  civil  service  (1912), 
and  the  advisory  committee  under  the 
Insurance  Act  of  1912.  She  was  deputy- 
president  of  the  Red  Cross  Society  for 
Perthshire,  and  one  of  the  governors  of 
Birkbeck  College. 

When  the  women's  suffrage  movement 
was  at  its  height.  Miss  Haldane  was 
opposed  to  militant  methods,  but  she 
worked  steadily  for  enlightened  freedom 


388 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Haldane,  J.  S. 


for  women  in  education  and  the  profes- 
sions. Her  political  views — she  remained 
a  staunch  liberal  all  her  life — might  be 
summed  up  in  the  words  of  her  great- 
imcle  Robert  Haldane,  of  Airthrey,  in  a 
speech  which  he  delivered  at  Stirling  in 
1794:  'The  true  character  of  a  democrat 
was  that  of  a  friend  of  his  coimtry,  a  lover 
of  peace,  and  one  who  cherished  the  senti- 
ment of  universal  benevolence.' 

In  addition  to  her  public  work  Miss 
Haldane  was  an  author  of  distinction. 
Besides  contributing  articles  to  various 
periodicals  and  worlds  of  reference  (includ- 
ing the  notice  of  her  brother  Richard  in 
this  Dictionary)  she  published  the  fol- 
lowing works:  HegeVs  Lectures  on  the 
History   of  Philosophy   (translated   with 

F.  Simpson,  3  vols.,  1892);  The  Wisdom 
and  Religion  of  a  German  Philosopher 
(Hegel,  1897) ;  James  Frederick  Ferrier 
(1899) ;  Descartes,  his  Life  and  Times 
(1905) ;  The  Philosophical  Works  of  Des- 
cartes  (translated  in   collaboration  with 

G.  T.  T.  Ross,  2  vols.,  1911-1912);  The 
British  Nurse  in  Peace  and  War  (1923) ; 
Mary  Elizabeth  Haldane  (edited  1925) ; 
George  Eliot  and  her  Times  (1927) ;  Mrs. 
Gaskell  and  her  Friends  (1930) ;  The  Scot- 
land of  Our  Fathers  (1933) ;  Scots  Gardens 
in  Old  Times  (1934) ;  and  From  One  Cen- 
tury to  Another  (1937). 

The  outstanding  features  of  Miss  Hal- 
dane's  character  were  love  of  humanity, 
courage,  and  ability,  coupled  with  a  clarity 
of  vision,  and  force  which  enabled  her  to 
overcome  any  obstacles  which  she  en- 
countered in  her  way.  Her  life  throughout 
was  marked  by  an  absence  of  self-con- 
sideration, and  an  abimdant  flow  of  little 
kindnesses  which  did  much  to  lighten 
for  many  the  daily  path  of  life.  There 
is  no  painted  portrait  of  her;  the  best 
photograph  is  that  in  the  Carnegie  Trust 
memorial  number.  She  was  of  medium 
height,  rather  thick  set,  not  exactly  good 
looking,  but  with  a  high  forehead  and 
an  expression  of  extreme  intelligence 
and  benevolence.  Her  practical-shaped 
hands  betokened  capability  in  what  they 
undertook.  She  died  at  St.  Margaret's 
Hospital,  Auchterarder,  24  December 
1937. 

[The  Times,  28  December  1937 ;  E.  S.  Hal- 
dane, From  One  Century  to  Another,  1937; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Ella  R.  Christie. 

HALDANE,  JOHN  SCOTT  (1860- 
1936),  physiologist  and  philosopher,  was 
born  in  Edinburgh  3  May  1860,  the  fourth. 


but  third  surviving,  son  of  Robert  Hal- 
dane, writer  to  the  signet,  of  Cloanden 
(later  called  Cloan),  Auchterarder,  Perth- 
shire, by  his  second  wife,  Mary  Elizabeth, 
second  daughter  of  Richard  Burdon- 
Sanderson,  of  West  Jesmond  and  Otter- 
burn  Dene,  Northumberland.  He  was  a 
yoimger  brother  of  Richard  Burdon  Hal- 
dane (afterwards  Viscoxmt  Haldane),  and 
an  elder  brother  of  Elizabeth  Sanderson 
Haldane  [qq.v.]. 

Educated  at  Edinburgh  Academy  and 
University,  and  at  the  university  of  Jena, 
Haldane  graduated  in  medicine  at  Edin- 
burgh in  1884,  and  was  appointed  demon- 
strator in  physiology  at  University  College, 
Dundee.  A  few  years  later  (1887)  he  joined 
his  uncle,  (Sir)  John  Burdon-Sanderson, 
Waynflete  professor  of  physiology  at  Ox- 
ford [q.v.],  as  a  demonstrator,  and  thence- 
forward Oxford  was  his  home.  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  New  College  in  1901, 
and  reader  in  physiology  at  Oxford  in 
1907,  resigning  the  latter  post  in  1913. 

At  Dundee  Haldane  had  investigated 
the  composition  of  the  air  in  dwellings  and 
schools,  and  soon  after  reaching  Oxford  he 
began  an  investigation  of  the  suffocative 
gases  encountered  in  coal  mines  and  wells, 
showing  their  dependence  on  spontaneous 
oxidation  processes  occurring  in  the  coal 
and  soU.  Turning  his  attention  to  carbon 
monoxide,  the  deadly  constituent  of  'after- 
damp' resulting  from  a  colliery  explosion, 
he  elucidated  by  experiments  on  animals 
and  on  himself  the  physiological  action  of 
this  gas,  and  in  1896  submitted  to  the 
home  secretary  an  important  report  on 
the  causes  of  death  in  colliery  explosions 
and  underground  fires,  which  clarified 
much  that  had  previously  been  uncertain 
and  gave  a  basis  on  which  to  develop 
means  for  overcoming  the  danger.  He 
thus  became  associated  with  the  mining 
profession,  an  association  which  he  main- 
tained throughout  his  life. 

Between  1892  and  1900  Haldane  in- 
troduced a  number  of  new  methods  for 
investigating  the  physiology  of  the  respi- 
ration and  blood  and  for  gas  analysis ; 
of  these  the  most  widely  used  were  his 
haemoglobinometer,  his  apparatus  for 
blood-gas  analysis  based  on  the  reaction 
between  oxy haemoglobin  and  ferricyanide, 
and  his  apparatus  for  the  accurate  and 
rapid  analysis  of  air  or  mixtures  of  gases. 

Of  Haldane's  researches  in  pure  physio- 
logy the  most  fundamental  was  published 
in  the  Journal  of  Physiology  (vol.  xxxii, 
1905)  in  his  classical  paper  on  the  regula- 
tion of  the  lung  ventilation,  in  collabora- 


389 


Haldane,  J.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


tion  with  John  Gillies  Priestley.  In  this 
he  showed  by  experiments  on  man  that 
the  regulation  of  the  breathing  is  in  the 
main  determined  by  the  exquisite  sensi- 
tiveness of  the  respiratory  centre  in  the 
brain  to  variations  in  the  tension  of  carbon 
dioxide  in  the  arterial  blood  which  reaches 
it,  and  thus  gave  a  clue  to  the  explanation 
of  the  automatic  changes  of  the  breathing 
which  occur  with  changes  in  bodily  acti- 
vity. The  further  development  of  this 
subject  was  to  occupy  him  for  a  number 
of  years  during  which  he  investigated  the 
influence  on  the  breathing  of  deficiency  of 
oxygen  and  of  muscular  exercise,  and  the 
part  played  by  the  vagus  nerves  in  co- 
ordinating the  respiratory  rhythm,  his 
work  having  an  important  bearing  on  the 
regulation  of  the  reaction  of  the  blood. 
During  the  course  of  this  work  he  led,  in 
1911,  a  scientific  expedition  to  Pike's 
Peak,  Colorado,  to  study  the  effects  of  low 
barometric  pressure  and  the  process  of 
acclimatization  to  high  altitudes.  His  dis- 
coveries revolutionized  current  ideas  about 
respiration,  and  the  precise  correlation  of 
function  which  he  had  so  clearly  demon- 
strated had  wide  implications  respecting 
the  co-ordination  of  other  bodily  func- 
tions. This  led  him  later  to  investigate 
the  cardiac  output  and  the  function  of  the 
kidney  in  relation  to  the  body's  physio- 
logical requirements. 

Haldane  was  an  invaluable  member 
from  1896  onwards  of  many  advisory  com- 
mittees to  government  departments  and 
was  responsible  for  much  of  the  experi- 
mental work  on  which  the  reports  of  these 
committees  were  based.  At  the  request  of 
the  Admiralty  he  investigated  the  problem 
of  deep  diving  with  a  view  to  reducing  the 
risk  of  '  caisson  disease '  due  to  the  libera- 
tion of  bubbles  of  nitrogen  in  the  blood 
during  the  ascent  to  the  surface.  Proving 
by  experiments  on  animals  and  on  man 
that  it  was  safe  to  start  decompression  by 
halving  the  absolute  air-pressure  to  which 
the  diver  had  been  exposed,  he  developed 
in  1907  a  detailed  method  of '  stage  decom- 
pression' by  which  the  diver  may  be 
brought  safely  to  the  surface,  and  later 
extended  these  instructions  to  include 
other  circumstances  when  the  industrial 
worker  is  obliged  to  work  in  compressed 
air.  The  risks  of  'caisson  disease'  were 
thereby  practically  abolished,  and  the 
method  of  stage  decompression  was  uni- 
versally adopted. 

During  the  South  African  war  Hal- 
dane's  influence  was  largely  responsible 
for  the  improvement  of  the  inadequate 


diet  at  first  provided  in  the  concentration 
camps  and  thus  abolished  a  serious  menace 
to  health.  During  the  war  of  1914-1918 
he  identified  for  the  War  Office  the  type 
of  poison  gas  introduced  by  the  Germans 
and  the  nature  of  the  effects  produced, 
and  subsequently  did  further  work  on  the 
pathology  and  treatment  of  cases  of  war- 
gas  poisoning  both  in  the  acute  and  in 
the  chronic  stages,  designing  a  portable 
oxygen  administration  apparatus  for  use 
in  the  field. 

Throughout  his  life  Haldane's  researches 
continued  on  problems  connected  with 
mining.  His  demonstration  in  1905  of  the 
importance  of  the  wet-bulb  temperature 
in  limiting  man's  power  to  withstand  a 
high  environmental  temperature  threw 
much  light  on  the  genesis  of  heat-stroke 
in  the  tropics  and  on  the  significance  of 
the  high  temperatures  encountered  in  the 
deep  workings  of  mines.  As  director  (1912) 
of  a  mining  research  laboratory  founded 
at  Bentley  colliery,  near  Doncaster,  by  ' 
the  Doncaster  coUiery  owners  and  trans- 
ferred in  1921  to  Birmingham  where  it  had  hi 
the  support  of  the  British  Colliery  Owners'B 
Research  Association,  and  as  a  member  of 
the  Safety  in  Mines  Research  Board  since 
its  inception  in  1921,  he  was  engaged  with 
questions  concerned  with  hot  and  deep 
mines,  mine  ventilation,  mine-rescue  ap- 
paratus, underground  fires  due  to  spon- 
taneous oxidation  of  coal,  illumination  at 
the  coal  face,  and  pulmonary  disease 
caused  by  the  inhalation  of  dust— all  prob- 
lems directly  bearing  on  the  safety  and 
health  of  the  miner.  In  1921  he  was  made 
an  honorary  professor  of  mining  in  Bir- 
mingham University,  and  his  great  ser- 
vices to  the  mining  profession  were 
recognized  when  he  was  elected  president 
of  the  Institution  of  Mining  Engineers  in 
1924,  a  position  which  he  held  until  1928. 

In  his  book  Respiration  (1922,  new  ed. 
1935),  founded  on  the  Silliman  memorial 
lectures  delivered  in  Yale  University  in 
1916,  Haldane  left  a  record  of  his  achieve- 
ments in  pure  and  applied  science  from 
which  an  estimate  can  be  formed  of  the 
profound  influence  which  he  had  on 
physiology.  He  invariably  made  his  ex- 
perimental investigations  both  on  himself 
and  on  those  of  his  colleagues  who  were 
ready  to  act  as  his  subjects,  and  the  study 
of  human  physiology,  and  no  less  of  medi- 
cine and  hygiene,  owes  a  lasting  debt  to  him. 

Destined  for  a  life  of  active  research  in 
natural  science,  Haldane  was  greatly 
attracted  by  philosophy,  which  indeed 
may  be  said  to  have  guided  and,  in  its 


390 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Halliburton 


turn,  to  have  been  inspired  by  his  scientific 
work  in  a  search  for  a  consistent  theory 
which  should  ofifer  an  inteUigible  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomena  of  life.  Biology  he 
igarded  as  an  independent  science  with 

ioms  and  modes  of  interpretation  dif- 
ferent from  those  appropriate  to  the  physi- 
cal sciences,  since  it  includes  an  aspect  of 
man's  experience  which  cannot  be  inter- 
preted in  terms  of  the  physical  sciences 
alone.  He  himself  showed  in  his  own  work 
how  immensely  valuable  chemical  and 
physical  methods  of  research  could  prove 
in  physiological  investigations.  Physio- 
logy implied  to  him  the  study  of  the  living 
organism  as  a  whole,  and  as  his  own 
researches  threw  into  clear  relief  the 
astonishing  delicacy  with  which  the  dif- 
ferent functions  of  the  body  are  correlated 
during  normal  life  he  was  led  to  the  con- 
clusion that  from  the  physiological  stand- 
point the  phenomena  of  life  'express 
the  maintenance  of  a  co-ordinated  whole 
which  includes  within  itself  relations  to 
environment  as  well  as  the  mutual  rela- 
tionships of  details  of  internal  structure 
and  activity'.  These  philosophical  views 
were  developed  mainly  in  the  last  two 
decades  of  his  life  in  a  series  of  books 
which  includes  The  Sciences  and  Philo- 
sophy (1929,  the  Gifford  lectures  delivered 
at  Glasgow  in  1927-1928),  The  Philoso- 
phical Basis  of  Biology  (1931 ,  the  Donnellan 
lectures  delivered  at  Dublin  University  in 
1930),  and  The  Philosophy  of  a  Biologist 
(1935). 

In  his  scientific  investigations  Haldane 
drew  no  sharp  distinction  between  pure 
and  applied  science.  Far  reaching  as  were 
his  contributions  to  academic  science  it 
was  his  practice  to  devote  himself  con- 
currently with  his  laboratory  researches 
in  this  field  to  problems  in  applied  science, 
either  in  connexion  with  mining  or  with 
questions  on  which  his  advice  had  been 
sought  by  government  departments.  A 
review  of  his  work  as  a  whole  shows  how 
closely  interwoven  were  these  two  aspects. 
A  study  of  the  effects  on  man  caused  by 
breathing  foul  air  foreshadowed  his  great 
work  on  the  physiology  of  respiration ;  the 
investigation  of  the  regulation  of  body 
temperature  in  a  hot  environment  was  the 
outcome  of  the  working  conditions  which 
he  encountered  in  the  depths  of  a  Cornish 
tin  mine,  and  the  use  that  he  made  of 
carbon  monoxide  for  physiological  re- 
search was  initiated  by  his  inquiry  into 
the  causes  of  death  in  colliery  explosions. 

Haldane's  capacity  for  work  was 
astonishing  and  he  rarely  took  a  holiday. 


His  outstanding  personality,  the  simpli- 
city and  directness  of  his  experimental 
methods,  the  clear  reasoning  which  made 
the  solution  of  the  complex  problems  that 
he  handled  appear  easy,  his  kindness  and 
regard  for  others  made  an  ineffaceable 
impression  on  those  who  worked  with  him. 
He  continued  working  until  the  end,  and 
it  was  but  shortly  after  returning  from  a 
visit  to  Persia  to  investigate  cases  of  heat- 
stroke in  the  oil  refineries  that  his  death 
occurred  at  Oxford  from  pneumonia  at 
midnight  14-15  March  1936. 

Haldane  received  honorary  degrees  from 
many  universities.  Elected  F.R.S.  in  1897, 
a  Royal  medallist  of  the  society  in  1916 
and  Copley  medallist  in  1934  in  recogni- 
tion of  his  discoveries  in  human  physiology 
and  their  practical  application,  he  was  in 
1928  appointed  C.H.  for  his  scientific  work 
in  connexion  with  industrial  disease. 

Haldane  married  in  1891  Louisa  Kath- 
leen, only  child  of  Coutts  Trotter,  of  Dreg- 
horn,  and  he  had  a  son,  John  Burdon 
Sanderson  Haldane,  F.R.S. ,  Weldon  pro- 
fessor of  biometry  at  University  College, 
London,  and  a  daughter,  the  novelist 
Mrs.  Naomi  Mary  Margaret  Mitchison. 

[The  Times,  16  March  1936 ;  Nature,  4  April 
1936;  Transactions  of  the  Institution  of 
Mining  Engineers,  vol.  xci,  1936 ;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  5, 
December  1936  (portrait) ;  Sir  J.  A.  L.  Hal- 
dane, The  Haldanes  of  Gleneagles,  1929 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  C.  G.  Douglas. 

HALIFAX,  second  Viscount  (1839- 
1934).    [See  Wood,  Sir  Charles  Lind- 

LEY.] 

HALLIBURTON,  WILLIAM  DOBIN- 

SON  (1860-1931),  physiologist  and  bio- 
chemist, was  born  in  London  21  June 
1860,  the  only  son  of  Thomas  Halliburton, 
a  Yorkshireman,  of  Upper  Norwood,  by 
his  wife,  Mary  Homan.  He  was  educated 
privately  and  at  University  College  School, 
London,  and  subsequently  at  University 
College  where  he  graduated  B.Sc.  (Lond.) 
in  1879  and  M.D.  with  gold  medal  in 
1884. 

In  1883  Halliburton  became  Sharpey 
scholar  and  later  assistant  to  (Sir)  E.  A. 
Sharpey-Schafer  [q.v.]  at  University  Col- 
lege. He  received  the  science  research 
medal  in  1885  and  subsequently  went  to 
Vienna  for  a  short  period.  In  1890  he 
succeeded  Gerald  Yeo  [q.v.]  as  professor 
of  physiology  at  King's  College,  London, 
where  he  remained  until  his  resignation 
owing  to  ill  health  in  1923.    He  rapidly 


391 


Halliburton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


attracted  to  himself  a  large  number  of 
brilliant  investigators,  notably  (Sir)  F.  W. 
Mott,  W.  E.  Dixon  [qq.v.],  Dr.  F.  S. 
Locke,  Thomas  Gregor  Brodie,  (Sir) 
Charles  James  Martin,  Dr.  Otto  Rosen- 
heim, and  Corrado  Donato  Da  Fano,  and 
almost  every  young  biochemist  of  note  of 
that  time  studied  under  him,  including  his 
great  friends,  (Sir)  Frederick  Hopkins  and 
(Sir)  Jack  Drummond.  He  also  became 
associated  with  (Sir)  David  Ferrier  [q.v.], 
a  physician  at  the  then  nearby  King's 
College  Hospital.  At  King's  College  he 
played  a  very  important  part,  not  only  in 
the  development  of  his  department,  which 
was  rebuilt  under  his  direction,  but  also 
in  the  college  as  a  whole.  He  acted  for 
many  years  as  dean  of  the  medical  faculty 
and  on  his  death  endowed  a  chair,  details 
of  which  are  to  be  decided  after  the  death 
of  Mrs.  Halliburton.  A  tablet  to  his 
memory  has  been  placed  in  the  laboratory 
which  bears  his  name. 

Halliburton  was  one  of  the  first  to 
appreciate  the  importance  of  chemical 
assay  of  biological  materials.  His  text- 
book, Chemical  Physiology  and  Pathology 
(1891),  was  the  greatest  work  of  the  time, 
and  contains  information  regarding  the 
chemical  constitution  of  every  part  of  the 
body  known  at  that  date;  it  was  trans- 
lated into  Spanish  in  1917  and  Portuguese 
in  1934.  His  own  contributions  were  for 
the  most  part  limited  to  the  differentiation 
of  the  proteins  of  blood  and  muscle  and 
the  constitution  of  nerve  tissue,  and  in  his 
papers  are  to  be  found  many  facts  which 
have  been  the  basis  of  much  later  work. 
He  also  wrote  Essentials  of  Chemical 
Physiology  (1893),  which  reached  its 
eleventh  edition  in  1922.  His  best-known 
book  is  'Halliburton's'  Physiology,  which 
for  the  last  thirty  years  has  been  the  vade- 
mecum  of  the  medical  student.  It  was 
originally  'Kirke's'  Physiology,  but  he 
made  it  more  popular  than  it  ever  was 
before.  During  his  authorship,  which 
began  in  1896,  there  were  nineteen  edi- 
tions, and  no  fewer  than  125,000  copies 
were  published.  It  has  twice  been  trans- 
lated into  Chinese.  Under  Professor 
Robert  John  Stewart  McDowall,  who  suc- 
ceeded him  at  King's  College,  it  has  now 
(1946)  reached  its  thirty-ninth  edition  and 
has  become  'McDowall's'  Handbook  of 
Physiology.  In  addition  he  published  a 
vast  number  of  scientific  papers.  In  1916 
he  was  asked  by  the  Physiological  Society 
to  edit  Physiological  Abstracts,  which  the 
society  had  decided  to  inaugurate ;  during 
his  editorship  of  the  first  seven  volumes 


the  journal  became  firmly  established  anc 
a  periodical  of  international  importance^ 
Halliburton  had  already  shown  his  great 
facility  at  this  kind  of  work  in  writing  the 
physiological  section  of  the  annual  report 
of  the  Chemical  Society. 

Halliburton  was  elected  F.R.S.  m  1891J 
and  that  society  records  his  great  value  as 
a  member  of  the  physiological  committee 
in  virtue  of  the  soundness  of  his  judge- 
ment and  equability  of  his  disposition.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  the  universities  of  Aberdeen  and 
Toronto.  He  was  elected  F.R.C.P.  in  1892 
and  was  awarded  the  Baly  medal  in  1911 ; 
to  the  college  he  gave  the  Goulstonian 
lecture  (1893),  the  Croonian  lecture  (1901), 
and  the  Oliver- Sharpey  lecture  (1907). 

As  a  man,  Halliburton  was  ever  lovable 
and  approachable,  and  had  a  great  sense 
of  humour,  although  to  the  outside  world 
he  appeared  a  little  serious.  As  a  speaker, 
he  had  few  equals,  and  when  it  was  neces- 
sary to  find  a  physiologist  who  could  give 
a  popular  lecture,  he  was  often  selected 
for  the  task.  He  wUl  be  remembered  asi 
one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  establishment 
of  biochemistry  as  a  distinct  branch  oi 
biology,  a  position  which  was  recognized 
by  his  election  as  one  of  the  first  honorarj 
members  of  the  Biochemical  Society, 
his  life  his  physical  activities  were  verj 
severely  limited  by  an  attack  of  infantile 
paralysis  which  in  his  first  year  lost 
the  use  of  his  right  arm,  but  with  his  lef^ 
he  accomplished  much. 

Halliburton    married    in    1886   Annie 
daughter  of  James  Dawes ;  there  were  nc 
children   of  the   marriage.    He   died  at 
Exeter  21  May  1931. 

[The  Times,  23  May  1931 ;  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society,  series  B,  vol.  cix,  1931- 
1932  (portrait) ;  British  MedicalJournal,  1931, 
vol.  1,  pp.  957  and  1006  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 
1931,  vol.  1,  p.  1263  (portrait);  Biochemical 
Journal,  1932,  vol.  xxvi  (i);  King's  College 
Calendar ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  R.  J.  S.  McDowall. 

HAMILTON,  JOHN  ANDREW,  Vis- 
count Sumner  (1859-1934),  judge,  was 
born  at  Manchester  3  February  1859,  the 
yoimger  son  of  Andrew  Hamilton,  an  iron 
merchant  there,  by  his  wife,  Frances, 
daughter  of  Joseph  Sumner,  of  Sharston, 
Cheshire.  He  was  educated  at  Manchester 
Grammar  School  imder  F.  W.  Walker 
[q.v.].  In  1878  he  won  a  scholarship  at 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1879)  and  in 
literae  humaniores  (1881),  was  president  of 


892 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Hamilton 


the  Union  in  1882,  and  in  the  same  year 
was  elected  to  a  prize  fellowship  at 
Magdalen.     This    made    his    subsequent 

reer  possible,  for  his  only  other  endow- 

ent  was  his  brain. 

Hamilton  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 

ner  Temple  in  1883,  became  a  bencher 

ere  in  1909,  and  was  treasurer  in  1930. 

e   was   made   K.C.   in   1901,   and   was 

unsel  to  the  university  of  Oxford  from 
906  to  1909. 

On  being  called  to  the  bar  Hamilton 
joined  the  Northern  circuit,  but  work 
there  for  juniors  mostly  went  to  'locals' 
and  after  a  few  years  he  gave  up  any 
attendance.  He  read  as  a  pupil  with  J.  C. 
Bigham  (afterwards  Viscount  Mersey, 
q.v.)  in  Goldsmith  Building,  stayed  on  as 
his  helper  when  Bigham  took  silk  in  1883, 
and  took  over  the  chambers  when  Bigham 
was  made  a  judge  in  1897.  Despite  the 
consequent  contact  with  Bigham's  many 
clients  Hamilton  had  to  wait  a  long  time 
before  he  made  any  way  at  the  bar.  In 
1889  a  brilliant  young  Balliol  man,  and 
fellow  of  All  Souls,  was  advised  by  Jowett 
to  go  to  Hamilton  as  a  pupil.  But  Hamil- 
ton, on  being  asked,  said  that  his  practice 
was  too  small  to  justify  his  taking  a  pupil, 
and  Cosmo  Gordon  Lang  went  instead  to 
W.  S.  (afterwards  Lord)  Robson  [q.v.]. 
Hamilton  was  perhaps  consoled  later  on 
when  another  Scot  from  Oxford  did  be- 
come his  pupil :  John  Buchan  also  deserted 
the  law  for  better  things. 

It  was  only  in  his  sixth  year  that  Hamil- 
ton earned  more  than  £100  in  fees.  Hap- 
pily the  Magdalen  fellowship,  which  he 
held  luitil  1889,  gave  him  something  to 
live  upon,  and  he  supplemented  this  by 
doing  work  as  a  university  extension  lec- 
turer, by  some  journalism,  and  by  con- 
tributions to  this  Dictionary.  This  last 
was  due  to  his  having  been  a  contem- 
porary at  Balliol  of  (Sir)  Sidney  Lee;  in 
fact  there  are  only  five  out  of  the  sixty- 
three  volumes  of  the  main  work  in  which 
his  initials  do  not  appear.  To  the  Supple- 
ment of  1912-1921  he  contributed  masterly 
lives  of  Lord  Macnaghten  and  Lord  Parker 
of  Waddington.  First  and  last  he  was  one 
of  the  most  voluminous  contributors  to 
this  work. 

The  vmiversity  extension  lecturing  had 
one  undesigned  result.  It  caused  Hamil- 
ton's introduction  to  Maude  Margaret 
Todd,  second  daughter  of  the  Rev.  John 
Wood  Todd,  D.D.,  of  Forest  Hill,  near 
Sydenham,  where  she  was  the  head- 
mistress of  a  flourishing  girls'  school.  In 
1892  he  married  this  lady,  and  went  to 


live  at  the  school.  One  of  his  younger 
friends  at  the  bar  cherishes  the  recollection 
of  being  present  at  a  prize-giving  party  at 
the  school,  and  of  seeing  the  future  lord 
of  appeal  in  ordinary,  in  a  frock  coat, 
making  himself  agreeable  to  the  parents. 
When  her  husband  became  a  flourishing 
'silk',  and  their  united  income  must  have 
been  large,  Mrs.  Hamilton  gave  up  the 
school:  they  moved  to  Streatham,  and 
later  to  Gloucester  Square,  north  of  Hyde 
Park.  They  had  no  children. 

By  the  time  of  his  marriage  the  tide  had 
turned,  and  Hamilton  was  rapidly  de- 
veloping a  large  practice,  chiefly  in  the 
Commercial  Court,  and  in  competition 
with  (Sir)  T.  E.  Scrutton  [q.v.].  They  took 
silk  on  the  same  day  in  1901,  and  con- 
tinued their  contests  in  the  front  row. 
Hamilton  had  the  finer  brain,  was  a  better 
scholar,  and  much  more  gifted  as  a  speaker ; 
Scrutton  perhaps  outdid  him  in  industry 
and  pertinacity.  The  first  fifteen  volumes 
of  Commercial  Cases  record  their  many 
forensic  encounters. 

Hamflton  was  the  first  of  the  two  to  be 
raised  to  the  bench  when,  in  February 
1909,  he  was,  by  the  selection  of  Lord 
Loreburn,  made  a  judge  of  the  King's 
Bench  division.  The  vacancy  was  created 
by  the  promotion  of  his  old  master, 
Bigham,  to  be  president  of  the  Probate, 
Divorce,  and  Admiralty  division. 

So  began  Hamilton's  career  as  one  of 
the  greatest  judges  of  his  time.  He  re- 
mained in  the  King's  Bench  division  for 
three  and  a  half  years.  While  there  he 
never  once  reserved  judgement :  but  what 
he  said  at  the  close  of  every  case,  however 
complicated  or  difficult,  when  taken  down 
in  shorthand,  was  better  than  the  laboured 
writing  of  other  judges,  while  it  scintil- 
lated with  phrases  that  none  of  them  could 
rival  by  the  consumption  of  midnight  oil. 

In  October  1912  Hamilton  was  pro- 
moted to  the  Covul;  of  Appeal,  and  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Coimcil.  He  only  sat  in  that 
court  for  a  year,  and  in  October  1913  was 
made  a  lord  of  appeal  in  ordinary.  The 
existence  of  other  ennobled  Hamiltons 
constrained  him  to  resort  to  his  mother's 
maiden  name  for  his  title,  and  he  became 
Lord  Sumner,  of  Ibstone,  a  viUage  in  the 
Chiltem  HiUs  where  he  had,  some  years 
before,  acquired  a  pleasant  coimtry  house. 
In  1927,  having  no  son  to  embarrass  by 
the  step,  he  exchanged  his  life  peerage  for 
an  ordinary  one  and  became  Viscount 
Siunner. 

The  war  of  1914-1918  provided  far  more 
legal  problems  than  did  that  of  1939-1945. 


393 


Hamilton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


The  Prize  Court  was  constantly  at  work 
under  Sir  Samuel  Evans  [q.v.],  and  appeals 
from  it  to  the  Privy  Council  were  frequent 
and  important.  The  other  courts  had  also 
to  solve  many  difficult  questions,  and 
there  were  many  that  were  carried  to  the 
House  of  Lords,  By  contrast,  from  1939 
to  1945  the  work  of  the  Prize  Court  (chiefly 
from  the  absence  of  neutrals)  was  insigni- 
ficant, and  there  was  only  one  important 
appeal;  and  the  business  of  the  other 
courts  was  far  less  than  in  the  earlier  war. 
In  all  the  appeals  from  1914  onwards 
Siunner  took  a  leading  part.  After  the 
death  of  Lord  Parker  of  Waddington  in 
1918  he  usually  presided  at  the  appeals 
from  the  Prize  Court  before  the  Judicial 
Committee. 

Apart  from  their  legal  merits  the  most 
striking  thing  about  Stunner's  judgements 
is  their  style.  He  was  as  great  a  master  of 
language  as  any  judge  who  has  ever  Uved, 
both  in  speech  and  in  writing.  His  power 
of  delivering  judgements  extempore  has 
already  been  noted.  In  the  Coiu*t  of 
Appeal,  the  Privy  Coimcil,  and  the  House 
of  Lords,  some  of  his  written  judgements 
attain  the  highest  level  of  English  prose. 
Of  the  wit  that  adorned  them  perhaps 
these  sentences  may  serve  as  samples :  '  It 
is  hard  to  see  how  infantile  temptations 
can  give  rights,  however  much  they  excuse 
peccadOloes '  (Latham  v.  Johnson  (1913), 

1  K.B.  409)  and  'In  Ayre  v.  Craven  the 
plaintiff  was  an  ordinary  doctor  at  HuU, 
so  did  not  belong  to  that  class  of  medical 
practitioners  which  the  appellant's  coun- 
sel postulated,  but  never  defined,  for 
whose  professional  well-being  a  reputation 
at  least  for  continence  was  said  not  to  be 
a  general  requisite'  (Jones  v.  Jones  (1916), 

2  App.  Cas.  493).  In  the  Oxford  Book  of 
English  Prose  (compiled  by  Sir  A.  T. 
Quiller-Couch,  1925)  there  is  a  part  of  his 
judgement  in  Bowman  and  others  v.  The 
Secular  Society  (1917,  App.  Cas.  466).  The 
only  other  judicial  utterances  thought 
worthy  of  inclusion  in  that  book  are  pas- 
sages from  Lord  Bowen  and  Lord  Mac- 
naghten. 

Sumner  carried  out  several  pieces  of 
public  work  outside  the  law.  He  was 
chairman  of  the  working  classes  cost  of 
living  committee  in  1918,  of  the  British 
and  foreign  legal  procedm*e  committee  in 
the  same  year,  of  the  royal  commission  on 
compensation  for  suffering  and  damage  by 
enemy  action  in  1921,  and  of  the  House 
of  Lords  committee  on  abeyances  in  1926. 
A  more  important  service  was  rendered 
by  him  as  a  member  of  the  British  delega- 


tion to  the  reparations  commission  of  the 
Paris  Peace  Conference  in  1919,  his  col 
leagues  being  Lord  Cunliffe  and  Mr.  W.  M. 
Hughes.  For  this  he  was  appointed  G.C.B. 
in  1920. 

As  an  imdergraduate,  and  at  the  Union, 
Sumner  had  been  regarded  as  a  formidable 
and  aggressive  radical.  In  the  Masque  of 
B-ll-l  (1881,  said  to  be  by  J.  W.  Mackail) 
are  the  lines 

I  am  Hamilton ;  my  mission 
Is  to  be  a  politician. 
But  from  leaving  Oxford  until  he  had  been 
for  some  time  in  the  House  of  Lords  he 
was  totally  inactive  in  politics.  From  1920 
onwards  he  displayed  most  of  the  attri 
butes  of  the  'die-hard'  conservative.  In 
July  of  that  year  he  delivered  a  bitter 
speech,  attacking  the  government,  in  the 
debate  upon  the  action  of  General  R.  E.  H. 
Dyer  [q.v.]  at  Amritsar  in  April  1919,  and 
in  1922  he  fiercely  opposed  the  'treaty' 
which  settled  the  fate  of  Ireland.  When 
Bonar  Law  formed  his  ministry  in  October 
1922  it  was  thought  by  many  that  Sumner 
might  become  lord  chancellor.  Lord  Cave 
was  perhaps  a  safer  choice,  but  the  best 
friends  of  that  most  amiable  man  could 
hardly  think  that  he  would  make  as  great 
a  lord  chancellor  as  Sumner  might  have 
been. 

Sumner  received  many  academic  hon- 
ours. He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Magdalen  in  1909,  was  an  honorary 
D.C.L.  of  Oxford,  and  LL.D.  of  Cam- 
bridge, Edinburgh,  and  Manchester  uni- 
versities. He  was  a  member  of  the 
Athenaeum  and  of  the  Carlton,  but  did 
not  make  much  use  of  either  club.  Lady 
Sunmer  had  not  much  Hking  for  society. 
Her  husband  satisfied  his  more  gregarious 
instinct,  elsewhere  than  at  home,  by  fre- 
quent attendance  at  dinners  of  The  Club 
(to  which  he  was  elected  in  1914),  and  at 
the  benchers'  table  and  in  the  smoking- 
room  (although  he  never  smoked)  of  the 
Inner  Temple.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  dis- 
cerning colleagues  at  either  to  get  a  seat 
by  him,  and  be  entertained  by  his  brilliant 
talk.  The  epigrams  and  sallies  had  much 
of  a  cynical  acidity.  But  the  most  dis- 
cerning realized  that  there  was  a  kind 
heart  beneath  the  iron  breast-plate.  Once, 
when  at  the  Temple,  after  his  death,  this 
was  questioned.  Sir  Lancelot  Sanderson 
said:  'When  Sumner  and  I  were  briefless 
barristers  on  the  Northern  circuit  we  sat 
through  the  trial  of  Mrs.  May  brick  at 
Liverpool.  At  the  end  of  that  tragedy  we 
walked  out  in  silence  to  the  robing-room. 
Hamilton  stood  gazing  out  of  the  window 


894 


J 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Harden 


— and  suddenly  burst  into  an  uncontrol- 
lable fit  of  weeping.' 

In  1930,  being  warned  of  a  weakness 
of  his  heart,  Sumner  resigned  froni  his 
judicial  duties.  His  wife  and  he  had 
always  been  fond  of  European  travel,  and 
his  leisure  gave  them  an  opportunity  for 
longer  visits  to  Italy.  He  died  suddenly, 
from  a  heart  attack,  in  London  24  May 
1934,  and  was  buried  in  the  churchyard 
at  Ibstone. 

Sumner's  portrait,  painted  in  1919  by 
Sir  William  Orpen,  is  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery.  The  benchers  of  the 
Inner  Temple  are  the  happy  possessors  of 
a  portrait  of  him  by  Oswald  Birley .  Those 
who  rate  portraits  by  the  mysterious 
canons  of  art  criticism  may  decry  this 
picture,  and  possibly  apply  the  epithet 
'photographic'  to  it.  But  to  those  who 
faiew  Sumner  well  it  is  the  very  man  him- 
self. They  might  say  before  it,  'Hush!  he 
will  speak',  and  await  the  clearing  of  the 
throat  that  was  commonly  the  prelude  to 
some  devastating  fulmination. 

[The  Times,  26  May  1934;  Law  Quarterly 
Review,  January  1945;  personal  knowledge.] 
F.  D.  MacKinnon. 

HANNAY,  ROBERT  KERR  (1867- 
1940),  Scottish  historian,  was  born  at 
Glasgow  31  December  1867,  the  eldest  son 
of  Thomas  Hannay,  iron  master,  of  that 
city,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth  McDowall.  He 
was  educated  at  Albany  Academy,  Glas- 
gow, the  university  of  Glasgow  (M.A., 
1895),  and  University  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1891)  and  in  liter ae 
humaniores  (1893),  In  1894  he  was  ap- 
pointed lecturer  in  classics  and  ancient 
history  at  University  College,  Dundee, 
and  in  1901  lecturer  in  ancient  history  at 
St.  Andrews  University.  There  he  began 
those  studies  in  Scottish  history  which 
were  to  constitute  his  life's  work.  The 
College  of  St.  Leonard  (1905)  was  followed 
by  The  Archbishops  of  St.  Andrews  (5  vols., 
1907-1915),  both  written  in  collaboration 
with  Professor  (Sir)  John  Herkless ;  for 
these  Hannay  furnished  the  fresh  material 
from  manuscript  sources.  The  reputation 
thereby  gained  led  to  his  appointment  in 
1911  as  curator  of  the  historical  depart- 
ment of  the  Register  House,  Edinburgh, 
where  his  scholarship  maintained  the  high 
traditions  of  such  predecessors  as  Joseph 
Robertson  (1810-1866,  q.v.).  In  1919  he 
became  Sir  William  Eraser  professor  of 
ancient  (Scottish)  history  and  palaeo- 
graphy in  Edinburgh  University,  and  in 


1930  historiographer-royal  for  Scotland. 
His  other  distinctions  included  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh 
(1922),  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  of 
St.  Andrews  University  (1923),  and  honor- 
ary membership  of  the  Royal  Scottish 
Academy  (1933).  In  1899  he  married  Jane 
Ewing  (died  1938),  second  daughter  of 
James  Stewart  Wilson,  D.D.,  minister  of 
New  Abbey,  Kirkcudbrightshire,  and  had 
one  son.  Mrs.  Hannay  was  appointed 
O.B.E.  (1918)  and  C.B.E.  (1933)  for  her 
social  services.  He  died  in  Edinburgh 
19  March  1940. 

Hannay  was  an  unconventional  and 
stimulating  teacher  of  senior  students, 
encouraging  them,  as  fellow  workers,  to  use 
original  sources.  No  general  history  of 
Scotland  came  from  his  pen.  In  his  view 
more  research  was  necessary,  especially  in 
his  own  field  of  the  later  middle  ages, 
before  the  rewriting  of  the  existing  nar- 
ratives could  be  justified.  But  by  his 
numerous  contributions  to  the  Scottish 
Historical  Review,  the  Juridical  Review, 
the  publications  of  the  Scottish  History 
Society,  the  Stair  Society,  and  the  Old 
Edinburgh  Club,  and  in  his  introductions 
to  volumes  ix  to  xiv  (1684-1689)  of  the 
third  series  of  The  Register  of  the  Privy 
Council  of  Scotland  (1924-1933)  and  The 
Acts  of  the  Lords  of  Council  in  Public 
Affairs,  1501-1554  (1932),  as  well  as  in 
such  typical  works  as  the  Rentale  Dunkel- 
dense  (1915)  and  The  College  of  Justice 
(1933),  he  successfully  challenged  many 
accepted  views  on  the  educational,  eccle- 
siastical, and  institutional  history  of  his 
country.  His  complicated  style  was  partly 
due  to  a  supersensitive  dread  of  inaccuracy 
in  general  statements.  The  style,  however, 
was  not  the  man.  Tall  and  handsome,  he 
was  generous  in  commimicating  know- 
ledge, genial  and  sociable,  a  born  racon- 
teur, an  excellent  golfer,  and  a  musician 
of  considerable  gifts. 

{Scotsman,  20  March  1940;  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  vol.  Ix,  1941 ; 
University  of  Edinburgh  Journal,  vol.  x,  1940 ; 
personal  knowledge.  A  memorial  volume, 
with  bibliography,  for  the  Scottish  History 
Society  is  in  preparation.] 

Henry  W.  Meikle. 

HANWORTH,  first  Viscount  (1861- 
1936),    judge.     [See    Pollock,    Ernest 

MtJRRAY.] 

HARDEN,  Sir  ARTHUR  (1865-1940), 
chemist,  was  bom  at  Manchester  12  Octo- 
ber 1865,  the  second  son  and  third  of  the 


395 


Harden 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


nine  children  of  Albert  Tyas  Harden,  a 
Manchester  manufacturer,  by  his  wife, 
Eliza,  daughter  of  John  MacAlister,  of 
Paisley.  He  was  educated  at  Victoria  Park 
School,  Manchester,  and  later  at  Tetten- 
hall  College,  Staffordshire,  until  he  was 
sixteen  years  old,  when  he  entered  the 
Owens  CoUege,  Manchester,  and  studied 
chemistry  under  Sir  H.  E.  Roscoe  [q.v.]. 
He  graduated  with  first  class  honours  in 
chemistry  in  1885  and  forthwith  embarked 
upon  an  investigation  of  the  action  of 
silicon  tetrachloride  on  aromatic  amide- 
compounds  under  the  guidance  of  Julius 
Berend  Cohen.  The  results  of  his  first 
research  were  published  by  the  Chemical 
Society  and  on  its  merits  he  was  awarded 
the  Dalton  scholarship  by  the  university 
in  1886.  The  next  two  years  were  spent 
at  the  university  of  Erlangen  where,  under 
Otto  Fischer,  he  prepared  a  nitrosonaph- 
thylamine  and  investigated  its  properties. 
For  his  thesis  on  this  subject  he  was 
awarded  a  Ph.D.  there. 

In  1888  Harden  was  appointed  a  lec- 
turer in  chemistry  at  the  university  of 
Manchester.  He  took  his  responsibilities 
very  seriously  and  for  the  next  few  years 
was  preoccupied  with  teaching.  He  pub- 
lished a  few  papers  on  chemical  topics  and, 
with  Roscoe,  an  interesting  historical  re- 
search on  the  genesis  of  the  atomic  theory 
of  John  Dalton  [q.v.].  From  the  study  of 
Dalton's  note-books  they  concluded  that 
it  was  his  observations  on  the  diffusion  of 
gases  which  led  him  to  formulate  his 
atomic  theory. 

In  1897  Harden  became  chemist  to  the 
Lister  Institute  (known  previously  as  the 
British  Institute  of  Preventive  Medicine 
until  1898,  when  it  became  the  Jenner 
Institute  of  Preventive  Medicine  until 
1903)  in  London.  He  became  head  of  the 
new  department  of  biochemistry  in  1907 
and  held  this  position  until  his  retirement 
in  1930.  There  he  made  contact  with 
biology.  His  first  venture  in  biochemistry 
was  to  investigate  the  fermentation  of 
sugar  by  various  bacteria.  The  observa- 
tions were  necessarily  limited  to  a  quanti- 
tative study  of  the  products,  and  what 
happened  in  the  intermediate  stages  could 
only  be  imperfectly  deduced  from  their 
nature  and  amounts.  Notwithstanding, 
his  researches  laid  some  of  the  foundations 
of  bacterial  chemistry. 

Shortly  after  Harden  began  work  upon 
bacterial  metabolism,  Eduard  Buchner 
published  experiments  from  which  he  con- 
cluded that  living  yeast  was  not,  as  main- 
tained by  Pasteur,  essential  for  alcoholic 


fermentation  but  could  be  induced  by  an 
expressed  juice  free  from  cells.  Appre- 
ciating that  if  Biichner's  contention  were 
true,  his  yeast  juice  would  provide  material 
for  the  study  of  the  conversion  of  sugar 
to  alcohol  step  by  step.  Harden  repeated 
his  experiments  and  confirmed  l^is  results 
Buchner  opined  that  yeast  juice  contained 
an  enzyme  'zymase'  which  broke  up  the 
sugar,  but  the  chemical  transactions  in- 
volved in  the  conversion  of  one  molecule 
of  glucose  into  precisely  two  each  of  alcohol 
and  carbonic  acid  were  mysterious. 

For  the  next  thirty  years,  Harden's 
principal  researches  were  directed  to  the 
solution  of  the  mystery.  In  this  he  was 
powerfully  supported  by  able  pupils  and 
collaborators  and  notably  by  William 
John  Young  and  Robert  Robison.  He 
discovered  many  new  facts  indicating  that 
in  the  transformation  of  sugars  to  alcohol 
and  carbonic  acid  a  complex  series  of 
reactions  was  involved  and  he  made  two 
fimdamental  discoveries.  The  first  was 
that  before  any  breakdown  of  the  sugar 
molecules  occurred,  combination  with 
phosphoric  acid  was  necessary  and  that 
it  was  only  after  this  preliminary  phos- 
phorylation had  been  achieved  that  they 
became  susceptible  to  disruption  by  the 
zymase  in  yeast.  The  second  was  that 
yeast  juice  contained  not  one  but  several 
enzymes  which  catalysed  different  reac- 
tions during  the  progress  of  conversion  of 
sugar  into  alcohol  and  carbonic  acid.  One 
of  these  he  supposed  to  activate  the  pre- 
liminary phosphorylation  of  the  sugar 
molecules ;  another,  a  phosphatase,  effected 
the  separation  of  the  phosphoric  acid  from 
the  first  products  of  cleavage  of  the  sugar 
molecule  after  it  had  served  its  purpose. 
Thus  it  became  available  for  combination 
with  further  sugar  molecules.  The  essen- 
tial part  played  by  phosphorylation  and 
dephosphorylation  in  the  breakdown  of 
sugars  by  yeast  was  soon  found  to  apply 
to  fermentation  by  other  micro-organisms 
and  provided  a  clue  for  the  understanding 
of  the  conversion  of  glycogen  into  lactic 
acid  in  muscle  during  activity.  Indeed, 
recognition  of  the  significance  of  Harden's 
discovery  constituted  a  turning-point  in 
the  history  of  muscle  chemistry. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Harden 
suspended  his  work  on  alcohohc  fermenta- 
tion in  order  to  study  the  chemistry  of  the 
two  then  known  water-soluble  vitamins. 
Although  he,  like  many  others,  did  not 
succeed  in  isolating  these  active  principles, 
some  of  his  observations  on  their  pro- 
perties found  immediate  useful  application 


896 


D.N.B,  1981-1940 


Hardy 


in  the  solution  of  nutritional  problems 
confronting  the  far-flxuig  armies,  and  they 
were  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  early 
knowledge  of  these  accessory  food  factors. 

Literary  work  occupied  much  of  Har- 
den's  time.  While  a  lecturer  at  Man- 
chester, he  wrote,  in  collaboration  with 
Roscoe,  an  elementary  text-book  of 
chemistry  and  with  F.  C.  Garrett  one  on 
practical  organic  chemistry  for  the  use  of 
students.  He  also  revised  and  edited  the 
Treatise  on  Chemistry  (1894)  by  Roscoe 
and  Carl  Schorlemmer  [q.v.].  The  first 
edition  of  his  monograph  on  Alcoholic 
Fermentation  was  published  in  1911.  He 
contributed  the  article  on  this  subject  to 
Thorpe'' s  Dictionary  of  Applied  Chemistry, 
and  one  on  'Bacterial  Metabolism  in  the 
System  of  Bacteriology '  pubUshed  by  the 
Medical  Research  Council  in  1930.  For 
twenty-five  years  he  was  joint  editor  of 
the  Biochemical  Journal. 

The  importance  of  Harden's  contribu- 
tions to  biochemistry  was  recognized  in 
1909  by  his  election  as  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  and  as  Nobel  prizeman 
in  chemistry  with  Hans  von  Euler,  of 
Stockholm,  for  1929.  Honorary  degrees 
were  conferred  upon  him  by  the  univer- 
sities of  Manchester  (1931),  Liverpool 
(1936),  and  Athens  (1937),  and  the  title  of 
professor  of  biochemistry  by  the  univer- 
sity of  London  (1912).  In  1935  he  was 
awarded  the  Davy  medal  of  the  Royal 
Society  and  he  was  knighted  in  1936. 

Harden  married  in  1900  Georgina  Syd- 
ney (died  1928),  elder  daughter  of  Cyprian 
W'ynard  Bridge,  of  Christchurch,  New 
Zealand ;  they  had  no  children.  He  died 
ut  Bourne  End,  Buckinghamshire,  17  June 
1940. 

[The  Times,  18  June  1940 ;  Biochemical 
Journal,  November  1941  (portrait) ;  Obituary 
I  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  11, 
j  November  1942;  Journal  of  the  Institute  of 
Brewing,  September  1940;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  J.  Martin. 

HARDY,  Sir  WILLIAM  BATE  (1864- 
1934),  biologist,  was  born  at  Erdington, 
Warwickshire,  6  April  1864,  the  only  child 
)!'  William  Hardy,  of  Llangollen,  North 
Wales,  by  his  wife,  Sarah,  eldest  daughter 
)!'  William  Bate.  He  was  educated  at 
jl'ramlingham  College  and  entered  Gonville 
|ind  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  in  1884. 
ile  was  elected  scholar  in  1885  and  was 
iwarded  a  first  class  in  the  natural  sciences 
ripos  (zoology)  in  1888.  He  was  elected 
I  fellow  of  the  college  in  1892,  and  was  a 


tutor  from  1900  to  1918.  He  became  uni- 
versity lecturer  in  physiology  in  1913, 
specializing  earlier  in  histology,  later  in 
colloid  chemistry  and  biophysics. 

In  1915  Hardy  organized  the  'Food 
(War)  Committee'  of  the  Royal  Society 
which  did  very  important  work  in  advising 
the  government.  After  the  formation  of 
the  Department  of  Scientific  and  Indus- 
trial Research  he  became  the  first  chair- 
man of  the  Food  Investigation  Board 
(1917-1928),  director  of  Food  Investiga- 
tion (1917-1934),  and  superintendent  of 
the  Low  Temperature  Research  Station  at 
Cambridge  (1922-1934):  he  was  respon- 
sible for  creating  the  Torry  research 
station  and  the  Ditton  laboratory.  From 
1919  to  1931  he  was  chairman  of  the 
advisory  committee  on  fisheries  of  the 
Development  Commission  which  issued  a 
very  valuable  series  of  confidential  reports 
on  fisheries  (including  freshwater  fisheries) 
whereby  the  fishery  departments  were 
strengthened  and  great  progress  was  made. 
He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1902,  and  was 
biological  secretary  from  1915  to  1925  ;  he 
gave  the  Croonian  lecture  in  1905  'On 
Globulins',  and  the  Bakerian  lecture  in 
1925  on  'Boundary  Lubrication'.  In  1931 
he  was  Abraham  Flexner  lecturer  at  Van- 
derbilt  University,  U.S.A.  At  the  time  of 
his  death  he  was  president  of  the  British 
Association,  and  had  been  a  trustee  of  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  since  1922.  He 
was  knighted  in  1925.  He  received  honor- 
ary degrees  from  the  universities  of  Ox- 
ford, Aberdeen,  Birmingham,  and  Edin- 
burgh. 

Hardy's  scientific  life  began  with  histo- 
logy. Sceptical  of  the  significance  of  much 
that  was  seen,  after  fixing  and  staining, 
under  the  microscope,  he  began  to  study 
for  himself  the  effect  of  such  treatment  on 
colloidal  systems.  This  led  to  his  pioneer 
work  in  colloid  chemistry  and  later  in  the 
molecular  physics  of  films,  surfaces,  and 
boundary  conditions.  Thence  he  passed 
on  to  static  friction  and  so  to  the  action 
of  lubricants.  In  presenting  him  with  a 
Royal  medal  in  1926,  the  president  of  the 
Royal  Society,  Sir  Ernest  (afterwards 
Lord)  Rutherford  [q.v.]  said:  'In  colloid 
chemistry,  his  name  is  known  .  .  .  for  the 
fundamental  and  pioneer  work  which  he 
has  accompUshed  in  that  field.  The  stabi- 
lity of  colloid  sols  in  relation  to  the  electric 
charge,  the  theory  of  flocculation,  the 
nature  and  importance  of  the  iso-electric 
point,  the  theory  of  protein  ampholytes, 
and  the  electric  charges  of  the  positive  and 
negative  colloid  ions  represent  some  of  his 


397 


Hardy 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


important  discoveries.  .  .  .  The  modern 
theory  of  protein  solutions  ...  is  very 
largely  due  to  his  pioneer  work  in  that 
field. 

'Hardy  has  also  been  a  pioneer  in  the 
elucidation  of  the  nature  of  surface  forces 
and  surface  films  and  the  orientation  of 
molecules  at  surfaces.  ...  As  a  natural 
outcome  of  this  work,  Hardy  has  turned 
his  attention  in  recent  years  to  the  friction 
between  surfaces  and  the  nature  of  lubrica- 
tion, and  in  a  series  of  important  investi- 
gations has  thrown  a  flood  of  light  on  a 
subject  which  had  long  been  neglected  by 
both  physicists  and  chemists.  For  the  first 
time  .  .  .  the  dependence  of  friction  and 
lubrication  on  the  structure  and  molecular 
orientation  of  surface  films  and  the  force- 
fields  of  molecules  in  relation  to  their 
structure  and  polarity  have  been  eluci- 
dated.' 

In  spite,  however,  of  the  successful 
physical  outcome  of  his  work,  the  bio- 
logical instinct  can  be  seen  throughout 
Hardy's  activities  and  published  papers. 
The  organizations  which  he  founded  for 
research  on  food  bear  the  stamp  of  his 
conviction  that  the  science  of  food  is  not 
simply  physics,  chemistry,  and  engineer- 
ing, but  that  of  living  material.  Hardy 
'never  wavered  in  his  conviction  that  no 
solution  of  a  practical  problem  was  worth 
while  unless  it  was  based  on  an  adequate 
knowledge  of  the  fundamental  science  that 
lay  behind  it':  to  him  biology  and  mole- 
cular physics  were  equally  fundamental. 
His  Collected  Scientific  Papers  covering  the 
years  1891  to  1934,  edited  by  Eric  Keight- 
ley  Rideal,  were  published  in  1936. 

All  his  life  Hardy  was  an  adventurer  in 
new  fields,  finding  joy  in  fresh  discovery, 
content  not  to  interfere  with  others  if  they 
wished  to  exploit  and  profit  by  what  he 
had  found.  This  adventurous  spirit  found 
an  outlet  in  sailing  and  no  estimate  of 
Hardy  would  be  adequate  without  a  refer- 
ence to  his  love  of  the  sea.  One  of  the 
finest  yachtsmen  of  his  time,  he  combined 
with  perfect  seamanship  a  capacity  for 
instant  decision  in  emergency.  His  first 
yacht.  Cockatoo,  was  equipped  as  a  floating 
laboratory  for  marine  biology:  his  last, 
Estrella,  served  as  a  houseboat  on  the  Hel- 
ford  river  in  his  later  years.  To  him,  the 
world  was  a  wonderful  place.  His  own 
nature  seemed  to  those  who  knew  him  weU 
to  have  much  of  the  strength,  beauty,  and 
consistency  which  he  found  in  the  natural 
world. 

Hardy  married  in  1898  Alice  Mary, 
eldest  daughter  of  Gerard  Brown  Finch, 


barrister,  and  had  a  son  and  two  daugh- 
ters. He  died  at  Cambridge  23  January] 
1934. 

A  crayon  portrait  of  Hardy  by  Francis! 
Dodd,  drawn  (1941)  from  a  photograph,} 
hangs  in  the  senior  combination  room  of^ 
Gonville  and  Caius  CoUege,  Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  24  and  25  January  1934 ;  Obi- 
tuary Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,] 
No.  3,  December  1934  (portrait);  private| 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  V.  Hill. 

HARINGTON,  Sm  CHARLES  (1872- 
1940),  general,  known  to  all  as  Tim,  was 
born   at   Chichester   31    May   1872,   the! 
youngest  son  of  Emanuel  Thomas  Voe,  of 
London,  an  indigo  planter  of  Behar,  India,! 
by  his  wife,  Isabella  Jane  Crowdy.  When! 
Charles   was   four  years   old   his   father! 
adopted  his  own  mother's  maiden  namel 
and  thereafter  the  son  became  loiown  asl 
Charles  Harington.   He  was  educated  atj 
Cheltenham  College,  where  he  began  to  J 
build   for   himself  a   not  inconsiderable! 
reputation   as  a  cricketer.    In   1890  he] 
passed  into  the  Royal  Military  College,! 
Sandhurst,  and  two  years  later  was  postedj 
to  the  2nd  battalion  of  the  Liverpool  (latei 
the  King's)  Regiment,  then  stationed  at 
Aden.   He  returned  with  his  regiment  toj 
England  in  1893  and  was  at  Manchester! 
and  Colchester,  where  he  himself  admitted! 
there   was   more   sport  than   soldiering.! 
Thence  the  regiment  moved  to  Aldershotl 
and  subsequently  to  Holywood,  near  BelJ 
fast,   where  in   1897  he  was  appointee 
adjutant,  and  in  the  foUowing  year  sai 
a  fortnight  of '  active  service '  in  the  streets! 
during  the  Belfast  riots.  On  the  outbreak 
of  the   South  African  war   he  received 
orders  for  embarkation.    He  came  home 
shortly  after  the  relief  of  Ladysmith  and 
for  his  services  in  the  campaign  he  was 
appointed  to  the  D.S.O.  (1900). 

Harington  then  went  to  Fermoy,  Ire- 
land, as  adjutant  to  the  newly  raised  4th 
battalion  of  the  King's  Regiment.  In  1903i 
he  became  an  instructor  to  the  Roya| 
Military  College  and  while  there  qualifiec' 
(1906)  for  the  Staff  College,  where  he  spent 
two  years  working  hard  and  playing  hard" 
and  making  some  lasting  friendships.  At 
the  end  of  1907  he  left  the  college  and,' 
after  a  short  time  in  Ireland,  went,  early 
in  1908,  to  the  War  Office,  becoming 
G.S.O.  3,  Staff  Duties  Branch,  in  1909^ 
dealing  with  promotion  examinations.  He 
moved  to  Aldershot  two  years  later 
brigade  major  to  the  6th  (later  2nd)  brigade 
imder  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  [q.v.] 


898 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Harington 


commander-in-chief,  and  later,  Sir  Douglas 
Haig.  In  1914,  now  a  major,  he  again 
joined  the  staff  at  the  War  Office,  this 
time  to  work  on  the  revision  of  Field 
Service  Regulations  and  in  July  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Mobihzation  Branch. 

Shortly  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  Harington  was  appointed  G.S.O.  2 
to  the  III  Corps  in  France  which  was 
formed  at  the  time  of  the  retreat  from 
Mons.  Early  the  next  year  he  was  sent  as 
G.S.O.  1  to  the  famous  49th  (West  Riding) 
division,  newly  arrived  from  England,  and 
went  with  the  division  into  the  front  line 
near  Fleurbaix,  and  thence  to  the  Ypres 
saUent.  Towards  the  end  of  1915  he  was 
appointed  brigadier-general.  General  Staff, 
to  the  Canadian  Corps  then  being  formed 
and  in  the  line  near  Messines,  where  it  was 
engaged  at  Hill  60  and  St.  Eloi.  In  Jime 
1916  he  was  selected  as  major-general, 
General  Staff,  Second  Army  under  General 
(afterwards  Viscount)  Plumer  [q.v.].  To- 
gether they  made  a  splendid  team,  and 
their  brilliant  staff  work  was  responsible 
for  the  surprise  attack  and  capture  of  the 
Messines  ridge  in  June  1917  with  com- 
paratively small  losses,  and  in  November 
for  the  action  at  Passchendaele,  but  this 
time  with  heavy  losses  due  to  the  severe 
winter  conditions.  Shortly  after  Passchen- 
daele Plumer  and  he  were  ordered  to  Italy, 
but  returned  to  the  Second  Army  at  Cassel 
in  March  1918,  where  the  situation  had  de- 
teriorated. Three  months  later  during  the 
great  German  spring  offensive  Harington 
was  appointed  deputy-chief.  Imperial 
General  Staff,  but  was  allowed  to  remain 
in  Flanders  until  the  situation  became 
stabilized.  He  came  home  in  May  1918 
and  took  up  his  new  duties  at  the  War 
Office,  continuing  there  until,  in  October 
1920,  he  was  promoted  lieutenant-general 
and  left  for  Constantinople  as  general 
ollicer  commanding-in-chief  the  Army  of 
the  Black  Sea. 

In  Constantinople  began  the  most  ardu- 
ous period  of  Harington's  career,  for  he 
was  called  upon  to  prove  himself  a  diplo- 
mat as  well  as  a  soldier.  Insufficient  credit 
has  been  given  to  his  courage,  tact,  ad- 
ministrative skill,  and  almost  superhuman 
efforts  to  avoid  war  in  his  handling  of  the 
Chanak  crisis  in  1922,  when,  as  general 
officer  commanding-in-chief  the  AUied 
forces  of  occupation  in  Turkey,  he  virtually 
\von  the  key  to  victory  and  the  friendship  of 
Turkey.  His  handling  of  the  situation  was 
not  altogether  pleasing  to  Lloyd  George, 
but  was  highly  commended  by  Curzon 
and  many  others.    In  December  1923  he 


returned  home  to  become  general  officer 
commanding-in-chief.  Northern  Conmiand, 
at  York,  where  he  spent  the  next  three 
and  a  half  years,  receiving  promotion 
to  general  in  March  1927.  He  was  sent  to 
India  the  following  October  as  general 
officer  commanding-in-chief.  Western  Com- 
mand, where  he  spent  an  uneventful  but 
happy  few  years  at  Quetta.  He  came 
home  early  in  1931  to  take  up  the  post 
of  general  officer  commanding-in-chief, 
Aldershot,  and  was  made  aide-de-camp 
general  to  the  king  (1930-1934).  He  was 
disappointed  not  to  achieve  his  ambition, 
chief  of  the  Imperial  General  Staff,  but  on 
being  offered  the  governorship  of  Gibral- 
tar in  1933  he  gladly  accepted.  Here  he 
found  life  very  pleasant  until  the  out- 
break of  the  Spanish  civil  war  in  1936 
when  he  had  to  cope  with  problems  of 
refugees  and  neutrahty. 

In  1937  ill  health  necessitated  Haring- 
ton's retirement  and  in  October  he  came 
home  and  settled  in  Sussex,  where  he 
occupied  himself  with  many  interests  in- 
cluding Toe  H,  boys'  clubs,  the  Old  Com- 
rades' Association,  and  the  committee  of 
the  Marylebone  Cricket  Club.  He  was 
appointed  C.B.  in  1917,  K.C.B.  in  1919, 
G.B.E.  m  1922,  and  G.C.B.  in  1933.  He 
was  given  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  York 
(1927),  and  the  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L. 
was  conferred  upon  him  by  Oxford  Uni- 
versity (1924),  both  of  them  honours 
which  do  not  commonly  fall  to  the  lot  of 
a  soldier.  While  deputy  chief  of  the  Im- 
perial General  Staff  he  founded  and  be- 
came first  president  of  the  Army  Sports 
Control  Board.  He  wrote  Plumer  of  Mes- 
sines (1935)  in  memory  of  his  former  chief. 
Harington  was  a  spare,  highly  strung  man, 
with  a  charming  manner  and  remarkable 
clarity  of  vision.  His  organization  for  a 
battle  was  superb.  He  had  a  great  sense 
of  humour  and  was  well  known  and  liked 
in  the  services.  In  common  with  many 
great  leaders  he  was  a  deeply  religious 
man.  In  1904  he  married  Gladys  Norah, 
eldest  daughter  of  Brigadier  General 
O'Donnel  CoUey  Grattan,  of  the  King's 
Regiment ;  there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Cheltenham  22 
October  1940. 

[The  Times,  24  October  1940;  Sir  Charles 
Harington,  Tim  Harington  Looks  Back,  1940 ; 
Sir  J.  F.  Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant  (Official) 
History  of  the  War  in  South  Africa,  1899-1902, 
1906-1910 ;  Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  His- 
tory of  the  Great  War.  Military  Operations. 
France  and  Belgium,  1914-1918,  1947 ;  Philip 

Gihbs,  Realities  of  War,  1920.]   ^  ,,  ^ 

"*  •"   C.  V.  Owen. 


899 


Harker 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


HARKER,  ALFRED  (1859-1939), 
petrologist,  was  bom  at  Kingston-upon- 
Hull  19  February  1859,  the  eldest  son  of 
Portas  Hewart  Harker,  corn  merchant,  by 
his  wife,  Ellen  Mary  Tarbotton.  He  was 
educated  at  the  Hull  and  East  Riding 
College  and  at  Clewer  House  School, 
Windsor.  Admitted  a  sizar  at  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1878,  he  graduated 
as  eighth  wrangler  in  the  mathematical 
tripos  of  1882  and  was  placed  in  the  first 
class  of  both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences 
tripos  (1882  and  1883),  with  physics  as  his 
principal  subject.  The  geological  interests 
which  he  had  acquired  as  a  boy  in  his 
native  Yorkshire  were  strengthened  at  St. 
John's,  where  he  was  elected  a  fellow  in 
1885,  and  led  him  eventually  to  a  life 
study  of  petrology  at  Cambridge.  He 
became  demonstrator  in  geology  in  1884 
and  university  lecturer  in  1904.  In  1888 
he  was  awarded  the  Sedgwick  prize.  In 
1918  a  readership  in  petrology  was  created 
for  him,  a  post  which  he  held  until  his 
retirement  in  1931.  His  early  researches 
dealt  with  slaty  cleavage  in  rocks,  on  which 
he  contributed  an  authoritative  report  to 
the  British  Association  (1886),  and  later 
(with  J.  E.  Marr,  q.v.)  he  made  a  pioneer 
contribution  on  the  thermal  metamorph- 
ism  of  rocks  in  his  studies  of  the  mineral 
assemblages  surrounding  the  Shap  granite 
of  Westmorland  (1891  and  1893). 

Seconded  in  1895  to  the  Geological  Sur- 
vey of  Scotland,  for  summer  field-work 
in  the  Western  Isles,  Harker  mapped  in 
great  detail  the  igneous  moiuitain  group 
of  the  CuilUns  and  the  Red  Hills  of  Skye 
and  later  surveyed  Rum  and  Eigg.  The 
outcome  of  his  researches  in  Skye  and 
Rum  appeared  in  the  Geological  Survey 
memoirs  The  Tertiary  Igneous  Rocks  of 
Skye  (1904)  and  The  Geology  of  the  Small 
Isles  of  Inverness-shire  (1908).  These 
studies  inaugurated  a  new  era  in  the  in- 
vestigation of  igneous  rock  complexes  and 
rank  among  the  great  achievements  in 
igneous  geology.  With  the  completion  in 
1905  of  his  official  studies  on  the  staff  of 
the  Geological  Survey,  he  now  found  time 
to  elaborate  some  of  his  early  essays  on 
theoretical  petrology,  and  these  were  pre- 
sented in  his  Natural  History  of  Igneous 
Rocks  (1909).  Written  in  an  extremely 
lucid  style,  this  classic  study,  through  its 
philosophical  contributions  to  the  major 
problems  of  igneous  action,  has  come  to 
exert  a  profound  influence  on  petrological 
thought.  In  his  later  years  he  returned 
once  more  to  the  subject  of  the  meta- 
morphism  of  rock  masses,  in  studies  which 


were  eventually  expanded  in  his  treatise 
Metamorphism  (1932,  2nd  ed.  1939  and 
Russian  translation  1937),  enriched  by 
illustration  from  the  metamorphic  fields 
of  Great  Britain  which  he  knew  so  well, 
and  now  occupying  a  high  place  in  the 
Uterature  of  petrology. 

Harker's  character  was  marked  by  great 
modesty  and  he  valued  research  above  any 
position.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1902 
and  was  awarded  a  Royal  medal  in  1935 ; 
he  also  received  the  Murchison  medal 
(1907)  and  the  WoUaston  medal  (1922) 
from  the  Geological  Society  of  London,  of 
which  he  was  president  from  1916  to  1918. 
He  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
imiversities  of  McGill  (1913)  and  Edin- 
burgh (1919).  He  died,  unmarried,  at 
Cambridge  28  July  1939. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  8,  January  1940  (selected  biblio- 
graphy and  portrait) ;  The  Eagle  (magazine  of 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge),  vol.  11,  1939 
(portrait) ;  The  Times,  31  July  1939 ;  Nature, 
19  August  1939 ;  Quarterly  Journal  of  the 
Geological  Society,  vol.  xcvi,  1940-1941 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  C.  E.  Tilley. 

HARMSWORTH,  HAROLD  SIDNEY, 

first  Viscount  Rothermere  (1868-1940), 
newspaper  proprietor,  was  born  at  Hamp- 
stead  26  April  1868,  the  second  son  of 
Alfred  Harmsworth,  barrister,  of  the 
Middle  Temple,  by  his  wife,  Geraldine 
Mary,  daughter  of  William  Maffett,  a  land 
agent  in  county  Down.  He  was  a  younger 
brother  of  Alfred  Harmsworth,  Viscovmt 
Northchffe  [q.v.].  Harold  Harmsworth 
left  St.  Marylebone  Grammar  School  at 
an  early  age  and  became  a  clerk  in  the 
Inland  Revenue  Office.  Here  he  stayed 
for  some  years,  apparently  unambitious 
and  contented.  When  his  brother  Alfred 
asked  him  to  join  the  firm  which  he  had 
founded  to  produce  a  number  of  periodi- 
cals such  as  Answers,  Comic  Cuts,  and  the 
Sunday  Companion,  he  agreed  only  after 
long  deliberation  (1888).  But  as  soon  as 
he  took  in  hand  the  business  side  of  the 
organization  which  developed  into  the 
Amalgamated  Press,  he  showed  rare  ability 
for  financial  management.  He  was  in- 
cUned  at  first  to  advise  caution  when  new 
ventures  were  mooted,  but  as  all  these 
prospered  his  attitude  grew  bolder,  and 
when  in  1894  a  London  daily  newspaper 
was  offered  to  the  brothers  they  bought 
it  for  £25,000  and  embarked  on  a  career 
that  was  to  make  them  millionaires  many 
times  over.  The  Evening  News  soon  be- 
came a  valuable  property  and  they  decided 
to  launch  a  morning  journal.    In  1896 


400 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Harmsworth 


appeared  the  Daily  Mail.  Working  on  a 
small  capital  (£40,000)  it  won  immediate 
popularity  and,  although  sneers  and  abuse 
were  lavished  on  the  'new  journalism',  as 
it  was  called,  the  revolution  which  the 
Harmsworths  inaugurated  in  both  the 
methods  and  material  of  newspapers  was 
soon  to  set  the  standard  for  most  of  the 
organs  of  the  daily  press.  So  far  as  its 
editorial  side  was  concerned,  the  elder 
brother  received  and  merited  most  of  the 
credit,  but  in  the  background  there  was 
always  the  younger's  solid  judgement  and 
masterly  handling  of  finance.  From  the 
one  serious  set-back  which  Northeliffe 
suffered  Harold  Harmsworth  stood  aloof. 
Later  on,  however,  in  1914  when  the  Daily 
Mirror  had  been  turned  from  a  disaster 
into  a  success  he  took  it  over  and  made 
it  an  immensely  profitable  undertaking 
along  with  its  satellite,  the  Sunday  Pic- 
torial (the  first  Sunday  picture  newspaper 
to  appear  in  London),  which  he  produced 
in  1915. 

Being  a  shy  man,  Harmsworth  had  no 
wish  to  share  in  the  public  attention  paid 
to  Northeliffe,  but  he  was  known  to  a 
small  circle  as  the  fiinancial  brain  of  the 
business,  an  extremely  astute  investor, 
and  a  generous  giver.  In  1910,  when  he 
was  created  a  baronet,  he  had  already 
begun  his  series  of  munificent  donations 
to  universities,  which  included  a  professor- 
ship at  Oxford  and  two  at  Cambridge,  and 
to  municipal  art  galleries,  for  which  he 
bought  pictures,  not  following  so  much  his 
own  taste  as  the  advice  of  prominent 
critics.  Four  years  later  he  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  as  Baron  Rothermere  and 
with  the  war  of  1914-1918  entered  upon 
a  new  phase  of  his  career.  Emerging  from 
the  privacy  in  which  he  had  lived  so  far, 
he  accepted  in  1916  the  director-general- 
ship of  the  Royal  Army  Clothing  Depart- 
ment and  in  the  following  year  was 
appointed  air  minister  with  the  special 
task  of  amalgamating  what  were  then  the 
Royal  Naval  Air  Service  and  the  Royal 
Flying  Corps.  He  met  with  a  good  deal  of 
opposition ;  he  disliked  having  to  '  argue 
and  wrangle  in  public  as  to  the  reasons 
for  his  business  decisions ' ;  and  unhappily 
soon  after  his  appointment  his  eldest  son 
died  of  wounds  received  in  battle  (his 
second  son  had  been  killed  in  1916),  and 
the  father's  grief  almost  overwhelmed  him. 
He  resigned  his  office  (1918)  and  for  a  time 
remained  invisible  even  to  his  intimates. 
Lloyd  George  as  prime  minister  paid  a 
warm  tribute  to  his  'inestimable  service' 
and  said  that  'time  will  bring  with  it  a  full 


recognition  of  your  achievement'.  Slowly 
the  wound  healed  and  Lord  Rothermere, 
promoted  a  viscount  in  1919,  resumed  his 
newspaper  and  financial  activities.  He 
had  sold  his  Daily  Mail  interest  in  1910, 
but  had  started  a  Glasgow  paper,  the 
Record,  and  bought  the  Leeds  Mercury; 
these  with  the  Mirror  and  Pictorial  were 
at  this  time  his  principal  press  properties. 
He  spent  an  increasingly  large  amount  of 
time  on  financial  operations  and  at  one 
time  estimated  his  wealth  at  twenty  mil- 
lions sterUng ;  but  it  decreased  heavily  in 
value.  His  will  was  proved  for  not  more 
than  a  few  hundred  thousand  pounds. 

Northcliffe's  death  in  1922  threw  on 
Rothermere  fresh  responsibilities.  He  took 
over  control  of  Associated  Newspapers, 
owning  the  Daily  Mail,  Evening  News, 
and  the  Sunday  Dispatch;  this  he  kept 
vmtil  1932,  when  he  passed  it  on  to  his 
son.  He  sold  his  brother's  share  of  The 
Times  to  Major  Astor,  and  the  Amalga- 
mated Press  to  the  Berry  brothers.  To  the 
latter  he  transferred  also  two  Manchester 
papers  bought  by  him  after  the  death  of  Sir 
Edward  Hulton  [q.v.]  in  1925.  An  attempt 
which  he  made  to  establish  a  chain  of 
Northeliffe  newspapers  did  not  succeed. 

Although  still  shy  and  shunning  pubUc 
appearances,  Rothermere  now  signed  fre- 
quent articles  in  the  Daily  Mail  on  the 
need  for  a  strong  Air  Force  and  in  praise 
of  Mussolini  and  Hitler;  with  the  latter 
he  once  stayed  at  Berchtesgaden.  He 
favoured  better  understanding  with  the 
Nazi  regime  and  seemed  inclined  to  back 
Sir  Oswald  Mosley  in  Great  Britain,  but 
never  came  out  as  his  supporter.  He  had 
taken  a  close  interest  in  Magyar  grievances 
at  an  earlier  date  and  was  believed  to  have 
been  approached  with  an  offer  of  the  Hun- 
garian crown.  His  activities  at  home  were 
more  fruitful  than  his  excursions  into 
foreign  affairs.  In  conjunction  with  his 
mother  (who  died  in  1925)  he  gave  £40,000 
to  the  Middle  Temple,  which  elected  him 
an  honorary  bencher ;  and  in  her  memory 
he  bought  the  site  of  Bethlehem  Hospital 
for  a  playground ;  he  was  chief  donor,  too, 
to  the  fund  for  saving  the  FoundUng 
Hospital.  A  man  of  few  friends  (his  abrupt 
manner  of  speech  seemed  disconcerting), 
he  was  in  the  family  circle  affectionate  and 
very  generous.  In  May  1940  he  was  asked 
by  Lord  Beaverbrook,  then  minister  of 
aircraft  production,  to  undertake  a  mis- 
sion to  the  United  States.  There  his  health 
suddenly  failed,  and  he  died  in  Bermuda, 
where  he  had  gone  to  recuperate,  26 
November  1940. 


401 


Dd 


Harms  worth 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lord  Rothermere  married  in  1893  Mary 
Lilian  (died  1937),  daughter  of  George 
Wade  Share.  He  was  succeeded  as  second 
viscoimt  by  his  youngest  and  only  sur- 
viving son,  Esmond  Cecil  (born  1898). 

A  bust  of  Lord  Rothermere  by  Jacob 
Epstein  and  an  oil-painting  by  John 
Cope  (c.  1908)  are  in  the  possession  of  the 
second  Lord  Rothermere.  Another  por- 
trait, by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo  (c.  1936),  was 
hung  in  the  Parliament  House  at  Buda- 
pest. 

[The  Times,  27  November  1940;  personal 
knowledge.]  Hamilton  Fyfe. 

HARRADEN,  BEATRICE  (1864^ 
1936),  novelist,  born  at  Hampstead  24 
January  1864,  was  the  yomiger  daughter 
of  Samuel  Harraden,  musical  instrument 
importer,  by  his  wife,  Rosalie  Lindstedt. 
She  was  educated  in  Dresden ;  at  Chelten- 
ham, Queen's,  and  Bedford  colleges ;  and 
graduated  B.A.  of  London  University. 
Her  life — spent  in  study,  in  travel,  and  in 
devoted  service  to  the  cause  of  female 
suffrage  and  emancipation — was  unobtru- 
sive and  outwardly  uneventful. 

Beatrice  Harraden  made  her  appearance 
in  London  hterary  circles  in  the  'nineties 
under  the  auspices  of  Eliza  Lynn  Linton 
[q.v.].  This  formidable  but  warm-hearted 
lady  introduced  the  girl  at  her  Sunday 
afternoon  gatherings  as  'my  Uttle  B.A.' 
and  delighted  to  show  her  off  as  the 
learned  young  person  which  she  undeni- 
ably was.  Short  and  slight,  with  an  olive 
complexion,  a  clever  rather  serious  face, 
and  beautiful  dark  eyes.  Miss  Harraden 
dressed  in  the  fashion  of  five  years  earlier, 
that  is  to  say,  after  the  style  of  a  Liberty 
aesthete  of  the  'eighties,  in  a  gown  (usually 
of  sage-green  velvet)  which  hung  straight 
from  the  shoulders,  topped  by  a  mush- 
room-hat. She  wore  her  hair  short,  with 
a  fringe,  and  in  outward  appearance  care- 
fully eschewed  the  fashions  of  the  moment. 
As  a  being  she  was  natural,  affectionate, 
and  modest,  had  a  considerable  sense  of 
humour,  and  was  well  loved  throughout 
her  Ufe. 

Miss  Harraden,  the  noveUst,  had  lofty 
principles,  a  deep  feeling  for  beauty,  and 
an  uncritical  sympathy  with  the  rebel  and 
the  outcast.  But  she  -knew  too  little  of 
ordinary  human  nature  to  be  able  to 
create  real  men  and  women.  Now  and 
again  she  depicted  a  conflict  or  a  com- 
panionship with  shrewdness  or  sympathy ; 
but  the  relationship  rather  than  the  per- 
sons related  was  her  interest.  Similarly 
she  was  a  passionate  advocate  of  woman's 


rights ;  but  the  cause,  not  the  individual 
woman,  was  what  stirred  her  enthusiasm. 
A  fatal  strain  of  whimsy  helped  her  to 
evade  the  actualities  for  which  she  had  no 
taste.  Continually  she  slipped  into  fan- 
tasy, into  allegory,  into  fable.  With  her 
first  story.  Ships  That  Pass  in  the  Night 
(1893),  she  had  what  to  posterity  must 
remain  an  inexplicable  success.  The  book 
has  delicacy  and  integrity ;  but  it  is  rhap- 
sodical, elusive,  and  deliberately  parabolic. 

None  of  her  later  novels  acliieved  any- 
thing like  its  success.  Through  them  there 
runs  an  almost  mystical  insistence  on  the 
significance  of  a  fleeting  contact  between 
two  strangers,  one  of  whom,  Excelsior- 
fashion,  'passes  on'.  This  obsession  pro- 
bably arose  from  the  one  tragic  experience 
of  her  life,  for  she  fell  deeply  in  love  with 
a  man  who  falsified  his  clients'  accounts 
and  whose  body  was  found  not  long  after 
in  a  crevasse  on  a  Swiss  glacier. 

In  1930  Miss  Harraden  received  a  civil 
list  pension  in  recognition  of  her  literary 
work.  She  died  at  Barton-on-Sea,  Hamp- 
shire, 5  May  1936. 

[The  Times,  6  May  1936 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] Michael  Sadleik. 

HARREL,  Sir  DAVID  (1841-1939), 
Irish  administrator  and  public  servant, 
was  born  at  Downpatrick,  co.  Down,  25 
March  1841,  the  youngest  son  of  David 
Harrel,  of  Mount  Pleasant,  co.  Down,  who 
was  agent  for  the  Ker  estate  in  that 
county,  by  his  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of 
James  Wharton,  of  Belfast.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  the  Royal  Naval  School,  Gosport, 
intending  to  enter  the  Royal  Navy,  but 
was  over  age  at  the  examination  date  and 
became  a  midshipman  in  the  Dunbar 
Shipping  Company.  He  left  the  sea  in 
order  to  enter  the  Royal  Irish  Constabu- 
lary in  1859  but  retained  a  lifelong  affec- 
tion for  his  first  profession.  He  became 
interested  in  the  Irish  land  question  early, 
when,  as  a  young  police  officer,  he  wit- 
nessed unfair  treatment  of  tenants  and 
evictions,  and  wrote  a  letter  to  Gladstone, 
stating  what  he  had  seen.  In  later  years 
Harrel  followed  with  constant  interest  the 
successive  remedial  measures  which  led  to 
the  settlement  of  the  land  question.  He 
was  appointed  resident  magistrate  in  1879, 
serving  during  the  Land  League  days  in 
county  Mayo,  where  his  just  and  generous 
character  established  mutual  trust  and 
affection  between  him  and  the  people.  He 
was  chief  commissioner  of  the  Dublin 
Metropolitan  Police  from  1883  to  1893. 

Harrel  was  an  active  member  of  the 


402 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Harris,  G.  R.  C. 


pc 

i 


Congested  Districts  Board,  which  brought 
much  improvement  to  the  poor  western 
districts  of  Ireland.  An  Ulster  Protestant, 
he  worked  for  the  Irish  peasantry,  in  co- 
operation with  Roman  Catholic  bishops 
and  priests,  with  whom  his  relations  were 
always  those  of  mutual  respect  and  friend- 
ship. 

Although  the  two  administrations  repre- 
sented differing  poHtical  outlooks,  Harrel, 
serving  as  under-secretary  for  Ireland 
(1893-1902)  while  John  (Viscount)  Morley 
and  George  Wyndham  [qq.v.]  were  chief 
secretaries,  maintained  a  lasting  friend- 
ship with  each  statesman.  After  Harrel's 
retirement  from  Irish  office,  owing  to  ill 
health,  Morley's  opinion  and  influence 
were  instrumental  in  the  recognition  by 
the  government  of  his  gifts  as  arbitrator, 
and  he  acted  as  chairman  and  member  of 
various  arbitration  and  conciliation  boards 
deaUng  with  trade  disputes  in  England,  as 
befitted  one  of  his  strength,  sense  of 
justice,  and  deep  humanity,  and  his  ser- 
vice in  this  respect  was  of  special  im- 
portance during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 
Harrel  was  sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy 
louncil  in  1900,  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
887,  and,  after  being  knighted  in  1893, 
C.B.  (1895),  K.C.V.O.  (1900),  G.B.E. 
(1918),  and  G.C.B.  (1920). 

In  1863  Harrel  married  Juliana  (died 
1931),  daughter  of  Richard  Nugent 
Horner,  rector  of  Killeeshill,  co.  Tyrone. 
It  was  a  perfect  marriage  of  two  rarely 
matched  characters,  and  Harrel's  deep 
respect  for  his  wife's  judgement  influenced 
and  supported  him  throughout  his  career. 
They  had  three  sons  and  two  daughters. 
He  died  at  Bath  12  May  1939. 

[The  Times,  13  May  1939;  Katharine 
Tynan,  The  Years  of  the  Shadow,  1919 ;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Pamela  Hinkson. 

HARRIS,  GEORGE  ROBERT  CAN- 
NING, fourth  Baron  Harris,  of  Seringa- 
patam  and  Mysore,  and  of  Belmont  (1851- 
1932),  cricketer  and  administrator,  was 
born  at  St.  Ann's,  Trinidad,  3  February 
1851,  the  only  son  of  George  Francis 
Robert  Harris,  third  Lord  Harris  [q.v.], 
governor  of  Trinidad,  who  was  appointed 
governor  of  Madras  in  1854.  His  mother, 
who  died  when  he  was  two  years  old,  was 
Sarah,  younger  daughter  of  George  Cum- 
mins, archdeacon  of  Trinidad.  He  was 
grandson  of  George  William  Harris,  second 
Lord  Harris  [q.v.],  and  great-grandson  of 
George  Harris,  first  Lord  Harris  [q.v.]. 
The  Harris  family  had  a  remarkable  record 


of  service  in  the  Indian  army  and  in 
Indian  administration,  which  was  main- 
tained by  the  fourth  Lord  Harris. 

Harris  entered  Eton  in  1864.  He  was  in 
the  eleven  for  his  last  three  years,  and  was 
captain  in  1870,  when  there  was  a  very 
close  struggle  with  Harrow  which  Eton 
won  by  only  21  runs.  An  incident  occurred 
when  as  bowler  he  ran  out  the  batsman  at 
his  end  who  was  backing  up  too  eagerly. 
He  checked  his  delivery  on  the  crease,  and 
instead  of  bowling  put  the  wicket  down, 
an  unusual  mode  of  dismissal  which 
evoked  a  noisy  expression  of  disapproval 
from  the  Harrow  partisans.  In  an  atmo- 
sphere of  tense  excitement  this  action, 
while  perfectly  legitimate,  required  some 
courage,  but  courage  was  a  quality  in 
which  Harris  was  never  found  wanting. 
His  development  as  a  batsman  came  later 
than  his  school  and  university  days.  He 
went  up  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and 
was  three  years  (1871,  1872,  and  1874)  in 
the  university  eleven,  but  except  on  one 
or  two  occasions  his  scores  were  modest. 
His  best  innings  was,  perhaps,  his  last, 
against  Cambridge  in  1874,  when  he  made 
43,  described  as  an  admirable  display. 

Harris's  main  interest  was  in  his  own 
county,  Kent,  where  a  county  cricket  club 
was  formed  early  in  1870,  and  shortly  after 
leaving  Oxford,  he  became  its  moving 
spirit.  His  energy  in  collecting  capable 
players,  as  well  as  in  encouraging  the 
interest  of  supporters,  was  invaluable.  He 
accepted  the  captaincy  in  1875,  and  held 
it  until  1889,  playing  in  most  of  the 
matches.  The  improvement  in  his  own 
form  was  rapid,  for  before  long  he  came 
to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  best  amateur 
batsmen  in  England. 

In  early  matches  with  Austraha  Harris 
played  a  prominent  part.  In  the  winter 
of  1878-1879  he  took  out  to  Australia  an 
amateur  team  with  two  professional 
bowlers.  The  side  played  no  test  matches, 
and  its  programme  contained  only  five 
eleven-a-side  games,  the  remainder  being 
against  odds.  The  team  won  and  lost 
against  Victoria,  and  also  against  New 
South  Wales.  The  fifth  match,  against  a 
strong  mixed  eleven,  also  went  against  it. 
There  was  an  unfortunate  disturbance  at 
Sydney,  owing  to  an  umpire's  decision. 
The  crowd  rushed  the  ground,  and  for  a 
time  all  was  confusion.  This  affair,  and 
some  controversial  correspondence  which 
followed,  may  almost  be  said  to  have  had 
a  share  in  bringing  about  in  1880  the  first 
test  match  ever  played  in  this  comitry 
between  England  and  Australia. 


403 


Harris,  G.  R.  C. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


i 


When  the  Australians  next  visited  Eng- 
land, in  that  year,  it  was  found  that, 
owing  to  some  faulty  arrangement,  their 
programme  was  of  the  dullest  and  most 
unworthy  kind.  Although  they  brought 
quite  a  good  side,  they  had  only  a  few 
eleven-a-side  matches,  most  of  their  en- 
gagements being  with  local  twenty-twos 
and  eighteens.  Towards  the  end  of  the 
season  some  extra  matches  were  played, 
and  among  these  was  one  against  the  fiill 
strength  of  England.  It  was  felt  that  in 
view  of  what  had  happened,  the  right  man 
to  collect  and  captain  the  English  side  was 
Harris.  The  match  was  an  immense  suc- 
cess. It  took  place  at  the  Oval  in  the  first 
week  of  September  and,  according  to  con- 
temporary accounts,  was  attended  by 
more  people  than  had  ever  watched  a 
game  of  cricket  in  England.  England  put 
almost,  if  not  quite,  its  full  strength  into 
the  field,  and  won  by  five  wickets  after 
a  much  closer  struggle  than  at  one  time 
had  looked  probable.  In  1884  Harris  again 
captained  England  in  two  test  matches, 
one  at  Lord's  which  England  won,  and  the 
other,  a  huge  run-getting  affair  at  the 
Oval,  which  was  drawn. 

After  his  retirement  from  active  play  in 
first-class  cricket,  Harris  continued  his 
services  to  the  game,  and  proved  as  valu- 
able in  the  committee  room  as  he  had  done 
in  the  field.  A  member  of  the  Marylebone 
Cricket  Club  for  over  sixty  years,  he  filled 
many  important  offices,  as  trustee  (1888), 
treasurer  (1896-1932),  and  president 
(1895).  Everywhere  respected  and  popu- 
lar, at  the  end  of  his  life  he  held  a  position 
of  authority  and  influence  in  the  cricket 
world  to  which  cricket  history  can  furnish 
no  parallel. 

It  is  no  reflection  upon  Harris's  record 
as  a  statesman  to  say  that  his  name  is 
remembered  chiefly  in  connexion  with 
cricket.  He  was  xmder-secretary  for  India 
from  June  1885  to  February  1886,  and 
under-secretary  for  war  from  1886  to  1889. 
From  1890  to  1895  he  was  governor  of 
Bombay,  an  office  in  which  he  showed 
robust  common  sense.  He  handled  the 
troubles  in  some  of  the  Kathiawar  states 
with  tact  and  vigour  and  he  did  valuable 
work  by  the  keen  interest  which  he  showed 
in  agriculture.  But  his  chief  service  wliile 
governor  was  the  popularization  of  cricket 
among  Indians,  and  it  was  he  who  secured 
the  first  visit  to  India  of  a  representative 
team  from  England  under  the  captaincy 
of  Martin  Bladen  Hawke,  seventh  Lord 
Hawke  [q.v.].  On  his  return  from  Bom- 
bay Harris  began  a  long  connexion  with 


the   City   of  London   as   chairman  an<3 
director  of  various  South  African  underl 
takings.   He  served  in  the  South  African 
war  as  assistant-adjutant-general  with  the  • 
Imperial  Yeomanry.  M 

Harris,  who  possessed  handsome  feaV 
tures  and  a  fine  physique,  succeeded  his 
father  as  fourth  baron  in  1872.  He  was 
appointed  G.C.I.E.  in  1890,  G.C.S.I.  m 
1895,  and  C.B.  m  1918.  He  married  in 
1874  Lucy  Ada  (died  1930),  second  daugh- 
ter of  Carnegie  Robert  John  Jervis,  third 
Lord  St.  Vincent.  He  died  at  his  home, 
Belmont,  near  Faversham,  24  March  1932, 
and  was  succeeded  as  fifth  baron  by  his 
only  child,  George  St.  Vmcent(born  1889). 

A  portrait  of  Harris  by  Arthur  Hacker 
is  in  the  pavilion  at  Lord's  Cricket  Ground. 

[The  Times,  26  March  1932 ;  Lord  Harris, 
A  Few  Short  Runs  (portrait),  1921 ;  Wisden's 
Cricketers'  Almanack,  passim.] 

Alfked  Cochrane. 

HARRIS,  JAMES  THOMAS 
('FRANK')  (1856-1931),  author,  editor, 
and  adventurer,  the  fourth  child  and  third 
son  of  Thomas  Vernon  Harris,  a  seaman, 
by  his  wife,  the  daughter  of  a  Baptist 
minister,  was  probably  born  14  February 
1856.  The  place  of  his  birth  was  at  various 
times  stated  by  himself  to  liave  been  Gal- 
way,  Tenby,  and  Brighton.  His  father 
and  mother  were  Welsh,  and  the  boy's 
early  years  were  spent  in  Ireland.  At  the 
age  of  fourteen  he  ran  away  to  the  United 
States  of  America,  where,  having  worked 
as  bootblack,  labourer,  hotel  clerk,  and 
cowboy,  he  joined  an  elder  brother  in 
Kansas  in  1872,  and  attended  the  state 
university.  Here  he  acquired  the  lan- 
guage, at  least,  of  idealistic  philosophy, 
and  became,  as  he  remained  tlu-oughout 
life,  a  systematic  amorist.  By  a  subse- 
quent return  to  Europe,  brief  experience 
as  correspondent  in  the  Russo-Turkish 
war  of  1877-1878,  and  attendance  at  two 
German  universities,  he  prepared  himself 
for  a  grand  assault  upon  London  at  the 
age  of  twenty-seven.  The  assault  began 
with  work  on  the  Evening  News,  which  he 
edited  and  sensationalized ;  but  at  the  end 
of  four  years  the  position  was  lost  or  re- 
signed, and  in  1886,  almost  by  force,  he 
obtained  the  editorship  of  the  Fortnightly 
Review.  Harris  used  control  of  this 
periodical,  which  he  filled  with  striking 
contributions  from  leading  or  rising  men, 
for  his  own  social  advancement;  and  in 
1887  he  married  a  wealthy  widow,  Mrs. 
Edith  Mary  Clayton,  whose  house  in  Park 
Lane  made  ideal  headquarters  for  a  politi- 


404 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Harrison 


cal  campaign  which  was  to  end,  he  hoped, 
in  the  premiership.  He  was  a  sociaUst. 
The  campaign  failed,  in  spite  of  Harris's 
ferocious  briUiance  as  talker  and  orator, 
and  the  marriage  likewise  failed.  In  1894 
he  eloped  with  Miss  Helen  O'Hara,  later 
Mrs.  Harris,  published  a  first  book,  Elder 
Conklin  and  Other  Stories,  and  bought  the 
Saturday  Review,  which  he  made  for  four 
years  the  most  brilliant  literary  and  politi- 
cal weekly  of  the  time.  This  period  (1886- 
1898)  was  without  question  the  finest  in 
his  life,  for  he  associated  as  an  equal  with 
the  most  distinguished  contemporary 
writers  and  had  tyrannic  power  over 
their  minds;  but  it  ended  in  the  latter 
year,  when  he  sold  the  Saturday  Review, 
wasted  his  own  and  other  people's  money 
in  an  incompetent  attempt  to  nm  luxury 
hotels  on  the  French  Riviera,  and  thence- 
forth became  not  so  much  a  buccaneer  as 
a  petty  opportunist  of  whose  needs  other 
men  took  advantage. 

Harris  continued  to  write.  His  play, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Daventry,  the  idea  for  which 
he  said  that  he  bought  from  Oscar  Wilde 
[q.v.],  was  produced  in  1900.  A  second 
volume  of  short  stories,  Montes  the  Mata- 
dor, containing  his  best  work  in  fiction, 
was  published  the  same  year.  He  now 
began  the  most  elaborate  of  all  his  writ- 
ings, The  Man  Shakespeare,  a  book  which 
anticipated  the  later  vogue  for  psycho- 
analytical literary  criticism  and  sought  by 
ingenious  quotation  and  conjecture  to  pre- 
sent Shakespeare  as  self-confessed  not 
only  in  the  Sonnets  but  in  the  characters 
of  Romeo,  Hamlet,  Orsino,  Jaques,  etc. 
The  book,  published  in  1909,  has  not 
influenced  Shakespearian  scholars;  but 
some  of  its  analyses,  especially  that  of  the 
character  of  Macbeth,  are  suggestive.  It 
was  followed  in  1910  by  a  play,  Shake- 
speare and  his  Love,  and  in  1911  by  a 
study.  The  Women  of  Shakespeare.  A  short 
novel  about  anarchists  in  Chicago,  The 
Bomb  (1908),  an  historical  tale.  Great  Days 
(1913),  and  further  volumes  of  short 
stories  practically  concluded  his  work  in 
fiction.  Meanwhile  one  disastrous  journa- 
listic venture  followed  another,  from  a  new 
weekly,  the  Candid  Friend,  in  1901,  and 
the  attempted  revival  of  Vanity  Fair  in 
1907,  to  a  brief,  ignominious  flutter  with 
a  woman's  journal.  Hearth  and  Home,  in 
1911,  and  a  shady  exploit  with  Modem 
Society  which  led  to  imprisonment  for  con- 
tempt of  court  and  the  final  eclipse  of 
Harris  as  a  reputable  English  journalist. 
He  returned  in  1914  to  the  United  States, 
where   he    acquired    and   ran   Pearson's 


Magazine,  using  it  during  the  war  of  191 4- 
1918  as  a  medium  for  vehement  and  scur- 
rilous anti-British  political  writing. 

In  1915  there  began  the  last  long  phase 
of  Harris's  literary  career,  which  was  de- 
voted to  books  and  short  pieces  about  men 
whom  he  had  known,  or  pretended  that 
he  had  known,  in  palmier  days.  The  first 
of  five  series  of  Contemporary  Portraits 
(1915-1930)  was  then  published,  and  for 
the  rest  of  his  life  these  portraits,  with 
biographies  of  Wilde  (2  vols..  New  York, 
1916)  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  (1931),  and 
an  immense  serial  autobiography.  My  Life 
(published  in  Germany,  America,  and 
France,  1925-1930;  abridged  version, 
under  the  title  of  Frank  Harris,  His  Life 
and  Adventures,  published  by  Grant 
Richards  in  1947),  occupied  his  time.  Such 
personal  books  all  suffer  from  Harris's 
fantastic  delusion  of  greatness,  complete 
lack  of  humour,  reckless  unreUability  of 
statement,  and  poor  sense  of  character. 
But,  while  glib  and  untruthful,  they  con- 
tain valuable  sidelights  upon  the  men 
whom  he  knew  or  had  read  about;  and 
they  have  more  life  than  his  fiction,  which, 
extravagantly  praised  by  early  critics,  is 
mechanical  and  without  feeUng.  It  was  as 
a  personality  that  Harris  impressed ;  and 
every  surviving  testimony  emphasizes  his 
physical  vigour,  vehement  (even  outrage- 
ous) speech,  rich  bass  voice,  and  piercing 
eyes.  Mr.  Shaw  is  quoted  by  Mr.  Hugh 
Kingsmill  as  saying:  'He  is  neither  first- 
rate,  nor  second-rate,  nor  tenth-rate.  He 
is  just  his  horrible  unique  self.'  That 
uniqueness  did  not  embrace  literary 
genius.  He  lived,  often  in  great  straits  for 
money,  until  26  August  1931,  and  died  at 
Nice. 

[A.  I.  Tobin  and  Elmer  Gertz,  Frank 
Harris:  a  Study  in  Black  and  White  (Chicago), 
1931 ;  Hugh  Kingsmill,  Frank  Harris,  1932 ; 
Frederic  Carrel,  The  Adventures  of  John 
Johns  (for  ^re-Fortnightly  career  in  London), 
1897;  Frank  Harris,  My  Life  (New  York), 
1925-1930.]  Frank  Swinnekton. 

HARRISON,     MARY     ST.     LEGER 

(1852-1931),  novelist  under  the  pseudo- 
nym of  Lucas  Malet,  was  born  at  Evers- 
ley,  Hampshire,  4  Jvme  1852,  the  yoimger 
daughter  of  the  novelist  Charles  Kingsley 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of 
Pascoe  Grenfell,  of  Taplow,  Buckingham- 
shire. Henry  Kingsley  [q.v.]  was  her 
uncle.  As  a  girl  she  studied  at  the  Slade 
School  of  Fine  Art  under  (Sir)  Edward 
Poynter  [q.v.]  but  abandoned  any  idea  of 
an  artistic  career  on  her  marriage  to  the 


405 


Harrison 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Rev.  William  Harrison,  which  took  place 
in  1876.  After  a  short  period  spent  at 
Wormleighton,  Worcestershire,  her  hus- 
band was  appointed  to  the  Uving  of  Clovelly 
in  North  Devon,  a  place  which  for  many 
years  remained  the  Harrisons'  home. 

Mrs.  Harrison's  first  literary  success 
came  with  the  appearance  of  her  second 
novel,  Colonel  Enderby's  Wife  (1885), 
written,  like  all  her  books,  under  the 
pseudonym  of  'Lucas  Malet',  a  name 
formed  from  the  surnames  of  two  families 
related  to  the  Kingsleys  and  chosen  be- 
cause she  did  not  want  to  profit  by  the 
literary  fame  of  her  own  family.  In  1891 
she  published  The  Wages  of  Sin,  a  novel 
dealing  partly  with  artistic  circles  in  Lon- 
don, partly  with  the  fishing  people  of  her 
own  home  at  Clovelly.  The  book  was 
stigmatized  by  many  critics  as  being  both 
daring  and  unpleasant,  although,  judging 
by  later  standards,  it  is  difficult  to  make 
out  the  grounds  for  such  objections.  The 
History  of  Sir  Richard  Calmady  (1901) 
provoked  an  even  louder  storm  of  criti- 
cism, partly  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
book  deals  with  the  subject  of  deformity, 
but  in  spite  of  its  realistic  theme  the  novel 
is  written  throughout  in  the  high  romantic 
manner. 

In  1897  William  Harrison  died,  without 
issue,  and  in  1902  his  widow  was  received 
into  the  Roman  CathoUc  Church.  In  1906 
she  bought  a  house  in  her  father's  old 
parish  of  Eversley,  but  she  spent  much  of 
her  time  travelUng  abroad  with  her  cousin 
and  adopted  daughter.  Miss  Gabrielle  Val- 
lings.  She  was  especially  at  home  in 
France,  where  she  had  many  friends 
among  the  artists  of  the  day.  Her  know- 
ledge of  French  literature  was  extensive 
and  she  had  a  particular  admiration  for 
Flaubert.  She  lived  in  London  throughout 
the  war  of  1914^1918,  but  in  1924  she 
moved  to  Montreux,  where  she  made  one 
of  a  literary  circle  which  included  such 
various  writers  as  Remain  RoUand,  Mr. 
Robert  Hichens,  'Sapper'  (Cyril  McNeile, 
q.v.),  and  Louis  N.  Parker.  Part  of  each 
year  she  spent  in  England,  and  it  was 
during  one  of  these  visits  that  she  was 
taken  ill,  dying  some  eighteen  months 
later  at  Tenby  27  October  1931.  The  pre- 
vious year  she  had  been  awarded  a  civil 
list  pension  in  recognition  of  her  literary 
work. 

A  handsome  woman  and  an  excellent 
conversationalist, '  Lucas  Malet '  was  a  well- 
known  figure  in  contemporary  literary 
society,  her  friends  including  Henry  James 
[q.v.]  and  the  critic  W.  L.  Courtney  [q.v.]. 

406 


She  was  among  the  most  successful  novel- 
ists of  her  day  and  was  considered  by  her 
contemporaries  to  be  extremely  out- 
spoken, but,  writing  always  in  an  ela- 
borate Meredithian  style  and  in  the 
romantic  convention,  she  can  hardly  be 
considered  a  forerunner  of  the  realistic 
school  of  twentieth-century  novehsts. 

Two  miniatures  of  'Lucas  Malet'  by 
S.  A.  Lindsey  are  in  the  possession  of 
Miss  Vallings. 

[The  Times,  29  October  1931 ;  private  in- 
formation.] Georgina  Battiscombe. 


HARTSHORN,  VERNON  (1872-1931) 
miners'  leader  and  politician,  was  born  at 
Pontywaim,   Monmouthshire,    16   March 
1872,  the  elder  son  of  TheophUus  Harts 
horn,    coalminer,    by    his    wife,    Helen 
Gregory,  daughter  of  a  farm  labourer.  H 
began  to  work  in  a  pit  as  a  boy,  and  later 
he  was  for  a  time  employed  as  a  clerk  in 
a    colliery    company's    office    at    Cardiff 
docks.    Returning  to  work  at  Risca,  he 
was  elected  by  the  miners  as  their  check 
weighman. 

Hartshorn,  who  from  an  early  age  had 
taken  a  deep  interest  in  industrial  an 
political  movements,  was  one  of  the  pio 
neers  of  the  independent  labour  party  in 
Wales.  In  1905  he  was  elected  miners' 
agent  of  the  Maesteg  district  of  the  South 
Wales  Miners'  Federation  and  in  1911  to 
its  executive  covmcil  and  to  the  National 
Executive  Coimcil  of  the  Miners'  Federa^ 
tion  of  Great  Britain.  He  took  a  leading 
part  in  the  minimum  wage  strike  of  1912 
and  was  prominent  in  local  government 
business.  At  the  general  election  of  1918 
Hartshorn,  who  had  in  1910  twice  unsuc- 
cessfully contested  the  Mid-Glamorgan 
division  as  a  labour  candidate,  was  re-^ 
turned  unopposed  as  the  first  member  foiQ 
the  newly  formed  Ogmore  division  of 
Glamorganshire,  and  he  held  the  seat  until 
his  death.  Notwithstanding  parliamentary 
duties,  he  aided  the  miners  in  their  strike 
in  1920,  but  he  found  himself  so  much  at 
variance  with  his  extremist  colleagues  that 
he  resigned  from  both  the  miners'  exe- 
cutive coiuicils  to  which  he  belonged.  He 
was  soon  afterwards  re-elected  and  from 
1922  to  1924  he  was  president  of  the  South  ( 
Wales  Miners'  Federation.  JH 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918,  Harts^ 
horn  served  on  the  Coal  Trade  Organiza- 
tion Committee,  the  Coal  Controllers' 
Advisory  Committee,  and  the  Industrial 
Unrest  Committee  in  South  Wales,  and  his 
services  were  recognized  by  appointme: 
as  O.B.E.  in  1918. 


J 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hawke 


In  parliament  Hartshorn  was  elected 
chairman  of  the  Welsh  labour  group  in 
1923,  and  in  the  first  labour  administra- 
tion in  1924  he  was  postmaster-general 
and  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  In  1927 
he  was  appointed  to  the  Indian  Statutory 
Commission,  which  he  regarded  as  one  of 
the  greatest  works  ever  undertaken  by 
any  seven  men.  The  chairman,  Sir  John 
(later  Viscount)  Simon  stated  that  those 
portions  of  the  commission's  report  which 
dealt  with  the  franchise  and  the  method 
of  election  were  especially  due  to  Harts- 
horn. 

On  the  formation  of  the  second  labour 
administration  in  1929,  the  prime  minister 
announced  that  a  place  for  Hartshorn 
would  be  found  as  soon  as  the  conmiission 
had  completed  its  work.  Accordingly,  in 
1930  he  was  appointed  lord  privy  seal 
with  special  responsibility  for  the  govern- 
ment's policy  on  employment,  but  al- 
though a  report  handed  to  the  prime 
minister  by  Hartshorn  after  two  months 
of  office  earned  Ramsay  MacDonald's  high 
praise,  Hartshorn's  death  did  not  allow 
this  promise  to  come  to  fulfilment. 

Hartshorn  owed  his  rise  to  his  special 
knowledge  of  the  mining  industry,  his  out- 
standing ability  as  a  negotiator,  and  his 
great  power  of  leadership.  He  himself 
attributed  his  moral  and  mental  develop- 
ment to  Primitive  Methodism,  to  Robert 
Blatchford,  and  to  his  own  wife,  Mary 
Matilda,  daughter  of  Edward  Winsor, 
coalminer,  of  Nailsea,  Somerset,  whom  he 
married  in  1899  and  by  whom  he  had  two 
sons  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at  Maes- 
teg,  South  Wales,  13  March  1931. 

[The  Times,  14  March  1931.] 

W.  L.  Cook. 

HAWKE,  MARTIN  BLADEN,  seventh 
Baron  Hawke  of  Towton  (1860-1938), 
cricketer,  was  born  at  Willingham,  Lin- 
colnshire, 16  August  1860,  the  second  but 
eldest  surviving  son  of  Edward  Henry 
Julius  Hawke,  sixth  Lord  Hawke,  vicar 
of  Coates  and  rector  of  Willingham  from 
1854  to  1875,  by  his  wife,  Jane,  third 
daughter  of  Henry  Dowker,  of  Lays- 
thorpe,  Yorkshire.  He  was  great-great- 
grandson  of  Edward  Hawke,  first  Lord 
Hawke  [q.v.],  the  celebrated  admiral.  He 
was  educated  at  Eton,  where  he  gained  his 
cricket  colours  in  1878,  playing  against 
Harrow  that  season,  and  again  in  1879. 
On  leaving  he  went  for  a  time  to  a  private 
tutor,  and  did  not  go  up  to  Magdalene 
College,  Cambridge,  until  the  autumn  of 
1881.  He  was  in  the  university  eleven  for 


three  years  (1882-1888  and  1885).  He  did 
not  play  against  Oxford  in  1884,  but  he 
captained  the  Cambridge  side  in  1885. 

In  the  late  summer  of  1881,  before  he 
went  to  Cambridge,  Hawke  was  invited  to 
play  for  Yorkshire,  the  county  with  which 
his  name  will  always  be  associated.  He 
appeared  in  two  matches  at  the  Scar- 
borough festival,  and  in  the  second  of 
these,  against  I  Zingari,  batted  with  some 
success.  In  1882  as  a  Cambridge  blue  his 
assistance  was  welcomed  by  the  Yorkshire 
executive,  and  as  soon  as  the  university 
season  was  over,  he  became  a  regular 
member  of  the  county  eleven,  playing  in 
thirteen  matches.  His  batting  had  made 
a  distinct  advance,  and  with  a  number  of 
useful  double-figure  scores,  the  highest  of 
which  was  60  against  Gloucestershire,  he 
fully  justified  his  selection.  His  ser\ices 
to  Yorkshire  cricket  in  after  years  were  so 
varied  and  important  that  his  value  as 
a  playing  member  of  the  side  is  apt  to  be 
overlooked.  But  in  point  of  fact,  if  never 
a  very  sound  batsman,  he  became  a  very 
dangerous  one,  a  powerful  hitter,  and  at 
his  best  in  an  emergency.  Apart  from  his 
captaincy  he  was  weU  worth  his  place. 

Yorkshire  in  those  early  days  was  re- 
garded as  one  of  the  strongest  opponents 
in  the  county  competition,  for  the  team 
contained  some  of  the  best  professional 
cricketers  to  be  found  in  the  country.  The 
need  of  the  moment  was  a  competent  cap- 
tain, able  to  control  and  direct  the  talent 
available.  In  1883  Hawke  was  offered  the 
captaincy,  which  he  accepted,  and  he  held 
it  until  1910. 

Hawke  entered  upon  his  duties  with 
energy,  and  improved  the  organization  in 
many  ways,  handling  with  tact  and  wis- 
dom problems  and  difficulties  as  they 
arose.  His  relations  with  the  professionals 
under  his  leadership  were  admirable.  He 
could  be  firm  in  cases  where  discipline 
called  for  drastic  action,  but  his  kindly 
interest  in  those  who  served  the  side  well 
was  unfailing.  It  was  at  his  suggestion 
that  the  system  of  winter  pay  was  intro- 
duced, and  that  the  large  sums  received 
for  benefit  matches  were  suitably  and 
wisely  invested.  At  the  end  of  each  season 
there  was  a  friendly  gathering  of  York- 
shire players  at  the  captain's  country 
house,  Wighill  Park,  near  Tadcaster.  After 
Ws  marriage  he  settled  at  Huttons  Ambo 
Hall,  near  Malton. 

With  the  continued  supply  of  high-class 
professionals,  and  the  aid  of  some  ama- 
teiu-s,  one  of  whom,  (Sir)  F.  S.  Jackson, 
was  among  the  greatest  of  his  generation. 


407 


Hawke 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


it  is  no  wonder  that  Yorkshire  soon 
reached  the  top  of  the  tree.  The  team  won 
the  championship  for  the  first  time  in 
1893,  and  in  the  twenty-seven  years  of 
Hawke's  captaincy  it  held  the  premier 
place  eight  times.  Considering  how  often 
it  had  to  let  its  best  men  off  for  test 
matches  this  is  a  good  record. 

Another  notable  service,  even  more 
valuable  to  the  progress  of  the  game,  was 
rendered  by  Hawke.  This  was  the  arrange- 
ment and  management  of  cricket  tours 
from  England  to  various  parts  of  the 
world.  He  went  to  Australia  in  1887,  but 
owing  to  his  father's  death  in  December 
he  was  obliged  to  return  home.  Later  he 
took  teams  to  India  (twice),  the  United 
States  of  America  and  Canada  (twice). 
South  Africa  (twice),  the  West  Indies,  and 
South  America.  It  is  interesting  to  notice 
that  he  Uved  to  see  South  Africa,  India, 
and  the  West  Indies  admitted  to  full  test- 
match  status. 

For  many  years  Hawke  served  the 
Marylebone  Cricket  Club  as  a  member  of 
various  committees.  He  was  elected  presi- 
dent of  the  club  in  1914.  Owing  to  the 
outbreak  of  war,  no  change  was  made,  and 
he  held  office  until  1918.  On  the  death  of 
George  Harris,  fourth  Lord  Harris  [q.v.], 
in  1932  he  became  treasurer.  He  remained 
president  of  the  Yorkshire  county  club 
until  his  death. 

Lord  Hawke  died  in  Edinburgh  after 
a  few  days'  illness  10  October  1938.  He 
married  in  1916  Marjory  Nelson  Ritchie 
(died  1936),  thfa-d  daughter  of  William 
Peacock  Edwards,  J. P.,  of  Edinburgh, 
and  widow  of  Arthur  J.  Graham  Cross. 
There  was  no  issue  of  the  marriage,  and 
he  was  succeeded  as  eighth  baron  by  his 
brother,  Edward  Juhan  (1873-1939). 

[The  Times,  11  October  1938 ;  Lord  Hawke, 
Recollections   and   Reminiscences  (portraits), 
1924 ;  Wisden's  Cricketers'  Almanack,  passim.] 
Alfred  Cochrane. 

HAWKINS,   Sir   ANTHONY   HOPE 

(1863-1933),  novelist  imder  the  pseudo- 
nym of  Anthony  Hopk,  was  the  younger 
son  of  the  Rev.  Edwards  Comerford 
Hawkins,  by  his  wife,  Jane  Isabella, 
daughter  of  Archibald  Grahame,  of  Brigh- 
ton. Kenneth  Grahame  [q.v.],  the  author, 
was  his  first  cousin.  He  was  born  9 
February  1863  at  Clapton  where  his  father 
was  headmaster  of  St.  John's  Foundation 
School  for  the  Sons  of  Poor  Clergy.  There, 
at  Leatherhead  whither  the  school  was 
moved,  and  at  Marlborough,  where  he  won 
the   100   yards   and   quarter-mile   races. 


Hawkins  began  his  education,  proceeding 
to  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  with  an  exhibi- 
tion (which  in  his  first  term  was  raised  to 
a  scholarship)  in  1881.  He  played  in  the 
college  fifteen,  obtained  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1882)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1885),  and  became  president 
of  the  Union  (1886).  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Middle  Temple  in  1887.  His 
father,  now  a  widower,  had  been  presented 
to  St.  Bride's  church.  Fleet  Street;  and  with 
him  Hawkins  made  his  home  for  the  next 
seventeen  years.  There  were  three  careers 
for  which  he  was  equally  equipped,  poli- 
tics, the  law,  authorship.  A  staunch 
liberal,  he  stood  (1892)  without  success 
but  without  disgrace,  for  a  conservative 
constituency,  South  Buckinghamshire. 
After  six  years  at  the  bar  he  was  holding 
briefs  from  such  important  bodies  as  the 
Great  Western  Railway.  By  June  1893 
he  had  published  five  novels,  of  which 
Mr.  WitVs  Widow  (1892)  achieved  as  well 
as  promised.  To  authorship  he  leaned 
most,  and  on  28  November  1893  his  choice 
was  made  for  him  rather  than  by  him.  On 
that  afternoon  as  he  walked  back  to  the 
Temple  from  the  Westminster  county 
court,  where  he  had  won  a  case,  the  story 
of  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda  unrolled  itself 
before  him.  He  began  it  the  next  morning, 
and  writing  two  chapters  a  day,  finished 
it  on  29  December.  It  was  published  in 
April  1894,  a  modern  romance  of  adven- 
ture. The  debonair  chivalry  of  its  hero, 
the  fresh,  vivid  narration,  and  the  tender- 
ness of  the  love-story  took  more  than  the 
town  by  storm.  Andrew  Lang  acclaimed 
it  at  the  Academy  banquet.  R.  L.  Steven- 
son sent  congratulations  from  far  Samoa. 
The  same  sununer  saw  The  Dolly  Dia- 
logues published.  Written  with  the  most 
delicate  wit  and  now  and  then  touched 
with  a  shade  of  sadness,  suggested  as 
much  as  stated  so  that  the  reader  to  his 
pleasure  must  do  a  share  of  the  work  him- 
self; these  conversations  between  Dolly, 
Lady  Mickleham,  and  Mr.  Samuel  Carter 
are  so  truthfully  set  in  the  London  season 
of  their  day  that  the  social  historian  would 
be  unwise  to  neglect  them.  They  enhanced 
the  fame  and  profits  gained  by  The 
Prisoner  of  Zenda ;  and  on  4  July  Hawkins, 
aware  of  the  danger  of  a  divided  mind, 
wrote  letters  of  farewell  to  his  legal  clients 
and  gave  twenty  years  to  imaginative 
work. 

The  Chronicles  of  Count  Antonio  (1895) 
and  Simon  Dale  (1898)  are  historical 
romances.  Rupert  of  Hentzau  (1898),  a 
sequel  to  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda,  The  Heart 


408 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Hay 


of  Princess  Osra  (1806),  Phroso  (1897), 
Sophy  of  Kravonia  (1906)  were  of  the 
Ruritania  type,  more  fanciful  but  less 
compelling.  Hawkins  and  others  thought 
The  King's  Mirror  (1899),  a  diary  of  disillu- 
sionment, and  Double  Harness  (1904)  his 
best  work.  But  he  had  many  interests  and 
ways  of  expressing  them.  He  would  take 
some  outstanding  figure,  an  empire  builder 
(The  God  in  the  Car,  1894),  a  poUtician 
(Quisantd,  1900),  an  actress  (A  Servant  of 
the  Public,  1905),  build  up  the  character 
carefully  against  its  natural  backgrotind, 
set  it  in  contact  with  a  woman  or  a  man 
of  high  individuahty,  and  work  out  the 
relationship,  sometimes  to  failure,  some- 
times to  contentment,  never  but  once 
{Tristram  of  Blent,  1901)  to  the  triumphal 
march.  The  Great  Miss  Driller  (1908),  a 
Queen  Elizabeth  in  a  modem  county,  is 
set  to  choose  between  independence  and 
surrender,  grasps  and  loses  the  advantages 
of  both,  and  climbs  courageously  back  to 
her  independence.  All  these  are  thought- 
ful analj'tical  novels  of  character  rather 
than  incident  and  graced  with  the  feU- 
citous  dialogue  of  which  he  especially 
was  master.  But  although  they  were  well 
received,  Anthony  Hope  remained  the 
author  of  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda. 

The  Prisoner  of  Zenda,  dramatized  by 
Edward  Rose,  was  produced  with  great 
success  by  Sir  George  Alexander  [q.v.]  at 
the  St.  James's  Theatre  in  January  1896. 
Hawkins,  whose  early  ambition  had  been 
to  act,  turned  playwright.  The  Adventure 
of  Lady  Ursula  was  produced  in  October 
1898,  with  Evelyn  Millard  and  Herbert 
Waring,  and  was  followed  in  1900  by 
English  Nell,  a  version  of  Simon  Dale,  with 
Marie  Tempest  as  Nell  Gwyn.  Both  were 
profitable,  but  Pilkerton's  Peerage  (1903), 
a  satire  on  the  distribution  of  honours, 
also  added  to  his  reputation. 

Hawkins  married  in  1903  Elizabeth 
Somerville  (died  1946),  daughter  of  Charles 
Henry  Sheldon,  of  New  York,  and  had 
two  sons  and  a  daughter.  He  lived 
thereafter  at  41  Russell  Square  but, 
warned  by  ill  health,  he  rented  and  subse- 
quently, bought  Heath  Farm,  Walton- 
on-the-Hill,  Surrey,  exchanging  the  big 
London  house  for  a  smaller  one  in  Cower 
Street.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
he  joined  the  Editorial  and  Pubhc  Branch 
Department  (the  original  Ministry  of  In- 
formation), which  was  under  the  direction 
of  Charles  Frederick  Gurney  Masterman 
[q.v.]  at  Wellington  House,  and  was 
knighted  for  his  services  in  1918.  He  was 
for  twelve  years  on  the  committee  of  the 


Authors'  Society,  for  four  years  its  chair- 
man, and  a  foimder  of  its  pension  scheme. 
He  published  a  modest  volume  of  remini- 
scences (Memories  and  Notes)  in  1927.  He 
died  at  Heath  Farm  8  July  1933. 

[The  Times,  10  July  1933 ;  Anthony  Hope, 
Memories  and  Notes,  1927 ;  Sir  Charles  Mallet, 
Anthony  Hope  and  his  Books,  1935 ;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  E.  W.  Mason. 

HAY,  Sir  HARLEY  HUGH  DAL- 
RYMPLE-  (1861-1940),  civil  engineer, 
was  born  probably  at  Rawalpindi,  India, 
7  October  1861,  the  third  son  of  Colonel 
George  James  Dalrymple-Hay,  Bengal 
Staff  Corps,  by  his  wife,  Amelia  Emily, 
daughter  of  Colonel  Henry  Daniel  Mait- 
land,  and  grandson  of  Sir  James  Dal- 
rymple-Hay, second  baronet,  of  Park 
Place,  Glenluce.  Educated  at  a  private 
school  in  Edinburgh  and  by  army  tutors, 
he  began  his  engineering  career  as  a  pupil 
on  the  South  Wales  line  of  the  Midland 
Railway,  and  later  joined  the  engineering 
staff  of  the  London  and  South  Western 
Railway  for  which  he  was  engaged  for 
several  years  on  various  engineering  works. 

In  1894  Dalrymple-Hay  became  resi- 
dent engineer  for  the  Waterloo  and  City 
Railway  for  the  construction  of  which  he 
employed  his  own  method  of  a  hooded  shield 
and  clay  pockets  for  driving  tiuinels  luider 
compressed  air  without  requiring  a  head- 
ing or  timbers  outside  the  shield.  This 
system  and  other  improvements  in  the 
methods  of  constructing  tube  railways, 
originated  by  Dalrymple-Hay,  have  been 
used  since  both  in  this  coimtiy  and  in  the 
United  States  of  America  and  have  in  fact 
become  standard  practice.  In  1902  he 
took  up  the  appointment  of  consulting 
civil  engineer  to  the  Undergrovmd  Electric 
Railways  Company  of  London,  a  position 
which  he  held  for  thirty-eight  years  and 
until  his  death ;  in  1907  he  began  his  own 
private  practice  as  a  consulting  civil 
engineer  in  Westminster. 

It  is  impracticable  to  enumerate  all 
Dalrymple-Hay's  tube-railway  works,  con- 
sisting as  they  do  of  over  sixty  miles  of 
tunnels  in  London  alone,  but  they  include 
the  Bakerloo,  Hampstead,  and  Piccadilly 
lines ;  the  extensions  from  Golders  Green 
to  Edgware,  from  Finsbury  Park  to  Cock- 
fosters,  and  from  Highgate  to  East  Finch- 
ley;  the  stations  at  Piccadilly  Circus, 
Leicester  Square,  Waterloo  (Bakerloo 
line).  King's  Cross,  Hyde  Park  Corner, 
Knightsbridge,  the  Elephant  and  Castle, 
and  many  others ;  also  numerous  escalator 


409 


Hay 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


schemes,  amongst  which  was  the  first 
escalator  on  the  underground  system,  that 
at  Earls  Court,  which  was  completed  in 
1911. 

Dalrymple-Hay  was  asked  in  1921  to 
report  on  a  system  of  tube  railways  for 
Calcutta,  and  later  designed  a  tunnel 
under  the  river  Hugh.  This  tunnel,  com- 
pleted in  1931,  was  the  first  shield-driven 
iron-lined  tunnel  under  a  great  tidal  river 
in  the  East,  and  its  construction  was 
carried  out  under  high  air  pressures,  in 
difficult  cUmatic  conditions,  and  with  the 
use  of  unskilled  labour.  Amongst  other 
works  outside  London  for  which  he  was 
responsible  were  a  system  of  culverts  for 
the  Bristol  corporation's  generating  sta- 
tion at  Portishead,  and  tunnels  for  the 
Edinburgh  corporation  luider  the  Firth  of 
Forth  at  PortobeUo. 

Although  Dalrymple-Hay's  work  was 
mostly  concerned  with  the  construction 
of  tunnels  and  tube  railways,  a  branch  of 
civil  engineering  in  which  he  was  probably 
the  greatest  expert  of  his  day,  he  also  was 
concerned  in  other  engineering  projects  of 
varying  natures.  Possibly  the  most  in- 
teresting of  these  was  the  widening  of 
Richmond  bridge.  The  150-year-old  bridge 
was  strengthened  and  widened  by  some 
11  feet,  without  either  the  traffic  over  it 
or  the  water  traffic  under  it  being  stopped 
for  a  single  day,  and  without  any  altera- 
tion to  the  architectural  design,  the  exist- 
ing fa9ade  stonework  and  parapet  being 
dismantled,  numbered,  and  later  replaced 
on  the  widened  bridge. 

Dalrymple-Hay  was  consulting  engineer 
for  the  construction  of  the  Post  Office 
(London)  Railway,  a  system  of  great  in- 
terest and  ingenuity,  which  was  opened  in 
1928,  and  it  was  for  the  Post  Office  that 
he  undertook  his  last  major  work.  This 
was  a  secret  system  of  deep-level  tunnels 
beneath  Whitehall  to  preserve  from  aerial 
bombardment  intercommunication  be- 
tween government  offices. 

Dalrymple-Hay  was  knighted  in  1933, 
and  served  on  the  council  of  the  Institu- 
tion of  Civil  Engineers  from  then  until  his 
death.  As  a  student  of  the  institution  he 
was  awarded  a  Miller  prize  in  1885  for  a 
paper  on  'Trigonometrical  Surveying'  and 
in  1900  he  won  a  Telford  gold  medal  and 
Telford  premium  for  his  paper  on  'The 
Waterloo  and  City  Railway'.  A  charac- 
teristic of  Dalrymple-Hay  was  his  strong 
belief  in  practice  being  preferable  to  theory 
and  experience  being  more  valuable  than 
scholarship.  He  was  intensely  human,  a 
quality  which  endeared  him  to  men  of  all 


walks  of  life  who  worked  under  him.   He] 
married  in  1891  Agnes  Yelland,  daughter] 
of  Frederick  Waters,  and  had  a  daugh- 
ter. He  died  at  Chorley  Wood,  Hertford- 
shire, 17  December  1940. 

[Engineer  and  Engineering,  27  December' 
1940  (portraits) ;  Journal  of  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers,  vol.  xv,  1940-1941 ;  The 
Times,  20  December  1940  and  3  January 
1941 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Agnes  Y.  Dalkymplk-Hay. 

HEAD,  Sir  HENRY  (1861-1940), 
neurologist,  was  born  at  Stamford  Hill, 
Stoke  Newington,  4  August  1861,  the 
eldest  son  of  Henry  Head,  an  insurance 
broker  at  Lloyds,  by  his  wife,  Hester, 
daughter  of  Richard  Beck.  He  was  edu- 
cated for  two  years  at  Grove  House  School, 
Tottenham,  and  afterwards  at  Charter- 
house. He  then  spent  some  time  at  the 
university  of  Halle  before  going  to  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1880.  From  1884 
to  1886  he  studied  under  Ewald  Hering  at 
the  German  university  of  Prague.  On  his 
return  to  Cambridge  he  studied  physiology 
and  anatomy  and  went  to  University  Col- 
lege Hospital,  London,  for  clinical  work, 
before  qualifying  M.B.  (Camb.)  in  1890, 
later  taking  his  M.D.  (Camb.)  in  1892.  His 
principal  teachers  at  Cambridge  were  (Sir) 
Michael  Foster,  W.  H.  Gaskell,  and  J.  N. 
Langley  [qq.v.]. 

After  qualification  Head  became  suc- 
cessively house-physician  at  University 
College  Hospital,  and  Victoria  Park  Hos- 
pital for  Diseases  of  the  Chest,  and  clinical 
assistant  (1894)  at  the  County  Mental 
Hospital,  Rainhill,  Liverpool.  He  then 
became  registrar  at  the  London  Hospital 
and  in  1896  assistant  physician,  becoming 
in  due  course  physician  and  consulting 
physician.  His  M.D.  thesis  'On  Disturb- 
ances of  Sensation,  with  special  reference 
to  the  Pain  of  Visceral  Disease',  was 
extended  and  published  in  Brain  (1893, 
1894,  and  1896).  This  piece  of  work  estab- 
lished 'Head's  Areas',  the  regions  of  in- 
creased cutaneous  sensitiveness  associated 
with  diseases  of  the  viscera.  In  1894  he 
became  M.R.C.P.  and  six  years  later 
F.R.C.P.,  and  in  1897  he  received  the 
Moxon  medal  which  is  awarded  every 
third  year  by  the  Royal  College  of  Physi- 
cians to  the  person  who  is  deemed  to  have 
distinguished  himself  by  observation  and 
research  in  clinical  medicine.  He  gave  the 
college's  Goulstonian  lecture  in  1901  on 
'Some  Mental  States  associated  with  Vis- 
ceral Disease  in  the  Sane'  and  in  1911 
the   Croonian  lecture  to  the  college  on 


410 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Head 


'Sensory  Changes  from  Cerebral  Lesions'. 
In  1899  he  was  elected  F.R.S,,  and  later 
served  on  the  council  (1915-1917)  and  as 
vice-president  (1916-1917).  In  1908  he 
was  awarded  a  Royal  medal  for  his  work 
on  neurology  and  in  1921  deUvered  the 
Croonian  lecture  to  the  society  on  the 
'  Release  of  Function  in  the  Nervous  Sys- 
tem'. From  1905  to  1921  he  was  editor 
of  the  neurological  journal  Brain  which 
had  been  founded  in  1878.  In  1920  he  was 
president  of  the  section  of  neurology  at 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  British  Medical 
Association  held  at  Cambridge. 

The  most  interesting  event  in  Head's 
life  was  the  operation  performed  on  him 
by  James  Sherren,  an  eminent  surgeon 
attached  to  the  London  Hospital.  At  the 
time  of  the  operation  the  circumstances 
were  ideal.  Head  was  then  forty -two  years 
old,  in  perfect  health,  he  had  not  smoked 
for  two  years  and  no  alcohol  was  taken 
during  the  time  of  observation.  The  opera- 
tion, the  details  of  which  are  described  by 
William  Halse  Rivers  Rivers  under  the 
title  of  'A  Human  Experiment  in  Nerve 
Division'  {Brain,  vol.  xxxi,  1908),  con- 
sisted in  exposure  and  excision  of  small 
portions  of  Head's  left  radial  and  external 
cutaneous  nerves.  To  facilitate  regenera- 
tion of  the  sensory  fibres  the  ends  of  the 
excised  nerves  were  vmited  with  silk 
sutures.  The  following  results  were  ob- 
served : '  AU  forms  of  superficial  sensibility 
were  lost  over  the  radial  half  of  the  fore- 
arm and  the  back  of  the  hand.  There  was 
no  interference  with  deep  sensibility,  as  this 
is  subserved  by  afferent  fibres  in  the  motor 
nerves.  Head  recognized  two  forms  of 
superficial  or  cutaneous  sensibility  and 
called  these  "  protopathic "  and  "epi- 
critic".  Protopathic  sensibility,  which 
returned  about  seven  weeks  after  the 
nerve  had  been  cut,  included  sensory  re- 
sponse to  pain,  heat,  and  cold  of  a  crude 
nature.  Epicritic  sensibility,  which  re- 
turned later,  was  finer  and  more  discri- 
minating; degrees  of  temperature  could 
be  distinguished,  light  touch  was  appre- 
ciated, and  the  subject  was  able  to  locate 
accurately  the  point  touched.'  Through- 
out the  investigation  the  tests  were  applied 
by  Rivers,  while  Head,  whose  eyes  were 
closed,  was  unaware  of  the  nature  of  the 
stimuli  and  of  the  correctness  or  error  of 
his  replies. 

The  work  entitled  Studies  in  Neurology, 
which  appeared  in  two  volumes  in  1920, 
was  written  by  Head  in  collaboration  with 
Dr.  Gordon  Holmes,  Dr.  George  Riddoch, 
J.  Sherren,  W.  H.  R.  Rivers,  and  Theo- 


dore Thompson.  It  consists  mainly  of 
seven  articles  which  had  appeared  in  Brain 
between  1905  and  1918.  The  work  also 
contains  an  account  of  the  methods  em- 
ployed in  testing  sensation,  an  introduc- 
tion and  an  epilogue  dealing  with  the 
common  aims  of  the  writers,  and  finally 
a  consideration  of  the  most  serious  criti- 
cisms. 

Head's  last  important  work,  entitled 
Aphasia  and  Kindred  Disorders  of  Speech, 
appeared  in  two  volumes  in  1926 ;  this  was 
based  on  the  examination  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  men  suffering  from  gunshot  wounds 
of  the  brain.  According  to  Dr.  Holmes 
these  volumes  were  'devoted  not  merely 
to  the  clinical  and  symptomatic  aspects 
of  disturbances  of  speech,  but  were  also 
an  attempt  to  investigate  the  psychical 
processes  concerned  therein,  and  the 
physiological  integrations  necessary  for 
the  comprehension  and  expression  of  ideas 
in  language'.  It  was  characteristic  of 
Head's  loyalty  to  his  former  teachers  that 
he  dedicated  his  work  on  aphasia  to 
Gaskell  of  Cambridge,  Hering  of  the  Ger- 
man university  of  Prague,  and  John 
Hughlings  Jackson  [q.v.],  of  the  London 
Hospital. 

Beyond  delivering  numerous  lectures 
before  medical  or  scientific  societies  al- 
ready mentioned.  Head  did  not  receive 
many  distinctions ;  he  was  knighted  in 
1927,  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1920,  and  received 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Edin- 
burgh University,  and  that  of  M.D.  from 
Strasburg  University. 

Head's  chief  relaxations  were  music  and 
literature,  particularly  poetry  and  prose 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  later 
psychological  novels  such  as  those  of 
Meredith,  Hardy,  and  Henry  James.  He 
had  two  volumes  printed  for  private  cir- 
culation containing  some  of  his  own  verse 
and  a  translation  of  some  of  Heine's 
poems ;  these  were  published  in  1919  under 
the  title  Destroyers  and  Other  Verses. 

After  a  long  illness  Head  died  of  pneu- 
monia at  Reading  8  October  1940.  In  1904 
he  married  Ruth  (died  1939),  the  highly 
gifted  eldest  daughter  of  Anthony  Lawson 
Mayhew,  fellow  of  Wadham  College,  Ox- 
ford; they  had  no  children.  He  left  the 
greater  part  of  his  fortune  to  the  Royal 
Society  '  for  the  purpose  of  the  advance- 
ment in  England  of  the  science  of  medicine 
in  the  widest  sense '  with  the  Royal  Society 
as  residual  legatee. 

In  conclusion  there  may  be  quoted  the 
following  estimation  by  Dr.  Holmes  of 


411 


Head 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Head's  character:  'Head  was  an  out- 
standing personality,  but  in  certain  re- 
spects a  complex  one.  Though  he  gave  the 
impression  of  being  a  severe  materiaUst, 
he  was  interested  in  certain  forms  of 
mysticism,  probably  due  to  the  influence 
of  the  Quaker  atmosphere  in  which  he  was 
brought  up.  A  rigidly  scientific  and  ob- 
jective outlook  on  all  matters  which  he 
studied  was  in  him  combined  with  a  vivid 
imagination  which  at  times  seemed  to 
carry  his  ideas  beyond  the  boiuids  of 
probabihty.  To  casual  acquaintances  his 
talents  in  conversation  and  discussion 
often  appeared  extravagant,  but  they  in- 
variably contained  a  germ  of  truth.  His 
pubUshed  writings,  on  the  other  hand, 
were  always  subjected  to  a  rigid  criticism 
which  assured  an  accurate  and  reasoned 
presentation  of  the  conclusions  to  which 
he  had  come.' 

[The  Times,  10  October  1940;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  10, 
December  1941  (portrait) ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1940,  vol.  ii,  pp.  539  and  577  (por- 
trait) ;  Lancet,  1940,  vol.  ii,  p.  534  (portrait) ; 
Brain,  vol.  Ixiii,  1940  (bibliography).] 

J.  D.  ROLLESTON. 

HEALY,  JOHN  EDWARD  (1872- 
1934),  journalist,  was  born  at  Drogheda 
17  March  1872,  the  eldest  child  and  only 
son  of  James  Stanislaus  Healy,  solicitor, 
of  that  town,  by  his  wife,  Kate  Mary, 
daughter  of  John  Edward  Appleyard,  of 
Drogheda.  He  was  educated  at  the  local 
grammar  school  and  in  1892  entered 
Trinity  College,  DubUn,  as  a  sizar.  There 
he  developed  remarkable  gifts  and  found 
an  enduring  spiritual  home. 

Healy  was  not  only  a  classical  scholar 
in  1895  and  in  1896  first  senior  moderator 
in  modern  literature,  but  also  junior 
moderator  in  classics  and  was  awarded  the 
Brooke  prize.  He  was  in  three  successive 
years  vice-chancellor's  prizeman — ^twice 
for  English  verse  and  once  for  English 
prose.  When,  therefore,  two  years  after 
graduation  he  was  invited  to  join  the  staff 
of  the  Dublin  Daily  Express  he  was  richly 
equipped  and  after  a  few  years  became  its 
editor. 

In  1906  Healy  was  called  to  the  Irish 
bar,  although  he  remained  Dublin  corre- 
spondent of  The  Times  to  which  he  had 
been  appointed  in  1899.  In  1907,  how- 
ever, he  returned  to  full-time  newspaper 
work  as  editor  of  the  Irish  Times,  and 
through  the  twenty-seven  difficult  and 
arduous  years  in  this  office  proved  himself 
a  supreme  journalist  and  leader-writer. 


To  Healy,  at  home  among  the  main  cur- 
rents of  European  culture,  Irish  national- 
ism appeared  a  reedy  backwater.  He 
therefore  threw  himself  whole-heartedly 
into  the  defence  of  the  union  and,  when 
his  cause  was  overwhelmed,  fought  on  to 
keep  the  new  Ireland  as  close  as  might 
be  to  the  Empire.  Although  just  and 
chivalrous  in  controversy  he  could  strike 
shrewdly.  The  majority  in  his  beloved 
country  was  against  him  and  in  the  early 
nineteen-twenties  his  fife — he  refused  pro- 
tection of  any  kind — was  in  constant  peril. 
Courage  went,  however,  with  the  equa- 
nimity which  was  his  outstanding  charac- 
teristic. 

Healy  took  an  active  part  in  Irish  poli- 
tics during  some  of  the  most  critical  years 
of  the  home  rule  controversy.  He  was 
associated  closely  with  Sir  Horace  Plunkett 
[q.v.]  in  his  economic  campaign,  and  when 
the  home  rule  bill  reached  the  statute 
book,  being  convinced  that  without  a 
united  Ireland  no  form  of  self-government 
would  be  of  any  avail,  he  gave  staunch 
support  to  the  anti-partition  movement, 
and  he  fought  vigorously  against  any 
attempt  to  broaden  the  gap  between  Dub- 
lin and  London.  His  real  interests,  how- 
ever, were  always  scholarly  rather  than 
poUtical.  Sir  J.  P.  Mahaffy  [q.v.]  had  been 
his  tutor  at  Trinity  College,  and  it  was  to 
him  that  Healy  looked  for  guidance  and 
advice  throughout  his  newspaper  career. 
In  1923  his  university  conferred  upon  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  M.A. 

In  1899  Healy  married  Adeline,  daughter 
of  James  Foe  Alton,  of  Limerick  and  later 
of  Dublin,  and  sister  of  Dr.  E.  H.  Alton, 
provost  of  Trinity  College,  DubUn.  By  her 
he  had  two  sons.  He  died  in  Dublin  30 
May  1934,  respected  even  by  his  strongest 
opponents  and  regarded  far  beyond  her 
shores  as  the  most  lucid  of  all  interpreters 
of  Ireland.  A  portrait,  by  Briana  Alton, 
is  in  Mrs.  Healy's  possession. 

[The  Times  and  Irish  Times,  31  May  1934 ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
R.  J.  Herbert  Shaw. 

HEALY,  TIMOTHY  MICHAEL  (1855- 
1931),  Irish  political  leader  and  first 
governor-general  of  the  Irish  Free  State, 
the  elder  son  of  Maurice  Healy,  by  his 
wife,  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Daniel  O' Sul- 
livan, of  Bantry,  co.  Cork,  was  born  at 
Bantry  17  May  1855.  His  father,  a 
scholarly  man  who  could  recite  Homer, 
was  successively  clerk  of  the  poor-law 
union  at  Bantry  and  after  1862  at  Lis- 
more.   Bantry  had  been  one  of  the  most 


412 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Healy,  T.  M. 


stricken  districts  in  Ireland  during  the 
famine  years,  and  Healy  had  therefore 
early  occasion  to  be  affected  by  a  sense  of 
the  misgovernment  of  his  country,  and  its 
misfortunes.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Christian  Brothers'  School  at  Fermoy ;  but 
was  largely  self-taught,  for  he  had  to  set 
out  for  Dublin  to  pick  up  a  living  at  the 
age  of  thirteen.  In  1871  he  left  Ireland  to 
find  employment  in  Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
as  a  shorthand  clerk  in  the  office  of  the 
North  Eastern  Railway  Company.  His 
spare  hours  at  Newcastle  were  given  to 
political  work  among  the  Irish  population 
— he  became  secretary  of  the  Home  Rule 
Association  after  a  visit  of  Isaac  Butt 
[q.v.] — and  to  literary  studies,  these  last 
assisted  by  his  prodigious  memory.  He 
could  repeat  Shakespeare  almost  by  heart, 
and  knew  enough  French  and  German  to 
be  able  to  enjoy  these  literatures.  Years 
later,  during  a  spell  in  prison,  he  memor- 
ized the  Bible.  In  1878,  after  removing  to 
London  and  becoming  confidential  clerk 
in  a  large  floor-cloth  factory,  he  began  to 
frequent  the  lobby  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, as  the  contributor  at  a  guinea  a 
week  of  a  weekly  parliamentary  letter  to 
the  Nation,  owned  and  edited  by  another 
Bantry  man,  Timothy  Daniel  Sullivan, 
who  had  married  his  aunt,  his  father's 
sister.  He  thus  came  into  contact  with 
the  young  members  of  the  Parnellite  party 
whom  he  astonished  by  his  cleverness  and 
accomplishments.  In  the  Nation  he  '  wrote 
up  Parnell  and  obstruction  week  after 
week  with  that  bright,  fiery,  corrosive  wit 
which  we  now  all  know;  and  the  Nation 
newspaper  was  Parnell's  first  organ,  and 
Tim  Healy  his  first  spokesman  in  the 
press'  [T.  P.  O'Connor  (q.v.),  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell],  Early  in  1880  Parnell, 
when  in  America  on  an  Irish  mission, 
remembering  what  he  had  heard  of  Healy's 
secretarial  abilities,  cabled  for  the  latter 
to  come  out  and  organize  the  Canadian 
end  of  the  tour.  In  reference  to  this  col- 
laboration T.  P.  O'Connor  [ibid.]  says,  'If 
ever  a  man  served  another  faithfully,  Tim 
Healy  was  the  faithful  servant  of  Parnell.' 
That  Parnell  recognized  Healy's  ability 
there  is  no  doubt ;  later  he  said  that  Healy 
had  the  only  political  head  among  his  fol- 
lowers. As  to  Healy's  early  attitude  to- 
wards the  inscrutable  leader  against  whom 
he  afterwards  turned  so  fiercely,  it  was  one 
of  mingled  reverence,  doubt,  and  affection. 
While  in  Canada  he  described  Parnell  as 
O'Connell's  successor,  'the  uncrowned 
King  of  Ireland' ;  yet  in  a  letter  of  1879 
to  his  brother  Maurice  he  had  written  of 


the  insecurity  which  he  felt  as  regards 
Parnell's  qualities  of  head  and  heart.  Par- 
nell, it  has  been  generally  considered  by 
those  who  had  the  opportunity  of  observa- 
tion, rather  markedly  failed  to  respond  to 
the  affectionate  side  of  Healy's  disposi- 
tion. He  never  admitted  him  even  to  the 
limited  intimacy  which  he  extended  to 
William  O'Brien  [q.v.]  and  a  few  of  his 
colleagues. 

After  the  general  election  of  1880  Glad- 
stone, the  new  premier,  found  himself 
faced  with  the  agrarian  agitation  which 
the  Parnellites  had  sponsored.  Healy 
threw  himself  heartily  into  this  movement 
in  the  course  of  which  he  was  arrested  on 
a  charge  of  intimidation.  His  arrest  was 
immediately  followed  by  his  nomination 
for  the  borough  of  Wexford,  where  a 
vacancy  had  occurred,  and  he  was  re- 
turned without  opposition.  He  was  then 
tried  by  jury  in  Dublin  under  one  of 
the  acts  in  the  ferocious  Whiteboy  code, 
but  acquitted.  On  taking  his  seat  in 
parliament  he  was  at  first  ill  at  ease.  The 
press  reporters  mocked  at  his  brogue  and 
even  at  the  cut  of  his  clothes.  He  re- 
sponded to  mockery  by  an  almost  super- 
human diUgence  in  acquainting  himself 
with  the  weaknesses  of  parliamentary  pro- 
cedure and  exploiting  these  to  the  profit 
of  the  policy  of  obstruction.  Ministers  had 
no  more  embarrassing  questioner,  for 
Healy  was  at  pains  to  acquaint  himself 
with  details  of  every  obscure  scandal  of 
public  administration  in  the  United  King- 
dom. His  constructive  ability  first  showed 
itself  during  the  debates  on  the  highly 
complicated  Land  Act  of  1881.  He  was 
one  of  a  half  a  dozen  members,  Irish  or 
Enghsh,  who  could  grasp  the  measure  in 
its  intricacies,  and,  indeed,  the  discussion 
of  the  measure  was  mainly  carried  on  by 
him  and  two  of  Gladstone's  law  officers. 
His  greatest  triumph  was  the  adoption  of 
the  '  Healy  clause '  which  provided  that  no 
rent  should  in  future  be  chargeable  on 
tenants'  improvements,  and  it  is  said  to 
have  been  accepted  by  Hugh  Law  [q.v.], 
the  Irish  attorney-general,  in  a  moment 
of  absence  of  mind.  'I  have  added  mil- 
lions to  the  pockets  of  the  tenants ',  Healy 
whispered  to  the  nationalist  member  by 
his  side. 

Although  the  Land  Act  of  1881  repre- 
sented a  substantial  victory  for  the 
tenants,  agrarian  agitation  continued  and 
was  met  by  stringent  measures  of  coercion 
and  by  the  imprisonment  without  trial  of 
hundreds  of  Land  Leaguers.  Healy  him- 
self was  imprisoned  in  1883  for  six  months. 


413 


Healy,  T.  M. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


When  matters  between  the  government 
and  the  ParneUites  were  about  at  their 
worst,  a  vacancy  occurred  in  county  Mona- 
ghan,  and  the  author  of  the  '  Healy  clause ' 
was  put  up  as  Parnellite  candidate  in 
order  to  attract  the  support  of  the  Pro- 
testant farmers  who  had  hitherto  voted 
for  the  liberals.  After  an  exciting  struggle 
in  which  he  had  Parnell's  personal  sup- 
port, he  was  returned  at  the  head  of  the 
poll  against  a  Uberal  and  an  Orangeman. 
At  the  general  election  of  1885  he  made 
an  even  deeper  incursion  into  Ulster,  and 
succeeded  in  winning  the  seat  in  South 
Londonderry,  which  he  held  until  the  next 
year.  He  had  been  called  to  the  Irish  bar 
(King's  Inns,  Dublin)  in  1884  (eventually 
taking  silk  in  1899)  and  was  doing  a  fair 
business  in  the  new  land  courts.  His  gain 
in  self-assurance  was  accompanied  by  a 
growing  distrust  of  Parnell,  of  whose 
entanglement  with  Mrs.  O'Shea  he  was 
undoubtedly  aware.  Parnell,  Healy  felt, 
had  as  a  consequence  lost  his  fighting  zest 
and  grasp  on  strategy.  It  was  never  sug- 
gested by  Healy's  worst  enemies  that  he 
himself  intrigued  for  the  leadership ;  and 
in  his  attitude  towards  Parnell's  private 
fault  he  had  more  human  understanding, 
and  was  more  of  a  man  of  the  world  than 
has  been  supposed  by  some  of  his  critics. 
The  colleague  in  the  party  whom  Healy 
most  trusted  and  admired  was  the  himch- 
back  J.  G.  Biggar  [q.v.],  whose  philander- 
ings  were  indiscriminate  and  notorious.  It 
was  with  Biggar  that  he  travelled  to  Gal- 
way  in  February  1886  when  he  had  his 
first  open  difference  with  Parnell.  Parnell 
had  proposed  Captain  O'Shea,  not  even 
a  nominal  home  ruler,  as  member  for  Gal- 
way,  and  Biggar  and  Healy  determined 
to  oppose  this  irresponsible  exercise  of 
power.  Both  made  speeches  in  favour  of 
the  popular  candidate,  Michael  Lynch; 
but  after  Parnell's  unexpected  arrival  in 
the  town  Healy  succumbed  to  the  old 
fascination,  on  Parnell's  agreeing  to  find 
another  seat  for  Lynch. 

Healy  stood  in  awe  of  but  two  men: 
Gladstone  and  Parnell — and  of  the  two 
Gladstone  after  1886  was  in  his  political 
judgement  the  more  important  asset  to 
the  Irish  cause.  This  helps  to  explain  his 
volte-face  in  the  crisis  of  Irish  leadership 
which  followed  the  divorce  case  of  1890. 
Healy  at  first  supported  Parnell's  re- 
election to  the  chairmanship  of  the  Irish 
party,  saying  'we  will  teach  these  damned 
nonconformists  to  mind  their  own  busi- 
ness'; but  on  the  publication  of  Glad- 
stone's refusal  to  co-operate  further  with 


the  Irish    leader  he    strongly,  although^ 
with  tears  in  his  eyes,  recommended  Par- 
nell's temporary  retirement  if  satisfactory  \ 
assurances  regarding  the  coming   home^ 
rule  bill  could  be  obtained  from  the  British  i 
premier,    'My  voice',  he  added,  'will  be: 
the  first  to  call  you  back.'    Parnell  re- 
sponded coldly  by  naming  Gladstone  thej 
'unrivalled  sophist',  and  it  was  then  that! 
Healy  flew  at  his  throat.   Healy  asked  if  I 
the  Gladstone  alliance  was  to  perish  'ini 
the  stench  of  the  Divorce  Court',  and  in) 
subsequent  electoral  struggles  in  Ireland^ 
he  made  frequent  and  very  regrettable] 
references  to  Mrs.   O'Shea.    It  is  to  bel 
remembered,  as  some  excuse,  that  he  re- 
garded Mrs.  O'Shea  not  merely  as  the! 
'woman  in  the  case'  but  as  a  politician! 
with  an  anti- Irish  bias  who  had  had  at 
disastrous  influence  upon  Parnell's  public 
as  weU  as  private  conduct.   He  was  con- 
vinced (as  appears  in  his  autobiography, 
Letters  and  Leaders  of  My  Day)  that  it  was  \ 
at  Mrs.  O'Shea's  insistence  that  the  retire- 
ment, suggested  under  stress  of  a  sincere  \ 
emotional  regard  for  Parnell,  was  refused. 
In  1892,  when  Parnell  was  dead,  Healy, 
who  had  represented  North  Longford  since ; 
1887,  captured  North  Louth  for  the  anti- : 
ParneUites.  But  he  was  a  constant  thorn ' 
in  the  flesh  to  the  other  anti-Parnellite 
leaders,   John   Dillon    [q.v.]   and   T.   P. 
O'Connor,  whom  he  accused  of  subservi- 
ence to  English  liberalism  after  the  defeat  j 
of  home  rule  and  Gladstone's  retirement. 
Eventually    he   was    expelled   from   the 
National  League  in  1895  ;  but  it  was  found 
impossible  to  dislodge  him  from  North 
Louth,  where  he  was  under  the  special 
protection  of  Cardinal  Logue  [q.v.]  and 
the  clericals,  who  rightly  regarded  him  as 
the  most  able  and  resolute  advocate  at 
Westminster  of  Roman  Catholic  interests, 
educational   and    otherwise.      He   led  a 
small  political  party  of  his  own  which  had 
the  financial  support  of  William  Martin 
Murphy,  another  self-made  Bantry  man 
and   a   captain   of    Irish   industry.     On 
the  reunion  of  the  nationalists   in  1900 
Healy  supported  the  choice  of  John  Red- 
mond [q.v.]  as  chairman,  but  was  a  few 
months  later  shown  the  door  of  the  league 
by  William  O'Brien  and  in  1902  was  ex- 
pelled from  the  party  itself.    During  the 
chief  secretaryship  of  George  Wyndham 
[q.v.]  he  was  on  friendly  personal  relations 
with  that  minister,  who  was  prepared, 
short  of  home  rule,  to  come  to  terms  with      \ 
nationalist  and   Catholic  sentiment.     It  fl 
was  Healy's  opinion  that  no  British  states-  V 
man  would  follow  Gladstone  in  taking  a       ' 


414 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Healy,  T.  M. 


serious  risk  for  home  rule,  and  the  captious 
attitude  of  the  Irish  party,  dominated 
by  John  Dillon's  anti-tory  prejudice,  to- 
wards Wyndham's  friendly  gestures,  ap- 
peared to  him  therefore  to  be  a  rejection 
of  the  substance  for  the  shadow.  Healy 
was  now  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  and 
his  speeches,  often  as  rich  in  pathos  as  in 
dexterity  and  wit,  seldom  failed  to  cap- 
tivate the  House.  In  1910  he  joined 
William  O'Brien,  his  former  foe,  in  the 
foundation  of  the  'AH  For  Ireland' 
League,  which  had  for  its  object  the  de- 
fence of  Wyndham's  Land  Purchase  Act 
and  the  promotion  of  the  cause  of  Irish 
self-government  by  conciliation  and  con- 
sent among  Irishmen  rather  than  by 
parliamentary  tactics.  In  the  same  year, 
after  being  defeated  in  North  Louth,  he 
found  a  seat  in  North-East  Cork,  an 
O'Brienite  stronghold,  and  became  a  K.C. 
and  was  made  a  bencher  of  Gray's  Inn. 
He  appeared  frequently  in  the  English 
courts  during  the  suffragette  agitation  as 
an  advocate  of  the  women  prisoners,  and 
in  Ireland  gave  much  of  his  time  to  work- 
ing up  the  case  of  the  Lough  Neagh  fisher- 
men (see  his  Stolen  Waters,  A  Page  in  the 
Conquest  of  Ulster,  1913,  and  The  Great 
Fraud  of  Ulster,  1917).  On  the  other  hand, 
his  conservatism  showed  forth  when  he 
acted  for  William  Martin  Murphy  and  the 
employers  in  the  arbitration  proceedings 
which  followed  the  great  Dublin  strike  of 
1913. 

During  the  situation  created  first  by 
the  Ulster  revolt  against  H.  H.  Asquith's 
home  rule  bill  of  1912,  then  by  the  war, 
and  finally  by  the  insurrection  in  1916, 
Healy  was  unsparing  in  criticism  of  Red- 
mond's management  of  national  interests. 
After  1916  the  Sinn  Feiners  were  the  rising 
power  in  Ireland,  and  although  Healy 
differed  from  them  in  his  view  of  the  war, 
he  fully  shared  their  opinion  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  promises  and  performances 
of  both  the  Asquith  and  coalition  govern- 
ments. His  views  were  reflected  in  W.  M. 
Murphy's  Irish  Independent,  the  most 
widely  read  newspaper  in  Ireland.  In  1917 
he  made  a  speech  in  which  he  declared 
a  general  sympathy  with  Sinn  Fein,  not 
indeed  in  its  aspect  of  a  revival  of  the 
physical -force  tradition,  but  as  originally 
formulated  by  Arthur  Griffith  [q.v.],  who 
had  for  twenty  years  advocated  the  ab- 
stention of  Irish  members  from  West- 
minster. At  the  general  election  of  1918 
he  took  no  part  in  what  proved  to  be  the 
death-struggle  of  the  nationaUst  parlia- 
mentary movement,  and  resigned  his  seat 

41 


in  Cork  in  favour  of  a  Sinn  Fein  prisoner. 
In  1922  he  was  recommended,  on  the 
British  side,  by  F.  E.  Smith,  first  Earl  of 
Birkenhead  [q.v.],  a  personal  friend,  and, 
on  the  Irish,  by  his  wife's  nephew  and  his 
own  cousin,  Kevin  O'Higgins  [q.v.],  for 
the  post  of  governor-general  of  the  newly 
established  Irish  Free  State.  The  appoint- 
ment was  resented  by  old  Parnellites  and 
brought  some  grist  to  the  mill  of  the 
republican  opponents  of  the  settlement. 
Healy,  no  republican,  accepted  it  with  a 
good  conscience  and  played  the  part  of  an 
Irish  Talleyrand  au  rehours  with  good  will 
if  not  with  enthusiasm  for  the  years  (1922- 
1928)  that  he  occupied  the  residence  of 
former  viceroys  in  Phoenix  Park.  He  ful- 
filled his  duties  with  a  social  tact  which 
won  respect  especially  from  former  Irish 
unionists.  One  characteristic  utterance, 
showing  the  mood  into  which  he  had 
passed,  may  be  recorded.  At  a  public 
dinner  in  1924  the  poet  W.  B.  Yeats  [q.v.] 
had  spoken  with  solemn  eloquence  about 
the  condition  of  the  world,  and  Healy, 
who  followed,  said,  'I  think  we  should 
remind  the  bard  of  his  own  lovely  lyric, 
"Down  by  the  saUy  gardens  my  love 
and  I  did  meet  .  .  .  She  bid  me  take  life 
easy".' 

Three  years  after  his  retirement  from 
the  governor-generalship  Healy  died  26 
March  1931  in  the  always  brilUantly 
lighted  villa  which  he  had  built  for  him- 
self at  Chapelizod,  near  Dublin.  His  wife, 
Erina,  daughter  of  T.  D.  Sullivan  and 
niece  of  A.  M.  Sullivan  [q.v.],  a  first 
cousin,  whom  he  had  married  in  1882,  pre- 
deceased him  in  1927 ;  they  had  three  sons 
and  three  daughters.  His  gifted  younger 
brother  Maurice,  to  whom  he  had  been 
ever  bound  by  the  closest  ties  of  poUtical 
agreement  as  well  as  of  fraternal  affection, 
died  in  1923.  A  portrait  of  Healy  by 
Sir  John  Lavery  is  in  the  Dublin  Muni- 
cipal Gallery  of  Modern  Art ;  another,  by 
P.  A.  de  Laszlo,  belongs  to  Lord  Devon- 
port  and  a  third,  by  Sir  William  Orpen, 
to  Healy's  daughter,  Mrs.  O'SulUvan. 

[The  Times,  27  March  1931 ;  T.  M.  Healy, 
Letters  and  Leaders  of  My  Day,  2  vols.,  1928 ; 
D.  P.  Barton,  Timothy  Healy:  Memories  and 
Anecdotes,  1933 ;  Joan  Haslip,  Parnell,  1936 ; 
St.  John  Ervine,  Parnell,  1925 ;  Barry  O'Brien, 
Life  of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell,  1899 ;  F.  H. 
O'Donnell,  A  History  of  the  Irish  Parlia- 
mentary  Party,  2  vols.,  1910 ;  William  O'Brien, 
An  Olive  Branch  in  Ireland,  1910,  and  Evening 
Memories,  1920 ;  T.  P.  O'Connor,  The  Parnell 
Movement,  1886,  and  Charles  Stewart  Parnell, 
1892;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Joseph  Hone. 


Heath 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


HEATH,  Sir  THOMAS  LITTLE 
(1861-1940),  civil  servant  and  authority 
on  ancient  mathematics,  was  born  5  Octo- 
ber 1861  at  Barnetby-le-Wold,  Lincoln- 
shire, the  third  and  youngest  son  of 
Samuel  Heath,  of  Thornton  Curtis,  Ulceby, 
Lincolnshire,  a  farmer  whose  hobby  was 
the  classics,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  daughter 
of  Thomas  Little,  of  Hibaldstowe  in  the 
same  county.  He  was  one  of  six  children, 
all  musically  as  well  as  intellectually  gifted. 
After  a  period  at  Caistor  Granunar  School 
he  went  to  Clifton,  and  thence,  with  a 
foundation  scholarship,  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in 
both  parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1881  and 
1883) ;  he  was  bracketed  twelfth  wrangler 
in  1882;  and  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
Trinity  in  1885  and  an  honorary  fellow 
in  1920. 

Heath  passed  first  into  the  civil  service 
in  1884,  and  entered  the  Treasiuy,  where, 
after  only  three  years'  service,  he  became 
private  secretary  to  Sir  Reginald  Earle 
(afterwards  Lord)  Welby  [q.v.],  then  per- 
manent secretary.  From  1891  to  1894  he 
was  private  secretary  to  successive  finan- 
cial secretaries,  and  he  became  assistant 
secretary  to  the  Treasury  in  1907.  In  1913 
he  was  appointed  permanent  secretary, 
jointly  with  Sir  John  (afterwards  Lord) 
Bradbury,  and  auditor  of  the  civil  list; 
Heath  taking  control  of  the  administrative 
side  of  the  Treasury,  while  the  finance 
work  fell  to  Bradbury.  In  1919,  however, 
when  Bradbury  retired  from  the  civil  ser- 
vice and  the  government  decided  to  re- 
organize the  Treasury  on  a  much  larger 
scale  than  before  the  war,  Heath  became 
comptroller-general  and  secretary  to  the 
commissioners  for  the  reduction  of  the 
National  Debt.  His  great  knowledge  of 
Irish  land  finance  was  valuable  to  the 
National  Debt  Office  which  dealt  inter  alia 
with  this  matter,  for  he  had  been  inti- 
mately concerned  with  the  financial  details 
of  the  various  Irish  land  bills  which 
guaranteed  loans  to  Irish  farmers  in  order 
to  enable  them  to  purchase  their  holdings. 
He  retired  from  the  civil  service  in  1926. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1903,  K.C.B.  in 
1909,  and  K.C.V.O.  in  1916. 

Heath  was  an  excellent  civil  servant  of 
the  old  type.  He  was  quick,  accurate, 
neat,  painstaking,  and  thorough  in  all  his 
written  work,  in  which  these  qualities, 
together  with  his  technical  knowledge  and 
his  power  of  marshalling  facts  clearly  and 
accurately  for  the  decision  of  ministers, 
were  of  the  greatest  value.  He  was  less  at 
home  in  oral  work  and  with  the  conference 


habit  which  grew  to  be  an  important 
method    of  transacting   pubUc   busines 
during  and  after  the  war. 

After  his  retirement  Heath,  who  hs 
served  as  one  of  the  Cambridge  commia 
sioners  under  the  Universities  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  Act  (1923),  served  from 
1927  to  1929  on  the  royal  commission  on 
national  museums  and  galleries.  In  1927 
he  published  an  interesting  and  lucid 
monograph  on  The  Treasury,  in  the 
'Wliitehall  series',  which  contains  a  clear 
and  accurate  account  of  the  British  finan- 
cial system. 

It  was,  however,  to  his  unofficial  work 
on  Greek  mathematics  that  Heath  owed 
his  fellowship  of  the  Royal  Society  (1912), 
on  the  coimcil  of  which  he  served  two 
terms ;  liis  presidency  of  the  Mathematical 
Association  (1922-1923);  and  his  fellow- 
ship of  the  British  Academy  (1932).  He 
was  one  of  the  select  band  of  British  public 
servants  who  have  enriched  scholarship 
by  the  judicious  use  of  their  scanty  leisure. 
His  training  at  Cambridge  in  classics  and 
mathematics  led  him  to  take  an  interest 
in  Greek  mathematics,  a  subject  explored 
by  few  at  that  time  despite  the  unique 
place  occupied  by  Euclid  for  generations 
in  the  education  of  English  youth;  and 
even  Euclid  was  known  only  through  im- 
perfect versions  of  the  simpler  books  of 
the  Elements.  Heath's  laboin-s  in  this  field 
won  for  him  the  reputation  of  being 
one  of  the  world's  leading  authorities  on 
Greek  mathematics;  and  he  made  acces- 
sible in  a  notation  readily  understood  by 
all  competent  mathematicians  the  works 
of  their  leading  Greek  precursors. 

Heath  first  gave  his  attention  to  Dio- 
phantus,  whose  Arithmetica  had  not  pre- 
viously been  edited  in  England.  His  essay 
Diophantus  of  Alexandria:  a  Study  in  the 
History  of  Greek  Algebra,  published  in 
1885,  was  revised  in  1910  so  as  to  give  not 
only  a  faithful  rendering  of  the  difficult 
Greek  but  a  thorough  history  of  Greek 
algebra ;  and  he  vindicated  the  high  esteem 
in  which  the  Alexandrian  '  father  of  alge- 
bra' was  held  by  Fermat  and  Euler.  In 
1896  he  did  a  similar  service  for  Apollonius 
of  Perga,  whose  masterly  treatise  on  the 
conic  sections  was  a  book  sealed  even  for 
good  Greek  scholars  by  the  prolixity  of  its 
rigid  geometrical  proofs.  Heath  success- 
fully produced  a  work  which  was  'Apol- 
lonius and  nothing  but  Apollonius',  but 
which,  thanks  to  skilful  compression  and 
the  substitution  of  modern  notation  for 
literary  proofs,  occupied  less  than  half  the 
space  of  the  original ;  it  was  prefaced  by 


416 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Henderson,  A. 


valuable  essays  on  the  previous  history  of 
conic  sections  among  the  Greeks.  In  1897 
Heath  applied  the  same  methods  to  an 
edition  of  the  works  of  Archimedes ;  and 
a  savant  chiefly  known  through  the  pic- 
turesque stories  of  his  leap  from  the  bath 
and  his  death  at  the  hands  of  a  Roman 
soldier  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
supreme  mathematical  geniuses  of  all  time. 
The  work  was  supplemented  in  1912  by 
a  translation  of  the  Method  of  Archimedes, 
discovered  a  few  years  earlier  by  J.  L. 
Heiberg.  In  the  meantime  Heath  had 
turned  his  attention  to  Euclid,  publishing 
in  1908  a  monumental  three- volume  edi- 
tion of  the  Elements  in  which  he  followed 
the  same  principles.  In  this  edition  the 
notable  tenth  book  on  irrational  magni- 
tudes was  for  the  first  time  rendered  into 
English  in  an  intelligible  form ;  and  Heath 
justified  against  modern  'improvements' 
Euclid's  rigidly  logical  choice  of  axioms 
and  postulates  and  his  order  of  proof.  A 
second  edition  appeared  in  1926.  He 
hoped  to  be  able  to  re-establish  the  teach- 
ing of  Euclid  in  the  schools,  and  to  this 
end  he  produced  in  1920  an  edition  of 
Book  I  of  the  Elements  in  Greek. 

In  1913  Heath  published  with  a  transla- 
tion and  commentary  the  Greek  text  of 
the  tract  of  Aristarchus  of  Samos  On  the 
.  Sizes  and  Distances  of  the  Sun  and  Moon ; 
he  prefaced  it  with  a  thorough  study  of 
the  history  of  Greek  astronomy  before 
Aristarchus,  justifying  the  title  of  this 
author  as  the  'Copernicus  of  antiquity'. 
He  wrote  short  popular  works  on  Aris- 
tarchus and  Archimedes  in  1920. 

In  1921  Heath  crowned  his  separate 
studies  with  A  History  of  Greek  Mathe- 
matics in  two  volumes.  Arranged  partly 
according  to  chronology  and  partly  accord- 
ing to  subject-matter,  it  immediately  be- 
came the  standard  work  on  the  subject. 
Ten  years  later  he  condensed  it  into  A 
Manual  of  Greek  Mathematics,  and  in  1932 
he  published  under  the  title  Greek  Astro- 
nomy a  collection  of  translations  covering 
the  same  ground  as  the  prefatory  matter 
of  his  Aristarchus.  He  also  gave  much 
help  to  the  ninth  edition  of  Liddell  and 
Scott's  Greek  Lexicon,  which  had  in  earlier 
editions  taken  little  notice  of  Greek  mathe- 
matical terminology.  At  his  death  he  was 
engaged  on  an  edition  (published  in  1948) 
of  the  mathematical  content  of  Aristotle's 
works. 

Heath  was  a  keen  moimtaineer  and  had 
made  ascents  of  most  of  the  Dolomites ; 
he  was  also  an  enthusiastic  musician.  He 
married  in  1914  Ada  Mary,  daughter  of 


Major  Edward  Charles  Thomas,  of  Wands- 
worth Common,  and  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  Lady  Heath,  who  survived  him, 
was  herself  a  musician  of  professional 
standing.  He  died  at  Merry  Hall,  Ashtead, 
Surrey,  16  March  1940. 

[The  Times,  18  March  1940 ;  M.  F.  Head- 
lam,  Sir  Thomas  Little  Heath,  1861—1940  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi, 
1940  (portrait) ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  January  1941 ;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Maurice  Headiam. 
Ivor  Thomas. 

HENDERSON,  ARTHUR  (1863-1935), 
labour  leader  and  statesman,  was  born  in 
Glasgow  13  September  1863,  the  younger 
son  of  David  Henderson,  a  Scottish  cotton- 
spinner,  who  died  when  Henderson  was 
nine  years  old ;  his  mother,  a  Scotswoman, 
moved,  on  re-marriage,  to  Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne.  He  left  school  at  the  age  of 
twelve  and  was  apprenticed  at  the  Robert 
Stephenson  locomotive  and  foundry 
works,  where  he  learned  to  be  'a  good, 
clean  moulder'.  There,  too,  interest  in 
poUtics  awoke ;  during  the  dinner-hour  he 
read  the  daily  newspaper  aloud  to  his 
fellow  workers.  At  the  age  of  eighteen,  as 
a  fully  trained  journeyman,  he  joined  the 
Ironfounders  Union  and,  before  long,  was 
unpaid  secretary  of  the  Newcastle  lodge. 
This,  even  in  the  north-east,  made  him  a 
marked  man,  as  he  realized  during  several 
spells  of  unemployment  at  Stephensons'. 
From  the  first,  Henderson  won  and  held 
the  confidence  of  those  with  whom  he 
worked;  in  1892  he  was  elected  district 
delegate  for  the  area  covering  Northum- 
berland, Durham,  and  Lancashire.  In  this 
capacity  he  succeeded  in  1894  in  getting 
effective  conciliation  machinery  set  up; 
he  acted  as  secretary  of  the  north-east 
coast  conciliation  board  and  later  (1908) 
was  chairman.  As  a  member  of  the  New- 
castle city  council,  to  which  he  was  elected 
in  1892,  he  acquired  a  mastery  of  local 
government  and  the  committee  method. 
A  fervent  admirer  of  Gladstone,  his  first 
notable  speech  was  in  support  of  John 
Morley,  and  from  1895  to  1903,  he  acted  as 
agent  to  Sir  J.  W.  Pease  [q.v.],  radical 
member  for  the  Barnard  Castle  division 
of  Dui'ham.  As  an  active  trade  unionist, 
however,  Henderson  shared  the  new  cur- 
rents of  opinion  drawing  many  intelligent 
workmen  away  from  liberaUsm  towards  a 
party  of  their  own;  he  attended  as  a 
visitor  in  1899  the  historic  London  con- 
ference of  sociaUsts  and  trade  unionists 
which  set  up  the  labour  representation 


417 


Ke 


Henderson,  A. 


D.N,B.  1931-1940 


committee  (1900).  In  1903  he  became  its 
treasurer  and  was  nominated  by  his  union 
as  independent  labour  candidate  for 
Barnard  Castle,  and  at  a  by-election  in  the 
same  year  he  won  the  seat.  Re-elected  in 
1906  he  moved  to  Clapham,  which  was 
thenceforward  his  home. 

On  the  labour  representation  committee 
Henderson  worked  in  close  association 
with  James  Keir  Hardie  [q.v.]  and  with 
James  Ramsay  MacDonald  [q.v.],  seeing 
in  the  latter  the  predestined  leader  of 
the  new  labour  party.  He  presided  over 
the  1906  conference  which  finally  estab- 
lished the  party,  and  in  1911  succeeded 
MacDonald  as  secretary,  holding  this 
arduous  post  until  1934.  It  was  due  to 
Henderson  that  the  party  held  together, 
despite  deep  division,  when  war  broke  out 
in  1914.  Like  the  majority  of  labour 
members,  he  threw  himself  whole  heartedly 
into  the  war  effort ;  when  MacDonald  on 
4  August  resigned  his  leadership  in  the 
House,  Henderson  replaced  him.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  January 
1915  in  recognition  of  his  services  to  man- 
power, and  he  entered  H.  H.  Asquith's 
Cabinet  in  May  nominally  as  president  of 
the  Board  of  Education  and  later  (1916) 
as  paymaster-general,  but  his  main  work 
was  as  adviser  on  matters  of  labour,  and 
this  induced  Lloyd  George  to  include  him 
in  his  original  War  Cabinet  of  five,  without 
portfoUo  (December  1916).  Resentment 
against  the  working  of  the  Munitions  Acts 
vented  itself  in  vigorous  criticism  of 
Henderson  at  party  conferences,  but  he 
held  his  own  and  told  his  opponents  with 
typical  directness : '  I  am  not  here  either  to 
please  myself  or  you ;  I  am  here  to  see  the 
war  through.'  In  1917,  after  the  first 
Russian  revolution,  he  went  on  an  official 
mission  to  Russia.  Convinced  that,  if 
Russia  was  to  be  kept  in  the  war,  the 
British  government  should  send  delegates 
to  the  conference  of  international  sociaUsts 
proposed  to  be  held  at  Stockholm,  he 
commended  this  course  not  only  to  the 
Cabinet  but  to  a  special  labour  conference, 
an  action  which  led  to  a  breach  with  Lloyd 
George  and  resignation  from  the  Cabinet 
in  August.  He  subsequently  refused  to 
accept  the  C.H.  at  the  hands  of  the  pre- 
mier, but  his  sense  of  public  duty  caused 
him  in  1919  to  act  as  chairman  of  the 
workers'  side  of  the  National  Industrial 
Conference ;  its  unanimous  report  in  favour 
of  a  legal  maximum  working  week  of  forty- 
eight  hours,  with  minimum-time  rates  of 
wages,  was  largely  due  to  his  patient  skill. 

The   Stockholm   Conference   marks   a 


turning-point  in  Henderson's  career. 
From  this  time  onwards  his  outlook  was 
to  be  predominantly  internationalist.  In 
close  association  with  MacDonald  and 
Sidney  Webb,  a  democratic  peace  pohcy 
was  worked  out  for  labour.  Whereas 
continental  parties,  split  on  the  war,  were 
further  divided  by  the  appeal  of  com- 
mimism,  as  represented  by  Moscow,  the 
British  labour  party  remained  imited,  and 
Henderson  steadily  converted  it  to  the 
League  of  Nations.  At  the  same  time  he 
set  himself  the  task  of  strengthening  the 
organization  of  the  party  and  broadening 
its  basis.  A  new  constitution  in  1918 
specifically  opened  the  party's  ranks  to 
'  workers  by  hand  and  by  brain  '.  The 
structure  remained  federal,  as  an  associa- 
tion of  trade  unions  and  sociahst  societies ; 
but  through  the  establishment  of  local 
labour  parties  which  individuals  coxild 
join  from  conviction,  the  purpose  was 
accomplished  which  he  had  foreshadowed 
in  1904  in  the  words : '  What  we  want  is  to 
get  away  as  far  as  possible  from  mere 
trade  representation.  We  want  labour 
representation  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
term.'  At  the  same  time,  Henderson 
strengthened  the  central  machine,  and 
brought  in  a  wide  range  of  experts  to  serve 
on  advisory  committees.  It  was  largely 
owing  to  his  thorough  and  sustained  work 
that  the  vote  cast  for  labour  in  the  election 
of  1923  gave  MacDonald  the  opportunity 
of  forming  a  minority  government. 

Meanwhile  Henderson's  electoral  career 
had  been  curiously  chequered.  In 
December  1918  he  was  defeated  at  East 
Ham  (S.).  In  August  1919  he  had  been 
elected  for  Widnes,  which  rejected  him  in 
the  general  election  of  November  1922. 
In  January  1923  at  a  by-election  at  East 
Newcastle  he  gained  the  seat,  only  to  lose 
it  at  the  general  election  at  the  end  of  that 
year,  and  it  was  not  until  February  1924 
that  a  by-election  at  Burnley  enabled  him  to 
take  his  seat  m  MacDonald's  administra- 
tion. Although  home  secretary,  Henderson 
was  mainly  occupied  in  the  international 
field ;  he  played  a  large  part  in  the  Lon- 
don conference  called  to  implement  the 
Dawes  plan  in  1924,  and  at  Geneva 
contributed  notably  to  the  working  out  of 
the  protocol  for  the  arbitral  settlement  of  ' 
international  disputes,  acquiring  thereby  i 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  Covenant  and 
of  the  League  in  aU  its  aspects.  The  elec- 
tion of  December  1924  severely  reduced  | 
the  number  of  labour  members  in  the! 
House  of  Commons;  with  great  self- 
sacrifice,  Henderson  took  on  again  (1925- 


418 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Henderson,  A. 


1927)  the  thankless  task  of  chief  whip, 
which  he  had  held  in  1914  and  from  1921 
to  1923,  as  well  as  that  of  re-constituting 
both  the  machinery  and  the  confidence  of 
the  party.  The  statement  of  aims  known 
as  Labour  and  the  Nation  (1928),  for  the 
preparation  of  which  he  was  responsible, 
helped  in  no  small  measure  to  make  possi- 
ble the  second  labour  government  of  1929. 
By  now  Henderson  was  well  prepared 
for  the  office  of  secretary  of  state  for 
foreign  affairs  by  his  chairmanship  of  the 
Labour  and  Socialist  International  at 
Hamburg  in  1923,  and  by  constant  other 
visits  to  the  continent  and  to  the  various 
parts  of  the  British  Commonwealth. 
Although  his  tenure  of  the  office  of  foreign 
secretary  was  brief,  he  succeeded,  in  the 
judgement  of  very  many,  in  restoring  the 
moral  prestige  of  Great  Britain  and  estab- 
lishing her  leadership  in  the  effort  to  lay 
secure  foundations  for  international  peace. 
He  chose  his  subordinates  with  skill  and 
pursued  a  line  of  action  as  firm  as  it  was 
clear.  The  House  of  Commons  and  the 
country  recognized  a  strong  hand  at  the 
helm,  directed  by  experience  and  purpose. 
Courage  marked  his  first  pubUc  act  when 
he  forced  the  resignation  in  July  of  Lord 
Lloyd,  high  commissioner  in  Egypt,  as 
part  of  a  determined  effort  to  reach  an 
agreement  which  should  lead  on  to  the 
independence  actually  achieved  in  1936. 
Further,  for  the  first  time  since  1917,  a 
British  ambassador  was  sent  to  Russia 
(November).  The  major  problem  was, 
however,  Franco-German  relationships ; 
Henderson  saved  The  Hague  conference 
of  August  1929  from  disaster  and  at 
Geneva,  a  month  later,  took  an  important 
step  in  the  struggle  for  security  by  affixing 
a  British  signature  to  the  Optional  clause, 
an  action  supported  later  by  the 
Dominions,  with  the  representatives  of 
which  he  estabUshed  warm  concord.  On 
terms  of  personal  friendship  with  both 
Briand  and  Stresemann,  his  impartiality 
was  conspicuous  in  his  handling  of  the 
Austrian  issue  in  1929,  and  the  Silesian 
plebiscite  in  1931.  By  1930  he  could  state 
that  Great  Britain  was  ready  to  sign  the 
General  Act  of  Arbitration,  and  move  on 
to  the  disarmament  on  which  his  heart  was 
set.  He  believed  in  the  League ;  he  made  it 
work.  Sympathizing  with  the  anxieties  of 
France,  he  yet  saw  small  hope  of  peace 
imless  the  pledge  of  article  viii  of  the 
Covenant  was  honoured  by  all.  To  this 
end  he  strove  with  his  whole  energy; 
when,  at  last,  2  February  1932  was  set  as 
the  date  for  the  meeting  of  a  world  con- 


ference on  disarmament,  he  was,  on  the 
motion  of  Briand,  unanimously  nominated 
(May  1931)  to  preside  over  it. 

The  hopes  thus  raised  were  shattered 
by  the  financial  crisis  of  the  late  summer 
of  1931.  Henderson  had,  at  no  time,  let 
his  Foreign  Office  work  absorb  him ;  the 
House  of  Commons  was  never  neglected ; 
he  was  the  most  accessible  of  ministers, 
in  constant  friendly  touch  with  the  rank 
and  file  of  members,  whose  concern  with 
mounting  unemployment  at  home  and 
abroad  he  fully  shared.  He  was  one  of  the 
Cabinet  sub-committee  of  five  set  up  to 
examine  the  alarming  financial  diagnosis 
of  the  Economy  Committee  set  up  under 
the  chairmanship  of  Sir  George  (later 
Lord)  May.  When  the  situation  developed 
to  the  point  at  which  drastic  cuts  in  un- 
employment benefit  were  demanded  in 
order  to  meet  an  anticipated  budget  deficit 
and  safeguard  the  gold  standard,  Hender- 
son was  faced  with  a  grim  choice  between 
long-standing  loyalty  to  MacDonald  and 
the  principles  of  a  Ufetime.  With  a 
majority  of  his  colleagues  he  held  that  the 
crisis  was  not  being  met  in  the  right  way ; 
and  when  MacDonald,  after  tendering  the 
resignation  of  the  Cabinet  as  a  whole, 
formed  next  day  (24  August)  a  'national 
government',  the  shock,  as  a  colleague  put 
it  at  the  time,  made  Henderson  suddenly 
an  old  man.  Chosen  by  the  labour  party 
to  lead  it  in  opposition,  he  faced  with  forti- 
tude a  personal  situation  of  acute  pain  in 
the  harsh  severance  of  long  association. 
In  the  subsequent  general  election  he  was 
defeated,  but  in  September  1 933  he  returned 
to  parliament  at  a  by-election  as  member 
for  the  Clay  Cross  division  of  Derbyshire. 
Although  the  crisis  had  caused  him  both 
distress  and  illness,  he  did  not  flinch  from 
the  superhuman  task  of  presiding  over 
the  world  disarmament  conference.  The 
greater  the  danger  to  world  peace  (and  he 
saw  it  already  as  very  great)  the  clearer 
the  obligation  to  proceed  with  the  work. 
JFrom  1932  therefore  until  the  sununer  of 
1935  he  remained  at  his  post  at  Geneva. 
By  the  end  of  that  summer  an  operation, 
long  delayed,  was  performed  and  on 
20  October  1935  he  died  in  London. 

So  there  closed  a  career  which  brought 
Henderson  from  the  humblest  beginnings 
to  a  commanding  position  in  national  and 
European  affairs.  Tall,  massively  built, 
fair  skinned  and  fair  haired,  with  keen- 
sighted  three-cornered  blue  eyes,  Hender- 
son, in  spite  of  his  Scottish  parentage, 
struck  men  of  other  lands  as  a  typical 
Englishman.  Those  who  did  not  penetrate 


419 


Henderson,  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


below  the  surface  thought  him  stolid ;  not 
so  those  who  came  to  know  the  slow 
strength  of  his  mind,  the  firm  covtrage  of 
his  will,  and  the  warm  kindness  of  his 
nature,  which  won  him  the  universal  nick- 
name of  'Uncle  Arthur'.  Wholly  dis- 
interested, he  devoted  his  life  to  the  ideas 
in  which  he  believed.  Indeed  his  character, 
which  was  as  strong  as  a  rock,  owed  much 
to  his  religion.  His  elder  brother  once 
said :  '  for  Arthur,  life  began  with  his  con- 
version ' :  in  these  words  lies  the  key  to  an 
influence  which  puzzled  the  superficial.  At 
sixteen  he  accepted  fully  the  Wesleyan 
creed;  its  discipline  of  faithful  co-opera- 
tion and  service  coloured  his  whole  life. 
As  a  Wesleyan  lay  preacher  he  learned  to 
speak :  from  religious  conviction  came  the 
anchored  certainty  which  carried  him 
through  every  disappointment  and  sus- 
tained both  his  trade  union  work,  his 
patient  building  of  a  party,  and  his 
mastery  of  the  complex  problems  which 
faced  him  as  foreign  secretary. 

Henderson  married  in  1888  Eleanor, 
daughter  of  William  Watson,  of  New- 
castle and  afterwards  of  Rotherfield, 
Sussex,  a  fellow  member  of  his  chapel. 
His  home  life  was  happy  and  the  family — 
three  sons  and  one  daughter— singularly 
united.  His  eldest  son  was  killed  in  action 
in  1916 ;  the  other  children  survived  him, 
and  it  was  a  deep  satisfaction  to  him  that 
his  two  younger  sons  chose  to  follow  in  his 
political  footsteps.  Of  the  many  distinc- 
tions showered  upon  him  by  public  bodies 
at  home  and  abroad,  the  most  precious  was 
the  Nobel  Peace  prize,  awarded  in  1934. 

[The  Times,  21  October  1935 ;  M.  A.  Hamil- 
ton, Arthur  Henderson,  1938  ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Maby  Agnes  Hamilton. 

HENDERSON,  Sir  REGINALD  GUY 
HANNAM  (1881-1939),  admiral,  was  born 
at  Mylor,  near  Falmouth,  1  September 
1881,  the  second  son  of  Commander  John 
Hannam  Henderson,  R.N.,  of  the  Red 
House,  Tenby,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth, 
adopted  daughter  and  niece  of  Henry 
May,  of  Honolulu.  Of  Scottish  ancestry, 
he  was  a  descendant  of  Andrew  Henderson 
{fl.  1734-1775,  q.v.)  whose  son  John  was 
secretary  to  Alexander  Hood,  Viscount 
Bridport  [q.v.].  The  family  had  settled  in 
east  Kent.  Its  strong  naval  ties  are  typi- 
fied by  Henderson's  three  admiral  uncles 
of  whom  Sir  WiUiam  Hannam  Henderson 
was  founder  and  editor  of  the  Naval  Review 
(1913-1931),  and  Sir  Reginald  Friend 
Hannam  Henderson  devised  the  detailed 
scheme  for  the  Royal  Australian  Navy. 


,  Henderson  entered  the  navy  through 
the  Britannia  and  in  1897  joined  the 
Mars  in  the  Channel  Squadron  under  his 
uncle  Reginald.  In  March  following  he 
was  transferred  to  the  Hermione,  under 
Captain  (Sir)  G.  A.  Callaghan  [q.v.],  until 
promoted  sub-lieutenant  in  November 
1900.  Having  obtained  first  class  certi- 
ficates in  all  courses  he  was  promotec 
lieutenant  in  May  1902  and  served  in  the 
Venerable,  flagship,  in  the  Mediterraneai 
until  his  appointment  in  1903  to  the 
gunnery  school.  He  qualified  as  a  gunner 
expert  in  April  1905,  and  remained  on  thi 
school  staff  until  January  1906.  He  thei 
served  as  gunnery  officer  in  the  Euryali 
flagship,  on  the  North  America  and  WesI 
Indies  station  and  in  the  battleshi| 
Britannia,  in  the  Channel  Fleet,  in  191( 
rejoining  as  senior  staff  officer  the  gunnerj 
school  where  he  remained  until  his  pre 
motion  as  commander  in  June  1913 ;  h^ 
was  then  specially  selected  to  accompany 
Admiral  Mark  Kerr's  naval  mission 
Greece  where  he  was  employed  in  instructsj 
ing  the  Greek  navy  in  modern  gunnery. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Henderl 
son  was  sent  to  the  Erin  and  served  in  hei 
at  Jutland.  As  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
the  younger  oificers,  he  was  brought  by 
Jellicoe  to  the  Admiralty  in  1916  and 
placed  in  the  anti-submarine  division, 
where  he  worked  out  a  trial  convoy  plan 
for  the  protection  of  colliers  sailing  to 
France.  Its  success  led  to  the  general 
adoption  of  the  convoy  system,  when  the 
entry  of  the  United  States  of  America  into 
the  war  provided  the  necessary  destroyers. 
His  imagination  and  enterprise  at  this 
time  earned  him  special  promotion  to 
captain  in  October  1917,  and  he  remained 
on  the  war  staff  as  naval  assistant  to  the 
assistant  chief,  Admiral  Sir  A.  L.  Duff 
[q.v.],  until  1919.  On  appointment  to  the 
China  command.  Duff  took  Henderson  as 
flag  captain  in  the  Hawkins  for  two  years, 
and  then,  after  a  period  (1923-1925) 
at  the  Royal  Naval  College,  Henderson 
commanded  the  aircraft  carrier  Furious 
(1926-1928)  and  was  promoted  to  flag  rank 
in  March  1929.  His  only  flag  command  was 
as  rear-admiral,  aircraft  carriers  (1931- 
1933),  flag  in  the  Courageous,  and  there  he 
did  much  to  advance  the  development  of 
the  Fleet  Air  Arm,  especially  in  the  tactical 
use  of  carriers  acting  together. 

In  April  1934  Henderson  (a  vice-admiral 
since  September  1933)  was  selected  to 
join  the  Admiralty  as  third  sea  lord  and 
controller.  The  Cabinet  having  at  last 
awakened  to  the  growing  defencelessness 


420 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Henry 


of  the  country,  agreed  in  1935  to  an  in- 
crease in  armaments,  and  this  moment 
was  an  excellent  opportunity  to  a  man  of 
Henderson's  great  administrative  ability, 
infectious  energy,  and  openness  of  mind. 
He  took  up  his  new  post  with  buoyant 
enthusiasm,  and  during  the  two  years 
before  construction  of  battleships  became 
possible  in  1937  (under  the  Washington 
and  London  treaties),  he  was  preparing,  as 
controller,  new  designs  for  all  classes  of 
ships  and  providing  for  facilities  for  their 
construction  and  equipment.  The  great 
expansion  projected  after  1935  proved  to 
be  beyond  the  resources  of  the  armament 
firms  in  Great  Britain.  Personal  visits 
secured  substantial  supplies  from  Vit- 
kovice  in  Czechoslovakia  and  also  from 
other  sources  for  armour-plates.  In  con- 
struction he  showed  the  same  advance, 
and  under  him  were  designed  the  Illustrious 
class  of  aircraft  carrier  with  an  armoured 
jjflight-deck,  the  J-class  destroyers  with 
|only  two  boilers,  and  the  all- welded  mine- 
sweeper. His  monument  is  the  memory  of 
la  fleet  ready  for  action  when  war  broke 
tout,  but  he  did  not  live  to  see  the  result 
|of  his  labours.  He  was  promoted  admiral 
January  1939  and  in  March  his  strong 
)hysique  broke  down  under  the  strain  and 
he  was  forced  to  resign.  He  died  in  Haslar 
Hospital,  Portsmouth,  2  May  1939. 

Henderson  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1919 
and  K.C.B.  in  1936,  and  specially  pro- 
moted to  G.C.B.  by  the  King  in  1939.  He 
married  in  1911  Islay,  daughter  of 
Rhoderick  McNeil  Campbell,  of  the  Camp- 
bells of  Dunstaffnage,  and  had  two  sons. 

[Admiralty  records ;  private  information.] 
Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

HENRY,   Sir  EDWARD  RICHARD 

baronet  of  Campden  House  Court  (1850- 
1931),  commissioner  of  metropolitan 
police,  was  born  at  Shadwell,  Middlesex, 
26  July  1850,  the  only  surviving  son  of 
Alexander  Henry,  M.D.,  of  Lagatum, 
CO.  Mayo,  by  his  wife,  Maria  McDonnell. 
He  was  educated  at  St.  Edmund's  College, 
Ware,  and  at  University  College,  London, 
whence  he  passed  by  examination  into  the 
Indian  civil  service,  being  posted  as 
assistant  magistrate-collector  in  Bengal, 
and  rising  through  successive  stages  to 
be  in  1890  secretary  to  the  Board  of 
Revenue. 

It  was  Henry's  appointment  in  1891  as 
inspector-general  of  police  in  Bengal  that 
proved  to  be  the  turning-point  of  his 
career,  for  it  enabled  him  to  begin  that 
study  of  the  use  of  finger-prints  in  the 


detection  of  crime  which  made  his  tenure 
of  the  commissionership  of  metropolitan 
police  epoch-making.  In  the  East,  finger- 
prints had  long  been  regarded  as  incon- 
trovertible signatures  to  documents,  and 
the  publication  by  (Sir)  Francis  Galton 
[q.v.]  of  his  work  on  Finger  Prints  (1892) 
had  attracted  much  attention  to  this 
study,  so  that  Henry,  even  before  he  had 
been  seconded  in  1900  from  India  for 
organizing  the  civil  police  of  Pretoria  and 
Johannesburg,  had  made  an  extremely 
valuable  contribution  to  the  solution  of 
the  most  intractable  problem  of  this  study, 
namely,  the  method  of  classification  of 
finger-prints,  by  evolving  a  system  of  his 
own.  This  had  been  adopted  by  the 
government  of  India  in  1897  and  he 
gave  it  to  the  world  in  Classification  and 
Uses  of  Finger  Prints  (1900,  printed  by 
order  of  the  government  of  India).  In 
1899  Henry  gave  evidence  before  a  com- 
mittee on  the  identification  of  criminals 
which  decided  on  the  adoption  of  his 
system  in  Great  Britain,  and  the  results 
proved  extremely  satisfactory,  both  in  the 
reduction  of  the  already  small  margin  of 
error,  and,  much  more  so,  in  the  astonish- 
ing rapidity  with  which  the  finger-prints 
could  be  classified.  In  the  first  year  of  the 
establishment  of  the  Central  Fingerprint 
Bureau,  four  times  as  many  old  criminals 
were  identified  as  in  previous  years,  and 
Henry's  system  has,  with  modifications, 
been  adopted  in  most  countries.  Two  out- 
standing cases,  the  Deptford  (or  'Masked') 
murder  in  1905  and  a  burglary  in  1909, 
revealed  the  new  system  to  the  public 
which  gave  it  its  confidence,  and  finger- 
prints became  an  indispensable  feature  of 
modern  detective  stories. 

In  1901  Henry  resigned  from  the  Indian 
civil  service  and  was  appointed  assistant 
commissioner  of  the  metropolitan  police  in 
charge  of  the  Criminal  Investigation  De- 
partment. Two  years  later  he  succeeded 
Sir  E.  R.  C.  Bradford  [q.v.]  as  commis- 
sioner. It  was  a  period  of  no  small 
anxiety.  Trade  depression  encouraged 
processions  of  the  unemployed;  allega- 
tions of  misconduct  against  the  police 
were  so  rife  that  in  1906  a  royal  com- 
mission of  inquiry  into  the  police  force 
was  appointed.  When  it  reported  in  1908, 
Henry  was  proud  to  be  able  to  say  that 
practically  every  specific  case  of  miscon- 
duct alleged  was  proved  to  be  unfounded. 

Henry  had  to  deal  with  a  situation 
marked  by  growing  disorder  in  the  public. 
In  1908  there  was  grave  threat  of  a  reli- 
gious riot  over  the  proposal  that  the  Host 


421 


Henry 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


should  be  carried  round  Ashley  Gardens 
at  the  Eucharistic  Congress  of  that  year. 
This  made  Henry's  personal  position  as  a 
Roman  Catholic  difficult ;  but  a  far  more 
lasting  anxiety  was  caused  by  the  agita- 
tion of  the  suffragists  and  the  destructive 
violence  of  the  suffragettes.  However, 
neither  movement  was  responsible  for  the 
bullet  wound  inflicted  on  Henry  in  1912 
by  a  crack-brained  man  whose  application 
for  a  cab-driver's  licence  had  been  refused 
at  Scotland  Yard  owing  to  inability  to 
pass  the  tests.  Henry's  generous  plea  for 
mercy  secured  that  a  sentence  of  fifteen 
years'  penal  servitude  was  passed  instead 
of  one  for  life.  Although  he  apparently 
recovered  from  the  woimd,  it  took  its  toU, 
and  even  before  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  he  had  asked  to  be  reUeved  of  his 
post.  But  he  was  too  valuable  a  servant 
to  lose  at  such  a  moment,  for  his  influence 
in  the  force  was  very  great,  as  the  men 
realized  that  he  was  maldng  determined 
efforts  to  bring  about  better  conditions, 
especially  in  respect  of  housing  and  single 
men's  quarters;  yet  even  he  could  not 
prevent  the  growth  of  discontent  over  the 
rate  of  pay,  or  ease  the  burden  carried  by 
the  force  with  its  numbers  depleted  by 
recruitment  into  the  fighting  services.  At 
length,  in  August  1918,  a  strike  broke 
out ;  Lloyd  George  intervened  in  favour  of 
the  men;  the  home  secretary.  Sir  George 
(later  Viscount)  Cave  [q.v.]  and  Henry 
both  offered  to  resign ;  Henry's  offer  was 
accepted,  and  he  was  created  a  baronet. 

This  incident,  in  which  Henry  had  no 
opportunity  of  making  an  open  defence, 
brought  his  public  career  to  an  end.  He 
spent  his  remaining  years  in  active  interest 
in  local  affairs  as  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  of 
Berkshire,  and  he  was  a  director  of  several 
companies.  In  1890  he  married  Louisa 
Langrishe,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  John 
Lewis  Moore,  vice-provost  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  and  besides  two  daughters, 
had  a  son,  who  died  nearly  a  year  before 
his  father,  so  that  on  Henry's  death  at 
Ascot  19  February  1931,  the  baronetcy 
became  extinct.  His  honours  included 
appointment  as  C.S.I,  in  1898,  C.V.O.  in 
1905,  K.C.V.O.  in  1906,  K.C.B.  in  1910, 
and  in  1911,  after  attending  the  King  and 
Queen  to  the  Imperial  Durbar  at  Delhi, 
G.C.V.O. 

A  cartoon  of  Henry  by  'Spy'  appeared 
in  Vanity  Fair  5  October  1905. 

[The  Times,  21  February  1931;  E.  R. 
Henry,  Classification  and  Uses  of  Finger 
Prints,  4th  ed.  1913 ;  Sir  Charles  Mallet,  Lord 
Cave,  a  Memoir,  1931 ;  private  information.] 


HENSCHEL,  Sm  GEORGE  (1850- 
1934),  musician,  was  born  at  Breslau 
18  February  1850,  the  only  son  of  Moritz 
Jacob  Henschel,  of  Breslau,  by  his  second 
wife,  Henriette,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Frankenstein,  of  Landshut,  Silesia.  His 
parents  were  Jewish  and  of  Polish  descent. 
He  was  converted  to  Christianity  when 
young,  and  he  never  used  the  first  of  his 
two  original  names  Isidor  Georg.  He  was 
educated  at  St.  Magdalen  College,  Breslau, 
and  at  the  Wandelt  Institute  there.  At 
the  age  of  twelve  (1862)  he  appeared  as  a 
pianist  in  Berlin:  he  entered  the  Leipzig 
Conservatorium  in  1867  and  the  royal 
conservatorium  at  Berhn  in  1870,  de- 
veloping a  fine  baritone  voice  which  led 
in  1874  to  his  first  important  engagement, 
in  Cologne,  and  to  his  first  appearance  in 
England  in  1877.  He  had  already  made  a 
mark  as  a  singer  and  composer  sufficient 
to  attract  the  attention  of  Brahms  as  a 
personal  friend,  and  to  earn  an  entry  in 
the  first  edition  of  Grovels  Dictionary  of 
Music  and  Musicians.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  no  other  musician  appears  as  a  '  live 
entry'  in  the  first  three  editions  (1879, 
1913,  and  1927). 

From  1881  until  1884  Henschel  was  the 
first  conductor  of  the  Boston  Symphony 
Orchestra ;  he  was  the  founder,  organizer, 
and  first  conductor  of  the  London 
symphony  concerts  (1886-1897),  and  was 
the  first  conductor  of  the  Scottish 
Orchestra,  Glasgow  (1893-1895).  His 
marriage  in  1881  to  the  talented  American 
singer  LiUian  June,  only  daughter  of 
Lucien  Champlin  Bailey,  of  Columbus, 
Ohio,  opened  up  the  long  and  successful 
series  of  duet  recitals,  in  which  Henschel 
was  invariably  accompanist  as  well  as 
singer.  This  remarkable  artistic  partner- 
ship, which  was  highly  valued  all  over 
Europe  and  the  United  States  of  America, 
was  terminated  in  1901  by  the  death  of 
Lillian  Henschel.  From  then  until  1907  he 
lived  in  retirement  in  Scotland,  but  in 
1909,  two  years  after  his  second  marriage, 
he  entered  upon  a  second  career  as  a  con- 
ductor and  as  a  concert  singer  accompany- 
ing himself,  which  continued  until  his 
farewell  concert  in  1914.  He  returned  to 
broadcast  during  the  Schubert  centenary 
celebrations  of  1928,  and  inquiries  were 
received  from  Cologne  for  'the  young 
artist'  whose  singing  had  been  so  accept- 
able. This  was  the  man  of  seventy-eight 
who  had  first  sung  in  Cologne  fifty-four 
years  previously.  His  last  broadcast  was 
given  in  1934  in  his  eighty -fourth  year. 

In  his  span  of  fifty  years  of  professional 


422 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Herford 


life  Henschel  established  himself  in 
Europe  and  the  United  States  as  com- 
poser, conductor,  singer,  as  well  as  accom- 
panist, showing  a  natural  gift  for  music  in 
every  variety  of  form  which  was  unusual 
then,  but  which  would  be  unparalleled 
in  these  days  of  specialization.  That  a 
singer  should  in  the  late  'eighties  form  an 
orchestra  in  London,  train  and  conduct 
it,  organize  its  concerts,  and  cany  them 
on  for  eleven  years  was  a  most  noteworthy 
feat  of  pioneering  which  created  the 
praiseworthy  tradition  of  good  orchestral 
playing  continued  in  London  under  Sir 
Henry  Wood.  But  it  was  above  all  as  a 
singer  that  Henschel's  genius  impressed 
itself  on  the  public  for  nearly  sixty  years, 
and  his  earlier  contemporaries  valued  him 
more  as  the  tmique  singer  that  he  was; 
while  those  who  knew  him  only  in  the  last 
twenty-five  years  of  his  life  remember  the 
inextinguishable  vitality  and  excitement 
of  his  singing,  the  inevitable  sweep  of  his 
rhythm,  and  the  singular  authority  of  his 
style  in  the  classical  Lieder. 

Of  Henschel's  numerous  compositions 
of  all  kinds  two  songs,  'Morning  Hymn' 
and  'Young  Dietrich',  are  still  favourites, 
while  the  Requiem  Mass  written  in 
m,emory  of  his  first  wife,  and  two  Masses 
written  for  All  Saints'  church,  Margaret 
Street,  London,  show  him  to  be  more  than 
the  mere  fluent  writer. 

Henschel  married  secondly,  in  1907, 
Amy,  eldest  daughter  of  Alexander  Louis, 
of  New  York,  and  had  one  daughter.  He 
was  naturalized  as  a  British  subject  in 
1890,  and  died  at  Aviemore,  Inverness- 
shire,  10  September  1934.  He  was  knighted 
in  1914,  and  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  Mus.  Doc.  from  the  university  of  Edin- 
burgh in  1910.  His  only  child  by  his  first 
marriage,  Helen  Henschel  (Mrs.  Harold 
Claughton),  carried  on  her  father's  musical 
tradition  as  a  singer  playing  her  own 
accompaniments . 

Three  portraits  of  Henschel  by  Sir 
Lawrence  Alma-Tadema,  J.  S.  Sargent 
(1889),  and  P.  A.  de  Laszlo  are  in  the 
possession  of  Lady  Henschel. 

[Sir  G.  Henschel,  Musings  and  Memories  of 
a  Musician,  1918 ;  Helen  Henschel,  When  Soft 
Voices  Die,  1944 ;  Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music 
and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol.  ii,  edited  by  H.  C, 
Colles ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Steuart  Wilson. 

HERFORD,  CHARLES  HAROLD 

(1853-1931),  scholar  and  critic,  was  born 
at  Manchester  18  February  1853,  the 
eldest  son  of  Charles  James  Herford,  wine- 


merchant,  of  that  city,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Jane,  daughter  of  J.  G.  Robberds  [q.v.]. 
He  was  nephew  of  Brooke  Herford  and 
of  William  Henry  Herford  [qq.v.],  and 
was  educated  at  Castle  Howell  School, 
Lancaster,  founded  by  the  latter.  From 
1867  to  1869  he  was  a  regular  student 
at  the  Owens  College,  Manchester.  After 
working  six  years  at  architecture,  he  went 
up  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1875. 
He  was  bracketed  eighth  classic  in  1879, 
in  which  year  he  also  obtained  a  second 
class  in  the  moral  sciences  tripos :  he  won 
the  Members'  (1879),  the  Harness,  and  the 
Le  Bas  (1880),  and  the  Hare  (1881)  essay 
prizes.  He  was  professor  of  English  lan- 
guage and  hterature  at  University  College, 
Aberystwyth,  from  1887  to  1901,  and  was 
first  holder  of  the  independent  chair  of 
English  hterature  at  Manchester  Univer- 
sity from  1901  until  his  retirement  in  1921. 
In  1900  he  was  Percy  TumbuU  lecturer  at 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore. 
He  acted  as  literary  critic  of  the  Man- 
chester Guardian  until  his  death. 

Herford's  most  notable  works  are  a 
model  edition  of  Spenser's  The  Shepheards 
Calender  (1895) ;  The  Age  of  Wordsworth 
(1897);  the  'Eversley'  edition  of  Shake- 
speare (10  vols.,  1899);  and  the  life  and 
critical  studies  which  he  contributed  to 
the  Oxford  edition  of  Ben  Jonson  (vols,  i 
and  ii,  1925).  He  edited  the  'Warwick' 
Shakespeare,  contributing  to  it  Richard  II 
(1893),  Othello  (1920),  and  The  Winter's 
Tale  (1926).  Shakespeare's  Treatment  of 
Love  and  Marriage  (1921),  A  Sketch  of 
Recent  Shakespearean  Investigation,  1893- 
1923  (1923),  and  A  Sketch  of  the  History  of 
Shakespeare's  Influence  on  the  Continent 
(1925)  rounded  off  these  larger  studies. 
He  wrote  handbooks  on  Browning  (1905), 
Wordsworth  (1930),  and  the  chapters  on 
Keats  and  Shelley  in  the  Cambridge 
History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  xii.  He 
edited  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  (1897), 
English  Tales  in  Verse  (1902),  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  Religio  Medici,  and  other  Writings 
(1906),  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury's  Auto- 
biography (1928),  and  Southey's  Journal  of 
a  Tour  in  Scotland  in  1819  (1929),  and  he 
revised  and  edited  with  a  prefatory  memoir 
Julia  Wedgwood's  Life  of  Josiah  Wedg- 
wood (1915). 

Herford  widened  his  range  to  embrace 
the  literature  of  Germany,  Italy,  Norway, 
and  Russia.  His  first  book.  Studies  in  the 
Literary  Relations  of  England  and  Germany 
in  the  Sixteenth  Century  (1886),  broke 
new  ground.  The  Influence  of  Goethe's 
Italian  Journey  on  his  Style  (1900)  was  the 


428 


Herford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Taylorian  lecture  delivered  at  Oxford  in 
1897.  He  helped  to  found  the  English 
Goethe  Society  (1885-1886)  and  gave  a 
presidential  address  on  Goethe  and  Words- 
worth (1926).  He  championed  the  Ibsen 
movement  with  verse  translations  of 
Brand  (1894)  and  Love's  Comedy  (1900). 
He  wrote  essays  on  Pushkin,  A  Russian 
Shakespearean  (1925),  and  'The  Culture 
of  Bolshevist  Russia'  {The  Post-War  Mind 
of  Germany  and  other  European  Studies, 
1927),  and  on  Gabriele  d'Annunzio  (1920) 
and  Dante  and  Milton  (1924). 

Herford  was  the  most  accomplished 
Enghsh  scholar  of  his  age.  A  humanist  of 
the  older  type,  he  concentrated  on  the 
ideas  and  the  characters  of  the  men 
behind  the  books.  His  attitude  is  seen  in 
such  essays  as  The  Permanent  Poiver  of 
English  Poetry  (1902),  Is  there  a  Poetic 
View  of  the  World?  (1916),  'National  and 
International  Ideals  in  the  English  Poets ' 
(Bulletin  of  the  John  Rylands  Library, 
1916),  The  Poetry  of  Lucretius  (1918), 
William  Blake  (1928).  He  contributed 
to  this  Dictionary  lives  of  Ben  Jonson, 
Thomas  Middleton,  Laurence  Minot,  and 
Hensleigh  Wedgwood.  He  wrote  memoirs 
of  his  uncle  Wilham  Herford  (1911), 
J.  Estlin  Carpenter  (1929),  and  a  full  life 
of  P.  H.  Wicksteed  (1931). 

Herford  died  25  April  1931  at  Oxford, 
where  he  had  lived  since  1927.  He  married 
in  1888  Marie  (died  1930),  daughter  of 
Hermann  Betge,  chief  postmaster  of 
Bremen,  and  had  one  son,  who  was  killed 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918,  and  one  daughter. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1926,  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Manchester 
(1899),  Wales  (1921),  and  Innsbruck,  this 
last  conferred  in  absence  to  recognize  The 
Case  of  German  South  Tyrol  against  Italy 
(1927).  A  portrait  by  T.  C.  Dugdale 
belongs  to  Manchester  University. 

[The  Times,  27  April  1931;  Manchester 
Guardian,  29  October  1927  and  27  April  1931 ; 
J.  G.  Robertson,  Charles  Harold  Herford, 
1853-1931  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy, vol.  xvii,  1931 ;  P.  Simpson  in  the 
Oxford  Ben  Jonson,  vol.  iv,  1932;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Percy  Simpson. 

HERRINGHAM,  Sir  WILMOT 
PARKER  (1855-1936),  physician,  was 
born  at  Guildford  17  April  1855,  the  elder 
son  of  William  Walton  Herringham,  of 
Old  Cleve,  Somerset,  then  curate  of  St. 
Nicholas's  church,  Guildford,  and  later  pre- 
bendary of  Wells  Cathedral,  by  his  wife, 
Matilda    Anne,    youngest    daughter    of 


Colonel  John  Boteler  Parker,   commat 
dant,  Woolwich.     He  was  educated 
Winchester  and  at  Keble  College,  Oxforc 
where  he  was  an  exhibitioner  and  obtaine 
a  second  class  in  classical   moderatior 
(1875)  and  in  literae  humaniores  (1877). 
1931  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
his  college. 

After  leaving  Oxford,  Herringham  was 
for  a  few  months  a  student  of  Lincoln's 
Inn,  but  gave  up  law  for  medicine  when 
he  entered  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital 
medical  school  in  October  1877.  He 
quahfied  M.R.C.S.  in  1881,  B.M.  (Oxon.), 
and  M.R.C.P.  in  1882,  and  graduated 
D.M.  (Oxon.)  in  1888.  He  was  elected 
F.R.C.P.  in  1889.  At  St.  Bartholomew's 
he  was  Kirkes  gold  medallist  and  house- 
surgeon  to  (Sir)  Thomas  Smith  [q.v.],  and 
medical  registrar  and  demonstrator  of 
anatomy  in  1883.  Herringham  was  not 
appointed  to  the  staff  as  assistant  physi- 
cian until  1895.  He  was  physician  from 
1904  to  1919.  He  was  also  physician  to 
the  West  London  Hospital  (1883-1893) 
and  to  the  Paddington  Green  Children's 
Hospital  (1888-1900),  and  then  consulting 
physician.  After  qualification  he  was  in 
private  practice  until  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

In  1886  Herringham  contributed  to  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  (vol.  xli) 
a  paper  entitled  '  The  Minute  Anatomy  of 
the  Brachial  Plexus '  which  was  referred  to 
with  appreciation  when  in  1930  he  re- 
ceived the  second  quinquennial  award  of 
the  Osier  bronze  medal.  In  1883  he  suc- 
ceeded F.  H.  H.  A.  Mahomed  [q.v.]  of 
Guy's  Hospital  as  honorary  secretary  of 
the  British  Medical  Association's  organi- 
zation for  the  collective  investigation  of 
disease,  and  in  1884  brought  out  the 
second  volume  of  the  reports  containing 
the  analysis  of  the  collected  cases  of  acute 
pneumonia.  In  1894  he  published  with 
(Sir)  Archibald  Garrod  [q.v.]  and  W.  J. 
Gow  A  Handbook  of  Medical  Pathology,  for 
the  Use  of  Students  in  the  Museum  of  St. 
Bartholomew'' s  Hospital. 

Herringham's  special  interest  was  in 
diseases  of  the  kidney,  and  he  published 
many  papers  on  this  subject  in  the  Saint 
Bartholomew's  Hospital  Reports  and  medical 
journals.  In  1912  he  wrote  a  monograph 
on  diseases  of  the  kidney  which  included 
chapters  on  renal  disease  in  pregnancy  by 
his  colleague  Herbert  Williamson.  At  an 
informal  meeting  in  May  1906,  at  Herring- 
ham's  house,  (Sir)  William  Osier  [q.v.] 
suggested  the  formation  of  an  Association 
of  Physicians  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
This  association  was  formed  a  year  later 


424 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hewins 


and  Herringham  agreed  to  act  as  its 
honorary  general  secretary.  The  other  and 
related  project  which  was  discussed  at  this 
meeting,  attended  by  Garrod  and  (Sir)  J. 
Rose  Bradford  [q.v.]  as  well  as  by  Osier, 
was  the  founding  of  the  Quarterly  Journal 
of  Medicine,  which  is  still  the  official 
journal  of  the  Association  of  Physicians. 
Herringham  was  also  active  in  the  chief 
medical  societies  in  London  which  became 
amalgamated  into  the  Royal  Society  of 
Medicine  in  1907.  In  1929  he  delivered 
the  Harveian  oration  before  the  Royal 
College  of  Physicians  without  notes,  a  tour 
de  force.  This  was  published  in  the  Lancet 
(1929,  vol.  ii),  under  the  title  of  'Circum- 
stances in  the  Life  and  Times  of  Wil- 
liam Harvey ' ;  an  extended  version  of  this 
was  printed  in  the  Annals  of  Medical 
History  (vol.  iv,  1932),  in  which  Herring- 
ham described  his  discovery  of  a  hitherto 
unknown  portrait  of  Harvey.  He  was  vice- 
chancellor  of  the  university  of  London 
from  1912  to  1915,  and  was  knighted  in 
1914  for  his  services  as  honorary  general 
secretary  to  the  International  Medical 
Congress  held  in  1913. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  Herringham  was  lieutenant-colonel 
irj  command  of  the  medical  unit  of  the 
London  University  Officers  Training  Corps. 
As  temporary  colonel,  Army  Medical 
Service,  he  went  to  France  as  con- 
sulting physician  to  the  forces  overseas 
and  attended  Lord  Roberts  in  his  last  ill- 
ness. He  became  attached  to  general 
headquarters,  was  made  surgeon-general 
in  1917,  and  promoted  major-general  in 
1918.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  (mil.)  in 
1915,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1919.  His  book 
A  Physician  in  France  (1919)  made  a 
wide  public  aware  of  the  part  played 
by  the  medical  services  in  an  army  at 
war.  He  was  one  of  the  four  sectional 
editors  of  the  History  of  the  Great  War 
based  on  Official  Documents.  Medical 
Services  (1922-1924). 

In  1918  Herringham  unsuccessfully 
contested  the  London  University  seat  as 
an  independent.  When  he  resigned  his 
post  as  physician  to  St.  Bartholomew's 
Hospital  in  1919  he  became  chairman  of 
the  reconstruction  committee  of  the 
hospital,  which  was  responsible  for  the 
creation  of  the  posts  of  directors  (sub- 
sequently professors)  of  medicine  and 
surgery  in  the  hospital.  After  Osier's 
death  in  the  same  year  Herringham  was 
offered  in  the  following  year  (1920)  the 
regius  chair  of  medicine  at  Oxford  in  suc- 
cession to  Osier,  but  he  declined  as  he  felt 


that  he  was  unsuited  for  the  position.  He 
was  chairman  of  the  General  Nursing 
Coimcil  for  England  and  Wales  (1922- 
1926)  and  of  the  governors  of  the  Old  Vic 
(1921-1929).  He  was  also  chairman  of  the 
council  of  Bedford  College  for  Women. 
In  1909  he  was  made  an  honorary  M.D.  of 
Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

Herringham  married  in  1880  Christiana 
Jane  (died  1929),  eldest  daughter  of 
Thomas  Wilde  Powell,  stockbroker,  of 
Piccard's  Rough,  Guildford;  she  was  an 
accomplished  artist  in  tempera  and  water- 
colour,  who  translated  the  Book  of  the  Art 
of  Cennino  Cennini  (1899).  They  had  two 
sons,  the  elder  of  whom  died  in  childhood, 
and  the  younger  was  killed  at  Messines  in 
1914.  He  died  at  Lymington,  Hampshire, 
23  April  1936. 

Herringham  was  a  classical  scholar  and 
spoke  French  and  Italian  well.  With  his 
pointed  beard  and  deep  voice  he  was  a 
formidable  personality  who  made  his  mark 
on  medicine  principally  as  an  organizer, 
administrator,  and  teacher. 

A  portrait  of  Herringham  by  Sir 
William  Rothenstein  (1935)  hangs  in 
Keble  College,  Oxford. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  1936,  vol.  i,  p.  915 
(portrait)  and  p.  965;  Lancet,  1936,  vol.  i, 
p.  1030  (portrait) ;  Saint  Bartholomew's  Hos- 
pital Reports,  vol.  Ixix,  1936  (bibliography  and 
portrait).]  Hugh  Clegg. 

HEWINS,  WILLIAM  ALBERT 
SAMUEL  (1865-1931),  poUtical  econo- 
mist, historian,  and  politician,  was  born 
near  Wolverhampton  11  May  1865,  the 
second  son  of  Samuel  Hewins,  a  merchant 
in  the  iron  trade,  by  his  wife,  Caroline 
Green,  of  Wednesfield.  He  was  educated 
at  Wolverhampton  Grammar  School,  and 
obtained  the  Hatherton  scholarship  which 
enabled  him  to  go  to  Pembroke  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  came  under  the  influence 
of  (Sir)  C.  H.  Firth  [q.v.].  Firth  testified 
that  the  pupil  soon  outran  the  master  in 
an  understanding  of  the  economic  and 
social  facts  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
He  graduated  with  a  first  class  in  mathe- 
matical moderations  (1885)  and  a  second 
class  in  the  final  mathematical  school 
(1887).  On  leaving  Oxford  he  took  a  large 
part  in  university  extension  work.  He 
lectured  to  working  class  audiences, 
mainly  in  the  north  of  England,  on  trade 
unionism,  factory  legislation,  and  other 
economic  and  social  questions.  In  1895, 
at  the  invitation  of  Sidney  Webb  amongst 
others,  he  organized  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  of  which  he  was  director  until 


425 


Hewins 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1903,  and  saw  it  achieve  much  success. 
He  was  Tooke  professor  of  economic 
science  and  statistics  at  King's  College, 
London  (1897-1903),  a  member  of  the 
senate  of  London  University  (1900-1903), 
and  he  held  the  chair  of  modern  economic 
history  at  that  university  (1902-1903). 

Unmoved  by  the  knowledge  that  other 
leading  political  economists  of  the  day 
regarded  his  views  as  reactionary,  Hewins 
welcomed  in  1903  the  invitation  of  Joseph 
Chamberlain  [q.v.]  to  become  secretary  of 
the  Tariff  Commission,  a  body  of  repre- 
sentative industrialists  who  set  themselves 
to  work  out  Chamberlain's  poUcy  of  safe- 
guarding British  industry  and  encouraging 
imperial  economic  unity.  He  held  this  post 
until  1917  and  was  chairman  from  1920  to 
1922. 

Noteworthy  as  were  his  qualities  as  an 
historian  and  a  lecturer,  Hewins  found 
only  a  limited  scope  for  them  in  political 
and  parliamentary  life.  He  fought  three 
unsuccessful  elections,  at  Shipley  (1910) 
and  twice  at  Middleton  (1910  and  1911), 
before  being  returned  at  a  by-election  in 
March  1912  as  conservative  member  for 
Hereford  City  which  he  represented  until 
1918.  In  parliament  he  became  especially 
attached  to  Walter  Long  [q.v.]  who  was 
colonial  secretary  from  1916  to  1918,  and 
from  1917  to  1919  Hewins  took  part  in 
realizing  a  policy  which  had  much  in 
common  with  Chamberlain's  ideas.  In 
1918  the  Hereford  City  constituency  was 
merged  in  the  South  Herefordshire  divi- 
sion. Hewins  was  not  invited  to  stand 
for  the  new  division,  and,  despite  three 
attempts  (1922,  1923,  and  1924)  in  the 
Swansea  West  constituency,  he  failed  to 
be  returned  again  to  Westminster. 

In  1914  Hewins  was  received  into  the 
Roman  Catholic  Chmrch  and  became  one 
of  the  principal  advisers  of  Cardinal 
Bourne  [q.v.]  in  anything  political  con- 
cerning Roman  Catholicism.  He  contri- 
buted copiously  to  current  periodicals  on 
economic  and  Empire  matters,  and  wrote 
many  books,  notable  among  them  being 
Imperialism  and  its  Probable  Effects  on  the 
Commercial  Policy  of  the  United  Kingdom 
(1901)  and  The  Apologia  of  an  Imperialist 
(1929). 

Hewins  married  in  1892  Margaret, 
eldest  daughter  of  James  Slater,  of  Bescot 
Hall,  Staffordshire,  and  had  a  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  suddenly  at  his 
home  in  Chelsea  17  November  1931. 

[The  Times,  18  November  1931 ;  W.  A.  S. 
Hewins,  The  Apologia  of  an  Imperialist,  2 
vols.,  1929.]  Percy  Hubd. 


HICHENS,  (WILLIAM)  LIONEl 
(1874-1940),  man  of  business,  was  born  at 
St.  Leonard's  1  May  1874,  the  younger  an^ 
posthumous  son  of  John  Ley  Hichens,  oi 
St.  Ives,  Cornwall,  by  his  wife,  Catherine 
Bacchus,  of  St.  Leonard's.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Winchester  and  at  New  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  graduated  in  liter 04^ 
humaniores.  After  some  fiui;her  study  of 
languages  in  France  and  Germany,  he 
became  a  master  at  Sherborne  School,  but 
abandoned  that  post  in  the  'black  week' 
in  December  1899  in  order  to  volunteer 
for  a  cyclist  section  organized  by  the  Inns 
of  Court  and  attached  to  the  City  Imperial 
Volunteers.  With  that  force  he  went  out 
to  South  Africa,  serving  mainly  as  a 
dispatch-rider  on  missions  of  risk  and 
trust,  until  the  entry  of  Lord  Roberts  into 
Pretoria  in  June  1900,  when  he  returned 
to  England.  A  chance  visit  to  Egypt  in 
the  same  year  brought  him  into  contact 
with  Lord  Cromer  [q.v.],  who  appointed 
him  to  a  post  in  the  Egyptian  Ministry  of 
Finance.  In  the  following  year  he  was 
invited  to  South  Africa  by  Lord  Milner 
[q.v.]  who  was  forming  his  'kindergarten' 
for  reconstruction  work  in  the  conquered 
colonies.  Hichens  was  appointed  town 
treasiu-er  of  Johannesburg  and  a  year  later 
colonial  treasurer  of  the  Transvaal.  He 
earned  much  credit  in  both  posts,  to 
which  was  subsequently  added  that  of 
treasurer  of  the  inter-colonial  council  of 
the  Transvaal  and  Orange  River  Colony. 
He  retired  from  South  Africa  in  1907  when 
responsible  government  was  substituted 
for  crown  colony  rule. 

After  a  short  period  of  unemployment 
broken  by  service  as  a  member  of  the 
royal  conunission  on  decentralization  in 
India  in  1907  and  then  in  1909  as  chair- 
man of  a  board  of  inquiry  into  the  public 
service  of  Southern  Rhodesia,  Hichens 
became  in  1910  chairman  of  the  great 
shipbuilding  firm  of  Cammell  Laird  & 
company  which  was  on  the  point  of 
closing.  To  this  and  other  cognate  business 
activities  he  gave  the  rest  of  his  life,  re- 
building and  completely  rehabiUtating  the 
firm,  of  which  he  was  still  chairman  at  the 
time  of  his  death  thirty  years  later.  As  a 
captain  of  industry  he  made  his  mark  very 
rapidly,  serving  as  chairman  of  the  Central 
Council  of  the  Association  of  Controlled 
Firms  which  co-ordinated  the  production 
of  mvmitions  in  the  war  of  1914-1918  and 
also  on  a  government  mission  to  Canada 
where  he  assisted  in  the  formation  of  the 
Imperial  Munitions  Board.  The  regard 
which  he  won  thus  early  for  breadth  of 


426 


D,N.B.  1931-1940 


Hicks 


judgement,  clear  grasp  of  essentials,  and 
capacity  for  handling  men  increased 
steadily  throughout  his  career ;  and  he  was 
always  particularly  distinguished  for  his 
understanding  of  labour. 

The  rare  combination  of  vision,  sym- 
pathy, and  practical  capacity  which 
Hichens  possessed  was  signally  displayed 
in  the  many  contributions  which  he  made 
to  public  discussion  of  industrial  problems 
in  the  period  of  reconstruction  after  the 
war  of  1914-1918.  He  was  a  good  speaker 
with  a  simple  but  incisive  style,  and  was 
as  much  at  home  with  working-class 
audiences  as  with  those  drawn  from  his 
own  side  of  industry.  His  Watt  anniver- 
sary lecture  on  Some  Problems  of  Modern 
Industry  (1918)  created  a  wide  stir  at  the 
time  of  its  delivery  earlier  in  that  year; 
and  that  was  but  the  first  of  many  illumi- 
nating discourses  on  the  relations  between 
the  state  and  industry,  operatives  and 
managers,  capital  and  labour.  He  is 
indeed  to  be  remembered  as  one  of  the 
pioneers  who  gave  national  thought  a  new 
direction  at  that  critical  time,  insisting,  in 
opposition  to  the  growing  materialism  of 
the  age,  that  'the  industrial  problem  is 
primarily  a  moral  one '  and  setting  in  the 
conduct  of  his  own  life  and  business  a 
shining  example  of  the  Christian  principles 
in  which  he  believed. 

Hichens  married  in  1919  Mary  Her- 
mione,  youngest  daughter  of  General  Sir 
Neville  Gerald  Lyttelton  [q.v.].  He  had 
three  sons,  the  eldest  of  whom  was  killed 
in  action  during  the  first  days  of  the  land- 
ing in  Normandy  in  1944,  and  three 
daughters.  Hichens  was  himself  killed  by 
a  bomb  which  fell  on  Church  House, 
Westminster,  14  October  1940. 

[The  Times,  17  October  1940 ;  Round  Table, 
December  1940 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Altkinchaji. 

HICKS,  WILLIAM  JOYNSON-,  first 
Viscount  Brentford  (1865-1932), 
statesman,  bom  in  Canonbury  23  June 
1865,  was  the  eldest  son  of  Henry  Hicks, 
merchant,  later  of  Plaistow  Hall,  Kent,  by 
his  wife,  Harriett,  daughter  of  William 
Watts,  of  Oadby,  Leicestershire.  He  was 
educated  at  Merchant  Taylors  School  from 
1875  to  1881.  In  1882  he  was  articled 
to  a  firm  of  London  solicitors,  and  was 
admitted  as  a  solicitor  in  1887.  Partly 
through  the  influence  of  his  father,  who 
for  twenty-one  years  was  a  prominent 
member  of  the  City  common  council,  but 
mainly  by  his  own  industry  and  insistence 
on  looking  into  things  for  himself,  he 


acquired  a  considerable  practice.  He  fore- 
saw the  revolution  which  road  motor 
traction,  then  becoming  a  commercial 
possibility,  would  bring  about,  and  he 
collaborated  with  (Sir)  Montague  Barlow 
in  publishing  in  1906  The  Law  of  Heavy 
and  Light  Mechanical  Traction  on  High- 
ways in  the  United  Kingdom. 

In  1894  Hicks  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Richard  Hampson  Joynson,  of  Bowdon, 
Cheshire,  a  Manchester  silk-manufactvu-er, 
whose  only  child,  Grace  Lynn,  he  married 
in  1895.  Next  year  Hicks  added  the  sur- 
name of  Joynson  to  his  own.  He  and  his 
father-in-law  had  strong  interests  in 
common,  both  being  conservative  in 
politics  and  evangelical  in  religion.  Hicks 
assisted  Joynson  in  philanthropic  work  in 
Manchester,  where  he  became  well  known. 
In  1906,  after  unsuccessfully  contesting 
North  Manchester  in  1900,  he  stood  for  the 
North- West  division,  but  was  heavily 
defeated  by  Mr.  Winston  Churchill.  Two 
years  later,  however,  at  a  by-election 
necessitated  by  Mr.  Churchill's  appoint- 
ment as  president  of  the  Board  of  Trade, 
the  result  was  reversed.  It  was  during  this 
contest  that  the  nickname  of  'Jix'  was 
applied  to  him  by  one  of  his  supporters, 
(Sir)  Ian  Malcolm. 

Joynson-Hicks  lost  his  seat  in  the 
general  election  of  January  1910  and  in 
December  was  defeated  at  Sunderland 
but  was  returned  unopposed  for  Brentford 
at  a  by-election  in  March  1911.  In  1918 
he  was  returned  for  Twickenham,  and  held 
the  seat  until  his  elevation  to  the  peerage 
in  1929. 

When  Jojoison-Hicks  re-entered  parlia- 
ment in  1911  he  showed  improvement  as 
a  legislator  and  debater.  He  made  use  of 
his  legal  and  technical  knowledge  of  motor 
road  traffic,  of  aviation  in  its  infancy,  of 
the  telephone,  and  kindred  subjects.  In 
October  1912  he  called  attention  to  the 
inadequacy  of  the  military  air  service,  and 
Colonel  J.  E.  B.  Seely  (later  Lord  Motti- 
stone),  then  secretary  of  state  for  war, 
subsequently  admitted  that  his  criticism 
had  made  a  considerable  contribution  to 
the  efficiency  displayed  by  the  Royal 
Flying  Corps  in  the  early  days  of  the  war 
of  1914f-1918.  During  the  war  he  became 
a  prominent  member  of  a  group  in  parlia- 
ment which  was  interested  in  aviation, 
and  in  1916  he  published  The  Command  of 
the  Air.  In  1919  he  was  created  a  baronet. 
At  this  time  it  seemed  possible  that  his 
career  was  ended.  He  had  a  good  position 
in  the  House  and  a  secure  seat,  but  he  had 
never  held  office  and  the  power  of  an  old 


427 


Hicks 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


antagonist,  Lloyd  George,  seemed  firmly 
established.  In  1920  he  visited  India  and 
the  Sudan.  While  in  India  he  went  to 
Amritsar  in  order  to  make  investigations 
into  the  shooting,  and  subsequently  in  the 
House  defended  the  action  of  Brigadier 
R.  E.  H.  Dyer  [q.v.].  He  also  made  a 
formidable  attack  upon  the  administra- 
tion of  the  secretary  of  state,  E.  S.  Mon- 
tagu [q.v.],  in  February  1922. 

Although  not  a  member  of  the  govern- 
ment, Joynson-Hicks  had  a  considerable 
following  of  private  members  in  the  con- 
servative party,  and  he  certainly  contri- 
buted to  the  overthrow  of  Lloyd  George's 
administration  in  October  1922  by  his 
exposure  of  its  increasing  disregard  of 
principle.  He  was  now  in  rapid  succession 
to  fill  important  posts  in  the  government, 
each  of  which  enhanced  his  reputation. 
Bonar  Law  at  once  offered  him  the  post  of 
parliamentary  secretary  to  the  Depart- 
ment of  Overseas  Trade.  In  March  1923 
he  was  transferred  to  the  office  of  post- 
master and  paymaster-general,  and  after 
Bonar  Law's  resignation  in  May,  his 
successor,  Baldwin,  made  Joynson-Hicks 
financial  secretary  to  the  Treasury  with 
the  unusual  addition  of  a  seat  in  the 
Cabinet,  being  then  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  Three  months  later  he  went  to 
the  Ministry  of  Health. 

At  the  close  of  1923  the  conservative 
party  went  out  of  office,  and  on  its  return 
in  1924  Joynson-Hicks  became  home 
secretary.  His  five  years'  tenure  was 
eventful.  In  May  1926  he  had  to  deal  with 
the  General  Strike :  his  success  in  doing  so 
was  largely  achieved  by  intelligent  anti- 
cipatory organization.  For  the  police 
force  he  displayed  singular  devotion,  and 
won  its  confidence  in  a  remarkable  degree. 
A  year  later  he  was  responsible  for  the  raid 
on  Arcos  Limited  which  resulted  in  the 
severance  of  diplomatic  relations  with 
Great  Britain  by  the  Soviet  government, 
represented  by  that  firm. 

Throughout  his  Ufe  Joynson-Hicks  took 
a  great  interest  in  religious  matters.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Church  Assembly  and 
in  1921  became  president  of  the  National 
Church  League.  He  took  a  prominent  part 
in  parliament  in  defeating  the  Prayer  Book 
measure  of  1927,  and  when  the  amended 
Deposited  Book  came  before  the  House  of 
Commons  in  June  1928,  Joynson-Hicks 
again  opposed  it  in  an  impressive  speech, 
and  the  bill  was  rejected  by  a  larger 
majority.  In  May  he  had  published  The 
Prayer-Book  Crisis. 

During  the  last  year  of  his  term  of  office 


as   home   secretary   Joynson-Hicks   wasi 
largely  concerned  in  passing  the  Shops  Actl 
of  1928  and  the  Summer  Time  Act  of  1928.1 
The  former  has  been  described  as  the 
shop-assistant's  charter.  He  was  also  pre- 
paring a  factories  bill  for  the  amelioration! 
of  the  conditions  of  the  workers.  But  the| 
general  election  of  1929  placed  the  labour- 
party  in  office,  and  Joynson-Hicks,  who 
did  not  stand  for  parliament,  was  created 
Viscount  Brentford,  of  Newick  in  Sussex. 
Five  years  at  the  Home  Office  with  a 
working  day  of  twelve  or  fifteen  hours  had 
seriously  impaired  his  health.  He  died  in 
London  8  June  1932.    He  had  two  sons 
and  a  daughter,  and  he  was  succeeded  as 
second  viscount  by  his  elder  son,  Richard 
Cecil  (born  1896). 

A  portrait  of  Joynson-Hicks  by  Sir 
Arthur  Cope,  which  was  presented  to  him 
by  the  constabulary  of  the  whole  country 
on  his  retirement  from  the  Home  Office, 
hangs  in  Scotland  Yard. 

[The  Times,  9  June  1932;  H,  A.  Taylor, 
Jix  Viscount  Brentford,  1933.] 

E.  I.  Cablyle. 

HILL,    Sir    (EDWARD)    MAURICE 

(1862-1934),  judge,  was  born  at  Totten- 
ham 8  January  1862,  the  eldest  of  the  five 
sons  of  the  Johnsonian  scholar  G.  Birkbeck 
N.  Hill  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Annie,  daughter 
of  Edward  Scott,  of  Beech  Hill,  Wigan. 
Maurice  Hill's  sisters  married  Sir  William 
Ashley  and  Charles  George  Crump  [qq.v.]. 
He  spent  much  of  his  childhood  at  Bruce 
Castle,  Tottenham,  where  his  father  was 
headmaster  of  a  school  in  which  modern 
theories  of  education  had  been  developed 
by  his  family.  From  Haileybury  he  went 
as  an  exhibitioner  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  and  graduated  with  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1881)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1884).  In  1888  he  was  called 
to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple,  took  silk 
in  1910,  and  was  elected  a  bencher  of  his 
Inn  in  1917. 

At  the  bar  Hill  built  up  a  solid  practice 
in  commercial  law,  and  became  a  pro- 
minent expert  in  all  legal  problems  con- 
cerned with  maritime  matters.  Apart 
from  his  work  at  the  bar,  he  was  keenly 
interested  in  politics  and  social  reform. 
He  was  devoted  to  the  liberal  cause  and 
often  spoke  at  political  meetings,  but  he 
never  stood  for  parliament. 

In  January  1917  Hill  was  appointed  a 
judge  of  the  Probate,  Divorce,  and  Ad- 
miralty division  of  the  High  Court.  Until 
May  1925  the  division  was  manned  by  a 
president    and    one    puisne    judge.     In 


428 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hinkson 


September  1918  the  president,  Sir  Samuel 
PiVans  [q.v.],  died.  His  successor,  William 
Pickford,  Lord  Sterndale,  was  president 
for  only  one  year  and  was  then  succeeded 
by  H.  E.  Duke,  Lord  Merrivale  [qq.v.]. 
The  result  of  these  changes,  coupled  with 
the  fact  that  the  president's  time  was  much 
occupied  with  prize  cases  (which  he  alone 
heard)  was  that  Hill  spent  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  first  eight  years  of  his  judicial 
life  trying  Admiralty  cases.  This  work 
increased  enormously  in  consequence  of 
the  war.  The  novel  conditions  of  naviga- 
tion in  convoy,  zigzagging  without  lights 
at  full  speed,  and  often  in  fog,  combined 
to  bring  a  constant  stream  of  cases  before 
the  court.  The  right  man  is  apt  to  appear 
when  needed,  and  Hill  certainly  met,  with 
complete  satisfaction  to  all  concerned,  the 
need  for  a  good  Admiralty  judge.  The 
records  in  the  Admiralty  Registry  indi- 
cate the  amount  of  work  done  by  him, 
often  sitting  on  Saturdays.  From  1917  to 
1924,  inclusive,  he  tried  1,313  Admiralty 
causes,  the  peak  year  being  1920  when  he 
disposed  of  308.  Hill  only  succeeded  in 
keeping  abreast  of  the  list  and  in  getting 
the  ships'  witnesses  away  to  sea  as  soon  as 
possible  by  long  hours  of  work  after  court. 
In  1925  an  additional  judge  was  appointed 
to  the  division  to  help  Hill,  whose  health 
was  breaking  down  under  the  continuous 
strain,  but  by  that  time  the  tide  of  Ad- 
miralty causes  had  begun  to  ebb. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  of  Hill's 
Admiralty  judgements  were  those  in 
which  he  dealt  with  claims  to  immunity 
from  legal  process  by  state-owned  ships. 
The  anomalies  of  this  kind  of  claim  were 
frequently  pointed  out  by  Hill.  They  have 
since  been  dealt  with  by  an  international 
convention,  prepared  in  1924  and  re- 
examined in  1947.  A  significant  stage  in 
this  department  of  maritime  law  was 
reached  in  England  by  the  passage  of  the 
Crown  Proceedings  Act  of  1947. 

Hill,  before  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914, 
with  the  help  of  his  brother,  (Sir  Arthur) 
Norman  Hill,  first  baronet,  an  eminent 
legal  adviser  to  the  shipping  community, 
drafted  the  legal  forms  necessary  to  put 
into  effect  a  scheme  of  national  insurance 
in  time  of  war.  This  scheme  did  much  to 
enable  the  mercantile  marine  to  carry  on 
its  essential  work  after  the  outbreak  of  war. 

In  his  last  years  on  the  bench  Hill  had 
to  try  from  time  to  time  divorce  and  pro- 
bate cases.  Although  he  brought  to  these 
cases  the  same  high  standard  of  care  and 
impartiaUty,  the  divorce  work  was  always 
distasteful  to  him.  His  sympathetic  mind 


hated  the  cruelty,  and  his  deep  sense  of 
decency  revolted  from  the  repulsive 
evidence  in  some  of  these  cases. 

Before  his  appointment  as  a  judge  Hill 
did  important  work  during  the  war  as 
chairman  of  the  Ship  Licensing  Com- 
mittee which  led  to  the  formation  of  the 
Ministry  of  Shipping.  At  the  request  of 
the  government  he  wrote  a  memorandum 
on  the  subject  of  freedom  of  the  seas.  This 
memorandum  formed  the  basis  of  article 
297  of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  and  the 
principle  of  equaUty  of  treatment  of 
vessels  of  all  flags  as  outlined  in  the 
memorandum  was  afterwards  embodied 
in  the  Maritime  Ports  Convention  of  1923. 

Hill  married  in  1891  Susan  Ellen  Berta, 
fourth  daughter  of  George  Burgess  Had- 
wen,  silk-mill  owner,  of  Kebroyd,  Halifax, 
and  had  two  sons.  The  elder  son,  Mr. 
Philip  Maurice  Hill,  is  general  manager  of 
the  Chamber  of  Shipping  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  In  1924  the  death  of  Hill's  wife, 
and  the  prolonged  strain  of  his  judicial 
work,  caused  for  a  time  a  serious  break- 
down in  his  health.  In  October  1930  he 
resigned  from  the  bench,  and  he  died  at 
Wimbledon  6  June  1934. 

As  a  judge,  Hill  inspired  confidence  in 
all  who  appeared  before  him.  He  brought 
to  each  case  obvious  ability,  utter  im- 
partiality, and  a  strenuous  desire  to  be 
just.  Although  this  desire  may  have 
seemed  at  the  time  to  prolong  the  hearing 
when  other  cases  were  pressing,  he  never 
failed  to  be  courteous  and  helpful  to 
counsel  or  witness.  In  the  result.  Hill's 
power  of  discernment  of  what  was  true  and 
just  nearly  always  enabled  him  to  decide 
the  case  aright. 

In  character  Hill  was  modest  and 
peculiarly  free  from  any  kind  of  vanity  or 
self-seeking.  He  paid  little  attention  to 
his  personal  appearance,  and  in  court,  as  an 
aid  to  thought,  usually  discarded  his  wig 
when  the  argument  became  interesting. 
He  seemed  to  care  for  simple  beauty 
almost  as  much  as  he  cared  for  truth.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  he  won  the  respect  and 
affection  of  all  who  knew  him. 

A  portrait  of  HiU,  by  (Sir)  Walter 
Russell  (1918),  presented  to  him  by  the 
London  and  Liverpool  War  Risk  Associa- 
tion, is  in  the  possession  of  his  elder  son. 

[The  Times,  7,  16,  19,  28  June  1934; 
Admiralty  Registry  records ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  T.  BucKNiix. 

HINKSON,  KATHARINE  (1861- 
1931),    better    known    as     Kathakine 


429 


Hinkson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Tynan,  poet  and  novelist,  was  born  in 
Dublin  23  January  1861,  the  fourth 
daughter  of  Andrew  Cullen  Tynan,  by  his 
wife,  Elizabeth  O'Reilly.  Her  father  was 
a  farmer  who  had  purchased  Whitehall, 
Clondalkin,  co.  DubUn,  formerly  the 
property  of  J.  P.  Curran  [q.v.]  whose 
daughter  Sarah  had  been  betrothed  to 
Robert  Emmet  [q.v.].  Amid  such  asso- 
ciations and  in  this  beautiful  scenery 
Katharine  Tynan  spent  her  early  years, 
and  with  her  dog,  her  sugar  stick,  and  her 
book  under  her  arm,  she  'learned  all 
the  mysteries  of  the  fields'.  She  was  a 
clever  child,  but  her  eyesight  having  been 
imperilled  by  an  attack  of  measles, 
her  school-days  at  the  Sienna  Convent, 
Drogheda,  were  curtailed.  She  grew  up 
to  be  a  woman  full  of  gentle  fun  and 
sympathy,  with  the  graciousness  that  she 
would  herself  have  attributed  to  her  con- 
vent schooling,  and  with  an  enchanting 
brogue.  In  her  childhood  she  had  heard 
talk  about  the  Fenians :  in  her  'teens  her 
father,  a  well-known  nationalist,  en- 
couraged her  to  listen  to  the  conversation 
of  his  poUtical  friends ;  in  her  girlhood  she 
joined  the  Ladies'  Land  League,  but 
according  to  her  own  statement  that 
branch  of  the  Lrish  movement  did  not 
greatly  appeal  to  her,  and,  like  her  father, 
she  supported  Parnell  both  before  and 
after  the  'spht'.  But  her  future  lay  in 
letters  rather  than  in  poUtics.  In  her 
'teens  she  was  reading  'everything'  from 
Rossetti  and  William  Morris  to  Miss 
Braddon  and  Eugene  Sue,  and  it  was  to 
her  father  that  she  showed  her  poems,  and, 
when  he  had  paid  for  the  pubUcation  of 
her  first  book,  Louise  de  la  VallUre  (1885), 
to  him  she  brought  the  news  of  their 
success.  This  earned  her  the  acquain- 
tance of  Wilfred  and  Alice  Me5aiell  [q.v.], 
of  William  and  Christina  Rossetti,  of 
W.  B.  Yeats  [qq.v.]  and  his  family,  of 
George  Russell  (AE)  [q.v.],  and  of  all  the 
leaders  of  the  Irish  Uterary  movement. 
From  that  time  too,  there  began  to  flow  a 
stream  of  more  than  a  himdred  novels  by 
which  she  made  a  pleasant  hving,  and  at 
intervals  she  published  collections  of 
poems.  During  her  married  hfe  and 
widowhood  she  wrote  her  autobiography 
in  five  volumes.  Twenty-five  Years:  Remi- 
niscences (1913),  The  Middle  Years  (1916), 
The  Years  of  the  Shadow  (1919),  The 
Wandering  Years  (1922),  and  Memories 
(1924),  which,  with  the  personal  accounts 
of  such  figures  as  Parnell  and  AJice  Mey- 
nell,  gave  her  a  claim  to  be  considered  a 
contemporary  historian. 


In  1883  Katharine  Tynan  married  1 
Henry  Albert  Hinkson,  an  open  scholar  of] 
Trinity  College,  DubUn,  a  barrister,  and] 
a  writer  of  novels.  By  him  she  had  two 
sons,  who  both  held  commissions  in  the 
British  Army  during  the  war  of  1914-1918, 1 
and  a  daughter,  the  noveUst  Miss  Pamela  | 
Hinkson.  After  her  marriage  her  home 
was  in  England  until  her  return  to  Ireland 
in  1916.  Her  husband  was  appointed  a 
resident  magistrate  in  county  Mayo  in' 
1914,  and  when  he  died  in  1919  she  moved 
from  place  to  place,  living  for  a  time  on 
the  continent  and  later  partly  in  Ireland 
and  partly  in  England.  Of  her  work 
W.  B.  Yeats  wrote:  'Mrs.  Hinkson  is 
happiest  when  she  puts  emotions  that  have 
the  innocence  of  childhood  into  symbols 
and  metaphors  from  the  green  world  about 
her.  She  has  ...  a  devout  tenderness  Uke 
that  of  St.  Francis  for  weak  instinctive 
things',  and  in  the  preface  to  her  Collected 
Poems  (1980)  George  Russell  (AE)  de- 
scribed her  as  'happy  in  religion,  friend- 
ship, children',  and  'instantly  kindling  to 
beauty'.  She  died  at  Wimbledon  2  April 
1931. 

A  portrait  of  Katharine  Tynan  by  John 
Butler  Yeats  (1896)  is  in  the  Municipal 
Art  Gallery,  Dublin. 

[Katharine  Tynan,  Twenty-five  Years,  1913, 
The  Middle  Years,  1916,  The  Years  of  the 
Shadow,  1919,  The  Wandering  Years,  1922, 
and  Memories,  1924;  Collected  Poems,  1930; 
private  information.]  Sylvia  Lynd. 

HOBDAY,  Sir  FREDERICK 

THOMAS  GEORGE  (1869-1939), 
veterinary  surgeon,  was  born  at  Burton- 
on -Trent  4  November  1869,  the  eldest  son 
of  Thomas  Hobday,  a  brewer's  manager 
for  Messrs.  Bass,  by  his  wife;  Mary  New- 
bold.  From  Burton  Grammar  School  he 
entered  his  uncle's  coal  business.  Dislik- 
ing office  work  he  moved  to  Hanley  for  two 
years  as  an  articled  apprentice  to  Alfred 
Hodgkins,  M.R.C.V.S.  After  three  years 
(1888-1891)  at  the  Royal  Veterinary  Col- 
lege and  a  further  year  with  Hodgkins  he 
graduated  M.R.C.V.S.  in  1892.  He  served 
six  months  as  resident  hospital  surgeon 
before  entering  private  practice  with 
Arthur  Blake,  M.R.C.V.S.,  of  Redhill.  In 
October  1893  he  returned  to  the  Royal 
Veterinary  College  on  appointment  to  a 
junior  professorship  with  charge  of  the 
out-patients'  department  and  the  teaching 
of  materia  medica  and  hygiene.  He  took 
his  F.R.C.V.S.  in  1897  and  was  awarded 
the  John  Henry  Steel  medal  in  1899.  In 
the  same  year  he  resigned  his  professorship 


430 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Hobday 


and  joined  Frank  Ridler,  M.R.C.V.S.,  in 
1900  in  practice  in  Kensington. 

Hobday  became  a  skilful  surgeon,  the 
craftsman  rather  than  the  reasoning 
diagnostician ;  the  busy  clinic  and  operat- 
ing theatre  rather  than  the  library 
and  classroom  moulded  him.  Ambitious, 
energetic,  restless,  he  spared  neither  him- 
self nor  his  assistants.  He  was  urbane 
with  clients  and  invariably  courteous  to 
students.  He  entered  fully  and  generously 
into  projects  for  the  advancement  of  his 
profession.  Among  the  more  durable  pro- 
ducts of  his  earUer  work  were  the  develop- 
ment and  refinement  of  animal  anaes- 
thesia, the  surgery  of  the  reproductive 
system,  and  the  surgical  technique  for 
small  animals.  His  operating  theatre 
attracted  fellow  practitioners  and  visitors 
from  abroad.  He  invited  Professor  Walter 
Long  WiUiams,  of  Cornell  University, 
U.S.A.,  to  demonstrate  modifications  of 
Professor  Karl  Adolf  Ktirt  Giinther's 
plastic  operation  for  the  relief  of  'roaring' 
in  horses.  In  Hobday's  hands  the  opera- 
tion became  so  successful  that  the  himting 
world  eventually  apphed  the  term  'hob- 
dayed '  to  horses  which  had  been  reUeved 
of  the  impediment  to  their  breathing.  His 
second  conspicuous  aptitude  was  his 
journalism,  on  which  his  restless  energy 
was  imprinted.  He  compiled  or  edited 
four  useful  text-books  and  wrote  numerous 
articles  for  the  professional  press,  particu- 
larly for  the  Veterinary  Journal,  of  which 
he  was  editor  from  1906  to  1939.  Lacking 
the  disposition  for  reflection  and  critical 
study,  he  acquired  the  habit  of  seeking 
ideas  of  more  informed  minds,  especially 
of  Henry  Gray,  M.R.C.V.S.,  his  neighbour 
and  friend  of  over  forty  years. 

In  1912  Hobday  was  gazetted  honorary 
veterinary  surgeon  to  Queen  Alexandra ; 
throughout  his  hfe  he  was  retained  in  the 
royal  appointment.  On  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1914  he  joined  the  Army  Veterinary 
Corps,  and  from  1915  to  1916  was  in  com- 
mand of  No.  22  Veterinary  Hospital  in 
France  with  the  rank  of  major.  At  the  end 
of  1916  he  took  his  hospital  to  Italy.  For 
his  services  he  was  twice  mentioned  in 
dispatches  and  appointed  C.M.G.  (1918) ; 
he  also  received  French  and  Italian  decora- 
tions. He  retired  from  the  army  with  the 
esteem  of  many  influential  veterinary 
surgeons  of  AUied  countries;  he  was  an 
honorary  member  of  the  veterinary  asso- 
ciations of  Paris,  Belgium,  Norway, 
Sweden,  and  the  United  States  of  America. 
By  maintaining  his  friendships  abroad  he 
was  the  most  widely  known  and  travelled 


British  veterinary  surgeon.  Later  he  re- 
ceived the  honorary  doctorate  of  veteri- 
nary medicine  from  Zurich  University 
(1933),  the  foreign  associateship  of  the 
Veterinary  Academy  of  France,  and  corre- 
sponding membership  of  the  Academy  of 
Medicine  of  Rumania  (1936). 

In  1919  Hobday  returned  to  his  Ken- 
sington practice  and  numerous  public 
activities.  In  appreciation  of  his  work  for 
the  profession  the  Central  Veterinary 
Society  presented  him  with  the  Victory 
medal  (1921).  The  idea  of  the  unity  of 
medicine  as  a  biological  study  embracing 
men,  animals,  and  plants  had  been  fostered 
by  several  generations  of  discerning 
physicians  and  veterinary  surgeons;  a 
further  step  was  taken  by  the  Royal 
Society  of  Medicine  in  establishing  a 
section  of  comparative  medicine  (1922). 
For  his  vigorous  support  of  the  new 
foundation  Hobday  was  elected  president 
of  the  section  (1924-1926)  in  succession  to 
Sir  T.  Chfford  AUbutt  [q.v.] ;  later  for  his 
work  on  behalf  of  medical  and  veterinary 
coUaboration  he  was  elected  an  honorary 
feUow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine 
(1937).  He  was  prominent  in  the  work  of 
several  animal  welfare  organizations, 
including  the  Universities  Federation  for 
Animal  Welfare,  of  which  he  was  president 
(1927-1939).  As  an  examiner  for  the 
Royal  College  of  Veterinary  Surgeons  for 
many  years  he  was  more  effective  than  as 
a  member  of  its  council.  In  council  he  was 
amiable  and  avoided  controversy ;  he  took 
a  minor  part  in  the  affairs  of  education  and 
professional  ethics.  He  had  a  penchant  for 
social  gatherings;  he  enjoyed  seeing  and 
being  seen  by  everyone. 

In  1927  the  governors  issued  an  appeal 
for  £35,000  for  the  reconstruction  of  the 
Royal  Veterinary  CoUege.  Hobday,  as 
chairman  of  the  ad  hoc  committee,  visited 
the  continental  centres  of  veterinary 
education  and  made  up  his  mind  that  the 
college  should  be  entirely  rebuilt  in  a  style 
worthy  of  the  Empire.  Within  a  few 
months  his  propaganda  had  attracted 
attention ;  he  dominated  the  appeal  fund 
organization.  At  the  height  of  his  influence 
the  governors  appointed  him  in  1927 
principal  of  the  college  in  succession  to 
Sir  John  McFadyean,  being  thereby  made 
responsible  for  the  administration  of  the 
coUege,  the  professorship  of  surgery,  and 
the  appeal  and  planning  for  reconstruc- 
tion ;  a  burden  too  great  for  any  one  man. 
Hobday  began  his  great  task  with  enthu- 
siasm and  remarkable  energy ;  in  his  inau- 
gural address  he  declared  the  governors' 


431 


Hobday 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


scheme  inadequate  and  called  for £250,000. 
By  1936  he  had  won;  the  appeal  fund 
totalled  £285,000,  the  income  and  student 
entry  had  been  more  than  doubled,  the 
college  staff  had  been  enlarged,  and  the 
debt  of  1927  had  been  cleared.  In  1933 
he  was  knighted,  but  his  path  to  victory 
was  marred  with  inevitable  omissions  and 
he  was  overwhelmed  by  misfortune. 

In  1936  defects  in  the  college  admini- 
stration were  alleged;  the  governors  ap- 
pointed a  committee  of  inquiry  and,  with 
unfeeling  prudence,  called  upon  Hobday 
to  resign.  Denied  an  opportunity  of  de- 
fending himself  he  refused  to  resign, 
whereupon  the  governors  announced  his 
resignation  on  the  grounds  of  his  having 
passed  the  age  limit.  When  reminded  at 
a  subsequent  meeting  that  no  age  limit 
had  been  specified  in  the  appointment  of 
the  principal,  the  governors  ruled  that 
Hobday's  salary  would  cease  at  the  opening 
of  the  new  buildings,  until  which  date  he 
would  remain  absent  on  leave.  He  was 
invited  to  the  opening  of  the  new  buildings 
by  the  King  and  Queen  in  November  1937, 
and  received  their  congratulations ;  but  he 
was  a  broken  man.  Disillusionment  em- 
bittered his  forced  retirement ;  resentment 
sapped  his  strength.  He  wrote  his  auto- 
biography (1938)  but  his  joyousness  had 
gone.  He  aged  very  rapidly  and  died  at 
Droitwich  24  June  1939. 

Hobday  married  in  1895  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Evans,  a  farmer,  and 
widow  of  William  Chambers,  of  Brom- 
yard, Herefordshire,  who  practised  veteri- 
nary surgery.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter. 

A  portrait  of  Hobday  by  John  Hassall 
hangs  in  the  library  of  the  Royal  Veteri- 
nary College. 

[The  Times,  26  June  1939;  Sir  Frederick 
Hobday,  Fifty  Years  a  Veterinary  Surgeon, 
1938 ;  Veterinary  Journal,  July  1939  (por- 
trait) ;  Nature,  29  July  1939 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]  T.  Hare. 

HOBHOUSE,  HENRY  (1854^-1937), 
pioneer  in  local  government,  was  born  at 
Hadspen  House,  near  Castle  Cary,  Somer- 
set, 1  March  1854,  the  only  son  of  Henry 
Hobhouse,  by  his  first  wife,  Charlotte 
Etruria,  youngest  daughter  of  James 
Talbot,  third  Lord  Talbot  de  Malahide. 
On  his  father's  death  in  1862  he  became 
head  of  the  younger  branch  of  the  Hob- 
house  family,  which  had  been  located  at 
Hadspen  House  since  1785.  He  was  a 
country  squire  with  an  inherited  estate  of 
about  2,500  acres.  His  father  and  grand- 


father  before   him  had   set  conspicuo 
examples  of  duty  and  public  spirit  in  t 
unpaid  work  of  petty  and  quarter  sessions 
and  although  he  was  not  quite  eight  yea; 
old  when  his  father  died,  the  tradition  w; 
handed    on    to    him    by    his    uncle    an( 
guardian,  Arthur  (afterwards  Lord  Hoh 
house,  q.v.),  the  well-known  judge.    Hi 
was  also  first  cousin  to  L.  T.  Hobhous 
[q.v.].   Educated  at  Eton  and  at  Balli 
College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  a  scholar, 
he  was  awarded  a  second  class  in  classic 
moderations  (1873)  and  a  first  class 
literae  humaniores  (1875).  In  1880  he  w; 
called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  i: 
the  same  year  was  appointed  a  count 
magistrate:    he    practised    as    a    parli 
mentary    draftsman    and    counsel    unt 
1885.    In  1884  he  collaborated  with  Si 
Robert  Wright  [q.v.]  in  An  Outline  oj 
Local  Government  and  Local  Taxation  i 
England  and  Wales,  which  remained 
standard  legal  text-book  for  over  half 
century,  its  eighth  main  edition  appearinj 
in  the  year  of  his  death. 

In  1885  Hobhouse  entered  parliamen" 
for  East  Somerset  as  a  liberal,  and  in  188i 
retained  the  seat  as  a  liberal  unionist.  I: 
the  debates  in  1888  on  the  county  councils 
bill  he  was  very  influential.  No  member 
excelled  him  in  direct  knowledge  of  county 
administration,  and  the  bill's  policy — to 
transfer  it  from  quarter  sessions  to  elected 
county  councils — was  the  one  which  he, 
unUke  some  rival  specialists,  entirely 
approved.  When  Lord  Salisbury  formed 
a  coahtion  ministry  with  the  Uberal  union- 
ists in  1895,  Hobhouse's  standing  was  high 
enough  to  warrant  his  inclusion;  but  his 
party's  eminent  front-benchers  were  so 
disproportionate  to  its  total  membership, 
that  no  newer  comer  stood  a  chance. 
Repeatedly  passed  over  in  favour  of 
conservatives,  he  evinced  no  sourness, 
but  concentrated  increasingly  on  county 
questions.  In  1902  he  gave  weighty  sup- 
port to  the  Balfour  education  bill,  which 
he  helped  to  shape.  Its  passage  perhaps 
partly  determined  his  acceptance  in  1904 
of  the  chairmanship  of  the  Somerset 
county  council,  a  post  which  he  filled  with 
great  distinction  for  twenty  years.  He 
took  a  leading  part  in  forming  in  1889  the 
County  Councils'  Association,  of  which  he 
was  an  original  member  and  from  1914  to 
1920  chairman.  He  retired  from  parlia- 
ment in  1906,  having  been  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council  in  1902. 

Hobhouse  was,  in  his  day,  the  pattern  of 
the  pubUc-spirited  country  gentleman, 
No  aspect  of  local  welfare  escaped  h: 


432 


1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hobson,  E.  W. 


but  his  favourite  subjects  were  education 
and  agriculture.  He  started  three  secon- 
dary schools  on  private  account,  and  after 
1902  was  keenly  interested  in  the  founda- 
tion of  others  by  his  county  coiuicil.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  royal  commission  on 
secondary  education  (1894-1895),  a 
notable  governor  and  benefactor  of  the 
King's  School,  Bruton,  and  very  in- 
iluential  in  the  conversion  of  University 
College,  Bristol,  into  Bristol  University  of 
which  (1909-1937)  he  was  pro-chancellor 
and  which  conferred  upon  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  His  interest  in  farming 
had  many  sides.  He  was  chairman  of  the 
Cider  Institute  at  Long  Ashton,  and  raised 
a  fund  for  it.  At  one  time  he  was  much 
concerned  to  combat  the  urban  bias  in 
rural  education;  but  had  only  moderate 
success.  He  cared  much  for  painting, 
architecture,  scenery,  and  literature,  and 
took  to  learning  foreign  languages  in  order 
to  study  their  masterpieces  in  the  original. 
He  was  a  devoted  churchman ;  an  eccle- 
siastical commissioner  from  1890  and  a 
member  of  the  Church  Assembly  from 
1920.  He  shot  regularly,  but  not  very 
well ;  he  rode  a  good  deal  about  his  estate, 
but  never  hunted. 

Hobhouse  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1880  to  Margaret  Heyworth  (died  1921), 
seventh  daughter  of  Richard  Potter,  of 
Standish  House,  Gloucestershire ;  she  was 
one  of  the  well-known  sisters  who  in- 
cluded Mrs.  Sidney  Webb  and  Lady 
Courtney  of  Penwith;  secondly,  in  1923 
to  Anne  Mackessack,  elder  daughter  of 
William  Grant,  of  Forres,  Morayshire. 
By  his  first  marriage  he  had  four  sons  and 
three  daughters;  the  youngest  son  was 
killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918  and  the 
youngest  daughter  died  in  infancy.  He 
died  at  Hadspen  House  25  June  1937. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Hobhouse  by  Hall 
Neile  (c.  1924)  at  Hadspen  House. 

[The  Times,  28  June  1937 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 

HOBSON,  ERNEST  WILLIAM  (1856- 
1933),  mathematician,  was  born  at  Derby 
27  October  1856,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
Hobson,  founder,  editor  and  part  pro- 
prietor of  the  Derbyshire  Advertiser  and  a 
prominent  figure  in  municipal  affairs,  by 
his  wife,  Josephine  Atkinson.  J.  A.  Hob- 
son  [q.v.],  the  economist  and  publicist,  was 
one  of  his  brothers.  His  early  education 
was  obtained  at  Derby  School.  In  1871 
he  was  elected  to  a  scholarship  at  what 
is  now  the  Imperial  College  of  Science, 


South  Kensington,  and  studied  physics  for 
a  time  in  London  under  Frederick  Guthrie 
[q.v.];  but,  although  a  versatile  student 
with  many  interests,  he  was  always  pri- 
marily a  mathematician  whose  ambition 
directed  him  naturally  towards  Cam- 
bridge. In  1874  he  obtained  a  scholarship 
at  Christ's  College,  and  he  remained  a 
member  of  that  foundation  for  the  rest  of 
his  Hfe. 

Hobson  was  senior  wrangler  in  January 
1878,  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his  college 
in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year.  In  1883 
he  was  chosen  as  one  of  the  first  university 
lecturers  in  mathematics,  and  in  1903  as 
Stokes  lecturer,  a  position  of  particular 
distinction.  In  1910  he  succeeded  Andrew 
Russell  Forsyth  as  Sadleirian  professor  of 
pure  mathematics,  and  he  held  this  posi- 
tion until  1931,  dying  at  Cambridge  soon 
after  his  retirement,  18  April  1933.  He 
had  long  been  a  conspicuous  figure  in  the 
international  world  of  science,  and  had 
received  many  honours,  a  Royal  medal 
(1907)  of  the  Royal  Society,  of  which  he 
had  been  elected  a  fellow  in  1893,  and  the 
De  Morgan  medal  (1920)  of  the  London 
Mathematical  Society,  honorary  degrees, 
and  memberships  of  foreign  academies. 

Hobson  was  for  many  years  one  of  the 
first  of  English  mathematicians,  but  his 
career  in  the  years  following  graduation 
was  not  particularly  distinguished.  He 
was  a  singular  exception  to  the  rule  that 
mathematicians  do  their  best  work  when 
they  are  young,  and  it  was  not  until  he 
was  nearly  forty  that  he  published  the 
first  of  the  works  upon  which  his  reputa- 
tion rests.  This,  an  elaborate  memoir  on 
'  spherical  harmonics '  in  the  Philosophical 
Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  for 
1896,  is  a  classic  in  its  field,  and  its  pre- 
paration may  well  have  occupied  him  for 
several  years;  but,  whatever  allowances 
are  made,  his  development  as  an  original 
mathematician  seems  now  to  have  been 
strangely  slow. 

The  slow  pace  of  Hobson's  progress  is 
no  doubt  largely  explained  by  the  Cam- 
bridge traditions  of  the  time,  the  ex- 
travagant importance  attached  to  position 
in  the  tripos,  and  the  general  indifference 
to  research :  it  was  one  of  Hobson's  great- 
est services  to  Cambridge  later  to  help  to 
break  down  these  traditions.  It  was  then 
quite  usual  even  for  the  best  of  Cambridge 
mathematicians  to  act  as  private  coaches 
for  the  tripos,  and  Hobson  for  many  years 
expended  much  of  his  energy  in  this  way. 
He  was  a  good  and  successful  coach, 
although  less  notorious  than  E.  J.  Routh 


433 


Ff 


Hobson,  E.  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


[q.v.]  or  Robert  Rumsey  Webb,  and  had 
one  theatrical  triumph,  Miss  PhiUppa 
Fawcett,  who  was  placed  'above  the 
senior  wrangler'  in  1890,  being  one  of  his 
pupils.  John  Maynard  (afterwards  Lord) 
Keynes,  was  another.  It  was  not  until 
1903  that  Hobson  abandoned  coaching  in 
order  to  win  more  leisure  for  research,  and 
not  until  he  was  fifty  that  he  developed 
fully  what  were  to  prove  the  dominant 
interests  of  his  Ufe. 

The  modem  theory  of  functions,  as 
understood  in  Europe  since  the  days  of 
Riemann  and  Weierstrass,  was  hardly 
known  in  England  before  1890.  In  parti- 
cular it  was  unknown  to  Cambridge 
mathematicians,  dominated  as  they  were 
by  the  algebraical  traditions  of  Cay  ley  and 
Sylvester  and  by  the  depressing  shadow 
of  the  tripos.  The  first  steps  towards  en- 
lightenment were  taken  by  A.  R.  Forsyth, 
whose  Theory  of  Functions  of  a  Complex 
Variable,  published  in  1893,  raised  the 
first  wave  of  interest  in  the  subject. 
Forsyth,  however,  cared  only  for  the 
'complex'  theory,  and  was  in  any  case 
deficient  in  critical  power;  and  the  still 
more  fundamental  'real'  theory  remained 
neglected.  It  was  here  that  Hobson  fotmd 
the  great  opportunity  of  his  life. 

Hobson' s  Theory  of  Functions  of  a  Real 
Variable  was  published  in  1907,  at  first  as 
a  single  volume.  The  modern  theories  of 
measure  and  integration,  initiated  in 
France  by  Bord  and  Lebesgue,  were  then 
still  unfamiliar ;  and  Hobson  and  William 
Henry  Young  (who  never  held  a  regular 
position  in  the  university)  were  the  first 
Cambridge  mathematicians  to  grasp  the 
significance  of  the  new  ideas.  The  subject 
expanded  rapidly,  and  Hobson's  book,  in 
its  various  editions,  occupied  him  for 
twenty  years.  In  its  final  form  of  1926- 
1927  it  fills  two  volumes  and  over  1,500 
pages,  and  the  best  tribute  to  the  vitality 
of  the  subject  and  the  author  is  that  it  is 
stiU  possible  to  feel  that  many  sections  are 
too  short.  It  is  a  fine  book,  written  with 
full  mastery  of  a  vast  subject  and  with 
many  important  contributions  of  Hob- 
son's  own ;  it  probably  ranks  first  among 
systematic  treatises  written  by  modern 
Enghsh  mathematicians;  and  if  EngUsh 
mathematics  has  now  lost  all  its  insularity, 
if  these  subjects,  once  neglected,  are  now 
widely  understood  and  achnirably  taught, 
it  is  to  Hobson  and  Young  that  the  credit 
is  primarily  due. 

Hobson  wrote  four  other  books.  The 
most  important  is  Spherical  and  Ellip- 
soidal Harmonics,  published  in  1931 :  this, 


although  it  appeared  so  late,  contains  the 
substance  of  much  of  his  early  work,  and 
in  particular  of  his  memoir  of  1896.  His 
first  book,  A  Treatise  on  Plane  Trigono- 
metry (1891),  is  a  'text-book'  of  a  much 
more  elementary  kind,  although  an  imj 
portant  one  which  has  run  through  manj 
editions.  This  was  the  first  English  bool 
apart  from  the  Algebra  of  George  Chryst 
[q.v.],  to  give  any  serious  account  of  th^ 
elements  of '  algebraical  analysis ' .  Squaring 
the  Circle  (1913),  a  reprint  of  six  lectures 
given  in  that  year,  is  a  'popular'  book, 
agreeably  written  and  full  of  entertaining 
information,  which  inspires  regret  that 
Hobson  did  so  httle  of  this  kind  of  exposi- 
tion. Finally,  in  The  Domain  of  Natural 
Science  (1923),  the  Gifford  lectures  de- 
livered at  Aberdeen  in  1921-1922,  Hobson 
appears  as  a  philosopher.  He  was  an 
intimate  friend  of  James  Ward  [q.v.]  and 
philosophy  had  always  been  his  strongest 
interest  outside  mathematics,  so  that  his 
selection  as  lecturer  was  quite  appropri- 
ate. The  book  itself,  however,  although 
competent  and  scholarly,  is  slightly  dis- 
appointing, the  position  which  he  de- 
fends, a  rather  extreme  and  abstract 
form  of  the  '  descriptive '  view  of  natural 
science,  being  much  more  reasonable  than 
exciting. 

Apart  from  his  position  as  a  leading 
British  mathematician,  Hobson  was  a 
conspicuous  and  influential  figure  in 
Cambridge.  He  was  proctor  twice,  served 
on  the  council  of  the  senate  and  on 
important  syndicates,  and  was  a  frequent 
speaker  in  senate-house  discussions.  He 
was,  as  was  to  be  expected  of  a  man  of 
his  temperament  and  upbringing  a  'radi- 
cal', as  radicaUsm  was  understood  in  uni- 
versity circles  thirty  years  ago,  who  was 
usually  to  be  foimd  on  the  placet  side 
— the  controversy  over  women's  degrees 
was  an  exception ;  and  he  was  one  of  the 
leaders  in  the  movement  for  the  reform 
of  the  mathematical  tripos  which  re- 
sulted in  1910  in  the  abolition  of  the  order 
of  merit. 

Hobson  married  in  1882  Selina  Rosa, 
daughter  of  Rudolf  Kniisli,  a  merchant, 
of  Glarus,  Switzerland,  and  had  four 
sons,  of  whom  one  predeceased  him.  A 
portrait  of  him  by  Kenneth  Green  (1925) 
hangs  in  the  combination  room  of  Christ's 
College. 

[The  Times,  19  April  1933 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  3,  December 
1934  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  the  London  Mathe- 
matical Society,  vol.  ix,  1934 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]    G.  H.  Hardy. 


434 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hobson,  J.  A. 


HOBSON,  JOHN  ATKINSON  (1858- 
1940),  economist  and  publicist,  was  born 
at  Derby  6  July  1858,  the  second  son  of 
William  Hobson,  founder,  editor,  and  part- 
proprietor  of  the  Derbyshire  Advertiser,  by 
his  wife,  Josephine  Atkinson.  The  mathe- 
matician E.  W.  Hobson  [q.v.]  was  his 
elder  brother.  He  was  educated  at  Derby 
School  and  at  Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  of 
which  latter  he  was  a  scholar.  From  1880 
to  1887  he  held  posts  as  classical  master 
in  schools  at  Faversham  and  Exeter,  and 
from  1887  to  1897  was  a  university  exten- 
sion lecturer  for  Oxford  and  London.  He 
paid  a  series  of  long  visits  to  the  United 
States  of  America  and  Canada,  and  spent, 
at  the  request  of  the  Manchester  Guardian, 
some  months  in  South  Africa  on  the  eve 
of  the  war  of  1899-1902.  His  main 
energies  were  devoted,  however,  to  eco- 
nomic and  social  studies,  on  which  he 
pubUshed  some  thirty-five  works,  as  well 
as  numerous  pamphlets  and  articles.  He 
married  in  1885  Florence,  daughter  of 
Jonathan  Edgar,  attorney,  of  New  Jer- 
sey, and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  He 
died  at  his  home  at  Hampstead  1  April 
1940. 

Hobson's  work  as  an  economist  was 
done  at  a  time  when  the  scope  of  the 
science  was  in  process  of  enlargement, 
while  its  methods  were  being  modified  by 
the  progress  of  realistic  investigations  into 
economic  and  social  life.  It  is  as  an  acute 
and  original  thinker,  who  made  important 
contributions  to  both  changes,  that  he  will 
principally  be  remembered.  He  had  been 
influenced  by  Ruskin,  on  whose  social 
teaching  he  published  a  study  (John 
Ruskin,  Social  Reformer,  1898).  As  ex- 
plained in  two  of  his  later  books,  Work 
and  Wealth:  a  Human  Valuation  (1914) 
and  Wealth  and  Life;  A  Study  in  Values 
(1929),  he  approached  economics  as  a 
humanist,  but  a  humanist  with  an  unusual 
power  of  logical  analysis,  and  also  with 
a  firm  grasp  of  a  wide  range  of  economic 
facts.  From  the  beginning,  he  struck  out 
on  lines  of  his  own.  The  theory  of  under- 
consumption formulated  in  The  Physio- 
^Sy  of  Industry  (1889),  in  wliich  he  col- 
laborated with  A.  F.  Mummery  [q.v.],  and 
developed  in  his  subsequent  works,  as- 
serted that  economic  health  requires  the 
maintenance  of  a  correct  balance  between 
expenditure  on  consumption  and  on  capi- 
tal goods,  and  saw  the  principal  cause  of 
unemployment  in  a  tendency  to  over- 
saving on  the  part  of  a  wealthy  minority, 
which  was  the  inevitable  consequence  of 
extreme  inequality  in  the  distribution  of 


income.  When  first  advanced,  the  doc- 
trine did  not  find  favour  with  his  fellow 
economists.  The  London  University  Ex- 
tension Board,  with  surprising  fatuity, 
refused  to  allow  Hobson  to  lecture  for  it 
on  political  economy,  and,  to  the  discredit 
of  EngUsh  universities,  he  was  never 
offered  an  academic  post.  Later  work  on 
trade  depressions,  however,  reached  con- 
clusions which  had  an  affinity  with  those 
suggested  by  him,  and  he  lived  to  read  the 
handsome  tribute  to  his  work  as  an  intel- 
lectual pioneer  paid  by  John  Maynard 
(afterwards  Lord)  Keynes  in  The  General 
Theory  of  Employment,  Interest  and  Money 
(1936).  Hobson's  next  important  book. 
The  Evolution  of  Modern  Capitalism:  a 
Study  of  Machine  Production  (1894), 
attacked  the  subject  of  industrial  organi- 
zation from  a  different  angle.  Offering  an 
analytical  accoiuit  of  the  creation  by 
modern  machine  industry  of  a  proletariat 
divorced  from  control  of  the  conditions  on 
which  its  livelihood  and  welfare  depend, 
and  of  the  concentration  of  power  in  the 
hands  of  an  oligarchy  of  capitalist  entre- 
preneurs, it  remains  an  indispensable  intro- 
duction to  nineteenth-century  economic 
history.  It  was  followed,  after  the  appear- 
ance of  The  Economics  of  Distribution 
(1900)  and  several  smaller  works,  by  two 
books  which  reveal  Hobson's  originality 
and  synthetic  power  at  their  best.  Im- 
perialism: a  Study  (1902,  3rd,  revised  ed. 
1938)  traces  the  drive  for  imperial  expan- 
sion to  the  search  for  new  markets  and 
opportunities  for  investment  on  the  part 
of  wealth  which,  owing  to  the  poverty  of 
large  sections  of  the  population  in  capi- 
talist countries,  could  not  find  profitable 
openings  at  home.  The  Industrial  System: 
an  Inquiry  into  Earned  and  Unearned  In- 
come (1909)  found  the  principal  source  of 
inequality  in  surpluses  accruing,  after  the 
necessary  costs  of  production  had  been 
met,  to  the  classes  owning  capital  and 
land,  or  enjoying  special  educational  and 
other  advantages.  The  remedies  pre- 
scribed in  that  book  and  in  some  of  the 
author's  later  writings,  such  as  Democracy 
after  the  War  (1917),  Taxation  in  the  New 
State  (1919),  and  The  Economics  of  Unem- 
ployment (1922),  include  steeply  gradu- 
ated taxation,  the  extension  of  the  social 
services,  and  the  nationaUzation  of  mono- 
poUes. 

Although,  as  an  economist,  Hobson  for 
long  travelled  almost  alone,  he  was  far 
from  being  a  recluse.  He  was  keenly  in- 
terested in  pubUc  affairs ;  and  his  migra- 
tion to  London  was  a  turning-point  in  his 


435 


Hobson,  J.  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


career.  It  introduced  him  to  a  group  of 
thinkers  and  reformers  who  were  preach- 
ing a  modernized  liberaUsm,  and  gave  him 
an  opportunity,  which  he  was  quick  to 
seize,  of  promoting  the  causes  which  com- 
manded his  allegiance.  The  Progressive 
Review,  in  which  he  was  associated  with 
Ramsay  MacDonald  [q.v.]  from  1896  to 
1898,  had  a  brief  and  troubled  life ;  but 
the  Nation  supplied  him  with  the  platform 
which  he  required.  The  circle  which  its 
editor  H.  W.  Massingham  [q.v.]  gathered 
about  him  included  L.  T.  Hobhouse  [q.v.], 
Henry  Woodd  Nevinson,  Mr.  John  Law- 
rence Le  Breton  Hammond,  C.  F.  G. 
Masterman  [q.v.],  and  other  well-known 
names.  Some  of  them  were  Hobson's  inti- 
mate friends;  and  from  1906  to  1920 
much  of  his  writing,  not  only  on  current 
politics,  but  on  sociological  subjects,  was 
first  published  in  the  Nation.  He  was  a 
vigorous  opponent  of  the  South  African 
war;  served  on  the  Bryce  committee 
which  prepared  a  scheme  for  a  League  of 
Nations;  helped  to  found  the  Union  of 
Democratic  Control;  and  published,  in 
addition  to  his  earher  study  of  imperial- 
ism, The  War  in  South  Africa:  its  Causes 
and  Effects  (1900);  The  Psychology  of 
Jingoism  (1901);  Towards  International 
Government  (1915);  and  Richard  Cobden, 
The  International  Man  (1919).  In  addition 
to  his  books  and  articles,  he  found  time 
for  lecturing.  Himself  a  convinced,  though 
tolerant  and  undogmatic,  rationalist,  he 
was  strongly  attracted  by  the  Ethical 
Movement.  The  addresses  which  for  many 
years  he  delivered  to  South  Place  Ethical 
Society  made  a  deep  impression  upon  aU 
who  heard  them. 

Setting  a  high  value  on  'free  and  frag- 
mentary intercourse  ...  as  a  mode  for  the 
discovery  and  communication  of  truth', 
Hobson  did  not  regard  such  activities  as 
an  impediment  to  his  austerer  studies,  but 
as  an  assistance  to  them.  It  is,  however, 
through  his  books  that  his  widest  and 
most  enduring  influence  has  been  exer- 
cised. The  best  introduction  to  his  work 
as  a  whole  is  to  be  found  in  two  of  his 
later  volumes,  Free-Thought  in  the  Social 
Sciences  (1926)  and  the  autobiographical 
Confessions  of  an  Economic  Heretic  (1938). 
While  he  made  original  and  fruitful  con- 
tributions to  economic  thought,  his  ap- 
proach to  the  problems  of  society  was  that 
of  a  sociologist  rather  than  an  economic 
theorist.  He  refused  to  treat  ethics,  poli- 
tics, and  economics  in  isolation  from  each 
other,  and  his  best  work  was  done  in  the 
border  region  where  studies,  convention- 


ally separated,  intersect.  Acutely  conH 
scious  as  he  was  of  the  tricks  played  bj 
interest  on  reason,  he  rejected,  as  warpec 
by  an  unconscious  class-bias,  both  the 
individualist  economics  of  his  youth  anc 
the  proletarian  economics  which  attackec 
them.  His  own  version  of  socialism  dre\ 
a  distinction  between  standardized  iriiH 
dustries,  which  could  appropriately  b€ 
nationaUzed,  and  those  in  which  persoi 
taste  and  skill  play  an  important  part^^ 
It  proposed  to  secure  the  advantages  of 
collective  ownership  where,  as  in  the  case 
of  monopohes,  that  policy  would  best 
serve  the  public  interest,  while  preservinj 
a  large  field  for  individual  initiative  anc 
ingenuity  in  meeting  the  demand  fot 
qualitative  production. 

[Manchester    Guardian    and     The    Times\ 
2  April  1940;  Derbyshire  Advertiser,  5  Api 
1940;  J.  A.  Hobson,  Confessions  of  an  Eco 
nomic  Heretic,  1938 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
R.  H.  Tawney. 

HOCKING,    SILAS    KITTO    (185 
1935),  novelist  and  preacher,  was  bom  & 
St.    Stephen   in    Brannel,    Cornwall,    2' 
March    1850,    the    third    son    of   Jamei 
Hocking,  part  owner  of  a  tin-mine,  by 
wife,  Elizabeth  Kitto,  who  was  related  t 
John  Kitto,  author  of  The  Pictorial  Bibl 
[q.v.].    Through  his  mother  he  came  ol 
one  of  the  oldest  Cornish  families.   Edu' 
cated  privately  and  perhaps  elsewhere 
he  intended  to  be  a  mine  surveyor,  but 
1869  was  accepted  as  a  candidate  for  thi 
ministry  of  the  United  Methodist  Fre^ 
Church,  and  was  ordained  in  1870.    H( 
held  pastorates  at  Pontypool,  Spalding,'! 
Liverpool,  and  Manchester  before  going,! 
in  1883,  to  Duke  Street,  Southport,  where, 
during  the  next  thirteen  years,  he  preachei 
to  crowded  congregations. 

Hocking  resigned  from  the  ministry  iaj 
1896  in  order  to  devote  himself  to  writing, 
liberal   politics    (he   unsuccessfully    con 
tested  the  Aylesbury  division  of  Bucking 
hamshire  in  1906  and  Coventry  in  Janua: 
1910),  lecturing,  and  journalism.  He  wro 
his  first  book,  Alec  Green,  at  Liverpool  i 
1878,  and  a  year  later  Her  Benny,  a  tal 
of  the  Liverpool  streets,  for  children,  th( 
copyright  of  which  he  sold  for  £20.  It  wi 
translated  into  many  languages  and  over 
a  million  copies  were  sold.  In  all,  he  wrote 
fifty  books,  including  his  reminiscences. 
My  Book  of  Memory  (1923),  and  at  one 
time  was  said  to  be  the  best-selling  English 
novelist.  In  1894  he  became  editor  of  the 
Family  Circle,  and  two  years  later  estab 
lished,  with  Frederick  Anthony  Atkins. 


436 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Hodge 


the  Temple  Magazine,  a  sixpenny  illus- 
trated monthly  journal  for  Sunday  reading. 

Hocking  married  in  1876  Esther  May 
(died  1940),  youngest  daughter  of  Richard 
Lloyd,  of  Liverpool,  and  had  a  son  and 
two  daughters.  He  died  at  Highgate  15 
September  1935,  The  secret  of  his  success 
was  that  'he  wrote  of  what  he  knew  for 
people  he  understood'.  Sir  Henry  Camp- 
bell-Bannerman  said  that  he  had  'done 
more  in  providing  healthy  fiction  for  the 
young  people  of  this  country  than  any 
other  man'.  A  cartoon  of  him  by  'Spy'  ap- 
peared in  Vanity  Fair  14  November  1906. 

His  brother  JOSEPH  HOCKING  (1860- 
1937),  novelist  and  preacher,  the  youngest 
son  of  James  Hocking,  was  born  at  St. 
Stephen  in  Brannel  7  November  1860. 
'My  earliest  recollections',  he  wrote,  'are 
of  sitting  in  the  old  chimney  corner,  with 
a  log  on  the  fire,  and  my  mother  telling 
me  ancient  Cornish  stories  of  wizards, 
wreckers,  ghosts,  and  haunted  houses.'  He 
was  educated  privately  and  perhaps  else- 
where, also  at  Crescent  Range  Theological 
College,  Manchester,  where  he  was  first  in 
his  year,  winning  the  Cuthbertson  prize, 
and  the  Owens  College,  Manchester.  He 
had  read  almost  all  Scott's  works  before  he 
was  twelve,  and  would  walk  twelve  miles 
through  the  Cornish  lanes  to  buy  a  cheap 
reprint  of  the  classics.  At  the  age  of  thir- 
teen he  wrote  his  first  novel,  which,  he 
said,  'was  not  a  success'.  At  sixteen  he 
began  to  study  land  surveying,  but  after 
four  years  felt  a  call  to  the  ministry  of  the 
United  Methodist  Free  Church,  and  was 
ordained  in  1884.  In  1887  he  travelled 
extensively  in  the  Middle  East,  and  on  his 
return  became  minister  of  Woodford  Green 
Union  church  in  Essex.  He  resigned  in  1910. 

Jabez  Easterbrook,  the  first  of  Hocking's 
fifty -three  published  books,  appeared  in 
1891.  Several  came  out  serially  in  the 
British  Weekly  and  other  journals.  He 
regarded  fiction  as  an  effective  medium 
for  conveying  religious  ideas  to  a  popular 
public.  His  tales,  sometimes  set  in  the 
Cornwall  of  his  childhood,  were  com- 
petently written,  didactic,  and  make  a 
good  use  of  suspense.  Perhaps  the  most 
successful  were  The  Woman  of  Babylon 
(1906),  The  Trampled  Cross  (1907),  and 
The  God  That  Answers  by  Fire  (1930).  In 
1887  he  married  Annie,  eldest  daughter  of 
Joseph  Brown,  J.P.,  F.C.S.,  and  had  a 
son,  who  was  killed  on  active  service  in 
1918,  and  four  daughters.  He  died  at 
Perxanporth,  Cornwall,  4  March  1937. 

[The  Times,  16  September  1935  and  5  March 
1937;  S.  K.  Hocking,  My  Book  of  Memory, 


1923 ;  Methodist  Recorder,  19  September  1935 ; 
Tit-Bits,  5  January  1909 ;  Men  and  Women  of 
the  Tim^,  1899 ;  private  information.] 

R.  G.  BUBNKTT. 

HODGE,  JOHN  (1855-1937),  labour 
leader,  was  born  at  Muirkirk,  Ayrshire, 
29  October  1855,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
Hodge,  a  puddler,  by  his  wife,  Marian 
Henderson,  who  came  from  Dumfriesshire. 
In  his  fifth  year  he  attended  the  school 
attached  to  the  ironworks  at  Motherwell, 
where  his  father  then  laboured.  After  a 
strike  in  1865  the  father  was  victimized, 
atid  the  family  moving  to  Glasgow  for  a 
year,  John  was  transferred  for  a  short  time 
to  Hutcheson's  Boys'  Grammar  School. 
Later,  after  returning  to  Motherwell,  he 
passed  an  examination  for  a  position  as 
pupil  teacher,  but  was  disqualified  as  he 
was  under  thirteen.  In  1868  he  entered 
a  sohcitor's  office  at  Hamilton  where  he 
earned  £10  a  year  and  gathered  some 
smattering  of  Scottish  law.  After  a  turn 
at  puddling  at  Parkhead  ironworks,  Glas- 
gow, in  addition  to  ventures  in  the  grocery 
and  provision  trades,  he  was  engaged  as 
a  stocktaker  by  the  firm  of  David  Colville 
&  Sons,  iron  and  steel  makers,  of  Mother- 
well. But  he  quarrelled  with  one  of  the 
partners,  and  attracted  by  the  high  wages 
reputed  to  be  earned  by  steel  melters,  he 
then  got  work  as  third  hand  at  Blochairn 
steelworks,  Glasgow,  and  while  there,  on 
account  of  his  knowledge  and  skill,  was 
invited  to  return  to  Colville's. 

A  demand  by  Colville's  for  a  20  per 
cent,  reduction  in  wages  and  the  dismissal 
of  one  in  three  men  in  the  works  led  in 
November  1885  to  a  strike,  which  col- 
lapsed in  a  week,  but  gave  rise  to  the 
formation  in  the  following  year  of  the 
British  Steel  Smelters'  Association  with 
Hodge  as  unpaid  secretary  and  his  wife 
as  unpaid  assistant.  Within  six  months 
practically  every  steel  smelter  in  Scotland 
had  been  enrolled.  Smelters  worked  up  to 
seventy  hours  a  week  under  a  system  by 
which  contractors  received  from  £40  to 
£50  a  week  and  the  men  8s.  Q^d.  down  to 
5s.  9d.  a  shift  of  twelve  hours.  Sound 
organization  and  patient  argument  led  to 
the  substitution  of  'payment  by  results', 
with  the  selling  price  of  metal  as  a  basis ; 
and  the  conversion  of  twelve  hours  to 
three  shifts  of  eight  hours.  Success  in 
Scotland  was  followed  by  similar  achieve- 
ment south  of  the  Border  and  particularly 
among  the  tinplate  workers  in  South 
Wales. 

Hodge  held  firmly  to  the  principles 
of  conciliation  and  arbitration.    As  the 


437 


Hodge 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


association  grew  in  strength,  and,  absorb- 
ing other  organizations,  moved  from  Glas- 
gow to  Manchester  and  then  to  London, 
Hodge  left  his  mark  on  those  cities.  In  Glas- 
gow he  engaged  in  a  successful  campaign 
for  bringing  the  city  tramways  under 
municipal  control,  and  as  president  of  the 
Glasgow  trades  council  he  presided  over 
the  Trades  Union  Congress  in  1892;  in 
Manchester  he  served  on  the  city  council, 
and  in  London  he  was  appointed  president 
of  the  British  Iron,  Steel,  and  Kindred 
Trades  Federation,  for  the  administration 
of  friendly  benefits,  and  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Trades  Confederation  which  dealt 
with  trade  negotiations  and  legal  ques- 
tions ;  and  he  was  president  of  both  luitil 
he  retired  from  them  in  1931. 

Greatly  influenced  by  Henry  George's 
Progress  and  Poverty,  Hodge  became  im- 
bued with  the  socialist  ideas  which  J.  Keir 
Hardie  [q.v.]  was  promulgating,  and  he 
led  his  association  in  the  formation  of  the 
labour  party,  serving  on  its  national  com- 
mittee from  1900  to  1915.  He  stood  un- 
successfully for  Gower  (1900)  and  Preston 
(a  by-election,  1903),  but,  winning  Gorton 
in  1906,  he  was  an  original  member  of  the 
parliamentary  labour  party,  and  held  this 
seat  continuously  until  1923.  During  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  was  the  first  minister 
of  labour  (1916-1917)  and  subsequently 
(1917-1919)  minister  of  pensions  in  Lloyd 
George's  coalition  government.  The  pre- 
sent status  of  the  Ministry  of  Labour  owes 
much  to  his  determination,  and  his  sym- 
pathetic administration  of  the  Ministry  of 
Pensions  marked  a  great  advance  in  the 
treatment  of  service  men  and  their  depen- 
dants. He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
in  1917. 

When  the  General  Strike  in  support  of 
the  miners  took  place  in  May  1926  Hodge 
was  strongly  opposed  to  the  association 
taking  part.  The  association  suffered  in 
finance  and  membership,  and  when  meet- 
ing the  iron  and  steel  trades  employers 
afterwards  it  required  all  Hodge's  tact  to 
secure  reconciliation  and  the  resumption 
of  the  broken  agreements ;  but  he  went  so 
far  as  to  diagnose  the  strike  as  'a  great 
moral  gesture,  a  great  moral  uplift  for  the 
purpose  of  helping  the  miners  whom  they 
believed  were  being  ground  down  to  con- 
ditions Uttle  better  than  slavery'. 

Hodge's  gifts  were  a  native  canniness, 
a  wide  knowledge  of  the  trade,  an  acquain- 
tance with  men  and  affairs  gained  by  visits 
to  the  United  States  of  America,  Canada, 
AustraUa,  New  Zealand,  and  the  con- 
tinent, as  well  as  at  home ;  together  with  a 


forthrightness  mingled  with  good-natured 
humour.  He  was  a  constitutionaUst,  look- 
ing for  his  socialist  ideals  to  be  aclxieved 
by  education  and  legislation,  and  anxious 
always  that  the  agreements  to  which  he 
put  his  hand  should  be  honoured  by  a^ 
concerned. 

Hodge  married  in  1885  Mary  Lambi^ 
(died  1931),  daughter  of  James  Forsytl 
of  Lanark:  he  had  first  met  her  in  187'3 
and  by  her  he  had  four  daughters, 
died  at  his  home  at  Bexhill-on-Sea  1< 
August  1937. 

[The  Times,  11  August  1937 ;  John  Hodgd 
Workman's  Cottage  to  Windsor  Castle,  193l| 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

HOLLAND,  Sir  SYDNEY  GEORGI 
third  baronet,  and  second  Viscot 
Knutsford  (1855-1931),  hospital  admini| 
strator  and  reformer,  was  born  in  Londoi 
19  March  1855,  the  elder  of  the  tmn  soi 
of  H.  T.  Holland  (afterwards  second 
baronet  and  first  Viscount  Knutsford 
q.v.),  and  grandson  of  Sir  Henry  HoUandJ 
the  physician  [q.v.].  His  mother,  who  diec 
shortly  after  giving  birth  to  the  twins,  wa 
Elizabeth  Margaret,  elder  daughter 
Nathaniel  Hibbert,  of  Munden,  Hertforc 
shire,  and  a  granddaughter  of  Sydne;j 
Smith.  All  through  hfe  the  twins,  Sydnej 
and  Arthur,  were  devoted  and  for  lor 
hard  to  tell  apart.  In  1858  their  fathe 
remarried  with  Margaret  Jean,  elde 
daughter  of  Sir  C.  E.  Trevelyan,  sister  o| 
Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan  [qq.v.],  and  niece 
Lord  Macaulay.  She  was  a  good  mothe 
to  the  twins,  but  their  unconventional  an(3 
even  prodigal  outlook  was  not  learned  atj 
her  knee.  Their  father,  who  was  a  bus3_ 
lawyer  and  later  statesman,  was  not  able 
to  see  much  of  them,  and  they  passed 
their  summer  holidays  with  their  grand- 
mother Mrs.  Hibbert  or  at  Knutsford  with 
their  great-aunts  Mary  and  Lucy  Holland, 
the  prototypes  of  the  ladies  in  Cranford. 
Sydney  was  sent  to  Wellington,  where  he 
came  under  the  influence  of  the  future 
historian  Osmund  Airy,  who  opened  the 
boy's  mind  and  humanized  his  outlook, 
tiu-ning  his  thoughts  to  social  service.  His 
father  designed  him  for  the  army,  but  his 
educational  standard  proved  too  low  for 
Woolwich.  He  fell  back  on  the  bar,  to 
please  his  father,  and  in  1873  went  up  to 
Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  where  he  made 
scores  of  friends,  and  spent  his  days  in 
debates  and  rowing  and  swimming,  in 
which  last  he  became  an  expert.  After 
leaving  Cambridge  in  1876  he  read  for  the 


438 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Holmes,  C.  J. 


bar  and  was  called  by  the  Inner  Temple 
in  1879.  He  then  entered  the  chambers  of 
George  Baugh  Allen,  a  well-known  special 
pleader  of  the  day.  He  began  now  to 
interest  himself  in  boys'  clubs,  did  some 
competitive  swimming,  and  learned  con- 
juring from  professionals.  He  achieved 
moderate  success  in  the  criminal  courts 
and  later  at  the  parliamentary  bar,  but 
a  flair  for  business  and  a  call  to  social 
service  decided,  and  divided,  his  life's 
activities.  In  the  cause  of  temperance,  he 
helped  to  launch  a  scheme  of  coffee  taverns. 
In  1882  he  inherited  a  house  and  com- 
petence, and  in  1883  married  Lady  Mary 
(died  1947),  foiurth  and  youngest  daughter 
and  tenth  child  of  Bertram  Ashbumham, 
fourth  Earl  of  Ashburnham  (born  1797). 

Holland's  name  now  began  to  be  known 
through  letters  to  the  press  and  pamphlets 
on  many  social  questions.  In  1888  he  was 
elected  a  director  of  the  East  and  West 
India  Dock  Company,  and  in  the  dockers' 
strike  of  1889  he  took  a  leading  part  in 
voicing  the  employers'  case,  in  which  The 
Times  and  even  John  Burns  acknowledged 
his  fairmindedness.  His  interest  in  the 
dock  labom-ers  led  him  to  visit  them  at 
the  Poplar  Hospital  and  thus  launched  him 
without  previous  experience  into  hospital 
management,  but  he  never  feared  respon- 
sibility and  was  always  at  war  with  apathy 
and  incompetence.  As  a  dock  company 
director  and  chairman  of  Poplar  Hospital 
(1891)  at  critical  junctures  he  quickly  put 
both  concerns  on  their  feet  again.  In  four 
and  a  half  years  he  raised  enough  money 
to  make  the  Poplar  Hospital  one  of  the 
best  of  the  smaller  London  hospitals. 

In  1896,  at  the  suggestion  of  Miss  Eva 
Luckes,  matron  of  the  London  Hospital, 
Holland  applied  to  be  put  on  the  com- 
mittee and  in  the  same  year  he  was  elected 
chairman  and  so  continued  until  his  death 
which  took  place  in  the  hospital  27  July 
1931.  His  fame  rests  on  those  thirty -five 
years.  An  obituary  notice  in  The  Times 
asserted  'He  was  much  more  than  "the 
Prmce  of  Beggars"  who  raised  £5,000,000 
for  the  ' '  London  " .  He  was  practically  the 
founder  of  modern  hospital  efficiency.  He 
raised  the  whole  standard  of  nursing  and 
hospital  work  from  a  very  low  to  a  very 
high  level';  while  a  leading  article  said 
'He  gave  his  whole  life  to  that  work,  and 
not  his  life  only ;  his  enthusiasm  also,  that 
rare  and  splendid  gift  of  friendship  which 
was  as  spontaneous  and  as  simple  as  it 
was  irresistible.  ...  He  gave  much  more 
than  he  took  from  others.  ...  He  spent 
the  money  so  that  every  penny  bought  the 


utmost  possible  benefit  for  his  beloved 
patients.  .  .  .  The  London  Hospital  ...  is 
the  everlasting  memorial  to  a  great  orga- 
nizer and  a  great  man.'  Holland  was  no 
sentimentahst  although  he  knew  how  to 
play  on  the  emotions.  Publicity  was  his 
first  weapon.  He  did  not  despise  'stiuits'. 
His  resource  was  remarkable.  He  was  a 
great  showman,  a  telling  and  touching 
speaker,  and,  with  the  actor's  arts,  a 
notable  broadcaster. 

Lord  Knutsford,  as  he  became  on  suc- 
ceeding his  father  in  1914,  loved  the  good 
things  of  Ufe,  spent  royally  his  City  income 
on  grouse-moors  and  forests,  and  made  a 
pleasant  home  for  his  family  at  Knees- 
worth  HaU,  near  Royston.  His  family  Ufe 
and  friendships  alike  were  ideally  happy. 
He  was  sinrvived  by  his  wife  and  their  two 
daughters.  He  wrote  innumerable  articles 
and  letters  to  the  press  and  was  himself 
a  constant  subject  for  press  'stories'.  In 
1926  he  published  an  autobiography,  In 
Black  and  White,  which  had  a  popular 
success. 

Lord  I&iutsford  was  succeeded  as  fourth 
baronet  and  third  Viscount  Knutsford  by 
his  twin-brother,  Arthur  Henry  Holland- 
Hibbert  (1855-1935). 

A  portrait  of  Lord  Knutsford  by 
Oswald  Birley  hangs  in  the  London 
Hospital.  A  cartoon  of  him  by  'Spy' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  25  August  1904. 

[The  Times,  28  July  1931 ;  J.  Gore,  Sydney 
Holland,  Lord  Knutsford,  1936 ;  N.  Langton, 
The  Prince  of  Beggars,  1921 ;  Lord  Knutsford, 
In  Black  and  White,  1926 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]       John  Gore. 

HOLMES,     Sir     CHARLES     JOHN 

(1868-1936),  landscape  painter  and  art 
critic,  was  bom  at  Preston  11  November 
1868,  the  elder  son  of  Charles  Rivington 
Holmes,  vicar  of  St.  Michael's  church, 
Bromley-by-Bow,  later  vicar  of  Stratton, 
Cornwall,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Susan,  eldest 
daughter  of  Joseph  Briggs  Dickson,  solici- 
tor, of  Preston.  He  was  grandson  of  the 
antiquary  John  Holmes  [q.v.]  and  nephew 
of  Sir  Richard  Holmes  [q.v.],  Hbrarian  at 
Windsor  Castle.  After  early  schooling  at 
St.  Edmund's,  Canterbury,  Holmes  went 
as  a  scholar  to  Eton  in  1883,  and  as  an 
exhibitioner  to  Brasenose  College,  Oxford, 
in  1887.  From  1889  to  1903  he  worked  in 
London  as  publisher's  and  printer's  assis- 
tant :  with  his  cousin,  Francis  Rivington ; 
at  the  Ballantyne  Press ;  with  John  Gum- 
ming Nimmo;  and  Charles  Ricketts  and 
Charles  Shannon  [qq.v.]  at  the  Vale  Press. 
For  some  years  he  had  been  teaching 


439 


Holmes,  C.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


himself  to  draw ;  now  direction  was  given 
to  his  efforts  by  Ricketts,  and  he  was  made 
to  etch  by  WilUam  Strang  [q.v.].  Laurence 
Binyon  prompted  his  first  essay  in  art 
criticism — 'Hiroshige'  published  in  the 
Dome  for  September  1897.  Other  early 
pubhcations,  Hokusai  (1899),  Constable 
(1901),  and  art  journalism  in  the  Realm 
and  Athenaeum,  culminated  in  the  major 
book,  Constable  and  his  Influence  on  Land- 
scape Painting  (1902),  which  is  still  the 
most  authoritative  work  on  that  artist.  In 
1900,  as  landscape  painter  himself,  Holmes 
began  exhibiting  with  the  New  English 
Art  Club. 

In  1903  Holmes  became  co-editor,  with 
Robert  Dell,  of  the  newly  estabUshed  Bur- 
lington Magazine ;  he  resigned  in  1909.  In 
1904  he  was  elected  Slade  professor  of  fine 
art  at  Oxford  and  he  so  continued  until 
1910.  Some  of  his  Slade  lectures  are  the 
basis  of  Notes  on  the  Science  of  Picture- 
Making  (1909)  and  Notes  on  the  Art  of 
Rembrandt  (1911).  His  standing  as  a 
painter  was  recognized  in  1905,  when, 
together  with  J.  S.  Sargent  [q.v.],  he  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  New  EngUsh  Art 
Club.  The  only  other  London  art  society 
which  he  joined  was  the  Royal  Society  of 
Painters  in  Water-Coloiu-s,  of  which  he 
was  elected  an  associate  in  1924  and  a 
member  in  1929.  His  paintings  of  moun- 
tain scenes  and  industrial  subjects  belong 
to  no  school  or  movement  but  his  own. 
They  were  inspired  by  strong  personal 
emotion,  but  in  execution  disciplined  by 
constant  analysis  of  the  methods  of  his 
predecessors,  European  and  oriental. 

On  the  retirement  of  (Sir)  Lionel  Cust 
[q.v.]  in  1909  Holmes  became  director  of 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery.  His  prime 
concerns  were  remodelling  and  rearrang- 
ing the  exhibition  rooms,  and  starting  a 
national  photographic  record.  In  1916  he 
was  appointed  director  of  the  National 
Gallery,  'in  succession  to  Sir  Charles 
Holroyd  [q.v.].  The  constitution  of  the 
gallery  was  stiU  a  vexed  question.  Alter- 
native solutions  were  to  give  the  director 
unfettered  responsibiUty  for  the  piu:chase 
of  pictures,  subject  to  Treasury  control ; 
or  but  one  vote  on  a  board  of  many  ama- 
teurs. The  second  poUcy  was  in  favour. 
The  new  director  was  hardly  supple  enough 
gladly  to  subordinate  what  he  regarded  as 
a  trust  of  scholarship  to  the  prejudice  or 
taste  of  less  exacting  standards.  Mean- 
while his  experience  as  critic,  adminis- 
trator, and  publisher  was  focused  on 
familiarizing  the  public  with  the  contents 
and  significance  of  the  National  Gallery. 


Photograph  and  pubhcations  department 
were  organized.  Holmes  personally  cor 
tributing  the  admirable  Illustrated  Guic 
to  the  National  Gallery  (1921)  and  01 
Masters  and  Modern  Art  in  the  Nationc 
Gallery    (3    vols.,    1923-1927).     He   wa 
knighted  in  1921  and  appointed  K.C.V.O. 
in  1928,  the  year  in  which  he  retired  from 
the  directorship  of  the  National  Gallery, 
continuing  to  write  and  paint.    His  last 
book  was   his   autobiography.   Self  and 
Partners  (1936).    He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Cambridge 
and  Leeds,  and  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Brasenose  College  in  1931.   He 
died  in  London  7  December  1936.  In  1903 
he  married  his  cousin  Florence  Mary  Hill, 
a  viohnist  and  composer,  only  daughter 
of  Charles  Robert  Rivington,  solicitor,  of 
London;    there   were   two    sons    of   the 
marriage. 

Holmes's  achievement  as  a  writer,  and 
the  distinction  of  his  art,  are  due  to  im- 
usual  integration  of  theory  and  practice. 
He  learnt  to  draw  and  paint  through  un- 
remitting experiment  and  analysis  of  the 
old  masters.    His  painter's  insight  gav«j 
him  special  grasp  of  those  masters'  prol 
lems   and  their  ways  of  solving  ther 
Other  writings  of  his,  Leonardo  da  Vine 
(Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol 
ix,    1919);    An    Introduction    to    Italiai 
Painting  (1929) ;  and  A  Grammar  of  th 
Arts  (1931)  are  vital  because  of  their  lucidj 
concrete  explanation  of  the  great  artistsf 
thought  and  practice.  WorlK  by  Holme 
are  in  many  public  collections,  includii 
the  Tate  Gallery,  British  Museum,  Vic 
toria   and   Albert   Museum,   FitzwilUai 
Museum,   Ashmolean  Museum,   and  th^ 
galleries  of  Manchester,  Adelaide,  JohaU'^ 
nesburg,  Melboiu-ne,  and  Sydney. 

[Sir  C.  J.  Holmes,  Self  and  Partners,  1936; 
The  Water-Colours  of  C.  J.  Holmes  (with  fore- 
word by  Michael  Sadleir),  1920 ;  X.  B.  [C.  H. 
Collins  Baker],  Sir  Charles  Holmes  {Contem- 
porary British  Artists),  1924;  Sir  Charles 
Holmes,  K.C.V.O.,  Memorial  Exhibition  Cata- 
logue (with  foreword  by  A.  M.  Hind),  Fine 
Art  Society,  February  1937 ;  A.  M.  Hind,  'The 
Sketch-Books  of  Sir  Charles  Holmes',  in  Bur- 
lington Magazine,  August  1940 ;  A.  M.  Hind, 
'The  Water-Colours  of  Sir  Charles  Holmes', 
in  the  Old  Water-Colour  Society's  Club, 
Twenty-first  Annual  Volume,  1943.] 

C.  H.  Collins  Baker. 

HOLMES,  THOMAS  RICE  EDWARD 
(1855-1933),  historian  and  classical 
scholar,  was  born  at  Waterstown  House, 
near  Athlone,  co.  Westmeath,  24  May 
1855,  the  fifth  son  and  seventh  child  of 


440 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hoist 


Robert  Holmes,  owner  of  the  property  of 
Moycashel,  in  the  parish  of  Kilbeggan, 
CO.  Westmeath,  and  tenant  of  Waterstown 
House,  by  his  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of 
William  Henn,  a  master  in  Chancery,  of 
Dubhn.  From  Merchant  Taylors  School 
in  London  he  passed  in  1873  to  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  as  a  junior  student.  At 
Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  second  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1875)  and  a  first 
class  in  modern  history  (1877),  he  fell 
under  the  influence  of  Sidney  James  Owen, 
then  university  teacher  of  Indian  law  and 
history. 

In  1878  Holmes  became  a  master  at 
Lincoln  Grammar  School,  whence  in  1880 
he  moved  to  Blackheath  Proprietary 
School.  Six  years  later  he  went  to  St. 
Paul's  School  where  he  remained  until  in 
1909,  with  the  help  of  a  civil  Ust  pension, 
he  was  able  to  retire.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Dublin 
(1904)  and  Oxford  (1922),  and  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1925. 
In  1888  he  married  Isabel,  daughter  of 
Lionel  Isaacs,  of  The  Grove,  Mandeville, 
Jamaica:  they  had  no  children.  He  died 
at  Roehampton  4  August  1933,  and  was 
survived  by  his  wife. 

Throughout  liis  career  Holmes  devoted 
his  leisure,  and  during  the  twenty-four 
years  of  his  retirement  his  whole  working 
time,  to  learned  research.  First,  he  de- 
veloped an  interest  acquired  at  Oxford  by 
writing  what  until  then  did  not  exist — a 
comprehensive  and  critical  account  of  the 
events  in  India  during  the  years  1857  and 
1858.  His  History  of  the  Indian  Mutiny 
appeared  in  1883.  Secondly,  having  pub- 
lished various  subsidiary  studies  on  the 
liistory  of  British  India,  he  was  led  by  the 
needs  of  his  pupils  at  St.  Paul's  to  turn  his 
attention  to  the  works  of  Julius  Caesar. 
It  was  as  a  Caesarian  scholar,  one  of  whose 
greatest  services  was  to  challenge  the  more 
speculative  doctrines  of  Napoleon  III,  and 
as  an  historian  of  Rome  in  the  times  of 
Caesar  and  Augustus,  that  he  became 
most  widely  known.  In  these  fields  his 
main  publications  were  Caesar's  Conquest 
of  Gaul  (1899,  2nd  ed.  1911),  Ancient 
Britain  and  the  Invasions  of  Julius  Caesar 
(1907),  Tfie  Roman  Republic  and  the 
Founder  of  the  Empire  (3  vols.,  1923),  and 
The  Architect  of  the  Roman  Empire  (vol.  i, 
1928;  vol.  ii,  1931).  The  outstanding 
characteristics  of  Holmes's  work  are  his 
extreme  accuracy,  the  independence  of 
his  judgement,  and  his  mastery  of  the 
literatvure  of  his  subjects. 

[Thomas  Rice  Edward  Holmes,  1855-1933  in 


Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy  (biblio- 
graphy), vol.  xxii,  1936.] 

HOLST,       GUSTAV       THEODORE 

(1874-1934),  composer,  whose  original 
name  was  Gustavus  Theodore  von 
HoLST,  was  born  at  Cheltenham  21  Sep- 
tember 1874,  the  elder  son  of  Adolph  von 
Hoist,  a  music  teacher  in  Cheltenham,  by 
his  first  wife,  Clara,  daughter  of  Samuel 
Lediard,  solicitor,  of  Cirencester.  The  von 
Hoists  were  of  Swedish  origin  though  long 
settled  in  England.  The  painter  Theodor 
von  Hoist  [q.v.]  was  Gustav's  great-uncle. 

At  an  early  age  Hoist  began  to  leam  the 
vioUn  and  the  pianoforte.  His  favourite 
composer  in  these  days  was  Grieg.  Soon 
after  entering  Cheltenham  Grammar 
School  he  read  Berlioz's  Orchestration  and 
with  no  further  instruction  started  to  set 
Macaulay's  '  Horatius '  to  music  for  chorus 
and  orchestra.  However,  his  father  dis- 
coiu-aged  composition  and  wished  him  to 
be  a  virtuoso  pianist,  but  neuritis  pre- 
vented this  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen 
he  was  allowed  to  study  counterpoint  with 
G.  F.  Sims  of  Oxford. 

In  1892  Hoist  obtained  his  first  pro- 
fessional engagement  as  organist  of  Wyck 
Rissington,  Gloucestershire.  At  the  same 
time  he  conducted  a  choral  society  at 
the  neighbouring  Bourton-on-the- Water. 
Next  year  saw  the  first  public  performance 
of  his  work  in  Cheltenham,  the  music  for 
an  operetta,  Lansdowne  Castle.  As  a  result 
of  this  success  his  father  sent  him  to  the 
Royal  College  of  Music  where  he  studied 
composition  with  (Sir)  C.  V.  Stanford 
[q.v.].  At  this  time  he  got  to  know  the 
later  works  of  Wagner  and  heard  Bach's 
B  minor  Mass;  thenceforth  Bach  and 
Wagner  became  his  passion  until  in  later 
years  the  influence  of  English  folk-song 
and  of  the  Tudor  composers  tended  to 
weaken  the  Wagnerian  supremacy  al- 
though Bach  was  never  dethroned. 

Meanwhile  Hoist  had  made  himself  pro- 
ficient on  the  trombone  and  was  able  to 
eke  out  his  modest  allowance  by  playing 
on  seaside  piers  and  in  a  '  Viennese '  dance 
band.  The  trombone  took  him  right  into 
the  heart  of  the  orchestra,  an  experience 
which  was  the  foundation  of  his  great 
command  of  instrumentation. 

In  1895  the  Royal  College  awarded 
Hoist  a  scholarship.  This  meant  free  tui- 
tion but  only  £30  a  year  for  '  maintenance ' 
and  his  Ufe  at  this  time,  partly  on  prin- 
ciple, but  chiefly  from  necessity,  was 
almost  unbelievably  frugal.  Owing  to  this 
his  neuritis  became  so  bad  that  he  could 


441 


Hoist 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


not  hold  an  ordinary  pen  and  his  eyesight 
suffered  severely.  These  two  weaknesses 
persisted  throughout  his  life.  Out  of  his 
poverty,  however,  there  grew  indirectly 
his  love  of  the  EngUsh  country.  He  could 
not  afford  train  journeys  and  used  to  walk 
to  his  various  destinations.  His  habit  of 
long  walks  never  left  him.  They  were  his 
relaxation  after  a  spell  of  hard  work  and 
a  prelude  to  new  periods  of  inspiration. 

In  1898  Hoist  became  first  trombone 
and  ripititeur  to  the  Carl  Rosa  Opera 
Company  and  shortly  after  joined  the 
Scottish  Orchestra  as  second  trombone. 
Thus  ended  his  status  pupillaris.  His 
student  compositioxis  had  grown  in  com- 
petence but,  although  his  intimate  friends 
saw  something  beneath  the  surface,  his 
work  did  not,  in  itself,  show  great  origina- 
hty  or  force.  Strangely  enough  the  germ 
of  the  future  Hoist  seems  to  be  found  in 
his  early  children's  operettas;  otherwise 
he  was  content,  xmconsciously  perhaps,  to 
lay  the  foundations  of  that  incomparable 
sureness  of  touch  and  clarity  of  texture 
which  mark  his  mature  writing. 

It  was  now  that  Hoist  discovered  the 
feeUng  of  unity  with  his  fellow  men  which 
made  him  afterwards  a  great  teacher.  A 
sense  of  comradeship  rather  than  political 
conviction  led  him,  while  still  a  student, 
to  join  the  Kelmscott  House  Socialist 
Club  in  Hammersmith.  Here  he  met  Iso- 
bel,  daughter  of  an  artist,  Augustus  Ralph 
Harrison,  and  he  married  her  in  1901. 
They  had  one  daughter,  Imogen,  who  fol- 
lowed her  father's  footsteps  as  composer 
and  teacher. 

Mysticism  had  always  attracted  Hoist, 
and  he  had  read  Walt  Whitman  and  Ibsen. 
In  1899  with  no  other  training  than  a  little 
'grammar  school'  Latin  he  learnt  enough 
Sanskrit  to  make  translations  of  the  Vedic 
hymns  for  musical  setting.  On  these  fol- 
lowed the  opera  di  camera,  'Savitri'  (1908), 
also  on  a  Sanskrit  subject:  this  was  first 
performed  at  the  London  School  of  Opera 
under  Mr.  Hermann  Grunebaum  in  1916. 
These  works,  although  mature,  were  but 
a  foreshadowing  of  something  greater — 
'The  Hymn  of  Jesus' — ^written  in  1917 
and  first  performed  at  the  Queen's  Hall 
in  1920. 

In  1903,  although  still  comparatively 
unknown,  Hoist  decided  to  give  up  the 
trombone  and  devote  himself  to  writing 
m^usic.  He  soon  found  that  man  cannot 
live  by  composition  alone  and  he  became 
music  teacher  at  the  James  Allen  Girls' 
School,  Dulwich,  and  at  the  Passmore 


ment,  where  he  gave  the  first  English  pei 
formances  of  several  Bach  cantatas. 
1905  he  was  appointed  director  of  musi^ 
at  St.  Paul's  Girls'  School,  Hanunersmitl 
Here  he  did  away  with  the  childish  senti| 
mentaUty  which  schoolgirls  were  supposec 
to  appreciate  and  substituted  Bach  and 
Vittoria;  a  splendid  background  for  im- 
mature minds.  In  1913  a  sound-proof 
music  room  was  built  at  the  school  where 
he  could  work  undisturbed.  The  first  work 
written  in  these  rooms  was  the  '  St.  Paul's ' 
suite  for  strings  (1913)  dedicated  to  the 
school  orchestra. 

St.  Paul's  was  a  clean  slate,  but  at 
Morley  College  for  Working  Men  and 
Women  in  South  London,  where  Hoist 
became  musical  director  in  1907,  a  bad 
tradition  had  to  be  broken  down.  The 
results  were  at  first  discouraging,  but  soon 
a  new  spirit  appeared  and  the  music  of 
Morley  College,  together  with  its  off-shoot 
the  'Whitsuntide  festival'  held  at  Thax- 
ted,  Essex,  and  elsewhere,  became  a  force 
to  be  reckoned  with.  The  'Hoist'  room 
stands  as  a  memorial  to  his  work  there 
which  was  carried  on  in  the  same  spirit  by 
his  successors. 

The  year  1914  marked  the  inception  of 
Hoist's  most  famous  work,  'The  Planets', 
a  suite  for  orchestra,  each  movement  being 
suggested  by  the  astrological  attribute  o| 
a  planet.  This  was  completed  in  1917. 
private  performance  was  given  in  191i 
under  (Sir)  Adrian  Boult  as  a  parting  pre-* 
sent  to  the  composer  on  his  departure 
the  Near  East.  The  war  had  brought 
Hoist  great  misery;  he  tried  in  vain  tc 
enUst  and  he  began  to  think  that  he  wa 
useless ;  then  the  Young  Men's  Christiai 
Association  invited  him  to  organize  music 
for  the  troops  in  Salonika.  In  view  of  tl 
official  appointment  he  decided  to  discard 
the  prefix  'von'  from  his  name.  He  re- 
turned after  a  successful  year  abroad 
find,  rather  to  his  dismay,  that  he  wa 
becoming  a  popular  composer.  The  Ameri4 
can  orchestras  were  fighting  for  the  first" 
public  performance  of  'The  Planets '  which 
was  produced  at  the  Queen's  HaU  in  1919 
and  followed  there  by  'The  Hymn  of 
Jesus'  in  1920. 

Hoist  went  back  to  his  sound-proof 
room  and  in  1919  composed  the  'Ode  to 
Death'  (a  setting  of  a  poem  by  Whitman), 
considered  by  many  to  be  his  most  beauti- 
ful choral  work.  He  also  finished  in  1922 
his  opera  The  Perfect  Fool.  This  was 
played  to  a  crowded  house  at  Covent 
Garden  in  1923.  The  audience  was  puzzled 


Edwards  (later  the  Mary  Ward)  Settle- 1  and  did  not  understand  his  pecuUar  sense 

442 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hopkinson 


of  humour,  so  well  appreciated  by  his 
friends.  However,  the  splendid  ballet 
music  has  remained  in  the  repertoire. 

From  1919  to  1924  Hoist  was  professor 
of  composition  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Music  and  he  held  a  similar  post  at  Uni- 
versity College,  Reading,  from  1919  to 
1923.  An  accident  while  conducting  at 
Reading  caused  concussion.  Disregarding 
this  he  went  to  America  in  1923  in  order 
to  conduct  at  the  musical  festival  at  the 
university  of  Michigan  at  Ann  Arbor,  but 
on  his  return  his  old  enemy,  insomnia, 
became  alarming  and  he  was  ordered  com- 
plete rest.  This  enabled  him  soon  to  re- 
start composing,  first  an  opera,  At  the 
Boafs  Head,  founded  on  the  Falstaff 
scenes  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  and  set  almost 
entirely  to  EngUsh  dance  tunes  (produced 
by  the  British  National  Opera  Company 
at  Manchester  in  1925),  and  second  and 
more  important,  the  'Keats'  choral  sym- 
phony, written  for  the  Leeds  festival  of 
1 925 .  Its  strength  and  power  were  obvious 
but  it  had  no  popular  success  and  an 
entirely  inadequate  performance  in  Lon- 
don did  not  help  it.  Hoist's  dread  of 
popularity  seemed  to  drive  him  back  upon 
himself.  A  certain  aloofness  appeared  in 
his.  music ;  for  instance,  in  'Egdon  Heath' 
(1927,  first  performed  in  1928),  written  as 
a  homage  to  Thomas  Hardy.  Even  those 
who  understood  him  best  found  it  difficult 
to  assimilate  at  first,  although  they  are 
gradually  coming  round  to  the  composer's 
own  opinion,  that  this  was  his  best  work. 
However,  some  gracious  smaller  composi- 
tions belong  to  this  period,  notably  the 
seven  part-songs  for  women's  voices 
(1925-1926),  settings  of  poems  by  his 
friend  Robert  Bridges. 

Hoist's  position  as  a  composer  is  testi- 
fied to  by  the  Hoist  festival  held  in  his 
native  town  of  Cheltenham  in  1927  and 
by  the  award  of  the  gold  medal  of  the 
Royal  Philharmonic  Society  in  1930.  He 
was  also  invited  to  lecture  at  Harvard 
University  and  to  conduct  his  own  com- 
positions in  Boston.  This  (his  third)  visit 
to  the  United  States  of  America  (1932) 
was  interrupted  by  illness,  but  he  re- 
covered quickly  and  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land apparently  well  though  without  some 
of  his  old  energy.  At  this  time  he  wrote 
the  six  choral  canons  which  are  a  puzzle 
to  many  although  some  have  succeeded  in 
plucking  out  the  heart  of  their  mystery. 

In  these  later  years  Hoist's  constant 
companion  was  his  daughter,  and  when- 
ever they  could  meet,  he  and  his  hfelong 
friend,  Dr.  Ralph  Vaughan  Williams,  would 


spend  whole  days  discussing  their  com- 
positions. Hoist  declared  that  his  music 
was  influenced  by  that  of  his  friend :  the 
converse  is  certainly  true. 

Hoist  again  fell  ill  in  1932,  although  he 
was  able  in  1933  to  write  the  'Lyric 
Movement'  for  Mr.  Lionel  Tertis,  the 
viohst.  He  died  in  London  of  heart  failure 
following  an  operation  25  May  1934.  His 
ashes  were  buried  in  Chichester  Cathedral, 
close  to  the  memorial  to  Thomas  Weelkes 
[q.v.]  whose  music  he  greatly  loved. 

Hoist's  music  has  been  called  cold  and 
inhuman :  it  is  only  cold  from  its  burning 
intensity.  It  is  true  that  he  sometimes 
seemed  to  be  Uving  in  a  world  removed 
from  human  beings,  but  he  never  lost 
touch  with  his  fellow  men. 

A  portrait  of  Hoist,  by  Bernard  Munns, 
is  in  Cheltenham  PubUc  Library,  and  a 
drawing,  by  Sir  WiUiam  Rothenstein 
(1920),  is  at  Morley  College. 

[Imogen  Hoist,  Gustav  Hoist,  1938  (chrono- 
logical lists  of  compositions,  and  portraits) ; 
Grovels  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians, 
4th  ed.,  vol.  ii,  edited  by  H.  C.  Colics ;  Music 
and  Letters,  July  and  October  1920 ;  Musical 
Times,  July  1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  Vaughan  Williams. 

HOPE,  ANTHONY  (pseudonym), 
novehst.  [See  Hawkins,  Sir  Anthony 
Hope.] 

HOPKINSON,  Sir  ALFRED  (1851- 
1939),  lawyer,  educationist,  and  poUtician, 
was  born  at  Manchester  28  June  1851,  the 
second  son  of  John  Hopkinson,  mechani- 
cal engineer  and  sometime  mayor  of  Man- 
chester, by  his  wife,  Alice,  daughter  of 
John  Dewhurst,  of  Skipton,  Yorkshire.  His 
elder  brother  was  John  Hopkinson  [q.v.]. 

Hopkinson  was  educated  at  a  private 
school  in  Manchester  and  in  1866  went  to 
the  Owens  College,  thence  in  1869,  as  a 
scholar,  to  Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  was  placed  in  the  second  class  in  literae 
humaniores  in  1872  and  in  the  first  class 
in  the  B.C.L.  examination  in  1874.  He 
was  elected  to  the  Stowell  fellowship  in 
civil  law  at  University  College  in  1873, 
and  to  the  Vinerian  scholarship  in  1875. 

Hopkinson  was  called  to  the  bar  by 
Lincoln's  Inn  in  1873  and  settling  in  Man- 
chester as  a  barrister  speedily  acquired 
a  considerable  local  practice  on  the 
Northern  circuit,  mainly  in  the  Palatine 
Chancery  Court.  This  he  conducted  in 
conjunction  with  the  tenure  of  a  lecturer- 
ship  and  (later  at  the  age  of  twenty -four) 
of  the  professorship  of  law  at  the  Owens 
College.  He  resigned  this  chair  in  1889. 


443 


Hopkinson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


In  1885  Hopkinson  unsuccessfully  con- 
tested the  East  division  of  Manchester  as 
a  liberal,  and  in  1892  the  South- Western 
division  as  a  liberal  unionist ;  but,  having 
moved  to  London  in  1889  and  having 
taken  silk  in  1892,  he  was  elected  member 
for  the  Cricklade  division  of  Wiltshire  in 
1895,  only  to  resign  the  seat  in  1898  on 
his  appointment  as  principal  of  the  Owens 
College,  the  first  constituent  college  of 
the  newly  formed  Victoria  University  of 
which  he  became  first  vice-chancellor  in 
1900.  In  these  offices  he  did  his  finest 
work. 

Retiring  from  the  vice-chancellorship  in 
1913,  Hopkinson  devoted  himself  unstint- 
ingly  to  pubUc  service,  including  a  visit 
to  India  to  report  on  the  university  of 
Bombay,  and  at  a  by-election  in  1926 
he  was  once  more  returned  to  parhament 
as  imionist  member  for  the  Combined 
English  Universities,  finally  retiring  in 
1929. 

A  man  of  striking  physical  appearance 
and  great  personal  charm,  Hopkinson  was 
never  known  to  act  otherwise  than  in 
accord  with  the  dictates  of  his  own  con- 
science, which  in  turn  were  based  on  a 
deep-rooted  belief  that  'the  hope  of  man- 
kind is  in  the  Christian  reUgion'.  On  his 
death  he  was  described  as  'above  all  else 
a  Christian  gentleman  to  whom  religion 
was  a  thing  which  he  recorded  as  vital  not 
only  in  his  own  life  but  also  in  that  of  the 
nation'.  In  Rebuilding  Britain,  a  Survey 
of  Problems  of  Reconstruction  (1918)  he 
expounded  his  political  ideas  and  views  of 
Enghsh  affairs,  whilst  in  Penultima  (1930) 
he  gave  frank  and  refreshing  expression 
to  the  views  which  had  guided  him 
throughout  his  long  and  unselfish  fife. 

Hopkinson  was  knighted  in  1910  and 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Lincoln 
College,  Oxford,  in  1903.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Manchester,  Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  Leeds, 
and  Bristol,  and  was  elected  bencher  of 
Lincoln's  Inn  in  1896;  he  was  treasurer 
in  1921.  In  1873  he  married  Esther  (died 
1931),  youngest  daughter  of  Henry  Wells, 
of  Nottingham,  and  had  four  sons  and 
three  daughters.  Of  his  sons,  the  second 
became  archdeacon  of  Westmorland  and 
the  third  was  member  of  parhament  for 
the  Mossley  division  of  Lancashire.  He 
died  at  Bovington,  Hertfordshire,  11 
November  1939. 

[The  Times,  13  November  1939 ;  Sir  Alfred 
Hopkinson,  Penultima,  1930;  Alpine  Journal, 
May  1940;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Alfred  T.  Davies. 


HORNE,     ROBERT     STEVENSONJ 
Viscount  Horne  of  Slamannan  (1871-. 
1940),  lawyer,  politician,  and  man  of  busi 
ness,  was  born  28  February  1871  at  th^ 
mining  village  of  Slamannan,  Stirlingshire 
the  youngest  son  of  Robert  Stevensoi 
Horne,  minister  of  the  parish  of  Slamanl 
nan,    by    his    wife,    Mary,    daughter   ol 
Thomas   Lochhead,   of  Toward,   Argyll. 
Throughout    his    varied    and    successful 
career   he   exhibited   the   characteristics 
which  are  commonly  recognized  as  the 
birthright  of  the   sons   of  the   Scottish 
manse,  a  resolute  ambition  to  get  on  in 
the  world,  the  gift  of  forgathering  easily 
and  congenially  with  all  sorts  and  condi- 
tions of  men,  and  a  well  educated  mind 
ahve  to  the  practical  realities  of  life  yet 
not  devoid  of  imagination.    Horne  was 
educated   at    George    Watson's    College, 
Edinburgh,  and  at  the  university  of  Glas- 
gow, where  he  combined  the  pursuit  of 
academic  studies  in  arts  and  law  with 
strenuous  undergraduate  pohtics.  In  botl 
he  distinguished  himself,  for  he  graduatec 
with  first  class  honours  in  mental  phUc 
sophy  (1893)  and  became  president  of  thd 
university  conservative  club  and  of  th^ 
students'  representative  council.    For 
man  of  his  gifts  the  bar  was  an  obvioi 
choice,  and,  after  lecturing  for  a  year  oi 
philosophy  in  the  University  College 
North  Wales  at  Bangor,  he  was  admitte<i 
a  member  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates 
1896.  His  coimexion  with  Glasgow,  froi 
which  so  much  of  the  work  of  the  Coi 
of  Session  comes,  assisted  his  early  sue 
cess,  and  his  practice  throve,  especially  ii 
commercial  and  shipping  cases.    In  191< 
he  took  silk. 

Horne   was   not   a   dedicated   lawyei 
although  he  was  proficient  in  knowledge 
of  the  law  and  efficient  in  its  practice.  Thd 
law  was  rather  his  means  of  Uvehhood  anc 
advancement  than  his  delight,  and  he  conJj 
tinned  to  cultivate  his  political  interest 
and  contacts,  as  if  prescient  that  his  res 
vocation  lay  in  that  sphere.    The  war  ol 
1914-1918  gave  him  the  opportunity  ol 
entering  a  wider  field  and  he  was  quick 
seize  it.  A  minor  appointment  as  secretai 
to  the  agricultural  section  of  the  Nations 
Service  Department  was  followed  by  hi 
association  with  Sir  Eric  Campbell  Geddes 
[q.v.],  in  railway  organization  at  the  front 
with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  From 
transport  Horne  turned  to  the  direction 
first  (1917)  of  the  department  of  materials 
and  priority  and  then  (1918)  of  the  depart- 
ment of  labour  at  the  Admiralty,  where 
he  held  the  office  of  third  civil  lord  from 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Horniman 


1918  to  1919.  In  December  1918,  on  the 
conclusion  of  the  war,  he  was  returned  to 
parliament  as  unionist  member  for  the 
Hillhead  division  of  Glasgow,  and  had  the 
unusual  honour  of  at  once  taking  his  seat 
on  the  front  bench  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons as  minister  of  labour,  an  appoint- 
ment which  he  owed  to  the  high  opinion 
of  his  abihty  which  the  prime  minister, 
Lloyd  George,  had  formed  and  throughout 
retained.  Here  Home  found  a  sphere 
|)eculiarly  suited  to  his  gifts  of  good  temper 
and  persuasion  and  to  his  origin  and  up- 
bringing. He  handled  with  conspicuous 
success  the  labour  disputes  which  were 
then  rife  in  the  mining  and  railway  worlds. 
In  1920  he  became  president  of  the  Board 
of  Trade,  and  in  the  following  year  he 
attained  the  second  position  in  the  Cabinet 
as  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  On  the 
dissolution  of  the  coaUtion  government  in 
1922  his  loyalty  to  Lloyd  George  deterred 
him  from  accepting  office  in  the  new  ad- 
ministration formed  by  Bonar  Law,  and 
his  pohtical  life  may  then  be  said  to  have 
ended,  although  he  retained  his  seat  in  the 
House  of  Commons  until  he  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  in  1937  as  Viscount  Home  of 
Slamannan. 

An  ex-Cabinet  minister  is  often  at  a  loss 
for  employment  compatible  with  his  posi- 
tion, but  Home's  versatility  was  equal  to 
the  situation.  He  is  said  to  have  thought 
of  the  possibihty  of  a  judgeship  in  the 
Court  of  Session,  but  for  the  successful 
Scotsman  in  London  there  are  vestigia 
nulla  retrorsum,  and  he  turned  to  the  City. 
Once  more  success  attended  him,  and 
before  long  he  found  himself  among  the 
financial  and  commercial  6Ute  as  a  director 
of  the  Suez  Canal  Company,  the  Penin- 
sular and  Oriental  Steam  Navigation 
Company,  Lloyds  Bank,  the  Commercial 
Union  Assurance  Company,  and  other 
concerns.  He  was  chairman  of  the  Bur- 
mah  Corporation  and  of  other  important 
undertakings.  In  1934  he  became  chair- 
man of  the  Great  Western  Railway  Com- 
pany. 

Among  the  honours  which  Home  re- 
ceived were  the  freedom  of  the  City  of 
Edinburgh  and  the  lord  rectorship  of 
Aberdeen  University  (1921-1924).  He  was 
appointed  K.B.E.  in  1918  and  G.B.E.  in 
1920,  and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
in  1919.  The  universities  of  Glasgow, 
Edinburgh,  Aberdeen,  and  Birmingham 
conferred  honorary  degrees  upon  him  and 
he  was  a  grand  officer  of  the  Order  of  the 
Crown  of  Italy. 

Lord  Home  died  at  Farnham,  Svurey, 


3  September  1940.  As  he  was  unmarried, 
the  peerage  became  extinct.  His  career 
has  been  described  as  meteoric,  but  it  had 
none  of  the  eccentricities  of  a  celestial 
vagrant.  On  the  contrary,  in  each  of  its 
successive  phases  it  attracted  the  rewards 
of  a  supreme  conventional  competence 
rather  than  of  wayward  genius.  He  could 
do  well  and  sometimes  brilliantly  what- 
ever task  he  tackled,  but  the  mark  which 
he  left  was  not  permanently  distinctive. 
Debonair,  alert,  and  sprightly,  he  was  in 
much  request  socially,  for  he  had  the  zest 
for  good  fellowship  which  accompanies  the 
ability  to  shine  in  it,  and  his  equipment 
included  an  inexhaustible  stock  of  really 
amusing  stories.  The  first  Earl  of  Birken- 
head wrote  of  him:  'Sir  Robert  Home 
contributed  much  to  the  liveUness,  to  the 
charm,  and  to  the  good  humour  of  English 
political  life  in  those  dark  and  lowering 
days  when  those  who  could  offer  these 
gifts  were  rare  and  shining  figures.' 

[The  Times,  4  September  1940;  personal 
knowledge.]  Macmillan. 

HORNIMAN,  ANNIE  ELIZABETH 
FREDERICKA  (1860-1937),  pioneer  of 
the  modern  theatre  repertory  movement, 
was  born  at  Forest  Hill,  London,  3  Octo- 
ber 1860,  the  only  daughter  of  Frederick 
John  Horniman  [q.v.],  founder  of  the 
Horniman  Museum  and  liberal  member  of 
parhament  for  Falmouth  and  Penryn  from 
1895  to  1904,  by  his  first  wife,  Rebekah, 
daughter  of  John  Emslie,  of  Dalton.  She 
was  educated  privately,  and  studied  for 
five  years  at  the  Slade  School  of  Fine  Art 
under  Alphonse  Legros  [q.v.],  and  for  five 
years  acted  as  secretary  to  W.  B.  Yeats 
[q.v.].  A  woman  of  considerable  wealth, 
with  very  determined  views,  she  interested 
herself  originally  in  the  theatre  merely 
because  her  relatives  strongly  disapproved 
of  it.  Doubtless,  however,  she  was  to  some 
extent  influenced  by  her  association  with 
Yeats. 

Miss  Homiman's  first  connexion  with 
theatrical  affairs  was  in  March  1894  when, 
at  the  Avenue  Theatre  (on  the  site  of  the 
Playhouse),  London,  she  produced  John 
Todhunter's  play  The  Comedy  of  Sighs  and 
Yeats's  The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire ;  these 
were  followed  in  April  by  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw's  comedy  Arms  and  the  Man.  She 
incmred  heavy  financial  loss  in  this  initial 
venture,  which  she  described  as  a  '  fruitful 
failure'.  She  was  not  deterred  by  this 
early  setback,  and  it  in  no  way  damped 
her  enthusiasm,  but  it  was  ten  years  be- 
fore she  made  her  next  move.  It  was  an 


445 


Horniman 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


important  decision.  She  determined  to  sub- 
sidize the  Irish  national  theatre  movement. 
In  1904  she  took  over  the  old  theatre  of 
the  Mechanics'  Institute  in  Abbey  Street, 
Dublin,  and  lent  it  rent  free  for  six  years 
to  the  Irish  National  Theatre  Society. 
The  gift  amounted  to  £12,000  and  the 
Abbey  Theatre,  DubUn,  presented  many 
fine  plays  and  produced  several  brilliant 
players. 

Miss  Horniman  transferred  her  activities 
to  Manchester  in  1907,  when  she  acquired 
the  Midland  Theatre,  which  she  opened 
in  September  of  that  year  with  David 
Ballard  and  His  Helpmate  both  written 
by  Charles  M'Evoy.  She  produced  several 
modern  plays  here.  Her  policy  was 
thoroughly  catholic,  her  object  being  to 
produce  plays  by  authors  of  all  ages,  with 
especial  emphasis  on  new  writers;  they 
were  to  be  performed  by  a  permanent 
company  of  picked,  front-rank  artists,  and 
at  prices  within  the  reach  of  all. 

The  immediate  appreciation  of  Miss 
Homiman's  efforts  was  such  that  in  1908 
she  purchased  the  old  Gaiety  Theatre, 
Manchester,  and  practically  rebuilt  the 
house.  She  opened  the  new  Gaiety  (the 
first  modern  repertory  theatre  in  this 
country)  in  September  with  When  the 
Devil  was  III,  by  M'Evoy,  and  Marriages 
are  made  in  Heaven,  by  Mr.  Basil  Dean. 
From  that  date  until  1921  she  presented 
over  200  plays,  more  than  a  hundred  of 
which  were  original.  The  early  promise  of 
cathoUcity  in  the  selection  of  authors  was 
amply  fulfilled.  Euripides,  Shakespeare, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Ben  Jonson, 
Goldsmith,  Sheridan,  Ibsen,  Sudermann, 
Maeterlinck,  Galsworthy,  St.  John  Han- 
kin,  Rostand,  Arnold  Bennett,  Mr.  Ber- 
nard Shaw,  Harley  Granville-Barker, 
Barrie,  and  Mr.  St.  John  Ervine  were  all 
represented.  Among  the  new  writers  of 
the  'Manchester  school'  whose  works  she 
presented  were  M'Evoy,  W.  S.  Houghton 
[q.v.],  Allan  Monkhouse,  Mr.  Harold  Brig- 
house,  Mr.  Basil  Dean,  Harold  Chapin, 
and  Miss  EUzabeth  Baker.  Among  the 
successful  modem  plays  presented  were 
Hindle  Wakes,  The  Mob,  The  Younger 
Generation,  Jane  Clegg,  Chains,  and  Mary 
Broome.  She  made  one  sohtary  appear- 
ance on  the  stage,  when  she  'walked  on' 
in  Nothing  Like  Leather  at  the  Gaiety  in 
September  1913. 

To  the  great  regret  of  lovers  of  the 
repertory  movement  all  over  the  country 
the  enterprise  collapsed  after  fourteen 
years,  and  in  1921  Miss  Horniman  was 
forced  to  sell  out.   She  received  the  sum 


of  £52,000  for  her  interest,  but  out  of  tl 
amount  a  large  overdraft  at  the  bank  hac 
to  be  met.  AVhen  she  rehnquished  he 
management,  she  presented  her  entii 
library  of  plays  to  the  Drama  League. 

Manchester  University  recognized  thi 
value  of  Miss  Horniman's  work  by  conl 
ferring  upon  her  the  honorary  degree  oi 
M.A.  in  1910,  and  she  was  appointed  C.Hi 
'for  services  to  the  drama'  in  1933.   Sh/ 
was  deeply  interested  in  astrology,  had 
great  knowledge  of  Wagnerian  opera,  anc 
a  wide  understanding  of  art  and  archi-j 
tecture.   She  was  an  interesting  lecturei 
and  was  widely  esteemed  as  a  generov 
personahty.    At  one  time   she   was   at 
ardent  supporter  of  the  suffragette  move 
ment,  but  the  stage  was  her  ruling  passioi 
She  died  at  Shere,  Surrey,  6  August  193'3 

A  portrait  of  Miss  Horniman  by  Ei 
Magnus  hangs  in  the  Chorlton  Repertoi 
Club. 

[The  Times,  9  August  1937 ;  Who's  Who  ii 
the  Theatre,  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Parker. 

HORRIDGE,  Sir  THOMAS  GARD^ 
NER  (1857-1938),  judge,  was  born  al 
Haulgh  Tonge  with  Haulgh,  Boltonl 
Lancashire,  12  October  1857,  the  only  soi 
of  John  Horridge,  manufacturing  chemis 
of  that  town,  by  his  wife,  Margaret" 
youngest  daughter  of  Robert  Sharpe  Bar- 
low, of  Bolton.  He  was  educated  at  Nas- 
sau School,  Barnes.  He  was  admitted  a 
solicitor  in  1879  and  practised  at  South- 
port.  In  1884  he  was  called  to  the  bar 
by  the  Middle  Temple  and  joined  the 
Northern  circuit,  practising  as  a  member 
of  the  local  bar  at  Liverpool,  where  his 
Lancashire  associations  secured  him  a 
start.  He  was  endowed  with  a  good  pre- 
sence and  self-confidence  as  well  as  ability, 
and  he  soon  acquired  a  substantial  prac- 
tice. In  1901  he  took  silk  and  was  success- 
ful, especially  in  commercial  cases,  but  his 
practice  continued  to  be  mainly  on  circuit. 
In  1907  he  appeared  for  W.  H.  Lever  (later 
Viscount  Leverhulme,  q.v.)  in  his  success- 
ful action  for  libel  against  the  Northchffe 
newspapers,  one  of  his  jvmiors  being  F.  E. 
Smith  (later  Earl  of  Birkenhead,  q.v.).  At 
the  general  election  of  1906  Horridge  had 
entered  parliament  as  liberal  member  for 
East  Manchester,  defeating  A.  J.  Balfour 
(later  first  Earl  of  Balfour,  q.v.)  by  a  sub- 
stantial majority.  F.  E.  Smith  entered 
parliament  at  the  same  time  and  Hor- 
ridge's  election  oratory  became  one  of  the 
targets  for  Smith's  invective  in  his  famous 
maiden  speech.    The  two  men  crossed 


446 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Horton 


swords  on  the  government's  trades  dis- 
putes bill  (1906)  which  Horridge  sup- 
ported, as  he  did  the  old  age  pensions 
scheme. 

Horridge  did  not  stand  at  the  general 
election  of  January  1910,  and  in  October 
of  that  year  was  appointed  a  judge  of  the 
King's  Bench  division.  He  proved  an 
excellent  judge  in  both  jury  and  non-jury 
cases,  sound,  competent,  dignified,  and 
expeditious.  His  only  fault  was  an  occa- 
sional brusqueness  to  counsel  and  wit- 
nesses. He  frequently  dealt  with  bank- 
ruptcy and  divorce  as  well  as  the  ordinary 
King's  Bench  cases.  In  1916  he  took  part 
with  Sir  Rufus  Isaacs  (later  Marquess  of 
Reading,  q.v.)  and  Sir  Horace  Avory  [q.v.] 
in  the  trial  at  bar  of  Roger  Casement 
[q.v.].  The  court's  construction  of  the 
Treason  Act  of  1351  was  upheld  in  the 
Court  of  Criminal  Appeal.  From  the  legal 
point  of  view  his  most  interesting  decision 
was  in  the  case  of  Philips  v.  Brooks  (1919). 
In  this  case  a  man  had  induced  a  jeweller 
to  sell  him  jewellery  and  to  allow  him  to 
take  it  away,  by  passing  himself  off  as  a 
man  of  good  financial  position  whom  he 
named.  Horridge  held  that  pawnbrokers 
who  had  advanced  money  to  the  fraudulent 
customer  in  good  faith,  on  the  security  of 
the  jewellery,  obtained  a  good  title  to  it, 
since  the  jeweller  had  intended  to  sell  the 
goods  to  the  fraudulent  customer  and  there 
was  thus  no  error  as  to  the  identity  of  the 
contracting  party.  The  sale  was  therefore 
voidable,  but  not  void.  Horridge,  who 
had  told  a  royal  commission  in  1935  that 
he  was  opposed  to  the  introduction  of  a 
retiring  age  for  judges,  retained  his  posi- 
tion until  his  eightieth  year,  resigning  in 
May  1937.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  on  his  retirement.  In  1929  he  had 
filled  the  office  of  treasurer  of  the  Middle 
Temple.  He  died  at  Hove  25  July  1938. 

Horridge  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1901  to  Evelyne  (died  1920),  youngest 
daughter  of  Melvill  Sandys,  of  the  Bengal 
civil  service,  of  Lanarth,  Cornwall; 
secondly,  in  1921  to  May  Ethel  Markham 
(by  deed  poll),  daughter  of  Captain  Francis 
Pavy,  of  London,  and  Wroughton,  Wilt- 
shire, and  widow  of  Alfred  Isenberg.  There 
were  no  children  by  either  marriage. 

[The  Times,  26  Jxily  1938 ;  Law  Journal, 
80  July  1938  (portrait) ;  Law  Reports.] 

David  Davies. 

HORTON,  ROBERT  FORMAN  (1855- 
1934),  Congregational  divine  and  theo- 
logical writer,  was  bom  in  London  18 
September  1855,  the  only  son  of  Thomas 


Galland  Horton,  Congregational  minister, 
by  his  wife,  Sarah  Ellen,  second  daughter 
of  Robert  Forman,  hop  merchant  and 
maltster,  of  Derby.  To  Horton,  as  the  son 
of  a  nonconformist  minister,  brought  up  in 
a  nonconformist  milieu,  nonconformity  of 
a  definite  but  Hberal  type  was  bone  of 
his  bone  and  flesh  of  his  flesh,  and  it  was 
as  a  nonconformist  minister  that  his  own 
life-work  was  done. 

Horton  was  educated  at  Tettenhall 
Proprietary  School,  Wolverhampton,  at 
Shrewsbury,  and  at  New  College,  Oxford, 
of  which  he  was  an  open  scholar.  He 
obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1875)  and  in  liter ae  humaniores 
(1878),  was  president  of  the  Union  (1877), 
and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his  college  in 
1879.  He  retained  his  fellowship  until 
1886,  and  until  1883  was  lecturer  in 
ancient  and  modern  history.  He  was  Ly- 
man Beecher  lecturer  at  Yale  University 
in  1893,  being  invited,  to  his  own  great 
embarrassment,  to  lecture  on  preaching. 
For  great  preacher  as  Horton  undeniably 
was,  preaching  was  never  to  him,  as  he 
once  declared,  the  '  delight  that  it  was  to 
most  preachers'.  Speaking  in  debate  or 
on  the  platform  was  a  pleasure  to  him; 
but  in  the  pulpit  he  was  overwhelmed  by 
the  sense  of  responsibiUty  in  being  per- 
mitted to  convey  to  men  the  message  of 
God.  That  was  characteristic  of  Horton's 
deep  humihty.  Yet  the  Yale  lectures, 
pubUshed  in  1893  as  Verhum  Dei  and  later 
(1898)  as  The  Word  of  God,  must  have 
been  immensely  helpful  to  several  genera- 
tions of  ministers.  Of  all  his  boolcs  this  is 
the  hkeUest  to  survive. 

The  main  work  of  Horton's  life  was  not, 
however,  literary  but  pastoral,  as  pastor 
of  the  Lyndhm-st  Road  Congregational 
church  in  Hampstead  from  1884  to  1930. 
To  this  church,  built  for  him,  he  attracted 
a  very  large  and  distinguished  congrega- 
tion, which  included  at  times  great  states- 
men and  brilliant  journalists.  Yet  it  was 
not  without  a  struggle  that  he  decided  in 
1883  to  leave  Oxford  for  Hampstead  and 
to  be  ordained  (January  1884).  At  Oxford 
his  official  work  in  college  was  congenial 
and  Oxford  itself  had  laid  on  him  her 
spell.  More  than  that,  this  nonconformist 
of  nonconformists  knew  that  there  was  a 
special  place  for  him  in  Oxford  which  only 
he  could  fill.  There  were  some  200  non- 
conformists already  in  residence,  and  after 
the  final  removal  of  disabilities  they  were 
coming  up  in  increasing  numbers.  But 
they  still  felt  rather  isolated  and  apart. 
Mansfield  College  had  not  yet  come  to 


447 


Horton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Oxford  to  provide  them  with  a  training 
college  and  a  social  centre.  The  latter 
Horton  provided  in  his  rooms  in  New 
CoUege,  where  were  held  the  meetings  of 
a  nonconformist  union  which  he  founded 
with  James  (afterwards  Viscount)  Bryce 
[q.v.]  as  president. 

From  Oxford  Horton  went  frequently 
to  preach  as  a  lay  pastor  in  a  temporary 
church  at  Hampstead,  and  in  1883  he  had 
to  make  a  final  choice  between  his  two 
spheres  of  activity.  He  never  regretted 
his  decision,  the  less,  perhaps,  as  his  de- 
parture from  Oxford  coincided  with  his 
rejection  as  examiner  in  'the  Rudiments 
of  Faith  and  ReUgion',  an  examination 
then  a  necessary  preliminary  to  a  degree. 
Unwisely  nominated  to  the  office,  Horton 
refused  to  withdraw,  but  an  angry  mob  of 
coimtry  clergymen  vetoed  the  nomination 
in  Convocation  and  Horton  left  Oxford, 
deeply  resenting  an  act  of  'bigotry  and 
intolerance'. 

Horton  became  a  far  more  distinguished 
man  in  London  than  ever  he  could  have 
been  in  Oxford.  But  ambition  was  the 
least  of  his  temptations.  All  the  great 
offices  in  his  own  denomination  fell  to  him 
in  due  course:  he  was  chairman  of  the 
London  Congregational  Union  (1898)  and 
of  the  Congregational  Union  of  England 
and  Wales  (1903),  and  president  of  the 
National  Free  Church  Coimcil  (1905).  He 
declined  more  than  once  to  leave  Hamp- 
stead for  a  pulpit  of  even  greater  pubUcity. 
Fame  came  to  him  indeed  but  he  never 
sought,  and  even  shunned  it.  Casual 
auditors  foimd  his  wit  mordant,  and  his 
speech  sarcastic;  but  these  attributes,  if 
obtrusive,  were  quite  superficial;  in  his 
heart  there  was  nothing  but  love  and 
tenderness,  coupled  with  deep  humihty. 

Horton  had  a  ready  pen:  the  British 
Museum  catalogue  contains  fifty  items 
from  it:  many  devotional  and  some  con- 
troversial pamphlets;  a  few  exercises  in 
critical  theology;  some  biographies  (e.g. 
Oliver  Cromwell,  1897).  But  Horton  was 
too  much  of  a  preacher  to  be  a  com- 
pletely successful  teacher;  he  had  too 
/little  detachment;  the  moral  purpose  is 
too  obtrusive.  It  is,  then,  as  the  imcon- 
scious  revelation  of  a  saintly  personality 
that  his  writings  can  to  advantage  be  read. 

Horton  died  at  Hampstead  30  March 
1934.  He  married  in  1918  Isabel  Violet, 
younger  daughter  of  Dimcan  Frederick 
Basden,  of  Hampstead,  and  had  one 
daughter. 

[The  Times,  2  April  1934;  R.  F.  Horton, 
An  Autobiography,  1917 ;  Albert  Peel  and  Sir 


J.  A.  R.  Marriott,  Robert  Forman  Hort. 
(portraits  and  bibliography),  1937;  privat 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  A.  R.  Marriott. 

HOSKYNS,  Sir  EDWYN  CLEMENT 

thirteenth  baronet  (1884-1937),  divine 
the  eldest  child  and  only  son  of  (Si 
Edwyn  Hoskyns,  afterwards  twelfth  bare 
net  and  second  bishop  of  Southwell  (whoi 
he  succeeded  in  1925),  by  his  wife,  Mai 
Constance  Maude,  only  daughter  of  Robet 
Benson,  of  London,  was  born  at  St 
Clement's  vicarage,  Notting  Hill,  Londoi 
9  August  1884.  He  was  descended  froi 
John  Hoskins  [q.v.],  lawyer  and  wit,  and 
from  Sir  John  Hoskyns  [q.v.],  second 
baronet  and  second  president  of  the  Roya 
Society. 

Hoskyns  was  educated  at  Haileybui 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  the  universitj 
of  Berlin,  and  Wells  Theological  College 
Ordained  in  1908  to  the  title  of  St.  Igna 
tins,  Simderland,  he  was  appointed  in  1915 
warden  of  Stephenson  Hall  in  the  univer^ 
sity  of  Sheffield.  In  1915  he  became 
chaplain  to  the  forces,  and  was  awarded 
the  M.C.  and  mentioned  in  dispatches. 

While  still  serving  overseas  Hoskyr 
was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at  Corpv 
Christi  College,  Cambridge,  and  began 
work  early  in  1919.  Theological  liberalisi 
was  then  dominant  in  Cambridge.    Hos 
kyns  became  a  pioneer  of  a  critical,  evan^ 
gelical  Catholicism,  intensely  devoted 
the  Church  of  England  and  her  forma-l 
laries.   He  had  studied  under  Harnack 
Berhn,  knew  and  had  been  influenced  b] 
Schweitzer,  and  found  through  Loisy 
approach  to  the  New  Testament, 
lectures  on  the  theology  and  ethics  of  thfl 
New  Testament  began  as  an  exposition  o^ 
the  religious  experience  of  the  primitive 
Church.  It  was  that  experience  which  laj 
behind  and  was  reflected  in  the  document 
of  the  New  Testament.  To  the  authoritj 
of  that  experience  he  appealed,  and  only" 
through   the   study   of  that   experience 
would  he  approach  the  problem  of  Chris- 
tian origins.  Slowly  his  lectures  changed. 
The  Romerbrief  of  Karl  Barth  gave  him 
a  language.   His  friendship  with  Gerhard 
Kittel  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  lexico- 
graphical  method   of  the    Theologisches 
Worterbuch.  In  his  most  important  book. 
The  Riddle  of  the  New  Testament  (1931), 
written  in  collaboration  with  his  pupil  the 
Rev.  Francis  Noel  Davey,  he  reached  his 
final  position.    No  interpretation  of  the 
person  and  teaching  of  Jesus  which  failed 
to   explain   the   faith   of  the   primitive 
Church  could  be  true  to  history. 


448 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Housman 


This  development  of  Hoskyns's  thought 
can  be  traced  in  his  Cambridge  Sermons 
(1938),  edited  after  his  death  with  a  bio- 
frraphical  account  by  Canon  Charles  Hugh 
l^igerton  Smyth.  It  comes  out  in  his  occa- 
sional papers,  Christ  and  Catholicism 
(1923),  'The  Christ  of  the  Synoptic  Gos- 
pels' in  Essays  Catholic  and  Critical  (1926) 
which  marked  a  turning-point  in  English 
theology,  and  in  'Jesus  the  Messiah'  in 
Mysterium  Christi  (1930).  His  largest 
books  are  his  brilliant  translation  of 
IJarth's  commentary  on  The  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  (1933)  and  his  unfinished  com- 
mentary on  The  Fourth  Gospel  (1940), 
edited  by  the  Rev.  F.  N.  Davey. 

Hosk>-ns  was  a  teacher  who  inspired  his 
pupils  through  his  enthusiasm.  In  his  col- 
lege he  exercised  a  profound  influence  as 
dean  of  chapel  from  1919  and  as  librarian 
and  president  from  1929.  His  interests 
were  wide  and  human — ^rowing,  music, 
farming.  His  piety  was  natural  and  direct. 
In  1921-1922  he  served  the  university  as 
senior  proctor.  He  was  canon  theologian 
of  Liverpool  Cathedral  from  1932  to  1935. 

In  1922  Hoskyns  married  Mary  Trym, 
younger  daughter  of  Edwin  Budden, 
schoolmaster,  of  Macclesfield:  she  was  a 
research  fellow  of  Newnham  College,  Cam- 
bridge, from  1921  to  1924.  By  her  he  had 
four  sons  and  a  daughter.  He  died  sud- 
denly in  London  28  June  1937,  and  was 
succeeded  as  fourteenth  baronet  by  his 
eldest  son,  Chandos  Wren  Hoskyns  (born 
1923),  who  was  killed  in  flying  operations 
over  Norway  in  1945. 

[The  Times,  30  June  1937;  E.  C.  Hoskyns, 
Cambridge  Sermons,  1938 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] J.  O.  COBHAM. 

HOUSMAN,      ALFRED      EDWARD 

(1859-1936),  poet  and  classical  scholar, 
was  born  at  the  Valley  House,  Fockbury, 
in  the  parish  of  Catshill,  Worcestershire, 
26  March  1859,  the  eldest  child  in  the 
family  of  five  sons  and  two  daughters  of 
Edward  Housman,  a  solicitor  practising 
in  the  neighbouring  town  of  Bromsgrove, 
by  his  first  wife,  Sarah  Jane  Williams, 
who  died  in  1871.  In  the  previous  year 
Housman  had  been  sent  to  Bromsgrove 
School,  whence  in  1877  he  passed  as  a 
scholar  to  St.  John's  College,  Oxford. 

At  Oxford  Housman  gained  first  class 
honours  in  classical  moderations  in  1879, 
but  in  1881  he  failed  to  obtain  honours  in 
literae  humaniores.  This  failure,  due  to  his 
neglect  of  philosopjiiy  and  history,  seriously 
affected  his  spirits.  He  worked  at  home  for 
the  civil  service  examination,  at  the  same 


time  helping  his  old  headmaster  in  sixth 
form  teaching.  In  1882  he  became  a 
higher  division  clerk  in  the  Patent  Office, 
and  took  lodgings  in  Bayswater  with  his 
greatest  friend,  Moses  John  Jackson,  to 
whom  he  later  dedicated  the  first  volume 
of  his  Manilius.  Jackson  went  to  India  in 
1887,  and  about  the  same  time  Housman 
settled  in  Highgate,  whence  in  1905  he 
moved  to  Pinner,  which  he  did  not  leave 
until  he  went  to  Cambridge  in  1911. 

In  the  Patent  Office  Housman  found 
time  for  classical  study.  At  Oxford  he  had 
already  worked  on  the  text  of  Propertius, 
and  had  corresponded  with  the  great 
Cambridge  Latinist  H.  A.  J.  Munro  [q.v.], 
but  his  first  publication  was  in  the  year  of 
his  entry  into  the  civil  service.  This  was 
a  powerful  paper  on  Horace  in  the  Journal 
of  Philology,  followed  next  year  by  a  note 
on  Ovid's  Ibis,  but  he  printed  no  more 
until  1887,  when  he  contributed  to  the 
first  volume  of  the  Classical  Review  an 
article  on  passages  of  Sophocles  and 
Euripides.  In  every  later  year,  including 
that  of  his  death,  he  pubUshed  at  least  one 
classical  article  or  review,  and  the  output 
of  the  years  foUowing  1887  was  especially 
striking.  It  dealt  with  textual  problems 
in  all  three  Greek  tragedians  and  in  half 
a  dozen  Latin  poets. 

In  1889  Housman  became  a  member  of 
the  Cambridge  Philological  Society,  and 
he  contributed  several  papers  to  its  Pro- 
ceedings and  Transactions,  as  well  as  to  the 
American  Journal  of  Philology.  The  high 
quafity  of  his  work  attracted  such  wide 
attention  that  when  in  1892  the  death  of 
Alfred  Goodwin,  professor  of  Greek  and 
Latin  at  University  College,  London,  gave 
him  the  chance  of  entering  academic  fife, 
he  obtained  testimonials  from  fifteen 
British  scholars,  and  also  from  Basil 
Lanneau  Gildersleeve  of  Baltimore  and 
Nikolaus  Wecklein  of  Munich.  In  place  of 
Goodwin's  combined  chair  two  professor- 
ships were  now  established.  Housman 
stood  in  the  first  instance  for  the  Latin 
chair,  but  desired  to  be  considered,  if  the 
Latin  went  to  another  candidate,  for  the 
Greek  chair.  He  obtained  his  first  pre- 
ference, and  remained  until  his  death  a 
professor  of  Latin:  thenceforward  his 
pubUshed  work  was  almost  confined  to 
that  language.  It  is  true  that  between 
1897  and  1910  he  made  several  brilliant 
contributions  to  the  restoration  of  lost 
works  of  Greek  poetry  then  coming  to 
light  in  Egyptian  papyri,  and  that  in  later 
years  he  was  often  consulted  by  the  editors 
of  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  and  of  Liddell 


449 


Qg 


Housman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  Scott's  Lexicon,  but  almost  all  his 
other  classical  work  was  concerned  after 
1892  with  Latin.  He  remained,  neverthe- 
less, as  his  review  (published  in  the 
Classical  Review,  vol.  xxxix,  1925)  of  the 
text  of  Sophocles  of  A.  C.  Pearson  [q.v.] 
suffices  to  prove,  one  of  the  best  Grecians 
in  Europe. 

Housman's  tenure  of  his  London  chair 
lasted  until  1911.  For  most  of  that  time 
University  College  was  served  by  a  pro- 
fessorial staff  of  great  distinction  in  many 
departments,  but  in  the  words  which 
Housman  used  of  his  colleague  John 
Arthur  Piatt,  'much  of  the  teaching  which 
he  was  required  to  give  was  elementary, 
and  he  seldom  had  pupils  who  possessed 
a  native  aptitude  for  classical  studies  or 
intended  to  pursue  them  far'. 

The  work  which  Housman  published 
while  he  was  in  London  dealt  with  most  of 
the  chief  Latin  poets  from  Lucilius  to 
Juvenal.  Of  these  Propertius  and  Ovid 
had  been  among  his  earUest  interests.  He 
now  published  four  masterly  papers  on  the 
manuscripts  of  Propertius,  a  step  towards 
an  edition  which  he  had  contemplated  at 
least  as  early  as  1882,  but  which  he  never 
produced.  Of  Ovid  he  edited  the  Ibis  for 
vol.  i  of  the  Corpus  Poetarum  Latinorum 
edited  by  J.  P.  Postgate  [q.v.],  published 
in  1894,  and  in  1897  he  wrote  a  series  of 
important  papers  on  the  text  of  the 
Heroides.  His  next  publications  con- 
cerned Manilius  and  Juvenal.  In  1898  he 
printed  a  short  paper  emending  without 
discussion  some  fifty  passages  in  Book  I 
of  Manilius  and  three  years  later  a  similar 
paper  on  Book  V.  In  1903  he  published 
an  edition  of  Book  I  which  showed  every 
sign  of  long  preparation.  It  became  the 
first  story  of  that  'monument',  to  borrow 
his  own  phrase,  which  he  resolved  to  build 
himself,  and  which  he  completed  twenty- 
seven  years  later  with  the  publication  of 
Book  V  in  1930. 

The  preface  to  Book  I  was  a  challenging 
assertion  of  Housman's  views  on  scholar- 
ship. Its  ruthless  wit  and  unanswerable 
severities  enchanted  his  juniors,  although 
they  were  less  pleasant  reading  to  some  of 
his  seniors  and  contemporaries.  The 
Latin  commentary  was  designed  'to  treat 
of  two  matters  only :  what  Manilius  wrote, 
and  what  he  meant',  without  including 
'the  illustration  of  his  phraseology  and 
vocabulary ' ;  but  this  restriction  did  not 
exclude  single  notes  running  to  over  a 
thousand  words,  or  pages  where  a  line  or 
two  of  text  stands  above  fifty  of  small- 
print  commentary. 


The    text    of   Manilius    in    Postgatef 
Corpus   had    already   been   assigned 
another,  but  in  1903  Housman  was  aske 
to  edit  Juvenal  for  a  later  fascicule, 
had   hitherto   dealt   in   print  with  littli 
except  the  new  lines  found  in  1899  in 
Bodleian   manuscript,   and   he   had   'n^ 
design  of  publishing  or  composing  ani 
such  work',  but  he  accepted  the  offer  anij 
produced  in  1905  both  this  Corpus  te? 
with  a  short  Latin  preface,  and  an  inde 
pendent    edition,    provocatively    aimetl 
editorum  in  usum.    This  was  not  on  thi 
scale  of  his  Manilius,  and  the  notes  wei 
much  briefer,  but  it  gave  fresh  proof  of  ] 
learning  and  acuteness  and  has  remaine 
the  standard  text.    The  English  preface 
about  half  as  long  as  that  to  Manilius 
was  no  less  brilliant  in  expression  an| 
even   broader   in   range,   and   Juvenall 
greater  popularity  put  the  book  into  tl 
hands  of  a  larger  public. 

Housman's  next  classical  work,  tl 
second  volume  of  Manilius,  appeared  afte 
his  election  to  his  Cambridge  chair,  but 
1896,  four  years  after  his  London  appoint 
ment,  he  startled  his  family  and  friend 
by  the  publication  of  A  Shropshire  Lac 
He  later  revealed  some  facts  about  tl 
dates  of  these  sixty -three  lyrics.  In  tl 
foreword  to  Last  Poems  (1922)  he  spoke 
'the  continuous  excitement  under  whici 
in  the  early  months  of  1895  I  wrote  thd 
greater  part  of  my  other  book',  and  h^ 
stated  elsewhere  that  his  most  prolific 
period  was  the  first  five  months  of  thai 
year.  The  definite  dates  of  twenty  of  the 
poems  are  known,  and  of  these  nine  ar^ 
assigned,  at  least  in  their  inception,  to  th^i 
first  six  months  of  1895,  and  three  more 
to  its  second  half.  The  other  eleven  are 
earlier,  the  earliest  being  of  1890,  in  which 
year  he  had  contributed  to  Alfred  William 
Pollard's  Odes  from  the  Greek  Dramatists 
three  lyric  translations  of  Aeschylus, 
Sophocles,  and  Euripides.  Housman  also 
stated  that  he  wrote  verse  at  the  age  of 
eight  or  earlier,  but  very  little  until  he  was 
thirty -five.  Some  early  verse  survives 
showing  little  of  his  later  power,  but  the 
characteristic  piece  which  his  brother 
Laurence  printed  as  number  xlviii  of  the 
posthumous  More  Poems  (1936)  had 
appeared  in  an  Oxford  periodical  in  1881. 

There  has  been  speculation  about  the 
'continuous  excitement'  of  1895,  but  it  is 
likely  that  Housman  referred  simply  to  an 
unexplained  outburst  of  creative  activity : 
he  said  in  1933,  in  his  Leslie  Stephen 
lecture,  that  he  had  seldom  written  poetry 
unless  he  was  rather  out  of  health.    His 


450 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Housman 


English  writing  in  his  London  period  was 
not  confined  to  verse,  for  he  delivered  in 
1892,  the  year  of  his  election,  an  admirable 
introductory  lecture,  defending  classical 
studies,  which  happily  survives,  and  at 
intervals  he  contributed  papers  on  English 
and  Scottish  poets  to  the  University 
College  literary  society,  but  he  instructed 
his  executors  to  destroy  them. 

Late  in  1910  the  death  of  J.  E.  B. 
Mayor  [q.v.]  threw  open  the  Latin  chair 
at  Cambridge,  and  Housman  was  per- 
suaded to  stand.  The  election  took  place 
early  in  1911:  the  field  was  strong,  but 
Housman  was  successful,  and  Trinity 
College  elected  him  into  a  fellowship.  In 
May  he  delivered  a  striking  inaugural 
l(>cture.  His  main  theme  was  a  sharp 
distinction  between  the  functions  of  a 
classical  scholar  and  those  of  a  literary 
critic.  He  had  no  wish  to  suppress  this 
lecture,  and  he  often  quoted  from  it,  but 
imluckily  he  had  stressed  a  textual  point 
in  Shelley's  'Lament'  which  he  was  un- 
able to  verify,  and  he  never  printed  it. 

The  move  to  Cambridge  was  Housman's 
last,  and,  as  he  never  married,  he  lived  in 
Trinity  until  his  death.  He  lectured  regu- 
larly, almost  always  on  some  portion  of  a 
Latin  poet,  and  he  delivered  between 
twenty  and  thirty  distinct  courses.  Some 
dealt  with  books  prescribed  for  textual 
study  in  part  ii  of  the  classical  tripos :  the 
poets  whom  he  chose  for  himself  were 
Lucretius,  Catullus,  Horace,  Ovid,  Lucan, 
and  Persius. 

Housman's  most  important  classical 
publications  after  1911  were  the  last  four 
books  of  Manilius,  which  appeared  in 
1912,  1916,  1920,  and  1930.  The  prefaces 
to  the  second,  third,  and  fourth  books, 
which  lucidly  explain  the  complex  astro- 
nomical and  astrological  theories  im- 
perfectly expounded  by  the  poet,  contain 
flashes  of  brilliant  wit,  but  little  general 
criticism  or  discussion.  In  the  fifth  volume, 
however,  he  dealt  trenchantly  with  the 
Manilian  literature  of  the  past  three 
decades,  winding  up  with  a  proud  defence 
of  his  own  methods  and  achievement. 

Apart  from  an  editio  minor  of  Manilius, 
with  short  critical  notes,  which  appeared 
in  1932,  and  a  reprint  of  his  Juvenal,  with 
a  second  preface,  in  1931,  Housman  pub- 
lished no  more  classical  works,  except  an 
edition  of  Lucan  in  1926,  reprinted  with 
corrections  in  the  following  year.  This 
book,  aimed,  like  the  Juvenal,  editorum  in 
usum,  is  one  of  his  best.  The  preface  is 
brilliant,  and  the  text  and  notes  show  an 
unerring    grasp    of    Lucan's    rhetorical 


modes  of  speech  and  thought.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  some  of  his  most  striking  cor- 
rections are  simple  changes  of  punctua- 
tion. 

In  1922  Housman  published  Last 
Poems,  containing  forty-one  lyrics.  He  says 
in  the  foreword:  'About  a  quarter  of  this 
matter  belongs  to  the  April  of  the  present 
year,  but  most  of  it  dates  between  1895 
and  1910.'  Some  poems  plainly  refer  to 
the  death  in  action  of  his  youngest  brother 
Herbert  in  1901.  He  contributed  in  1927 
a  charming  preface  to  J.  A.  Piatt's  post- 
humous Nine  Essays.  In  1932  he  accepted 
the  Leslie  Stephen  lecturership  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  in  1933  delivered  and  printed 
a  striking  lecture.  The  Name  and  Nature 
of  Poetry,  which  threw  light  on  his  tastes 
and  on  his  own  poetical  creation. 

At  Cambridge  Housman's  regular  habits 
included  between  luncheon  and  tea  one  or 
other  of  Cambridge's  country  walks,  when 
he  avoided  company,  but  watched  with  a 
keen  and  subtle  eye  the  progress  of  the 
seasons  in  tree  and  flower.  He  took  many 
short  holidays  in  England,  and  often  went 
abroad.  He  always  shunned  Germany, 
but  as  a  young  man  he  went  to  Constanti- 
nople, and  he  paid  a  few  visits  to  Italy, 
chiefly  to  Venice.  He  early  formed  the 
habit  of  spending  three  weeks  or  a  month 
every  summer  in  different  parts  of  France. 

Housman's  health  deteriorated  in  1932, 
and  three  years  later  he  was  seriously  ill. 
He  was  able,  however,  to  visit  France  in 
the  summer  of  1935,  and  he  lectured  as 
usual  in  each  term  of  that  year  and  also  in 
the  Lent  term  of  1936,  but  in  the  Easter 
term  he  broke  down  after  two  lectures, 
and  he  died  in  a  nursing  home  at  Cam- 
bridge on  30  April. 

Housman's  will  forbade  any  collection 
of  his  published  classical  papers,  and  any 
attempt  to  print  what  he  had  not  pub- 
lished, and  he  extended  the  ban  to  all  un- 
printed  English  prose  but,  happily,  not  to 
his  unprinted  poetry.  Here,  referring  to 
his  brother  Laurence,  he  wrote :  '  I  permit 
him  but  do  not  enjoin  him  to  select  from 
my  verse  manuscript  writing,  and  to 
publish,  any  poems  which  appear  to  him 
to  be  completed  and  to  be  not  inferior  to 
the  average  of  my  published  poems ;  and 
I  direct  him  to  destroy  all  other  poems  and 
fragments  of  verse.'  His  brother  found  it 
possible  to  print  forty-eight  pieces,  which 
appeared  in  1936  under  the  title  More 
Poems.  A  few  of  these  scarcely  deserved 
to  be  saved,  but  the  average  is  high, 
and  some  may  rank  with  his  best.  The 
same  can  hardly  be  said  of  the  further 


451 


Housman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


eighteen  serious  poems  which  his  brother 
appended  to  his  memoir  A.E.H.  in  1937, 
but  the  hght  verse  and  parodies  which 
accompanied  them  are  dehghtful.  The 
best  text  of  the  posthumous  lyrics  will  be 
found  in  The  Collected  Poems  of  A.  E. 
Housman  (1939). 

Housman  was  of  slender  build,  with 
delicately  sensitive  features.  His  sensi- 
tiveness was  indeed  acute  and  it  made 
him  so  reserved  that  most  people  found 
his  company  difficult;  but  he  enjoyed 
social  meetings,  and  his  conversation, 
when  he  felt  at  ease,  was  full  of  wit  and 
charm.  He  did  not  smoke,  but  was  a 
connoisseur  of  food  and  wine.  He  had  a 
powerful  memory,  which  occasionally 
played  him  tricks,  and  decided  views  on 
most  subjects.  In  classical  scholarship  his 
discipUned  passion  for  truth  made  him 
ready  to  accept  new  evidence  and  to 
modify  old  conclusions,  but  in  other 
matters  he  was  not  tolerant  of  opposition. 
In  history  and  politics,  especially,  he  was 
apt  to  pin  his  faith  to  a  few  not  infallible 
authorities,  and  he  often  allowed  his  pre- 
judices to  warp  his  judgement.  His  anti- 
nomianism  did  not  prevent  him  lending 
strong  support  to  most  established  insti- 
tutions, and  he  combined  declared  atheism 
with  an  hereditary  attachment  to  the  high 
church  party.  He  admired  Aristippus 
'who  was  not  afraid  of  words',  and  he 
sometimes  professed  a  cult  of  ruthlessness, 
but  his  working  philosophy  was  tinged 
with  the  Stoicism  which  he  rejected,  and 
he  hated  cruelty.  He  was  deeply  read  in 
English  literature  and  he  had  by  heart  an 
immense  amount  of  poetry.  His  taste 
was  catholic,  but  he  had  strong  prefer- 
ences, which  are  clearly  shown  in  his 
Leslie  Stephen  lecture. 

Housman  was  eminent  in  two  fields,  the 
distinctness  of  which  he  often  emphasized, 
that  of  classical  scholarship  and  that  of 
original  poetry.  In  the  first  his  permanent 
rank  was  assured  before  his  death,  and  it 
is  among  the  highest.  As  he  knew,  he  was 
not  fully  comparable  to  Bentley,  whom  he 
outshone  in  patience  and  intellectual 
honesty  and  closely  approached  in  swift- 
ness of  insight  and  brilliant  power,  but 
whose  scholarship  had  a  sweep  and  range 
which  he  could  not  equal.  To  the  rest  of 
the  giants  we  may  extend  what  Housman 
said  of  himself  matched  with  Porson : '  the 
comparison  is  not  preposterous — ^he  sur- 
passed me  in  some  quaUties  as  I  claim  to 
surpass  him  in  others'.  Of  contemporary 
scholars  he  most  admired,  and  rated  above 
himself,  U.  von  Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, 


a  lesser  man  than  Bentley,  but  cast  in  th< 
same  titanic  mould.  His  admiration  foi 
Wilamowitz  is  one  of  many  disproofs  o| 
the  belief  that  he  was  unfair  to  Germai 
learning.  He  was  pitiless  to  pretentioi 
incompetence,  of  which  he  found  to( 
much  in  the  contemporary  scholarship  of 
all  countries,  including  England;  and 
Germany  filled  most  space  in  his  oi 
slaughts  this  was  because  nine-tenths 
the  work  in  his  special  fields  was  done  bj 
Germans. 

Housman's  restriction  to  Latin 
1892  was  a  loss  to  Greek  scholarship,  bi 
the  choice  is  intelligible.   His  passion  fc 
perfection  came  nearer  being  satisfied 
the  narrower  field,  and  as  a  textual  critij 
he    even    preferred    to    concentrate 
attention  on  writers  not  of  the  first  ran] 
since  their  ideas  and  means  of  expressioi 
were  in  some  degree  predictable.  His  earlj 
notes  on  Aeschylus,  always  his  favouril 
poet,  are  brilliant,  but  not  equal  to 
best  work  in  Latin,  and,  had  he  eve 
begun  to  edit  him,  he  would  probablj 
have  abandoned  the  task  from  the  coi 
viction  that  it  was  less  difficult  than  ii 
possible.   Manilius,  on  whom  he  lavishe( 
his  richest  gifts,  was,  as  he  knew,  a  poor 
poet  with  a  bad  subject,  but  his  edition 
throws  invaluable  light  on  Latin  usage 
and  on  the  facts  of  textual  transmission, 
and  the  problems  of  this  corrupt  text 
exercised  his  highest  faculties. 

On  Housman's  rank  as  an  English  poet 
it  would  be  rash  to  attempt  a  verdict. 
When  A  Shropshire  Lad  appeared  it 
struck  a  new  note  in  late  nineteenth- 
century  literature.  The  chief  sources  of 
which  he  declared  himself  conscious  were 
Shakespeare's  songs,  the  Scottish  Border 
ballads,  and  Heine.  Other  influences  have 
been  noted,  especially  those  of  the  English 
Bible  and  of  Matthew  Arnold,  and  there 
are  many  dehcate  reminiscences  of  Greek 
and  Latin  poetry,  but  his  work  remains 
unmistakably  personal.  He  has  been 
accused  of  monotony,  and  his  favourite 
themes  are  not  numerous,  but  he  shows 
great  variety  in  metre  and  a  Horatian 
felicity  of  expression:  every  poem  has 
phrases  that  no  one  else  could  have 
written.  It  is  often  said  that  Last  Poems  is 
inferior  to  A  Shropshire  Lad,  but  both  are 
uneven,  and  some  of  his  best  work  is  in  the 
later  volume:  one  at  least  of  the  very 
finest  ('Tell  me  not  here')  was  composed 
in  the  year  of  its  publication.  Housman's 
low  estimate  of  much  of  the  verse  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
angered  some  younger  critics,  and  both  the 


452 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Houston 


form  and  the  content  of  his  own  poetry  were 
out  of  fashion  in  the  same  circles  before  he 
(lied,  but  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  his 
best  poems  will  always  rank  high,  although 
perhaps,  unlike  his  scholarship,  not  in  the 
liighest  class  of  all.  He  refused  almost  all 
honours,  including  the  Order  of  Merit,  but 
accepted  an  honorary  fellowship  from  his 
Oxford  college  in  1911. 

There  is  no  painted  portrait  of  Hous- 
man,  but  there  are  several  drawings:  of 
these,  two  made  by  (Sir)  William  Rothen- 
stein  in  1906  are  respectively  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  and  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.  His  appearance  in 
later  life  is  best  shown  in  that  made  by 
Francis  Dodd  in  1926  for  St.  John's 
College,  Oxford.  Another  drawing  by 
Dodd  (1936),  and  a  plasticine  medallion 
by  Theodore  Spicer-Simson  (1924),  are  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times,  2  May  1936;  A.  S.  F.  Gow, 
A.  E.  Housman,  A  Sketch,  together  with  a  List 
of  his  Writings  and  Indexes  to  his  Classical 
Papers,  193G;  Alfred  Edward  Housman  Me- 
morial Supplement  to  the  Br omsgr avian,  1936 ; 
Laurence  Housman,  A.  E.  H.,  1937,  and  The 
Unexpected  Years,  1937;  Percy  Withers,  A 
Buried  Life,  1940;  F.  T.  Grant  Richards, 
Housman  1897-1936,  1941 ;  J.  Carter  and  J. 
Sparrow,  A.  E.  Housman,  An  Annotated 
Check-List,  1940;  A.  S.  F.  Gow,  'A.  E.  Hous- 
man at  Oxford'  in  Oxford  Magazine,  11 
November  1937;  R.  W.  Chambers,  Man's 
Unconquerable  Mind,  1939 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  S.  Robertson. 

HOUSTON,  Dame  FANNY  LUCY 
(1857-1936),  philanthropist  and  eccentric, 
was  born  at  Kennington,  Lambeth, 
8  April  1857,  the  fourth  daughter  of 
Thomas  Radmall,  warehouseman,  by  his 
wife,  Maria  Isabella  Clarke.  She  grew  up 
a  beautiful  woman  who  for  a  time  earned 
her  livelihood  on  the  stage,  and  her  por- 
trait was  painted  by  H.  J.  Thaddeus,  an 
Irish  artist.  She  married  three  times: 
first,  in  1883  Theodore  Francis  Brinck- 
man,  later  third  baronet,  whom  she 
divorced  in  1895 ;  secondly,  in  1901  George 
Frederick  William  Byron,  ninth  Lord 
Byron,  who  died  in  1917;  and  thirdly,  in 
1924  Sir  Robert  Paterson  Houston, 
baronet,  member  of  parliament  for  the 
West  Toxteth  division  of  Liverpool  from 
1892  to  1924,  of  the  Houston  Shipping 
line,  who  in  1926  bequeathed  to  her  four- 
fifths  of  a  fortune  of  about  £7,000,000. 
She  had  no  children. 

By  the  time  of  her  second  marriage, 
Lady  Byron  had  become  a  strong  advocate 


of  women's  rights  and  displayed  a  fervent 
interest  in  their  welfare,  founding,  financ- 
ing, and,  during  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
administering  the  first  rest  home  for  tired 
nurses,  which  earned  her  appointment  as 
D.B.E.  in  1917;  but  it  was  not  until  she 
became  possessed  of  her  third  husband's 
bequest  that  her  name  became  widely 
known. 

Sir  Robert  Houston  had  been  domiciled 
in  Jersey,  and  a  month  after  his  death  a 
Royal  Court  was  convened  there  to  deter- 
mine 'the  state  of  mind  and  body'  of  his 
widow,  but  by  the  time  that  the  verdict 
was  given  in  her  favour,  she  had  recovered 
something  of  her  balance  of  mind.  Her 
inheritance  was  indeed  larger  than  might 
have  been  expected,  for  as  the  laws  of 
Jersey  provided  for  no  statutory  declara- 
tion of  the  value  of  an  estate,  no  duties 
appeared  to  be  payable  on  that  of  Sir 
Robert  Houston.  In  1927  Lady  Houston, 
who  refused  to  admit  any  liability,  made 
an  ex  gratia  payment  of  £1,500,000  to 
satisfy  the  demands  of  the  Exchequer; 
and  in  1933  she  again  made  a  voluntary 
payment  of  some  £46,000  to  cover,  as  she 
maintained,  the  amount  of  income  tax 
which  she  would  have  had  to  pay  in  the 
previous  five  years,  had  she  not  been 
resident  in  Jersey. 

Before  this  dispute  had  ended,  Lady 
Houston  had  come  to  be  regarded  by  her 
friends  as  'a  warm-hearted  woman  who 
would  brook  no  contradiction,  and  de- 
manded implicit  obedience  from  those  who 
served  her'.  She  bestowed  her  largess  on 
coal-miners,  worshippers  in  Liverpool 
Anglican  Cathedral,  tramwaymen  in  Hull, 
persecuted  Russian  Christians;  and  her 
largest  contribution  to  charity  was  £40,000 
to  King  George's  Jubilee  Trust.  But  to 
the  general  public  she  was  a  strident, 
perhaps  sincere,  patriot,  who  painted  her 
rooms  in  red,  white,  and  blue,  which  she 
had  adopted  as  her  racing  colours,  kept 
a  yacht,  the  Liberty,  displaying  the  motto 
Nemo  me  impune  lacessit,  and  aired  her 
views  with  'combative  patriotism'  in  the 
Saturday  Review,  which  she  had  purchased. 

Lady  Houston,  however,  deserves  to  be 
remembered  for  her  gift  of  £100,000  to 
enable  a  British  team  to  compete  for 
the  Schneider  trophy  in  1931,  when  the 
government  had  refused  the  ftinds.  The 
trophy  was  won  by  Fhght-Lieutenant 
George  Hedley  Stainforth,  flying  a  super- 
marine  Rolls-Royce  S6,  the  direct  pre- 
decessor of  the  Spitfires  and  Hurricanes 
of  the  battle  of  Britain.  Two  years  later 
she  financed  the  expedition  which  flew 


453 


Houston 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


s^ 


over  Mount  Everest.  In  1932,  being  con- 
vinced that  war  was  inevitable,  she 
offered  a  contribution  of  £200,000  to  the 
air  defence  of  London,  which  was  refused 
on  the  ground  that  parliament  was  sole 
judge  of  the  sum  to  be  spent  in  defence. 
She  also  offered  to  salvage  the  Finnish 
barque  Herzogin  Cecilie,  to  be  used  as  a 
training  ship  in  'masts  and  sails'.  This 
offer  was  also  declined  with  thanks.  By 
now  she  had  become  notorious  rather  than 
famous ;  nevertheless  her  intervention  in 
the  matter  of  the  Schneider  trophy  re- 
mains, though  indirectly,  an  act  of  the 
greatest  service  to  the  country. 

Lady  Houston  died  intestate  at  Hamp- 
stead  29  December  1936, 

[The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph,  31  Decem- 
ber 1936;  Evening  Standard,  30  December 
1936 ;  Warner  Allen,  Lucy  Houston  D.B.E.]. 
H.  A.  St.  G.  Saunders. 

HOWARD,  ESME  WILLIAM,  first 
Baron  Howard  of  Penrith  (1863-1939), 
diplomatist,  was  born  at  Greystoke  Castle, 
Cumberland,  15  September  1863,  the 
youngest  of  the  four  sons  of  Henry 
Howard,  of  Greystoke,  by  his  wife,  Char- 
lotte Caroline  Georgiana,  eldest  daughter 
of  Henry  Lawes  Long,  of  Hampton  Lodge, 
Surrey,  He  was  educated  at  Harrow, 
leaving  in  1881  for  further  studies  abroad. 
He  joined  the  diplomatic  service  in  April 
1885,  and  in  June  of  that  year  went  on  to 
the  staff  of  his  brother-in-law,  H.  E.  M. 
Herbert,  Lord  Carnarvon  [q.v.],  who  had 
just  been  made  lord-lieutenant  of  Ireland. 
The  country  was  in  a  state  of  great  unrest, 
for  the  home  rule  agitation  was  at  its 
height,  and  at  the  beginning  of  1886,  when 
Gladstone  came  into  office,  Carnarvon 
resigned.  Howard  was  then  sent  to  the 
embassy  in  Rome,  where  he  remained  until 
1888  when  he  was  transferred  to  Berlin 
under  Sir  Edward  Malet  [q.v.].  This  year 
was  one  of  great  changes  in  Germany. 
The  old  Emperor,  William  I,  died  in 
March,  and  three  months  later  his  son  and 
successor,  Frederick  III,  also  died  and  was 
succeeded  by  the  Emperor  WiUiam  II. 
Howard  watched  the  coronation  of  the 
new  Emperor,  and  two  years  later  his 
dismissal  of  the  chancellor  in  1890.  He 
left  the  Berlin  embassy  at  the  end  of  1890, 
and  in  1892,  while  still  under  thirty, 
retired  from  the  diplomatic  service,  un- 
successfully contesting  Worcester  as  a 
liberal  at  the  general  election  in  the  latter 
year. 

For  the  next  few  years  Howard  led  an 
adventurous    life,    travelling    in    various 


"8 
it^ 

ikP 


parts  of  the  world.  He  then  became  assi 
tant  private  secretary  to  John  Wodehous 
Lord  Kimberley  [q.v.],  secretary  of  state 
for  foreign  affairs  in  Lord  Rosebery's 
government  of  1894^-1895.  In  1900,  during 
the  South  African  war,  he  served  witi 
distinction  as  a  trooper  in  the  Imperi 
Yeomanry,  joining  a  corps  called  the  Dub 
of  Cambridge's  Own,  the  members  of 
which  waived  their  pay.  He  saw  some 
fighting,  was  captured  and  escaped,  and, 
after  being  eleven  years  absent  from  the 
diplomatic  service,  rejoined  it  in  1903, 

Howard  was  now  given  his  first  inde- 
pendent post,  being  appointed  consul- 
general  for  Crete,  where  he  had  a  difficult 
task.  In  the  island ,  nominally  autonomous 
but  actually  controlled  by  the  consuls- 
general  of  Great  Britain,  France,  Russia, 
and  Italy,  trouble  was  caused  by  the 
Venizelist  revolt  in  favour  of  union  with 
Greece.  Howard's  firm  and  tactful  hand- 
ling of  the  situation  gained  him  credit,  and 
on  his  return  to  England  in  1906  he  was 
appointed  C.V.O,  and  C.M.G. 

After  several  short-term  appointments 
Howard  was  promoted  to  be  minister  at 
Berne  in  1911,  and  was  transferred  to 
Stockholm  in  1913.  He  stayed  there  until 
after  the  armistice,  and  the  history  of  his 
mission  is  that  of  the  blockade.  One  of  the 
chief  difficulties  in  coming  to  an  agreement 
with  Sweden  for  an  effective  blockade  of 
enemy  countries  was  that  the  trade  to 
Russia  was  through  that  country,  and  any 
attempt  to  put  pressure  on  the  Stockholm 
government  was  met  by  the  threat  of  pre- 
venting supplies  to  Russia,  Howard  acted 
with  great  discretion,  and  the  position  was 
eased  by  the  Russian  revolution.  Con- 
sidering his  difficulties,  it  is  surprising  to 
what  an  extent  he  had  the  foreign  trade  of 
Sweden  under  his  control  by  1918. 

After  the  armistice  Howard,  who  had 
been  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1916  and 
K.C.B.  in  1919,  was  attached  to  the 
British  delegation  of  the  Peace  Conference 
in  Paris.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  and  became  ambassador  in 
Madrid  in  1919.  His  career  ended  with  the 
greatest  of  his  many  successes.  In  1924, 
on  the  resignation  of  Sir  Auckland  (later 
Lord)  Geddes,  Howard  was  selected  to  be 
ambassador  at  Washington.  He  remained 
six  years  in  office,  his  mission  was  a  bril- 
liant personal  triumph,  and  he  won  the 
trust  and  regard  of  all  shades  of  American 
opinion.  The  universities  of  Washington 
(1925)  and  Hartford  (1929)  conferred 
honorary  degrees  upon  him. 

In  1923  Howard  was  appointed  G.C.M 


454 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hunt,  W. 


and  in  1928  G.C.B.  On  his  return  home  in 
1 930  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron 
Howard  of  Penrith.  In  1935-1936  he  pub- 
lished his  memoirs,  The  Theatre  of  Life,  in 
two  vivid  and  charming  volumes.  He 
married  in  1898  Lady  Maria  Isabella 
Giovanna  Teresa  Gioachina,  sixth  daughter 
of  Sigismondo  Nicholas  Venantius  Gaetano 
Francis,  Prince  Giustiniani-Bandini  and 
eighth  Earl  of  Newburgh.  Earlier  in  the 
same  year  he  was  received  into  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  Five  sons,  the  eldest  of 
whom  predeceased  his  father,  were  born 
of  the  marriage.  Lord  Howard  died  at  his 
home  at  Hindhead  1  August  1939,  and  was 
succeeded  as  second  baron  by  his  second 
son,  Francis  Philip  (born  1905). 

A  portrait  of  Howard,  by  H.  Harris 
Brown,  is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  2  August  1939 ;  Lord  Howard 
of  Penrith,  The  Theatre  of  Life:  vol.  1,  Life 
seen  from  the  Pit,  1863-1905,  1935 ;  vol.  ii. 
Life  seen  from  the  Stalls,  1905-1936,  1936.] 
Arthur  Cochrane. 

HUNT,  ARTHUR  SURRIDGE  (1871- 
1934),  papyrologist,  was  born  at  Romford, 
Essex,  1  March  1871,  the  eldest  son  and 
third  child  of  Alfred  Henry  Hunt,  soli- 
citor, later  of  Romford  Hall,  by  his  wife, 
Emily  Pertwee,  who  was  descended  from 
a  French  Huguenot  family  originally 
named  Pertuis.  He  was  educated  at  Cran- 
brook  School  and  Eastbourne  College, 
whence  in  October  1889  he  went  as  a 
classical  scholar  to  Queen's  College, 
Oxford.  In  1891  he  obtained  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations,  but  in  1893  only 
a  second  class  in  literae  humaniores.  In  the 
first  disappointment  he  abandoned  his 
hope  of  a  fellowship  ;  but  a  project  of  being 
ordained  and  the  winning  of  the  Aubrey 
Moore  studentship  led,  despite  his  father's 
death  in  1893,  to  his  remaining  at  Queen's, 
and  in  1894  he  was  elected  to  the  Craven 
fellowship.  He  chose  as  his  field  of  study 
the  palaeography  of  early  Latin  manu- 
scripts in  Spanish  libraries,  but  after  his 
return  from  Spain,  on  the  invitation  of  his 
friend  and  older  contemporary  at  Queen's, 
B.  P.  Grenfell  [q.v.],  he  abandoned  Latin 
palaeography  for  papyrology.  In  January 
1896  he  joined  Grenfell  and  D.  G.  Hogarth 
[q.v.],  who  were  excavating  for  papyri  in 
the  Fayum.  Thus  was  formed  a  partner- 
ship memorable  in  the  history  of  classical 
scholarship,  which  made  the  names  of  the 
'Dioscuri  oif  Oxford',  as  they  were  called, 
familiar  throughout  the  learned  world. 
Details  of  their  joint  work  will  be  found  in 
the  notice  of  Grenfell. 


From  1896  to  1900  Hunt  was  a  senior 
demy  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  and 
from  1901  to  1906  a  fellow  of  Lincoln,  of 
which  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
in  1918 ;  in  1906  he  became  research  fellow 
of  Queen's.  In  1908,  on  Grenfell's  election 
as  professor  of  papyrology,  Hunt  was 
appointed  lecturer  in  that  subject.  During 
Grenfell's  absence  from  1908  to  1913  he 
worked  alone,  and  in  the  latter  year, 
Grenfell's  professorship  having  lapsed, 
Himt  was  elected  professor  in  his  place. 
After  his  recovery,  Grenfell  was  in  1919 
appointed  joint  professor  with  Hunt,  who, 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918,  served  suc- 
cessively as  an  officer  in  the  Oxfordshire 
and  Buckinghamshire  Light  Infantry,  in 
the  War  Trade  Intelligence  Department, 
in  the  War  Office,  and  in  the  Intelligence 
Corps  in  France.  From  1920,  when  Gren- 
fell's health  finally  collapsed,  Hiuit  was 
sole  editor  of  the  volumes  of  papyrus 
texts  issued  by  the  Egypt  Exploration 
Society.  He  had  previously  edited  alone 
volume  i  of  the  Catalogue  of  the  Greek 
Papyri  in  the  John  Rylands  Library  Man- 
chester (1911)  and  Tragicorum  Graecorum 
Fragmenta  Papyracea  (1912). 

Hunt  married  in  1918  Lucy  Ellen, 
fourth  daughter  of  Surgeon-Major-General 
Sir  Alexander  Frederick  Bradshaw.  His 
health  had  never  been  robust,  and  in  1932 
the  sudden  death  of  his  son,  his  only 
child,  was  a  blow  from  which  he  never 
really  recovered,  although  he  made  little 
show  of  grief.  He  died  at  Oxford  18  June 
1934.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Glasgow,  Dublin, 
Konigsberg,  Graz,  and  Athens,  and  was 
Drexel  medallist  of  the  university  of 
Pennsylvania.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy  in  1913,  and  was  also 
a  member  of  several  foreign  academies. 

Hunt  was  a  fine  scholar,  with  a  keenly 
critical  intelligence,  and  imsparing  in  his 
devotion  to  accuracy.  Beneath  a  reserved 
manner  lay  a  fund  of  quiet  humour, 
generous  kindness,  and  deep  religious 
feeling. 

[H.  I.  BeU,  A.  S.  Hunt,  1871-1934  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xx,  1934 ; 
F.  de  Zulueta,  Studia  et  Documenta  Historiae 
et  luris,  fasc.  ii,  1935;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  H,  I.  Bell. 

HUNT,  WILLIAM  (1842-1931), 
historian,  was  born  at  Clifton,  Bristol, 
3  March  1842,  the  elder  son  of  William 
Hunt,  curate  of  Holy  Trinity  church, 
Hotwells,  Clifton,  later  vicar  of  Holy 
Trinity  church,  Weston-super-Mare,  aij4 


455 


Hunt,  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


prebendary  of  Wells  Cathedral,  by  his 
wife,  Maria  Simpson.  Educated  at  Harrow 
and  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  he  obtained 
a  second  class  in  classical  moderations  in 
1862  and  a  first  class  in  law  and  modern 
history  in  1864.  He  was  ordained  in  1865 
as  curate  to  his  father  at  Weston-super- 
Mare,  and  two  years  later  was  presented 
to  the  vicarage  of  Congresbury,  Somerset. 
He  held  the  living  for  fifteen  years,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  restored  the  church, 
built  a  new  day  school,  and  occupied  his 
leisure  with  historical  work  of  which  he 
had  laid  the  foundations  at  Oxford.  He 
was  an  examiner  in  the  final  school  of 
modern  history  at  Oxford  from  1877  to 
1879  and  again  in  1881  and  1882.  In  1882 
he  resigned  his  living,  came  to  London, 
and  devoted  the  rest  of  his  life  to  the 
writing  of  history  and  biography. 

Hitherto,  Hunt  had  concerned  himself 
mainly  with  coimty  and  diocesan  history, 
and  with  the  activities  of  the  Somerset- 
shire Archaeological  Society,  of  which  he 
was  a  member  from  1866  to  the  end  of  his 
life  and  an  honorary  general  secretary 
from  1872  to  1879.  Of  these  interests  the 
fruits  are  his  Somerset  Diocese,  Bath  and 
Wells  (1885),  a  history  of  Bristol  (1887)  in 
the  'Historic  Towns'  series,  of  which  he 
was  joint-editor  with  E.  A.  Freeman  [q.v.], 
and  an  edition  of  Two  Chartularies  of  the 
Priory  of  St.  Peter  at  Bath  (1893)  for  the 
Somerset  Record  Society. 

In  London  Hunt  was  associated  almost 
from  its  foundation  with  this  Dictionary, 
for  which  he  wrote  nearly  600  articles, 
including  the  biographies  of  Edward  I  and 
Edward  III  and  many  medieval  church- 
men. In  him  (Sir)  Leslie  Stephen  [q.v.] 
found  an  ideal  contributor  and  sub-editor 
— learned,  accurate,  and  impartial.  It  was, 
however,  his  share  in  two  other  historical 
enterprises  which  brought  Hunt  wider 
recognition.  These  were  A  History  of  the 
English  Church  in  eight  volumes  (1899- 
1910)  of  which  he  was  joint-editor  with 
W.  R.  W.  Stephens  [q.v.],  and  to  which 
he  contributed  the  very  successful  first 
volume  (1899),  covering  the  period  before 
the  Norman  Conquest ;  and  The  Political 
History  of  England  in  twelve  volumes 
(1905-1910),  written  by  leading  historians, 
of  which  he  and  R.  L.  Poole  [q.v.]  were  the 
general  editors.  Both  series  were  fortunate 
in  their  editors,  and  both,  especially  the 
latter,  have  remained  standard  authorities 
up  to  the  present  time.  The  issue,  within 
five  years,  of  twelve  volumes  of  the  quaUty 
of  the  Political  History  was,  indeed,  a 
notable  editorial  achievement.  Hunt  him- 


self wrote  the  tenth  volume  (1905),  dealuij 
with  the  reign  of  George  HI  from 
accession  to  the  Act  of  Union.    Lucid; 
careful,  and  dispassionate.  Hunt  was  m 
merely  'safe'   historian:  he  wrote  wit] 
insight,  decision,  and  a  ripe  knowledge  oi 
human  affairs.   He  travelled  widely,  h 
a  large  acquaintance,  and  his  figure,  wit] 
flowing  beard,  was  well  known  at  th 
Savile  Club.   A  staunch  conservative,  hi 
contributed  frequently  to  the  Saturday 
Review,  in  which  at  one  time  he  sought  t 
acquire  a  joint  controlling  interest.    H 
was   president   of  the   Royal   Historical 
Society  from  1905  to  1909,  and  in  1921 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity 
College  to  which  he  was  deeply  attached 
and  to  which  his  library  was  presented  by 
his  widow.  Although  not  in  its  front  rank. 
Hunt  holds  an  established  position  in  the 
great  school  of  English  historians  which 
dates   from   the   time   of  Freeman   and 
William   Stubbs;    its   tradition   he   well 
understood  and  its  standard  of  scholarshi 
he  worthily  upheld. 

Hunt  was  twice  married:  first,  in  186 
to  Emma  (died  1893),  daughter  of  th 
Rev.  Arthur  Ramsay;  secondly,  in  1895 
to  Katharine,  daughter  of  Thomas  Rae, 
merchant,  of  Melbourne,  Victoria.  He  had 
no  children.  He  died  in  London  14  June 
1931. 

[The  Times,  16  June  1931 ;  Proceedings  of 
the  Somersetshire  Archaeological  and  Natural 
History  Society  for  the  year  1931,  vol.  Ixxvii, 
1932  (portrait) ;  History,  January  1932 ;  pri- 
vate information.]  J.  R.  H.  Weaver. 

HUNTER,  Sir  ARCHIBALD  (1856- 
1936),  general,  was  born  in  Kilburn, 
6  September  1856,  the  son  of  Archibald 
Hunter,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Jane  Graham. 
Both  his  parents  came  of  good  Lowland 
families.  He  was  educated  at  Glasgow 
Academy  and  Sandhurst  and  was  gazetted 
to  the  4th  Foot  (The  King's  Own)  in  June 
1874,  joining  the  1st  battalion  at  Gib- 
raltar. He  quickly  made  his  mark  as  an 
efficient  and  zealous  officer,  ser\'ing  as 
adjutant  from  April  1880  to  November 
1882 ;  he  had  been  promoted  to  captain  in 
August  1882. 

Hunter  saw  his  first  active  service  in 
1884,  being  employed  on  the  Nile  expedi 
tion  on  intelligence  duties  and  gaining  a 
brevet  as  major  (1885)  besides  being  men 
tioned  in  dispatches.  For  fifteen  years 
(1884-1899)  he  served  with  the  Egyptian 
Army,  gaining  a  great  reputation  for 
gallantry  and  efficiency  and  doing  much 
to  build  up  the  army  for  the  work  before 


11 

] 


456 


I 
1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hunter,  A. 


it.  He  was  severely  wounded  at  Giniss 
(December  1885),  where  the  Dervish 
advance  was  effectively  checked,  and  was 
awarded  the  D.S.O.  At  Toski  in  1889  he 
did  good  service  in  command  of  a  brigade, 
and  was  again  wounded,  gaining  another 
Ijrevet  (Ueutenant-colonel).  From  August 
1892  to  July  1894  he  was  governor  of  the 
lied  Sea  littoral  and  of  Suakin,  receiving 
command  of  the  Sudan  Frontier  Field 
Force  in  the  latter  month  and  retaining  it 
until  November  1896.  Promoted  to  sub- 
stantive major  in  June  1892,  he  obtained 
a  brevet  as  colonel  in  January  1894.  In 
the  operations  of  1896  to  1898  which 
(Hilminated  in  the  recovery  of  Khartoum, 
Hunter  was  Kitchener's  right-hand  man. 
At  Firket  (7  June  1896)  he  commanded 
the  infantry  most  successfully,  and  was 
specially  promoted  to  major-general  in 
November  1896,  when  aged  only  forty. 
In  1897  he  led  the  flying  column  which 
defeated  the  Dervishes  at  Abu  Hamed 
(7  August)  and  went  on  to  occupy  Berber 
(5  September).  At  the  battles  of  the 
Atbara  (8  April  1898)  and  of  Omdurman 
(2  September)  he  was  again  in  command 
of  a  division,  which  he  handled  with  great 
ability,  especially  at  Omdurman  where 
liis  judicious  dispositions  and  use  of  his 
reserves  did  much  to  ensure  victory.  His 
good  services  were  repeatedly  acknow- 
ledged in  the  Sudan  dispatches  and  he 
received  the  thanks  of  both  Houses  of 
Parliament.  After  the  fall  of  Khartoum 
he  was  appointed  K.C.B.  (1898). 

May  1899  brought  Hunter  command  of 
the  Quetta  division  in  India,  but  on  the 
dispatch  of  troops  from  India  to  Natal  he 
was  appointed  chief  of  staff  to  Sir  George 
White  [q.v.]  and  played  a  big  part  in  the 
defence  of  Ladysmith,  being  more  second 
in  command  than  chief  staff  officer.  He 
has  been  described  as  the  life  and  soul  of 
the  defence  and  led  and  planned  the 
successful  sortie  of  7  December  in  which 
two  of  the  enemy's  guns  were  disabled. 

Shortly  after  the  rehef  (1  March  1900), 
Hunter  was  promoted  lieutenant-general 
and  given  command  of  the  10th  division, 
composed  of  troops  transferred  from  Natal 
to  the  western  Transvaal.  His  column's 
advance  over  the  Vaal  at  Windsorton  and 
their  defeat  of  the  Boers  at  Rooidam 
(5  May  1900)  contributed  appreciably  to 
the  relief  of  Mafeking  and  to  the  diversion 
of  the  Boers  from  opposing  Lord  Roberts's 
advance  on  Pretoria.  In  June,  owing  to  an 
accident  to  Major-General  Sir  Ian  Hamil- 
ton, he  was  placed  in  command  of  the 
columns  operating  in  the  north-east  of  the 


Orange  River  Colony  and  was  responsible 
for  the  manoeuvres  which  culminated  in 
the  second  great  Boer  surrender,  that  of 
General  Marthinus  Prinsloo  and  4,000 
men  in  Brandwater  Basin  (30  July),  a 
success  largely  caused  by  his  skilful  com- 
binations and  inspiring  leadership;  he 
later  commanded  in  the  central  Orange 
River  Colony  but  was  invalided  home  in 
January  1901. 

From  May  1901  to  September  1903 
Hunter  was  general  officer  commanding 
the  Scottish  District  (later  Command), 
after  which  he  commanded  first  the 
Western  and  later  the  Southern  Army  in 
India  until  October  1908,  assisting  Lord 
Kitchener  in  the  reorganization  of  the 
Indian  Army.  He  was  promoted  general 
in  December  1905.  Appointed  governor 
and  commander-in-chief  of  Gibraltar  in 
September  1910,  his  well-founded  criti- 
cisms on  the  shortcomings  of  the  civil 
administration,  prompted  by  his  zeal  for 
the  welfare  and  efficiency  of  the  garrison, 
led  to  some  friction  with  the  civil  autho- 
rities, and  he  relinquished  the  post  in 
July  1913. 

Shortly  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914,  Hunter  was  given  command  of  the 
Aldershot  Training  Centre  and  later 
became  general  officer-commanding-in- 
chief,  Aldershot  Command.  For  the  next 
three  years  (until  September  1917)  he 
laboured  assiduously  at  the  training  of 
the  New  Armies,  most  of  the  divisions 
of  which,  as  well  as  their  drafts  and  re- 
inforcements, did  their  final  preparation 
under  him.  Always  zealous  for  those 
under  him,  he  was  the  right  man  for  the 
place  and  the  New  Armies  owed  much  to 
him.  He  retired  from  the  army  in  October 
1920. 

Hunter  was  elected  conservative 
member  of  parliament  for  Lancaster  in 
1918  but  did  not  seek  re-election  in  1922. 
He  was  colonel  of  his  old  regiment,  The 
King's  Own,  from  1913  until  1926.  He 
was  appointed  G.C.B.  in  1911  and  was 
aide-de-camp  general  to  the  king  from 
1917  to  1919.  He  was  also  honorary 
colonel  of  the  5th  (Territorial)  battalion 
of  the  Highland  Light  Infantry  and  re- 
ceived the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from 
the  universities  of  Glasgow  and  Cambridge. 
With  Lord  Kitchener  as  his  best  man,  he 
married  in  1910  Mary  (died  1924),  younger 
daughter  of  Hickson  Fergusson,  of  The 
Knowe,  Ayrshire,  and  widow  of  George 
Arbuthnot  Burns,  second  Lord  Inverclyde; 
there  were  no  children  of  the  marriage.  He 
died  in  London  28  June  1936. 


457 


Hunter,  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


A  vigorous,  energetic,  and  capable 
soldier.  Hunter  was  extremely  popular 
with  all  ranks  of  the  army,  inspiring 
affection  and  respect.  He  played  a  notable 
part  in  the  recovery  of  the  Sudan  for 
civilization  and  in  South  Africa  he  en- 
hanced his  reputation.  It  has  been  said  of 
him  that  'he  never  spoke  ill  of  any  man, 
was  always  seeking  to  do  others  kindnesses 
and  never  forgot  a  friend'. 

A  portrait  of  Hunter  is  included  in  the 
cartoon  'A  General  Group'  by  'Spy' 
which  appeared  in  •  Vanity  Fair  29 
November  1900. 

[The  Times,  29  June  1936 ;  W.  S.  Churchill, 
The  River  War,  1899,  new  ed.  1902  (portrait) ; 
Sir  J.  F.  Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant,  (Official) 
History  of  the  War  in  South  Africa  1899-1902, 
1906-1910 ;  The  King's  Own,  the  history  of  a 
Royal  Regiment,  edited  by  L.  I.  Cowper,  1939.] 
C.  T.  Atkinson. 

HUNTER,   Sir   GEORGE   BURTON 

(1845-1937),  shipbuilder,  was  born  at 
Sunderland  19  December  1845,  the  third 
son  of  Thomas  Hunter,  of  Sunderland,  by 
his  wife,  Elizabeth,  eldest  daughter  of 
William  Rowntree,  also  of  Sunderland. 
After  leaving  school  at  the  age  of  thirteen 
he  was  for  two  years  a  pupil  of  Thomas 
Meek,  engineer  to  the  River  Wear  com- 
missioners. He  was  then  apprenticed  to 
the  shipbuilding  firm  of  W.  Pile,  Hay  «& 
company,  of  Sunderland,  and  was  put  in 
charge  of  the  drawing  office  in  1865.  Four 
years  later  (1869)  he  went  to  the  Clyde  as 
assistant  to  (Sir)  William  Pearce  at  the 
shipyard  of  Robert  Napier  [qq.v.]  at 
Govan.  In  1871  he  returned  to  his  old 
firm  as  manager,  and  on  the  closing  of  its 
yard  in  1873  he  joined  S.  P.  Austin  in 
establishing  at  Sunderland  a  yard  for  the 
construction  of  iron  ships.  That  partner- 
ship was  dissolved  in  1880  and  he  went  to 
Wallsend  as  principal  partner  of  C.  S. 
Swan.  In  1895  the  firm  was  formed  into  a 
limited  company  with  Hunter  as  chair- 
man, and  by  combining  in  1903  with 
Wigham  Richardson  &  company  became 
under  the  style  of  Swan,  Hunter,  «fe 
Wigham  Richardson  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant shipbuilding  undertakings  on  the 
north-east  coast,  possessing  also  extensive 
interests  in  the  Clyde  area.  Hunter  re- 
mained chairman  of  the  new  company 
until  1928,  and  it  was  a  tribute  to  the 
reputation  which  he  had  won  for  excellence 
of  design  and  quality  of  workmanship  that, 
in  an  area  predominantly  engaged  in  the 
construction  of  cargo  tonnage,  it  was  able 
to  secure  the  order  for  a  ship  so  elabo- 


rately fitted  as  the  famous  Cunard  liner 
Mauretania.  He  was  a  pioneer  of  the 
system,  which  was  adopted  for  her,  of 
building  ships  within  large  glazed  sheds, 
which  provided  protection  against  the 
weather. 

Habitually  dressed  in  a  blue  reefer  suit 
and  often  wearing  a  yachting  cap.  Hunter 
was  a  familiar  figure  on  Tyneside.  Re- 
garded as  a  fair  and  just  employer,  he  set 
an  example  of  hard  work,  being  in  his 
office  every  day  from  10  a.m.  to  6  p.m. 
except  on  Saturdays,  when  his  hour  of 
departure  was  4  p.m. ;  and  besides  taking 
a  keen  interest  in  industrial  questions 
relating  to  the  payment  and  training  of 
workmen  was  president  of  the  National 
Temperance  Federation,  treasurer  of  the 
United  Kingdom  Alliance,  and  chairman 
of  the  SimpUfied  Spelling  Society. 

Hunter  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  1918 
in  recognition  of  his  services  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  and  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.Sc.  from  Durham 
University  in  recognition  of  his  work  on 
the  council  of  Armstrong  College.  In  19i 
he  unsuccessfully  contested  Sunderlam 
as  a  liberal.  He  married  in  1873  A 
(died  1927),  daughter  of  Charles  Hudson, 
of  Whitby,  and  niece  of  George  Hudson 
[q.v.],  the  'railway  king',  and  had  two 
sons  and  three  daughters.  He  died  at  Jei 
mond,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  21  Janua; 
1937. 

[The  Times,  22  January  1937 ;  Engineer  ani 
Engineering,  29  January  1937  (portrait).] 

H.  M.  Ross 


si 


] 


HUNTER-WESTON,  Sir  AYLMER 
GOULD  (1864-1940),  lieutenant-general. 
[See  Weston.] 

HUTCHINSON,  ARTHUR  (1866- 
1937),  mineralogist,  was  born  in  London 
6  July  1866,  the  only  child  of  George 
Hutchinson,  of  Woodside,  Westmorland, 
silk  merchant,  of  London,  by  his  wife, 
Deborah  Richardson,  of  Culgaith,  Cum- 
berland. He  was  educated  at  Clifton 
College  and  in  1884  went  with  a  scholar- 
ship to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  where 
he  was  awarded  first  classes  in  both  parts 
of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1886  and 
1888).  After  a  year's  research  work  in 
chemistry  with  Matthew  Moncrieff  Patti- 
son  Muir  he  went  to  Germany  where  he 
studied  under  Emil  Fischer  and  W.  K. 
Rontgen  and  obtained  the  degree  of  Ph.D. 
In  1891  he  was  appointed  a  demonstrator 
in  the  chemical  laboratory  at  Gonville  and 
Caius  College,  Cambridge,  and  in  1892  was 


458 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Hutchinson,  H.  G. 


elected  into  a  fellowship  at  Pembroke 
College  and  appointed  college  lecturer  in 
natural  science. 

Hutchinson's  work  as  a  mineralogist 
began  in  1895  when  he  was  appointed 
demonstrator  in  mineralogy  in  the  imiver- 
sity  of  Cambridge.  In  this  capacity  he 
conducted,  almost  unaided,  for  twenty- 
eight  years  the  whole  of  the  course  in 
mineralogy  for  the  first  part  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos.  He  was  appointed  univer- 
sity lecturer  in  crystallography  in  1923 
and  finally  in  1926  he  succeeded  William 
James  Lewis  as  professor  of  mineralogy. 
He  was  then  within  five  years  of  the  age 
for  retirement.  During  these  years  he 
devoted  himself  to  the  development  of  his 
department,  encouraging  research  in  X- 
ray  crystallography  and  preparing  for  the 
organization  of  the  two  new  departments 
of  mineralogy  and  petrology  and  of  crystal- 
lography which  were  established  on  his 
retirement  from  the  professorship  in  1931. 

Hutchinson's  first  notable  contribution 
to  mineralogical  research  was  the  dis- 
covery of  a  new  mineral,  stokesite,  in 
1899.  In  the  same  year  he  began  work 
on  the  diathermancy  and  optical  charac- 
ters of  stibnite,  showing  that  the  mineral, 
ordinarily  supposed  to  be  opaque,  trans- 
mitted light  of  long  wave-length,  and  he 
successfully  measured  its  refractive  in- 
dices, and  proved  its  orthorhombic  sym- 
metry. He  devised  an  inverted  form  of 
goniometer  for  the  determination  of  the 
crystallographic  and  optical  characters  of 
small  crystals,  and  a  protractor  for  the 
construction  of  stereographic  and  gnomo- 
nic  projections,  adapting  this  later  (1925) 
to  the  interpretation  of  Laue  X-ray  photo- 
graphs of  crystals.  Several  charts  for  the 
graphical  solution  of  crystallographic  pro- 
blems, for  the  correction  of  specific  gravity 
determinations,  and  for  the  solution  of 
some  formulae  in  crystal  optics  were  pub- 
lished between  1915  and  1925.  For  eight 
years  (1904-1912)  he  wrote  the  section  on 
mineralogical  chemistry  in  the  Annual 
Reports  of  the  Chemical  Society. 

In  addition  to  his  mineralogical  work 
Hutchinson  took  an  active  share  in  college 
and  university  life.  He  was  assistant  tutor 
of  Pembroke  College  from  1901  to  1926, 
and  was  elected  master  of  the  college  in 
1928,  a  post  from  which  he  retired  only 
five  months  before  his  death  at  Cambridge 
12  December  1937.  He  was  a  governor  of 
Gresham's  School,  Holt,  for  twenty-two 
years,  and  of  St.  Bees  School,  Cumberland, 
and  he  was  an  active  member  of  the  council 
of  CUfton  CoUece. 


Hutchinson  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1922 
and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Christ's  College 
in  1935 ;  he  was  appointed  O.B.E.  for  his 
research  work  on  gas  masks  during  the 
war  of  1914r-1918.  In  1901  he  married 
E valine,  second  daughter  of  Alexander 
Shipley,  of  Datchet,  Buckinghamshire,  and 
sister  of  Sir  Arthur  Everett  Shipley  [q.v.] ; 
they  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  The 
elder  son  is  professor  of  zoology  in  Yale 
University. 

A  portrait  of  Hutchinson  by  Sir  William 
Rothenstein  is  in  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  house 
at  Culgaith. 

[The  Times,  13  December  1937;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7, 
January  1939  (bibliography  and  portrait) ; 
personal  knowledge.] 

W.  Campbell  Smith. 

HUTCHINSON,  HORATIO  GORDON 
(HORACE)  (1859-1932),  golfer  and 
author,  was  bom  in  London  16  May  1859, 
the  third  son  of  General  William  Nelson 
Hutchinson,  of  the  Grenadier  Guards,  by 
his  wife,  Mary,  daughter  of  John  Russell 
[q.v.],  headmaster  of  Charterhouse  and 
later  rector  of  St.  Botolph's  church, 
Bishopsgate.  In  1864  his  father  went  to 
live  near  Northam  in  Devon.  In  that  year 
the  Royal  North  Devon  Golf  Club  was 
founded  and  Hutchinson  thus  learnt  golf 
as  a  boy.  He  went  to  school  first  at 
Charterhouse,  which  he  left  owing  to  ill 
health,  and  later  at  the  United  Services 
College,  Westward  Ho!  In  1878  he  went 
up  to  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford.  In 
that  year  the  first  miiversity  golf  match 
was  played  and  Hutchinson  led  the  Oxford 
side,  as  he  did  in  1879,  1880,  and  1882 
(there  was  no  match  in  1881).  In  1881  he 
won  the  university  cue  and  played  for 
Oxford  in  the  doubles  match  at  billiards. 
He  was  also  a  competent  oarsman  and 
cricketer.  He  intended  to  read  for  the  bar 
and  entered  at  the  Inner  Temple,  but  his 
health,  always  frail,  temporarily  broke 
down.  Later,  in  1890,  he  had  thoughts  of 
being  a  sculptor  and  worked  for  some  time 
in  G.  F.  Watts's  studio,  but  this  project  was 
likewise  abandoned;  he  embraced  no 
regular  profession  but  took  gradually  to 
authorship.  In  1886  he  wrote  a  small  book 
Hints  on  the  Game  of  Golf,  which  synchro- 
nized with  the  great  increase  in  the  popu- 
larity of  the  game  in  England,  and  had 
considerable  success.  In  1890  he  edited 
and  wrote  a  large  part  of  the  volume  on 
golf  in  the  Badminton  Library,  and  from 
that  time  became  a  prolific  writer  on  golf 
both  in  books  and  newspapers,  as  also  on 


459 


Hutchinson,  H.  G. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


shooting,  fishing,  and  natural  history ;  he 
was  himself  a  fine  shot  and  fisherman. 
When  Country  Life  was  founded  in  1897, 
he  wrote  regularly  for  it  on  all  these 
subjects  and  edited  several  volumes  in  the 
Country  Life  Library.  He  wrote  several 
not  unsuccessful  novels,  among  them 
Peter  Steele,  the  Cricketer  (1895),  and  'Bert 
Edward,  the  Golf  Caddie  (1903).  He  was 
essentially  an  essayist  rather  than  a  novel- 
ist, having  a  fluent,  pleasant,  and  graceful 
style  in  which  he  could  write  rapidly  and 
without  effort  on  a  variety  of  topics. 

When  in  1886  the  amateur  champion- 
ship was  formally  instituted  Hutchinson 
beat  Henry  Lamb  in  the  final  and  in  1887 
won  against  John  Ball  [q.v.]  at  Hoylake. 
In  1888  he  played  in  an  exhibition  at  the 
Meadowbrook  Club  near  New  York,  one 
of  the  earliest  occasions  on  which  the  game 
was  seen  in  the  United  States  of  America. 
He  played  for  England  against  Scotland 
in  the  first  international  match  in  1902 
and  in  each  subsequent  year  until  1907, 
except  1905  when  he  was  ill.  In  1908  he 
was  the  first  Englishman  to  be  elected 
captain  of  the  Royal  and  Ancient  Golf 
Club  of  St.  Andrews.  As  a  golfer  Hutchin- 
son was  for  a  long  time  one  of  the  leading 
players  in  the  country,  with  a  dashing  and 
characteristic  style,  and  his  career  would 
have  been  even  more  successful  than  it 
was  but  for  intermittent  ill  health.  During 
the  last  eighteen  years  of  his  life  he  was 
incapacitated  by  grave  illness:  he  then 
left  his  home  at  Forest  Row  in  Sussex  and 
moved  to  London  where  he  died  27  July 
1932. 

Hutchinson  married  in  1893  Dorothy 
Margaret,  younger  daughter  of  Major 
Frederick  Barclay  Chapman,  of  the  14th 
Hussars;  there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage. 

A  portrait  of  Hutchinson  by  Oswald 
Birley  is  in  the  possession  of  Mrs. 
Hutchinson. 

[The  Times,  29  July  1932 ;  H.  G.  Hutchin- 
son, Fifty  Years  of  Golf,  1919;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Bernard  Darwin. 

HUXLEY,  LEONARD  (1860-1933), 
biographer,  poet,  and  editor  of  the  Corn- 
hill  Magazine,  was  bom  in  London  11 
December  1860,  the  second,  but  elder 
surviving,  son  of  the  famous  scientist 
Thomas  Henry  Huxley  [q.v.],  by  his  wife, 
Henrietta  Ann,  daughter  of  Henry 
Heathom,  of  Bathurst,  New  South  Wales. 
He  was  educated  at  University  College 
School,  at  St.  Andrews  University,  and  at 


Balliol  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  a 
exhibitioner  and  where  he  obtained  a  fin 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1881)  am 
in  literae  humaniores  (1883).  In  1884  h 
became  an  assistant  master  at  Charte 
house  and  stayed  there  until  in  1901  h 
joined  the  publishing  firm  of  Smith,  Elderj 
&  company,  becoming  the  close  friend  am 
literary  adviser  of  Reginald  John  Smitl 
[q.v.]  and  his  assistant  in  the  editorship  ol 
the  Cornhill  Magazine.  After  the  deat 
of  Smith  in  1916  and  the  amalgamation  ol 
his  firm  in  the  following  year  with  Jo! 
Murray's,  Huxley  willingly  migrated  t 
Albemarle  Street  and  there  continued 
role  of  valued  friend  and  adviser  as  well 
becoming  sole  editor  of  the  Cornhill, 
position  which  gave  him  full  scope  foi 
showing  his  kindness  to,  interest  in,  am 
almost  paternal  encouragement  of  honesi 
literary  effort. 

In  1885  Huxley  married  Julia  Frano 
(died  1908),  daughter  of  Thomas  Arnol 
and  sister  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  [qq.v.] 
she  was  the  successful  headmistress  o: 
Priorsfield  School,  near  Godalming.  B 
her  he  had  a  daughter  and  three  sons,  tb 
second  of  whom  died  in  1914,  while  th 
other  two.  Dr.  Julian  and  Mr.  Aldoui 
Huxley,  are  both  well  known  for  the: 
scientific  and  literary  works.  In  191 
Huxley  married  as  his  second  wife  Rosa-" 
lind,  third  daughter  of  William  Wallace 
Bruce,  and  had  two  sons.  He  was  brother 
in-law  of  John  CoUier  [q.v.],  the  well 
known  portrait-painter,  with  whom  b 
was  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship. 

Huxley's  generous  nature,  combinci 
with  his  veneration  for  the  memory  of  his) 
father  and  his  enjoyment  of  the  successes 
of  his  sons,  saved  him  from  any  sense  of 
being  overshadowed.  Nevertheless,  it  was 
a  great  pleasure  to  him  when  in  1919  his 
old  university  of  St.  Andrews  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
in  recognition  of  his  own  literary  achieve- 
ments. He  wrote  an  outstanding  bio- 
graphy of  his  father,  The  Life  and  Letters 
of  Thomas  Henry  Hurley  (2  vols.,  1900; 
2nd  ed.  3  vols.,  1903),  and  also  The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Sir  Joseph  Dalton  Hooker 
(2  vols.,  1918).  His  poetic  talent,  which 
he  inherited  from  his  mother,  was  proved 
by  his  volume  Anniversaries  (1920),  and, 
among  other  works,  he  skilfuUy  edited 
Jane  Welsh  Carlyle:  Letters  to  her  Family, 
1839-1863  (1924)  and  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning:  Letters  to  her  Sister,  1846-1859 
(1929).  He  always  maintained  his  in- 
herited interest  in  biology,  and  was  an 
enthusiast  for  music  and  the  delights  of 


] 


460 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Iqbal 


open-air  life.  He  died  at  ELampstead  3  May 
1933. 

Portraits  of  Huxley,  by  John  Collier, 
one  as  a  young,  the  other  as  an  older,  man, 
are  in  the  possession  of  his  widow.  The 
head  of  the  portrait  as  a  young  man  was 
j)ainted  by  Marian  Collier  and  finished  by 
lier  husband  after  her  death. 

[The  Times,  4  May  1933;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  Murray. 

INCHCAPE,  first  Eaul  of  (1852- 
1932),  shipowner.  [See  Mackay,  James 
Lyle.] 

INVERNAIRN,  Baron  (1856-1936), 
shipbuilder.  [See  Beardmore,  William.] 

IQBAL,  Sir  MUHAMMAD  (1876- 
1938),  Indian  thinker  and  poet,  was  born 
at  Sialkot  in  the  Punjab  in  February 
1 876.  His  forebears  were  Hindus,  originally 
from  Kashmir,  who  had  been  converted 
to  Islam.  He  was  educated  at  Murray 
(Scottish  Presbyterian)  College  at  Sialkot 
and  Government  College,  Lahore  (after- 
wards the  university  of  Lahore),  where  his 
brilliance  gained  him  a  post  as  lecturer  in 
philosophy,  first  in  the  Oriental  College 
and  later  in  Government  College.  During 
these  years  he  came  under  the  influence  of 
(Sir)  T.  W.  Arnold  [q.v.],  who  introduced 
him  to  Western  philosophy  and  the 
principles  of  critical  scholarship.  Wlien 
Arnold  left  Lahore  in  1904  Iqbal  decided 
to  continue  his  studies  in  England  and  in 
1905  was  admitted  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  read  philosophy 
with  J.  M.  E.  M'Taggart  [q.v.].  At  the 
same  time  he  attended  law  lectures  at 
Lincoln's  Inn  and  was  called  to  the  bar  in 
1908.  From  Cambridge  he  went  to  Ger- 
many and  obtained  the  degree  of  D.Ph. 
from  Munich  University  for  a  thesis 
published  in  1908  under  the  title  of  The 
Development  of  Metaphysics  in  Persia.  In 
1908  Iqbal  returned  to  India,  and  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  practised  as  a  barrister,  a 
profession  which  he  valued  for  its  inde- 
pendence. In  1923  he  was  knighted,  and 
from  1927  to  1929  was  a  member  of  the 
Pimjab  legislative  council.  Through  his 
poems  he  had  already  won  an  outstanding 
position  in  the  Indian  Moslem  community, 
and  he  served  as  president  of  the  All-India 
Moslem  League  in  1930  (when  the 
Pakistan  project  was  definitely  adopted 
as  the  political  objective  of  the  League) 
and  as  a  delegate  to  the  first  Round  Table 
Conference  held  in  London  in  1931  to 
frame  a  constitution  for  India.  In  his  last 


years  he  took  little  part  in  politics.  He 
died  at  Lahore  21  April  1938,  and  was 
buried  there. 

For  the  last  twenty-five  years  of  his  life 
Iqbal  stood  in  a  class  by  himself  as  a 
Moslem  thinker  and  poet.  Impressed  by 
the  vigour  and  vitality  of  Europe  and  of 
Western  thought,  he  saw  in  the  social 
apathy  of  Moslem  pantheism  the  cause  of 
Moslem  decadence,  and  in  reaction  against 
its  negations  he  was  drawn  towards  the 
evolutionary  philosophy  of  Bergson  and 
Nietzsche.  It  became  his  fixed  purpose  to 
infuse  into  Indian  Islam  the  same  spirit  of 
activism.  His  first  major  work,  a  Persian 
masnavi  sequence  entitled  Asrdr-i  Khudl 
(1915 ;  translated  into  English,  with  an 
introduction,  by  Dr.  Reynold  Alleyne 
Nicholson  as  The  Secrets  of  the  Self,  1920), 
with  its  gospel  of  the  creative  ego  striving 
to  achieve  freedom  and  the  fuller  develop- 
ment of  personality,  took  the  younger 
generation  of  Indian  Moslems  by  storm. 
But  together  with  this  he  insisted  that 
the  true  development  of  personality  could 
be  achieved  only  by  sinking  the  self  in 
the  service  of  a  community  inspired  by 
common  spiritual  traditions  and  in  the 
pursuit  of  its  highest  values.  Such  a 
society  could  not  be  found  in  the  West 
because  of  the  evils  inherent  in  Western 
civilization  and  social  order,  in  the 
materialism  of  Western  thought,  and  the 
corrupting  influences  of  nationalism  and 
imperialism.  In  contrast  to  these  he  saw 
in  Islam  the  pattern  within  which  the 
social  endeavour  and  spiritual  life  of  the 
developing  personality  should  be  inte- 
grated. This  was  the  theme  of  his  second 
poetic  work,  Rumuz-i  Bekhudi  ('The 
Symbols  of  the  Non-Self'),  issued  in  1918. 

These  two  doctrines,  the  sustained 
struggle  of  the  awakened  ego  to  raise 
humanity  to  a  higher  stage  of  evolution, 
and  the  moral,  spiritual,  and  intellectual 
values  of  an  idealized  Islamic  community, 
were  developed  and  diversified  in  Iqbal's 
later  poems.  These  were  composed  some- 
times, like  the  first  two,  in  Persian  for  the 
sake  of  a  wider  Moslem  circle,  although 
there  is  no  indication  that  they  were  much 
read  outside  India:  Paydm-i  Mashriq 
('The  Message  of  the  East'),  in  reply  to 
Goethe's  West-ostlicher  Divan  (1923); 
Zabur-i  Ajam  ('Persian  Psalms',  1927); 
Jdvid-Ndmah  ('The  Book  of  Eternity'), 
modelled  after  the  Divina  Commedia 
(1932).  Sometimes  they  were  composed 
in  Urdu  for  his  own  Indian  public :  Bdng-i 
Dard  (1924);  Bdl-i  Jihrll  (1935);  and 
Darb-i  Kalim  (1936). 


461 


Iqbal 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


A  more  systematic  account  of  his 
thought  was  put  together  by  Iqbal  in  a 
course  of  lectures  delivered  at  Madras  in 
1928-1929  and  published  as  The  Recon- 
struction of  Religious  Thought  in  Islam 
(1930;  second  ed.,  with  a  supplementary 
chapter,  1934).  Throwing  aside  the  tradi- 
tional transcendentalist  dogmas  of  Islam, 
as  the  imposition  of  an  alien  Hellenistic 
philosophy,  he  set  out  to  reinterpret  the 
Koran  in  evolutionary  and  immanentist 
terms.  As  a  thinker,  his  chief  weakness 
was  a  failure  to  eliminate  or  reconcile  the 
contradictions  in  his  ethical  teaching, 
where  a  dynamism  of  Western  inspiration 
came  into  conflict  with  his  insistence  upon 
the  cultural  values  of  the  Islamic  tradi- 
tion. Nevertheless,  he  had  an  immense 
influence  upon  the  contemporary  genera- 
tion of  Indian  Moslem  intellectuals,  and 
after  his  death  an  'Iqbal  Academy'  was 
founded  at  Lahore  to  expound  and  propa- 
gate his  ideas. 

[The  Times,  22  April  1938 ;  Sir  M.  Iqbal's 
works;  S.  Abdul  Wahid,  Iqbal:  his  Art  and 
Thought,  1944 ;  K.  G.  Saiyidain,  IqbaVs  Educa- 
tional Philosophy,  1938 ;  Iqbal  as  a  Thinker  by 
various  writers,  1945 ;  Shad  Iqbal  (correspon- 
dence with  Raja  Sir  Kishen  Parshad),  edited 
by  S.  M.  Qadiri,  1942 ;  private  information.] 
H.  A.  R.  GiBB. 

ISAACS,  RUFUS  DANIEL,  first 
Marquess  of  Reading  (1860-1935),  lord 
chief  justice  of  England,  ambassador  to 
the  United  States  of  America,  and  viceroy 
of  India,  was  born  in  the  parish  of  St. 
Mary  Axe,  London,  10  October  1860.  He 
was  the  second  son  and  the  fourth  of  the 
nine  children  of  Joseph  Michael  Isaacs,  a 
Jewish  fruit  merchant,  then  carrying  on 
business  in  Spitalfields,  by  his  wife,  Sarah, 
daughter  of  Daniel  Davis,  of  London,  a 
woman  of  strong  character  who  wielded 
unchallenged  sway  over  her  growing 
household.  Joseph  Isaacs's  daughter 
Esther  Stella  became  the  wife  of  Alfred 
Sutro  [q.v.];  his  brother  Henry  was  lord 
mayor  of  London  in  1889-1890.  Rufus  did 
not  receive  all  the  education  which  his 
father's  income  would  have  justified ;  after 
two  years  at  a  school  in  Brussels,  which  he 
left  at  the  age  of  seven,  he  was  for  some 
years  a  boarder  at  an  Anglo-Jewish 
academy  in  Regent's  Park  and  then 
attended  for  some  months  at  University 
CoUege  School  in  Gower  Street.  His 
schooldays  were  over  before  he  was  yet 
fourteen.  It  says  much  for  the  courageous 
determination  and  quick  adaptability 
with  which  he  faced  some  later  stages  of 


his   remarkable   career  that   this   initial] 
handicap  was  so  largely  overcome. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  Isaacs,  after  a , 
period  in  Hanover  spent  in  learning  some  i 
German,  entered  the  service  of  the  family ; 
business,  an  occupation  which  he  soon 
grew  to  dislike,  while  his  spare  time  was 
given  to  many  lively  escapades.  There  is 
no  truth  in  the  story  that  he  ran  away  to 
sea ;  his  parents  arranged  for  him  to  join 
the  saiUng-ship  Blair  Athole  as  an  appren- 
tice, but,  scanning  the  apprenticeship 
deed,  he  refused  to  pledge  himself  to  the 
stipulated  two  years  of  service  and  chose 
instead  to  sign  articles  for  the  round 
voyage  as  a  ship's  boy  at  the  wage  of  ten 
shillings  a  month  (October  1876).  The 
experiment  did  not  work  out  well ;  he 
tried  to  leave  the  ship  at  Rio  de  Janeiro, 
but  was  caught  and  in  due  course  sailed 
in  her  up  the  Hooghly  and,  in  April  1877, 
saw  the  country  which  he  was  next  to 
revisit  as  viceroy  forty-four  years  later. 
When  the  Blair  Athole  reached  London 
Isaacs  abandoned  further  employment  at 
sea  and  for  a  time  resumed  the  unattrac- 
tive routine  of  work  in  the  fruit  trade.  In 
1880  he  exchanged  this  drudgery  for  the 
Stock  Exchange,  where  he  carried  on  the 
business  of  a  jobber  in  the  foreign  market, 
an  enterprise  which  ended  in  the  disaster 
of  his  being  'hammered'  when  over- 
whelmed by  a  sudden  slump  in  August 
1884.  It  was  then  proposed  that  he  should 
endeavour  to  repair  his  finances  and  repay 
liis  creditors  by  going  to  seek  his  fortune 
in  central  America,  but  his  mother  inter- 
vened and  insisted  that,  instead,  he  should 
read  for  the  bar. 

Isaacs  studied  law  for  six  months  in  the 
office  of  Algernon  Sydney,  a  solicitor  who 
was  a  personal  friend  of  his  family.  In 
January  1885  he  was  admitted  as  a 
student  to  the  Middle  Temple.  He  read 
for  a  year  as  a  pupil  in  the  chambers  of 
(Sir)  J.  L.  Walton  [q.v.],  then  a  rising 
Common  Law  junior,  and  was  called  to 
the  bar  in  November  1887.  Three  weeks 
later  he  was  married  to  Alice  Edith,  third 
daughter  of  Albert  Cohen,  a  City  merchant, 
at  the  West  London  synagogue. 

Isaacs  at  once  established  himself  in 
chambers  of  his  own  at  1  Garden  Court, 
Temple.  Work  came  quickly  and  his  first 
year  of  practice  produced  £519.  The 
establishment  of  the  Commercial  Court  in 
1895  provided  him  with  a  forum  in  which 
his  inside  knowledge  of  the  Stock  Ex- 
change and  his  practical  experience  of 
commercial  documents  gave  him  unusual 
qualifications  for  successful  argument,  and 


462 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Isaacs 


another  branch  of  the  law  in  which  he  was 
s{x!cially  occupied  was  that  relating  to 
t  rade  unions.  He  became  overwhelmingly 
l)usy,  and  after  ten  and  a  half  years  in  a 
stuff  gown,  his  application  for  silk  was 

I  granted  by  Lord  Chancellor  Halsbury  in 

!  April  1898. 

Isaacs  soon  attained  a  position  in  the 
front  row  where  he  became  the  acknow- 

i  ledged  equal  of  competitors  as  powerful 
and  distinguished  as  Sir  Edward  Clarke 
and  Sir  Edward  Carson  [qq.v.].  His 
practice  lay  chiefly  in  heavy  cases  of  a 
business  kind  or  before  special  juries,  with 
occasional  excursions  to  the  divorce  court 
or  the  Old  Bailey.  It  is  impossible  within 
reasonable  limits  of  space  to  give  a  list  of 
his  chief  forensic  triumphs ;  amongst  them 
were  the  Taff  Vale  litigation  (1902),  the 
prosecution  of  Whitaker  Wright  (q.v., 
1904),  the  defence  of  Sir  Edward  Russell 
(1905),  and  the  defence  of  Robert  Sievier 
(1908).  Such  a  burden  could  only  have 
been  discharged  by  a  man  of  great  physical 
and  mental  vigour.  Isaacs's  method  was 
to  start  the  preparation  for  the  day's 
labours  at  a  very  early  hour  before  break- 
fast ;  he  made  it  his  rule  not  to  do  legal 
work  after  dinner. 

Isaacs's  fine  presence  and  handsome 
features,  combined  with  a  voice  of  rare 
quality,  expressive  hands,  and  an  alert 
glance  that  compelled  attention,  made 
him  an  advocate  of  the  first  rank,  while 
his  complete  mastery  of  the  facts,  his 
moderation  in  statement,  and  his  firm  but 
courteous  attitude  in  argument,  always 
secured  him  a  friendly  reception  from  the 
bench.  Among  his  brethren  at  the  bar  he 
was  a  popular  colleague,  completely  un- 
spoiled by  success.  He  was  not  a  profound 
lawyer,  but  hard  work  and  good  sense 
made  him  the  master  of  all  the  law  that 
mattered  for  winning  his  case.  His  cross- 
examination  was  often  very  effective,  al- 
though his  questions  had  not  the  crispness 
of  Carson's;  and  his  speeches  in  court, 
expressed  in  commonplace  language  and 
directed  strictly  to  the  matter  in  hand, 
had  a  verdict-getting  quality  which 
showed  how  well  he  understood  what  the 
tribunal  was  thinking.  Indeed,  Isaacs's 
greatest  asset  at  the  bar  was  not  eloquence 
(although  he  was  popularly  regarded  as  a 
fine  orator)  but  a  penetrating  power  of 
judgement,  which  enabled  him  to  see  the 
point  on  which  the  case  would  ultimately 
turn,  the  main  difficulty  of  fact  to  be  sur- 
mounted, and  sometimes  the  moment 
when  compromise  could  wisely  be  effected. 
Isaacs's  political  leanings  had  always 


been  to  the  liberal  side.  In  the  internal 
dissension  which  rent  the  liberal  party 
during  the  South  African  war,  his  sympa- 
thies were  with  the  liberal  imperialists. 
After  unsuccessfully  contesting  North 
Kensington  at  the  general  election  of 
1900,  he  was  returned  for  Reading  at  a 
by-election  in  August  1904  and  retained 
that  seat,  in  spite  of  some  close  contests, 
until  his  appointment  as  lord  chief  justice 
in  1913.  He  became  a  bencher  of  his  Irm 
in  1905  and  served  as  treasurer  in  1927. 

In  March  1910,  when  Sir  Samuel  Evans 
[q.v.]  became  president  of  the  Probate, 
Divorce,  and  Admiralty  division,  Isaacs 
was  appointed,  amid  universal  approval, 
to  succeed  him  as  solicitor-general.  In  the 
following  October,  when  Sir  W.  S.  (later 
Lord)  Robson  [q.v.]  left  the  House  of 
Commons  to  become  a  lord  of  appeal, 
Isaacs  succeeded  to  the  attorney-general- 
ship and  thus,  at  the  age  of  fifty,  became 
the  official  head  of  the  bar. 

Isaacs  was  an  excellent  law  officer  and 
brought  all  his  ability  and  industry  to 
bear  on  the  multifarious  business  of  the 
Crown  both  in  court  and  out  of  it.  In  191 1 
he  led  for  the  prosecution  in  Rex  v.  Mylius 
when  the  defendant  was  convicted  of 
criminal  libel  for  circulating  the  utterly 
false  story  that  King  George  V,  whose 
coronation  was  approaching,  was  married 
before  his  marriage  to  Queen  Mary.  In 
1912,  in  the  only  murder  case  in  which  he 
ever  took  part,  he  secured  the  conviction 
of  the  poisoner  Frederick  Henry  Seddon 
at  the  Old  Bailey,  and  later  in  the  same 
year,  at  the  height  of  the  militant  suffra- 
gette disturbances,  he  prosecuted  (sup- 
porter though  he  was  of  votes  for  women 
as  a  constitutional  reform)  Mrs.  Emmeline 
Pankhurst  [q.v.]  and  others  for  conspiring 
to  commit  injury  and  damage. 

Isaacs  was  also  heavily  occupied  on  the 
Treasury  bench  in  aiding  to  pilot  govern- 
ment bills  through  the  House  of  Commons 
and  in  particular  rendered  strenuous  help 
to  the  carrying  of  Lloyd  George's  Health 
Insurance  Act  (1911).  His  industry  and 
geniality  were  everywhere  appreciated, 
and  he  took  great  pains  in  the  endeavour 
to  make  himself  a  successful  parliamen- 
tarian. His  speeches,  however,  did  not 
catch  the  ear  of  the  House  as  effectively 
as  his  innumerable  friends  hoped.  He 
sometimes  tended  to  continue  at  too  great 
length  and  there  was  an  absence  of  striking 
or  memorable  phrase.  Isaacs's  inclusion 
in  the  Privy  Council  was  announced  in  the 
coronation  honours  of  1911.  He  was 
appointed  K.C.V.O.  in  the  same  year. 


463 


Isaacs 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


In  June  1912  Lord  Loreburn  resigned 
the  office  of  lord  chancellor  and  the 
attorney-general  was  deeply  chagrined 
that,  instead  of  himself,  Lord  Haldane  was 
invited  to  occupy  the  woolsack.  At  first 
Isaacs  was  disposed  to  regard  his  being 
passed  over  as  a  reflection  not  only  upon 
himself  but  upon  his  race.  His  ruffled 
feelings,  however,  were  more  than  soothed 
by  the  prime  minister's  invitation  that  the 
attorney -general  should  become  a  member 
of  the  Cabinet — a  new  but  questionable 
precedent,  which  has  seldom  been  followed 
since.  The  result  was  that  Isaacs  had  the 
great  satisfaction  of  entering  the  inner 
circle  of  government  without  having  to 
give  up  his  membership  of  the  House  of 
Commons. 

The  even  tenor  of  Isaacs's  advancement 
was  now  grievously  interrupted  by  the 
'Marconi'  controversy.  When  wireless 
communication,  of  which  Guglielmo  Mar- 
coni was  one  of  the  scientific  pioneers,  was 
in  its  first  stage  of  commercial  develop- 
ment, Isaacs's  brother  Godfrey  became 
joint  managing  director  of  the  Marconi 
Wireless  Telegraph  Company  and,  in 
March  1912,  obtained  for  his  company  a 
contract  with  the  Post  Office  for  a  long- 
distance service,  subject  to  ratification  by 
the  House  of  Commons.  In  point  of  fact, 
neither  of  the  law  officers  of  the  Crown  was 
ever  consulted  about  this  contract,  which 
was  negotiated  and  settled  departmen- 
tally.  Rumours  nevertheless  began  to  arise 
in  certain  quarters  that  the  monopoly 
obtained  from  the  government  by  the 
Marconi  Company  was  due  to  the  influence 
exercised  by  the  attorney-general  in 
favour  of  his  brother,  and  that  he  and 
certain  other  ministers  who  were  his  close 
friends — namely,  Lloyd  George  and  the 
liberal  chief  whip,  the  Master  6f  Elibank — 
were  seeking  to  make  profits  out  of  the 
shares  of  that  company.  There  was  no 
truth  in  this,  but  what  was  true  was  that 
when  Godfrey  Isaacs  carried  through 
negotiations  with  a  different  company,  the 
American  Marconi  Company,  and  acquired 
as  his  personal  holding  a  large  block  of 
shares  in  that  company,  he,  on  9  April, 
offered  to  dispose  of  some  of  these  shares 
to  his  brothers  Rufus  and  Harry  Isaacs. 
The  American  company  had  no  interest 
in  the  profits  of  the  English  company,  but 
Rufus  refused,  preferring  to  have  no  deal- 
ings with  Godfrey  in  view  of  the  Enghsh 
company's  relations  with  the  government, 
while  Harry  acquired  a  large  shareholding. 
On  17  April— the  Titanic  disaster  occurred 
in   the   interval   and   demonstrated   the 


importance  of  wireless  communication 
sea — Harry  independently  offered 
Rufus  some  of  his  American  shares  and  t' 
attorney-general  bought  10,000  at  i 
market  price  of  £2,  and  later  on  the  sa; 
day,  transferred  1 ,000  of  them  to  each 
his  two  ministerial  friends.  There  can 
no  question  but  that  these  transaction* 
in  the  American  shares,  carried  out  as  they 
were  in  the  parties'  own  names,  operated 
to  confirm  the  unfounded  rumour  which 
began  to  be  exploited  in  sections  of  the 
press,  that  ministers  of  a  government 
which  was  making  an  agreement  with  the 
English  Marconi  company  were  improperly 
interesting  themselves  in  the  shares  of  that 
company. 

It  was  not  until  11  October  that  the 
postmaster-general,  Mr.  Herbert  (later 
Lord)  Samuel,  could  move  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  select  committee  to  investigate 
and  report  upon  the  Marconi  contract  and 
the  attorney-general  intervened  to  deal 
with  criticisms  in  the  debate  affecting 
himself.  He  repudiated  completely  the 
false  insinuations  made  against  him 
regard  to  the  English  Marconi  compan 
but  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  refer 
his  holding  in  the  American  compan; 
with  which  the  British  government  h 
nothing  to  do.  It  was  a  lamentable  err 
of  judgement.  The  further  informatio: 
was  made  public  in  the  course  of  an  un- 
defended action  for  libel  against  the  Paris 
newspaper  Le  Matin  in  March  1913,  and 
shortly  afterwards  (25  March)  Isaacs  at 
last  got  his  opportunity  of  appearing 
before  the  select  committee,  which  had 
already  been  sitting  for  six  months.  In 
the  meantime  he  had  had  to  endure  fierce 
attacks  from  a  portion  of  the  press.  His 
evidence  extended  over  three  days  and 
completely  disposed  of  any  allegation  of 
corruption.  Whether  his  conduct  involved 
impropriety  was  debated  by  the  com- 
mittee, but  in  the  end  the  final  Report, 
adopted  by  a  majority,  acquitted  the 
ministers  involved  by  declaring  that  they 
had  acted  throughout  in  the  sincere  belief 
that  what  they  did  was  not  in  conflict  with 
their  pubhc  duty. 

In  the  debate  upon  the  Report  on 
18  June  the  attorney-general  declared 
that,  while  at  the  time  he  considered  that 
the  pm-chase  of  these  American  shares  was 
quite  unobjectionable,  he  had  come  to 
reaUze  that  'it  was  a  mistake  to  purchase 
those  shares'.  The  House  adopted  a 
motion  accepting  this  expression  of  regret, 
reprobating  any  charge  of  corruption,  and 
acquitting  the  ministers  of  acting  other- 
464. 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Isaacs 


wise  than  in  good  faith.  Isaacs  suffered 
acutely  during  this  long  and  painful  con- 
troversy, although  none  but  the  most 
credulous  and  most  malignant  could  have 
supposed  that  he  had  acted  from  corrupt 
motives.  He  was  sustained  by  the  con- 
tinued confidence  reposed  in  him  by  his 
constituency  and  by  the  proofs  that  his 
friends  of  the  bar  knew  him  to  be  of  tm- 
suUied  character. 

The  dying  embers  of  this  unhappy  dis- 
pute, which  throughout  had  been  inflamed 
i)y  fierce  party  feeling,  had  hardly  ceased 
to  glow  when  the  position  of  lord  chief 
justice  fell  vacant  through  the  retirement 
of  Viscount  Alverstone  in  October  1913. 
Asquith,  the  prime  minister,  had  no  hesi- 
tation in  offering  the  post  to  Isaacs,  who 
accepted  it.  At  the  swearing-in  ceremony 
on  22  October,  Lord  Haldane  spoke  of 
him  as  '  a  man  of  the  highest  honour '  and 
the  welcome  which  he  received  showed 
that  the  profession  shared  this  opinion  to 
the  full.  He  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Baron  Reading  in  the  New  Year's  honours 
list  of  1914. 

Had  it  not  been  for  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  August  1914,  Lord  Reading  might  have 
continued  to  discharge  the  functions  of 
the  head  of  the  King's  Bench  division  for 
a  full  span  of  judicial  service,  and  have 
become  an  outstanding  figure  on  the 
illustrious  roll  of  chief  justices.  His  wide 
experience  and  dignified  bearing  fitted  him 
for  such  a  part,  and  he  gave  general  satis- 
faction while  performing  his  duties  in  the 
lord  chief  justice's  court.  But  at  the  out- 
break of  war  his  help  was  called  for  to 
assist  the  Treasury  in  framing  financial 
and  legislative  plans  for  the  domestic 
emergency,  and  although  he  retained  the 
chief  justiceship  until  1921,  and  inter- 
mittently presided  (for  example,  in  settling 
the  status  of  an  enemy  alien  in  Porter  v. 
Freudenburg,  1915,  and  at  the  trial  for 
treason  of  Roger  Casement  [q.v.],  1916) 
his  statesmanlike  qualities  were  through- 
out the  war  increasingly  employed  on 
special  duties  of  the  highest  order  imposed 
upon  him  by  the  successive  governments 
of  Great  Britain. 

In  September  1915  Reading,  who  had 
been  appointed  G.C.B.  at  the  New  Year, 
led  the  Anglo-French  mission  to  the 
United  States  to  seek  American  credits  for 
supplies  urgently  needed  for  carrying  on 
the  war.  He  achieved  a  brilliant  success, 
and  after  immense  efforts  secured  a  loan, 
to  be  spent  in  the  United  States,  of  500 
million  dollars.  He  returned  in  October 
and  went  back  to  the  more  limited  scope 


of  his  judicial  work,  with  an  api)etite 
whetted  for  wider  responsibilities.  The 
government  continued  to  take  constant 
advantage  of  his  advice,  and  he  was  ad- 
vanced to  a  viscountcy  in  the  birthday 
honours  of  1916. 

The  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the 
war  in  AprU  1917  made  it  more  necessary 
than  ever  that  the  complicated  strands  of 
Anglo-American  finance  should  be 
gathered  together  in  the  hands  of  the 
right  man,  and  in  September  Reading 
again  crossed  the  Atlantic  with  the  special 
appointment  of  high  commissioner,  and  a 
mandate  which  covered  Canada  also.  He 
had  expected  that  his  absence  would  be 
brief,  but  the  tasks  which  beset  him  were 
so  intricate  that  he  could  not  get  back 
until  November,  and  even  then  was  kept 
engrossed  in  financial  matters  in  London 
where  the  British  War  Cabinet  required 
his  assistance.  An  earldom  was  conferred 
upon  him  in  that  same  month. 

Reading's  exceptional  qualifications 
both  as  skilled  negotiator  and  as  promoter 
of  good  will  between  his  own  country  and 
the  United  States  were  widely  recognized 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  and  the 
successes  that  had  attended  his  labours 
led  to,  and  abundantly  justified,  his 
appointment  in  January  1918  as  ambas- 
sador to  Washington,  in  succession  to 
Sir  Cecil  Spring-Rice  [q.v.].  At  the  same 
time  his  authority  to  deal  on  Great 
Britain's  behalf  with  every  aspect  of  the 
war  effort  was  emphasized  by  the  addi- 
tional title  of  high  conunissioner.  He  and 
Lady  Reading,  whose  pluck  in  spite  of 
ill  health  was  unfailing,  made  an  un- 
comfortable crossing  in  February.  The 
new  ambassador  had  to  handle  a  host  of 
delicate  and  urgent  problems — amongst 
them  the  acceleration  of  food  supplies  to 
Great  Britain,  negotiations  for  the  more 
rapid  availability  of  American  troops  in 
the  crisis  of  the  war,  the  question  of  inter- 
vention in  Russia  and  in  the  Far  East,  and 
complex  financial  arrangements  of  many 
kinds — and  yet  he  found  time  for  a  series 
of  public  speeches  well  calculated  to  sustain 
Anglo-American  co-operation.  In  June  he 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Harvard,  Yale,  Princeton,  and 
Columbia.  He  continued  to  work  at  intense 
pressure  at  Washington  until  July  1918, 
after  which  the  ambassador's  presence  in 
England  was  required  for  the  next  six 
months.  In  the  interval  the  armistice  in 
Europe  presaged  the  end  of  his  war  ser- 
vice and  in  May  1919  he  was  succeeded  as 
ambassador  by  Viscount  Grey  of  Fallodon. 


465 


Hh 


Isaacs 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


The  services  which  Reading  rendered  to 
his  country  and  to  the  Allies  as  ambas- 
sador to  the  United  States  in  the  last  year 
of  the  war  were  everywhere  regarded  as 
invaluable.  Lloyd  George  addressed  to 
him  a  letter  (21  May)  in  which  he  declared : 
'  When  the  time  comes . . .  the  leading  part 
which  you  played  in  co-ordinating  the 
war-effort  of  the  United  States  and  the 
other  Allies,  and,  above  all,  in  helping  to 
bring  about  that  dramatic  movement  of 
the  American  Army  in  Europe  in  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1918,  which  contri- 
buted so  strikingly  to  the  Allied  victory 
in  the  later  autumn,  will  be  understood  in 
its  true  perspective.' 

Reading's  position  while  combining  the 
positions  of  war-time  ambassador  and  lord 
chief  justice  was  exceedingly  anomalous ; 
the  foreign  secretary  (A.  J.  Balfour),  when 
urging  him  to  continue  at  Washington 
longer  than  he  had  at  first  intended, 
recognized  his  difficulty.  'We  cannot 
think',  he  had  cabled  in  the  summer  of 
1918,  'in  the  circumstances  the  judiciary 
would  insist  on  your  early  return  to  your 
high  office,  as,  however  great  their  depri- 
vation may  be,  it  is  after  all  domestic, 
while  duties  you  are  now  executing  are 
essential  to  effective  prosecution  of  the 
War  and  cannot  be  performed  by  another.' 

Reading  now  retimied  to  the  lord  chief 
justice's  court.  But  at  the  end  of  1920  his 
kaleidoscopic  career  included  another  call 
for  wider  service.  In  January  1921  it  was 
announced  that  Reading  had  been  chosen 
to  succeed  F.  J.  N.  Thesiger,  Lord  Chelms- 
ford [q.v,],  as  viceroy  of  India.  He  went  to 
India  at  a  critical  time.  The  Montagu- 
Chelmsford  reforms  had  been  put  into 
legislative  shape  by  the  Act  of  1919  and 
it  was  a  chief  task  of  the  new  viceroy  to 
watch  over  their  early  apphcation.  The 
frustration  of  the  new  plans  was  the  ob- 
ject of  Gandhi,  who  hoped  by  fomenting 
Mohammedan  resentment  at  the  terms  of 
the  Treaty  of  Sevres  to  combine  Hindu 
and  Moslem  on  a  common  platform  of 
non-co-operation.  Agitation  became  rife 
and  led  to  many  violent  demonstrations, 
but  Reading  showed  much  patience  before 
resorting  to  extreme  measures.  In  the 
summer  of  1921  he  was  constrained  to 
arrest  the  Ah  brothers,  and  in  March  1922 
Gandhi  was  imprisoned.  In  August  1921 
he  had  to  deal  with  the  ferocious  rebeUion 
of  the  Moplahs  in  the  Madras  Presidency. 
Notwithstanding  the  disturbed  conditions, 
the  visit  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  India, 
planned  to  take  place  in  November  1921, 
was  carried  through. 


In  the  following  year,  Sikh  agitation  in 
the  Punjab  reached  extreme  heights,  and 
the  boycott  by  the  Congress  party  of  the 
reformed  legislatures  was  accompanied  by 
grave  pohtical  tension.  Not  content  with 
mere  repression,  Reading  on  28  February 
1922  sent  to  E.  S.  Montagu  [q.v.],  the 
secretary  of  state  for  India,  a  dispatch 
strongly  representing  the  interest  of 
Indian  Moslems  in  the  post-war  treatment 
of  Turkey  and  putting  forward  the  govern- 
ment of  India's  request  for  a  revision  of 
the  Treaty  of  Sevres.  Montagu  agreed  to 
make  this  dispatch  public.  He  did  so 
without  obtaining  the  consent  of  the  prime 
minister  and  foreign  secretary,  with  the 
result  that  he  had  to  resign  his  office.  The 
viceroy  was  deeply  stirred,  although  his 
own  action  had  been  unexceptionable,  and 
for  a  time  he  hesitated  whether  he  should 
not  follow  the  minister  into  retirement. 
Second  thoughts  proved  best;  the  value 
of  his  liberal  outlook  was  preserved  for 
India,  and  after  Bonar  Law's  government 
had  come  into  power,  the  negotiation  of 
the  Lausanne  treaty  went  far  to  reheve 
Moslem  anxieties. 

The  Indian  elections  of  1923  saw  the 
abandonment  by  Congress  of  its  previous 
boycott  of  the  legislatures,  although  its 
policy  of  attacking  the  reforms  from  the 
inside  brought  consequences  to  meet  which 
Reading  felt  compelled  to  authorize  ex- 
ceptional measures ;  but  in  February  1924 
Gandhi  was  released.  In  May  1924  the 
committee  on  the  working  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  India  Act,  presided  over  by  Sir 
Alexander  Muddiman  [q.v.],  was  ap- 
pointed and  its  Report,  published  in 
March  1925,  led  to  much  controversy. 
Reading  hoped  (although  the  hope  was  not 
realized  until  after  his  time)  that  one  result 
might  be  to  advance  the  setting  up  of  the 
statutory  commission  which  was  due  to 
be  appointed  not  more  than  ten  years 
from  the  passing  of  the  Act  of  1919. 
Reading  left  India  in  April  1926.  He  had 
discharged  his  viceregal  duties  with  great 
distinction  in  most  difficult  years,  avoid- 
ing all  vague  and  high-sounding  promises 
while  applying  his  practical  mind  in  a 
liberal  spirit  to  every  problem  that  came 
before  him.  In  recognition  of  his  services 
he  was  in  April  created  a  marquess,  and 
in  June  he  received  the  freedom  of  the 
City  of  London.  He  had  been  appointed 
G.C.S.L  and  G.C.I.E.  in  1921  and  G.C.V.O. 
in  1922.  The  universities  of  Cambridge 
and  Oxford  (1926)  conferred  honorary 
degrees  upon  him. 

After  his  return  to  England,  Reading, 


466 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Isherwood 


I  )esides  undertaking  a  number  of  business 
posts  of  which  the  most  important  was  his 
association,  first  as  director,  and  later  as 
{^resident,  with  Imperial  Chemical  Indus- 
tries, played  a  dominating  part  in  the 
Hound  Table  Conference  on  the  Indian 
constitution  which  was  called  by  the  labour 
^'ovemment  in  1930.  In  January  of  that 
>  ear  Lady  Reading  died.  In  August  1931 
lie  married  SteUa,  third  daughter  of 
Charles  Charnaud ;  she  had  long  acted  as 
principal  secretary  in  the  Reading  house- 
liold.  When,  just  afterwards,  Ramsay 
-MacDonald  formed  his  all-party  govern- 
ment, Reading,  now  aged  nearly  seventy- 
one,  was  appointed  foreign  secretary,  but 
after  the  general  election  in  October  he 
resigned  the  post. 

In  1934  Reading  was  appointed  lord 
warden  of  the  Cinque  Ports,  having  held 
tlie  captaincy  of  Deal  Castle  from  1926. 
He  died  in  London  30  December  1935,  and 
was  succeeded  as  second  marquess  by  his 
only  child,  Gerald  Rufus  (bom  1889),  who 
became  a  barrister  of  the  Middle  Temple 
(K.C.,  1929)  and  had  borne  the  courtesy 
title  of  Viscoimt  Erleigh. 

Reading  was  a  man  of  impressive  per- 
sonahty  and  winning  charm.  His  courtesy 
and  tact  contributed  powerfully  to  the 
success  of  everytliing  which  he  undertook. 
While  his  manner  was  reserved  and  he 
detested  undue  effusiveness,  the  sweetness 
of  his  nature  gave  him  a  host  of  friends 
and  admirers.  He  remained  throughout 
a  proud  upholder  of  his  race,  without 
taking  any  part  in  Jewish  observances. 
In  his  youth  he  was  a  fine  boxer. 

There  is  a  strking  portrait  of  Reading 
by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo  in  the  viceroy's  house 
at  Delhi.  Other  portraits  include  a  full- 
length  in  the  robes  of  the  Star  of  India, 
by  Oswald  Birley,  which  hangs  in  the 
Middle  Temple,  and  an  earlier  one,  by  the 
same  artist,  in  lord  chief  justice's  robes 
in  Reading  Municipal  Art  Gallery.  A  chalk 
drawing  by  (Sir)  William  Rothenstein 
(1925)  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
C.  S.  Jagger  [q.v.]  executed  a  life-size 
statue  of  him  which  is  at  New  Delhi;  a 
bust  by  Lady  Kennet  (Kathleen  Scott) 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  family.  A 
cartoon  of  him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  18  February  1904. 

[The  Times,  31  December  1935;  Lord 
Reading  (son),  Rufus  Isaacs,  first  Marquess 
of  Reading,  2  vols.,  1942-1945;  personal 
knowledge.]  Simon. 

ISHERWOOD,  Sir  JOSEPH  WIL- 
LIAM, first  baronet  (1870-1937),  ship  de- 


signer, was  bom  at  Hartlepool  23  June 
1870,  the  son  of  John  Isherwood,  by  his 
wife,  Mary  Ellen  Dobinson,  of  Stockton- 
on-Tees.  He  was  educated  at  Luggs 
School,  Hartlepool. 

When  about  fifteen  years  of  age  Isher- 
wood entered  the  drawing  office  of  Edward 
Withy  &  company,  shipbuilders,  of  Hartle- 
pool, and,  after  serving  in  various  other 
departments,  left  that  firm  to  join  the  staff 
of  the  principal  ship  surveyor  of  Lloyd's 
Register  of  Shipping  in  1896.  It  became 
his  duty  to  examine  day  by  day  the  plans 
of  ships,  and  particularly  cargo  ships,  for 
which  that  society's  classification  was  de- 
sired. He  soon  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  ships  for  the  carriage  of  dry  cargo 
and  oil  could  be  designed  which  would  be 
cheaper  to  build  and  would  carry  more 
cargo,  and  thus  be  more  profitable  in 
operation  at  sea.  In  1907,  when  he  re- 
signed his  position  at  Lloyd's  Register,  he 
published  particulars  of  his  new  invention, 
which  came  to  be  known  as  the  longi- 
tudinal system,  in  the  Shipping  World.  It 
was  at  once  recognized  that  Isherwood 
had  made  a  notable  contribution  to  the 
science  of  naval  architecture.  After  a 
short  association  vnth  the  shipbuilding 
firm  of  Messrs.  Craggs,  at  Middlesbrough, 
he  began  to  practise  as  a  naval  architect 
in  London.  Later  he  developed  an  im- 
proved 'bracketless '  system  and  later  still 
introduced  a  new  design  of  hull  form, 
namely,  the  'arcform'.  Several  ships  of 
this  type  were  immediately  laid  down  and 
gave  satisfactory  results. 

By  1937,  2,500  ships,  cargo  vessels,  and 
oil  tankers,  the  design  of  which  incor- 
porated one  or  more  of  Isherwood's  special 
designs,  had  been  built  and  upwards  of 
fifty  'Isherwood'  ships  were  under  con- 
struction in  the  shipyards  of  this  and  other 
countries,  representing  the  'arcform'  de- 
sign and  the  '  combination '  and  '  bracket- 
less'  systems.  He  also  introduced  an 
ingenious  type  of  steel  hatch  cover. 

Isherwood,  who  was  created  a  baronet 
in  1921  in  recognition  of  his  contributions 
to  the  progress  of  naval  architecture  and 
his  work  for  the  government  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  retained  to  the  end  of 
his  life  the  enthusiasm  of  youth  tempered 
by  the  experience  of  advancing  years.  He 
was  always  thinking  out  and  testing  new 
ideas  and  extending  and  improving  the 
organization  of  his  offices  in  London  and 
New  York,  which  dealt  with  orders  from 
shipowners  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Worshipful  Company 
of  Shipwrights,  of  the  Institution  of  Naval 


467 


Isherwood 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Architects,  of  the  North-East  Coast  Insti- 
tution of  Engineers  and  Shipbuilders,  and 
of  the  Society  of  Naval  Architects  and 
Marine  Engineers,  New  York.  He  was 
also  a  member  for  many  years  of  the  tech- 
nical committee  of  Lloyd's  Register  of 
Shipping. 

Isherwood  married  in  1892  Annie  Mary, 
daughter  of  Matthew  Robson  Fleetham, 
and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died 
in  London  24  October  1937  and  was  suc- 
ceeded as  second  baronet  by  his  son, 
William  (bom  1898). 

[The  Times,  25  October  1937.] 

Archibald  Kurd. 

ISLINGTON,  Baron  (1866-1936).  [See 
PoYNDER,  Sir  John  Poynder  Dickson-.] 

ISMAY,  JOSEPH  BRUCE  (1862- 
1937),  shipoAvner,  was  born  at  Crosby, 
near  Liverpool,  12  December  1862,  the 
eldest  son  of  Thomas  Henry  Ismay  [q.v.], 
of  Dawpool,  Cheshire,  senior  partner  in 
the  firm  of  Messrs.  Ismay,  Imrie  &  com- 
pany and  founder  of  the  White  Star  Line, 
by  his  wife,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Luke 
Bruce.  He  was  educated  at  Elstree  School 
and  Harrow,  and  on  leaving  the  latter 
went  for  a  year  to  a  tutor  in  France,  after 
which  he  served  an  apprenticeship  of  four 
years  in  his  father's  office  and  then  went 
on  a  year's  tour  round  the  world.  He  was 
then  sent  to  New  York  where  he  worked 
in  the  White  Star  office  for  a  year  at  the 
end  of  which  time  he  was  appointed  agent 
for  the  White  Star  Line  in  New  York.  In 
1891  he  settled  in  England  and  the  same 
year  became  a  partner  in  the  firm  of 
Ismay,  Imrie  &  company. 

After  his  father's  death  in  1899,  Ismay 
became  head  of  the  business  and  his 
management  was  most  brilliant  and  suc- 
cessful. In  1901  he  was  approached  by 
American  interests  towards  forming  an 
International  Shipping  Company,  and 
after  lengthy  negotiations  between  him 
and  J.  P.  Morgan  (1837-1913),  the  Inter- 
national Mercantile  Marine  Company  was 
formed.  C.  A.  Griscom,  president  of  the 
American  Steamship  Line,  was  then  at 
the  head,  but  was  succeeded  in  1904  by 
Ismay,  who  resigned  this  position  in  1912 
and  was  succeeded  by  H.  A.  Sanderson. 

Ismay  was  also  chairman  of  the  Asiatic 
Steam  Navigation  Company,  director  of 
the  Liverpool  London  and  Globe  Insur- 
ance Company,  the  Sea  Insurance  Com- 
pany, the  Birmingham  Canal  Navigation 
Company,  and  the  London,  Midland  and 
Scottish  Railway,  of  which  he  was  offered 


the  chairmanship  but  declined.    He  wa 
chairman    of   the    Liverpool    Steamshij 
Owners  Protection  Association,  the  Liver^ 
pool  and  London  War  Risks  Associatior 
and  the  Delta  Insurance  Company. 

Ismay  inaugurated  the  cadet  ship  Mer\ 
sey  for  training  officers  for  the  merchanf 
navy  and  he  took  the  deepest  interest  ii 
all  ranks  of  the  merchant  service.  He  gav^ 
£11,000  to  found  a  fund  to  benefit  wido\ 
of  seamen  who  lost  their  lives  afloat  and 
in  1919  presented  £25,000  to  establish 
fund  to  'mark  his  admiration  of  the 
splendid  and  gallant  manner  in  which  the 
officers  and  men  of  all  ranks  in  the  Britisl 
Merchant  Marine  have  carried  on  through<j 
out  the  war'. 

Ismay  was  a  man  of  striking  personalitj 
and  in  any  company  arrested  attentioi 
and  dominated  the  scene.  Those  who 
knew  him  slightly  found  his  personaUtj 
overpowering  and  in  consequence  imaginec 
him  to  be  hard,  but  his  friends  knew  tl 
was  but  the  outward  veneer  of  a  shy  anc 
highly  sensitive  nature,  beneath  whicl 
was  hidden  a  depth  of  affection  and  underJ 
standing  which  is  given  to  but  few.  Peri 
haps  his  outstanding  characteristic  wa 
his  deep  feeUng  and  sympathy  for  thfl 
'underdog'  and  he  was  always  anxious  to 
help  anyone  in  trouble.  Another  notable 
trait  was  an  intense  dislike  of  publicitj 
which  he  would  go  to  great  lengths  tc 
avoid.  In  his  youth  he  won  many  prizes 
lawn-tennis  tournaments ;  he  also  played 
association  football,  having  a  natural  aptij 
tude  for  games.  He  enjoyed  shooting  anc 
fishing  and  became  a  first  class  shot  and 
an  expert  fisherman.  Perhaps  the  latte^ 
was  his  favourite  sport  and  he  spent  man) 
happy  holidays  fishing  in  Connemara. 

Ismay  married  in  1888  Julia  FlorenceJ 
eldest  child  of  George  R.  Schieffelin,  of 
New  York,  and  had  two  sons  and  twc 
daughters.  He  died  in  London  17  Octobel 
1937. 

[The  Times,  18  October  1937.] 

Archibald  Hukd. 

JACKSON,   FREDERICK   GEORGE 

(1860-1938),  explorer,  soldier,  and  big- 
game  hunter,  was  bom  at  Alcester, 
Warwickshire,  6  March  1860,  the  eldest 
son  of  George  Frederick  Jackson,  land- 
owner and  agriculturist,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Frederick  Alfred 
Crowe,  rector  of  Alcester.  After  being  at 
school  at  Denstone  College,  he  spent  three 
years  on  a  Queensland  cattle  station,  and 
then  for  a  brief  period  attended  classes  at 
Edinburgh  University. 


468 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Jackson,  H. 


In  1887  Jackson  sailed  for  a  summer 
Noyage  in  the  Greenland  Sea  in  the  sealer 
and  whaler  Eric.  Inspired  by  Fridtjof 
Xansen's  projected  voyage  in  the  Fram, 
.Jackson  published  in  1892  his  plans  for  an 
attempt  on  the  Pole,  using  Franz  Josef 
Land,  then  supposed  to  extend  far  north, 
as  a  base.  In  order  to  test  equipment  and 
<;ain  experience  he  explored  Vaigach 
Island,  in  Arctic  Russia,  and  made  a 
sledge  journey  from  Khabarova  to  Kir- 
kcnes  in  1893-1894.  Finding  a  patron  for 
his  polar  project  in  Alfred  Harmsworth 
(afterwards  Lord  NorthcUffe,  q.v.)  he 
organized  the  Jackson-Harmsworth  polar 
expedition  which  sailed  in  the  Windward 
in  1894.  The  expedition  had  its  base  at 
Cape  Flora  in  Franz  Josef  Land  for  three 
years.  Jackson  and  Albert  Borlase  Armi- 
tage  explored  British  Channel  and  found 
to  the  north  Queen  Victoria  Sea,  which  put 
an  end  to  hopes  of  a  poleward  journey. 
Jackson's  map  revealed  the  main  features 
of  the  western  half  of  the  group  of  islands. 
On  17  June  1896  he  met  Nansen  and 
Fredrik  Hjalmar  Johansen  returning  from 
their  northern  record  of  latitude  86°  14'  N. 
They  had  wintered  in  the  north  of  the 
group  at  Cape  Norway,  on  an  island  subse- 
quently named  Jackson  Island  by  Nansen, 
and  were  hoping  to  make  their  way  to 
Spitsbergen.  This  chance  encounter  pro- 
bably saved  the  lives  of  the  two  Nor- 
wegians. For  his  services  Jackson  was 
awarded  in  1898  the  Norwegian  order  of 
St.  Olav. 

Jackson,  commissioned  in  the  Man- 
chester Regiment,  served  with  distinction 
with  the  mounted  infantry  in  the  South 
African  war  from  1899  to  1902.  In  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  transferred  to  the 
East  Surrey  Regiment  and  served  on 
the  western  front.  After  the  armistice 
he  was  in  charge  of  Russian  prisoners  in 
Germany. 

In  1925-1926  Jackson  made  a  long 
journey  in  search  of  sport  by  rail  and  boat 
and  on  foot  through  tropical  Africa  from 
Beira  to  Matadi,  via  the  Victoria  Falls, 
Katanga  district,  the  Lualaba  river,  Lakes 
Tanganyika  and  Kivu,  and  the  Congo 
river.  Soon  after  his  return  to  England  he 
was  appointed  a  member  of  the  inter- 
national commission  of  inquiry  into  the 
existence  of  slavery  and  forced  labour  in 
the  Republic  of  Liberia  set  up  by  the 
League  of  Nations.  The  report  was  pub- 
lished in  1930. 

Jackson's  travels  were  inspired  chiefly 
by  love  of  adventure  and  the  opportunities 
of  big-game  hunting.    His  explorations 


were  confined  to  his  pioneer  surveys  in 
Franz  Josef  Land,  where  his  scientific 
staff,  including  A.  B.  Armitage,  Reginald 
Koettlitz,  and  W.  S.  Bruce  [q.v.],  were  able 
to  do  much  useful  work. 

Jackson  was  awarded  a  gold  medal  of 
the  Societe  Geographique  de  Paris  (1899) 
and  the  Royal  Humane  Society's  medal 
(1885).  He  married,  first,  in  1898  Mabel 
(died  1918),  youngest  daughter  of  Colonel 
Dalrymple  Bruce ;  secondly,  in  1925  Mar- 
guerite Wigan,  elder  daughter  of  Albert 
Hernu,  of  Boulogne,  and  widow  of  Henry 
James  Fisher.  There  were  no  children. 
He  died  in  London  13  March  1938.  A 
memorial  tablet  was  unveiled  in  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  in  1945. 

There  are  two  portraits  of  Jackson, 
painted  in  oils :  one  is  in  the  possession  of 
his  widow ;  the  other  (with  his  bear  dogs), 
by  Frederick  Stacpoole,  hangs  in  the  Scott 
Polar  Research  Institute,  Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  14  March  1938  ;  F.  G.  Jackson, 

The  Great  Frozen  Land,  1895,  A  Thotisand 

Days  in  the  Arctic,  1899,  and  The  Lure  of 

Unknown  Lands,  1935 ;  private  information.] 

R.  N.  RuDMOSE  Brown. 

JACKSON,  Sir  HERBERT  (1863- 
1936),  chemist,  was  born  in  Whitechapel, 
London,  17  March  1863,  the  only  sur- 
viving son  of  Samuel  Jackson,  by  his  wife, 
Clementina  Rebecca  Grant.  Educated  at 
King's  College  School,  in  1879  he  entered 
King's  College,  London,  where  he  worked 
for  thirty-nine  years,  becoming  succes- 
sively demonstrator,  lecturer,  and  profes- 
sor of  organic  chemistry  ( 1 905 ) ,  and  Daniell 
professor  of  chemistry  (1914).  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  the  coUege  in  1907. 

Jackson  covered  an  immense  field  in  his 
investigations,  but  he  committed  very 
little  to  paper,  and  his  publications  give 
an  entirely  inadequate  impression  of  the 
extent  and  importance  of  his  work.  About 
1890,  in  the  course  of  experiments  on  the 
excitation  of  phosphorescence  by  means 
of  discharge  tubes,  he  discovered  that  by 
using  a  concave  cathode  he  could  con- 
centrate the  phosphorescent  response  of 
material  at  the  anti-cathode  to  a  small 
area  about  the  centre  of  curvature  of  the 
cathode.  He  also  observed  that  phosphor- 
escence was  excited  in  screens  held  outside 
the  tube.  There  is  no  doubt  that,  in  this 
work,  he  came  very  near  to  anticipating 
W.  K.  Rontgen's  discovery  of  X-rays  in 
1895.  With  a  discharge  tube  having  a  con- 
cave cathode  and  inclined  anti-cathode, 
Jackson  found  that  he  was  able  in  1896 
to  reproduce  all  Rontgen's  effects;  and 


468 


Jackson,  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


this  original  Jackson  'focus-tube'  became 
the  prototype  of  later  X-ray  tubes. 

Besides  numerous  investigations  in  pure 
chemistry,  Jackson's  inquiries  extended 
to  such  subjects  as  the  weathering  of 
stone,  and  the  action  of  soaps  and  solvents 
in  laundry -work ;  his  advice  on  chemical 
matters  was  freely  sought  by  manufac- 
turers. He  was  greatly  interested  in 
oriental  ceramics,  and  his  determinations 
of  the  colouring  agents  in  glasses  and 
glazes  and  reproduction  of  the  effects  gave 
much  assistance  to  archaeologists  and  con- 
noisseurs. In  all  his  work  he  was  a  skilled 
user  of  optical  instruments,  and  he  was, 
particularly,  a  master  of  microscope  tech- 
nique; and  his  wide  experience  in  the 
interpretation  of  microscopic  observations 
was  often  the  key  to  his  success.  He  was 
also  an  expert  photographer. 

Early  in  the  war  of  1914-1918  this 
country  was  greatly  handicapped  by  in- 
abiUty  to  produce  glasses  for  special  pur- 
poses. Jackson  undertook  an  investiga- 
tion, and  working  under  great  pressure, 
by  1915  had  succeeded  in  determining  the 
formulae  for  a  number  of  different  labora- 
tory, heat-resisting,  and  other  glasses, 
including  a  full  range  of  optical  glasses. 
In  this  work  he  put  his  knowledge  at  the 
disposal  of  the  glass  manufacturers  and 
helped  them  in  their  production  problems. 
For  these  and  other  invaluable  war  ser- 
vices he  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  1917. 
In  the  same  year  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  In 
1918  he  resigned  his  professorship  on  being 
appointed  the  first  director  of  research  of 
the  British  Scientific  Instrument  Research 
Association,  a  post  which  he  held,  with 
conspicuous  success,  until  his  retirement 
in  1933,  and  in  which  he  became  the  friend 
and  scientific  adviser  of  the  optical  in- 
dustry. He  was  president  of  the  Rontgen 
Society  (1901-1903)  and  of  the  Institute 
of  Chemistry  (1918-1921);  a  member  of 
the  senate  of  the  university  of  London 
and  a  governor  of  the  Imperial  College  of 
Science ;  and  he  gave  valuable  service  on 
many  government  and  scientific  commit- 
tees. He  died  at  Hampstead  10  December 
1936.  He  married  in  1900  Amy,  elder 
daughter  of  James  Collister,  and  had  no 
children. 

Jackson  was  a  man  of  infinite  resource, 
of  very  varied  accomplishments,  and  great 
personal  chanii.  As  a  young  man  he  was 
a  notable  athlete.  He  was  an  entertaining 
talker,  with  a  wealth  of  information  on 
out  of  the  way  subjects.  To  those  who 
worked  with  him,  particularly  the  younger 
men,  his  help  and  encouragement  were 


unfailing,  and  to  all  those  who  knew  him 
there  remains  the  memory  of  a  generous 
and  inspiring  personality. 

[The  Times,  14  December  1936;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  6, 
January  1938  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Thomas  Martin. 

JAGGER,  CHARLES  SARGEANT 
(1885-1934),  sculptor,  was  bom  at  Kiln- 
hurst,  Yorkshire,  17  December  1885,  the 
elder  son  of  Enoch  Jagger,  colliery  mana- 
ger, by  his  wife,  Mary  Elizabeth  Sargeant. 
Educated  at  Kilnhurst  national  school  and 
the  Middle  Class  School,  Sheffield,  he  left 
at  the  age  of  fourteen  to  learn  the  craft  of 
engraving  on  silver  with  the  Sheffield  firm 
of  Messrs.  Mappin  &  Webb.  He  worked 
concurrently  at  the  Sheffield  School  of 
Art,  where  he  studied  modelling  and  metal 
engraving  and  taught  drawing  in  the 
evenings.  In  1903  he  won  a  scholarship  to 
the  Royal  College  of  Art,  South  Kensing- 
ton. After  seven  years  there  as  student 
and  assistant  to  Professor  Edward  Lanteri 
a  travelling  bursary  enabled  him  to  study 
for  some  months  in  Rome  and  Venice.  In 
1914  he  won  the  Rome  scholarship  in  sculp- 
ture, but  was  prevented  from  taking  it  up. 

Jagger  joined  the  Artists'  Rifles,  passing 
out  early  in  1915  with  a  commission  in  the 
4th  battalion  of  the  Worcestershire  Regi- 
ment Avith  which  he  went  to  Gallipoli.  He 
was  later  transferred  to  the  2nd  battaUo^B 
serving  in  France  and  Belgium.  He  w^H 
three  times  wounded,  and  won  the  M.C. 
On  demobiUzation  he  began  work  as  a_ 
sculptor  in  London.  He  had  been  deep^ 
impressed  by  the  patience  and  solid  valoil 
of  the  average  infantryman ;  and  he  trai 
lated  this  spirit  so  well  into  bronze  th^ 
he  was  commissioned  to  execute  mar 
war  memorials.  He  designed  the  Britis 
Memorial  to  Belgium,  in  Brussels,  and  his 
Artillery  Memorial  at  Hyde  Park  Comer 
(with  the  architect,  Mr.  Lionel  Pearson) 
won  him  the  gold  medal  of  the  Roya^ 
Society  of  British  Sculptors  in  1926. 
was  elected  A.R.A.  in  the  same  year  ai 
in  1921  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
British  Sculptors,  which  in  1933  a^ 
awarded  him  its  gold  medal,  for  stone " 
groups  at  Imperial  Chemical  House,  Mill- 
bank.  In  1932  he  was  appointed  an  addi- 
tional member  of  the  Royal  Mint  Advisor 
Committee  on  Coins,  Medals,  Seals,  ai 
Decorations. 

Jagger  executed  (1922)  a  portrait  statu- 
ette of  the  Prince  of  Wales  (later  Duke  of 
Windsor)  and  statues  of  Lord  Reading  and 
Lord  Hardinge  of  Penshurst.   These 


LS  a 

[oifl 
infl 

ti4 


470 


lUl- 

orv; 
itu-l' 

jof  : 

..^  and 
se  las^i 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


James 


were  for  New  Delhi,  and  Jagger  was  en- 
gaged on  a  figure  of  King  George  V  for  the 
same  city  when  he  died  suddenly  in 
London  16  November  1934. 

Influenced  in  his  early  years  by  Sir 
Alfred  Gilbert  [q.v.]  and  Auguste  Rodin, 
Jagger  developed  an  individual  style  that 
was  stronger  than  that  of  the  former  and 
far  less  romantic  than  that  of  the  latter, 
lie  is  seen  best  not  in  his  Artillery 
Memorial,  which  was  done  in  collabora- 
tion, but  in  the  great,  massive,  monu- 
mental bronzes  of  soldiers,  one  of  the  most 
imposing  of  which  is  the  Great  Western 
Railway  War  Memorial  at  Paddington 
Station.  Rigidly  realistic,  but  obviously 
products  of  a  master  craftsman,  these 
works  epitomize  the  dour,  stolid  courage 
and  endurance  of  the  soldier  of  the  war  of 
1914-1918  as  perfectly  as  anything  in 
graphic,  plastic,  or  literary  art  which  that 
war  produced.  Jagger  also  executed  low 
reliefs,  less  realistic  and  more  decorative, 
and  was  a  stylish  draughtsman  in  pencil 
and  charcoal.  For  the  'How  to  do  it' 
series  published  by  The  Studio  he  wrote 
a  monograph  on  Modelling  and  Sculpture 
in  the  Making  (1933). 

Jagger  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1916 
to  Violet  Constance,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Charles  Smith,  solicitor's  manager;  she 
divorced  him  in  1924;  secondly,  in  1925 
to  Eveljoi  Isabel  Wade.  By  his  first  mar- 
riage he  had  a  son,  and  by  his  second 
marriage  two  daughters. 

Portraits  of  Jagger  by  his  brother 
David  are  in  the  possession  of  the  Graves 
Art  Gallery,  Sheffield,  and  of  his  second 
wife,  who  later  married  Mr.  Quentin 
Clarke,  of  Buffalo,  New  York,  U.S.A. 

[Burlington  Magazine,  February  1922; 
Studio,  November  1914;  Ulrich  Thieme  and 
Felix  Becker,  Allgemeines  Lexikon  der  bilden- 
den  Kiinstler,  vol.  xviii,  1925 ;  Catalogue  of  the 
Charles  Sargeant  Memorial  Exhibition,  1935 ; 
The  Times,  17  and  20  November  1934 ;  Mex- 
borough  Times,  23  November  1934;  private 
information.]       Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

JAMES,       MONTAGUE       RHODES 

(1862-1936),  biblical  scholar,  antiquary, 
and  palaeographer,  was  bom  1  August 
1862  at  Goodnestone,  Kent,  the  third  son 
and  the  fourth  and  youngest  child  of 
Herbert  James,  perpetual  curate  of  Good- 
nestone, formerly  fellow  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  by  his  wife,  Mary  EmUy, 
daughter  of  Admiral  Joshua  Sydney  Hor- 
ton.  Three  years  later  Herbert  James  was 
presented  to  the  rectory  of  Livermere, 
near  Bury  St.  Edmunds,  where  he  died  in 


1909.  His  son  started  as  a  mere  boy  to 
make  careful  notes  and  plans  of  churches 
in  the  neighbourhood ;  he  learned  quickly 
and  read  much.  In  1876  he  gained  a 
scholarship  at  Eton  and  there  had  for  his 
'tutor'  Henry  Elford  Luxraoore.  Prizes 
for  classics,  divinity,  and  French  were  not 
his  only  distinctions:  he  learned  Italian 
in  his  spare  time  and  even  acquired 
enough  Ethiopia  to  make  an  English  ver- 
sion of  the  apocryphal  Rest  of  the  Words 
of  Baruch;  he  explored  unaided  the 
early  Western  manuscripts  in  the  college 
Ubrary,  and  devoured  soUd  works  on 
medieval  art  and  architecture.  Games 
(and  mathematics)  he  viewed  as  a  penance 
to  be  got  through  as  quickly  as  possible. 
A  visit  to  France  in  1880  with  Luxmoore 
disclosed  to  him  the  magnificence  of 
French  church  architecture  and  painted 
glass,  and  forty  years  later  he  was  able  to 
claim  that  he  had  visited  all  but  two  of 
the  143  cathedrals  in  the  land.  In  1882  he 
crowned  his  Eton  career  by  winning  the 
Wilder  divinity  prize  and  the  Newcastle 
scholarship.  Later  in  the  year  he  went  up 
as  an  Eton  scholar  to  King's  College, 
Cambridge.  There  he  presently  used  his 
influence  in  helping  to  break  down  the 
barriers  of  mistrust  which  at  that  time 
tended  to  separate  Etonian  and  non- 
Etonian  members  of  the  college.  He  took 
part  in  three  Greek  plays  and  joined  the 
Amateur  Dramatic  Club.  These  activities 
brought  him  into  contact  with  J.  W.  Clark, 
the  antiquary,  and  Charles  Waldstein 
(afterwards  Sir  Charles  Walston),  the 
classical  archaeologist  [qq.v.],  and  of  both 
he  was  the  grateful  and  admiring  disciple. 
Something  too  he  owed  to  the  profound 
and  rigorous  scholarship  of  Henry  Brad- 
shaw  [q.v.].  Besides  college  prizes  he  won 
the  Carus  divinity  prize  in  1882,  and  a  Bell 
scholarship  in  1883 ;  he  was  Craven  scholar 
in  1884,  and  in  the  same  year  secured  the 
first  Jeremie  Septuagint  prize  and  a  first 
class  in  part  i  of  the  classical  tripos. 
Turning  to  classical  archaeology  he  visited 
Greece  and  in  1885  obtained  a  first  class 
in  part  ii  of  the  tripos.  In  the  following 
year  he  won  the  first  chancellor's  classical 
medal  and  was  shortly  after  appointed 
assistant  to  Waldstein,  director  of  the 
FitzwiUiara  Museum,  and  afterwards  to 
his  successor,  John  Henry  Middleton.  In 
1887  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  King's  for 
a  dissertation  on  The  Apocalypse  of  St. 
Peter.  He  was  hesitating  between  classical 
and  biblical  studies  when  he  visited 
Cyprus  (1887-1888)  and  joined  D.  G. 
Hogarth  and  E.  A.  Gardner  [qq.v.]  in 


471 


James 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


excavating  the  Temple  of  Aphrodite  at 
Paphos.  In  three  months  he  travelled  over 
most  of  the  island  and  learned  modem 
Greek.  His  choice  was  determined  by  his 
appointment  as  lecturer  in  divinity  at 
King's,  but  although  he  gave  courses  on 
the  New  Testament  and  Apocrypha  he  did 
so  without  feeling  that  he  had  any  gift  for 
instruction.  His  appointment  as  dean  in 
1889  made  him  in  part  responsible  for  the 
fabric  of  the  chapel,  and  when  the  six- 
teenth-century painted  windows  were 
leaded  afresh  he  was  able  with  his  ex- 
haustive knowledge  of  Christian  icono- 
graphy to  discover  and  to  reconstruct 
pictures  disordered  by  earlier  'restorers', 
a  service  which  he  was  to  repeat  later  for 
the  Priory  Church  at  Great  Malvern.  As 
director  of  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum  (1893- 
1908)  in  succession  to  Middleton,  he 
secured  for  the  university  some  of  its  most 
splendid  and  precious  manuscripts. 

In  1895  James  brought  out  the  first  of 
a  long  series  of  descriptive  catalogues  of 
the  Western  manuscripts  at  Cambridge 
and  elsewhere  which  were  soon  to  place 
him  in  the  front  rank  of  palaeographers. 
Between  1895  and  1932  he  catalogued  the 
manuscripts  at  Eton,  Lambeth,  West- 
minster Abbey,  the  John  Rylands  Library, 
Manchester,  Aberdeen  University  Library, 
in  every  college  in  Cambridge,  and  those 
in  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum  and  in  the 
University  Library  (catalogue  as  yet  un- 
published), not  to  mention  important  col- 
lections in  private  hands.  To  these  naust 
be  added  nearly  a  score  of  volumes  edited 
for  the  Roxburghe  Club,  the  Walpole 
Society,  and  others,  in  which  single  manu- 
scripts or  families  were  described  and  their 
history  and  relations  elucidated.  'My 
catalogues',  he  wrote,  'were  on  a  scale 
that  had  not  been  tried  before',  adding 
with  unaffected  humility  'they  may  not 
unfairly  be  called  superficial  or  at  least 
preliminary.'  He  knew  that  there  were 
omissions  and  slips  (his  writing  was  a  sore 
puzzle  and  he  was  a  negligent  proof- 
reader), that  there  was  still  much  for 
others  to  glean  after  his  reaping.  Even  so 
his  achievement  is  prodigious:  he  was  an 
explorer  charting  an  unknown  continent. 

Hardly  less  remarkable  is  his  work  on 
Apocryphal  literature,  for  which  his  name 
may  fairly  rank  with  that  of  Johann 
Albert  Fabricius.  He  was  the  first  scholar 
in  England  to  cultivate  this  field,  and  he 
did  for  Apocrypha  much  what  the  Bol- 
landists  have  done  for  hagiography:  he 
brought  it  out  of  the  category  of  literary 
lumber  into  being  a  comprehensible  docu- 


mentation of  human  thought  and  life  fo 
the  modem  educated  reader. 

Beside  all  this  James  wrote  extensivelj 
on  the  arts  and  literature  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  editing  and  translating  texts,  and, 
in  a  lighter  vein,  composing  ghost-storie 
and  little  plays  for  schoolboys.  To  hi 
other  languages  he  soon  added  Danisl 
Swedish,  and  Coptic,  with  a  modicum  o^ 
Hebrew  and  Syriac.  His  immense  learning 
was  the  fruit  of  a  memory  exact  and  capa- 
cious as  that  of  Porson  or  Macaulay,  great 
powers  of  concentration,  and  a  faculty  for 
working  continuously  at  high  speed:  his 
Apocryphal  New  Testament  (1924)  was 
composed  in  under  three  months.  Yet 
there  is  no  parade  of  learning;  there  is 
admirable  coolness  and  sanity  of  judge- 
ment, whether  of  books  or  of  persons ;  and 
the  English  is  limpid  and  concise.  Alike 
in  all  that  he  wrote  or  spoke  or  did  there 
was  a  seemingly  effortless  grace,  a  telling 
simplicity  which  is  'the  echo  of  a  great 
mind'. 

In  1900  James  exchanged  the  office  of 
dean  for  that  of  tutor,  but  after  two  years 
was  glad  to  be  free  once  more  to  devote 
his  whole  time  to  scholarship  and  the 
museum.  In  1905  on  the  death  of  Augustus 
Austen  Leigh  he  was  elected  provost  of 
King's,  and  for  all  his  dislike  of  admini- 
strative business  proved  that  a  scholar  can 
also  be  a  man  of  affairs.  The  office  of  vice- 
chancellor  he  fiUed  Avith  distinction  in  the 
difficult  years  1913-1915. 

In  1918  James  was  offered  by  the  Crown 
the  provostship  of  Eton,  and  was  the  first 
to  preside  in  turn  over  both  the  founda- 
tions of  King  Henry  VI.  Both  for  the 
school  and  for  James  himself,  steeped  as 
he  was  in  the  sentiment  and  the  history 
of  the  place,  the  appointment  was  a  singu- 
larly happy  one.  He  enjoyed  the  company 
of  boys  and  entertained  them  frequently. 
His  first  concern  was  for  the  chapel:  he 
had  the  modern  stall-canopies  removed  so 
as  to  reveal  the  fifteenth-century  wall- 
paintings,  'a  treasure  unrivalled  in  this 
country',  and  suggested  designs  in  con- 
nexion with  the  war  memorial,  which, 
however,  were  not  generally  applauded. 
His  real  skill  lay  in  inscriptions,  and  of 
the  style  known  as  'lapidary'  he  was  a 
master.  He  gave  much  thought  to  the 
ordering  of  the  services  in  chapel  and  was 
himself  an  effective  preacher.  His  grati- 
tude to  the  founder  amotmted  to  an  almost 
personal  devotion,  and  in  aU  that  he  di^ 
for  Eton  that  thought  was  uppermost. 

Until  1914  it  was  James's  practice  to" 
spend  a  part  of  his  holidays  with  friends 


472 


1 

tH' 

ds 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jellicoe,  J.  B.  L. 


bicycling  in  France,  of  which,  excluding 
Paris  and  the  Riviera,  he  knew  every 
corner.  Denmark  and  Sweden  stood  next 
in  his  affections;  once  he  bicycled  from 
Dieppe  to  Regensburg,  but  Germany, 
apart  from  her  scholarship,  had  no  great 
attraction  for  him.  His  tastes  were  simple : 
he  'collected'  nothing,  and  gave  little 
thought  to  his  surroundings  or  personal 
comfort;  he  liked  his  food  and  loved  his 
pipe.  At  King's  he  was  always  accessible 
and  seemed  never  too  busy  to  spend  a 
social  evening  with  younger  friends,  stimu- 
lating talk  in  others  rather  than  himself 
talking,  for  although  quite  prepared  to 
unlock  his  store  of  knowledge  for  any 
inquirer  he  was  far  too  modest  ever  to 
'hold  forth'.  If  alone,  he  would  devour 
the  State  Trials,  the  Victorian  novelists, 
or  modern  detective  fiction;  poetry  but 
seldom.  Politics  and  the  problems  of 
philosophy  did  not  interest  him.  Chari- 
table in  his  judgements  he  disliked  bitter- 
ness and  fault-finding,  preferring  to  dwell 
on  whatever  was  good  in  men  or  things. 
He  had  a  rich  vein  of  humour  and  appre- 
ciated it  in  others.  The  spirit  of  youthful- 
ness  never  left  him ;  he  desired  to  be  and 
to  see  others  happy ;  he  '  kept  his  friend- 
ships in  repair'  and  the  circle  of  them  was 
for  ever  widening. 

James  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Dublin  (1907),  St. 
Andrews  (1911),  Oxford  (1927),  and  Cam- 
bridge (1934),  and  the  gold  medal  of  the 
BibUographical  Society  (1929).  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1903,  and  was  an  honorary  member 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  a  com- 
missioner for  the  Exhibition  of  1851, 
and  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum ;  he 
served  on  the  royal  commissions  on  public 
records,  on  historical  monuments,  and  on 
the  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge ; 
he  was  made  officier  de  I'lnstruction  Pub- 
lique  (France),  commander  of  the  Belgian 
Order  of  Leopold,  and  in  1930  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  Order  of  Merit.  He  died, 
unmarried,  at  Eton  12  June  1936. 

James  was  tall,  with  clear-cut  features, 
and  hands  long  and  tapering.  He  had  a 
natural  dignity  and  his  presence  at  any 
ceremony  made  it  seem  more  august. 
There  is  a  chalk  drawing  of  him  by 
William  Strang  (1909)  in  the  Fitzwilliam 
Museum ;  an  oil-painting  by  Glyn  Philpot 
(1918)  at  King's  College ;  and  another  oil- 
painting,  by  G.  F.  Kelly  (1935),  at  Eton. 

[The  Times,  13  June  1936 ;  M.  R.  James, 
Eton  and  King's,  1926;  S.  G.  Lubbock,  A 
Memoir  of  Montague  Rhodes  James  with  a  list 


of  his  writings  by  A.  F.  Scholfield,  1939; 
Stephen  Gaselee,  Montague  Rhodes  James, 
1862-1936  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy, vol.  xxii,  1936 ;  C.  H.  K.  M[arten]  and 
others  in  Eton  College  Chronicle,  18  June  1936 ; 
A.  B.  Ramsay,  ibid.,  25  June  1936;  J.  H. 
C[lapham]  in  Cambridge  Review,  9  October 
1936 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] A.  F.  Scholfield. 

JELLICOE,  (JOHN)  BASIL  (LEE) 
(1899-1935),  housing  reformer,  was  bom 
at  Chailey,  Sussex,  5  February  1899,  the 
elder  son  of  Thomas  Harry  Lee  Jellicoe, 
rector  of  Chailey,  by  his  wife,  Bethia 
Theodora,  youngest  daughter  of  Sir  John 
Boyd,  of  Maxpoffle,  Roxburgh,  lord  pro- 
vost of  Edinburgh  from  1888  to  1891.  His 
father  was  a  cousin  of  J.  R.  Jellicoe,  first 
Earl  Jellicoe  [q.v.]. 

From  an  early  age  Jellicoe's  heart  was 
set  upon  the  vocation  of  the  priesthood. 
Through  the  generosity  of  his  godmother, 
Mrs.  Hepbtirn,  he  was  educated  at  Hailey- 
bury  and  Magdalen  College,  Oxford.  A 
few  months  before  the  end  of  the  war  of 
1914-1918  he  left  Oxford  to  join  the  Royal 
Naval  Volunteer  Reserve  and  served  for 
a  short  time  in  the  Mediterranean.  In 
1920  he  resumed  his  studies  at  Oxford  and 
was  ordained  deacon  in  1922  and  priest 
in  1923. 

Brought  up  in  the  Tractarian  tradition, 
it  was  the  social  implications  of  sacra- 
mental Christianity  which  determined 
Jellicoe's  outlook;  as  a  schoolboy  he  had 
made  a  speech  on  Christian  socialism  to 
the  Oddfellows  at  a  village  inn.  For  poU- 
tics  or  social  reform  as  such  he  had  but 
Uttle  interest ;  it  was  the  theological  aspect 
of  these  matters  in  their  direct  relation  to 
human  beings  which  aroused  in  him  an 
urgent  desire  to  demonstrate  the  efficacy 
of  the  Christian  gospel.  This  he  achieved, 
not  only  by  means  of  the  great  enterprises 
which  he  inspired,  but  also  through  the 
influence  of  his  character  and  convictions 
on  all  types  of  people,  especially  the 
young.  'No  man',  wrote  William  Temple, 
'  ever  so  luminously  exemplified  the  sacra- 
mental quality  of  the  Christian  religion  as 
did  Basil  Jellicoe.'  His  opportunity  came 
at  an  early  age  when  in  1921,  while  still 
a  layman,  he  was  given  charge  of  the 
Magdalen  College  mission  in  the  Somers 
Town  district  of  St.  Pancras.  In  that 
overcrowded  area,  where  more  than  22,000 
people  were  Uving  at  an  average  of  two 
to  three  persons  per  room,  Jellicoe  realized 
that  the  value  of  clubs  and  camps  was 
merely  palliative;  the  fundamental  need 
was  better  housing.    The  evils  resulting 


473 


Jellicoe,  J.  B.  L. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


from  slum  conditions  were  to  him  'the 
devil's  work'  and  he  described  Somers 
Town  as  'a  gigantic  theft'.  So,  towards 
the  end  of  1924,  largely  as  a  result  of  his 
initiative,  the  St.  Pancras  House  Improve- 
ment Society  was  formed  to  re-house 
existing  tenants.  Beginning  with  a  share 
capital  of  £250  it  became  the  vanguard 
of  a  widespread  campaign  of  voluntary 
housing.  By  1930  the  society's  capital  had 
reached  £160,000,  and  some  hundreds  of 
the  poorest  families  in  London  had  been 
re-housed  in  blocks  of  flats  at  low  but 
economic  rents. 

Jellicoe  found  the  Magdalen  College 
mission  disorganized  and  heavily  in  debt. 
When  in  1927  he  resigned  the  headship 
owing  to  ill  health  he  left  it  not  only  free 
of  debt  but  in  so  flourishing  a  condition 
that,  according  to  the  New  Survey  of 
London  Life  and  Labour,  vol.  ix  (1935), 
'nothing  should  be  described  in  St.  Pan- 
eras  before  the  splendid  work  of  the 
Magdalen  College  Mission  .  .  .  has  been 
mentioned'.  After  his  resignation  he  con- 
tinued his  work  for  housing  in  Somers 
Town  and  elsewhere,  notably  in  the  Isle 
of  Dogs. 

JeUicoe's  ambition  was  not  limited  to 
the  re-housing  of  the  poor;  it  was  to 
demonstrate  the  possibility  of  a  Christian 
motive  and  environment  for  all  human 
activities  through  the  consecration  of  life 
to  the  service  of  God.  A  public  house 
under  Christian  management  was  among 
the  projects  which  he  initiated. 

In  1931  Jelhcoe  visited  Canada,  where 
his  sermons  and  speeches  made  a  profound 
impression.  Illness  frequently  intervened 
during  the  last  ten  years  of  his  short  life, 
and  he  died,  unmarried,  in  a  nursing-home 
at  Uxbridge  24  August  1935. 

[The  Times,  26  August  1935;  Kenneth 
Ingram,  Basil  Jellicoe,  1936  (portraits) ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.] 

Percy  Maryon- Wilson. 

JELLICOE,    JOHN    RUSHWORTH, 

first  Earl  Jellicoe  (1859-1935),  admiral 
of  the  fleet,  was  born  at  Southampton 
5  December  1859,  the  second  of  the  four 
sons  of  John  Henry  Jellicoe,  a  captain  in 
the  Royal  Mail  Steam  Packet  Company 
and  later  its  maruie  superintendent  at 
Southampton,  by  his  wife,  Lucy  Henrietta, 
daughter  of  John  Rushworth  Keele,  of 
Southampton.  It  was  natural  that  the 
future  admiral  should  elect  to  foUow  a  sea 
career;  but  there  were  other  hereditary 
incentives ;  for  his  family  had  already  con- 
tributed seven  officers  to  the  Royal  Navy, 


notably  on  his  mother's  side.   One  of  he 
ancestors,  Philip  Patton,  had  fought 
La  Hogue,  and  her  grandfather,  Ac 
PhQip  Patton  [q.v.],  had  served  as  secon<3 
in-command  to  Lord  Keith  in  the  Dowi 
when  Napoleon  had  his  camp  at  Boulogne 
and  he  was  second  sea  lord  during  the 
Trafalgar  campaign. 

JeUicoe  spent  much  of  his  boyhood 
among  the  docks  and  on  the  waterfront; 
and  at  a  very  youthful  age  gained  experi- 
ence of  small  craft.  From  the  age  of  six 
he  attended  a  preparatory  school  at 
Southampton,  passing  at  eleven  (after  a 
year  at  a  larger  school)  to  Field  House, 
Rottingdean,  where  he  was  well  grounded 
in  mathematics.  In  1872  he  received  a 
nomination  for  the  Royal  Navy,  and  in 
the  summer  of  that  year  passed  second 
into  the  Britannia,  being  twelve  and  a  half 
years  old,  and  four  feet  six  inches  high.  In 
the  summer  of  1874  he  passed  out  top  of 
his  term,  gaining  first  class  certificates  in 
every  subject,  with  consequent  promotion 
to  midshipman.  In  the  autumn  he  joined 
the  Newcastle,  his  first  sea-going  ship,  an 
iron  sailing  frigate  with  auxihary  steam. 
As  midshipman  he  had  under  him  broad- 
shouldered,  bearded  men,  whose  agility  in 
making  and  shortening  saU  required  a 
combination  of  knowledge,  muscle,  and 
nerve  which  the  youngster  was  expected 
to  equal  or  excel.  In  October  the  NeW' 
castle  set  sail  from  Sheemess,  and  dropped 
anchor  at  Plymouth  two  and  a  half  years 
later  after  visiting  Gibraltar,  Rio  de 
Janeiro,  the  Falkland  Islands,  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope,  St.  Helena,  Ascension,  Bom- 
bay, Singapore,  Hong-Kong,  Nagasaki, 
and  Mauritius.  During  the  long  cruise 
Jellicoe  added  to  his  height  five  inches; 
and,  to  his  experience  of  the  unexpected 
always  happening  at  sea,  a  range  remark- 
able for  his  years. 

In  July  1877  JeUicoe  joined  the  battle- 
ship Agincourt  which  shortly  afterwards 
sailed  to  join  Vice-Admiral  (Sir)  Geoffrey 
Phipps  Hornby  [q.v.],  at  the  time  under 
orders  to  prepare  to  force  the  Dardanelles 
diu-ing  the  Russo-Tinrkish  war.  JeUicoe 
had  charge  of  two  steamboats  and  four 
cutters;  and  on  arrival  at  GaUipoU  was 
employed  ashore  as  a  dispatch  rider.  A 
more  daunting  experience  was  the  hand- 
Ung  of  the  Cruiser  (a  sailing  vessel  attached 
to  the  fleet  for  instructional  purposes) 
when  the  commander-in-chief  came  on 
board  for  inspection  and  ordered  the  sloop 
to  take  him  back  to  his  flagship.  At  the 
close  of  the  trip  JeUicoe  was  compU- 
mented  on  his  performance,  and  on  his 


474 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


nineteenth  birthday  obtained  a  first  class 
certificate  in  seamanship,  and  left  the 
Agincourt  for  a  period  of  study  at  the 
Royal  Naval  College,  Greenwich. 

Here  and  afterwards  in  the  gunnery  and 
torpedo  courses  at  Portsmouth  Jellicoe 
again  obtained  first  classes,  and,  as  a 
'three  one-er',  was  properly  entitled  to 
immediate  promotion;  but  for  technical 
reasons  this  encouragement  was  denied 
him,  and  for  six  months  he  served  in  the 
Alexandra,  flagship  of  the  Mediterranean 
Fleet,  as  signal  sub-heutenant.  In  Sep- 
tember 1880  he  was  promoted  lieutenant, 
and  returned  home  through  Italy,  visiting 
Rome,  and  at  Florence  contracting  dysen- 
tery. When  he  recovered  he  determined 
to  qualify  as  a  gunnery  specialist;  but 
before  undertaking  intensive  study  ashore 
for  two  years  or  longer  it  was  necessary 
to  complete  at  least  one  year's  watch- 
keeping  at  sea;  and  in  February  1881 
Jellicoe  returned  to  the  Agincourt. 

In  May  1882,  in  consequence  of  the 
rebellion  of  Arabi  Pasha,  the  Agincourt 
was  ordered  to  Malta,  where  she  embarked 
a  battahon  of  infantry ;  and,  despite  her 
low  speed  and  the  overcrowding  on  board, 
reached  Alexandria  only  thirty-six  hours 
after  the  bombardment,  bringing  welcome 
reinforcements.  Jellicoe  was  sent  with  a 
company  of  seamen  to  support  the  turning 
movement  of  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley  [q.v.] 
from  Ismailia;  and  from  that  base  was 
entrusted  with  secret  dispatches  for  the 
commander-in-chief,  which,  in  the  disguise 
of  a  refugee  and  amid  a  horde  of  ver- 
minous natives,  he  conveyed  successfully 
to  Port  Said. 

After  a  year  of  active  service  Jellicoe 
was  released  to  qualify  as  a  gunnery 
specialist.  In  the  theoretical  work  at 
Greenwich  he  defeated  all  competitors  and 
was  awarded  the  £80  prize ;  and  at  Ports- 
mouth he  gained  first  class  certificates  in 
gunnery  and  torpedo.  In  May  1884,  as 
a  full-blown  gunnery  lieutenant,  he  was 
appointed  to  the  staff  of  the  Excellent 
gxumery  school  and  participated  in  the 
far-reaching  reforms  instituted  at  that 
time  by  the  dynamic  commandant,  Cap- 
tain J.  A.  (later  Lord)  Fisher  [q.v.]. 

In  1885  Admiral  Sir  Geoffrey  Phipps 
Hornby  hoisted  his  flag  in  the  Minotaur. 
Fisher  was  appointed  his  chief  of  staff,  and 
as  his  own  staff-officer  selected  the  most 
junior  of  those  who  had  served  under  him 
in  the  Excellent,  a  very  notable  testimonial 
to  Jellicoe's  merits.  The  cruise  was  short, 
but  enabled  him  to  witness  the  first  tor- 
pedo attack  on  a  fleet,  and  the  first  modern 


attempt  at  a  tactical  fleet  action.  In  Sep- 
tember 1885  he  was  appointed  gunnery 
Ueutenant  to  the  Monarch,  an  obsolescent 
turret  ship ;  and  in  April  1886,  in  the  same 
capacity,  joined  the  Colossus,  the  most 
up-to-date  battlesliip  then  afloat.  At  the 
end  of  the  year  he  was  back  again  in  the 
Excellent  as  an  experimental  officer  to 
superintend  the  gunnery  tests  of  all  ships 
commissioning.  The  monotony  of  the 
work  was  relieved  by  experiments  which 
led  to  the  adoption  of  the  4-7-in.  (45- 
pounder)  and  6-in.  (90-pounder)  guns. 

In  1889  the  passing  of  the  Naval  De- 
fence Act  allocated  £21,000,000  to  the 
long  neglected  task  of  increasing  and 
modernizing  the  matdriel  of  the  fleet ;  and 
much  of  the  unprecedented  labour  in- 
volved in  the  provision  of  ten  battleships 
and  forty-two  cruisers  fell  upon  Fisher, 
then  director  of  naval  ordnance.  To  assist 
him  in  his  task  he  insisted  that  Jellicoe 
should  be  transferred  from  the  Excellent 
to  the  Admiralty,  although  the  step  was 
contrary  to  precedent.  Looking  back  on 
this  period  Jellicoe  records  that  he  was 
frequently  at  work  until  midnight  in  his 
efforts  to  keep  pace  with  the  daily  influx 
of  work.  In  Jime  1891  he  was  promoted 
commander;  and  in  March  1892,  in  the 
Sans  Pareil,  commanded  by  Captain  (Sir) 
A.  K.  Wilson  [q.v.],  joined  the  Mediter- 
ranean Fleet  at  Malta. 

Early  in  1893  Admiral  Sir  George  Tryon 
[q.v.],  then  commander-in-chief,  asked  the 
captain  of  the  Sans  Pareil  that  JeUicoe 
might  come  as  commander  to  his  flagship, 
the  Victoria,  then  recommissioning  at 
Malta ;  and  when  preparations  were  com- 
plete, left  for  a  cruise  in  the  Levant.  On 
22  Jvme,  as  he  drew  near  to  Tripoli,  with 
his  fleet  in  two  lines  ahead  he  prepared 
to  anchor.  Before  doing  so  it  was  neces- 
sary to  put  about.  But  instead  of  the 
customary  procedure,  he  signalled  the 
leading  ship  of  each  column  to  turn  in- 
wards towards  one  another.  For  this 
manoeuvre  Tryon  allowed  insufficient  sea- 
room;  and  the  Victoria,  ranuned  by  the 
Camperdown,  turned  over  and  sank  with 
the  loss  of  her  admiral  and  nearly  400 
men.  Jellicoe,  who  was  suffering  from  a 
bout  of  Malta  fever,  hurried  on  deck, 
walked  along  the  port  side  of  the  ship  as 
it  assiuned  a  horizontal  position;  and, 
before  the  Victoria  took  the  final  plunge, 
committed  himself  to  the  water.  Swim- 
ming as  strongly  as  his  condition  allowed 
and  receiving  some  assistance  from  a  mid- 
shipman, he  kept  afloat  until  he  was 
picked  up.  On  his  return  to  England  the 


475 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


effects  of  his  immersion  declared  them- 
selves and  he  was  for  a  time  invaUded. 

In  command  of  the  Mediterranean  Fleet 
Tryon  was  succeeded  by  Admiral  Sir 
Michael  Culme-Seymour,  whose  flag  flew 
in  the  RamilUes,  a  new  battleship  success- 
fully conforming  to  the  requirements  of 
the  age  of  steel.  The  utmost  care  was 
exercised  in  the  choice  of  her  officers,  and 
for  commander  the  choice  of  the  Admiralty 
fell  upon  Jellicoe  who,  later  in  life,  looked 
back  with  pleasure  to  a  commission  which 
lasted  three  years  (October  1893  to  Decem- 
ber 1896)  and  of  which  he  retained  delight- 
ful memories.  The  other  ships  of  the  fleet 
did  their  utmost  to  surpass  the  flagship  in 
smartness  and  efficiency;  but,  thanks  to 
her  commander,  the  RamilUes  excelled 
them  all.  At  the  close  of  the  commission 
JeUicoe  returned  to  England  and  in 
January  1897  was  promoted  captain. 

After  a  year's  work  as  a  member  of  the 
Ordnance  Committee  Jellicoe  set  out  for 
the  Far  East  in  company  with  Admiral 
Sir  E.  H.  Seymour  [q.v.]  who,  flying 
his  flag  in  the  Centurion  on  the  China 
station,  chose  Jellicoe  as  his  flag  captain 
and  chief  of  staff.  The  hour  of  their 
arrival  coincided  with  a  critical  conjunc- 
ture in  the  Far  East.  The  utter  defeat  of 
China  by  Japan  two  years  earlier  and  the 
seizure  by  the  victor  of  the  key-points 
on  the  Gulf  of  Pe-chi-li  led  to  the  inter- 
vention of  the  great  powers:  the  seizure 
of  Port  Arthur  by  Russia,  of  Kiaochow 
by  Germany,  and  of  Kwang- Chow- wan 
by  France.  It  was  impossible  for  Great 
Britain,  with  her  vast  interests  in  the 
Orient,  to  stand  aside;  and  she  secured 
from  China  a  lease  of  Wei-hai-wei  for  a 
period  co-extensive  with  the  occupation 
of  Port  Arthur  by  Russia.  In  May  1898 
Seymour  occupied  the  place,  and  Jellicoe 
busied  himself  with  the  conversion  of  the 
harbour  into  a  naval  base.  For  the  rest 
it  was  the  duty  of  the  British  fleet  to  keep 
the  peace.  All  the  great  powers  had 
squadrons  or  ships  to  support  their  diplo- 
macy in  the  event  of  further  disputes ;  and 
further  disputes  seemed  only  too  probable. 
The  presence  of  a  strong  British  fleet,  it 
was  hoped,  would  exercise  a  stabilizing 
effect  upon  the  ocean- ways. 

But  it  was  not  at  sea  that  the  storm  was 
brewing.  On  28  May  1900  a  telegram  from 
Peking,  requesting  a  guard  for  the  lega- 
tions, commimicated  the  first  inteUigence 
of  the  Boxer  rising.  Seymour,  as  com- 
mander-in-chief of  a  strictly  naval  force, 
was  in  no  position  to  deal  with  a  military 
crisis:  but  appeals  for  help  left  him  no 


alternative;  and  he  summoned  a  confer^ 
ence  of  international  flag  officers  an<3 
invited  them  to  send  contingents  ashor^ 
under  his  personal  command.  He  selecte(j 
JeUicoe  as  his  chief  of  staff ;  and  on  5  June 
sent  him  ahead  to  decide  whether  tc 
advance  by  river,  road,  or  railway.  JeUiij 
coe  reported  that  the  river  was  choked  bj 
sandbanks,  the  road  a  broken  track,  and 
the  railway  the  only  possibility.  AssemJ 
bling  aU  the  tugs  and  lighters  in  the 
neighbourhood  he  sent  them  to  the  ships, 
knowing  that  smaU  craft  only  could  bring 
the  troops  ashore.  Signalling  by  search- 
light, he  apprised  the  admiral  of  the  situa- 
tion; and  on  10  June  an  international 
naval  brigade  set  out  for  Peking.  The 
total,  representing  ten  nations,  numbered 
little  more  than  2,000  men,  of  whom  915 
were  British. 

The  difficulties  that  were  soon  to  prove 
insuperable  declared  themselves  at  once. 
The  day  temperature  of  95°  sank  at  night 
to  an  icy  chillness.  The  terrain  was  little 
better  than  desert;  and  the  sand -laden 
wind  parched  the  skin  and  irritated  the 
throat.  The  railway  was  highly  vulner- 
able ;  and  although  the  imperial  army  per- 
mitted the  force  to  pass  the  Taku  forts 
and  occupy  Tientsin,  in  a  few  days  it 
openly  joined  the  rebels.  Before  long  the 
railway  w^s  irreparably  broken  both  ahead 
of  the  column  and  in  its  rear ;  and  a  council 
of  war  (19  June)  decided  to  leave  the  rail- 
way and  retreat  by  the  river  bank,  towing 
the  wounded  in  sampans.  Serious  opposi- 
tion was  encountered;  and  on  21  June, 
while  leading  an  attack  at  Peitsang,  Jelli- 
coe received  a  bullet  in  the  left  lung,  and 
fell  dangerously  wounded.  After  an  injec- 
tion of  morphia  he  wrote  his  wiU  on  the 
battlefield  and  was  placed  in  a  sampan 
to  die.  But  his  strong  constitution  bore 
him  up;  moreover,  as  the  last  spark  of 
strength  flickered  out  of  the  expedition, 
reinforcements  from  the  base  had  captured 
the  Taku  forts  (17  June),  and  brought  the 
exhausted  crusaders  to  the  comparative 
comforts  of  Tientsin  (26  June).  From  here 
Jellicoe  was  removed  to  Wei-hai-wei  to 
recover  from  his  wound.  Some  fifteen 
months  later,  after  a  four  years'  commis- 
sion, the  Centurion  was  relieved  by  the 
Glory  and  Jellicoe  returned  home  (Sep- 
tember 1901),  having  accumulated  most 
valuable  Far  Eastern  experience  and  an 
insight  into  the  capacities  of  various 
nations  on  active  service. 

In  March  1902  JeUicoe  was  selected  to 
fill  a  new  post  at  the  Admiralty,  that  of 
naval  assistant  to  the  controller.  As  such, 


476 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


his  duty  was  to  inspect  all  new  ships  under 
construction,  and  this  took  him  to  Clyde- 
side.  While  in  Scotland  he  renewed  his 
acquaintance  with  Sir  Charles  William 
Cayzer  (later  first  baronet,  of  Gartmore, 
I'erthshire),  from  whom  he  had  previously 
received  hospitality.  On  this  occasion 
.lellicoe's  friendship  with  Cayzer's  second 
daughter,  Florence  Gwendoline,  ripened 
into  an  engagement;  and  in  July  1902 
they  were  married  in  London.  Just  over 
a  year  later  Jellicoe  was  appointed  to 
command  the  armoured  cruiser  Drake, 
and  his  happy  home  life  was  interrupted. 

In  November  1904  Fisher,  who  had 
become  first  sea  lord  in  the  previous  Octo- 
ber, recalled  Jellicoe  to  the  Admiralty, 
and  in  February  1905  he  was  appointed 
director  of  naval  ordnance  and  to  serve  on 
the  committee  then  assembling  to  deter- 
mine the  future  design  of  battleships ;  the 
existing  mixed  armament  of  heavy  and 
medium  calibres  was  considered  anachro- 
nistic ;  and  the  development  of  long-range 
firing  certainly  demanded  a  radical  change. 
The  outcome  was  the  '  all  big  gun '  battle- 
ship Dreadnought,  which  rendered  all  her 
predecessors  obsolete.  Jellieoe's  duties 
were  of  paramoimt  importance:  in  addi- 
tion to  stimulating  the  accuracy  of  long- 
range  gunnery  by  battle-practice,  he 
conducted  a  long-delayed  reform  of  revolu- 
tionary significance — the  transfer  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  output  of  naval 
ordnance  from  the  War  Office  to  the 
Admiralty.  In  February  1907  he  was 
promoted  rear-admiral;  in  August  he 
hoisted  his  flag  in  the  Albemarle  as  second- 
in-command  of  the  Atlantic  Fleet ;  and  in 
October,  on  the  occasion  of  the  naval 
review  at  Spithead,  was  knighted  and 
invested  by  King  Edward  VII  with  the 
insignia  of  the  K.C.V.O.  He  had  been 
appointed  C.B.  in  1900  and  C.V.O.  in  1906. 

A  commission  which  included  a  cruise 
off  the  coast  of  Portugal  at  the  time  of  the 
assassination  of  King  Carlos  and  his  elder 
son,  and  participation  in  the  tercentenary 
celebrations  at  Quebec  can  hardly  be  de- 
scribed as  vmeventful.  But  to  a  keen  naval 
officer  greater  significance  attached  to 
battle -practice  at  a  range  of  five  miles  in 
contrast  with  the  one-mile  maximum  of 
some  eleven  years  earlier  when  Jellicoe 
was  commander  of  the  Ramillies.  Still 
more  important  for  his  future  was  the 
enforced  absence  of  the  commander-in- 
chief,  which  for  a  period  put  him  in 
charge  of  the  whole  fleet.  In  August  1908, 
after  just  a  year's  sea-time,  he  returned 
to  England,  and  in  October  rejoined  the 


Admiralty  as  controller  and  third  sea 
lord. 

Jellicoe  became  responsible  for  new 
naval  construction  at  a  moment  of  extreme 
difficulty.  The  Dreadnought  admittedly 
surpassed  all  previous  battleships ;  but  in 
promoting  a  new  type  Great  Britain  of 
necessity  had  given  other  nations  a  better 
chance  of  drawing  level  than  they  had 
enjoyed  for  two  and  a  half  centuries.  Not 
only  were  the  Germans  intent  on  seizing 
this  opportunity ;  but  the  general  election 
of  1906  brought  in  a  government  com- 
mitted to  the  curtailment  of  armaments. 
When  Jellicoe  became  controUer  there  was 
a  strong  probability  that  by  1912  England 
would  have  eighteen  dreadnoughts  and 
Germany  twenty-one.  Jellicoe  pointed  out 
that  if  Britain's  shipbuilding  capacity 
might  in  an  emergency  enable  her  to  over- 
take a  German  lead,  the  same  argument 
did  not  apply  to  heavy  ordnance,  which 
could  not  be  constructed  against  time.  It 
was  this  hard  fact  that  weighed  down  the 
balance  and  led  to  the  inclusion  in  the 
1909-1910  programme  of  the  eight  battle- 
ships which  restored  the  lead  to  Britain. 
But  the  adoption  of  the  Dreadnought 
brought  another  disadvantage.  The  ships 
were  growing  too  large  for  existing  docks ; 
and  the  government  was  not  prepared  to 
face  the  excessive  cost  which  new  docks 
would  entail.  Its  veto  cramped  the  breadth 
of  the  new  vessels,  which  in  consequence 
were  not  sufficiently  proof  against  under- 
water attack.  The  total  displacement 
might  compare  favourably  with  that  of 
German  ships  of  the  same  class ;  but  the 
German  ships,  mounting  smaller  guns  and 
with  greater  beam,  were  heavily  protected 
about  their  vitals ;  and  the  greater  hitting 
power  of  the  British  ships  would  be 
seriously  offset  if  one  lucky  shell  from  the 
enemy  found  their  protection  insufficient. 
The  toughness  of  the  German  ships  re- 
quired an  improvement  in  British  armour- 
piercing  sheUs ;  and  for  these  the  controller, 
after  experimental  firings  at  a  ship,  put 
forward  insistent  demands.  The  docu- 
mented proofs  of  his  foresight  clear  him  of 
the  blame  for  faulty  Cabinet  decisions, 
with  which  political  apologists  have  tried 
to  saddle  him. 

Concluding  his  term  of  office  with  the 
satisfaction  of  having  seen  ninety  vessels, 
including  twelve  battleships,  added  to  the 
fleet,  Jellicoe,  in  December  1910,  with  the 
rank  of  vice-admiral,  hoisted  his  flag  in 
the  Prince  of  Wales  as  vice-admiral  com- 
manding the  Atlantic  Fleet.  The  year  that 
followed  saw  the  coronation  review  of 


477 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


King  George  V  and  the  Agadir  incident. 
Dvu-ing  the  latter  Jellicoe  took  his  fleet  to 
a  south  Irish  port  to  be  ready  for  any 
eventuality.  In  December  1911  the  steam- 
ship Delhi,  with  the  Princess  Royal  and 
her  family  on  board,  suffered  shipwreck 
off  Cape  Spartel,  and  JeUicoe  earned  the 
gratitude  of  the  King  for  the  effective 
steps  taken  to  rescue  them.  The  same 
month,  to  give  him  experience  in  handling 
a  squadron  of  dreadnoughts,  he  was  ap- 
pointed to  command  the  second  division 
of  the  Home  Fleet,  and  hoisted  his  flag  in 
the  Hercules.  The  two  years  of  Jellicoe's 
command  afloat  passed  uneventfully ;  and 
in  December  1912  he  was  summoned 
again  to  the  Admiralty.  As  second  sea 
lord  he  became  responsible  for  the  disci- 
pline and  manning  of  the  fleet  and  all 
questions  affecting  officers  and  men. 

Meanwhile  the  war  cloud  lowered  over 
Europe ;  and  in  June  1914  the  tragedy  of 
Serajevo  precipitated  the  crisis.  The 
Admiralty  had  already  ordered  a  naval 
mobilization;  and  at  Spithead  the  King 
reviewed  a  fleet  which  included  fifty-seven 
capital  ships.  At  the  close  of  the  exercise 
the  Admiralty  cancelled  the  customary 
paying  off  and  dispatched  the  fleet  to 
Scapa  Flow.  JeUicoe  followed  overland, 
ostensibly  as  second-in-command ;  but  on 
4  August  he  received  a  telegram  directing 
him  to  open  a  secret  envelope  which  had 
been  handed  to  him  on  leaving  London. 
This  proved  to  be  his  appointment  as 
commander-in-chief.  Grand  Fleet,  with 
the  acting  rank  of  admiral,  flying  his  flag 
in  the  Iron  Duke. 

For  the  distant  blockade  of  the  German 
fleet  Scapa  Flow  was  not  ill  placed ;  but 
in  August  1914  as  a  naval  base  it  lacked 
every  requisite.  In  its  desire  to  avoid 
action  calculated  to  increase  the  tension 
with  Germany,  the  government  had  re- 
frained from  taking  the  measures  neces- 
sary for  the  defence  of  the  place  or  the 
maintenance  of  a  fleet  there.  There  were 
three  entrances  tlu-ough  which  hostile 
torpedo-craft  could  gain  ingress;  and  it 
was  not  until  February  1915  that  they 
were  blocked.  Jellicoe  found  it  necessary 
to  keep  his  fleet  continually  moving ;  and 
in  August  one  day  only  was  spent  in  har- 
bour. When  winter  came  the  weather  in 
those  latitudes  grew  dark  and  tempestu- 
ous ;  and  the  swirl  of  waters  through  the 
Pentland  Firth  made  return  to  harbour 
a  hazardous  proceeding.  Although  Jellicoe 
had  a  large  floating  dock  towed  up  to  the 
Cromarty  Firth,  and  although  Rosyth  was 
put  into  full  use,  there  were  for  some  time 


not  sufficient  facilities  or  docks  and  plant 
for  minor  repairs.  The  fleet  was  reduced 
by  casualties  and  damage  requiring  re- 
pairs, for  which  ships  had  to  be  sent  south 
to  the  Channel  ports;  and  had  the  Ger- 
mans been  more  venturesome  they  might 
in  January  1915  have  challenged  Jellicoe's 
dreadnought  strength  on  practically  equal 
terms.  But  they  preferred  to  stay  snugly 
in  harbour,  while  the  Grand  Fleet  in  the 
first  four  months  of  the  war  steamed 
16,805  mUes.  The  commander-in-chief 
balanced  the  rigours  of  his  routine  by  a 
personal  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the 
60,000  officers  and  men  under  his  com- 
mand. Admirals  and  captains  were,  in 
Nelson's  phrase,  a  band  of  brothers ;  while 
the  lower  deck  knew  instinctively  that 
Jellicoe  thought  more  of  their  happiness 
than  of  his  own. 

During  1915  (the  year  in  which  he  was 
promoted  admiral)  JeUicoe  strengthened 
his  grip  on  northern  waters.  By  the  middle 
of  the  year  he  had  a  preponderant  margin 
of  dreadnought  strength ;  and,  as  a  base, 
Scapa  was  in  some  degree  equipped  for 
repairs  and  put  in  a  reasonable  state  of 
defence.  No  pains  were  spared  to  increase 
the  Grand  Fleet's  fighting  efficiency  by 
evolutions  and  exercises.  But  it  was  no 
longer  necessary  to  plough  the  seas  as  a 
precaution  against  torpedo  attack;  and 
time  could  be  spent  in  harbour  with  com- 
parative immunity.  But,  as  in  the  days 
of  Hawke,  Jervis,  Howe,  and  Nelson,  the 
wearisome,  monotonous  blockade  con- 
tinued ;  and  between  the  outbreak  of  war 
and  the  battle  of  Jutland  the  German 
admiral  only  five  times  emerged  from  har- 
bour. After  each  modest'  saUy  of  some 
hundred  miles  he  hastened  home  with  the 
mendacious  assurance  that  he  had  vainly 
offered  his  opponent  the  chance  of  battle. 

The  King,  at  the  outbreak  of  war,  de- 
scribed the  navy  as  the  country's  'sure 
shield';  and  this  definition  opportunely 
emphasized  the  necessarily  defensive 
character  of  JeUicoe's  blockade.  So  long 
as  the  Grand  Fleet  controUed  all  sea  ap- 
proaches to  and  from  Germany,  the  enemy 
in  a  naval  sense  was  immobilized.  The 
raids  of  the  German  battle-cruisers  on 
British  fishing  towns  and  seaside  resorts, 
ethieaUy  indefensible  and  strategically  in- 
effective, were  intended  to  undermine  the 
trust  which  this  country  reposed  in  its 
sea-governance.  In  this  objective  they 
failed  signally,  and  unless  the  Germans 
were  content  with  having  built  a  dread- 
nought battle  fleet  to  no  purpose,  it  was 
for  them  to  break  Jellicoe's  stranglehold ; 


478 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


it  was  for  them  to  assume  the  offensive. 
The  appointment  early  in  1916  of  Admiral 
Scheer  brought  the  chances  of  a  collision 
perceptibly  nearer.  Not  that  his  plans  for 
reducing  the  British  margin  of  dread- 
nought superiority  came  any  nearer  suc- 
cess than  those  of  his  predecessors,  but 
they  did  involve  him  in  the  meshes  of  the 
net  which  JeUicoe  set  to  catch  him.  On 
31  May,  the  weather  being  thick  for  the 
time  of  year,  he  gave  the  word  to  attack 
a  British  detached  force  which  Jelhcoe  had 
sent  in  the  direction  of  the  Skagerrak. 
Tlie  German  battle-cruisers,  under  Admiral 
Hipper,  were  sent  on  ahead  and  were 
sighted  at  2.20  p.m.  by  the  British  light 
cruiser  Galatea  wearing  the  broad  pendant 
of  Commodore  E.  Alexander  Sinclair,  and 
the  first  salvoes  of  the  battle  of  Jutland 
were  fired  when  the  Galatea,  in  company 
with  the  Phaeton,  opened  fire  on  two  enemy 
destroyers.  At  2.35  Hipper's  battle-cruisers 
were  sighted,  and  at  3.48  the  two  squad- 
rons opened  fire  on  each  other.  [See  also 
Beatty,  David,  Earl.] 

Although  the  British  battle-cruisers  had 
with  them  four  fast  dreadnought  battle- 
ships, their  prime  function  was  that  of 
scouting ;  and  when  at  4.33  Scheer  himself 
appeared  in  Hipper's  wake,  Beatty  put 
about  to  join  JeUicoe  to  the  northward  of 
the  battlefield,  drawing  the  enemy's  forces 
after  him.  JelUcoe  had  intercepted  the 
signals  from  the  Galatea  and  other  ships, 
and  was  making  all  speed  to  the  south, 
sending  ahead  his  own  battle-cruisers  to 
support  those  already  engaged.  But  he 
was  in  no  position  to  order  a  'General 
Chase',  the  signal  beloved  by  the  navy  in 
sailing  days:  for  he  was  still  some  fifty 
miles  away ;  and  from  those  engaged  had 
received  no  exact  intelUgence  as  to  the 
enemy's  position  or  formation.  His  own 
fleet,  numbering  twenty-four  dreadnought 
battleships,  was  in  saihng  order,  six  Unes- 
ahead  disposed  abeam.  Before  he  accepted 
battle  he  had  to  deploy  his  six  columns 
into  single  line  ahead ;  and  before  deploy- 
ment it  was  essential  that  he  shoidd  know 
at  what  point  on  his  front  the  enemy 
would  appear. 

At  6.14  the  German  battle-fleet  was  re- 
ported ;  not  (as  was  expected)  immediately 
ahead,  but  to  the  westward.  Jellicoe,  with 
no  enemy  yet  in  sight,  instantly  signalled 
deployment  on  his  port  (or  easternmost) 
wing  column.  By  doing  so,  he  threw  a 
mantle  of  invisibihty  over  his  own  fleet, 
while  the  glare  of  the  setting  sun  through 
the  mist  made  silhouette  targets  of  the 
enemy.   As  his  six  divisions  drew  into  a 


perfect  line  ahead  he  crossed  the  enemy's 
T,  compelling  them  to  alter  course  and 
steer  parallel  to  him.  At  6.23  the  leading 
British  battleships  opened  fire,  the  salvoes 
of  nine  dreadnoughts  converging  on  three 
of  their  opponents.  Outmanoeuvred,  and 
outclassed  except  in  matiriel,  Scheer 
turned  and  doubled  on  his  tracks.  By  this 
time  the  murky  evening  was  rendered 
more  opaque  by  the  pall  of  battle-smoke 
that  hung  above  the  combatants.  It  was 
thus  impossible  for  Jellicoe  to  know 
whether  Scheer  had  actually  retreated,  or 
fortuitously  disappeared  behind  the  cur- 
tain of  mist.  What  he  did  know  was  that 
he  had  placed  the  British  battle-fleet  be- 
tween the  Germans  and  Germany;  and 
that  if  they  desired  to  see  home  again 
they  must  re-emerge. 

For  ten  miles  Scheer  fell  back  to  the 
inhospitable  west.  Then  pulling  his  force 
together  he  came  back  in  fine  ahead, 
hoping  to  work  a  passage  past,  or  even 
through,  his  opponents,  like  a  snake  wrig- 
gling through  a  wire  fence.  At  7.10  he 
reappeared ;  and  for  the  second  time  reeled 
backwards  under  the  punishment  of  Jelli- 
coe's  devastating  fire.  Georg  von  Hase 
records  that  the  Derfflinger  was  hit  twenty- 
five  times,  often  by  15-in.  shells,  and  that 
the  British  battleships  had  the  range  to 
an  inch.  [Kiel  and  Jutland,  translated  by 
A.  Chambers  and  F.  A.  Holt,  1921.] 

For  the  second  time  accepting  the 
necessity  of  retreat,  Scheer  ordered  his 
destroyers  to  veil  him  with  a  smoke-screen, 
and  to  deUver  a  massed  torpedo  attack. 
In  theory  he  could  count  on  the  discharge 
of  224  of  those  deadly  projectiles ;  but  as 
Jellicoe  instantly  laxmched  an  effective 
counter-attack  on  the  enemy  flotillas,  only 
thirty-one  torpedoes  were  actually  fired, 
though  these  might  have  played  havoc 
with  a  line  of  twenty -four  ships  broadside 
on.  Jellicoe,  however,  turned  his  ships 
individually  at  an  angle  of  45°  to  the  east- 
ward of  their  advance ;  and  the  torpedoes 
thus  ran  harmlessly  between  the  widened 
interstices  in  his  line. 

Night  now  sank  upon  the  sea;  and 
Jellicoe,  who  still  stood  between  the  Ger- 
mans and  Germany,  took  every  step  that 
ingenuity  could  suggest  to  block  their 
natural  avenues  of  escape.  In  a  land  cam- 
paign under  similar  circumstances  the 
enemy  would  have  been  compelled  to  con- 
tinue the  action  on  the  morrow;  but  in 
deep  waters  the  entire  surface  of  ocean  is 
a  path ;  and  all  that  Scheer  needed  was  the 
breadth  of  one  ship  where  in  Indian  file 
the  rest  could  follow.    Darkness  served 


479 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


him  well  in  this  his  third  and  last  attempt ; 
and  with  heavy  losses  he  brought  his 
defeated  ships  back  in  dejection  to  their 
base.  On  1  June  Jellicoe  foimd  himself 
alone  in  German  waters.  If  he  had  suc- 
cessfully sunk,  burnt,  or  destroyed  every 
vessel  brought  against  him,  he  could  not 
have  been  more  completely  master  of  the 
sea. 

The  immediate  sequel  to  the  action 
forms  an  interesting  study  in  popular 
psychology.  Jellicoe  signed  the  Jutland 
dispatches  on  18  June;  and  upon  them 
any  proper  appraisal  of  the  action  hinged. 
Before  he  reached  harbour,  however,  the 
Germans  issued  a  communique  represent- 
ing Jutland  as  a  glorious  success  for  their 
arms;  and  this  preposterous  claim  the 
Admiralty  pubhshed  on  2  June;  supple- 
menting it  with  a  frank  but  inadequate 
statement  which  disclosed  little  beyond 
the  serious  British  losses.  The  pubUc, 
finding  in  the  latter  no  hint  of  victory,  at 
once  conceived  the  idea  that  the  engage- 
ment had  been  a  disaster  and  were  con- 
firmed in  their  delusion  when  they  dis- 
covered that  the  German  losses,  both  in 
ships  and  men,  were  less  heavy  than  the 
British.  With  good  cause  for  annoyance 
with  German  publicity  and  Admiralty 
reticence,  they  visited  their  displeasure  on 
Jellicoe  and  allowed  their  resentment  to 
be  fanned  into  flame  by  imdiscerning 
critics  who,  not  in  club-land  only,  demon- 
strated what  Nelson  would  have  done.  But 
there  were  two  big  differences.  First,  the 
close  blockade,  possible  in  Nelson's  day 
but  impossible  in  Jellicoe's,  prevented  any 
general  action  in  home  waters  in  1805. 
Secondly,  in  1805  Nelson  was  not  even  in 
command  of  the  Grand  Fleet.  Had  he 
been,  he  would  probably  not  have  taken 
the  risks  which  he  accepted  at  Trafalgar, 
where  he  was  covered  by  the  Grand  Fleet 
under  Cornwallis.  Unhappily  the  critics  of 
1916  overlooked  these  important  distinc- 
tions; and  the  mistaken  tradition  that, 
if  not  a  defeat,  Jutland  was  at  best  a 
drawn  battle,  for  very  many  years  lingered 
on. 

Later  events  fully  established  the  cor- 
rectness of  Jellicoe's  judgement  (formed 
on  the  battlefield  of  Jutland)  that  the 
Germans  would  not  again  risk  such  an 
encounter.  More  serious  at  the  moment 
was  the  U-boat  assault  on  British  sea- 
borne supplies;  and  Jellicoe  modestly 
volunteered  to  serve  on  a  cormnittee  to 
grapple  with  this  baffling  problem.  It  was 
not,  however,  until  November  1916  that, 
on  appointment  as  first  sea  lord,  he  left 


the  perfect  organization  of  the  Grand 
Fleet  for  the  mass  of  unsolved  problems 
at  headquarters.  The  merchantmen  need- 
ing defence  were  privately  owned  and 
were  run  by  private  enterprise  over  which 
government  had  no  control.  The  responsi- 
bility of  the  Board  of  Trade  was  unsuited 
to  an  hour  when  the  vessels  were  no  longer 
engaged  in  commerce,  but  in  carrying  the 
supplies  on  which  the  Ufe  of  the  nation 
depended.  Some  nationalization  of  the 
industry  was  inevitable ;  but  that  was  for 
Cabinet  action.  Taking  up  his  new  duties 
on  4  December  Jellicoe  went  straight  to 
the  heart  of  the  problem  and  made  it  his 
first  duty  to  see  that  the  arming  of  the 
merchantmen  was  accelerated.  By  the 
end  of  February  1917  2,899  ships  had 
guns  to  defend  themselves;  and  depth- 
charges  were  daily  accumulating.  But 
these  measures  of  protection,  with  others 
instituted  before  he  accepted  office,  drove 
the  Germans  in  February  to  unrestricted 
U-boat  warfare ;  and  shipping  losses  soared 
in  April  to  the  staggering  total  of  599,000 
tons.  Britain  possessed  3,200  steamers 
Of  these  1,900  were  engaged  on  war  puj 
poses  only,  leaving  1,300  to  stock  tl 
country  with  food  and  raw  material.  Ho| 
long  could  Britain  hold  out,  if  she  coi 
tinued  (as  in  April)  to  lose  ten  merchanlj 
men  a  day  ? 

There  is  a  widespread  belief  that  salva 
tion  was  found  in  the  convoy  system ;  ar 
that  this  was  evolved  by  amateurs  and 
imposed  from  without  upon  a  recalcitrant 
Admiralty.  The  first  premiss  is  true ;  the 
second  is  unjust  to  Jellicoe :  for  he  brought 
from  the  Grand  Fleet  the  officers  who, 
under  his  direction,  organized  the  convoy 
system.  'The  establishment  and  develop* 
ment  of  the  convoy  system',  wrote  Tir- 
pitz,  '(a  tremendous  achievement  on  the 
part  of  the  EngUsh)  involved  years  of 
work.'  He  was  wrong  in  his  time  estimate; 
and  yet  nearer  the  truth  than  those  who 
have  claimed  for  this  statesman  or  that 
the  whole  credit  for  an  idea  easy  to  sug- 
gest but  which  only  the  British  Admiralty 
could  implement.  It  is  true  that,  in  the 
hour  of  Jellicoe's  arrival,  the  naval  staff 
was  opposed  to  the  extension  of  the  con- 
voy system  beyond  the  escort  of  troop- 
ships and  other  precious  freights  (which 
had  been  convoyed  since  the  outbreak  of 
hostiUties) :  but  such  opposition  (whateve 
the  cause)  serves  only  to  emphasize  tl 
impossibility  of  expanding  the  system  ii 
December  1916.  In  the  black  days  of 
April  1917  two  compensatory  factors 
adjusted  the  balance.    The  new  Ministry 


480 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


of  Shipping  (inaugurated  in  December 
1916)  began  to  function,  and  brought 
unity  of  control  and  direction  to  the  mer- 
cantile marine ;  unrestricted  U-boat  atro- 
cities brought  the  United  States  of 
America  into  the  war,  and  so  permitted 
tlie  release,  for  escort  duties,  of  the  tenth 
cruiser  squadron  (until  then  employed  in 
preventing  American  goods  from  reaching 
Germany);  the  admission  into  American 
harbours  of  armed  British  merchantmen ; 
and  a  substantial  reinforcement  of  Ameri- 
can escort  vessels  which  were  essential  for 
the  success  of  the  convoy  system.  Within 
a  matter  of  months  (to  quote  Admiral 
Sims,  U.S.N.)  'the  whole  gigantic  enter- 
prise flowed  with  a  precision  and  regularity 
which  it  is  hardly  Ukely  that  any  other 
transportation  system  has  ever  achieved' ; 
and  the  credit,  however  able  the  contri- 
bution of  colleagues  and  alUes,  belongs 
in  chief  to  Jellicoe,  whose  lifelong  sea- 
experience,  administrative  gifts,  and  grasp 
of  technical  minutiae  were  never  employed 
to  better  advantage. 

The  tributes  paid  by  the  sailors  Sims 
and  Tirpitz  may  be  contrasted  with  the 
views  of  the  landsman  who,  in  the  month 
after  Jellicoe's  appointment  as  first  sea 
lord,  became  prime  minister,  and  whose 
impatient  temper  and  utter  ignorance  of 
sea-conditions  combined  to  make  him 
chafe  at  any  delay.  The  peril  was  indeed 
extreme ;  and  Jellicoe  was  doing  no  more 
than  his  duty  in  demonstrating  that  there 
was  no  infallible  panacea  for  U-boat 
troubles,  and  in  recommending  resort  to 
rationing.  But  Lloyd  George  came  to  be- 
lieve that  the  negUgence  of  the  Admiralty 
was  proved  and  that  JeUicoe  was  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  maladministration  which 
he  denounced  [War  Memoirs,  vol.  iii,  c.  xl, 
1934].  In  July  1917  he  translated  to  a 
higher  poUtical  plane  the  then  first  lord  of 
the  Admiralty,  Sir  Edward  Carson  [q .v.], 
and  put  in  his  place  Sir  Eric  Geddes  [q.v.], 
the  railway  king,  to  teach  the  Admiralty 
their  business.  When,  being  totally  ignor- 
ant of  naval  traditions,  customs,  and 
sentiments,  Geddes  trampled  such  trifles 
underfoot,  it  was  Jellicoe's  unpleasant 
task  to  remind  him  that  the  sea  lords  were 
his  colleagues,  not  his  subordinates;  and 
on  Christmas  Eve  1917  he  found  in  his 
office  a  curt  note  from  Geddes  dismissing 
him  from  government  employ.  He  carried 
into  the  silence  of  exile  the  consoling 
thought  that  the  submarine  menace  had 
been  mastered  and  that  he  had  provided 
the  Grand  Fleet  with  the  armour-piercing 
shells  which  at  Jutland  would  have  made 


the  German  losses  five  or  six  times  as 
heavy.  In  January  1918  he  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  as  Viscount  Jellicoe,  of  Scapa. 
In  1919  he  received  the  thanks  of  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  and  a  grant  of 
£50,000,  and  was  promoted  admiral  of  the 
fleet. 

At  the  Imperial  Conference  in  March 
1917  the  Admiralty  had  been  invited  by 
the  Dominions  to  consider  the  most 
effective  manner  in  which  they  could  share 
in  the  naval  defence  of  the  Empire ;  and 
when  the  war  ended,  this  invitation  was 
renewed  with  a  clear  hint  to  utilize  Jelli- 
coe's imquestioned  status  as  one  of  the 
greatest  living  sailors.  The  Admiralty  ap- 
proved ;  and  in  February  1919  Jellicoe  left 
Portsmouth  for  a  cruise  which  included 
visits  to  India,  AustraUa,  New  Zealand, 
and  Canada.  The  tour  lasted  a  year  and 
involved  an  immense  amount  of  work  of 
an  invaluable  but  xmspectacular  kind.  The 
magnitude  and  secrecy  of  the  recom- 
mendations preclude  adequate  appraisal; 
but  among  soHd  results  must  be  counted 
the  formation  of  the  great  naval  base  at 
Singapore,  and  the  establishment  of  the 
royal  Indian  navy  and  of  the  New  Zealand 
naval  division.  It  was  no  fault  of  Jellicoe's 
if  effect  was  not  given  to  his  earnest  plea 
for  a  strong  Pacific  Fleet  with  accumula- 
tions of  fuel  to  ensure  its  mobihty.  From 
the  personal  standpoint  the  most  satis- 
fying aspect  of  the  cruise  was  the  heart- 
stirring  enthusiasm  everywhere  shown  for 
Jellicoe  himself.  Such  world-wide  appre- 
ciation and  spontaneous  tributes  of  ap- 
plause could  hardly  fail  to  make  amends 
for  the  censure,  contumely,  and  political 
persecution  from  which  he  had  suffered 
at  home. 

After  six  months'  leave,  Jellicoe,  with 
his  household,  sailed  in  August  1920  for 
New  Zealand  to  take  up  his  duties  as 
governor-general.  He  held  the  appoint- 
ment for  four  years ;  and  during  that  time 
raised  the  olfice  to  a  pinnacle  of  esteem 
previously  imapproached.  Unfailing  ally 
of  every  charitable  and  philanthropic  im- 
pulse, wise  guide  to  the  most  sagacious  of 
his  own  counsellors,  idol  of  every  child  in 
the  Dominion,  he  established  between 
himself  and  those  whom  he  governed 
strong  ties  of  personal  affection,  and  left 
behind  him  unfading  memories  of  nation- 
wide gratitude.  Importuned  to  stay  and 
reluctant  to  leave,  he  re-embarked  in 
November  1924,  retiring  from  the  service 
in  December.  In  June  1925  he  was  ad- 
vanced to  the  rank  of  Earl  Jellicoe. 

During  the  last  eleven  years  of  his  life 


481 


Jellicoe,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Jellicoe  patiently  shouldered  many  volun- 
tary tasks.  Not  only  was  he  chairman  of 
the  National  Rifle  Association  and  grand 
president  of  the  British  Empire  Service 
League ;  but  he  interested  himself  keenly 
in  the  Boy  Scout  movement  and  in  1925 
became  county  commissioner  for  London. 
On  the  death  of  Lord  Haig  in  1928  the 
British  Legion  invited  him  to  fill  the 
vacant  presidency.  Thinking  a  soldier  to 
be  a  more  suitable  choice,  he  asked  per- 
mission to  decline.  The  nomination  was 
then  referred  to  thirteen  area  conferences, 
all  of  which  unanimously  elected  him,  and 
he  held  office  until  1932.  In  all  these 
causes  he  laboured  strenuously,  never 
sparing  himself  or  allowing  himself  the 
rest  and  recreation  which  his  health  de- 
manded and  his  age  condoned.  On  9 
November  1935  he  caught  a  chill  while 
planting  poppies;  and  two  days  later 
attended  the  Armistice  Day  service  at  the 
Cenotaph.  The  infection  spread  to  one 
lung;  and  on  20  November,  fifteen  days 
before  his  seventy-sixth  birthday,  he  died 
at  his  home  in  Kensington,  On  25  Novem- 
ber the  funeral  procession  passed  through 
crowded  streets  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
where  his  body  was  fittingly  laid  to  rest 
beside  those  of  Nelson  and  CoUingwood. 

Unaided  by  wealth  or  social  prestige, 
Jellicoe  rose  to  the  head  of  his  profession 
by  sheer  merit  and  force  of  character.  He 
might  have  suffered  from  pride  and  over- 
confidence.  But  the  key  to  his  character 
was  selflessness.  A  man  of  deep  religious 
convictions,  he  never  allowed  personal 
considerations  to  affect  his  judgement; 
never  spoke  of  himself;  and  instead  of 
courting  publicity,  shunned  it.  When  pil- 
loried by  the  press  and  censured  by  politi- 
cians, he  answered  not  a  word  and  allowed 
no  recriminations.  In  congenial  company 
his  shrewd,  twinkling  eyes  radiated  friend- 
liness and  sympathy;  and  his  countless 
little  acts  of  kindness  to  the  needy,  diffi- 
dent, and  distressed  made  all  who  served 
with  him  worship  'J,  R.  J.'  with  a  touch- 
ing doglike  devotion,  deepened  by  their 
unquestioning  trust  in  his  faultless  leader- 
ship. Those  who  passed  with  him  through 
the  flame  of  battle  testify  to  his  imper- 
turbable calm,  and  the  lightning  speed  of 
his  decisions.  When,  however,  he  found 
that  ill-informed  writers  were  unjustly 
attacking  the  reputations  of  officers  who 
had  served  under  his  command,  then  and 
then  only  would  he  write  to  the  proper 
authorities  to  call  attention  to  the  in- 
justice. 

In  addition  to  the  honours  already  men- 


tioned, Jellicoe  was  appointed  K.C.B,  in 
1911,  G,C,B,  in  1915,  and  G.C.V,0.  in 
1916:  in  the  last-named  year  for  his  ser- 
vices at  Jutland  he  was  appointed  to  the 
Order  of  Merit.  He  also  received  the  free- 
dom of  the  City  of  London  and  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Cambridge,  St.  Andrews,  and  Glasgow. 
His  numerous  foreign  decorations  included 
the  grand  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour. 

Jellicoe  had  one  son  and  five  daughters, 
the  second  of  whom  died  in  childhood.  He 
was  succeeded  as  second  earl  by  his  son, 
George  Patrick  John  Rush  worth  (bom 
1918),  who  was  awarded  the  D.S.O,  and 
the  M.C.  in  the  war  of  1939-1945. 

A  half-length  portrait  of  Jellicoe,  by 
R.  G.  Eves,  is  in  the  possession  of  H.M.S. 
Excellent  and  the  United  Services  Club, 
and  a  quarter-length,  by  the  same  artist 
(1935),  is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
A  portrait  of  him  is  included  in  Sir  A.  S. 
Cope's  picture  'Some  Sea  Officers  of  the 
Great  War',  painted  in  1921,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery.  A  cartoon  of 
him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
26  December  1906. 

[Sir  Reginald  Bacon,  The  Life  of  John  Rush' 
worth  Earl  Jellicoe,  1936;  Lord  Jellicoe,  The 
Grand  Fleet  1914-1916,  1919,  The  Crisis  of  the 
Naval  War,  1920,  and  The  Submarine  Peril, 
1934 ;  Sir  Julian  Corbett,  (Official)  History  of 
the  Great  War.  Naval  Operations,  vol.  iii, 
1923;  C.  E.  Fayle,  Seaborne  Trade,  vol.  iii, 
1924 ;  Lord  Chatfield,  The  Navy  and  Defence, 
1942.]  Geoffrey  Callendeb. 

JENKIN,       CHARLES       FREWEN 

(1865-1940),  first  professor  of  engineering 
science  in  the  university  of  Oxford,  was 
born  at  Claygate,  Surrey,  24  September 
1865,  the  second  son  of  Henry  Charles 
Fleeming  Jenkin  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Anne, 
only  child  of  Alfred  Austin,  permanent 
secretary  to  the  Office  of  Works,  and  niece 
of  John  Austin  the  jurist  [q.v.].  He  was 
educated  at  Edinburgh  Academy  and  at 
the  university,  where  from  1868  his  father 
was  professor  of  engineering ;  he  then  went 
to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
was  a  senior  optime  in  the  mathematical 
tripos  of  1886.  On  leaving  Cambridge  he 
entered  the  engineering  workshops  of 
Messrs.  Mather  &  Piatt  at  Manchester, 
whence  he  moved  to  the  London  and  North 
Western  Railway  works  at  Crewe.  In 
1891  he  became  engineer  to  the  Royal 
Gunpowder  Factory  at  Waltham  Abbey, 
where  he  designed  machinery  for  a  new 
factory  of  cordite.  Later  he  pursued 
practical  work  in  other  fields :  at  Newport, 


482 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jenks 


Monmouthshire  (1893-1898),  Blackheath 
(1898-1903),  Stafford  (1903-1905),  and 
I.ondon  (1905-1908).  But  enthusiasm  for 
its  technical  side  was  blended  with  dislike 
of  its  more  commercial  aspects.  His  heart 
was  always  set  upon  research,  and  in 
London  he  found  time  for  work — on 
calcareous  sponges — which  is  recorded  in 
two  papers  dated  1908.  Although  under- 
taken as  a  hobby,  this  work  seems  to  have 
decided  his  election  to  the  new  chair  at 
Oxford  in  that  year,  when  he  became  a 
fellow  of  New  College,  migrating  to  Brase- 
nose  in  1912. 

At  Oxford  for  some  years  Jenkin  had 
to  strive  against  the  handicaps  of  in- 
sufficient staff,  space,  and  equipment :  not 
until  1914  was  his  scattered  department 
installed  within  one  building,  and  by  that 
time  the  war  had  brought  him  work  of 
quite  another  kind.  He  had  always  had  a 
passion  for  the  sea,  and  it  was  natural  that 
in  1914  he  should  join  the  navy  as  a 
lieutenant.  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Re- 
serve. More  unexpectedly,  on  the  amal- 
gamation early  in  1918  of  the  Royal 
Flying  Corps  and  the  Royal  Naval  Air 
Service,  he  became  head  of  a  group  re- 
sponsible for  the  preparation  of  specifica- 
tioiis  in  regard  to  every  kind  of  aircraft 
material,  with  the  rank  of  lieutenant- 
colonel,  Royal  Air  Force.  That  work,  for 
which  he  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in  1919, 
entailed  much  experimental  study  (never 
before  had  'factors  of  safety'  been  cut  so 
low)  and  brought  him  into  association  with 
the  best-known  British  workers  in  this 
field.  Its  results  are  recorded  in  his  Report 
on  Materials  of  Construction  used  in  Air- 
craft and  Aircraft  Engines  published  by 
the  Stationery  Office  in  1920 ;  its  effect  on 
his  own  outlook  is  shown  by  his  presi- 
dential address  to  the  British  Association 
(Section  G)  in  that  year,  and  by  his  own 
research  in  post-war  years.  Jenkin's  main 
concern  was  with  the  effects  of  cracks  and 
notches  on  the  strength  of  machine  parts, 
and  the  influence  of  fatigue.  With 
Mr.  Alfred  Maurice  Binnie,  G.  D.  Leh- 
maim,  and  W.  N.  Thomas,  he  notably 
promoted  understanding  of  'corrosion 
fatigue ',  testing  metals  at  rates  of  alterna- 
tion far  higher  than  had  been  usual 
(20,000  alternations  per  second  in  1928, 
by  a  novel  method  in  which  the  specimen 
itself  was  made  the  'reed'  of  an  acoustic 
resonator).  Largely  by  reason  of  this 
work  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1931. 

On  retirement  from  his  chair  in  1929 
Jenkin  settled  at  St.  Albans  and  joined  the 
staff  of  the  Building  Research  Station  at 


Garston,  near  Watford,  where  he  investi- 
gated the  properties  of  granular  materials 
and  clay. 

Jenkin  married  in  1889  Mary  Oswald, 
youngest  daughter  of  Donald  Mackenzie 
(Hon.  Lord  Mackenzie),  and  had  two  sons 
and  a  daughter.  Both  sons  predeceased 
him,  the  younger  on  active  service  in  the 
navy  in  1916.  He  died  at  St.  Albans 
23  August  1940. 

[The  Times,  26  August  1940;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  10, 
December  1941  (portrait) ;  R.  L.  Stevenson, 
Memoir  of  Fleeming  Jenkin  prefixed  to  his 
Papers,  1887 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  V.  Southwell. 

JENKS,  EDWARD  (1861-1939), 
writer  on  law  and  history,  was  born  at 
Stockwell  in  South  London  20  February 
1861,  the  eldest  of  the  four  sons  of  Robert 
Jenks,  who  traded  in  the  City  of  London, 
by  his  second  wife,  Isobel  Frances, 
daughter  of  Edward  Jones,  furniture 
manufacturer,  of  Nottingham.  He  was 
educated  at  Dulwich  College  (1874-1877), 
leaving  in  his  seventeenth  year  in  order 
to  be  articled  to  a  solicitor.  In  1883,  the 
year  after  he  had  qualified,  the  death  of 
his  mother  put  money  at  his  disposal, 
which  made  it  possible  for  him  to  enter 
King's  College,  Cambridge,  as  a  pensioner, 
in  the  Michaelmas  Term.  He  read  law, 
was  awarded  an  exhibition  in  1884,  and 
was  placed  first  in  the  first  class  in  the 
tripos  of  1886 ;  in  the  same  year  he  won 
the  chancellor's  medal  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  the  study  of  English  law.  His 
college  rewarded  these  successes  with  a 
scholarship.  Next  year  (1887)  he  was 
bracketed  second  in  the  first  class  in  the 
historical  tripos.  Concurrently,  he  was 
reading  for  the  bar,  to  which  he  was  called 
by  the  Middle  Temple  in  1887 ;  he  won  a 
studentship  in  jurisprudence  and  Roman 
law  (1886)  and  the  Barstow  scholarship  of 
the  four  Inns  of  Court  (1887).  At  Cam- 
bridge, he  was  awarded  the  Le  Bas  (1887) 
and  the  Thirlwall  (1889)  prizes  for  essays 
on  Thomas  Carlyle  and  John  Stuart  Mill 
and  The  Constitutional  Experiments  of  the 
Commonwealth.  A  Study  of  the  Years 
1649-1660,  published  respectively  in  1888 
and  1890.  He  was  director  of  studies  in 
law  and  history  at  Jesus  College  and 
lecturer  at  Pembroke  College  in  1888- 
1889,  and  in  the  latter  year  was  elected 
into  a  fellowship,  which  he  held  until 
1895,  at  King's. 

In  1889  Jenks  left  England  on  his 
appointment  as  professor  and  dean  of  the 


483 


Jenks 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


faculty  of  law  in  the  university  of  Mel- 
bourne. In  1890,  soon  after  his  arrival,  he 
married  Annie  Ingham,  of  Leeds,  who  had 
followed  him  from  England.  She  died  next 
year  after  having  given  birth  to  a  son. 
Jenks,  by  nature  combative,  was  soon 
engaged  in  public  controversy  with  (Sir) 
John  Madden,  the  vice-chancellor,  over 
questions  of  imiversity  administration. 
[See  Ernest  Scott,  A  History  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Melbourne,  1936.]  But  this  incident 
did  not  distract  him  from  collecting 
material  for  The  Government  of  Victoria 
(Australia),  published  in  1891,  a  pioneer 
work  of  great  merit,  not  yet  superseded, 
nor  from  writing  an  essay,  which  won  him 
the  Yorke  prize  at  Cambridge  in  1891,  on 
The  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  Consideration 
in  English  Law,  published  in  1892. 

In  November  1891  Jenks  resigned  his 
chair  at  Melbourne  and,  returning  to 
England,  was  appointed  next  year  to  a 
professorship  in  the  recently  instituted 
faculty  of  law  at  University  College, 
Liverpool,  which  three  years  later  (1895) 
became  the  Queen  Victoria  chair  of  law 
in  the  Victoria  University  of  Manchester, 
of  which  University  College,  Liverpool, 
was  a  constituent  body.  During  his  four 
years  at  Liverpool  Jenks  championed  the 
cause  of  humanism  in  legal  education  in 
opposition  to  the  view  that  a  lawyer,  in 
particular  a  solicitor,  is  perfectly  equipped 
if  he  has  learnt  the  technique  of  his  trade. 
It  often  happens  that  the  men  who  count 
for  most  in  the  profession  belong  to  the 
latter  school  of  thought.  Jenks  entered 
upon  the  fray  with  zest  and  considerable 
success.  In  his  last  report  to  the  board  of 
legal  studies  he  wrote:  'To  have  taken 
even  a  modest  part  in  founding  an  institu- 
tion which  has  for  its  object,  not  merely 
the  sharpening  of  technical  faculties,  but 
the  production  of  wise  and  public-spirited 
men  is,  and  must  always  be,  a  source  of 
unmixed  gratification.'  This  was  written 
in  1895.  Next  year  Jenks  left  Liverpool 
in  order  to  take  up  the  post  of  reader  in 
English  law  in  the  university  of  Oxford 
with  a  tutorship  and  lecturership  in  law 
at  Balliol  College.  In  these  capacities  he 
made  his  mark  as  a  competent  and  stimu- 
lating teacher.  His  Law  and  Politics  in  the 
Middle  Ages  was  published  in  1898  (2nd 
ed.  1913),  his  Modern  Land  Law  in  1899, 
and  in  1900  there  appeared  a  small  manual 
entitled  A  History  of  Politics  which  had  a 
large  sale  and  the  distinction  of  translation 
into  Japanese .  Another  work  begun  diuring 
this  period  was  A  Digest  of  English  Civil 
Law  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  code  along 


the  lines  of  the  German  civil  code.  It  was 
the  joint  product  of  a  team  which  in- 
cluded Jenks,  as  editor,  and  four  other 
Oxford  lawyers.  It  appeared  in  pai 
(1905-1917)  and  in  a  consolidated  editi( 
in  1921  (3rd  ed.  1938). 

In  1903  Jenks  left  Oxford  for  London  oj 
his  appointment  as  principal  and  dired 
of  legal  studies  of  the  Law  Society,  a  pos 
tion  which  he  held  for  twenty-one  yeai 
Here  the  problem  was  the  same  as 
Liverpool,  but  on  a  nation-wide  seal* 
Jenks  fought  the  battle  with  indomitable" 
courage  and  persistence.  He  gathered 
about  him  a  staff  of  teachers  of  remarkable 
ability,  many  of  whom  were  greatly  dis- 
tinguished in  after  life.  He  was  an  effective 
and  sympathetic  administrator.  In  1924 
he  transferred  his  activities  to  the  newly 
founded  chair  of  English  law  in  the  univer- 
sity of  London,  attached  to  the  London 
School  of  Economics  and  Political  Science. 
In  1927  he  became  dean  of  the  faculty  of 
laws  in  the  university.  He  had  taken  the 
degree  of  LL.B.  in  1909  with  a  first  class, 
no  mean  performance  for  a  man  in  his 
forty-ninth  year. 

When  his  five-year  tenure  as  professor 
expired  in  1929  Jenks  made  his  home  at 
Bishop's  Tawton,  near  Barnstaple,  where 
he  continued  to  take  an  undiminished 
interest  in  public  affairs,  and,  in  particular, 
in  the  Workers'  Educational  Association 
and  the  League  of  Nations  Union.  He  was 
in  the  habit  of  visiting  Geneva  when  the 
Assembly  of  the  League  was  in  session. 

An  activity  in  which  Jenks  took  a 
prominent  part  was  the  foundation  in 
1909  of  the  Society  of  Public  Teachers  of 
Law,  familiarly  known  at  the  time  as. 
'Jenks's  trade  union'.  He  was  for  some 
years  virtual,  not  titular,  editor  of  the 
Independent  Review,  in  which  his  own 
contribution  'The  Myth  of  Magna  Carta' 
(November  1904)  made  a  considerable 
stir. 

Jenks  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Wales  (1928),  Paris 
(1929),  and  Bristol  (1933).  He  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1930. 

In  1898  Jenks  married  as  his  second 
wife  Dorothy  Mary,  fourth  daughter  of 
Sir  William  Bower  Forwood,  of  Liverpool, 
who  with  their  son  and  daughter  survived 
him.  The  son  of  his  first  marriage  won  the 
M.C.  and  was  killed  in  action  in  1917. 
Jenks  dedicated  to  his  memory  his  book 
on  The  Government  of  the  British  Empire 
(1918).  He  himself  died  at  Bishop's 
Tawton  10  November  1939. 

Jenks  was  iadefatigably  active  both  in 


484 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Jerram 


mind  and  in  body,  a  man  of  wide  interests, 
obstinate  to  a  fault  in  maintaining  a  view 
once  formed,  whether  in  the  world  of  ideas 
or  of  practice.  Above  all  he  was  a  teacher. 
He  might  have  won  a  higher  position  in 
literature  if  his  work  had  been  more  con- 
centrated, but  he  wanted  the  critical 
judgement  to  make  a  great  historian. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Jenks  by  Frank 
Bennett  in  the  Law  Society's  School  of 
Law,  but  a  more  satisfactory  likeness  will 
he  found  in  the  photograph  prefixed  to  the 
memoir  in  volume  xxvi  of  the  Proceedings 
of  the  British  Academy. 

[R.  W.  Lee,  Edward  Jenks,  1861-1939  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi, 
1940  (bibliography  and  portrait);  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  W.  Lee. 

JERRAM,  Sir  (THOMAS  HENRY) 
^L^RTYN  (1858-1933),  admiral,  was  born 
at  Chobham,  Surrey,  6  September  1858, 
the  second  son  of  Samuel  John  Jerram, 
\icar  of  Chobham,  by  his  wife,  Grace, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Hunt,  of  Hermitage, 
CO.  Waterford.  He  was  a  grandson  of 
Charles  Jerram  [q.v.].  He  entered  the 
navigating  branch  of  the  Royal  Navy 
through  the  Britannia  in  1871.  After 
service  as  navigating  cadet  and  midship- 
man in  the  Channel  Fleet  he  was  promoted 
navigating  sub-lieutenant  in  1877;  two 
years  later  he  transferred  to  the  executive 
branch  and  joined  the  sailing  sloop  Sea- 
flower,  employed  in  the  training  of  boys. 
He  was  promoted  lieutenant  in  1881  and 
after  a  year  in  the  Iron  Duke,  flagship 
on  the  China  station,  he  returned  to  the 
Seaflower  as  first  lieutenant  for  another 
year.  In  1884  he  was  given  command,  for 
the  passage  to  Australia,  of  the  torpedo- 
boat  Childers  (65  tons),  just  completed  by 
(Sir)  J.  I.  Thornycroft  [q.v.]  for  the 
government  of  Victoria.  Although  the 
Childers^s  complement  was  only  twelve  all 
told,  and  her  coal  capacity  but  ten  tons, 
she  made  the  long  voyage  with  complete 
success ;  Jerram  received  the  appreciation 
of  the  Admiralty  and  a  special  letter  of 
thanks  from  the  Victorian  minister  of 
defence. 

Jerram  then  became  first  lieutenant  of 
the  sloop  Reindeer  on  the  North  America 
station  for  three  and  a  half  years  and  later, 
in  1889,  of  the  cruiser  Conquest  on  the 
China  station.  That  ship  was  transferred 
the  next  year  to  the  East  Indies  station, 
and  was  in  the  squadron  commanded  by 
Vice-Admiral  Sir  E.  R.  Fremantle  [q.v.] 
from  which  a  naval  brigade,  in  which 


Jerram  commanded  a  battalion,  was 
landed  for  the  pimitive  expedition  against 
the  Sultan  of  Vitu,  in  East  Africa.  The 
next  year  (1891),  while  in  command  of  the 
Pigeon,  he  was  landed  for  a  time  at  Beira 
to  act  as  British  vice-consul,  afterwards 
receiving  from  the  Foreign  Office  'high 
appreciation  and  thanks  for  his  services'. 
Returning  home  in  1892,  he  became  first 
lieutenant  of  the  Ruby,  in  the  training 
squadron,  thereby  resuming  the  close 
association  with  the  training  service  which 
was  to  last  for  many  years  more.  He  was 
promoted  commander  in  1894,  and  was  for 
two  years  executive  officer  of  the  masted 
training  ship  Northampton,  employed  on 
the  training  of  youths ;  he  was  then  given 
command  of  the  masted  sloop  Curasao, 
tender  to  the  Northampton,  which  he  held 
until  promoted  captain  in  1899.  Command 
of  the  training  ship  Boscawen  at  Portland 
followed  for  the  next  three  years,  com- 
bined with  his  appointment  as  assistant 
to  the  inspecting  captain  of  boys'  training 
ships. 

In  1902  Jerram  returned  to  the  China 
station  for  eighteen  months  in  the  battle- 
ship Albion,  as  flag  captain  to  the 
second-in-command.  Rear- Admiral  Harry 
Tremenheere  Grenfell,  and  to  the  Channel 
Fleet  in  May  1904  in  command  of  the 
battleship  Russell.  In  December  1905  he 
came  ashore  to  command  the  Royal  Naval 
Engineering  College  at  Keyham  until  his 
promotion  to  flag  rank  in  1908.  After  a 
year  as  chief  of  staff  to  Sir  George  Neville 
in  the  reserve  divisions  of  the  Home  Fleet, 
he  was  appointed  in  1910  second-in- 
command  in  the  Mediterranean,  with  his 
flag  in  the  Duncan,  until  1912,  in  which 
year  he  was  appointed  C.B.  In  1913  he 
became  conunander-in-chief  on  the  China 
station,  as  acting  vice-admiral  with  his 
flag  in  the  armoured  cruiser  Minotaur ;  he 
was  promoted  vice-admiral  in  June  1913 
and  appointed  K.C.B.  in  1914.  His  chief 
preoccupation  on  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  was  the  powerful  German  squadron 
under  Admiral  Graf  Spec,  which  had  been 
based  on  Tsing-Tao  but  of  which  the 
whereabouts  was  at  first  imknown.  It 
soon  became  clear,  however,  that  the 
German  ships  had  left  their  peace-time 
station  in  the  China  Seas,  and  various 
other  activities  there  developed  for  the 
Allied  navies,  of  which  by  that  time  Jerram 
had  under  his  command  Russian,  French, 
and  Japanese  ships  as  well  as  his  own. 
German  radio  stations  in  the  Caroline 
Islands  and  elsewhere  were  destroyed  by 
bombardment,  measures  were  taken  to 


485 


Jerram 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


cope  with  commerce  raiding  by  the  Ger- 
man cruiser  Emden,  and  to  protect  troop 
convoys  from  Australia.  The  flagship 
Minotaur  being  needed  for  these  duties, 
Jerram  first  shifted  his  flag  to  the  armed 
merchant  cruiser  Empress  of  Japan,  but 
later  found  it  necessary  to  remain  ashore 
at  Singapore  in  order  adequately  to 
control  his  composite  and  scattered  forces. 

In  1915  Jerram  returned  home  to 
command  the  second  battle  squadron  of 
the  Grand  Fleet.  Since  his  squadron 
formed  the  starboard  wing  of  the  fleet,  it 
fell  to  him,  in  the  King  George  V,  to  lead 
the  battle  line  in  the  battle  of  Jutland ; 
and  although  in  his  official  dispatch 
Admiral  Sir  John  (afterwards  Earl) 
Jellicoe  [q.v.]  paid  a  tribute  to  Jerram's 
qualities  as  a  squadron  commander,  he 
became  the  target  for  a  certain  amount  of 
criticism,  much  of  it  iU  informed,  on  the 
score  of  lack  of  initiative  in  that  position. 
For  his  services  in  the  battle  he  was 
appointed  K.C.M.G.  (1916);  but  when 
Vice-Admiral  Sir  David  (afterwards  Earl) 
Beatty  [q.v.]  who  was  his  junior  succeeded 
to  the  command  of  the  Grand  Fleet  at  the 
end  of  1916,  he  left  the  fleet  and  was 
appointed  to  the  Admiralty  for  special 
service.  He  was  promoted  admiral  in 
April  1917  and  retired  at  his  own  request 
a  few  months  later.  He  was  appointed 
G.C.M.G.  in  1919. 

In  September  1918,  when  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  current  pay  scales  for  officers 
and  men  became  an  urgent  matter, 
Jerram  was  appointed  president  of  a 
committee  thereon ;  the  rates  recom- 
mended by  his  committee,  somewhat 
whittled  away  by  official  parsimony, 
became  the  basis  of  the  new  scales  then 
introduced.  A  permanent  Welfare  Com- 
mittee was  set  up  in  1919  and  Jerram  was 
appointed  president  of  it.  He  became 
president  of  the  Naval  Prize  Tribunal  in 
1925.  After  his  retirement  he  lived  at 
Alverstoke,  Hampshire,  where  he  died 
19  March  1933. 

Jerram  was  twice  commended  for 
jumping  overboard  and  saving  life  at  sea, 
in  1881,  when  lieutenant  of  the  Seaflower, 
for  which  he  received  the  bronze  medal  of 
the  Royal  Humane  Society,  and  in  1902, 
when  captain  of  the  Albion.  For  his  war 
services  he  received  Japanese,  French, 
Russian,  Italian,  and  Chinese  decorations. 
While  not,  perhaps,  an  outstanding  leader 
of  men,  he  was  one  in  whose  sympathy, 
fairness,  and  understanding  of  their  needs 
in  the  difficult  matters  of  their  pay  and 
conditions  of  service  the  men  of  the  navy 


had  full  confidence.  He  married  in  1892 
Clara  Isabel  (died  1926),  second  daughter 
of  Joseph  Parsons,  of  Ennox,  Somerset, 
and  had  two  sons. 

A  portrait  of  Jerram,  by  Neville  Lytton, 
is  in  the  Imperial  War  Museum. 

[The  Times,  21  March  1933;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.]  ^ 

H.  G.  THURSFIELD.H 

JOACHIM,  HAROLD  HENRY  (1868- 
1938),  philosopher,  was  born  in  London 
28  May  1868,  the  second  child  and  only 
son  of  Henry  Joachim,  a  London  wool- 
merchant,  who  as  a  boy  had  come  to 
England  from  Kitsee  in  Hungary,  by  his 
wife,  Ellen  Margaret,  daughter  of  the 
organist  and  composer  Henry  Thomas 
Smart  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Harrow 
and  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  won  the  senior  classical  scholarship 
in  1886.  He  was  awarded  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1888)  and  in 
literae  humaniores  (1890),  and  in  the  latter 
year  was  elected  to  a  prize  fellowship  at 
Merton  College.  He  lectured  on  moral 
philosophy  at  St.  Andrews  University 
from  1892  to  1894,  when  he  returned  to 
Balliol  as  lecturer  in  philosophy  under 
J.  A.  Smith  [q.v.].  In  1897  he  succeeded 
William  Wallace  as  fellow  and  tutor  in 
philosophy  at  Merton.  In  1919  he  was 
appointed  to  the  Wykeham  professorship 
of  logic  in  succession  to  J.  Cook  Wilson 
[q.v.],  and  held  the  chair  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1935. 

Joachim's  main  publications  are  A 
Study  of  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza  (1901) ;  The 
Nature  of  Truth  (1906) ;  and  translations 
of  Aristotle's  De  lineis  insecabilibus  and 
De  generatione  et  corruptione  (published 
respectively  in  vol.  vi,  1908,  and  vol.  ii, 
1922,  of  the  Oxford  translation  of  the 
Works  of  Aristotle) ;  the  translation  of  the 
De  generatione  was  followed  in  the  same 
year  by  a  revised  text  with  introduction 
and  commentary.  His  almost  completed! 
commentary  on  Spinoza's  Tractatus  de. 
Intellectus  Emendatione  was  published] 
posthumously  in  1940,  and  it  is  hoped  that| 
the  very  detailed  manuscript  of  his  lectures! 
on  logic  may  also  appear  in  print. 

These  works,  none  of  them  lengthy  and! 
all  of  them  written  in  a  close  but  luminous' 
style,  to  which  his  undergraduate  pupil' 
Mr.  T.  S.  Eliot  has  acknowledged  a  great 
debt,  were  the  fruit  of  a  deep  and  finely 
discriminating  scholarship.  Joachim  once, 
dismissed  as  'heavy  and  perishable'  the! 
writings  of  a  certain  German  professor,! 
and  few  men  had  a  better  right  to  criticize 


486 


cizel 

I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Joel 


with  such  a  phrase.  None  of  Joachim's 
contemporaries  ranked  higher  than  he 
either  as  a  Spinozist  or  as  a  textual  critic 
and  interpreter  of  Aristotle. 

But  to  study  minutely  and  scrupulously 
the  meaning  of  the  great  thinkers  was 
always  for  Joachim  a  means  to  the  solving 
of  his  own  problems.  A  pupil  of  R.  L. 
Nettleship  [q.v.]  and,  at  Merton,  a  col- 
league of  F.  H.  Bradley  [q.v.],  he  shared 
in  general  the  idealist  views  which  then 
dominated  Oxford  philosophy.  The  Nature 
of  Truth  presents  the  most  compact  single 
statement  of  the  coherence  theory  of 
truth.  Joachim  there  proceeds  by  examin- 
ing doctrines  of  Aristotle,  Descartes, 
S])inoza,  and  Bradley,  but  he  confesses 
himself  in  the  main  inspired  by  Hegel. 
Bradley  he  regarded  as  still  tinged  with 
the  empiricism  of  his  opponents  and  too 
much  affected  by  Lotze's  reaction  from 
Hegel.  But  although  he  conceived  him- 
self as  working  in  Hegel's  shadow,  he  was 
always  loth  to  attempt  exposition  of 
Hegel's  system,  and  he  offers  his  conclu- 
sions with  none  of  Hegel's  untroubled 
confidence.  Very  certain  of  his  own  way 
of  thinking,  he  pursued  it  without  com- 
promise; but  he  was  most  cautious  in 
estimating  the  distance  which  he  had 
travelled.  Despite  his  lifelong  deference  to 
the  views  of  J.  A.  Smith,  who  in  his  later 
years  acknowledged  Benedetto  Croce  as 
his  master,  Joachim  did  not  fully  share 
Smith's  enthusiasm  for  the  ItaUan  ideaUsts. 
He  would  praise  them  for  going  straight  to 
the  point,  but  he  did  not  regard  their  con- 
tribution to  philosophy  as  fundamental. 

The  part  which  Joachim  played  in  the 
life  and  affairs  of  the  university  was  re- 
stricted by  his  intense  devotion  to  philo- 
sophy. His  pupils  at  Merton  found  him  an 
exacting  but  infinitely  patient  teacher. 
His  acquaintance  with  undergraduates 
studying  other  subjects  was  small,  but  at 
Merton  and  subsequently  as  Wykeham 
professor  at  New  College  his  acumen  both 
as  advocate  and  as  critic  made  him  a  most 
influential  member  of  the  governing  body. 

In  1907  Joachim  married  his  first  cousin 
Elisabeth,  daughter  of  Joseph  Joachim, 
the  violinist.  A  son  and  two  daughters 
were  born  of  this  extremely  happy  mar- 
riage. His  admiration  for  his  uncle  was  a 
deep  influence  on  his  life.  He  was  himself 
a  considerable  musician  and  a  violinist  of 
great  talent  (though,  characteristically,  he 
for  long  gave  up  playing  because  he  could 
not  find  time  to  practise  sufficiently),  and 
he  did  much  to  help  Oxford  music.  It  came 
naturally  to  him  to  illustrate  the  notion  of 


a  coherent  whole  in  terms  of  a  musical 
composition,  and  all  his  philosophic 
activity,  his  writings,  his  phrasing  and 
diction  when  he  lectured  or  discussed, 
showed  something  akin  to  the  exact  and 
delicate  technique  of  the  classical  violinist. 

The  keenness  of  Joachim's  mind,  the 
quiet  candour  of  his  conversation,  and  that 
sense  of  the  greatness  of  his  subject  which 
he  always  succeeded  in  conveying,  gained 
him  the  devotion  and  high  respect  of  all 
his  friends,  but  of  none  more  than  of  those 
who  asked,  and  always  obtained,  his  help. 
The  generosity  with  which  he  would  read 
and  criticize,  unsparingly  but  construc- 
tively, work  presented  for  his  advice  was 
never  stinted  even  in  the  last  years  of  his 
life,  when  he  had  become  almost  blind 
from  cataract. 

Joachim  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1922  and  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Merton  in  1919  and  of  New 
College  in  1936 ;  he  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  St.  Andrews 
University  in  1923.  He  died  at  Croyde, 
Devon,  30  July  1938. 

[The   Times,   2  August   1938;   H.   W.   B. 
Joseph,  Harold  Henry  Joachim,  1868—1938  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxiv, 
1938  (bibliography) ;  personal  knowledge.] 
G.  R.  G.  Mure. 

JOEL,  SOLOMON  BARNATO  (1865- 
1931),  financier  and  sportsman,  was  bom 
in  London  21  December  1865,  the  youngest 
of  the  three  sons  of  Joel  Joel,  of  London, 
by  his  wife,  Kate,  daughter  of  Isaac  Isaacs, 
and  sister  of  Barnett  Isaacs,  known  as 
Barney  Barnato  [q.v.].  His  brothers  were 
Woolf  and  Jack  Barnato  Joel  [q.v.]. 

The  relationship  which  was  destined 
most  materially  to  affect  the  course  of  Joel' s 
Ufe  was  that  of  being  nephew  to  Barney 
Barnato,  the  young  Jew  who,  sprung  from 
very  humble  origins  in  Wliitechapel,  made 
his  way  out  to  Kimberley  in  South  Africa 
soon  after  the  first  discoveries  of  diamonds 
there  in  the  early  eighteen-seventies, 
amassed  a  great  fortune,  and,  at  one  time 
the  rival,  afterwards  the  colleague,  of 
Cecil  Rhodes  [q.v.]  in  the  diamond-mining 
industry,  joined  with  him  in  the  formation 
of  De  Beers  Consolidated  Mines  in  1888. 

'Solly'  Joel,  as  he  was  generally  nick- 
named, went  out  to  South  Africa  in  the 
early  'eighties  to  join  his  uncle  and  his 
brother  Woolf  Joel  in  business  at  Kim- 
berley. Later  on  he  became  a  partner  in 
the  firm  of  Barnato  Brothers,  first  estab- 
lished in  London  in  1880  by  Barney  and 
his  brother  Harry  Barnato.   In  1896,  the 


487 


Joel 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


interests  of  his  firm  having  spread  from 
the  diamond  mines  of  Kimberley  to  the 
gold  mines  of  the  Witwatersrand,  Joel 
was  a  member  of  the  'reform  committee' 
in  Johannesburg,  and  along  with  other 
members  of  that  conunittee  was  arrested 
in  1896,  after  the  Jameson  raid,  by 
President  Kruger's  government,  and  re- 
leased on  payment  of  a  heavy  fine.  In  the 
following  year  (1897)  he  accompanied 
Barney  Barnato  on  his  last  voyage  to 
South  Africa  in  the  Scot,  in  the  course  of 
which  Barnato  fell  overboard  and  was 
drowned. 

Another  tragedy,  in  1898,  the  shooting 
of  Woolf  Joel  at  Johannesburg  by  one 
von  Veltheim,  left  only  Solly,  his  surviving 
uncle  Harry  Barnato,  who  died  in  1909, 
and  his  brother  Jack  Joel  in  the  business 
of  Barnato  Brothers. 

At  this  date  (1898)  Joel,  now  aged 
thirty -three,  had  given  proof  of  possessing 
much  of  his  uncle's  business  acuteness  and 
enterprise.  As  early  as  1890  he  had  be- 
come a  director  of  the  Johannesburg 
Consolidated  Investment  Company,  in 
which  the  gold-mining  interests  of  Barnato 
Brothers  were  centred.  He  now  became 
chairman  of  that  company  in  succession 
to  his  brother  Woolf  and  of  many  success- 
ful gold-mining  companies  on  the  Wit- 
watersrand under  its  general  control.  In 
1900  he  was  elected  to  the  board  of  De 
Beers  ConsoHdated  Mines. 

Joel's  business  activities  were  multi- 
farious and  incessant.  They  extended  to 
coal  and  copper  mining,  and  to  banking, 
in  which  he  engaged  as  director  of  the 
Standard  Bank  of  South  Africa.  But  his 
chief  interests  were  always  in  gold  and 
diamond  mining:  in  regard  to  the  latter, 
he  followed  through  the  Diamond  Syndi- 
cate the  pohcy  of  Rhodes  and  Barnato  of 
monopolizing  the  production  and  control- 
ling the  sale  of  what  was  almost  purely  a 
luxury  commodity,  paradoxically  sought 
after  for  its  costliness  hardly  less  than  for 
its  intrinsic  beauty.  The  industrial  use  of 
diamonds  had  not,  in  Joel's  day,  reached 
the  commercial  importance  which  it  has 
since  attained.  But  Joel,  business  man 
and  millionaire  as  he  was,  loved  diamonds 
not  only  for  the  wealth  which  they  brought 
him,  but  as  an  amateur  with  a  genuine 
admiration  for  fine  stones ;  a  taste  which 
sometimes  led  him  to  a  display  of  them 
which,  while  it  might  provoke  smiles, 
proceeded  from  a  real  artistic  instinct. 

After  the  South  African  war  of  1899- 
1902  Joel,  although  he  continued  to  visit 
South  Africa  from  time  to  time,  lived 


mainly  in  England,  at  his  London  hou: 
in  Great  Stanhope  Street  and  at 
country  seats,  Maiden  Erlegh,  n< 
Reading,  and  Moulton  Paddocks,  neai 
Newmarket.  Although  the  head  office 
De  Beers  was  moved  to  Kimberley  fro 
London  he  could  look  after  his  businei 
interests  very  well  from  the  latter :  and 
England  he  foxmd  full  scope  for  his  restlei 
activity  and  for  his  tastes  for  lavis 
hospitaUty,  for  the  theatre,  and  for  spo 

Of  these  the  first  was  proverbial :  he  wi 
a  most  generous  host.   The  second,  co: 
bined  with  his  business  instinct,  led  hi 
to  take  an  interest  in  the  management  oi 
several  theatres,  in  particular  of  Drur; 
Lane.    The  third  covered  the  fields  ol 
yachting,  cricket,  and  racing.  He  was  fom 
of  visiting  the  Riviera  in  his  yacht  Eileen 
Of  cricket  he  was  not  a  player  but 
patron;  and  the  visit  in  1924  to  Sout] 
Africa   of  an   EngUsh   team   under   th 
captaincy  of  the  Hon.  Lionel  (afterwar 
third   Lord)   Tennyson  was   due  to  h 
Uberality.  But  his  ruling  passion  in  spo: 
was  for  horse-racing. 

Joel's  first  big  success  on  the  turf  was 
the  Ascot  Gold  Cup  of  1906,  when  his  hors 
Bachelor's   Button   beat   the   celebrat 
Pretty  Polly.  He  also  bought  Polymelus 
which  won  him  many  races  and  was 
conspicuous  success  at  the  stud.    Aftei 
that  he  achieved  many  other  successes 
Pommern,  a  son  of  Polymelus,  in  191 
won  him  the  Two  Thousand  Guineas,  th( 
New  Derby  stakes  (the  first  war  Derby 
ever  held),  and  the  St.  Leger.    He  won 
many  important  handicaps,   the  Royal 
Hunt  Cup  at  Ascot,  the  Cambridgesmre 
twice,  and  the  Doncaster  Cup  amongst 
others.    In  1921   he  headed  the  list  of 
winning  owners. 

Joel  was  twice  married:  first,  to  Ellen 
Ridley  (died  August  1919)  by  whom  he 
had  three  sons  and  two  daughters; 
secondly,  in  November  1919  to  Mrs. 
Phoebe  Benjuta,  nie  Carlo,  by  whom  he 
had  one  daughter.  He  died  at  Moulton 
Paddocks  22  May  1931.  He  was  a  man  of 
kindly  disposition  and  a  devout  Jew,  in 
whose  appearance  and  manner  there  was 
something  that  might  give  colour  to  the 
mainly  mythical  conception,  popular  in 
his  day,  of  the  South  African  millionaire 
raised  by  his  own  untiring  efforts  from 
lowly  beginnings  to  a  lofty  pinnacle  o: 
success  and  wealth. 

AUke  in  business  and  on  the  turf  th 
career  of  JACK  BARNATO  JOEL  (1862-1 
1940),  was  in  many  respects  similar  to  that 
of  his  more  conspicuous  and  widely  known 


n 

I 


488 


1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Johnson 


younger  brother  Solly.  Bom  29  September 
1862,  the  second  son  of  Joel  Joel,  he  too 
went  out  to  South  Africa  at  a  tender  age, 
in  1874,  and  later  became  a  partner  in 
liarnato  Brothers,  He  too  became  a 
director  of  the  Johannesburg  Consolidated 
Investment  Company  in  1898.  In  1931, 
after  Solly's  death,  he  was  elected  to  the 
chair  of  that  company,  which  he  retained 
until  his  own  death.  He  also  was  a  director 
of  several  of  the  gold-mining  companies 
of  the  Witwatersrand,  and  was  largely 
interested  in  diamonds  and  in  the  copper 
mines  of  Northern  Rhodesia. 

Like  Solly,  Jack  Joel  lived  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  in  England.  His  house  was 
on  the  Child  wick  Bury  estate,  St.  Albans, 
which  he  bought  in  1907 :  it  had  previously 
belonged  to  Sir  J.  B.  Maple  [q.v.].  Again, 
like  Solly,  he  was  a  prominent  figure  on 
the  turf  and  was  an  authority  on  British 
bloodstock.  He  won  in  all  eleven  classic 
races,  including  the  Derby  twice  (1911  and 
1921),  with  horses  of  his  own  breeding, 
among  them  the  well-known  Dean  Swift. 
In  1908, 1913,  and  1914  he  headed  the  list 
of  winning  ovraers. 

Joel  married  Olive  Coulson  (died  1937), 
daughter  of  Thomas  Sopwith,  and  had 
one  son.  He  died  at  Childwick  Bury  13 
November  1940. 

A  cartoon  of  Joel  appeared  in  Vanity 
Fair  20  January  1910. 

[The  Times,  23  May  1931  and  14  Novem- 
ber 1940.]  DOUGAL  O.  MAI/COLM. 

JOHNSON,  WILLIAM  ERNEST 
(1858-1931),  logician,  was  born  at  Cam- 
bridge 23  June  1858,  the  fifth  child  and 
second  son  of  William  Henry  Farthing 
Johnson,  proprietor  and  headmaster  of 
Llandaff  House  School,  Cambridge,  by  his 
wife,  Harriet,  daughter  of  Augustine 
Gutteridge  Brimley,  of  Cambridge,  and 
half-sister  of  the  essayist  George  Brimley 
[q.v.].  He  was  the  brother  of  the  writers 
George  William  Johnson  and  Reginald 
Brimley  Johnson.  Educated  at  his  father's 
school,  at  the  Perse  School,  Cambridge, 
and  at  the  Liverpool  Royal  Institution 
School,  he  entered  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, as  a  mathematical  scholar  in  1879, 
and  was  eleventh  wrangler  in  the  mathe- 
matical tripos  of  1882.  His  interests  had 
now  settled  on  philosophical  subjects,  and 
he  was  placed  in  the  first  class  in  the  moral 
sciences  tripos  of  1883.  For  some  years  he 
gained  his  living  as  a  mathematical  coach 
in  Cambridge,  until  openings  were  found 
for  him  in  the  teaching  for  the  moral 
sciences  tripos  and  as  a  lecturer  in  psycho- 


logy and  in  the  theory  of  education  to  the 
Cambridge  Women's  Training  College  and 
for  the  University  Teachers'  Training 
Syndicate.  He  had  no  permanent  position, 
however,  until  1902,  when  he  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  newly  created  Sidgwick 
lecturership  in  moral  science  in  the  univer- 
sity and  was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at 
King's  College.  He  held  these  positions 
for  the  rest  of  his  life,  continuing  to  lecture 
until  a  few  months  before  his  death  which 
took  place  at  Northampton  14  January 
1931.  He  had  married  in  1895  Barbara 
Keymer,  daughter  of  Charles  WiUiam 
Heaton,  lecturer  in  chemistry  at  Charing 
Cross  Hospital,  London.  After  his  wife's 
death  in  1904  his  sister  Fanny  made  a 
home  for  him  and  his  two  sons. 

Johnson  suffered  all  his  life  from  ill 
health:  bronchial  troubles,  together  with 
a  natural  shyness,  kept  him  to  his  house 
or  college  rooms.  But  he  was  always 
accessible  and  sociable:  his  pupils,  who 
numbered  a  large  proportion  of  those 
reading  moral  science  in  the  imiversity, 
and  those  who  attended  his  lectures, 
which  were  delivered  conversationally  and 
with  frequent  digressions,  were  aware  of 
a  lovable  personality  and  were  infected 
with  his  exacting  subordination  of  origi- 
nality to  clarity  and  truth. 

As  well  as  lecturing  on  logic  Johnson 
lectured  on  philosophical  psychology  and 
on  mathematical  economics  (he  published 
a  substantial  article  on  'The  Pure  Theory 
of  UtiUty  Curves '  in  the  Economic  Journal 
for  December  1913);  but  it  was  as  a 
logician  that  he  became  known  to  the 
learned  world  when  the  insistence  and 
assistance  of  his  pupils  induced  him  to 
develop  his  ideas  in  three  volumes  of  a 
treatise  on  Logic  (part  i,  1921 ;  part  ii, 
1922;  part  iii,  1924).  A  fourth  volume, 
to  treat  of  probability,  was  projected ;  but 
this  was  never  completed,  its  first  three 
chapters  being  published  posthumously  in 
Mind  (January,  July,  and  October  1932). 
The  Logic  brought  him  fame  outside 
Cambridge :  the  universities  of  Manchester 
(1922)  and  Aberdeen  (1926)  conferred 
honorary  degrees  upon  him,  and  in  1923 
he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy. 

Johnson  wrote  his  Logic  at  a  time  when 
the  subject  was  developing  out  of  the 
traditional  formal  logic,  with  John  Stuart 
Mill's  empirical  treatment  superimposed, 
into  the  wider  study  made  possible  by  the 
work  of  the  symbolic  logicians  from  George 
Boole  to  Mr.  Bertrand  (afterwards  Earl) 
Russell .  Johnson  was  not  in  full  sympathy 


489 


Johnson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


with  these  developments,  and  devoted 
time  and  energy  to  criticism  of  Russell; 
but  his  definition  and  exposition  of  the 
subject-matter  of  logic  as  'the  analysis 
and  criticism  of  thought'  did  much  to 
break  down  previous  restrictions  upon 
its  scope.  Johnson  began  with  the  pro- 
position as  the  unit  of  thought,  and  intro- 
duced the  logic  of  terms  as  subsidiary  to 
the  logic  of  propositions,  a  significant 
reversal  of  the  customary  order.  He 
attached  great  importance  to  the  relation 
of  the  thinker  to  the  proposition  which  is 
the  object  of  thought,  and  showed  that 
this  'epistemic'  aspect  could  not  be 
ignored  in  logic.  He  introduced  an  illu- 
minating distinction  between  properties 
of  different  degrees  of  generahty ;  and  in 
his  discussion  of  deduction  he  emphasized, 
at  a  time  when  the  symbolic  logicians  had 
not  realized  its  importance,  the  difference 
between  the  premisses  of  a  deduction  and 
the  logical  principles  in  accordance  with 
which  the  conclusion  is  drawn.  His  treat- 
ment of  probability,  as  the  field  of  rational 
but  not  certain  beUef,  was  similar  to  that 
of  John  Maynard  (afterwards  Lord) 
Keynes,  who  in  his  Treatise  on  Probability 
(1921)  acknowledged  his  debt  to  Johnson. 
Johnson's  mathematicological  ingenuity 
was  shown  in  his  attempts  to  improve  on 
the  rule  of  succession  in  the  theory  of 
probability,  as  well  as  in  a  paper  'Sur  la 
theorie  des  equations  logiques'  published 
in  the  Bibliotheque  du  Congres  International 
de  Philosophic,  vol.  iii  (1901). 

A  portrait  of  Johnson  by  Delmar  Har- 
mood  Banner  is  in  the  possession  of  his 
elder  son,  Mr.  Charles  Johnson. 

[C.  D.  Broad,  William  Ernest  Johnson, 
1858-1931  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy, vol.  xvii,  1931 ;  Cambridge  Review,  30 
January  1931 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  R.  B.  Braithwaite. 

JOHNSTON,  Sir  CHRISTOPHER 
NICHOLSON,  Lord  Sands  (1857-1934), 
Scottish  judge,  was  the  second  son  of 
James  Johnston,  of  Sands,  in  the  parish  of 
Tulliallan ,  formerly  in  the  county  of  Perth, 
now  in  the  county  of  Fife,  by  his  wife, 
Margaret,  youngest  daughter  of  Chris- 
topher Nicholson,  minister  of  the  parish  of 
Whithorn,  in  the  county  of  Wigtown.  He 
was  born  in  the  mansion-house  of  Sands 
18  October  1857. 

After  being  educated  at  Madras  College, 
St.  Andrews,  and  the  universities  of 
St.  Andrews,  Edinburgh,  and  Heidelberg, 
Johnston  was  admitted  in  1880  to  the 
Faculty  of  Advocates.  His  progress  at  the 


Scottish  bar  was  steady,  and,  after  holding 
appointments  as  junior  counsel  to  various 
government  departments,  he  entered  the 
Crown  Office  in  1892  as  an  advocate-^ 
depute,  a  post  which  he  was  obliged  tc 
vacate  on  the  change  of  government 
which  followed  the  general  election  of  that 
year.  He  returned,  however,  in  1895  when 
the  conservatives  regained  power,  and 
remained  there  until  1899  when  he  was 
appointed  sheriff  of  Caithness,  Orkney, 
and  Zetland.  In  1900  he  was  transferred 
to  the  sheriffdom  of  Inverness,  Elgin,  and 
Nairn ;  and  in  1905  to  that  of  Perth.  In 
1902  he  took  silk. 

Johnston  was  always  a  keen  jK>litician. 
In  1892  he  unsuccessfully  contested 
Paisley  as  a  conservative,  but  at  a  by- 
election  held  in  December  1916,  having 
resigned  his  sheriffdom,  he  was  returned 
to  parliament  as  member  for  the  luiiver- 
sities  of  Edinburgh  and  St.  Andrews.  In 
1917  he  was  knighted  and  succeeded  Lord 
Dewar  as  a  senator  of  the  College  of 
Justice  in  Scotland,  taking  the  judicial 
title  of  Lord  Sands. 

As  a  silk,  Sands  had  never  been  in  large 
practice,  and  he  came  to  the  bench  un- 
wearied by  over-work,  but  with  a  wealth 
of  experience.  Interested  always  in  what 
went  on  about  him,  he  had  been  brought 
into  contact  with  the  ordinary  people  of 
Scotland  in  his  work  as  a  sheriff  and  as 
a  churchman  in  a  way  which  was  not 
possible  for  a  busy  counsel.  The  value  of 
this  training  was  seen  in  his  work  as  a 
judge.  He  had  a  wide  knowledge  of  law 
and  much  common  sense.  He  grasped 
quickly  the  essential  points  in  a  case  and 
had  a  mastery  over  facts.  To  appear 
before  him  was  stimulating,  for  he  had  a 
fondness  for  testing  discussion  by  hypo- 
thetical cases,  often  fantastic,  but  always 
helpful.  His  written  judgements  are 
admirable  in  form  and  sound  in  substance, 
full  of  quaint  illustrations  and  touches  of 
humour  which  hght  up  the  argument  and 
remain  in  the  memory.  Underlying  them 
all  is  an  understanding  of  the  Scot  and 
a  human  sympathy  which  were  charac- 
teristic. 

Outside  the  courts  Sands  found  his  chief 
interest  in  the  work  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land. In  1907  he  was  elected  procurator 
of  the  Church,  and  remained  its  official 
legal  adviser  until  1918.  He  served  on  its 
principal  committees,  and  he  was  a 
hcensed  lay-preacher  for  many  years. 
But  his  reputation  as  a  churchman  rests 
chiefly  on  his  part  in  the  long  negotiations 
which  in  1929  brought  about  the  union  of 


490 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Johnston,  R.  F. 


the  Church  of  Scotland  and  the  United 
Free  Church  of  Scotland.  In  1903  he  had 
edited,  and  largely  rewritten,  John 
Morison  Duncan's  Parochial  Ecclesiastical 
Law  of  Scotland,  and  was  a  recognized 
authority  on  that  subject.  He  was  also  a 
theologian  of  considerable  attainments. 
His  views  were  listened  to  with  respect, 
and  a  memorandum  which  he  drew  up 
became  the  basis  on  which  union  was 
effected.  For  his  services  the  university  of 
Pidinburgh  conferred  upon  him  in  1928 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.D.,  an  unusual 
distinction  for  a  layman.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  uni- 
versities of  St.  Andrews  in  1909  and  Glas- 
gow in  1930. 

Sands  was  also  interested  in  social  and 
educational  work,  especially  in  that  which 
concerned  youth.  Amongst  other  acti- 
vities he  was  from  1921  chairman  of  the 
Carnegie  Trust  for  the  Universities  of 
Scotland  and  from  1919  president  of  the 
Edinburgh  battalion  of  the  Boys'  Brigade. 

Sands  wrote  much  on  all  kinds  of  topics, 
legal,  theological,  biographical,  and 
general.  His  style  was  easy  and  pleasant ; 
and,  apart  from  contributions  to  periodical 
literature  and  manuals  on  the  various  Acts 
dealing  with  small-holdings,  he  was  the 
author  of  a  considerable  number  of  books, 
such  as  Major  Owen  and  other  Tales  and 
St.  Paul  and  his  Mission  to  the  Roman 
Empire  (1909),  and  Off  the  Chain  (1924). 

Sands  married  in  1898  Agnes  Warren, 
second  daughter  of  James  Ebenezer  Dunn, 
of  Dunmullin,  Strathblane,  in  the  county 
of  Stirling,  and  had  two  sons  and  two 
daughters.  He  died  in  Edinburgh  26  Feb- 
ruary 1934.  His  portrait,  by  Henry 
Lintott  (1930),  is  in  the  vestibule  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  Assembly  Hall, 
Edinburgh. 

[Scotsman  and  The  Times,  27  February 
1934;  personal  knowledge.] 

M.  G.  FiSHER. 

JOHNSTON,  Sir  REGINALD  FLEM- 
ING (1874-1938),  scholar,  traveller,  and 
administrator,  was  born  in  Edinburgh 
31  October  1874,  the  son  of  Robert  Fleming 
Johnston,  W.S.,  by  his  wife,  Isabella  Anna 
Catherine  Irving.  Reginald  Johnston  was 
educated  privately,  at  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, where  he  won  the  Gray  prize,  and  at 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
obtained  a  second  class  in  modem  history 
in  1898. 

Johnston  began  his  lifelong  connexion 
with  China  when,  having  entered  the 
Hong-Kong  civil  service,  he  arrived  in  the 


colony  at  the  end  of  1898.  From  1899  to 
1904  he  was  acting  clerk  of  the  councils 
and  assistant  colonial  secretary  in  the 
colony,  and  from  1900  to  1902  he  was  also 
private  secretary  to  the  governor.  To- 
wards the  end  of  1902  he  began,  during 
one  of  his  periods  of  leave,  the  series  of 
journeys  into  the  interior  of  China  which 
were  to  make  him  such  a  fascinating 
authority  on  the  country  and  its  people. 
He  travelled  on  this  occasion  through 
Tongking,  ascending  the  Red  River  to  the 
high  plateau  of  Yunnan,  traversing  this 
province  from  east  to  west,  and  descending 
by  way  of  the  Chinese  Shan  states  into  the 
French-protected  states  of  Upper  Laos, 
from  which  he  reached  Bangkok.  In  1904, 
on  a  second  trip,  he  started  from  Kiao- 
chou,  then  in  German  hands,  travelling  to 
Tsinanfu  in  Shantung,  where  he  visited 
the  tomb  of  Confucius  and  was  entertained 
by  the  descendant  in  the  seventy-sixth 
generation  of  the  sage,  and  then  proceeded 
to  Korea.  In  1906,  on  a  third  journey,  he 
travelled  alone  with  his  bull  terrier  from 
Peking  to  Ichang,  through  the  famous 
Yangtze  gorges  to  the  sacred  Buddhist 
mountain  of  Omeishan  in  Szechuan.  From 
here,  via  Tachienlu,  he  travelled  through 
the  borders  of  eastern  Tibet,  descending 
through  southern  Yunnan  to  cross  the 
Mekong  valley  into  Burma.  From  this 
journey  emerged  his  delightful  book  From 
Peking  to  Mandalay  (1908)  which  contains 
some  valuable  ethnological  comments  on 
these  border  regions. 

In  1904  Johnston  was  seconded  to 
Wei-hai-wei  as  assistant  to  the  commis- 
sioner, (Sir)  James  Haldane  Stewart 
Lockhart,  to  whom  he  dedicated  his 
second  book  on  China,  Lion  and  Dragon  in 
Northern  China  (1910).  In  this  work, 
which  is  packed  with  information  pre- 
sented in  a  scholarly  and  readable  form, 
he  deals  with  the  history  and  legends  of 
Wei-hai-wei,  its  native  chronicles,  its 
village  life  and  folklore.  In  Shantung,  in 
which  the  province  of  Wei-hai-wei  lies,  he 
was  near  to  the  heart  of  ancient  China, 
and  in  particular  to  the  birthplace  of 
Confucius,  for  whom  he  conceived  an 
especial  veneration.  This  is  the  secret  to 
an  understanding  of  Johnston's  character, 
for,  as  time  went  on,  he  became  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  a  Confucianist.  He 
could  write  sympathetically  of  Buddhism 
and  Taoism,  although  he  felt  that  either 
of  these  could  be  extinguished  without 
loss,  but  Confucianism  or  rather  the 
principles  and  doctrines  which  Confucius 
connotes,  he  felt  could  not  be  annihilated 


491 


Johnston,  R.  F. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


■without  irreparable  harm  to  the  soul  and 
body  pohtic  of  China.  To  this  theme 
Johnston  returns  in  book  after  book,  and 
because  of  this  and  his  subsequent  rela- 
tions with  the  last  occupant  of  the  Dragon 
throne  he  became  persona  non  grata  to  the 
new  China  of  the  Kuomintang,  which 
regarded  him  as  an  imperialist  reactionary 
and  as  a  laudator  temporis  acti.  He  was  in 
fact  something  very  much  greater  than 
either  of  these. 

Throughout  his  life  Johnston  was  highly 
critical  of  Christian  missionary  activities 
in  China,  and  in  two  books,  A  Chinese 
Appeal  to  Christendom  concerning  Christian 
Missions  (published  in  1911  under  his 
Chinese  name  Lin  Shao  Yang)  and  Letters 
to  a  Missionary  (1918),  he  showed  how 
painstaking  and  wide  was  his  theological 
reading  and  how  trenchant  a  critic  he 
could  be.  Not  unnaturally  these  volumes 
aroused  considerable  antagonism,  and  it 
was  his  belief  that  they  cost  him,  at  a  later 
stage  in  his  career,  the  governorship  of 
Hong-Kong,  and,  what  was  much  nearer 
to  his  heart,  the  vice-chancellorship  of 
Hong-Kong  University. 

In  1913  Johnston,  who  from  1906  to 
1917  was  district  officer  and  magistrate  at 
Wei-hai-wei,  published  his  Buddhist  China. 
In  this  deep  and  sympathetic  study  he 
traces  the  early  history  of  Buddhism  in 
China,  describes  Buddhist  pilgrimages  to 
the  sacred  hills  of  Buddhism,  and  ends 
with  some  delightful  chapters  on  the 
monks  and  monasteries  of  Chiu  Hua  Shan 
and  Puto  Shan,  which  he  had  visited  in 
pCTSon. 

In  November  1918  Johnston,  after 
administering  for  a  year  the  territory  of 
Wei-hai-wei  in  the  absence  of  the  com- 
missioner, was  offered  and  was  permitted 
to  accept  the  post  of  European  tutor  to 
the  last  of  the  Ch'ing  Emperors,  Hsiian 
T'ung,  whose  personal  name  was  P'ui  Yi, 
then  still  a  boy  in  his  'teens.  For  the 
greater  part  of  the  next  six  years  he 
actually  lived  within  the  walls  of  the 
Forbidden  City,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
served  with  unswerving  loyalty  the 
interests  of  his  imperial  pupil.  In  the  most 
absorbing  of  all  his  works.  Twilight  in  the 
Forbidden  City  (1934),  dedicated  to  the 
Emperor,  he  describes  these  years.  His 
position  as  a  member  of  the  imperial 
household  soon  brought  him  into  conflict 
with  the  Nei  Wu  Fu  (the  imperial  house- 
hold department),  which  he  realized  ex- 
ploited its  privileges  at  the  expense  of  its 
imperial  master,  and  vain  intrigues  were 
made    to    bring   about    his    resignation. 


Throughout  this  period  he  had  the  com-^ 
plete  confidence  of  the  Emperor  who, 
1924,  made  him  comptroller  of  the  imperia 
household  and  head  of  the  Nei  Wu 
itself.  His  book  gives  a  most  interesting 
description  of  the  arrangement  and  life  ol 
the  Forbidden  City  in  its  decline ;  of  the 
imperial  tutors  and  the  Manchu  aristo- 
cracy ;  and  of  the  hopes  and  dreams  of  the 
monarchists  after  the  Emperor's  abdica- 
tion and  the  establishment  of  the  republic 
in  February  1912. 

Johnston  was  still  at  his  post  when,  on 
5  November  1924,  the  so-called  Christian 
general  Feng  Yii-hsiang  seized  the  For- 
bidden City  by  a  coup  d'etat  and  expelled 
the  Emperor,  who  took  refuge  in  the  house 
of  his  father  Prince  Ch'un  in  the  northern 
section  of  Peking,  where  he  remained 
under  close  military  surveillance,  and  in 
considerable  personal  danger.  From  this 
house  on  29  November  Johnston  was  able 
to  contrive  his  flight  to  the  legation 
quarter,  where  he  took  refuge  in  the 
Japanese  Embassy.  For  this  deed  John- 
ston had  to  suffer  a  campaign  of  slander 
and  abuse  at  the  hands  of  the  Chinese 
nationaUst  press. 

In  1925  Johnston  left  the  service  of  the 
Emperor  to  become  (1926)  secretary  to 
the  British  China  indemnity  delegation, 
and  in  1927  he  returned  to  Wei-hai-wei  as 
commissioner,  remaining  there  until 
October  1930,  when  he  returned  to 
England  after  he  had  arranged  the  restora- 
tion of  that  territory  to  China.  For  this 
work  he  received  the  thanks  of  the 
secretaries  of  state  for  the  Colonies  and 
for  foreign  affairs,  and,  from  the  citizens  of 
Wei-hai-wei  itself,  as  a  parting  present,  a 
white  porcelain  bowl,  fuU  of  spring  water, 
the  highest  compliment  which  could  be 
paid  by  the  Chinese  to  the  integrity  of  an 
administrator.  From  the  Emperor  he  had 
already  received  the  button  of  the  highest 
of  the  nine  official  grades  and  the  Sable 
Court  Robe.  In  1931  he  revisited  China 
as  chairman  of  the  delegation  of  the 
Universities'  China  Committee. 

The  last  phase  of  Johnston's  career  was 
his  professorship  of  Chinese  in  the  univer- 
sity of  London,  when  he  was  head  of  the 
department  of  languages  and  cultures  of 
the  Far  East  at  the  School  of  Oriental 
Studies  from  1931  to  1937.  This  work  was 
not  particularly  congenial  to  him,  but  he 
did  it  faithfully,  with  flashes  of  enthusi- 
asm, and  his  classes  on  T'ang  poetry  were 
attended  by  a  small  but  devoted  band  of 
students. 

In  1935  Johnston  paid  a  visit  to  his  old 


492 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Joicey 


pupil,  then  in  Manchuria,  and  went  on  to 
study  the  Manchu  archives  at  Mukden; 
unfortunately  the  results  of  his  researches 
were  never  published,  as  by  his  wish  all 
his  unpubUshed  papers  were  destroyed  at 
liis  death.  In  the  previous  year  (1934) 
he  had  pubUshed  his  Confucianism,  and 
Modem  China  (the  Lewis  Fry  memorial 
lectures  deUvered  at  Bristol  University  in 
1933-1934)  in  which  he  restated  his  early 
beUef  in  the  wisdom  of  the  doctrine  of 
Confucius. 

Johnston,  although  a  competent  ad- 
ministrator, was  by  nature  rather  a 
scholar,  theologian,  and  poet.  In  addition 
to  the  works  already  mentioned  he  pub- 
lished anonymously  a  volume  of  poems, 
The  Last  Days  of  Theodoric  the  Ostrogoth 
and  other  Verses  (1904),  and  a  slight  but 
attractive  book  The  Chinese  Drama 
(Kelly  and  Walsh,  1921).  He  was  by 
preference  a  recluse,  and  on  every  avail- 
able occasion  he  used  to  retire  to  a  small 
property,  which  he  called  the  'Cherry 
Glen',  deep  in  the  coimtry  to  the  north  of 
Peking,  where  he  built  a  shrine  to  the  poet 
Shelley,  to  whom,  as  he  was  delighted  to 
tell,  the  local  country  women  came  to  pray 
for  children.  Here  he  could  enjoy  the 
scenery  and  introduce  a  few  favoured 
friends  to  his  wonderful  collection  of 
mountain  chronicles.  On  his  retirement 
he  replaced  this  retreat  by  the  purchase  of 
a  small  island,  Eilean  Righ,  in  Loch 
Craignish,  Argyll,  where  he  built  a  house 
for  his  considerable  oriental  Ubrary,  now 
at  the  School  of  Oriental  Studies  in 
London. 

Despite  his  reserve,  Johnston  could  be 
a  gay,  stimulating  companion,  and  was 
most  hospitable.  Even  those  Chinese  who 
did  not  agree  with  him  poUtically  could 
not  but  respect  and  admire  his  simpUcity, 
his  integrity,  his  wide  sympathies,  and  his 
abiding  loyalty  to  a  lost  cause.  He  died, 
immarried,  in  Edinburgh  6  March  1938. 

Johnston  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in  1918, 
C.M.G.  in  1928,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1930. 
The  university  of  Hong  Kong  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
in  1929.  He  was  a  member  of  numerous 
learned  societies  both  British  and  foreign. 

[The  Times,  8  March  1938 ;  Sir  R.  F.  John- 
ston's writings ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  SoAME  Jenyns. 

JOICEY,  JAMES,  first  Bakon  Joicey, 
of  Chester-le-Street  (1846-1936),  coUiery 
proprietor,  was  born  in  the  hamlet  of 
Kip  Hill,  near  Tanfield  Lea,  co.  Dur- 
ham, 4  April  1846,  the  yotmger  son  of 


George  Joicey,  a  mechanical  engineer,  a 
partner  in  the  engineering  firm  of  Joicey 
&,  company.  Forth  Banks  engine  works, 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  George  Joicey  was 
one  of  four  brothers  who,  in  the  year  1828, 
had  embarked  upon  the  adventure  in  coal- 
mining at  Tanfield  Moor  which  became  the 
well-lcQOwn  coking  coal  firm  of  James 
Joicey  &  company.  He  had  married 
Dorothy,  daughter  of  Jacob  Gowland,  of 
Wrekenton,  near  Gateshead.  George 
Joicey  died  when  his  son  was  nine  years 
old,  but  his  widow  Uved  to  a  ripe  old  age. 
James  Joicey,  who  was  educated  at  Gain- 
ford  School,  West  Darlington,  entered  the 
family  business  in  1863  at  the  age  of 
seventeen  and  became  a  partner  four  years 
later,  eventually  rising  to  the  position  of 
chairman  and  managing  director. 

In  1885  Joicey  was  elected  liberal 
member  of  parliament  for  the  Chester-le- 
Street  division  of  the  county  of  Durham, 
and  held  the  seat  xmtil  he  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  in  1906  as  Baron  Joicey,  of 
Chester-le-Street.  He  had  been  created  a 
baronet  in  1893.  In  1931  he  joined  the 
conservative  party. 

In  1896  Joicey  piwchased,  from  the 
Earl  of  Durham,  the  Lambton  coUieries, 
at  a  time  when  the  coal  industry  was 
suffering  from  a  deep  depression,  and  made 
a  remarkable  success  of  the  venture.  In 
1911  he  added  to  the  magnitude  of  his 
commercial  interests  by  the  acquisition, 
from  the  company  of  that  name,  of  the 
Hetton  coUieries,  also  situated  in  the 
county  of  Durham ;  and  in  1920  he  pur- 
chased, from  the  Marquess  of  London- 
derry, the  Silksworth  A)llkry  in  the  same 
covmty.  In  1924  the  Lawibton  company 
purchased  the  shares  of  the  Joicey  com- 
pany, and  thereafter  the  firm  became 
known  as  the  Lambton,  Hetton  and 
Joicey  CoUieries  Ltd.,  the  largest  coal 
mining  concern  in  the  great  northern  coal- 
field, with  an  output  of  upwards  of  six 
miUion  tons  of  coal  per  annum. 

Joicey  did  not  confine  his  interests  to 
the  coal  trade ;  he  was  for  many  years  a 
director  of  the  London  and  North- 
Eastern  RaUway  Company  and,  imtil  a 
few  years  before  his  death,  was  president 
of  the  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  chamber  of 
commerce.  In  business  he  was  shrewd, 
sagacious,  and  far-sighted.  He  was  of 
a  handsome  presence,  an  engaging  persona- 
Uty,  and  had  an  optimistic  outlook  on 
Ufe. 

Lord  Joicey  acquired  first  the  Longhirst 
estates  near  Morpeth,  Northumberland, 
and    later    on,    early    in    the    centuiy. 


493 


Joicey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


purchased  the  Ford  Castle  estates  in 
Northumberland,  near  the  Border.  He 
died  at  Ford  Castle  at  the  age  of  ninety 
21  November  1936. 

Lord  Joicey  was  twice  married:  first, 
in  1879  to  Elizabeth  Amy  (died  1881), 
only  daughter  of  Joseph  Robinson,  J.P., 
of  North  Shields;  secondly,  in  1884  to 
Marguerite  Smyles  (died  1911),  daughter 
of  Colonel  Thomas  Drever,  of  the  East 
India  Company's  service.  By  his  first  wife 
he  had  two  sons,  and  by  his  second,  two 
sons  and  a  daughter,  all  three  of  whom 
predeceased  their  father,  the  elder  son 
being  killed  in  action  in  1916.  He  was 
succeeded  as  second  baron  by  his  elder 
son  by  his  first  wife,  James  Arthur  (1880- 
1940). 

A  portrait  of  Lord  Joicey  by  Sir  John 
Lavery,  which  was  presented  to  him  by 
the  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  and  Gateshead 
chamber  of  commerce  in  recognition  of  his 
services  as  president,  hangs  in  the  Com- 
mercial Exchange,  Quayside,  Newcastle: 
another  portrait,  by  Trevor  Haddon,  is  in 
the  possession  of  the  family  at  Etal  Manor, 
Berwick-on-Tweed.  A  cartoon  of  him  by 
'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  19  Decem- 
ber 1906. 

[The  Times,  23  November  1936;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  A.  S.  Redmayne. 

JOLY,  JOHN  (1857-1933),  engineer, 
geologist,  and  physicist,  was  bom  at  Holy- 
wood,  King's  County,  1  November  1857, 
the  third  and  youngest  son  of  John 
Plunket  Joly,  rector  of  ClonbuUoge,  co. 
Kildare,  by  his  wife,  Grafln  Julia  Anna 
Maria  Georgina,  daughter  of  Graf  Fried- 
rich  Wilhelm  Ludwig  August  von  Lusi. 
His  father's  family,  of  which  Charles 
Jasper  Joly  [q.v.]  was  a  member,  was  of 
French  origin ;  through  his  mother  he  was 
a  kinsman  of  Richard  Lovell  Edge  worth, 
the  Abbe  Edgeworth  de  Firmont,  and 
Maria  Edgeworth  [qq.v.].  Except  for  a 
year  spent  in  France,  he  was  educated  at 
Rathmines  School,  Dublin.  In  1876  he 
entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he 
studied  modern  literature  and  engineering, 
and  in  1883,  on  graduating  with  first  class 
honours,  he  was  appointed  to  a  teaching 
post  in  the  engineering  school.  In  1887 
he  was  appointed  to  the  chair  of  geology 
in  the  university  of  Dublin  which  he 
held  imtil  he  died,  unmarried,  in  DubUn 
8  December  1933. 

Joly  had  early  shown  his  originaUty  and 
inventive  powers  and  had  published  papers 
on  reading  meteorological  instruments  at 


a  distance,  on  the  volcanic  ash  from 
Krakatoa,  and  on  photometry,  and  from 
1884  he  maintained  a  constant  flow  of 
inventions  and  researches  among  which 
may  be  recorded  a  meldometer  which 
determined  the  melting-points  of  minerals 
and  other  substances,  a  hydrostatic  balance 
to  determine  the  specific  gravity  of  small 
quantities  of  dense  or  porous  bodies,  and 
a  condensation  method  of  calorimetry,  by 
which  he  succeeded  in  determining  by 
direct  measurement  the  specific  heats  of 
gases  at  constant  volume,  a  problem  of 
great  theoretical  importance  in  the  study 
of  the  gaseous  state  and  hitherto  insoluble; 
his  simple  electric  furnace  which  reduced 
aluminium  from  topaz  anticipated  Henri 
Moisson's  method  of  producing  that  metal. 
He  made  some  of  the  earhest  determina- 
tions of  the  volume-change  of  rocks  upon 
fusion,  ingeniously  replacing  the  contain- 
ing vessels  by  the  surface-tension  of  the 
molten  substances. 

In  1893  Joly  joined  with  (Professor) 
Henry  Horatio  Dixon  in  investigating  the 
ascent  of  sap  in  trees,  and  their  cohesion 
theory,  after  much  criticism  and  discus- 
sion, remains  the  only  generally  accepted 
explanation  of  the  rise  of  water  to  the  tops 
of  high  trees.  On  natural-colour  photo- 
graphy Joly's  work  was  of  great  interest. 
He  originated  in  1894  the  idea  of  making 
the  positive  image  select  from  a  parti- 
coloured transparent  screen  the  correct 
amounts  of  three  primary  colours  and 
by  this  invention  produced  transparent 
pictures  of  great  beauty  and  true  repre- 
sentation, which  were  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Society  in  1895.  They  were  the 
earliest  pictures  of  the  kind  ever  exhibited 
and  are  the  starting-point  of  all  that  has 
since  been  accomplished.  In  a  sense  they 
are  superior  to  anything  done  later,  for 
Joly's  method  can  allow  for  the  actual 
sensibility  of  the  eye  for  the  three  primary 
colours.  In  1897  he  showed  that  the 
'  canals '  of  Mars  may  be  rationally  attri- 
buted to  the  gravitational  effects  of 
satellites  moving  near  the  planet's  surface. 

During  his  tenure  of  the  chair  of  geology 
Joly  published  some  150  papers.  Being  a 
keen  yachtsman  he  was  led  to  write  on 
such  subjects  as  synchronous  signalling,  a 
method  for  observing  the  altitude  of  a  star 
when  the  horizon  is  obscure,  a  collision 
predictor,  a  method  of  measuring  distances 
at  sea  in  thick  weather,  an  explosive  sea- 
sounder,  floating  breakwaters,  the  age  of 
the  earth  estimated  by  the  accumulation 
of  sodium  in  the  ocean,  and  the  radio- 
activity of  sea-water.   During  the  war  of 


,    494 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Joly 


1914r-1918  he  submitted  sixteen  inven- 
tions to  the  Admiralty.  Other  subjects 
were :  the  apophorometer  for  studying  the 
subUmation  products  of  minerals,  pleo- 
chroic  haloes,  their  radio-active  origin  and 
what  they  tell  of  the  age  of  rocks,  and  a 
(jiiantum  theory  of  vision.  To  radio- 
activity in  geology  he  paid  much  atten- 
tion, pointing  out  how  the  distribution  of 
radio-active  substances  in  the  earth  must 
modify  our  views  on  its  age,  and  by  de- 
\ising  a  new  and  accurate  method  of 
estimating  the  quantity  of  thorium  in 
rocks,  he  showed  that  that  element  plays 
a  part  in  earth-history  almost  as  important 
as  that  of  radium. 

The  radio-active  explanation  of  the 
occurrence  and  the  action  of  thermal  cycles 
in  earth-history  was  the  outcome  of  Joly's 
prolonged  researches  on  the  radio-activity 
of  the  constituents  of  the  outer  crust.  In 
The  Surface  History  of  the  Earth  (1925, 
2nd  ed.  1930)  he  shows  that  the  slow 
accumulation  of  radio-active  heat  in  the 
deeper  layers  of  the  earth's  crust  must  in 
time  lead  to  their  melting  and  thus  by 
establishing  new  isostatic  conditions  allow 
the  subsidence  of  the  continental  masses 
and  the  consequent  transgression  of  the 
oceans,  which  now  deposit  their  sediments 
on  the  submerged  tracts.  Meanwhile  the 
molten  layers,  losing  their  accumulated 
heat  by  convection,  actuated  by  lunar 
tides,  slowly  return  to  their  solid  state. 
Heat  accumulation  recommences,  expan- 
sion follows,  raising  the'  continents  and 
buckling  the  sedimentary  deposits  on  their 
lower  levels.  The  continued  accumulation 
of  heat  in  the  radio-active  layers  leads 
inevitably  to  the  repetition  of  the  same 
events,  and  one  millennial  beat  of  the 
radio-thermal  timekeeper  will  follow 
another  through  the  lapsing  aeons,  until 
the  radio-activity  of  the  deeper  layers  of 
the  crust  ultimately  expires.  Thus  the 
grand  geological  problems  of  sedimentary 
succession  interrupted  by  revolutions  and 
unconformities,  together  with  many  lesser 
puzzles,  find  their  solution  and  unification 
in  Joly's  theory  of  thermal  cycles. 

Scientific  work  by  no  means  occupied 
all  Joly's  energy.  In  college  Ufe  he  was 
chiefly  responsible  for  the  appointment  of 
the  Trinity  College  Science  Schools  Com- 
mittee which,  under  his  inspiration  during 
thirteen  years  of  arduous  work,  and  with 
benefactions  from  E.  C.  Guinness,  Earl 
of  Iveagh  [q.v.],  and  others,  built  and 
equipped  the  schools  of  physics  and 
botany  and  endowed  the  Iveagh  geological 
laboratory.    In  1907  he  was  one  of  the 


foremost  champions  in  defence  of  Trinity 
College  against  the  Bryce  scheme,  and 
undoubtedly  the  ablest  defence  of  Trinity 
College  came  from  Joly's  pen.  He  gave 
impressive  evidence  before  the  Fry  com- 
mission in  1905-1906  and  in  1920  he  was 
a  member  of  the  Geikie  commission,  the 
report  of  which,  recommending  a  subsidy 
to  Trinity  College,  had  been  adopted  by 
the  imperial  parliament  when  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Irish  Free  State  put  an 
end  to  the  project.  In  university  life 
his  sympathy  both  with  colleagues  and 
students  gave  him  great  influence,  and  in 
teaching  he  inspired  enthusiasm  and 
affection  by  his  originality  of  treatment 
and  picturesque  diction.  During  the  Irish 
rebellion  of  Easter  1916  he  took  an  active 
part  in  the  defence  of  Trinity  College.  An 
account  of  his  experiences  then  was  pub- 
lished in  BlacMiood's  Magazine  (July  1916). 

In  conjunction  with  D.  J.  Cunningham 
[q.v.]  and  William  Spotswood  Green,  Joly 
developed  a  scheme  of  marine  research  in 
order  to  improve  the  Irish  fisheries,  and  he 
became  a  commissioner  of  Irish  Lights  in 
1901 .  Working  with  Walter  Clegg  Steven- 
son he  devised  the  deep-seated  application 
of  radio-active  preparations  in  hollow 
needles,  and  discussed  the  use  of  other 
radio-active  methods  in  therapeutics.  He 
was  the  originator  of  the  formation  in 
1914  of  the  Royal  DubUn  Society's 
Radium  Institute.  He  was  president  of 
this  society  from  1929  to  1932,  having  been 
its  honorary  secretary  from  1897  to  1909, 
receiving  its  Boyle  medal  in  1911.  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1892  and  was  awarded 
a  Royal  medal  in  1910.  In  1905  he  was 
president  of  the  Photographic  Convention 
of  the  United  Kingdom.  From  the  London 
Geological  Society  he  received  the  Mur- 
chison  medal  in  1918,  and  in  1908  he  was 
president  of  Section  C  (geology)  of  the 
British  Association.  He  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  Trmity  CoUege,  Dublin,  in  1918, 
and  in  the  same  year  he  was  selected 
by  the  Foreign  Office  to  represent  Irish 
universities  on  the  Balfour  mission  to  the 
United  States  of  America.  In  1924  he 
delivered  both  the  Hugo  Miiller  lecture 
at  the  London  Chemical  Society  and  the 
Halley  lecture  at  Oxford.  The  univer- 
sities of  Cambridge  and  Michigan  and  the 
National  University  of  Ireland  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  ScD. 

Joly  was  a  man  of  intensely  vivid  and 
varied  personality.  His  poetic  nature  ex- 
pressed itself  in  his  diction  and  in  some 
sonnets,  his  interest  in  art  in  a  beautiful 
collection   of  modern  pictures;   and  his 


495 


Joly 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


unselfish  consideration  and  sympathy  for 
others  more  than  matched  these  quaUties 
and  his  inventive  genius. 

A  portrait  of  Joly  by  Leo  Whelan  is  in 
the  possession  of  Professor  Henry  Dixon 
and  a  copy  of  it  hangs  in  the  coumcil 
Room  of  the  Royal  Dublin  Society. 
Professor  Dixon  also  possesses  a  small 
drawing  in  water-colours  by  Sir  Richard 
Paget  and  another  by  Mrs.  Dixon. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  3,  December  1934  (bibliography 
and  portrait) ;  Henry  H.  Dixon,  John  Joly, 
Presidential  Address  to  the  Dublin  University 
Experimental  Science  Association,  1940,  1941 
(portrait) ;  Nature,  20  January  1934 ;  Quarterly 
Journal  of  the  Geological  Society,  vol.  xc,  1934 ; 
J.  Joly,  Reminiscences  and  .Anticipations, 
1920;  British  Medical  Journal,  1933,  vol.  ii, 
p.  1132;  Philosophical  Magazine,  7th  series, 
vol.  xvii,  1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Henry  H.  Dixon. 

JONES,  ADRIAN  (1845-1938), 
sculptor,  was  bom  at  Ludlow,  Shropshire, 
9  February  1845,  the  fourth  son  of  James 
Brookholding  Jones,  of  that  town,  by  his 
wife,  Jane  Marshall.  After  leaving  Ludlow 
Grammar  School  his  early  love  of  horses 
led  him  to  study  at  the  Veterinary  College, 
Camden  Town,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one  he  passed  the  examinations  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Veterinary  Surgeons. 
During  his  schooldays  his  other  chief 
interest  had  been  in  water-colour  painting, 
in  which  art  he  received  some  instruction. 
However,  at  this  stage  he  had  no  intention 
of  making  art  his  career.  In  1867  he  was 
gazetted  to  the  Royal  Horse  Artillery  and 
served  subsequently  in  the  3rd  Hussars, 
the  Queen's  Bays,  and  the  2nd  Life 
Guards.  He  served  in  several  campaigns, 
including  the  Abyssinian  war  (1868),  the 
first  Boer  war  (1881),  and  the  Nile  expedi- 
tion (1884),  retiring  as  captain  in  1890. 
During  this  jieriod  he  was  first  active  as  a 
painter,  chiefly  of  horses,  and  latterly 
received  instruction  in  sculpture  from 
C.  B.  Birch  [q.v.].  He  first  exhibited  a 
work  of  sculpture  at  the  Royal  Academy 
in  1884,  and  continued  to  be  an  exhibitor 
until  1935:  he  also  exhibited  at  the 
Grosvenor  Gallery,  the  Royal  Institute, 
and  the  Paris  Salon.  In  1891  he  exhibited 
at  the  Academy  a  small  group  representing 
a  quadriga.  This  was  admired  by  the 
Prince  of  Wales  who  proposed  that  a  large 
group,  based  upon  this  model,  should  be 
placed  on  the  top  of  Decimus  Burton's 
arch  on  Constitution  Hill.  The  full-size 
group,  known  as  the  Peace  Quadriga, 
which  was  not  completed  and  in  position 


until  1912,  may  be  said  to  have  set  th 
seal  upon  Jones's  reputation  as  a  monu 
mental  sculptor.  Am(  ng  other  large-seal 
works  of  his  in  pubUc  places  are  the  Roya 
Marines  Monument,  St.  James's  Pari 
(1903),  the  Soldiers'  National  Wa 
Memorial,  Adelaide  (1904),  the  Cara 
bineers'  War  Memorial,  Chelsea  Embank 
ment  (1905),  and  the  Cavalry  Wa 
Memorial,  Stanhope  Gate  (1924). 

Jones's  career  as  a  whole  was  successfu 
if  unspectacular.  His  lengthy  experieno 
of  the  veterinary  service  had  equippe( 
him  with  a  perfect  understanding  o 
horses,  which  were  always  his  chief  models 
Although  an  excessive  realism  tends  t< 
mar  some  of  his  work,  he  undoubtedly 
excelled  in  this  sphere  and  enjoyed  a  con 
siderable  reputation. 

Jones  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  190' 
and  was  awarded  in  1935  the  gold  meda 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  British  Sculptors 
In  1933  he  published  his  reminiscences 
Memoirs  of  a  Soldier  Artist.  He  was  twic 
married:  first,  in  1870  to  Emma  (die< 
1884),  daughter  of  Thomas  Beckingham 
attorney,  of  Ross-on-Wye ;  secondly,  ii 
1891  to  Emma,  daughter  of  Robert  Wed 
lake,  master  mariner,  of  Watchet.  Ther 
was  one  son  of  the  first  marriage.  Jone 
died  in  London  at  the  age  of  ninety-twc 
24  January  1938. 

A  bust  of  Jones,  by  Roland  Bevan,  is  i 
the  possession  of  the  family. 

[The    Times,    25    January    1938;   Adrial 
Jones,  Memoirs  df  a  Soldier  Artist,  1933.] 
James  Layer. 

JONES,  Sir  HENRY  STUART-  (1867 
1939),  classical  scholar,  Roman  historiai 
and  lexicographer,  the  only  child  of  Henr 
WiUiam  Jones,  vicar  of  St.  Andrewi 
church,  Ramsbottom,  Lancashire,  by  h 
wife,  Margaret  Lawrance  Baker,  was  bor 
15  May  1867  at  Hunslet,  Leeds,  whei 
his  father  was  then  curate.  Stuart  was  h 
second  Christian  name,  but  after  h 
marriage,  he  and  his  wife  generally  pr« 
fixed  it  to  their  surname:  when  he  w£ 
loiighted  in  1933  he  legally  assumed  tl 
name  of  Stuart- Jones.  He  was  educate 
at  Rossall  School,  imder  Dr.  Herbe 
Armitage  James,  and  won  a  scholarshi 
to  BalUol  College,  Oxford,  in  1886.  H 
career  at  the  university  was  distinguishe< 
Besides  obtaining  first  classes  in  classic 
moderations  (1888)  and  literae  humanior 
(1890),  he  won  the  Hertford  scholarsh 
(1886),  the  Ireland  and  Craven  schola 
ships  (1888),  and  the  Gaisford  prize  fi 
Greek   prose   with   a   Platonic   dialogi 


496 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Jones,  H.  Stuart- 


'Adficov  Tj  vepl  fji,ovcri,K7Js*  (1890).  In  the 
last-mentioned  year,  Stuart-Jones  was 
elected  by  competitive  examination  to  a 
iion-offlcial  fellowship  at  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  and,  as  Craven  fellow  and  Derby 
scholar,  spent  three  years  (1890-1893)  on 
classical  studies  in  Italy  and  Greece.  He 
then  returned  to  Oxford  and  began 
tutorial  work  by  taking  pupils  in  classics 
at  Trinity,  and  in  ancient  Wstory,  in  suc- 
cession to  Henry  Francis  Pelham  [q.v.], 
at  Exeter  College.  In  1894,  after  his 
Tiiarriage  in  that  year  to  Ileen,  only  child 
of  the  Rev.  Edwyn  Henry  Vaughan,  a 
well-known  Harrow  house-master  and  a 
brother  of  Charles  John  Vaughan  [q.v.], 
he  was  transferred  to  an  official  fellowship 
at  Trinity,  and  became  one  of  the  three 
tutors  in  1896. 

Stuart-Jones's  reputation  as  a  scholar 
grew  rapidly,  and  he  was  known  to  be  the 
author  of  many  brilliant  reviews,  such  as 
those  of  Robinson  Ellis's  Nodes  Mani- 
lianae  and  (Sir)  R.  C.  Jebb's  Ajax  of 
Sophocles,  in  the  Oxford  Magazine,  of 
which  he  was  for  a  time  review-editor 
under  Charles  Cannan  [q.v.].  His  earliest 
publications  were  an  elaborate  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  chest  of  Kypselos  {Journal  of 
Hellenic  Studies,  vol.  xiv,  1894)  and  a 
text-book  of  Select  Passages  from  Ancient 
Writers  illustrative  of  the  History  of  Greek 
Sculpture  (1895).  He  also  revised  (1898- 
1900)  the  text  of  Thucydides  for  the 
Scriptorum  Classicorum  Bibliotheca  Oxoni- 
ensis,  projected  by  the  Clarendon  Press, 
which  he  thus  inaugurated.  The  value  of 
such  work  and  of  his  teaching  was  widely 
recognized;  and  it  was  felt  that,  if  a 
vacancy  occurred  in  any  of  the  chairs  of 
Greek,  Latin,  or  ancient  history  at  Oxford, 
he  would  be  a  very  strong  candidate,  and, 
for  the  Lincoln  and  Merton  professorship 
of  classical  archaeology,  a  certain  choice. 
But  after  a  serious  breakdown  in  health 
from  overwork,  Stuart-Jones  accepted  in 
1903  the  directorship  of  the  recently 
founded  British  School  at  Rome,  with  the 
financial  assistance  of  a  research  fellow- 
ship from  Trinity  College.  There  he  con- 
solidated his  profound  knowledge  of 
Roman  history  and  antiquities,  subse- 
quently displayed  in  his  principal  books 
and  articles  for  the  next  twenty  years.  In 
May  1905  he  resumed  his  tutorship  at 
Trinity;  but  he  left  Oxford  in  December 
for  a  country  home  at  Saundersfoot,  near 
Tenby,  revisiting  Oxford  to  examine  in 
literae  humaniores  in  1909, 1910,  and  1911, 
and  during  the  war  in  1916  and  1917,  and 
again  in  1919.   He  was  probably  the  last 


man  to  examine  in  this  school  as  well  as  in 
classical  honour  moderations  (1900  and 
1901). 

Between  1906  and  1912  Stuart- Jones 
published  his  principal  books  on  Roman 
history  and  dealt  with  allied  subjects  in 
the  Quarterly  Review,  The  Times  Literary 
Supplement,  and  many  learned  periodicals. 
But  he  was  not  forgotten  at  Oxford,  and 
in  1911  the  Clarendon  Press  invited  him, 
and  Trinity  College  by  electing  him  to  a 
fellowship  enabled  him,  to  undertake  the 
long- wanted  revision  of  Liddell  and  Scott's 
Greek-English  Lexicon,  then  in  its  eighth 
edition.  In  this  great  task,  not  only  his 
wide  knowledge  of  Greek,  but  his  practi- 
cal ability  and  tact,  were  conspicuous. 
Putting  aside  the  eariier  suggestions  for  a 
Thesaurus  Linguae  Graecae,  which  would 
have  extended  over  several  lifetimes, 
Stuart-Jones  at  once  organized  a  remark- 
able body  of  specialists  as  voluntary 
collaborators.  Although  incorporating  in 
it  a  great  amount  of  new  material,  from 
inscriptions,  papyri,  and  comparatively 
unexplored  writers,  he  kept  the  new 
edition  within  reasonable  bounds  as  to 
size,  print,  and  dates  of  issue  in  parts,  by 
an  ingenious  scheme  for  abbreviation  of 
references,  and  by  drastic  omission  of 
ecclesiastical  and  Byzantine  words.  In 
1920  he  was  supplied  with  an  extremely 
efficient  assistant  in  the  person  of  an 
ex-scholar  of  Trinity  College,  Roderick 
McKenzie,  afterwards  Fereday  fellow  of  St. 
John's  College,  whose  death  in  June  1937 
was  a  very  serious  blow.  By  1939  Stuart- 
Jones  had  seen  the  last  part  (X)  of  the 
Lexicon  through  the  press,  and  had  the 
necessary  Supplement  of  Addenda  well  in 
hand,  in  spite  of  his  failing  health. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  both 
Stuart-Jones  and  McKenzie  had  offered 
their  services  to  the  Foreign  Office  and  had 
undertaken  confidential  work  in  London 
and  Geneva,  in  which  their  acquaintance 
with  Eastern  European  languages  was  of 
great  value.  But  with  this  exception, 
Stuart-Jones  made  steady  progress  with 
the  Lexicon,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  from 
1919  to  1934  he  also  occupied  important 
academic  posts.  In  1919  he  was  elected 
unanimously  to  the  Camden  professorship 
of  ancient  history  in  succession  to  F.  J. 
Haverfield  [q.v.].  This  chair,  to  which  is 
annexed  a  fellowship  at  Brasenose  College, 
is  now  by  custom  appropriated  to  Roman 
history.  After  this  date,  apart  from  his 
inaugural  lecture  on  Fresh  Light  on  Roman 
Bureaucracy  (1920),  Stuart- Jones  pub- 
lished important  articles  but  no  complete 


497 


Kk 


Jones,  H.  Stuart- 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


book  except  the  Catalogue  of  the  Sculptures 
in  the  Palazzo  dei  Conservatori  at  Rome 
(which  he  edited  in  1926).  His  professorial 
lectures  were  mainly  on  Roman  provincial 
bureaucracy,  on  which  fresh  light  was 
being  thrown  by  Egyptian  papyri.  He 
found  much  to  interest  him  during  term 
time  in  the  life  of  his  new  college ;  and  for 
some  years  he  served  usefully  on  the 
Hebdomadal  Council,  gaining  administra- 
tive experience,  but  at  the  cost  of  over- 
work, and,  as  he  was  constitutionally 
unable  to  take  anything  quietly,  some 
over-excitement. 

This,  together  with  the  fact  that  his 
home  was  still  at  Saundersfoot,  probably 
induced  Stuart- Jones  in  1927  to  become 
a  candidate  for  the  principalship  of  the 
University  College  of  Wales  at  Aberyst- 
wyth, although  he  was  a  strong  church- 
man, only  half  Welsh  by  birth,  and  in  no 
way  Welsh  by  education.  His  election 
was  due  as  much  to  his  impressive  per- 
sonaUty  as  to  his  eminence  as  a  scholar. 
His  seven  years  of  administration  were 
sound  although  not  sensational.  He  dealt 
with  the  status  and  salaries  of  the  non- 
professorial  staff,  with  the  extension  of  the 
library  and  other  new  college  buildings, 
and  with  the  establishment  of  courses  on 
arts  and  crafts  at  the  intermediate  and 
subsidiary  stages  for  the  B.A.  degree.  An 
able  letter  from  him  in  The  Times  may  be 
said  to  have  produced  the  benefaction 
from  Sir  Julian  Cahn  for  the  development 
of  the  agricultural  and  plant-breeding 
station  on  300  acres  of  hill  land.  Stuart- 
Jones  acted  as  vice-chancellor  of  the 
university  of  Wales  for  the  two  years 
1929  and  1930;  and  he  was  knighted  in 
1933.  In  spite  of  illness  in  1933,  he  had 
consented  to  retain  office  for  another  year, 
but  he  was  obliged,  by  medical  advice,  to 
resign  at  very  short  notice  in  March  1934. 

As  a  devoted  supporter  of  the  Church  in 
the  diocese  of  St.  David's,  Stuart-Jones 
continued  to  serve  assiduously  on  the 
Representative  Council  of  the  Welsh 
Church ;  he  also  attended  the  meetings  of 
learned  societies  and  committees.  On  his 
seventieth  birthday  the  Society  for  the 
Promotion  of  Roman  Studies,  of  which  he 
had  been  president  from  1926  to  1929, 
presented  him  with  a  special  volume 
(xxvii,  1937)  containing  a  photographic 
portrait,  a  full  bibliography  of  his  publica- 
tions, and  appropriate  papers  contributed 
by  English  and  foreign  scholars.  He  was 
elected  to  honorary  fellowships  at  Brase- 
nose  (1928),  Trinity  (1935),  and  Balliol 
(1936)   colleges,   and   received   honorary 


degrees  from  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Wales,  Leeds,  and  Liverpool.  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in 
1915  and  a  member  of  the  German 
Imperial  Archaeological  Institute  in  1904. 
After  a  long,  but  not  incapacitating,  ill- 
ness, he  died  at  Tenby  29  June  1939,  and 
was  buried  with  his  wife,  who  had  died  in 
1931,  at  Saundersfoot.  They  had  one  son. 
As  a  classical  scholar  Stuart-Jones  was 
polymathic,  with  a  ready  and  retentive 
memory,  and  a  special  flair  for  ascertain- 
ing and  estimating  in  a  very  short  time  all 
the  important  points  in  any  new  publica- 
tion on  his  subjects.  He  was  a  competent 
linguist  and  a  lucid  expositor,  and  among 
general  interests  he  was  fond  of  music. 
The  bibliography  of  his  books,  articles, 
and  signed  reviews  occupies  nearly  eight 
pages  of  the  Festschrift  mentioned  above, 
but,  as  the  prefatory  note  states,  'no 
single  volume  of  any  periodical  could 
adequately  represent  all  his  activities  and 
interests',  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  to 
which  branch  of  classical  study  his  contri- 
butions, other  than  the  Greek  Lexicon, 
have  been  most  important  and  illuminat- 
ing. His  best-known  works,  besides  those 
already  mentioned,  are:  The  Roman 
Empire,  B.C.  29  to  A.D.  476  ('Story  of  the 
Nations'  series,  1908);  Companion  to 
Roman  History  (1912),  an  elaborate  com- 
pendium published  by  the  Clarendon 
Press;  and  The  Sculptures  of  the  Museo 
Capitolino  (which  he  edited  in  1912).  But 
special  articles  such  as  those  on '  Art  under 
the  Roman  Empire'  {Quarterly  Review ^ 
vol.  cciv,  1906)  and  on  'Mithraism 
(Hastings's  Encyclopaedia  of  Religion  and 
Ethics,  vol.  viii,  1915),  together  with  his 
chapters  in  vol.  vii  of  the  Cambridge 
Ancient  History  (x,  xiv,  and  xvi,  the  last 
two  in  collaboration  with  Professor  Hugh 
Last,  and  v,  vi  of  vol.  x)  and  revisions  in  the 
Encyclopcedia  Britannica  (eleventh  edition) 
are  of  conspicuous  merit ;  and  his  reviews 
seldom  fail  to  contain  original  suggestions, 

{The  Times,  30  June  1939 ;  J.  L.  M[yres] 
Sir  Henry  Stuart  Jones,  1867-1939  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi,  194( 
(portraits) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  E.  D.  Blakiston, 

JONES,  Sir  ROBERT,  first  baronei 
(1857-1933),  orthopaedic  surgeon,  was 
bom  at  Rhyl  28  June  1857,  the  eldest  chile 
and  elder  son  of  Robert  Jones,  a  Londoi 
free-lance  journalist,  by  his  wife,  Mary! 
daughter  of  Edward  Hughes,  of  Rhuddlanj 
Flintshire.  He  was  educated  at  Sydenhani 
College,  and  in  1870,  five  years  before  th 


498 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Jones,  R. 


death  of  his  father,  to  whom  he  was  deeply 
attached,  an  uncle  by  marriage,  Hugh 
Owen  Thomas,  an  orthopaedic  surgeon, 
offered  Jones  residence  in  his  home  if  he 
should  decide  to  read  medicine.  The  invi- 
tation was  accepted  and  in  1873  he  left 
London  to  study  at  the  Liverpool  School 
of  Medicine,  from  which  he  graduated  in 
1878.  The  new  life  was  strange  and  exact- 
ing, for  his  uncle  was  a  man  of  genius  and 
great  powers  of  endurance,  and  had  it  not 
been  for  his  vigorous  constitution,  Jones 
might  not  have  been  able  to  combine  the 
arduous  work  of  a  medical  student  with 
eager  participation  in  his  uncle's  Ufe  and 
work,  a  'part-time'  apprenticeship  which 
was  of  great  value  to  him,  for  it  instilled 
into  him  his  uncle's  passion  for  effective 
ser\ice  with  complete  disregard  of  self. 
To  the  serenity,  affection,  and  religion  of 
his  aunt,  Mrs.  Thomas,  he  probably  owed 
more  than  he  knew,  for  without  her  cul- 
tured and  kindly  presence  his  uncle's 
home  might  well  have  proved  unbearably 
restless. 

Jones  was  appointed  honorary  assistant 
surgeon  to  the  Stanley  Hospital,  Liver- 
pool, in  1881,  becoming  surgeon  in  1886 
and  in  1888  consulting  surgeon  to  the 
Manchester  Ship  Canal  Company.  He 
collected  and  taught  his  surgical  teams, 
and  this  experience  among  injured  seamen 
and  dockers  was  a  valuable  preparation 
for  his  work  during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 
In  1889  he  was  elected  honorary  surgeon 
and  dean  of  the  clinical  school  at  the 
Royal  Southern  Hospital,  Liverpool. 

In  1891  his  uncle  died,  and  Jones  had 
to  decide  whether  he  should  continue  with 
orthopaedic  work  or  take  the  easier  path 
of  general  surgery.  Loyalty  to  Thomas 
and  all  that  he  stood  for,  with  a  deter- 
mination to  vindicate  his  teaching  and 
bring  honour  to  his  name,  dispersed  any 
doubts  which  Jones  may  have  entertained. 

At  some  time  in  1900  Jones  met  (Dame) 
Agnes  Gwendoline  Hunt,  a  nurse,  and 
almost  at  once  they  were  working  together 
with  perfect  understanding  in  a  system  of 
orthopaedic  surgery,  nursing,  and  after- 
care, novel  in  character  and  superb  in 
quality.  Thus  came  into  being  the  first 
coimtry  orthopaedic  hospital  (at  Bas- 
church,  Shropshire)  for  crippled  children 
of  every  kind,  with  wards  where  fresh  air, 
courage,  and  happiness  combined  to  cure 
body  and  mind  as  one  unit.  But  before 
this  could  come  to  full  flower  the  war  of 
1914-1918  broke  out.  Jones  was  ap- 
pointed inspector  of  military  orthopaedics 
in  1916,  and  his  teaching  and  influence 


spread  not  only  in  the  army,  but  in  the 
hospitals  of  Great  Britain.  The  Thomas 
spUnt,  invented  by  Jones's  uncle,  reduced 
the  mortality  of  gun-shot  wounds  in  the 
femur  from  80  per  cent,  to  20  per  cent., 
and  a  great  orthopaedic  organization  had 
been  set  up.  It  was  one  of  his  chief  sorrows 
that  soon  after  the  war  most  of  the  units 
of  the  organization  were  dispersed,  and 
that  his  efforts  to  save  the  Shepherd's 
Bush  unit  as  a  centre  for  teaching  and 
research  were  unavailing. 

It  remained  to  build  up  a  new  ortho- 
paedic scheme.  The  Baschurch  germ  was 
working,  and  in  1919  the  Central  Council 
for  the  Care  of  Cripples  was  set  up,  from 
which  has  grown  a  system  of  regional 
orthopaedic  hospitals  throughout  England 
and  Wales,  each  linked  with  general  and 
cottage  hospitals  and  serving  closely  every 
viUage  in  its  region,  the  first  of  the  regional 
specialist  services. 

Honours  came  to  Jones  from  many 
quarters.  He  was  knighted  and  appointed 
C.B.  in  1917,  and  K.B.E.  in  1919  for  his 
services  in  the  war,  and  created  a  baro- 
net in  1926.  Among  other  distinctions 
he  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Liverpool,  Wales,  Aber- 
deen, McGiU,  Harvard,  Smith's  College, 
and  Yale,  together  with  that  rare  honour, 
the  D.S.M.  of  the  United  States  of 
America.  He  was  president  of  the  British 
Orthopaedic  Association  (1920-1925) ;  he 
was  the  first  president  of  the  International 
Society  of  Orthopaedic  Surgery,  and  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  the 
Royal  CoUege  of  Surgeons  in  1918. 

Jones's  great  qualities  grew  freely  and 
were  used  without  reserve.  He  remained 
pleasantly  immune  to  worldly  wisdom  and 
made  friends  equally  with  duke  or  docker. 
He  understood  and  enjoyed  almost  every 
form  of  sport ;  he  was  a  formidable  boxer 
in  early  manhood  and  always  delighted 
in  a  game  of  cricket.  Yet  it  was  only 
necessary  to  be  with  him  in  hospital  to 
know  that  his  heart  was  in  his  work  above 
aU  else.  He  was  a  surgeon  of  superb  skill, 
a  clinician  of  wide  experience  and  resource, 
and  an  admirable  teacher.  He  founded  a 
school  of  orthopaedics,  and,  what  is  more, 
by  his  gift  of  friendship  he  brought  to- 
gether orthopaedic  surgeons  with  a  strong 
sense  of  fellowship  so  that  they  became 
eager  to  learn  and  as  ready  to  discuss  their 
failures  as  their  successes,  for  he  gave 
them  his  sense  of  values. 

Jones  married  in  1887  Susannah, 
daughter  of  William  Evans,  merchant,  of 
Liverpool,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 


499 


Jones,  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


The  death  in  1918  of  Lady  Jones,  who 
had  been  deeply  anxious  about  her  son 
who  was  serving  in  the  trenches,  was  a 
heavy  blow,  and  towards  the  end  of  his  life 
he  spent  much  time  with  his  daughter  at 
BodynfoelHall,  Llanfechain,  Montgomery- 
shire, where  he  died  14  January  1933.  He 
was  succeeded  as  second  baronet  by  his 
son,  Arthur  Probyn  (bom  1892),  who 
changed  his  name  by  deed-poll  to  Probyn- 
Jones  in  1933. 

[The  Times,  16  January  1933;  Frederick 
Watson,  The  Life  of  Sir  Robert  Jones,  1934 
(portrait);  British  Journal  of  Surgery,  April 
1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Gathorne  R.  Girdlestone. 

JOURDAIN,  FRANCIS  CHARLES 
ROBERT  (1865-1940),  ornithologist,  was 
born  at  Adenshaw  Lodge,  near  Man- 
chester, 4  March  1865,  the  eldest  of  the 
five  sons  of  Francis  Jourdain,  later  vicar  of 
Ashbourne,  Derbyshire,  by  his  wife,  Emily 
Clay.  He  was  educated  at  Ashbourne 
Grammar  School  and  at  Magdalen  CoUege, 
Oxford,  graduated  in  1887,  and  was  or- 
dained in  1890.  He  was  vicar  of  Clifton- 
by -Ashbourne,  Derbyshire,  from  1894  to 
1914,  and  rector  of  Appleton,  Berkshire, 
from  1914  until  his  retirement  in  1925, 
after  which  he  devoted  most  of  his  time  to 
ornithology. 

Jourdain's  primary  preoccupation  in 
ornithology  was  the  collecting  and  study 
of  eggs,  but  he  was  interested  in  almost 
every  aspect  of  the  breeding  habits  of 
birds  and  was  an  excellent  general  field 
ornithologist.  He  travelled  widely  in 
Europe  and  North  Africa  collecting  eggs 
and  studying  breeding  habits  and  distri- 
bution. The  very  extensive  first-hand 
experience  which  he  thus  acquired  was 
combined  with  an  encyclopaedic  knowledge 
of  the  hterature  of  his  subject,  and  he 
became  generally  recognized  both  at  home 
and  abroad  as  the  leading  authority  on  the 
breeding  biology  of  the  birds  of  the  palae- 
arctic  region,  especially  its  western  portion. 
He  was  one  of  the  first  fully  to  recognize 
the  importance  to  scientific  ornithology  of 
accumulating  accurate  factual  data  on  all 
phases  of  the  breeding  of  birds,  for  example 
on  incubation  and  fledgling  periods,  the 
share  of  the  sexes  in  parental  duties  and 
so  on,  and  he  devoted  much  of  his  time  for 
many  years  to  this  task.  As  a  result  when 
A  Practical  Handbook  of  British  Birds 
appeared  (2  vols.,  1919-1924),  in  the 
authorship  of  which  he  collaborated  with 
Harry  Forbes  Witherby,  Ernst  Johann  O. 
Hartert,    and    others,    his    concise    and 


systematic  treatment  of  these  matters  set 
up  a  new  standard  in  the  literature.  It 
also  provided  an  effective  stimulus  to 
further  investigation  and  was  largely 
responsible  for  the  remarkable  increase  in 
precise  information  on  breeding  biology 
recorded  in  The  Handbook  of  British  Birds 
(5  vols.,  1938-1941),  the  enlarged  suc- 
cessor of  the  work  just  mentioned. 

His  work  in  The  Handbook,  the  product 
of  a  lifetime  of  study,  was  Jourdain's 
greatest  contribution  to  ornithology,  but 
he  was  also  the  author  of  important 
faunistic  papers  on  Corsica,  Spitsbergen 
(he  was  leader  of  the  Oxford  University 
expedition  to  Spitsbergen  in  1921),  Cyprus, 
Spain,  and  North  Africa,  and  many  other 
ornithological  pubUcations.  The  list  of 
those  under  his  own  name,  although  ex- 
tensive, perhaps  hardly  brings  out  to  the 
full  the  importance  of  his  contribution  to 
British  ornithology  or  the  extent  of  his 
influence  upon  it.  Apart  from  The  Hand- 
book, he  supplied  material  to  or  actually 
collaborated  in  some  of  the  principal 
standard  works  on  British  ornithology  of 
the  present  century  and  was  constantly 
assisting  other  ornithologists  from  his 
unique  fund  of  knowledge.  His  '  Study  of 
Parasitism  in  the  Cuckoos'  {Proceedings 
of  the  Zoological  Society,  1925)  deserves 
notice  as  a  valuable  contribution  to  general 
evolutionary  biology,  and  his  active  interest 
in  and  encouragement  of  local  faunistic 
work  on  birds  in  the  British  Isles  should 
also  be  mentioned.  He  was  also  for  many 
years  assistant  editor  to  his  friend 
Witherby  of  the  journal  British  Birds. 

Jourdain's  caustic  style  in  controversy 
was  famous  in  ornithological  circles,  but, 
characteristic  though  it  was,  it  tended  to 
give  a  misleading  impression  of  him.  His 
ready  sympathy  and  helpfulness  towards 
the  younger  generation  of  ornithologists 
in  particular  reflected  his  real  character 
much  more  accurately.  This  attractive 
trait  found  full  play  through  his  close 
association  with  Oxford  during  the  period 
when  he  was  rector  of  Appleton  and  after- 
wards, and  contributed  greatly  to  the  de- 
velopment of  ornithological  studies  there.i 

Jourdain  married  in  1896  Francesi 
Emmeline  (died  1933),  daughter  of  Willianij 
Richard  Smith,  of  Clifton,  Derbyshire,  andi 
had  two  sons,  the  younger  of  whom  pre-i 
deceased  his  father,  and  a  daughter.  Hel 
died  at  Bournemouth  27  February  1940.  I 

[Ibis,  fourteenth  series,  vol.  iv,  1940  (biblio-l 
graphy  and  portrait) ;  Nature,  8  June  1940 ' 
British  Birds,   April   1940;   personal  know 
ledge.]  B.  W.  Tucker. 


500 


D.N.B.  1931-1040 


Keith 


JOYNSON-HICKS,  WILLIAM,  first 
Viscount  Brentford  (1865-1932), 
statesman.  [See  Hicks.] 

KEARLEY,    HUDSON    EWBANKE, 

first  Viscount  Devonport  (1856-1934), 
man  of  business,  was  born  at  Uxbridge, 
Middlesex,  1  September  1856,  the  youngest 
son  of  George  Ewbanke  Kearley,  of  Ux- 
bridge, by  his  wife,  Mary  Ann,  only 
daughter  of  Charles  Hudson,  of  Old  Ford, 
Essex,  and  widow  of  Josiah  John  Barrow. 
He  left  Surrey  County  School,  Cranleigh, 
at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  after  serving, 
without  salary,  for  eight  months  in  a  City 
coffee  sale-room,  he  joined  the  firm  of 
Messrs.  Tetley  &  Sons  Ltd.,  tea  merchants, 
of  Mincing  Lane.  In  1876  he  successfully 
founded  the  firm  of  Heseltine  and  Kearley 
and  opened  his  first  shop  at  Brentford  in 
1878.  From  1880  onwards  many  branches 
were  opened  in  town  and  country  under 
the  name  of  International  Stores.  G.  A. 
Tonge  joined  the  firm  soon  afterwards  and 
on  Heseltine's  retirement  it  changed  its 
name  in  1887  to  Kearley  and  Tonge. 

Kearley  then  turned  to  poUtics,  and  at 
the  general  election  of  1892  was  returned 
to  parliament  as  liberal  member  for 
Devonport,  which  he  represented  until 
January  1910.  He  was  appointed  in  1905 
parUamentary  secretary  to  the  president 
of  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  his  services 
were  recognized  by  the  conferment  of  a 
baronetcy  in  1908.  In  the  same  year  he 
conducted  through  the  House  of  Commons 
the  Port  of  London  bill,  and  in  1909  gave 
up  his  political  career  in  order  to  become 
the  first  chairman  of  the  newly  constituted 
Port  of  London  Authority,  a  position 
which  he  held  imtil  his  retirement  in  1925. 
Sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1909,  he 
was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Devon- 
port,  of  Wittington,  Buckinghamshire,  in 
1910.  In  November  1916  he  was  appointed 
first  food  controller  by  Lloyd  George,  with 
the  object  of  fixing  maximum  prices  for 
the  principal  foods  and  of  securing  the 
economic  use  of  food.  During  his  tenure 
of  office  a  voluntary  scheme  of  rationing 
was  developed.  His  proposals  for  setting 
up  the  machinery  for  compulsory  ration- 
ing had  been  accepted  by  the  War  Cabinet, 
subject  to  approval  by  his  successor,  when 
he  resigned  from  office  on  grounds  of  ill 
health  in  May  1917  and  was  advanced  to  a 
viscountcy.  During  this  time  he  was  also 
chairman  of  the  royal  commission  on  sugar 
suppUes. 

Ambitious,  courageous,  and  enterpris- 
ing, Devonport  possessed  a  forceful  per- 


sonality, which  inevitably  involved  him  in 
acrimonious  controversy,  particularly  with 
the  representatives  of  dock  labour.  He 
was  a  successful  pioneer  of  the  modem 
chain-store  system,  the  shares  of  Kearley 
and  Tonge  and  the  International  Stores 
being  disposed  of  in  1927  for  £4,000,000. 
The  modem  Port  of  London,  embracing 
the  far-sighted  development  programmes 
which  he  inaugurated,  represents  the  most 
notable  public  service  rendered  by  him. 
He  was  a  keen  sportsman  and  an  ardent 
gardener. 

Devonport  married  in  1888  Selina, 
youngest  daughter  of  Edward  Chester,  of 
Blisworth,  Northamptonshire;  they  had 
two  sons  and  one  daughter.  He  died  at 
his  Scottish  estate  of  Kinloch,  Perthshire, 
5  September  1934,  and  was  buried  at 
Hambleden  cemetery,  near  Marlow.  He 
was  succeeded  as  second  viscount  by  his 
elder  son,  Gerald  Chester  (born  1890). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Devonport  by 
P.  A.  de  Laszlo  in  the  possession  of  the 
Port  of  London  Authority. 

[The  Times,  6  September  1934;  Lord 
Devonport,  The  Travelled  Road — Some 
Memories  of  a  Busy  Life  (privately  printed), 
1934;  official  documents  of  the  Port  of 
London  Authority;  personal  knowledge.] 
J.  D.  Ritchie. 

KEITH,  Sir  WILLIAM  JOHN  (1873- 
1937),  administrator  in  Burma,  was  bom 
at  Portobello,  Edinburgh,  13  April  1873, 
the  eldest  of  the  four  gifted  sons  in  the 
family  of  six  children  of  Davidson  Keith, 
an  advertising  agent  in  Edinburgh,  by  his 
wife,  Margaret  Stobie  Drysdale.  Educated 
at  Edinburgh  Royal  High  School,  Edin- 
burgh University,  and  Christ  Church, 
Oxford,  he  entered  the  Indian  civil  service 
in  1896,  heading  the  list  in  the  final 
examination.  Of  his  brothers,  Arthur 
Berriedale  Keith  headed  the  combined 
home  and  Indian  civil  services  list  in  1901 
but  remained  in  England ;  the  other  two 
both  served  in  Burma,  Steuart  being  a 
sessions  judge  in  the  Indian  civil  service 
and  Alan  a  barrister;  they  successively 
died  when  nearing  promotion  to  the  bench 
of  the  Rangoon  High  Court. 

William  Keith  spent  his  entire  service 
in  Burma,  and  save  for  a  few  years  in  the 
districts,  mainly  as  settlement  officer,  he 
was  always  at  headquarters.  But  he  was 
much  more  than  a  secretariat  officer:  he 
never  forgot  a  face  or  ceased  to  \'isit  the 
villages.  All  the  posts  which  he  held  were 
in  revenue  or  finance;  he  wielded  the 
power  of  the  purse  and,  combining  an 


501 


Keith 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


unrivalled  capacity  for  work  with  a  re- 
markable knowledge  of  the  country,  he 
began  to  dominate  the  other  departments 
in  1912,  while  still  junior  to  their  chiefs. 
For  two  decades  there  was  hardly  a  pro- 
ject upon  which  he  did  not  leave  his 
creative  mark,  or  a  state  paper  of  which 
he  was  not  largely  the  author.  He  might 
have  had  a  more  spectacular  career  had 
he  been  less  indifferent  to  his  own  claims. 
He  was  loyalty  itself  to  men  placed  in 
invidious  positions.  When  the  Montagu- 
Chelmsford  reforms  were  applied  to  Burma 
in  1923,  and  the  first  native  ministers  were 
appointed,  he  was  one  of  the  few  Euro- 
peans to  give  them  his  real  intimacy. 

From  1923  to  1928  Keith  was  leader  of 
the  House  in  the  legislative  council  (the 
Burmese  parhament),  as  well  as  finance 
member  and  vice-president  of  the  execu- 
tive council,  acting  as  governor  in  1925. 
Appointed  C.I.E.  in  1917,  knight  bachelor 
in  1925,  and  K.C.S.I.  in  1928,  he  was  the 
only  man  ever  to  receive  the  K.C.S.I. 
solely  for  service  in  Burma. 

Keith  retired  in  1928  to  St.  Margaret's, 
Dunbar,  the  home  of  his  youth,  where  he 
died  22  January  1937,  having  served  as 
a  member  of  the  burgh  council  (1929- 
1932)  and  as  bailie  and  magistrate  (1931). 
He  married  in  1915  Isabel,  only  daughter 
of  Sir  Harvey  Adamson,  lieutenant- 
governor  of  Burma,  and  had  one  son  and 
two  daughters. 

[The  Times,  25  January  1937 ;  private  in- 
formation.] G.  E.  Harvey. 

KELLY,  Sir  JOHN  DONALD  (1871- 
1936),  admiral  of  the  fleet,  was  born  at 
Southsea  13  July  1871,  the  second  son  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Henry  Holdsworth 
Kelly,  Royal  Marine  Artillery,  by  his  wife, 
EUzabeth,  daughter  of  John  CoUum,  of 
Bellevue,  co.  Fermanagh.  Entering  the 
Royal  Navy  in  1884,  he  became  a  midship- 
man in  1886  and  sub-lieutenant  in  1891. 
Promoted  lieutenant  in  1893,  he  served 
for  six  years  continuously  on  the  Austra- 
lia station,  for  the  last  three  years  in  the 
flagship  Royal  Arthur ;  after  quahfying  as 
a  gunnery  officer  he  served  in  the  cruiser 
Forte,  on  the  Cape  station,  whence  he  was 
promoted  commander  in  1904.  He  served 
in  that  rank  on  the  China  station  and  at 
home;  he  was  promoted  captain  in  1911 
and  was  for  eighteen  months  (1913-1914) 
superintendent  of  physical  training  before 
returning  to  sea  service  in  command  of 
the  Ught  cruiser  Dublin  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, a  month  before  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1914.    There  he  greatly  distin- 


guished himself  when  the  Dublin,  togethei 
with  her  sister  ship,  the  Gloucester,  cojn\ 
manded  by  his  younger  brother,  Captai 
(Sir)  William  Archibald  Howard  KeUyJ 
were  the  only  ships  to  keep  touch  with  th^ 
German  battle-cruiser  Goeben  when  she 
eluded  the  British  battle-cruiser  squadron^ 
He  subsequently  commanded  the  cruisei 
Devonshire  and  Weymouth  in  home  water 
and,  from  1917  until  the  end  of  the  warj 
the  battle-cruiser  Princess  Royal. 

In  1919  Kelly  was  appointed  directoi 
of  the  Operations  Division  of  the  Nava 
Staff  at  the  Admiralty,  being  promote^ 
rear-admhal  in  1921 ;  from  1922  to  192< 
he  was  rear-admiral  in  the  Home  Fleet, 
detachment  of  which  under  his  commanc 
spent  many  months  in  the  Dardanelk 
and  Bosphorus  during  the  disturbance^ 
in  Turkey.   In  1924  he  joined  the  Boai 
of  Admiralty  as  fourth  sea  lord ;  he  wa 
promoted  vice-admiral  in  1926,  returnini 
to  sea  service  in  1927  in  command  of  thi^ 
first  battle  squadron  and  as  second-in^ 
command  of  the  Mediterranean  Fleet  fol 
two  years,  after  which  he  had  two  years] 
further  employment  on  shore  as  admira 
commanding  reserves;  he  was  promoted 
admiral  in  1930.    On  relinquishing  tha| 
command,  seeing  no  further  prospect 
employment,  he  sent  the  Admiralty  a  re 
quest  to  retire  forthwith  in  order  to  facili^ 
tate  the  promotion  of  younger  officers! 
but  before  this  took  effect,  the  politic 
crisis  of  1931  occurred,  of  which  the  reper-j 
cussion  in  the  navy  was  the  mutiny  in  th< 
Home  Fleet  at  Invergordon  in  SeptemberJ 
and  Kelly  was  chosen  as  the  man  to  tak^ 
over  the  command-in-chief  vnth  the  tasl 
of  restoring  discipUne  in  the  fleet.   That 
task  he  performed  with  conspicuous  under- 
standing, firnmess,  and  success,  in  recogni- 
tion of  which  he  was  appointed  G.C.V.O. 
in  1932. 

After  two  years  in  the  Home  Fleet  com- 
mand Kelly  was  appointed  first  and  prin- 
cipal naval  aide-de-camp  to  the  king 
(1934-1936),  attd  commander-in-chief  at 
Portsmouth.  That  command  he  held  for 
two  and  a  half  years  until  July  1936, 
when,  having  reached  the  age  of  sixty-five, 
he  was  due  for  compulsory  retirement; 
but  the  day  before  he  was  relieved,  he  wa 
specially  promoted  to  admiral  of  the  fleetj 
and  he  flew  his  union  flag  in  that  rank  fol 
one  day  before  hauUng  it  down  and  rC'^ 
tiring  to  his  home  at  Greenham  Hal" 
Taunton.  Four  months  later  he  died  ii 
London  4  November  1936,  and  was  buried 
at  sea  with  full  naval  honours. 

Kelly  married  in  1915  Mary  (died  1937), 


502 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Kendal 


daughter  of  Thomas  Hussey  Kelly,  of 
Glenyarrah,  Sydney,  New  South  Wales; 
they  had  one  daughter.  He  was  appointed 
C.B.  in  1919,  K.C.B.  in  1929,  and  G.C.B. 
in  1935.  He  was  a  man  of  fine  physique, 
a  prime  seaman,  a  man  of  strong  common 
sense  and  sympathy,  of  great  courage, 
determination,  and  strength  of  character. 
He  earned,  and  was  accorded,  the  respect 
and  gratitude  of  all  ranks  in  the  navy, 
officers  and  men  alike,  for  his  rapid 
restoration  of  the  discipline  and  morale  of 
the  Home  Fleet  in  1931. 

[The  Times,  5  November  1936 ;  Admiralty 
records ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] H.  G.  Thursfield. 

KENDAL,  Dame  MARGARET 
SHAFTO  (1848-1935),  better  known  as 
Madge  Kendal,  actress,  was  born  at 
Grimsby,  Lincolnshire,  15  March  1848. 
She  belonged  to  a  family,  originally  domi- 
ciled in  Scotland,  which  had  been  con- 
nected with  the  stage  for  two  hundred 
years.  Her  great-great-grandfather,  James 
Shafto  Robertson,  was  a  theatre-manager 
at  Peterborough,  his  company  touring  a 
circuit  of  towns  in  the  vicinity  of  that  city ; 
her  father,  William  Robertson,  although 
he  had  been  intended  for  a  solicitor, 
managed  this  theatre  after  his  father's 
death  and,  in  addition,  acted  in  a  great 
many  parts;  her  eldest  brother,  Thomas 
William  Robertson  [q.v.],  originally  an 
actor,  became  a  celebrated  dramatist,  the 
founder  of  a  new,  naturalistic  style  of 
play,  sometimes,  derisively,  described  as 
'the  teacup  and  saucer  drama',  or  'bread 
and  butter  school',  which  included  Caste 
(1867) ;  and  she  herself,  in  addition  to  two 
of  her  brothers  and  four  of  her  sisters, 
went  on  the  stage.  Her  husband  was  an 
actor,  and  two  of  her  daughters  became 
actresses.  Her  father  married  a  young 
actress,  Margharetta  Elisabetta  Marinus, 
the  daughter  of  a  Dutchman  who  taught 
languages  in  London.  It  was  while  she 
was  with  her  husband's  company  on  the 
Lincoln  circuit  that  Madge,  her  twenty- 
second  and  last  child,  was  born. 

The  failure  of  the  Lincoln  circuit  sent 
the  Robertsons  to  London,  where  William 
Robertson  became  the  partner  of  J.  W. 
Wallack  [q.v.]  in  leasing  the  Marylebone 
Theatre,  and  it  was  in  this  theatre,  on 
20  February  1854,  that  Madge,  then  not 
quite  six  years  of  age,  made  her  first 
appearance  as  an  actress.  Her  part  was 
Marie  in  The  Struggle  for  Gold.  By  the 
time  she  was  fifteen  she  was  a  seasoned 
actress,  and  had  performed  in  London, 


Bristol,  and  Bath.  It  was  while  she  was 
appearing  at  the  reopening  of  the  Theatre 
Royal,  Bath,  in  March  1863  that  Ellen 
Terry  [q.v.],  then  aged  sixteen,  and  she 
appeared  together  for  the  first  time.  The 
play  was  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 
Ellen  Terry  was  Titania,  Madge  Robertson 
the  second  singing  fairy.  Her  songs  were 
'  Over  hill,  over  dale '  and  '  I  know  a  bank '. 
The  Oberon  of  this  production  was  Ellen's 
sister,  Kate  Terry.  After  another  engage- 
ment at  Bristol  had  ended,  Madge,  now 
turned  seventeen,  returned  to  London 
where,  on  29  July  1865,  she  made  her  real 
London  debut,  playing  Ophelia  to  the 
Hamlet  of  Walter  Montgomery  [q.v.]  at 
the  Hay  market  Theatre.  This  production 
was  a  failure,  and  was  soon  succeeded  by 
King  John,  with  Madge  Robertson  as 
Blanche  of  Spain.  It,  too,  was  a  failure, 
and  it  was  followed  by  Othello,  with  Madge 
as  Desdemona,  Montgomery  as  lago,  and 
a  negro,  named  Ira  D.  Aldridge,  as  the 
Moor.  This  was  strenuous  training  for  a 
girl  of  seventeen,  but  it  is  not  the  entire 
tally  of  her  training,  for  in  the  same  year, 
or  early  in  1866,  she  played  Lady  Macbeth 
to  the  Macbeth  of  Samuel  Phelps  [q.v.]  at 
Hull  and  later,  in  London,  Lady  Teazle  to 
his  Sir  Peter  at  the  Haymarket.  By  the 
time  she  was  married,  when  she  was 
twenty-one,  she  had  acted  over  fifty  parts 
in  productions  as  various  as  Shakespeare 
and  pantomime. 

In  1869  Madge  Robertson  married  the 
actor-manager  William  Hunter  Kendal 
[q.v.],  with  whom  thenceforth  her  whole 
life  was  identified.  As  an  actor,  he  was  in 
no  wise  comparable  to  his  wife,  as  an 
actress:  he  was  dull  and  pompous,  both 
as  a  player  and  a  private  person,  a  solemn, 
sententious  man  whose  heavy  utterances 
were  received  by  his  wife  as  the  most  deli- 
cious sallies  of  wit ;  and  he  made  a  cult  of 
respectability  which,  although  it  earned 
appreciation  for  him  and  his  far  abler  wife, 
made  them  both  disliked  in  many  quarters 
because  of  the  ostentation  with  which  the 
respectability  was  displayed.  Mrs.  Kendal 
was  called  the  'matron  of  the  English 
theatre',  and  the  title  sat  very  heavily 
upon  her.  Her  marriage,  so  far  as  it 
related  to  Kendal  and  herself,  was  happy, 
but  it  was  far  from  happy  in  respect  of 
their  five  children,  two  sons  and  three 
daughters,  the  divorce  of  one  being  a 
heavy  grief  to  Kendal.  After  Kendal's 
death  the  influence  which  he  had  exercised 
over  his  wife's  opinions  seemed  to  become 
more  severe.  She  grew  publicly  cen- 
sorious, and  all  her  utterances,  often  witty , 


503 


Kendal 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


whether  they  referred  to  the  times  in 
general  or  to  the  theatre  in  particular, 
were  acid  and  denunciatory.  Acting  had 
declined,  the  drama  was  degenerate,  the 
young  had  neither  morals  nor  manners. 
Her  reproaches  were  rendered  more  grim 
by  the  style  of  dressing  which  she  now 
affected ;  a  style  which  was  ostentatiously 
old-fashioned,  but,  nevertheless,  suited 
her  appearance  and  was  attractive. 

Madge  Kendal  was  an  accomplished, 
but  not  a  great,  actress.  Her  verve  was 
immense,  as  a  result,  in  part,  of  extra- 
ordinary vitality,  and  her  gaiety,  on  occa- 
sions, was  charming  and  infectious.  It  is 
arguable  that  she  might  have  been  a 
greater  comedienne  than  she  was,  had  she 
forgotten  her  husband's  passion  for  re- 
spectability. But  even  under  his  oppres- 
sive influence  she  was  delightful  to  watch, 
on  the  stage  or  off  it.  Her  stature  was 
tall,  and  she  had  a  serene  look  that  fitted 
her  especially  for  elderly  parts.  Her 
character  was  firm  and  robust,  too  firm, 
perhaps,  for  family  affection  to  survive, 
too  robust  to  make  her  easy  to  work  with. 
But  the  long  line  of  actors  and  actresses 
who  went  to  the  making  of  her  were  able, 
at  times,  to  resist  and  even  to  overthrow 
her  husband's  influence ;  and  it  was  when 
they  were  in  the  ascendant  that  she  was 
at  her  best.  She  was  familiar  to  playgoers 
in  her  last  years  on  the  stage  mainly  in 
amiable,  unexacting,  sentimental  pieces, 
such  as  A  Scrap  of  Paper,  Still  Waters  Run 
Deep,  and  The  Elder  Miss  Blossom,  but  in 
June  1902,  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre,  when 
she  and  Ellen  Terry  played  respectively 
Mrs.  Ford  and  Mrs.  Page  in  The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor  to  Beerbohm  Tree's 
Falstaff,  she  showed  her  happiest  spirit. 
Those  who  had  the  good  fortune  to  see 
her  and  Ellen  Terry  in  this  production, 
realized  what  great  comediennes  they  were. 
As  they  had  begun  together,  almost  forty 
years  earUer,  so  they  ended  together,  in 
Shakespeare. 

In  1908  Mrs.  Kendal  retired  from  public 
work.  In  1926  she  was  appointed  D.B.E. 
and  in  1927  G.B.E.  Her  birthplace  did 
not  forget  her:  in  1932  she  was  made  an 
honorary  freewoman  of  Grimsby.  Her 
autobiography,  Dame  Madge  Kendal,  in 
writing  which  she  was  assisted  by  Rudolph 
de  Cordova,  was  published  in  1933,  but  it 
is  an  imtidy,  inaccurate  work,  as  was,  per- 
haps, inevitable,  for  she  was  eighty-five 
when  it  appeared.  She  died  at  her  home 
at  Chorley  Wood,  Hertfordshire,  14  Sep- 
tember 1935. 

A  portrait  of  Madge  Kendal,  painted  in 


her  eightieth  year  by  Sir  William  Orpen, 
was  presented  to  her  on  behalf  of  a  num-j 
ber  of  old  friends  by  Sir  Johnston  Forbes- 
Robertson,  and  is  now  in  the  Tate  Gallery.] 

[The   Times,    16   September  1935;    Dame) 
Madge  Kendal,  by  herself,  1933;  Who's  Who\ 
in  the  Theatre,  1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
St.  John  Ekvine. 

KENNEDY,  HARRY  ANGUS  ALEX- 
ANDER (1866-1934),  Scottish  New  Testa- 
ment   scholar,    was    born    at    Dornoch, 
Sutherland,  4  July  1866,  the  elder  son  oi 
George    Rainy    Kennedy,    Free    Churcl 
minister  in  that  town,  by  his  wife,  Maryj 
Margaret  Mclntyre.   Having  won  distinc-j 
tion  as  a  classical  scholar  at  the  Edinburgh] 
Academy   and   the   university   of  Edin-I 
burgh,  he  proceeded  to  the  study  of  theo- 
logy at  the  New  College  in  that  city  andJ 
at  the  German  universities  of  Halle  and] 
Berlin.    In  1893,  the  year  in  which  he] 
married  Elisabeth  (died  1928),  daughter] 
of  George  Gordon,  flax-importer,  of  Dona- 
vourd,   Perthshire,   he  was   ordained  asj 
minister  of  the  Free  church  at  Callander,! 
and  remained  in  that  charge  until  he  was] 
elected  in  1905  to  the  chair  of  New  Testa- 
ment language  and  Uteratm-e  in   KnoxJ 
College,   Toronto.    Four  years   later  he] 
returned  to  Edinburgh,  having  been  calledj 
to  succeed  the  weU-knowu  biblical  scholar 
Marcus  Dods  [q.v.]  in  the  chair  of  Newj 
Testament  language  and  literature  in  the 
New  College.    In  this  post  he  remained! 
until  premature  ill  health  compelled 
to  retire  in  1925.   After  a  period  of  sue! 
growing  weakness  as  rendered  impossible 
the  continuance  of  his  scholarly  pursuits, 
Kennedy  died  in  Edinbiu-gh  23  Marcl 
1934,  survived  by  his  three  daughters. 

It  was  during  his  twelve  years  of  happj 
and  fruitful  ministry  in  Callander  thall 
Kennedy  first  made  a  name  for  himsel 
among  biblical  scholars.  His  small  volume 
on  The  Sources  of  New  Testament  Greek^ 
pubUshed  in  1895,  was  a  pioneer  in  it 
kind.   Its  thesis  was  that  the  language  oi 
the  Septuagint  and  of  the  New  Testament 
was  not,  as  had  always  been  assumed, 
Hebraic  dialect  of  the  Greek  tongue,  but 
the  common  speech  of  the  contemporarj 
Hellenistic  world,  a  conclusion  which  was 
soon  to  be  confirmed  by  the  study  of  the! 
Greek  papyri  found  in  Egypt,  and  by  the 
further  researches  of  scholars  like  Adolf 
Deissmann,  George  Milligan  [q.v.],  and 
J.  H.  Moulton  [q.v.].    Having  first  fol- 
lowed up  this  notable  achievement  by  the 
contribution  of  a  learned  article  on  the 
'Old  Latin  Biblical  Versions'  to  the  third 


504 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Kennett 


\olume  of  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the 
Bible,  Kennedy  turned  from  the  purely 
linguistic  field  to  that  of  biblical  ideas.  In 
1904  he  published  his  Cunningham  lec- 
tures (delivered  in  Edinburgh  in  1902- 
1 904)  on  St.  Paul's  Conceptions  of  the  Last 
Things.  Just  at  this  time  the  eschato- 
logical  problem  was  beginning  to  occupy 
the  central  place  in  biblical  controversy, 
and  Kennedy's  wide  acquaintance  with 
Jewish  apocalyptic  literature  combined 
with  the  conscientious  exactitude  of  his 
New  Testament  scholarship  to  enable 
him  to  make  a  notable  contribution  to 
the  discussion.  This  was  followed  nine 
years  later  by  St.  Paul  and  the  Mystery 
Religions  (1913),  a  volume  no  less  timely 
in  that  it  was  devoted  to  the  assessment 
of  a  further  tendency  then  beginning  to 
exercise  a  wide  influence  on  biblical  inter- 
pretation, namely,  the  tendency  repre- 
sented by  Richard  Reitzenstein  and  other 
scholars,  mainly  continental,  to  derive  the 
most  characteristic  features  of  Paulinism 
from  certain  ideas  widely  current  in  the 
contemporary  Hellenistic  world.  In  1919 
there  appeared  Philo's  Contribution  to 
Religion,  a  first-hand  investigation  which, 
besides  being  of  the  greatest  interest  to 
students  of  Philo  himself,  is  hardly  less 
valuable  for  the  understanding  of  the 
background  of  New  Testament  thought. 
In  the  same  year  Kennedy  had  published 
The  Theology  of  the  Epistles,  a  small  book 
hardly  surpassed  in  its  field.  A  still  smaller 
volume,  more  popular  in  style,  on  The 
Vital  Forces  of  the  Early  Church,  brought 
Kennedy's  literary  career  to  a  virtual  close 
in  1920 ;  and  this,  together  with  his  com- 
mentary on  The  Epistle  to  the  Philippians 
in  the  'Expositor's  Greek  Testament', 
which  had  appeared  as  early  as  1903,  com- 
pletes the  tale  of  the  works  published  by 
him  in  volume  form. 

Although  Kennedy's  own  theological 
position  might  be  described  broadly  as 
that  of  the  liberal  evangelicalism  which 
surrounded  him  in  his  mature  years,  the 
great  merit  of  his  work,  as  well  as  the 
source  of  its  lasting  usefulness,  lies  in  its 
large  measure  of  freedom  from  tendency. 
He  was  above  all  an  exact  and  conscien- 
tious scholar,  grounding  his  conclusions 
upon  an  impartial  survey  of  his  evidence, 
and  following  whithersoever  the  argument 
led  him.  In  this,  and  in  the  guileless  charm 
of  his  warm  and  genial  personality,  he  set  a 
noble  example  to  the  generation  of  Scottish 
ministers  which  it  was  his  business  to  train. 

[The  Times,  29  March  1934 ;  personal  know- 
edge.]  John  Baillie. 


KENNETT,  ROBERT  HATCH  (1864r- 
1932),  biblical  and  Semitic  scholar,  was 
bom  at  St.  Laurence,  Thanet,  9  September 
1864,  the  only  son  of  John  Kennett,  J.P. 
for  the  Cinque  Ports  and  first  mayor  of 
Ramsgate,  by  his  second  wife,  Jane  Hatch, 
of  Ulcombe,  Kent.  He  was  educated  at 
Merchant  Taylors  School,  where  he  learnt 
Hebrew  imder  Charles  James  Ball.  In  1882 
he  gained  a  scholarship  at  Queens'  College, 
Cambridge,  the  president  of  which  was 
the  Syriac  scholar  George  Phillips  [q.v.], 
and  where  the  distinguished  orientaUst 
William  Wright  [q.v.]  was  a  fellow.  He 
obtained  a  first  class  in  the  Semitic  lan- 
guages tripos  of  1886,  and  in  1887,  the  year 
in  which  he  was  ordained,  was  awarded 
the  first  Tyrwhitt  Hebrew  scholarship  and 
the  Mason  prize  for  biblical  Hebrew. 
Elected  a  fellow  of  his  college  in  1888, 
Kennett  was  lecturer  in  Hebrew  and 
Syriac  there  from  1887  to  1903,  and  chap- 
lain from  1887  to  1893  and  again  from 
1902  to  1908.  He  was  also  lecturer  in 
Hebrew  and  Syriac  at  Gonville  and  Caius 
College  from  1891  to  1893.  He  was  ap- 
pointed university  lecturer  in  Aramaic  in 
1893,  and  ten  years  later  was  elected  to  the 
regius  professorship  of  Hebrew  and  to  the 
canonry  of  Ely  Cathedral,  then,  for  the  last 
time,  attached  to  the  chair.  In  1 889  he  mar- 
ried Emily  Augusta,  second  daughter  of 
Major-General  Edward  William  Smythe 
Scott,  Bengal  Artillery,  and  granddaughter 
of  Lieutenant- General  Sir  W.  S.  Whish 
[q.v.],  and  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter. 
The  younger  son,  Austin,  an  official  in  the 
government  of  Nigeria,  and  author  of  an 
important  book  on  Bedouin  Justice  (1925), 
survived  his  father  by  only  a  few  months. 
Kennett  died  rather  suddenly  at  Ely  15 
February  1932. 

Among  Kennett's  contemporaries  at 
school  were  G.  A.  Cooke  [q.v.]  and  Charles 
Fox  Burney,  later  respectively  regius  pro- 
fessor of  Hebrew  and  Oriel  professor  of 
interpretation  of  holy  scripture  at  Oxford ; 
and  at  Cambridge,  along  with  W.  E. 
Barnes,  A.  A.  Bevan,  F.  C.  Burkitt  [qq.v.], 
and  Norman  M'Lean,  he  was  among  the 
pupils  of  William  Robertson  Smith  [q.v.]. 
It  was  a  notable  period  in  Cambridge 
biblical  studies,  and  Kennett  took  a  pro- 
minent part  in  interpreting  the  Graf- 
Wellhausen  position  in  Old  Testament 
criticism  which  was  then  winning  its  way. 
For  forty  years  he  was  an  earnest  evan- 
gelical teacher  and  'higher  critic',  and  his 
most  immediately  effective  work  lay  in 
bridging  the  gulf  between  biblical  and 
modern  modes  of  thought.  As  a  critic  he 


505 


Kennett 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


was  independent  and  original,  if  not 
daring ;  and  he  attracted  attention  by  his 
studies  on  the  date  of  Deuteronomy  (the 
first  of  which  was  published  in  the  Journal 
of  Theological  Studies  for  January  1905), 
part  of  a  brilliant  treatment  of  Israelite 
history  during  the  seventh  to  the  fifth 
centuries  B.C.,  and  also  by  his  defence  of 
a  Maccabean  date  for  the  Psalms  and 
other  portions  of  the  Old  Testament.  He 
was  twice  (1909  and  1931)  Schweich  lec- 
turer of  the  British  Academy,  his  lectures 
being  published  respectively  as  The  Com- 
position of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  in  the  Light 
of  History  and  Archaeology  (1910)  and 
Ancient  Hebrew  Social  Life  and  Custom  as 
indicated  in  Law,  Narrative  and  Metaphor 
(1933).  His  critical  work,  with  the  recon- 
struction of  biblical  history  which  it  in- 
volved, was  the  subject  of  much  discussion, 
although  in  many  important  respects  his 
views  were  in  harmony  with  certain  trends 
of  Old  Testament  research. 

Of  medium  height,  dark,  with  blue  eyes, 
and  of  indifferent  health,  Kennett  was  a 
warm-hearted  man  with  great  personal 
charm,  wide  in  his  interests,  and  utterly 
unselfish  in  his  efforts  to  help  pupils  and 
colleagues. 

[Introduction  by  S.  A.  Cook  to  R.  H.  Ken- 
nett, The  Church  of  Israel,  1933  (select  list  of 
writings  and  portrait) ;  Cambridge  Review,  26 
February  1932 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  S.  A.  Cook. 

KEOGH,  Sir  ALFRED  (1857-1936), 
lieutenant-general,  was  bom  probably  in 
Dublin  3  July  1857,  the  younger  son  of 
Henry  Keogh,  barrister-at-law.  Educated 
at  Queen's  College,  Galway,  he  qualified 
in  medicine  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  and 
entered  the  army  in  1880,  after  serving  as 
house  physician  at  Brompton  Hospital  for 
Diseases  of  the  Chest  and  as  assistant  at 
the  Westminster  Ophthalmic  Hospital. 
He  gained  the  Herbert  prize  and  the 
Martin  gold  medal  at  Netley  and  was  pro- 
moted surgeon-major  in  1892.  During  the 
South  African  war  he  was  in  charge  of 
a  general  hospital  and  was  specially  pro- 
moted lieutenant-colonel  in  1900.  From 
1902  to  1905  he  was  deputy  director- 
general,  Army  Medical  Services,  being 
promoted  colonel  in  1904  and  surgeon- 
general  the  following  day;  and  from  1905 
until  1910  he  vras  director-general.  He 
was  that  year  appointed  rector  of  the  Im- 
perial College  of  Science  and  Technology. 
Shortly  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
Keogh  acceded  to  Kitchener's  request  to 
return  to  the  War  Office,  but  only  on  con- 


dition that  he  was  granted  exceptioni 
powers.    He  retired  finally  in  1918  an 
resumed  his  rectorship,  holding  this  ap 
pointment  until  1922. 

Keogh's  reforms  were  far-reaching 
extent  and  effect.  During  his  first  tenun 
of  office  he  set  himself  to  bridge  the  ga. 
between  the  military  and  civil  branches] 
of  his  profession,  and  to  raise  the  standar 
of  practice  in  the  army.  In  1907  the  Royal 
Army  Medical  College  was  established  a 
Millbank,     London,     for     post-graduat 
teaching,  including  training  in  specialis 
subjects.   He  founded  an  army  school  o 
hygiene.  The  many  station  hospitals  dis 
tributed  over  the  country  were  replaced 
by  central  hospitals,  equipped  and  staffed 
on  a  scale  impossible  in  small  estabUsh- 
ments.  When  R.  B.  (later  Lord)  Haldane 
[q.v.]  organized  the  Territorial  army,  it  fell 
to  Keogh  to  create  a  medical  service  for! 
the  New  Armies.  With  the  co-operation  of 
the  civil  profession,  the  teaching  hospitals 
were  brought  into  the  scheme,  and  the 
staffs  trained  in  military  duties.    Thus 
when  war  came,  the  great  machine  that 
he  had  built  up  worked  smoothly,  and 
grew  and  developed  under  his  guiding 
hand  as  the  fighting  fronts  expanded. 

Keogh  was  an  organizer  and  admini- 
strator of  the  first  rank.  He  had  the  gift 
of  quick  decision,  and  a  firm  grip  of  essen-] 
tials.  For  all  his  resolute  enthusiasm,  he 
was  unfailingly  courteous  and  considerate, 
and  never  forgot  the  good  work  of  others. 
His  conspicuous  services  won  him  many 
distinctions:  he  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1900,  K.C.B.  in  1906,  G.C.B.  in  1917, 
G.C.V.O.  and  C.H.  in  1918.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of  j 
Dublin,  Aberdeen,  Edinburgh,  Leeds,  and 
Oxford.  He  was  elected  F.R.C.P.  in  1914 
and  honorary  F.R.C.S.  (England,  Edin- 
burgh, and  Ireland).  He  was  honorary 
physician  to  the  king  from  1907  to  1910. 
In  1922  he  was  awarded  the  gold  medal  of 
the  Institute  of  Mining  and  Metallurgy. 

Keogh  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1880 
to  Elizabeth  (died  1887),  daughter  of 
George  Williams,  M.D.,  of  the  Indian 
Medical  Service,  and  had  one  son ;  secondly, 
in  1888  to  Camilla  Porterfield  (died  1948), 
daughter  of  Captain  William  Hamilton 
Sheriff  Hart,  of  the  105th  Regiment,  and 
had  two  daughters.  He  died  in  London 
30  July  1936. 

A  portrait  of  Keogh  by  Arthur  Hacker 
hangs  in  the  Royal  Army  Medical  College, 
London. 

[The  Times,  31  July  1936 ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  317  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 


I 


506 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Kerr 


1936,  vol.  ii,  pp.  349  and  464 ;  Journal  of  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  vol.  Ixvii,  1936; 
private  information.]      W.  P.  MacArthur. 

KERR,  PHILIP  HENRY,  eleventh 
Marquess  of  Lothian  (1882-1940),  jour- 
nalist and  statesman,  was  born  in  London 
18  April  1882,  the  elder  son  of  Major- 
General  Lord  Ralph  Drury  Kerr,  by  his 
wife.  Lady  Anne,  sixth  daughter  of  Henry 
Granville  Fitzalan-Howard,  fourteenth 
Duke  of  Norfolk  [q.v.].  He  was  nephew 
of  Schomberg  Henry  Kerr,  ninth  Marquess 
of  Lothian,  and  of  Lord  Walter  Talbot 
Kerr  [qq.v.].  He  was  educated  at  the 
Oratory  School  (then  at  Edgbaston),  and 
New  College,  Oxford.  After  having  been 
awarded  a  first  class  in  modem  history  in 
1904,  he  went  to  South  Africa  as  private 
secretary  to  Sir  Arthur  Lawley  (later  sixth 
Lord  Wenlock),  then  lieutenant-governor 
of  the  Transvaal,  and  soon  afterwards 
became  the  youngest  of  that  band  of  pro- 
mising young  men  whom  Alfred,  Lord 
Milner  [q.v.]  gathered  about  him  after  the 
South  African  war. 

As  assistant  secretary  of  the  Inter- 
Colonial  Council  of  the  Transvaal  and 
Orange  River  Colony  and  of  the  Railway 
Committee  of  the  Central  South  African 
Railways  (1905-1908),  Kerr,  working 
under  Mr.  R.  H.  (later  Lord)  Brand,  drew 
up  a  report  on  railway  rates  which  showed 
clearly  that  unless  the  South  African 
colonies  united,  they  must  drift  back  into 
internecine  quarrels,  and  this  earned  him 
his  appointment  in  1907  as  secretary  of 
the  Transvaal  Indigency  Commission.  Its 
Report,  'a  milestone  in  the  study  of  the 
colour  question',  found  that  the  'colour 
bar'  created  in  South  Africa,  as  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  a  class  of  poor 
whites,  which  represented  a  most  serious 
problem,  and  brought  into  prominence  the 
fundamental  problems  of  the  relations  be- 
tween the  white  and  black  races.  A  year 
later,  one  of  his  main  bents  appeared  after 
his  appointment  as  editor  of  The  State,  a 
monthly  review  founded  by  his  colleagues 
and  friends  for  the  purpose  of  promoting 
union  between  the  South  African  colonies. 
In  this  capacity  he  played  an  effective 
part  in  the  campaign  for  federation.  After 
he  and  others  of  his  friends  had  returned 
to  England  on  the  coming  into  force  of  the 
Union  constitution  in  1909,  they  founded 
together  in  1910  the  Round  Table,  a 
quarterly  magazine  which  had  as  its  aim 
the  organic  union  of  the  British  Common- 
wealth, and  Kerr  was  appointed  its  first 
editor.  In  that  periodical,  while  purveying 


sane  information  to  its  readers  about  im- 
perial and  American  affairs,  he  did  not  fail 
to  give  serious  warnings  of  the  German 
danger  which  was  impressed  upon  him  by 
the  writings  of  German  professors  no  less 
than  by  the  utterances  of  the  military 
caste. 

This  work  was  interrupted  in  December 
1916  by  the  call  to  Kerr  from  Lloyd 
George  to  become  his  private  secretary, 
and  the  next  five  were  the  most  contro- 
versial years  of  his  life.  He  was  more 
responsible  than  any  one  else  for  the  docu- 
ment with  regard  to  the  German  nation 
which  forms  a  preface  to  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles.  In  The  Truth  about  the  Peace 
Treaties  (1938)  Lloyd  George  acknowledges 
the  'priceless  help'  given  by  Kerr  to  the 
prime  minister,  and  emphasizes  the  im- 
portance of  the  part  played  by  Kerr  in 
dealing  with  the  Dominions,  India,  and 
the  United  States.  As  an  illustration  of 
Kerr's  literary  gifts  he  singles  out  the 
reply  sent  by  the  Allies  to  Brockdorff- 
Rantzau's  challenge  of  Germany's  respon- 
sibility for  the  war,  which  was  drafted  by 
Kerr  and  won  the  admiration  of  both 
President  Wilson  and  Clemenceau.  He 
acknowledges  also  the  help  which  Kerr 
gave  in  the  matter  of  the  Russian  civil 
war  which  led  the  critics  of  the  prime 
minister  to  use  strong  language  about 
Kerr's  influence ;  but  he  denies  that  Kerr 
was  pro-Bolshevist.  'It  was  Kerr's  acti- 
vities, acting  on  my  instructions,  that  gave 
rise  to  the  legend  that  the  Foreign  Office 
had  been  transferred  to  "the  garden 
suburb  at  10  Downing  Street"'  (a  tem- 
porary structure  in  the  garden),  but  Lloyd 
George  adds,  '  I  could  not  have  kept  fully 
in  touch  with  events  abroad  without  Mr. 
Kerr's  intelligent  and  informed  vigilance.' 

In  1921  Kerr  resigned  his  secretaryship 
and  in  1922  gave  up  his  directorship  of 
United  Newspapers  (1918)  which  he  had 
held  for  a  year.  He  devoted  his  leisure  to 
writing  on  imperial  politics,  and  one  fruit 
of  it  was  his  publication  in  conjunction 
with  Mr.  Lionel  Cmtis  of  The  Prevention 
of  War  (1923),  based  on  the  lessons  of 
American  history  from  the  covenant  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  made  by  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  on  landing  in  New  England  to  the 
achievement  of  federation.  On  this  theme 
he  was  to  speak  frequently  when  ambas- 
sador to  the  United  States  of  America. 

In  1925  Kerr  accepted  the  post  of 
secretary  to  the  Rhodes  trustees.  The 
work  was  entirely  congenial  to  him.  By 
giving  him  opportunity  for  travel  all  over 
the  world,  it  deepened  his  acquaintance 


507 


Kerr 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


with  the  Dominions  and  the  United  States, 
and  prepared  him  even  further  for  the 
final  chmax  of  his  career.  To  his  imagina- 
tion was  due  the  short-lived  experiment  of 
the  Rhodes  travelling  fellowships  which, 
while  they  lasted,  were  of  immense  value 
to  the  fellows  and  tutors  of  Oxford  col- 
leges, by  giving  them  personal  acquain- 
tance with  overseas  territories  and  prob- 
lems which  they  could  not  otherwise  have 
gained.  How  high  a  value  Kerr  attached 
to  this  position  is  shown  by  his  retention 
of  the  post  in  spite  of  the  ministerial  duties 
which  fell  upon  him  in  the  financial  crisis 
of  1931. 

In  August  of  that  year  Lord  Lothian 
(as  Kerr  had  become  on  the  death  of 
his  cousin  in  1930)  joined  the  all-party 
Cabinet  of  Ramsay  MacDonald  [q.v.]  as  a 
representative  of  the  liberal  party,  and 
received  the  chancellorship  of  the  duchy 
of  Lancaster,  In  November  he  became 
under- secretary  of  state  for  India  and,  as 
chairman  of  the  Indian  Franchise  Com- 
mittee (1932),  he  went  to  India  to  report  on 
the  question  of  electoral  franchise.  He  pre- 
pared a  very  valuable  Report  and,  charac- 
teristically, created  friendly  associations 
between  the  India  Office  and  Indians  in 
India.  However,  with  the  re-emergence 
after  the  Ottawa  Conference  of  the  issue 
of  free  trade,  he,  as  a  convinced  free 
trader,  reluctantly  left  the  administration 
at  the  end  of  September  1932. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  his  appoint- 
ment as  ambassador  to  the  United  States 
in  1939  that  Lothian  revealed  to  the  public 
of  both  countries  his  persuasive  powers, 
his  statesmanlike  qualities,  and  his  breadth 
of  vision.  A  series  of  speeches  deUvered 
by  him  to  American  audiences  after  July 
1939  placed  him  in  general  esteem  in  the 
very  forefront  of  public  men.  At  a  fare- 
well dinner  given  to  him  in  London  by  the 
Pilgrims  of  Great  Britain,  he  emphasized 
the  difficulties  and  complexities  of  Anglo- 
American  relations  in  spite  of  the  under- 
lying unity,  and  avowed  it  to  be  his  task 
to  increase  mutual  confidence  by  making 
the  British  outlook  better  known  to 
Americans.  Arriving  at  his  post  on  the 
eve  of  the  outbreak  of  war,  he  gave  in 
New  York  to  the  Pilgrims  of  the  United 
States  on  25  October  an  address  which 
attracted  universal  attention.  After  point- 
ing out  the  difference  between  totahtarian 
propaganda  and  British  statements,  he 
entered  on  an  exposition  of  the  origins  of 
the  war,  the  principles  of  British  poUcy, 
and  the  reasons  for  the  absence  of  uni- 
versal war  which  had  prevailed  from  1815 


to  1914.  He  claimed  that  the  British  hadl 
the  right  to  tell  their  story,  but  that  they] 
felt  that  having  done  that  it  was  for  the] 
Americans  and  the  Americans  alone  to! 
form    their    own   judgement    about   the] 
British  and  the  war.    The  war  was  thei 
outcome  of  the  mistakes  of  the  past,  but] 
the  victorious  democracies  of  1919  couldl 
at  any  rate  claim  that  they  did  apply  their  • 
own  principles,  whereas  Hitler  was  chal- 
lenging the  whole  democratic  conception 
of  international  Ufe.  If  political  errors  had 
been  committed  at  Versailles,  they  were 
small  in  comparison  with  the  freeing  of 
nations   which   that  treaty  had  effected 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  greatest  mis- 
takes at  Versailles  were  not  political  but 
economic.  The  principles  of  British  policy 
he  declared  to  be  the  right  of  all  nations 
to  autonomous  freedom  and  the  clearing 
out  of  the  Gestapo  from  among  them, 
without  which  there  could  be  no  lasting 
peace,   and   the   establishment   of  some 
security  against  constantly  renewed  wars 
of  aggression.  At  the  same  time  he  asked 
what  were  American  aims,  adding  that 
Americans  must  think  out  the  question  for 
themselves  and  that  it  was  inconceivable 
to  him  that  the  United  States  had  no  con- 
tribution of  its  own  to  make  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  greatest  problem  ever  presented 
to  the  genius  of  mankind.  Then  he  turned  ■ 
to  the  century  of  peace  in  the  nineteenthj 
century,  and  attributed  it  to  four  factors:} 
first,  to  the  combination  of  the  Monroe] 
doctrine  (suggested  by  Canning),  with  thej 
power  of  the  British  navy  which  had  pre- 
vented any  attack  from  any  European  or| 
Asiatic  power ;  secondly,  to  a  stable  inter- 
national currency  based  on  gold ;  thirdly,  j 
to  free  trade  and  at  worst  low  tariffs; 
fourthly,  to  free  immigration  into  the  New] 
World.  From  these  factors  had  sprung  an] 
unexampled  expansion  of  human  freedom 
and  prosperity.    He  ended  by  agreeing 
that  disarmament  on  a  large  scale  was 
essential,  but  he  added  that '  peace  comes 
from  there  being  overwhelming  power  be- 
hind law'.  The  next  day  he  added,  at  the 
Herald  Tribune  forum,  his  belief  that  pro- 
gress to  peace  had  come  by  stages  in 
human  history ;  from  the  Greek  city  state, 
from  the  Roman  conception  of  a  single  law 
throughout  the  Empire,  from  the  Enghsh 
representative    system,    and    from    the 
federation  of  the  United  States,  all  of 
which  would  lead  eventually  to  a  universal 
federation  of  mankind,  a  theme  which  he 
had   already   propounded   in   his   Burge 
memorial  lecture  of  1935. 

These  beliefs  Lothian  put  before  the 


508 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Kerr 


American  public  in  sixteen  speeches  and 
a  broadcast  during  the  remainder  of  his 
life.  Only  once  again  were  they  all  com- 
bined in  a  single  speech,  an  address  to  the 
Chicago  Council  of  Foreign  Relations  (4 
January  1940),  but  one  or  other  recurs 
again  and  again,  whether  he  is  warning 
the  students  at  Swarthmore  that  however 
attractive  communism  and  fascism  may 
appear  to  the  young,  totalitarianism  is  not 
the  right  remedy,  or  addressing  the  St. 
Louis  Chamber  of  Commerce,  or  the 
alumni  of  Columbia  University  on  the 
occasion  of  his  receiving  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  in  June  1940.  He  con- 
tinued to  press  his  beliefs  upon  the 
American  public  even  when  the  successive 
blows  of  the  German  invasions  of  Den- 
mark and  Norway,  Holland  and  Belgium, 
the  fall  of  France,  and  the  evacuation  at 
Dunkirk  compelled  him  to  turn  to  the 
immediate  prospect  and  warn  his  hearers 
of  the  strategic  consequences  to  them- 
selves if  the  ports  and  factories  of  Great 
Britain  and  France  should  all  pass  into 
German  hands  and  the  guardianship  of 
the  waterways  leading  from  Germany  to 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Mediterranean  be 
weakened  by  the  transference  of  the 
British  fleet  to  the  western  shores  of  the 
Atlantic,  thus  compelling  the  United 
States  to  guard  both  the  Atlantic  and  the 
Pacific  with  a  fleet  designed  for  the  control 
of  only  one  ocean.  Yet,  while  he  made  no 
secret  of  the  fact  that  Great  Britain 
desperately  needed  American  munitions 
and  destroyers,  he  was  ever  careful  to  say 
that  the  decision  what  their  poUcy  was  to 
be  was  a  matter  for  the  Americans  them- 
selves and  their  responsibility. 

In  the  last  address,  read  for  him  on  the 
day  before  his  death,  he  came  nearer  to 
advising  them  what  to  do  than  ever  before. 
'If  you  back  us  you  won't  be  backing  a 
quitter.  The  issue  now  depends  largely  on 
what  you  decide  to  do.  Nobody  can  share 
that  responsibility  with  you.'  He  died  at 
Washington,  unmarried,  12  December 
1940. 

The  death  of  Lothian  was  felt  as  a  cala- 
mity of  the  first  order,  not  only  in  Great 
Britain,  where  warm  tributes  were  paid 
to  him  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  but 
also  in  the  United  States,  where  he  was 
awarded  a  state  funeral,  and  his  ashes 
were  laid  in  the  National  Cemetery  at 
Arlington,  to  be  removed  later  to  Jed- 
burgh. No  British  ambassador  had  ever 
done  so  much  to  dissipate  the  traditional 
suspicion  that  clouded  the  relations  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, 


and  it  is  no  disparagement  to  his  successor 
to  say  that  at  the  moment  it  was  felt  that 
no  one  could  take  Lothian's  place. 

In  person,  Lothian  was  well  above 
medium  height,  and  in  youth  was  exceed- 
ingly handsome.  No  one,  however,  was 
less  attentive  to  appearances:  his  clothes 
were  untidy,  his  habit  of  running  his 
fingers  through  his  hair  left  it  generally  in 
an  admired  disorder,  nor  did  he  think  it 
incongruous  for  a  marquess  to  attend  the 
coronation  of  his  sovereign  in  an  Austin 
Seven.  All  through  his  Ufe,  while  he  in- 
spired the  greatest  affection  and  admira- 
tion in  his  friends,  and  while  he  both 
preached  and  practised  the  true  Christian 
virtues,  he  always  maintained  a  certain 
detachment  himself.  While  profoundly 
interested  in  public  affairs,  he  never 
showed  any  Uking  for  party  poUtics.  His 
mind  was  both  analytical  and  constructive. 
He  had  an  exceptional  measure  of  sym- 
pathy with  new  ideas,  which  was  both  a 
strength  and  sometimes  a  weakness.  He 
would  absorb  and  accept  a  new  point  of 
view,  but  then  come  back  gradually  to  a 
sort  of  dead  centre  of  sanity  and  conamon 
sense.  When  at  Oxford,  new  vistas  of 
thought  were  suddenly  opened  to  him,  and 
particularly  he  used  to  say,  when  he  first 
read  the  works  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  he 
lost  and  never  regained  his  early  Roman 
Catholic  faith.  But  the  needj  so  early  im- 
planted in  him,  for  some  definite  faith 
remained  compelling  upon  him,  and  after 
some  years  of  indecision  and  indeed  ill 
health,  he  became  a  sincere  and  convinced 
beUever  in  Christian  Science.  There  were 
not  wanting  those  who  said  that  a  more 
orthodox  treatment  of  the  ailment  from 
which  he  died  would  have  saved  his  Ufe. 
He  retained  a  deep  knowledge  and  love  of 
the  Bible,  traces  of  which  are  clearly 
apparent  in  the  speeches  which  he  de- 
livered in  America.  His  character  was 
therefore  complex,  a  mixture  of  critical 
faculty  and  realism  on  the  one  side  and, 
so  to  speak,  in  another  compartment  a 
deep  and  strong  faith.  He  gave  himself 
generously  to  all  good  causes.  In  his  will 
he  left  Newbattle  Abbey  to  Edinburgh  for 
educational  purposes  and  his  magnificent 
Elizabethan  house  in  Norfolk,  BUckling 
Hall,  to  the  National  Trust. 

Lothian,  who  was  appointed  C.H.  in 
1920  and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
in  1939,  was  designated  K.T.  in  1940  in 
recognition  of  his  services,  but  owing  to 
his  absence  from  the  country  he  never  was 
knighted  and  invested  with  the  insignia. 
In  addition  to  his  honorary  degree  at 


509 


Kerr 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Columbia  University,  he  had  already  re- 
ceived the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from 
Edinburgh  University  in  1936  and  that  of 
D.C.L.  from  Oxford  University  in  1939. 
In  1936  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  his  college.  He  was  succeeded  as  twelfth 
marquess  by  his  cousin,  Peter  Francis 
Walter  Kerr  (born  1922),  his  younger 
brother,  David  Anselm  Kerr,  having  been 
killed  in  action  in  1914. 

There  is  a  posthumous  portrait  of 
Lothian  by  James  Gimn  at  Rhodes 
House,  Oxford,  and  a  plaster  death-mask 
is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  American  Speeches  of  Lord  Lothian, 
edited  by  Lionel  Curtis,  with  a  preface  by 
Lord  Halifax  and  a  memoir  by  Sir  Edward 
Grigg  (later  Lord  Altrincham),  1941 ;  Lord 
Templewood,  Ambassador  on  Special  Mission, 
1946 ;  The  Times,  13  and  17  December  1940 ; 
David  Lloyd  George,  The  Truth  about  the 
Peace  Treaties,  vol,  i,  pp.  263-265,  1938  j 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Brand. 

KETTLE,  EDGAR  HARTLEY  (1882- 
1936),  pathologist,  was  bom  in  London 
20  April  1882,  the  son  of  Edgar  Kettle,  by 
his  wife,  Mary  Austin,  daughter  of  Edward 
Hartley,  of  Chipping  Norton,  Oxfordshire. 
He  was  educated  at  Skipton  Grammar 
School,  of  which  his  uncle,  Edward  Tom- 
son  Hartley,  was  headmaster.  At  the  age 
of  sixteen  he  underwent  an  operation  on 
the  knee,  and  it  was  during  his  stay  in 
St.  Mary's  Hospital  as  a  patient  that  he 
decided  to  take  up  a  medical  career.  Re- 
turning to  St.  Mary's  in  1902,  with  an 
entrance  scholarship,  he  became  attracted 
to  the  study  of  pathology  and  before 
graduating  M.B.,  B.S.  (London)  in  1907, 
was  given  the  post  of  demonstrator  in  that 
subject.  As  a  senior  student  he  acted  as 
temporary  house-surgeon  at  the  French 
Hospital.  Here  he  formed  a  close  friend- 
ship with  Dr.  James  Alexander  Murray, 
of  the  Imperial  Cancer  Research  Fund, 
and  acquired  an  enduring  interest  in  can- 
cer research.  In  1908  he  was  invited  to 
work  in  the  new  laboratories  of  the  Cancer 
Hospital,  Fulham,  and  there  he  remained 
until  1912,  when  he  returned  to  St.  Mary's 
as  first  assistant  pathologist.  In  1910  he 
obtained  the  M.D.  degree  and  during  part 
of  1911  he  worked  under  Ludwig  Aschoff 
at  Freiburg. 

At  St.  Mary's  Hospital  Kettle  became 
successively  assistant  lecturer,  joint  patho- 
logist with  (Sir)  Bernard  Spilsbury,  patho- 
logist and  lecturer  in  pathology  (1918), 
and  ultimately  director  of  the  Institute  of 
Pathology  and  Medical  Research.  On  the 


outbreak  of  war  in  1914  he  was  unable 
join  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  be- 
cause of  his  stiff  knee.   In  addition  to 
pathological   work   he   taught   studentsj 
shared  the  work  of  his  clinical  colleagues^ 
and  even  acted  for  a  time  as  resident 
obstetric  officer.    In  1916  he  also  became 
director  of  pathology  to  the  Third  Londoi 
General  Hospital  at  Wandsworth.  In  1924 
he  left  London  for  Cardiff  to  become  the 
first  whole-time  professor  of  pathology! 
and  bacteriology  in  the  Welsh  National! 
School  of  Medicine,  and  in  1927,  on  the] 
retirement  of  Sir  F.  W.  Andrewes  [q.v.],j 
he  was  chosen  to  succeed  him  in  the  chairl 
of  pathology  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Hos-f 
pital.   At  this  turning-point  in  his  career] 
the  sudden  perforation  of  a  gastric  ulcer! 
placed  his  life  in  peril,  but  he  fought  hisi 
way  back  to  health  and  was  able  to  take! 
up  his  new  duties  in  the  early  summer  ofl 
1928.    His  years  at   St.   Bartholomew'sl 
were  the  happiest  of  his  Ufe,  but  in  1934] 
he  felt  bound  to  accept  a  call  to  the  newly! 
instituted  chair  of  pathology  at  the  British] 
Postgraduate  Medical  School  at  Hammer- 
smith, a  post  for  which  he  was  particularly] 
qualified  by  experience,  standing,  and  per- 
sonality.   In  1935,  when  in  the  midst  of| 
enthusiastic  planning  of  the  new  depart- 
ment, a  serious  recurrence  of  his  old  gastric] 
trouble  necessitated  a  radical  operation.} 
After  a  long  and  anxious  convalescence,] 
during    which    he    showed    indomitable] 
courage,  he  was  able  to  return  to  work  for] 
a  short  time,  but  he  died  at  his  home  in] 
London  1  December  1936. 

Kettle's  early  publications  were  con- 
cerned   with    experimental   rheumatism,] 
cancer,  splenomegaly,  infection,  and  im- 
mimity.    Histopathology  was  his  special! 
province  and  he  devoted  much  attention] 
to  malignant  disease.  His  classical  mono- 
graph on  The  Pathology  of  Tumours  (1916),  I 
illustrated  by  his  own  drawings,  reached] 
a  second  edition  in  1925,  and  a  third  edi- 
tion, edited  by  Professor  W.  G.  Barnard 
and  Dr.  A.  H.  T.  Robb-Smith,  was  pub- 
lished in  1945.    In  1919  he  was  the  first  i 
to  describe  in  detail  the  actual  lesions  of! 
gas  gangrene.   His  outstanding  contribu- 
tion to  medicine  was  the  series  of  papers 
on  silicosis  and  its  association  with  pul- 
monary tuberculosis,  published  between 
1922  and  1934.   Kettle  and  his  collabora- 
tor. Professor  W.  E.  Gye,  showed  that  the 
injurious  qualities  of  silica  depended  on  its 
solubility  in  the  tissues  and  not,  as  had 
been  generally  assumed,  on  its  great  hard- 
ness and  insolubility.    Kettle's  later  in- 
vestigations covered  the  whole  problem  of 


510 


I 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


King 


the  relation  of  dust  to  infection.  In  col- 
laboration with  Dr.  Reginald  Hilton  he 
devised  a  method  of  rapidly  determining 
whether  or  not  any  given  dust  was  capable 
of  producing  serious  lung  disease. 

Kettle  was  a  member  of  the  Medical 
Research  Council's  committees  on  indus- 
trial solvents,  industrial  pulmonary  dis- 
ease, and  radiology,  and  represented  the 
council  at  the  international  conference  on 
siUcosis  held  at  Johannesburg  in  1930.  At 
the  invitation  of  the  International  Labour 
Office  he  attended  the  meetings  of  the 
international  committee  on  pneumoconio- 
sis at  Geneva  two  months  before  his  death. 
He  was  consulting  pathologist  to  St. 
Bartholomew's  Hospital  and  to  Queen 
Alexandra's  Military  Hospital,  Millbank, 
a  member  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  Imperial  Cancer  Research  Fund,  and 
treasurer  (1928)  of  the  Pathological  Society 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  He  was 
president  of  the  pathological  sections  of 
the  British  Medical  Association  (1928)  and 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine  (1930- 
1932).  As  one  of  four  representatives 
nominated  by  the  British  universities  he 
gave  evidence  before  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Lords  on  the  'Osteopaths  bill'. 
He  was  elected  F.R.C.P.  (1931)  and  F.R.S. 
(1936). 

Kettle's  mastery  of  and  enthusiasm  for 
his  subject  and  his  gift  of  friendship  won 
and  retained  the  confidence  and  affection 
of  all  who  worked  with  or  under  him.  A 
Kettle  memorial  lecturership,  to  be  held 
in  rotation  at  the  four  medical  schools 
with  which  he  was  associated,  was  founded 
by  colleagues  and  pupils  in  1938. 

Kettle  married  in  1918  Marguerite 
Henrietta  Pam,  M.D.  (died  1939),  daugh- 
ter of  Leopold  Pam,  who  was  for  many 
years  a  member  of  the  editorial  staff  of 
the  Lancet.  They  had  no  children. 

[The  Times,  2  and  4  December  1936 ;  Obi- 
tuary Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait) ;  Journal  of 
Pathology  and  Bacteriology,  March  1937 
(bibliography  and  portrait);  British  Medical 
Journal,  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  1236  (portrait); 
Lancet,  1936,  vol.  ii,  p.  1427  (portrait) ;  St. 
Bartholomew's  Hospital  Reports,  1937  (biblio- 
graphy and  portrait);  St.  Bartholomew's 
Hospital  Journal,  January  1937;  St.  Mary's 
Hospital  Gazette,  vol.  xliv,  1936-1937.] 

W.  J.  Bishop. 

KILBRACKEN,  first  Baron  (1847- 
1932),  civil  servant.  [See  Godley,  (John) 
Arthur.] 

KING,  Sir  (FREDERIC)  TRUBY 
(1858-1938),  pioneer  of  the  science  known 


as  mothercraft,  was  bom  at  New  Ply- 
mouth, New  Zealand,  1  April  1858,  the 
third  son  of  Thomas  King,  of  New  Ply- 
mouth, a  manager  of  the  Bank  of  New 
Zealand,  by  liis  wife,  Mary  Chilman.  He 
was  educated  at  New  Plymouth,  and  went 
to  Edinburgh  University,  where  he  was 
awarded  the  Ettles  scholarship  and  gradu- 
ated M.B.,  CM.  in  1886.  After  practising 
for  a  number  of  years  in  New  Zealand,  he 
founded  in  1907  the  Royal  New  Zealand 
Society  for  the  Health  of  Women  and 
Children,  known  as  the  Plunket  Society. 
From  1921  to  1927  he  was  the  director  of 
child  welfare  in  the  Dominion. 

In  1918,  immediately  after  the  end  of 
the  war,  King  established  in  London  the 
Plunket  Society  Training  Centre,  having 
been  sent  over  to  England  by  the  New 
Zealand  government  for  that  purpose.  His 
mothercraft  centres  have  since  been  imi- 
tated in  every  English-speaking  country, 
as  well  as  in  various  foreign  countries, 
such  as  Russia,  Poland,  Palestine,  and 
China,  where  his  writings  are  read  and 
their  teaching  is  followed.  His  books, 
Feeding  and  Care  of  Baby  (1913)  and  The 
Expectant  Mother  and  Baby^s  First  Month 
(1924),  were  for  a  long  time  the  only 
authentic  works  on  the  subject,  but  some 
years  before  his  death  his  daughter.  Miss 
Mary  Truby  King,  brought  out  a  revised 
edition  of  his  teachings  with  additional 
matter  under  the  title  of  Mothercraft 
(1934).  There  are  thousands  of  men  and 
women  in  various  countries  who  owe  their 
healthy  bodies,  or  even  their  lives,  to  the 
principles  laid  down  by  King. 

The  following  impressive  figures  have 
been  given  of  the  results  of  King's  philan- 
thropic labours.  In  New  Zealand  in  1905 
the  annual  mortality  of  infants  under 
twelve  months  old  was  8  per  cent.  By 
1912  it  had  fallen  to  5-1  per  cent.,  and  in 
1934  to  3-16  per  cent.  In  Dunedin,  where 
the  work  originated,  it  was  as  low  as  2'1 
per  cent.  Thanks  mainly  to  King  and  the 
adoption  of  his  methods  during  the  same 
period  of  about  thirty  years,  the  rate  of 
infant  mortality  has  fallen  in  a  marked 
manner.  At  the  time  of  his  death,  the  New 
Zealand  rate  was  still  very  much  lower 
than  it  was  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  of  America. 

It  was  said  of  King  after  his  death  that 
he  combined  infinite  patience  and  accurate 
observation  with  flashes  of  imagination, 
but  that  the  essence  of  his  teaching  was 
based  upon  respect  for  the  laws  of  nature, 
and  the  rules  of  common  sense.  No  com- 
pliment could  have  pleased  him  better 


511 


King 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


than  this.  As  a  pioneer  worker  in  welfare, 
he  always  declared  that  he  regarded  it  as 
his  greatest  reward  that  so  much  of  what 
he  advocated  so  vigorously  was  accepted 
so  generally  as  to  become  a  commonplace. 
His  admirers  may  well  go  farther  and  say 
that,  however  ordinary  his  work  may  ap- 
pear, his  infectious  enthusiasm  overcame 
many  seemingly  insuperable  obstacles  and 
produced  benefits  to  humanity  as  valuable 
as  those  which  flowed  from  the  labours  of 
Lister  or  Pasteur. 

King  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1917,  and 
knighted  in  1925.  In  1887  he  married 
Isabella  Cockburn  (died  1927),  daughter 
of  Adam  Millar,  of  Edinburgh,  and  had 
one  daughter.  He  spent  his  last  years  in 
a  small  bungalow  in  the  grounds  of  one  of 
his  mothercraft  homes.  His  favourite 
recreation  was  gardening,  and  his  love  of 
flowers  intense.  He  had  much  skill  in 
growing  them,  especially  rhododendrons. 
He  died  at  Wellington,  New  Zealand, 
9  February  1938. 

[The  Times,  10,  12,  14,  and  17  February 
1938 ;  information  from  the  Office  of  the  High 
Commissioner  of  New  Zealand.] 

Akthur  Cochrake. 

KIPLING,  (JOSEPH)  RUDYARD 
(1865-1936),  author,  came  of  farming 
stock  in  Yorkshire.  His  father,  Jolin 
Lockwood  Kipling  (1837-1911),  the  eldest 
son  of  Joseph  Kipling,  a  methodist  minis- 
ter, worked  as  a  potter  in  Staffordshire, 
studied  at  South  Kensington,  and  was  for 
some  time  employed  as  a  designer  at 
Burslem.  He  married  Alice  (1837-1910), 
daughter  of  George  Browne  Macdonald, 
a  Wesleyan  minister,  of  Wolverhampton. 
The  Macdonalds  were  Highlanders  who 
had  migrated  to  Fermanagh  after  the 
'Forty-Five'.  Alice's  grandfather,  James 
Macdonald,  who  had  become  a  preacher 
on  the  invitation  of  John  Wesley  himself, 
came  to  England  in  1795.  There  his  son 
was  bom.  George  Browne  Macdonald  had 
a  large  family,  including  four  daughters 
who  married  and  had  children :  Alice  Kip- 
ling, Georgiana,  wife  of  Sir  Edward  Burne- 
Jones  [q.v.],  Agnes,  wife  of  Sir  Edward 
Poynter  [q.v.],  and  Louisa,  wife  of  Alfred 
Baldwin  and  mother  of  Earl  Baldwin  of 
Bewdley. 

John  Kipling  married  (March  1865)  on 
the  strength  of  his  appointment  as  archi- 
tectural sculptor  in  the  Bombay  School 
of  Art.  The  elder  of  their  two  children 
(a  daughter  followed  three  years  later)  was 
bom  in  Bombay  30  December  1865,  and 
named  Joseph  after  his  grandfather:  his 


second  name  was  chosen  by  his  godmotherj 
Louisa  Macdonald,  to  commemorate  the 
place  where  his  parents  had  first  metJ 
Rudyard  Lake  in  Staffordshire.  In  187fl 
his  doctors  advised  that  the  boy  should  he 
sent  home.  He  passed  some  years  witl 
a  disagreeable  and  pious  family  at  South<*( 
sea :  but  Christmas  holidays  were  happilj 
spent  with  the  Bume-Jones  family  at  The 
Grange,  Fulham,  and  they  knew  nothing 
of  the  beatings  and  humiliations  recorded 
in  'Baa,  Baa,  Black  Sheep'.  He  remem- 
bered William  Morris  seated  on  a  rocking- 
horse  telling  the  children  the  story  of 
Burnt  Njal.  In  1877  Mrs.  Eapling  came 
home,  carried  the  boy  away  from  South- 
sea,  and  in  1878  entered  him  at  the  United 
Services  CoUege,  Westward  Ho!  In  the 
latter  year  his  father,  now  principal  of 
the  Mayo  School  of  Art  and  curator  of  the 
museum  at  Lahore,  spent  some  months 
on  furlough  in  England,  and  took  Rud- 
yard to  the  Paris  Exhibition.  This  visit 
was  the  beginning  of  a  devotion  to  France 
which  grew  stronger  to  the  end. 

Kipling  as  a  schoolboy  showed  no  outi 
standing  qualities  except  a  passion  foi 
reading,  to  which  Cormell  Price,  the  head<| 
master,  ministered  wisely  and  generously] 
At  Westward  Ho !  and  in  his  holidays  h« 
began  to  build  that  knowledge  of  EngUsl 
Uterature  which  reveals  itself  so  abun-j 
dantly,  by  reference  or  allusion,  through^ 
out  his  work.  The  Bible,  the  Elizabethai 
translators,  the  poets  indiscriminately^ 
Defoe  and  the  story-tellers,  small  and 
great:  he  drew  his  vocabulary  from  thei 
all.  He  had,  too,  for  a  schoolboy,  ai 
unusually  wide  knowledge  of  Frencl 
Uterature,  and  he  made  some  slight  pro- 
gress in  Russian,  with  a  view,  it  may  be 
suspected,  to  service  some  day  on  the 
Afghan  frontier:  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten 
that  these  susceptible  years  were  also  the 
years  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war,  of  Indian 
troops  at  Malta,  and  the  great  Jingo  song. 
Out  of  his  friendships  and  the  incidents  of 
school  Ufe  he  was  afterwards  to  weave  the 
adventures  of  Stalky  and  Co.  (1899).  There 
has  been  much  idle  disputation  over  the 
verisimilitude  of  Kipling's  school  stories. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  like  Scott  and 
Dickens,  he  at  all  ages  possessed,  and 
heartily  enjoyed,  the  gift  of  transmuting 
the  commonplace  into  drama  or  fairy  tale. 
Add  the  exuberant  sense  of  fun,  which 
appears  in  ' Brugglesmith '  (1891)  and  'My 
Sunday  at  Home'  (1895),  and  no  further 
analysis  or  explanation  seems  necessary. 

Kipling's  extraordinary  powers  of  re- 
ception and  recoUection  made  him  in  fact 


512 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Kipling 


i  reporter  of  genius:  and  it  was  as  a 
reporter  that  he  became  known  when  he 
Returned  to  India  in  1882  and  joined  the 
staff  of  the  Lahore  Civil  and  Military 
Gazette:  he  was  also  associated  with  the 
Ulahabad  Pioneer.  Here  he  was  once 
nore  under  the  eye  of  his  father,  to  whose 
tandards  of  jftne  craftsmanship  Rudyard 
oyally  and  enthusiastically  adhered:  to 
i>ee  everything  with  his  own  eyes;  to 
experiment  endlessly  with  'the  weight, 
:;olour,  perfume,  and  attributes  of  words 
n  relation  to  other  words';  and  to  set 
iiown  the  results  with  the  utmost  precision 
!jf  epithet  and  phrase.  The  vast  and  many- 
jjoloured  pageant  of  India  was  his  field, 
Imd,  dominant  over  all,  was  the  imperial 
i:ace,  'picked  men  at  their  definite  work' 
|)f  doing  justice  and  upholding  the  law, 
imd,  in  the  doing,  misunderstood  and 
sometimes  reviled  by  the  great,  ignorant, 
iberal  public  in  England.  From  his  father 
le  had  the  gift  of  mixing  with  all  sorts 
Imd  conditions :  from  his  mother  a  vitality 
ind  imagination  which  led  a  viceroy  to 
iay  'Dullness  and  Mrs.  Kipling  cannot 
::xist  in  the  same  room.'  And  these  two 
vere,  and  remained,  his  public. 

Very  soon,  verses,  mostly  satiric  with 
I  secret  meaning  for  the  initiated,  sketches, 
ind  stories  began  to  be  quoted  and  talked 
iibout,  not  always  with  approval,  wherever 
English  officials  and  their  families  met  in 
.'ndia.  There  had  been  such  things  before 
;)ut  never  of  this  vivid  quality  and  wide 
jange.  They  reached  England:  Sir  William 
Hunter  [q.v.],  who  knew  both  books  and 
'ndia,*wrote  in  the  Academy  of  a  new  star 
jising  in  the  East ;  and  by  1888,  when  the 
jvriter  was  only  twenty-two,  the  literary 
jvorld  was  asking  'Who  is  Rudyard  Kip- 
ing  ? '  The  books  which  created  this  early 
ame  were  Departmental  Ditties   (1886), 

lain  Tales  from  the  Hills,  Soldiers  Three, 
Vhe  Story  of  the  Gadsbys,  In  Black  and 
Vhite,  Under  the  Deodars,  The  Phantom 
kickshaw.  Wee  Willie  Winkie  (aU  1888), 
iontaining  altogether  over  seventy  stories. 
The  next  volume.  The  Courting  of  Dinah 
ihadd  (1890),  had  for  introduction  a  bio- 
;raphical  sketch  by  Andrew  Lang  [q.v.], 
hen  at  the  height  of  his  authority  as  a 
ritic.  No  writer  since  Dickens  had  been 
xposed  to  so  sudden  a  blaze  of  celebrity. 
Jut  Kipling  was  unspoiled  by  praise,  un- 
listurbed  by  criticism.  He  was  now  and 
ilways  his  own  taskmaster.  He  would 
leclaim  a  paragraph  or  chant  a  poem  (he 
lad  no  ear  and  an  immusical  voice)  until 
le  was  satisfied  that  every  phrase  and 
adence  was  doing  its  duty.  'A  word',  he 


said,  'should  fall  in  its  place  like  a  bell  in 
a  full  chime.'  In  the  rising  art  of  the  short 
story  England  had  found  a  master  to  rival 
Guy  de  Maupassant,  and  few  things  gave 
him  more  pleasure  than  to  learn  that  a 
French  critic  had  detected  the  phrase 
'burdensome  geniality'  round  which  a 
whole  story  ('A  Wayside  Comedy',  1888) 
had  been  written.  Some  day  his  trans- 
lators, headed  by  Andr6  Chevrillon,  were 
to  make  him  almost  as  popular  in  France 
as  in  England. 

Late  in  1889  Kipling  left  India  for  a  long 
journey  in  Japan  and  the  United  States 
of  America,  and,  with  £300  to  his  credit, 
settled  in  London,  in  rooms  in  Villiers 
Street  by  Charing  Cross.  The  critical 
journals,  especially  the  National  Observer, 
made  much  of  him  and  he  was  soon  taken 
into  the  circle  of  W.  E.  Henley,  Thomas 
Hardy,  (Sir)  Edmimd  Gosse,  (Sir)  Walter 
Besant,  to  whose  novel.  All  in  a  Garden 
Fair,  he  owned  a  debt  in  craftsmanship, 
George  Saintsbury  [qq.v.],  and  Andrew 
Lang.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  whom  he  greatly 
adnured,  was  at  VaiUma,  and  although 
they  corresponded,  they  never  met.  But 
Kipling  made  it  a  matter  of  principle  to 
join  no  literary  coterie,  and  never,  directly 
or  by  implication,  to  criticize  another 
craftsman's  work.  In  London  also,  Kip- 
Ung  made  the  acquaintance  of  Wolcott 
Balestier  (son  of  Henry  Wolcott  Balestier, 
of  Rochester,  New  York),  an  American 
joumahst  of  French  origin,  with  whom  he 
wrote  The  Naulahka  (1892),  and  his  sister 
Caroline  Starr,  whom  he  married.  Mean- 
while he  had  published  his  one  novel  The 
Light  that  Failed  (1891),  visited  America 
again,  and  made  his  first  journey  to  the 
Cape:  thence  on  to  Austraha  and  New 
Zealand;  back,  with  'General'  William 
Booth  [q.v.],  to  Colombo,  visiting  Lahore 
for  the  last  time.  Indefatigable  traveller 
and  observer  as  he  was,  he  never  saw  the 
world  again  as  he  had  seen  India,  with 
the  eyes  first  of  childhood  and  then  of 
early  manhood. 

Immediately  after  their  marriage  in 
January  1892  the  Kiplings  started  for 
America,  on  a  journey  round  the  world: 
a  project  brought  to  an  uncomfortable 
stop  by  the  faUure  of  a  bank  in  Yoko- 
hama. Returning  eastward  by  Canada, 
they  settled  on  the  Balestier  property  at 
Brattleboro,  Vermont.  Here  they  lived 
for  four  years.  Kipling  did  not  like  his 
neighbours,  nor  did  they  like  him :  his  im- 
pressions of  American  society  gave  edge 
to  the  Jungle  Book  story  of  the  Ban- 
darlog.   In  the  end  a  mischievous  feud, 


513 


t    xA 


Kipling 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


provoked  by  a  trifle  and  culminating  in  a 
lawsuit,  so  worked  on  his  horror  of  pub- 
licity, and  his  dislike  of  interference,  as  to 
send  him,  sooner  than  he  had  intended, 
back  to  England.  He  had  finished  his  best 
volume  of  stories.  Many  Inventions  (1893), 
written  the  two  Jungle  Books  (1894  and 
1895),  and  drafted  Captains  Courageous 
(published  1897). 

Kipling's  fame  was  reaching  its  highest 
point — ^the  fame,  first,  of  a  great  story- 
teller and  ballad-singer :  then  of  a  master  of 
comedy  and  sentiment.  True  pathos  came 
later  with  the  death  of  his  eldest  child, 
Josephine,  for  whom  the  Just  So  Stories 
for  Little  Children  (1902)  were  to  have  been 
written:  he  himself  ranked  them  highest 
among  his  stories,  the  'Recessional'  (1897) 
among  his  poems.  The  choice  is  signi- 
ficant: the  family  and  the  Empire  were 
the  poles  about  which  his  genius  turned: 
and  between  Barrack-Room  Ballads  (1892) 
and  The  Seven  Seas  (1896)  KipUng  had 
become  the  exponent  of  a  pohtical  creed, 
a  national  philosophy,  an  imperial  ethic. 
The  note  had  been  loudly  struck  in  'The 
EngHsh  Flag'  (1891)  which  the  aged 
Tennyson  approved,  and  The  Seven  Seas 
might  be  read  as  an  overtvu'e  to  the  cele- 
brations of  the  year  of  jubilee.  And 
although  well  sustained  by  A  Fleet  in 
Being  (1898),  the  masterpiece  of  his  craft 
as  journaUst  and  special  correspondent, 
Kim  (1901),  Puck  of  Book's  Hill  (1906), 
and  Rewards  and  Fairies  (1910),  his  popu- 
larity was  never  again  so  universal  as  it 
had  been  before  the  South  African  war. 

In  1898-1899  the  family — Josephine, 
Elsie,  and  John — were  in  New  York  visit- 
ing Mrs.  Balestier.  There  Kiphng  fell 
dangerously  ill  of  pneumonia:  Josephine 
died,  and  alarm  and  sympathy  were  felt 
throughout  the  English-speaking  world. 
He  was  a  national  figure,  and  his  death 
would  have  been  felt  as  a  national  cala- 
mity. But  those  who  had  stood  aloof  from 
the  somewhat  feverish  exaltation  of  those 
years  were  not  slow  to  remark  a  vein  of 
brutality,  of  something  at  once  noisy  and 
showy,  in  his  art ;  a  love  of  violence  and 
domination,  an  'effete  Phihstinism'  not  in 
keeping  with  the  new  age  of  pacific  demo- 
cracy and  government  directed  not  by 
inherited  experience  but  by  liberal  prin- 
ciples. The  anti-imperial  reaction,  stimu- 
lated by  the  mismanagement  of  the  South 
African  war,  v/as  gathering  strength,  and 
the  young  intellectuals  on  that  side  were 
waiting,  with  parody,  caricature,  or  sober 
protest,  to  put  the  great  imperialist  down. 

Never  much  affected  by  criticism  of  his 


work,  Kipling  went  on  writing  and  trave 
ling.  He  made  his  second  journey  to  tl: 
Cape  in  1898  and  from  1900  to  1908  tl 
family  went  there  every  year,  leavii 
England  in  December  and  returning 
April  or  May.  Then  the  venue  was  chan^ 
to  Switzerland:  winter  sports  at  Engel- 
berg,  followed  by  a  trip  to  France  or  Italy, 
and  a  return  to  England  for  John  KipUng's 
Easter  hoUdays.  In  1902  the  Kiplings  had 
bought  Bateman's,  at  Burwash,  in  Sussex: 
and  here  for  the  first  time  he  struck  roots 
in  the  English  soil  which  he  worshipped. 
Here  Pttck  was  begun  in  the  autumn  of 
1904,  and,  with  Rewards  and  Fairies  and 
A  School  History  of  England  (1911),  may  be 
taken  as  'a  sort  of  balance  to,  as  weU  as  a 
seal  upon,  some  aspects  of  my  "  Imperial- 
istic" output  in  the  past'.  These  volumes 
contain  some  of  his  most  durable  poetry, 
besides  the  much  quoted  'The  Glory  of 
the  Garden',  and  the  last  of  his  famous 
ballads,  the  verses  called  'If,  written  with 
Dr.  Jameson  in  mind,  which  'snowballed 
themselves',  as  he  ruefuUy  acknowledged, 
and  were  translated  into  twenty-seven  lan- 
guages. 

In  1907  Kiphng  was  awarded  the  Nobel 
prize  for  hterature.  He  had  refused  the 
laureateship  when  in  1895,  after  long 
delay,  Lord  Salisbury  decided  to  fill  the 
post  vacant  since  the  death  of  Tennyson 
and,  on  Balfour's  urgent  recommendation, 
offered  it  to  Kiphng.  He  felt,  then  and 
always,  that  he  could  do  better  work  and 
be  of  more  use  to  the  country  if  he  were 
free  to  write  as  he  chose.  Anticipating  this 
reply,  Asquith  did  not  invite  him  to  accept 
the  office  when  next  it  fell  vacant  in  1913. 
In  1916  Robert  Bridges  suggested  that  the 
Order  of  Merit  could  not  be  more  suitably 
bestowed:  'Kipling  is  the  greatest  living 
hterary  genius  that  we  have:  and  it  is 
generally  thought  that  he  has  been  passed 
over  on  account  of  his  politics.'  Five  years 
later  the  proposal  was  renewed  and  the 
names  of  Kipling  and  Sir  J.  M.  Barrie 
[q.v.]  were  discussed  between  the  King 
and  Lloyd  George.  The  offer  was  made 
but  Kiphng  prayed  that  he  might  be 
excused.  To  his  great  distress,  the  story 
became  public.  Finally,  in  1924  the  offer 
was  made  for  the  third  time,  and  dechned 
on  the  same  grounds,  that  whatever  he 
did  or  might  do  for  the  King  or  Empire 
in  the  troublesome  times  ahead  would  be 
most  serviceably  done  without  acknow- 
ledgement in  the  public  eye. 

From  about  his  fortieth  year  onward 
more  and  more  of  Kiphng's  energy  was 
given  to  imperial  concerns.   The  menace 


514 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Kipling 


ot  Germany  grew  ever  nearer  and  more 
formidable:  and  he  was  equally  ready  to 
take  arnts  for  conscription  or  against 
^vomen's  suffrage,  against  democracy,  or 
lor  the  rights  of  Ulster.  These  vehement 
preoccupations,  grounded  upon  an  intense 
faith  in  discipline,  and  self-discipline,  and 
recaUing,  in  substance  and  expression,  the 
vaticinations  of  Carlyle  and  of  Tennyson 
in  his  later  years,  coincided  with  a  new 
and,  to  the  general  public,  a  by  no  means 
attractive  development  of  his  literary 
manner.  Of  Rewards  and  Fairies  he  said 
that  he  '  loaded  the  book  up  with  allegories 
and  allusions '.  This  tendency  to  a  cryptic, 
over-mannerized  style  of  writing  grew  on 
him  with  the  years  and  produced  'the 
Kipling  whom  nobody  reads',  the  Kipling 
of  A  Diversity  of  Creatures  (1917),  Debits 
and  Credits  (1926),  and  Limits  and  Re- 
newals (1932).  He  had  made  a  rule  for 
himself:  'Never  follow  up  a  success:  when 
you  have  found  what  you  can  do,  do  some- 
thing you  can't.'  But  after  forty-five,  he 
was  no  longer  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
health,  or  of  his  old  creative  power,  and 
the  genius  which  might  have  told,  what 
he  once  aspired  to  tell,  'the  saga  of  the 
Anglo-Saxons',  was  deflected  to  a  range 
of  business  which  to  his  eye  was  of  vastly 
greater  importance :  to  warn,  to  exhort,  to 
preach;  some  said  to  scold  his  country- 
men. His  style,  drawing  less  and  less  on 
observation,  and  more  and  more  on  the 
notebook,  had  lost  its  magnetism  for  a 
generation  which  knew  the  formula:  his 
political  faith,  authoritarian,  hierarchic, 
feudal,  embarrassed  some  as  much  as  it 
exasperated  others.  Certain  Irish  members 
'  Icmanded  his  prosecution:  one  liberal  organ 
described  him  as  a  'vindictive  maniac'. 

From  his  fiftieth  year  until  his  death, 
moreover,  Kipling  suffered  constant  and 
often  acute  pain,  accompanied  by  haemor- 
rhage and  sicloiess,  from  a  duodenal  ulcer, 
only  diagnosed  by  a  French  surgeon  in 
1933.  No  treatment  (and  a  score  of  doctors 
were  consulted)  gave  him  more  than  pass- 
ing relief.  It  is  against  this  background 
of  wretchedness  and  bodily  distress  that 
the  work  of  his  last  twenty  years  must  be 
viewed.  In  order  to  keep  the  pain  at  bay, 
he  drove  his  mind  harder  and  harder: 
going  always  deeper,  his  handling  always 
more  tense,  his  style  more  abrupt.  From 
allusive  he  became  obscure,  from  obscure 
at  times  unintelligible. 

The  long-foreseen  war  of  1914-1918  gave 
Kipling  a  field  of  action  not  unwelcome. 
He  poured  out  letters,  verses,  and  speeches. 
He  wrote  of  minesweepers  and  submarines : 


of  the  training  of  the  New  Armies:  he 
busied  himself  with  the  history  of  his  son's 
regiment,  the  Irish  Guards  (published  as 
The  Irish  Guards  in  the  Great  War,  2  vols., 
1923).  Above  all  he  wrote  of  France,  of 
France  at  war,  when  all  were  on  his  side : 
of  France  after  the  war,  when  England 
was  not  so  whole-hearted;  and  his  pas- 
sionate antagonism  to  Germany,  at  a  time 
when  French  policy  was  to  most  English- 
men a  mystifying  exasperation,  and 
Germany  a  harmless  and  beaten  enemy, 
involved  him  once  more  in  a  cloud  of 
angry  detraction. 

Compensating  honours  came  to  Kipling 
from  many  quarters:  most  valued  of  all 
were  the  doctorates  conferred  upon  him 
by  the  universities  of  Paris  and  Strasburg 
in  1921.  In  November  1922  he  was  elected 
lord  rector  of  St.  Andrews  University, 
among  the  honorary  graduates  at  his  in- 
stallation in  the  following  October  being 
liis  cousin  Stanley  (later  Earl)  Baldwin, 
then  prime  minister.  In  1926  he  was 
awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Literature,  which  only  Scott, 
Meredith,  and  Hardy  had  received  before 
him.  He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge,  in  1932, 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  McGill  (1899),  Durham  and 
Oxford  (1907),  Cambridge  (1908),  Edin- 
burgh (1920),  and  Athens  (1924).  In  1918, 
at  the  invitation  of  M.  D.  Caclamanos,  he 
translated  the  Greek  national  anthem  into 
English,  and  the  version  appeared  in  the 
Daily  Telegraph  on  17  October  1918.  In 
return  the  Greek  government  presented 
him  with  an  original  gold  stater  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great  in  mint  condition.  In 
1933  he  was  made  a  foreign  associate  of 
the  Academic  des  Sciences  Morales  et 
Politiques.  Twice  only  did  he  consent  to 
broadcast — a  short  speech  delivered  at  a 
luncheon  given  by  the  Royal  Society  of 
Literature  to  the  Canadian  Authors  Asso- 
ciation on  12  July  1933  (recorded)  and  his 
last  speech  to  the  Royal  Society  of  St. 
George  on  6  May  1935.  His  last  completed 
book  was  Souvenirs  of  France  (1933).  An 
unfinished  autobiography.  Something  of 
Myself,  was  published  posthumously  in 
1937.  He  died  after  an  operation  in  Lon- 
don 18  January  1936,  and  was  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  His  widow  survived 
until  1939.  She  bequeathed  Bateman's  to 
the  National  Trust. 

Kipling's  only  son  was  killed  in  action 
on  the  western  front  in  1915.  Much  of  the 
father's  energy  was  given  in  the  years  after 
the  war  to  the  War  Graves  Commission: 


515 


Kipling 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


every  night  the  Last  Post  is  sounded  at 
the  Menin  gate  by  Rudyard  KipUng's 
endowment.  His  one  surviving  child, 
Elsie,  married  Captain  George  Bambridge, 
of  Wimpole,  Cambridgeshire. 

Kipling,  though  short,  was  lithe  and 
slim,  with  beautifully  balanced  move- 
ments. His  most  arresting  feature  was  his 
heavy  eyebrows,  which  shot  up  and  down 
with  his  talk :  under  them  twinkled  bright 
blue  eyes.  Among  the  numerous  portraits 
are:  a  pencil  drawing  by  Lady  Granby 
(Violet,  Duchess  of  Rutland)  (1891)  at 
Bateman's ;  paintings  by  John  Collier 
(1891)  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Bambridge 
and  (1900)  at  Bateman's;  a  painting  by 
Sir  Philip  Burne-Jones  (1899)  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery,  a  replica  of 
which  is  in  the  Victoria  Memorial  Hall, 
Calcutta;  a  painting  by  William  Strang 
(1913)  at  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge, 
and  a  pencil  drawing  by  the  last-named 
artist  (1937)  in  the  National  Portrait  Gal- 
lery. A  bronze  bust  by  Henry  Pegram 
(1909)  is  at  Bateman's,  and  another,  by 
Ginette  Bingguely-Lejeune  (1936-1937), 
is  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery.  A 
plaque  by  Patrick  Synge-Hutchinson  is  in 
the  possession  of  Mrs.  Bambridge.  There 
are  cartoons  by  '  Spy '  ( Vanity  Fair,  7  June 
1894),  (Sir)  Max  Beerbohm  {The  PoeVs 
Corner,  1904),  and  many  others. 

[Rudyard  Kipling,  Something  of  Myself, 
1937;  Andr^  Chevrillon,  Three  Studies  in 
English  Literature:  Kipling,  Galsworthy,  and 
Shakespeare  (translated  from  the  French  by 
F.  Simmonds),  1923;  Sir  George  MacMunn, 
Rudyard  Kipling:  Craftsman,  1937;  Edward 
Shanks,  Rudyard  Kipling,  1940 ;  L.  R.  Car- 
penter, Rudyard  Kipling.  A  Friendly  Profile, 
1942 ;  E.  W.  Martindell,  A  Bibliography  of  the 
Works  of  Rudyard  Kipling,  1881-1923,  1923 ; 
F.  V.  Livingston,  A  Bibliography  of  the  Works 
of  Rudyard  Kipling,  1927,  and  Supplement 
(containing  lists  of  portraits,  &c.),  (Harvard), 
1938 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] G.  M.  Young. 

IQ^OX,    EDMUND    ARBUTHNOTT 

(1847-1937),  bishop  of  Manchester,  was 
born  at  Bangalore,  India,  6  December 
1847,  the  second  son  of  George  Knox,  by 
his  wife,  Frances  Mary  Anne,  elder 
daughter  of  Thomas  Forbes  Reynolds, 
M.D.,  of  Wallington,  Surrey.  The  eldest 
son  was  Sir  George  Edward  Knox  [q.v.]. 
The  father  was  one  of  the  last  chaplains  in 
the  East  India  Company's  service;  he 
retired  in  1855  and  became  a  secretary  of 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  1857; 
but  the  connexion  with  India  remained 
a  close  one  throughout  Edmund  Knox's 


eafUer  days.  His  own  work,  however,  lay 
entirely  in  England.  He  was  educated  at 
St.  Paul's  School,  and  had  a  distinguished 
career  at  Oxford,  as  a  scholar  of  Corpus 
Christi  College  and  later  as  fellow  (1868), 
dean  (1872),  and  tutor  (1875)  of  Merton 
College,  posts  which  he  held  until  1884. 
His  great  abihty  was  shown  by  his  first 
classes  in  classical  moderations  (1867), 
literae  humaniores  (1868),  and  law  and 
modern  history  (1869),  and  his  versatility 
as  a  scholar  by  his  election  to  the  Boden 
Sanskrit  scholarship  (1867).  But  with  his 
intellectual  powers  went  great  practical 
ability  and  a  strong  call  to  evangelism  and 
pastoral  work.  He  was  accounted  one  of 
the  most  effective  disciplinarians  of  his 
day  as  dean  of  Merton  and  in  his  year  of 
office  as  proctor,  but  his  strong  sense  of 
law  and  order,  both  then  and  later,  when 
he  had  become  a  diocesan  bishop,  did  not 
in  any  way  conflict  with  his  sense  of 
spiritual  responsibility  for  those  with 
whom  he  had  to  deal.  He  was  ordained 
deacon  in  1870  and  priest  in  1872.  In  his 
old  age  he  recalled  the  days  when  the 
fellows  of  Merton  used  to  ride  out  on 
horseback  to  take  the  services  at  Wolver- 
cote. 

In   1884   Knox's   real   lifework   began 
when    he    became    rector    of    Kibworth 
Beauchamp,  near  Leicester,  but  his  powers 
as  an  administrator  first  showed  them- 
selves  fully   Avhen   he   became   vicar  of 
Aston,    Birmingham,    seven   years    later 
(1891).      Shortly    afterwards,     in     1892, 
occurred   the   death   of  his   wife,   Ellen 
Penelope,    eldest    daughter    of    Thomas 
Valpy  French,  bishop  of  Lahore  [q.v.], 
whom  he  had  married  in  1878.    She  left 
him  with  a  family  of  four  sons  and  two 
daughters,  and  in  1895  he  married  Ethel 
Mary,  daughter  of  Canon  Horace  Newton, 
vicar  of  Redditch,  to  whose  quiet  support  j 
he  owed  much  both  in  Birmingham  and| 
in  Manchester.  For  twelve  years  he  exer- 1 
cised  a  wide  influence  in  Birmingham,] 
becoming   in    1894   suffragan   bishop  ofj 
Coventry  and  archdeacon  of  Birmingham  j 
and  in  1895  rector  of  St.  Philip's  church,  I 
Birmingham,   afterwards   the   cathedral,  j 
There  he  laid  effective  foundations  for  the , 
new  diocesan  see  of  Birmingham  before  he  j 
himself  became  bishop  of  Manchester  inj 
1903.  j 

At  Manchester  Knox  became,  withj 
whole-hearted  Lancastrian  backing,  the| 
acknowledged  leader  of  the  evangelical  j 
party.  He  took  a  prominent  part  especi-| 
ally  in  the  controversies  over  the  Church  j 
schools  (1906)  and  the  Church  of  England  | 


516 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Kotz^ 


Assembly  (Powers)  Act,  commonly  called 
the  Enabling  Act  (1919),  of  which  he  was 
a  vigorous  critic.  But  as  a  diocesan  bishop 
his  great  concern  was  to  foster  direct 
pastoral  and  evangelistic  work  by  liis 
clergy,  and  he  was  never  more  effective 
than  in  the  efforts  which  he  made  with 
this  end  in  view.  Probably  his  own  deep- 
est joy  was  in  the  founding  of  the  great 
annual  mission  to  the  holiday-makers 
upon  the  sands  at  Blackpool.  His  charges, 
later  published  as  books  such  as  Sacrifice 
or  Sacrament  (1914)  and  On  What  Autho- 
rity? (1922),  dealt  mainly  with  the  doc- 
trinal statement  of  the  evangelical  case. 
But  his  ability  Avas  shown  most  of  all  in 
organization.  It  was  said  of  him  by  a 
Manchester  layman  that  he  was  worth  any 
six  business  men  on  a  committee.  Yet 
throughout  his  career  he  was  always  a 
pastor  and  always  found  time  for  personal 
and  individual  work. 

Knox  retired  in  1921  and  spent  a  long 
old  age  at  the  house  at  Shortlands,  Kent, 
bought  for  him  by  the  diocese  of  Man- 
chester. He  was  in  his  ninetieth  year  when 
he  died  there  16  January  1937.  During 
his  retirement  his  powers  as  a  scholar  re- 
asserted themselves.  Both  his  Robert 
Leighton,  Archbishop  of  Glasgow  (1930)  and 
The  Tractarian  Movement,  1833-1845 
(1933)  were  considerable  pieces  of  his- 
torical research.  In  1935,  only  two  years 
before  his  death,  he  published  his  Remi- 
niscences of  an  Octogenarian,  1847-1934, 
a  work  which  in  its  vigour  and  liveliness 
casts  many  illuminating  sideUghts  upon 
nearly  a  century  of  the  history  of  the 
Church  of  England. 

A  portrait  of  Knox,  painted  by  A.  T. 
Nowell  in  1911,  was  presented  by  Mrs. 
Knox  to  the  Old  Rectory  Club,  90  Deans- 
gate,  Manchester,  where  it  now  hangs. 

[The  Times  and  Manchester  Guardian,  18 
January  1937 ;  E.  A.  Knox,  Retniniscences  of 
an  Octogenarian,  1935 ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.]        L.  W.  Grensted. 

KNUTSFORD,  second  Viscount  (1855- 
1931),  hospital  administrator  and  re- 
former. [See  Holland,  Sir  Sydney 
Geouge.] 

KOTZfi,  Sir  JOHN  GILBERT  (1849- 
1940),  South  African  judge,  born  at 
J^euwenhof,  Cape  Town,  5  November 
1849,  was  a  member  of  a  well-known 
family  which  has  lived  in  South  Africa 
since  1691  when  Jan  Kotze  from  Amster- 
dam settled  there.  He  was  the  yovmgest 
son  of  Petrus  Johannes  Kotze,  who  was 


twice  mayor  of  Cape  Town  and  who  lived 
at  Leeuwenhof  on  the  slopes  of  Table 
Mountain,  later  the  official  residence  of  the 
administrator  of  the  Cape  Province.  His 
mother  was  Susanna  Maria,  eldest  daughter 
of  Johannes  Gysbert  Blanckenberg.  He 
was  educated  at  the  South  African  College 
(afterwards  the  university  of  Cape  Town) 
from  1864  to  1868,  and  in  1869  he  became 
a  student  at  London  University  and  the 
Inner  Temple.  He  qualified  for  the  LL.B. 
degree  in  1872,  and  in  1874  he  was  called 
to  the  bar  and  returned  to  South  Africa 
where  he  began  to  practise  as  a  barrister, 
first  in  Cape  Town  and  then  in  Crahams- 
town.  In  March  1877,  when  he  was  only 
twenty-seven,  the  office  of  chief  justice 
of  the  South  African  Republic  (Transvaal) 
was  offered  to  him  by  President  Burgers. 
He  accepted  it,  but  before  he  assumed 
duty  the  Transvaal  was  annexed  bj'^  Great 
Britain  and  on  Kotze's  arrival  at  Pretoria 
the  administrator  suggested  that  Kotze 
should  take  his  seat  as  sole  judge  of  the 
High  Court  about  to  be  constituted.  He 
agreed  but  reserved  his  right  to  claim  the 
position  of  chief  justice. 

In  1879  the  high  commissioner  for 
South  Africa,  SirBartle  Frere  [q.v.],  drew 
up  a  constitution  for  the  Transvaal,  based 
upon  the  principles  of  crown  colony 
government.  He  submitted  it  to  Kotze, 
who  told  him  that  it  was  in  conflict 
with  the  annexation  proclamation  and 
would  not  be  accepted  by  the  Boers. 
The  constitution  was  nevertheless  intro- 
duced and  aroused  widespread  dissatis- 
faction. In  the  same  year  Kotze  drew 
up  a  minute  in  which  he  set  out  cer- 
tain objections  to  the  appointment  of 
an  attorney-general  who  had  not  been 
admitted  as  a  barrister  and  signed  it  in  his 
capacity  as  chief  justice ;  he  sent  it  to  the 
governor.  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley  [q.v.],  to 
be  forwarded  to  the  secretary  of  state. 
The  governor  declined  to  do  so  on  the 
ground  that  Kotze  was  not  chief  justice 
and  had  no  right  to  sign  in  that  capacity. 
This  led  to  a  controversy  which  the 
governor  settled,  temporarily  at  any  rate, 
by  appointing  Jacobus  Petrus  de  Wet  as 
chief  justice  and  Kotze  as  puisne  judge. 
Kotze  protested  and  petitioned  the  Privy 
Council  but  nothing  further  was  heard  of 
the  matter  because  the  Boers'  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  new  constitution  led  to  the 
establishment  by  them  of  their  own 
government  on  16  December  1880  and  to 
the  first  Anglo-Boer  war.  After  the  war 
Kotze  was  appointed  (1881)  chief  justice 
of  the  Transvaal,  but  he  found  his  position 


617 


Kotz6 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


difficult.  In  1882  he  was  offered  a  seat  on 
the  bench  of  the  High  Court  of  Griqualand 
West;  he  accepted  the  offer  but  did  not 
take  up  the  appointment  because  he  was 
persuaded  to  continue  as  chief  justice,  and 
thereafter  from  1882  to  1898  he  presided 
over  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  South 
African  Republic,  the  name  which  the 
country  resumed  in  1884. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was  on  the 
bench,  Kotze  took  a  surprisingly  active 
interest  in  political  questions  and  in  1893, 
without  resigning  from  the  bench,  he 
became  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency. 
But  the  secluded  life  which  is  necessarily 
led  by  a  judge  does  not  make  him  a 
popular  figure  on  the  hustings  and  Kotze 
received  only  81  votes,  against  7,854  cast 
for  Kruger. 

In  1897  a  constitutional  crisis  of  the 
first  magnitude  arose  out  of  certain  judge- 
ments given  by  Kotze.  In  1884  he  had,  in 
a  considered  judgement,  examined  the 
constitutional  powers  of  the  Volksraad 
in  relation  to  the  grondwet  (constitution) 
of  1858  and  had  decided  that  supreme 
power  in  the  Republic  was  vested  in  the 
Volksraad,  that  it  had  power  to  make  laws 
which  were  in  conflict  with  the  grondwet, 
that  it  could  legislate  by  mere  resolution 
(besluit)  and  that  the  Supreme  Court  had 
no  jurisdiction  to  pronounce  on  the 
validity  of  its  enactments.  Subsequently 
he  began  to  have  doubts  about  the  matter, 
and  in  1895  he  announced,  by  way  of 
obiter  dictum,  that  his  views  had  changed 
and  that  he  now  regarded  the  grondwet  as 
a  rigid  constitution  on  the  lines  of  the 
American  constitution  and  that  the 
Supreme  Court  had  jurisdiction  to  inquire 
into  the  validity  of  Acts  of  the  Volksraad. 
On  22  January  1897  he  carried  these  new 
views  into  effect  in  a  judgement  (Brown 
V.  Leyds)  which  caused  considerable 
embarrassment  to  the  government.  The 
Volksraad  immediately  passed  a  law 
authorizing  the  president  to  ask  the  judges 
whether  they  claimed  the  right  to  inquire 
into  the  validity  of  the  Volksraad's  legis- 
lative acts  and,  if  they  did  not  repudiate 
such  a  right,  to  dismiss  them.  The  judges 
protested  but  the  president  put  the  fateful 
question.  The  chief  justice  of  the  Cape 
Colony,  Sir  John  Henry  (later  Lord)  de 
Villiers  [q.v.],  although  his  views  on  the 
constitutional  issue  differed  from  those  of 
Kotze,  hastened  to  Pretoria  to  mediate  in 
the  dispute.  A  temporary  compromise 
was  effected,  but  after  a  while  Kotze  con- 
sidered that  the  president  was  not  carry- 
ing out  his  side  of  it  and  communicated 


his  views  to  him  very  pointedly.  Kruj 
promptly  acted  under  the  provisions 
the  obnoxious  law  and  dismissed  Ko 
on  16  February  1898.  An  appeal  to  1 
people  by  Kotze  proved  fruitless  and  1 
sensation  caused  by  his  dismissal  was  sc 
overshadowed  by  the  outbreak  of  1 
second  Anglo-Boer  war  in  1899. 

In  1900  Kotze  was  appointed  attorn 
general  of  Southern  Rhodesia.  In  1902 
took  silk ;  in  1904  he  was  appointed  to 
bench  of  the  Cape  Eastern  Distri 
Court  at  Grahamstown  and  on  8  July 
that  year  he  became  its  judge  preside 
In  1913  he  accepted  a  puisne  judgeship 
the  Cape  Provincial  division  of  the  Supre 
Court  of  South  Africa  at  Cape  Town  anc 
1920  he  became  judge  president  of  tl 
court.  In  July  1922  he  was  appointet 
judge  of  appeal  and  held  that  post  ui 
his  retirement  in  1927. 

Kotze  was  knighted  in  1917,  having 
1896   been   appointed   a   Knight   Gk 
Cross  of  the  Order  of  the  Conception 
the  King  of  Portugal.    He  received 
honorary    degree    of    LL.D.    from 
universities  of  the  Cape  of  Good  H 
(1912),  Cape  Town  (1927),  and  Witwat 
rand  (1939).  He  was  twice  married:  firs1 
1872  to  Mary  Aurelia  (died  1931),  fov 
daughter  of  Daniel  Bell,  of  Milton  Ho 
Clapham ;  secondly,  in  1933,  to  Margart 
Jeldina,  daughter  of  Hendrik  Doornbc 
Groningen.    One  son  and  six  daugh 
were  born  of  his  first  marriage.   He 
at  Cape  Town  at  the  age  of  ninety  1  A\ 
1940. 

Kotze's    best-known    legal  work 
translation,  with  valuable  notes,  of  Si 
van  Leeuwen's  Commentaries  on  Roi 
Dutch  Law  (2  vols.,  1881-1886;  2ncie 
1921).  He  also  published  a  monograj 
Causa  in  the  Roman  and  Roman-lhi 
Law  of  Contract  (1922)  and  contrillb 
several    learned    articles    to    the 
African  Law  Journal. 

Kotze  had  many  endearing  qua(iEi 
On  the  bench  he  was  always  patien 
courteous  and  ready  to  listen  with  an  tpe 
mind  to  the  dullest  of  arguments,  ai 
old-world  courtesy  was  perfect 
simplicity  and  ease.  He  was  pro' 
having  been  appointed  to  the  bench 
early  age  of  twenty-seven  and  of  Y 
been  on  it,  with  a  short  interval,  fojle^e 
years.  He  was  ever  a  stout  upholder rittfi 
principles  of  judicial  independencil » tli 
was  deeply  imbued  with  the  princijliriaj 
Roman-Dutch  law,  and  was  an  ejjcli* 
student  of  the  medieval  authoriticjlof) 
was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  Wtoi 


m 


fia 


iar 


518 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lacey 


giiished  judges  and  jurists  that  South 
Africa  has  produced,  and  his  learned  and 
lucid  judgements  will  continue  to  be  cited 
with  the  respect  that  they  so  fully  merit. 
His  valuable  collection  of  legal  works, 
some  of  great  rarity,  now  forms  part  of  the 
library  of  the  Appeal  Court  of  South 
Africa,  which  also  contains  his  bust  by 
Grace  Wheatley. 

[J.  G.  Kotz^,  Biographical  Memoirs  and 
Reminiscences  (incomplete),  vol.  i,  1934,  An 
Appeal  to  the  Inhabitants  of  the  South  African 
Republic,  1898,  and  Documents  and  Correspon- 
dence relating  to  the  Judicial  Crisis  in  the  South 
African  Republic,  1898 ;  The  Memoirs  of  Paul 
Kruger  told  by  himself,  2  vols.,  1902 ;  E.  A. 
Walker,  Lord  de  Villiers  and  His  Times: 
South  Africa,  1842-1914,  1925,  and  A  History 
of  South  Africa,  1928;  M.  Nathan,  Paul 
Kruger,  his  Life  and  Time's,  1941 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  E.  F.  Watekmeyer. 

KYLSANT,  Baron  (1863-1937),  ship- 
owner and  financier.  [See  Philipps, 
DwEN  Cosby.] 

LACEY,     THOMAS     ALEXANDER 

1853-1931),  ecclesiologist  and  contro- 
it  ^ersialist,  was  born  at  Nottingham  20 
u  December  1853,  the  younger  child  and 
31  inly  son  of  George  Frederick  Lacey,  by 
reds  wife,  Susan  Woodward,  a  native  of 
)0  itamford,  Lincolnshire,  who  was  iU 
h  reated  and  deserted  by  her  husband, 
1 1  eing  left  to  bring  up  two  infants.  Lacey 
.Vas   nominated  to   a  free   place   in  the 

rammar  school  at  Nottingham,  founded 
;  I  1513,  which  in  1868  was  re-established 
Si  J  the  high  school,  and  the  excellence  of 
joj)  is  Latin  paper  in  the  Oxford  senior  local 
nd  camination  resulted  in  his  being  offered 
ap  I  1871  an  exhibition  at  Balliol  College, 
i-flxford,  where  he  was  awarded  a  second 
jib  ass  in  literae  humaniores  in  1875.  He 
,  f  !came  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
itinists  of  his  time,  and  it  is  related  that 
lualtien  he  was  in  Rome  in  connexion  with 
jent  e  inquiry  into  Anglican  ordinations 
J  an  )pe  Leo  XIII  said  that  he  wished  that 
:  an  had  a  cardinal  who  could  write  such 
J  iAtin  as  Mr.  Lacey.  In  1876  he  was  or- 
ptoJined  while  a  master  at  Queen  Elizabeth 
jpliiammar  School,  Wakefield.  He  married 
gfh  1888,  while  a  master  at  Denstone 
jl  foi  Uege,  Dorothy,  only  daughter  of  William 
^lljet  )ttBanks,  solicitor,  of  Wakefield.  There 
jjjce  re  three  sons  and  three  daughters  of  the 
'^0^  xriage.  He  was  vicar  of  St.  Edmund's 
'^  e:  irch,  Northampton,  from  1892  to  1894 


iorin« 


i  of  Madingley,  near  Cambridge,  from 
14  to  1903. 


In  1894  Lacey  embarked  upon  the  most 
important  task  of  his  life.  It  was  notorious 
that  misconceptions  about  Anglican  ordi- 
nations existed  in  Rome.  Discussion  of 
the  subject  had  begun  in  the  previous  year 
by  the  publication  of  the  Abbe  Portal's 
treatise  upholding  the  validity  of  Anglican 
ordinations.  Portal  had  also  had  im- 
portant conversations  with  Charles  Wood, 
Viscount  Halifax  [q.v.].  The  Pope  himself 
was  bent  on  furthering  reconciliation  and 
took  the  initiative  in  appointing  a  com- 
mission on  AngUcan  orders.  In  collabora- 
tion with  Edward  Denny,  Lacey  composed 
a  Dissertatio  Apologetica  de  Hierarchia 
Anglicana  (1895).  In  March  1896  the  com- 
mission appointed  by  Leo  XIII  to  investi- 
gate the  question  assembled  in  Rome.  In 
April,  at  the  desire  of  the  Abbe  Duchesne 
and  of  Cardinal  Gasparri,  Lacey,  accom- 
panied by  Frederick  William  Puller,  of  the 
Society  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist, 
Cowley,  went  to  Rome  to  give  further 
help.  He  remained  in  Rome  until  June, 
and  in  A  Roman  Diary  (1910)  gave  a 
graphic  account  of  the  comings  and  goings 
in  the  antechambers  of  the  cardinals,  the 
differences  among  the  Roman  theologians, 
the  enthusiasm  of  Leo  XIII,  the  high 
expectations,  and  finally  the  successful 
neutralizing  efforts  of  the  English  Roman 
Catholics  led  by  Cardinal  Vaughan  [q.v.] 
with  inflexible  determination  to  get 
Anglican  ordinations  condemned. 

During  the  middle  years  of  his  life 
Lacey  was  a  member  of  the  editorial  staff 
of  the  Church  Times,  the  organ  of  the  high 
church  party.  He  contributed  a  weekly 
essay  over  the  pseudonym  'Viator'  and 
anonymously  was  the  author  of  brilliant 
leading  articles  ranging  over  an  immense 
variety  of  topics.  As  a  proctor  in  convo- 
cation (1922-1929)  his  speeches  were  pro- 
vocative, paradoxical,  and  disconcerting. 
He  wrote  learnedly  on  liturgical  and 
historical  subjects  and  in  1917  delivered 
the  Bishop  Paddock  lectures  at  the  General 
Theological  Seminary,  New  York,  pub- 
lished the  same  year  as  Unity  and  Schism. 
He  was  one  of  the  editors  of  the  English 
Hymnal  (1906)  to  which  he  contributed 
many  translations  of  ancient  Latin  hymns. 
His  original  hymn  'O  Faith  of  England, 
taught  of  old'  is  widely  used.  In  1903 
he  became  chaplain,  and  from  1910  to 
1919  was  warden,  of  the  London  Diocesan 
Penitentiary,  Highgate.  In  1918  he  was 
appointed  canon-residentiary  of  Worcester 
Cathedral  and  was  treasurer  from  1922 
until  his  death  at  Worcester  6  December 
1931.  He  received  the  honorary  degree  of 


519 


Lacey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


D.D.   from   St.   Andrews   University   in 
1926. 

[Church  Times,  11  December  1931 ;  T.  A. 
Lacey,  A  Roman  Diary,  1910 ;  Lord  Halifax, 
Leo  XIII  and  Anglican  Orders,  1912 ;  private 
letters ;  personal  knowledge.] 

C.  B.  MORTLOCK. 

LAIDLAW,  Sir  PATRICK  PLAY- 
FAIR  (1881-1940),  physician,  was  born  at 
Glasgow  26  September  1881,  the  third 
of  the  six  sons  of  Robert  Laidlaw,  M.D., 
at  that  time  superintendent  of  the  Glasgow 
Medical  Mission  and  later  a  magistrate  and 
medical  officer  in  the  Seychelles  Islands, 
by  his  wife,  EUzabeth,  daughter  of  Patrick 
Playfair,  a  member  of  a  family  which  has 
produced  several  men  of  eminence  in 
science  and  medicine ;  among  these  were 
Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  first  Baron  Playfair, 
and  his  brother  W.  S.  Playfair  [qq.v.], 
well  known  as  a  specialist  in  obstetrics  and 
gynaecology. 

Laidlaw  first  attended  a  private  Quaker 
school  in  North  London;  from  there  he 
went  to  the  Leys  School,  Cambridge,  and 
in  1900  he  began  his  medical  studies  as  a 
scholar  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 
In  October  1904  he  won  a  scholarship  to 
Guy's  Hospital,  London,  where  he  com- 
pleted his  medical  course  and  then  became 
a  demonstrator  in  physiology  in  the 
medical  school.  From  1909  to  1913  he  was 
engaged  in  research  on  problems  of 
pharmacology  and  physiology  in  the  Well- 
come Physiological  Research  Laboratories 
at  Heme  Hill,  together  with  (Sir)  Henry 
Dale,  with  whom  he  investigated  im- 
portant pharmacological  actions  of  hista- 
mine, the  presence  of  which  in  ergot  had 
recently  been  shown.  Here  he  was  also 
associated  with  George  Barger  [q.v.]  and 
Arthur  James  Ewins.  With  the  latter  he 
investigated  the  fate  of  tyramine  in  the 
body  and  showed  that  it  is  both  deamin- 
ized  and  oxidized  to  phenol  acetic  acid  in 
the  liver.  In  association  with  Ewins  he 
later  found  a  method  of  producing  indol- 
ethylamine  by  synthesis  and  studied  its 
metaboUc  breakdown. 

In  1913  Laidlaw  was  appointed  to  the 
Sir  William  Dimn  lecturership  in  patho- 
logy at  Guy's  Hospital.  Since  most  of  his 
interest  up  to  this  point  had  lain  in 
pharmacology  and  physiology,  he  felt  un- 
prepared to  tackle  the  new  work  without 
making  a  further  study  of  the  subject. 
Before  taking  up  this  appointment,  there- 
fore, he  spent  some  months  in  Vienna  and 
Freiburg  studying  pathology.  The  out- 
break of  war  in  1914  found  Laidlaw  with 


a  large  hospital  department  to  run  and  but 
little  opportunity  for  research.  He  was 
very  fully  occupied  in  teaching  and  organ- 
izing the  examination  of  post-mortem 
material  at  Guy's  Hospital.  Even  these 
arduous  duties  could  not  suppress  com- 
pletely Laidlaw's  ingenuity,  and  in  1915 
he  first  described  the  use  of  hydrogen  in 
spongy  platinum  to  remove  the  last  traces 
of  oxygen  from  a  culture  tube  and  so 
greatly  improve  conditions  for  growing 
anaerobic  bacteria,  a  method  later  de- 
veloped by  Dr.  Paul  Fildes  and  James 
Mcintosh.  In  this  war  period  also  he 
collaborated  again  with  Sir  Henry  Dale 
and  with  A.  N.  Richards,  of  Philadelphia, 
on  the  subject  of  histamine  shock  and  its 
physiological  relations.  This  work  was 
widely  acclaimed  at  the  time,  not  only 
because  of  its  intrinsic  merit  but  also 
because  it  was  thought  to  explain  trau- 
matic shock,  a  condition  of  the  utmost 
importance  in  the  war.  While  the  investi- 
gation undoubtedly  led  to  a  great  improve- 
ment in  the  treatment  of  woimded  persons 
by  transfusion  of  blood  and  other  fluids, 
it  has  since  become  clear  that  the  release 
of  histamine  from  the  injured  tissue  is  not 
the  cause  of  woimd  shock. 

Laidlaw's  work  at  Guy's  Hospital 
ceased  in  1922  when  he  joined  the  staff 
of  the  Medical  Research  Council  at  the 
National  Institute  for  Medical  Research. 
From  then  onwards  he  concentrated 
almost  entirely  on  bacteriological  and 
virus  research.  The  virus  disease  first 
selected  for  investigation  was  dog  dis- 
temper, because  of  the  opportunity  which 
it  offered  for  experiment.  With  the 
assistance  of  George  William  Dunkin, 
M.R.C.V.S.,  he  first  found  a  means  of 
transmitting  the  disease  to  ferrets,  thus 
greatly  widening  the  scope  of  the  study, 
and  before  long  conclusive  evidence  was 
obtained  in  support  of  Henri  Carre's  claim 
that  the  primary  infective  agent  respon- 
sible for  true  dog  distemper  is  a  falterabl 
virus.  Two  methods  of  inducing  immuni^ 
to  this  disease  in  dogs  were  then  develope 
By  the  first  method  partial  immunity 
obtained  by  injection  of  the  virus  inac 
vated  by  treatment  with  formaldehyc 
followed  by  a  small  injection  of  the  acti^ 
virus,  which  caused  an  abortive  attack  i 
left  the  animal  with  a  strong  and  lasti^ 
immunity.  By  the  second  method 
animal  received  simultaneous  injectic 
of  the  active  virus  and  a  serum  rich  in 
protective  antibodies.  Again,  permane 
immunity  was  established. 

Experience  gained  in  this  work  laid 


520 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


Lake 


foundation  for  Laidlaw's  research  on 
t  pidemic  influenza.  In  collaboration  with 
i)r.  Christopher  Howard  Andrewes  and 
!)r.  Wilson  Smith,  he  showed  that  the 
iVrret  was  susceptible  to  the  influenza 
\  irus  as  directly  obtained  from  the  human 
])Litient.  By  an  accident  one  of  the  team 
lii'came  infected  with  influenza  from  one 
( 1 1'  the  ferrets,  thus  completing  the  evidence 
I  hat  the  infecting  agent  was  transmissible 
in  both  directions.  At  a  later  stage  the 
tcelinique  was  modified  and  extended  to 
mice.  On  the  basis  of  this  work  Laidlaw 
mid  his  colleagues  proved  that  the  in- 
•tive  agent  of  human  epidemic  influenza 
a  virus,  a  discovery  which  has  been 
II  firmed  all  over  the  world.  The 
.luenza  work  was  not  brought  to  the 
same  satisfactory  conclusion  as  the  dis- 
ieniper  research,  partly  because  it  was 
found  that  epidemics  in  different  parts  of 
tJie  world  are  due  to  different  viruses  and 
partly  because  such  epidemics  are  so 
unpredictable  that  large  numbers  of  people 
!i;ive  to  be  inoculated  in  order  to  be  pre- 
j)ared  for  an  outbreak  which  may  or 
may  not  occur.  American  experience 
indicates,  however,  that  some  immunity 
can  be  built  up  by  influenza  virus  vaccine. 
Laidlaw  was  keenly  interested  in  many 
other  branches  of  medical  science  and 
he  collaborated  with  Dr.  Clifford  Dobell 
in  an  investigation  on  parasitic  amoebae. 
The  first  part  of  this  investigation  con- 
sisted in  obtaining  a  new  method  for 
growing  these  amoebae  profusely.  The 
particular  trick  adopted  was  to  use  grains 
of  rice  starch  in  the  medium  as  the  supply 
of  carbohydrate  for  the  growing  organisms. 
Having  obtained  rapidly  growing  cultures 
by  this  method.  Dr.  Dobell  and  Laidlaw 
then  studied  the  action  on  such  cultures 
of  the  alkaloids  of  ipecacuanha  and  thereby 
made  an  important  contribution  to  know- 
ledge of  the  treatment  of  amoebic  dysen- 
tery by  this  drug.  One  of  his  chief  charac- 
teristics was  his  ability  and  willingness 
out  of  his  vast  experience  to  advise 
and  assist  in  research  work  those  who 
consulted  him  on  almost  any  problem. 
In  1936  he  succeeded  Stewart  Ranken 
Douglas  as  deputy  director  of  the  National 
Institute  for  Medical  Research  and  head 
of  the  department  of  pathology  and  bac- 
teriology. Shortly  after  this  time  his 
health,  never  robust,  began  to  fail,  and  he 
died  suddenly  in  London  of  heart  failure 
in  the  night  of  19-20  March  1940,  a  day 
or  two  after  his  election  into  an  honorary 
fellowship  at  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. 


Laidlaw  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1927,  and 
received  a  Royal  medal  from  the  society 
in  1933  for  his  work  on  distemper  in  dogs ; 
he  was  knighted  in  1935  for  his  great  con- 
tributions to  medicine.  He  was  un- 
married. He  had  a  modest  and  retiring 
nature  and  disliked  publicity.  Little  of 
his  work  is  published ;  he  gave  the  Linacre 
lecture  on  'Epidemic  Influenza:  a  Virus 
Disease'  in  1935,  and  the  Rede  lecture  on 
'  Virus  Disease  and  Viruses '  at  Cambridge 
in  1938. 

[The  Times,  23  March  1940;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9, 
January  1941  (bibliography  and  portrait); 
British  Medical  Journal,  1940,  vol.  i,  p.  551 
(portrait) ;  Lancet,  1940,  vol.  i,  p.  623  (por- 
trait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  Mellanby. 

LAKE,  Sir  PERCY  HENRY  NOEL 

(1855-1940),  lieutenant-general,  was  bom 
at  Tenby,  Wales,  29  June  1855,  the  eldest 
son  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Percy  Godfrey 
Botfield  Lake,  of  GrenfeU,  Canada,  54th 
and  100th  Regiments,  by  his  wife,  Mar- 
garet, second  daughter  of  William  Phillips, 
of  Quebec.  He  was  educated  at  Upping- 
ham and  gazetted  to  the  59th  Foot  (later 
the  2nd  battalion.  East  Lancashire 
Regiment)  in  August  1873.  His  first  ex- 
perience of  active  service  came  in  the 
first  stage  of  the  second  Afghan  war 
(1878-1879)  where  he  became  assistant 
field  engineer.  Southern  Field  Force,  and 
gained  a  medal  for  the  campaign.  He 
passed  into  the  Staff  College  as  a  captain 
and  graduated  with  honours  in  1884. 

In  the  following  year  Lake  accom- 
panied the  Sudan  expedition  as  deputy- 
assistant-adjutant  and  later  quarter- 
master-general with  the  forces  of  Sir 
Gerald  Graham  [q.v.],  which  were  operat- 
ing from  Suakin  against  the  dervishes,  and 
he  took  part  in  the  actions  of  Hasheen  and 
Tofrek  and  in  the  advance  on  Tamai.  For 
the  campaign  he  was  awarded  the  medal 
and  clasp  and  the  bronze  star.  Two  years 
later  (1887)  he  was  appointed  staff 
captain  and  deputy -assistant-adjutant- 
general  for  InteUigence  at  the  War  Office. 
After  his  three-year  tenure  of  this  office 
he  acted  as  secretary  to  R.  J.  Lindsay, 
Lord  Wantage  [q.v.],  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittee on  terms  of  service  in  the  army 
(1891);  and  he  was  promoted  major  in 
that  year.  In  1892  he  was  made  deputy- 
assistant-adjutant-general  at  the  head- 
quarters of  the  Irish  Command,  Dublin 
district,  but  in  1893  he  sailed  for  Canada 
to  become  quartermaster-general,  Cana- 
dian MiUtia,  and  during  the  next  five 


521 


Lake 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


years  did  excellent  work,  receiving  the 
brevet  of  colonel  in  1899.  The  same  year 
he  went  to  India  as  assistant-quarter- 
master-general for  intelUgence  duties  at 
the  headquarters  of  the  army  in  India,  but 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African 
war  in  1899  he  was  brought  back  to  the 
War  Office  to  become  assistant-adjutant- 
general  (afterwards  assistant-quarter-mas- 
ter-general) for  mobilization,  and  as  chief 
staff  officer  II  Army  Corps.  He  was 
promoted  colonel  and  appointed  C.B.  in 
1902.  He  remained  at  the  War  Office  until 
1904,  when  he  once  more  left  for  Canada 
to  become  chief  of  the  General  Staff, 
Canadian  Mihtia.  He  was  promoted 
major-general  and  appointed  C.M.G.  in 
1905. 

During  the  next  three  years  Lake  did 
much  to  increase  the  efficiency  of  the 
Militia  and  urged  the  formation  of  a 
general  staff  on  the  British  army  model. 
In  1908  he  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  and 
nominated  inspector-general,  Canadian 
Militia,  and  chief  military  adviser  to 
the  Canadian  government,  appointments 
which  he  held  until  the  end  of  1910  when 
he  returned  to  England.  Early  in  1911, 
with  promotion  to  lieutenant-general,  he 
was  again  sent  to  India  as  division  com- 
mander (7th  Meerut  division),  and  in  1912 
became  chief  of  general  staff,  at  Simla, 
India.  During  the  next  few  years  as  a 
member  of  the  'army  in  India  committee' 
he  did  much  to  build  up  that  army  and  as 
a  result  a  force  was  sent  from  India  in  1915 
to  Mesopotamia  to  ensure  the  safety  of  the 
oilfields.  After  the  first  failure  to  relieve 
(Sir)  Charles  Townshend  [q.v.],  besieged 
in  Kut  el  Amara,  Lake  became  com- 
mander-in-chief in  Mesopotamia  and  with 
the  Tigris  Force  made  a  second  attempt, 
which  again  failed.  However,  with  large 
reinforcements  he  prepared  for  a  fresh 
campaign,  but  in  August  1916  (Sir)  F.  S. 
Maude  [q.v.]  took  over  and  Lake  came 
home  to  give  evidence  before  the  Meso- 
potamia commission.  Maude  testified  to 
his  excellent  foundation  work  and  he  was 
appointed  K.C.B.  (1916)  and  given  a  post 
in  the  Ministry  of  Munitions  in  May 
1917. 

Two  and  a  half  years  later,  in  November 
1919,  Lake  retired  from  the  army  and 
returned  to  Canada  to  make  his  home  in 
Victoria,  British  Columbia.  From  1913  to 
1920  he  was  honorary  colonel  of  the  East 
Lancashire  Regiment.  In  1891  he  married 
Hester  Fanny,  only  daughter  of  Henry 
Woodyer,  architect,  of  Grafham,  Surrey ; 
there  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 


He  died  at  his  Canadian  home  17  Novembei 
1940. 

[The  Times,  20  November  1940;  F.  J.I 
Moberly,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great  War! 
The  Campaign  in  Mesopotamia  1914r-1918l 
4  vols.,  192S-1927;  Who's  Who  in  Canada} 
1927.]  C.  V.  Owen. 

LAMB,    Sir    HORACE    (1849-1934)J 
mathematician,  was  bom  at  Stockport,! 
near  Manchester,  27  November  1849,  the] 
second  son  of  John  Lamb  (a  cotton-millj 
foreman,  of  Stockport,  and  an  inventor  oi 
an  improvement  of  the  spinning  machine)i 
who  died  while  Horace  was  a  child.   Hia 
mother,  whose  maiden  name  was  Elizabetl 
Rangeley,  married  again,  and  Horace  wa^^ 
brought  up  by  her  sister  Mrs.  HoUanc' 
kind  but  severely  puritan ;  she  sent 
to  Stockport  Grammar  School,  where  hi 
gained  a  lasting  love  for  the  Greek  anc 
Latin  poets  from  his  excellent  headmaster! 
the  Rev.  Charles  Hamilton,  whose  sister^ 
in-law,    Elizabeth,    daughter    of    Simoi 
Foot,  merchant,  of  Blackrock,  co.  Dublin| 
he  married  in  1875. 

After    leaving    school    Lamb's    mai 
studies  were  in  mathematics,  first,  for 
year,  under  Thomas  Barker  [q.v.]  at  thi 
Owens  College,  Manchester,  and  then  ai 
Cambridge,  where  he  attended  the  lectures 
of  J.  Clerk  Maxwell  [q.v.]  and  (Sir)  G.  GJ 
Stokes   [q.v.],  and  in   1872  was  seconcT 
wrangler  and  second  Smith's  prizemar 
His  college  was  Trinity,  of  which  he  ws 
successively  scholar  (1869-1872),   fello\ 
and  lecturer  (1872-1875),  and  honorai 
fellow    (1920-1934).     For    recreation    he 
took  long  country  walks  ;  later  he  travelleC 
widely,  especially  in  Italy  and  Switzer!| 
land,  where  he  was  an  early  climber  of  tt 
Matterhorn.    He  read  much  in  Frencl 
German,    and    Italian,    and    had 
artistic  interests. 

After  three   years'   teaching  at   Caral 
bridge,   where  the  rule   of  celibacy   foi 
college  fellows  was  still  in  force,  Laml| 
went    out    with    his    wife    to   Adelaide 
Australia,  as  professor  of  mathematics  a|_ 
the  newly  founded  university  there.    In 
1885  he  returned  to  the  Owens  College 
(which  had  become  a  constituent  member 
of  the  Victoria  University  of  Manchester) 
to  succeed  his  old  teacher  Barker.   There 
and  at  the  university  he  served  as  pro- 
fessor of  pure,  and  later  also  of  appliec 
mathematics  until   1920,  remaining  fi\ 
years  beyond  the  normal   retiring  a^ 
because  of  the  war  of  1914—1918. 

Lamb   was   a  born  teacher,   and  tl 
excellence  and  inspiration  of  his  lecture 


522 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lamb 


to  successive  generations  of  Manchester 
>tudents  of  mathematics,  engineering, 
LH(]  physics  were  an  important  factor  in  the 
•;ireer  of  many  of  his  able  pupils,  of  whom 
iiu'  most  distinguished  was  Sir  Arthur 
ivldington.  When  on  his  eightieth  birth- 
lux-  his  former  students  paid  him  a  tribute, 
lis  reply  included  the  words:  'I  did  try 
■  I  f)  make  things  clear",  first  to  myself  (an 
tiiportant  point)  and  then  to  my  students, 
iiid  somehow  to  make  these  dry  bones 
i\c.'  He  was  very  lucid  both  in  his 
cH'tures  and  in  his  many  books,  of 
vliieh  the  most  notable  was  his  treatise 
(I i/drodynamics  (1895),  first  published  in 
1879  as  A  Treatise  on  the  .  .  .  Motion  of 
Fluids  and  successively  enlarged  in  several 
editions  and  translations.  In  lecturing 
nul  writing  his  choice  of  topics  and  mode 
il  treatment  were  very  judicious,  equally 
n  ])ure  and  in  applied  mathematics. 

Lamb's  special  subjects  were  hydro- 
l>'namics,  sound,  elasticity,  and 
nechanics,  on  all  of  which  he  wrote  books, 
IS  well  as  many  original  memoirs.  He 
i\Tote  also  an  excellent  elementary  text- 
)Gok  Infinitesimal  Calculus  (1897),  which 
:;oinbines  great  clarity  with  mathe- 
natical  rigour.  In  his  Hydrodynamics  he 
selected  the  main  researches  and  results 
'rom  a  great  mass  of  publications,  and 
jrilliantly  presented  them  in  a  unified 
^logant  treatment,  himself  filling  in  many 
i;i[)s  and  making  many  valuable  improve- 
ucats  and  extensions  by  his  own  re- 
ii;irches,  as,  for  example,  in  the  theory  of 
:ides  and  waves. 

Among  the  special  problems  to  the 
?ohition  of  which  Lamb  made  important 
contributions  the  following  may  be  men- 
:ioned:  the  motion  of  perforated  solids  in 
X  perfect  liquid;  the  fortnightly  tide; 
vvaves  on  deep  water  due  to  a  local  dis- 
tirbance  of  its  surface;  tidal  phase 
lifl'erences;  the  motion  of  a  sphere  or 
nlinder  in  a  viscous  liquid;  the  oscilla- 
:ions  of  a  viscous  spheroid ;  vibrations  of 
lastic  spheres  and  spherical  shells ;  electro- 
r.a<Tnetic  induction  in  spheres  and  spheri- 
■i\]  shells;  the  vibration  of  thin  curved 
)lates  and  shells ;  the  deflection  of  gra\ity 
)>  tidal  loading  of  the  earth's  surface; 
.\  ives  in  air,  allowing  for  the  upward 
If  crease  of  density;  the  propagation  of 
i.ithquake  tremors  along  the  surface 
) !  an  elastic  solid ;  and  the  diffraction  of 
t  at  the  straight  edge  of  a  semi-infinite 
;ie. 

In  the  words  of  his  contemporary 
V.  E.  H.  Love  [q.v.] :  'His  writings  call  up 
before  one  the  picture  of  an  extremely 


acute  and  wonderfully  alert  mind,  en- 
dowed with  a  profound  knowledge  of  the 
facts  of  physics,  especially  on  its  dynamical 
side,  keenly  interested  in  the  work  of 
others,  particularly  when  it  had  a  bearing 
on  any  matter  of  mechanics  or  wave- 
transmission,  equipped  with  an  excep- 
tionally varied  and  powerful  mathematical 
technique,  and  ever  on  the  look-out  for 
topics  on  which  his  analysis  could  be  em- 
ployed for  the  promotion  of  natural 
knowledge. ' 

In  1884  Lamb  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society,  which  later  awarded  him  a 
Royal  medal  (1902)  and  its  highest  honour, 
the  Copley  medal  (1923).  Among  his  many 
other  honours  were  a  knighthood  (1931) 
and  the  presidency  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion (1925)  and  of  the  London  Mathe- 
matical Society  (1902-1904),  which  latter 
awarded  him  its  De  Morgan  medal  in  1911, 
and  of  the  Manchester  Literary  and  Philo- 
sophical Society.  He  received  honorary 
doctorates  from  the  universities  of 
Glasgow,  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Dublin, 
St.  Andrews,  Manchester,  and  Sheffield. 

On  his  retirement  from  Manchester 
Lamb  returned  to  Cambridge,  where  the 
university  made  him  an  honorary  (Ray- 
leigh)  lecturer;  he  lectured  there  for 
fourteen  years.  He  retained  his  high 
mathematical  powers,  which  in  most 
mathematicians  wane  with  age,  and  con- 
tinued to  produce  elegant  and  important 
memoirs.  During  the  war  of  1914-1918 
he  had  given  valuable  help  to  the  Ad- 
miralty and  to  aeronautical  research,  and 
he  continued  to  serve  the  latter  for  a  time 
(1921-1927)  as  a  member  of  the  Aero- 
nautical Research  Committee.  On  many 
other  councils  and  committees  also,  as 
previously  at  Manchester  during  his  long 
membership  of  the  university  senate,  his 
wide  knowledge  and  the  wisdom  of  his 
outlook  were  higlily  esteemed.  He  died 
at  Cambridge  4  December  1934. 

Lamb  was  a  man  of  great  personal 
dignity,  somewhat  awe-inspiring  to  youth, 
but  on  closer  acquaintance  kindly, 
humane,  humorous,  highly  cultured,  con- 
servative in  temper,  with  wide  interests 
and  many  contacts.  His  wife,  who  had 
borne  him  three  sons  and  four  daughters, 
died  in  1930.  One  of  his  sons,  Henry,  a 
distinguished  artist,  painted  a  notable 
portrait  of  him,  which  was  presented  in 
1913  to  the  university  of  Manchester. 

[The  Times,  5  December  1934;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4, 
December  1935  (portrait);  personal  know- 
ledge.] S.  Chapman. 


528 


Lamington 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


LAMINGTON,  second  Baron  (1860- 
1940).  [See  Baillik,  Charles  Wallace 
Alexander  Napier  Ross  Cochrane-.] 

LANE  POOLE,  REGINALD  (1857- 
1939),  historian.    [See  Poole.] 

LANE  POOLE,  STANLEY  EDWARD 
(1854-1931),  orientalist  and  historian. 
[See  Poole.] 

LANGDON,    STEPHEN    HERBERT 

(1876-1937),  Assyxiologist,  was  bom  at 
Ida,  near  Monroe,  Michigan,  in  the  United 
States,  8  May  1876,  the  elder  son  of  George 
Khowles  Langdon,  farmer,  by  his  wife, 
Abigail  Elizabeth  Hassinger.  He  was 
educated  at  the  high  school  at  Monroe  and 
the  university  of  Michigan  at  Ann  Arbor 
and  also  took  degrees  at  the  Union  Theo- 
logical Seminary  and  Columbia  University 
in  New  York ;  he  then  (1904-1906)  studied 
in  Paris,  where  he  was  ordained  deacon 
(1905)  in  the  American  Episcopal  Church 
(never  proceeding  beyond  that  order),  and 
(1906-1907)  at  Leipzig. 

In  1908  Miss  Mary  Wallace  Shillito 
offered  £10,000  to  the  university  of  Oxford 
to  found  a  readership  in  Assyriology  on 
condition  that  Langdon  was  elected; 
appointed  on  these  terms,  he  remained  in 
Oxford  for  the  rest  of  his  hfe.  In  1913  he 
became  a  naturalized  British  subject,  and 
in  1919  was  given  the  title  of  professor  on 
the  retirement  of  A.  H.  Sayce  [q.v.].  He 
was  a  voluminous  editor  and  interpreter 
of  Sumerian  and  Assyrio-Babylonian  texts, 
but  his  work  was  marred  by  inaccuracy 
caused  by  undue  haste  and  a  defective 
sense  of  language;  he  wrote  fluently  in 
French  and  German  as  well  as  English, 
but  aU  his  writing  betrayed  his  mixed 
education.  At  the  same  time  scholarship 
owes  him  a  great  debt  for  much  pioneer 
work,  especially  in  making  an  immense 
number  of  cuneiform  tablets  accessible  for 
the  first  time ;  and  many  flashes  of  bril- 
liance lit  up  if  they  did  not  always  solve  the 
numerous  problems  offered  by  these  often 
exceedingly  obscure  texts.  He  also  found 
time  to  raise  funds  for  the  excavation  of 
Kish  and  spent  two  seasons  (1923,  1925) 
personally  directing  the  work  at  some  risk 
to  his  health:  these  excavations  not  only 
made  considerable  additions  to  early 
Mesopotamian  history  but  also  greatly 
enriched  the  collections  of  the  Ashmolean 
Museum  at  Oxford  and  the  Field  Museum 
at  Chicago,  which  provided  part  of  the 
funds.    Further,  before  Langdon's  time, 


his  chief  merit  was  perhaps  to  have  buil^ 
up  an  English  school  of  Assyriologists. 

Langdon  married  in  1925  May  Adelaide  J 
younger  daughter  of  Thomas  Gregoryj 
J. P.,  of  Cardiff,  owner  of  the  Gartli 
engineering  worlK,  but  had  no  issue.  Hd 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Britisl 
Academy  in  1931  and  a  corresponding 
member  of  the  Academic  des  Inscriptior 
et  Belles-Lettres  in  1933;  he  was  alsc 
Schweich  lecturer  of  the  British  Academj 
in  1933  and  Singer-Polignac  lecturer  a^ 
the  College  de  France  in  1934.  He  dice 
suddenly  at  Oxford  19  May  1937. 

[The  Times,  21  May  1937 ;  Oxford  Magazine^ 
27  May  1937;  C.  J.  Gadd,  Stephen  Herbe 
Langdon,   1876-1937   in   Proceedings  of  thd 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxiii,  1937 ;  persona 
knowledge.]  G.  R.  Driver. 

LANSBURY,  GEORGE  (1859-1940)j 
labour  leader  and  politician,  was  bom 
a  toll-house  on  the  turnpike  road  betweei 
Halesworth  and  Lowestoft  21  Februar 
1859.  He  was  the  second  son  of  George 
Lansbury,  a  railway  sub-contractor  in  thfl 
employment  of  Thomas  Brassey  [q.v.],  bj 
his  wife,  Mary  Ann  Ferriss,  of  Clyro^ 
Radnorshire.  His  connexion  with  East 
London  began  in  1868  when  his  parent 
moved,  after  successive  periods  at  Syden^ 
ham  and  Greenwich,  to  Bethnal  Green^ 
Later  they  settled  in  Whitechapel.  Hig 
education,  received  at  elementary  schoold 
in  these  four  places,  ended  at  the  age  oi 
fourteen.  For  several  years  he  was  em- 
ployed in  unloading  coal  trucks  for  the 
Great  Eastern  Railway  under  a  contract 
originally  held  by  his  father. 

In    1880,    when    he    was    twenty -oneJ 
Lansbury  married  Elizabeth  Jane  (diec 
1933),    elder    daughter   of   Isaac    Brine,j 
owner  of  a  sawmill  and  veneer  works  ir 
Whitechapel,  by  whom  he  had  four  sor 
and  eight  daughters:  two  sons  and  two 
daughters    predeceased    him.     With    his 
wife  and  their  three  children  he  sailed 
1884  for  Australia   to   seek  his  fortune.! 
Next  year,  however,  the  young  couple 
were  back  in  London,  where  he  accepted 
a  partnership  in  his  father-in-law's  busi- 
ness, and  made  his  home  in  Bow,  where  he 
lived  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Lansbury  no\ 
came  under  the  influence  of  the  Cliristiat 
socialists.     This   was   to   determine   the 
whole  course  of  his  career,  and  he  threii 
himself  energetically  into  local  politics,  at 
first  as  a  radical.  In  1890,  however,  he  was 
converted    to    socialism,    and    William 


all  English  Assyriologists  were  either  self-  Morris  and  H.  M.  Hjoidman  [qq.v.]  sooi 
taught  or  educated  on  the  continent,  and  |  took  him  into  the  earliest  British  group  oi 

524 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lansbury 


socialists,  which  had  been  known  since 
1884  as  the  Social  Democratic  Federation. 
In  1892  he  was  elected  to  the  local  Board 
of  Guardians ;  and  three  years  later  he 
made  (at  Walworth)  the  first  of  five  un- 
successful attempts  to  enter  parliament. 
He  was,  as  a  Poplar  guardian,  a  moving 
spirit  in  the  setting  up  of  the  Hollesley 
Bay  (Suffolk)  colony  for  unemployed 
men;  as  a  member  of  the  Central  (Un- 
employed) Body  for  London  he  completed 
his  remarkable  knowledge  of  the  condi- 
tions of  life  and  labour  in  the  metropolis, 
and  from  1905  to  1909  was  a  member  of 
the  royal  commission  on  the  Poor  Laws 
and  was  one  of  the  four  signatories  of 
the  famous  minority  Report.  Returned 
to  parliament  as  a  labour  member  for 
the  Bow  and  Bromley  division  of  Poplar 
in  December  1910,  he  resigned  in  1912, 
in  order  to  fight  the  seat  as  an  indepen- 
dent on  the  straight  issue  of  votes  for 
women,  a  cause  in  which  he  was  an 
ardent  believer.  This  gallant  effort  failed 
and  he  was  not  back  at  Westminster 
until  1922,  when  he  was  again  returned 
for  Bow  and  Bromley  and  held  the  seat 
until  his  death.  During  the  war,  he  was 
closely  associated  with  the  pacificist 
section  of  the  labour  party  and  a  powerful 
defender  of  the  conscientious  objector. 
He  had  been  one  of  those  responsible  for 
the  creation  of  labour's  first  daily  paper, 
the  Daily  Herald  (1912) ;  during  the  war, 
he  edited  a  lively  Weekly  Herald,  and 
in  1919  played  a  vigorous  part  in  making 
it  again  a  daily  paper,  which  he  edited 
during  a  series  of  difficult  years. 

For  all  his  ideaUsm  Lansbury  had  a 
measure  of  practical  sagacity  and  shrewd- 
ness ;  when  the  second  labour  government 
was  formed  in  1929,  he  was  made  first 
commissioner  of  Works,  and  the  Lido  in 
Hyde  Park,  among  many  other  instances, 
will  be  a  memorial  of  the  work  which  he 
did  for  Londoners.  As  to  the  fine  he  would 
take  in  the  financial  crisis  of  1931,  there 
could  never  be  any  doubt;  on  an  issue 
which  could  be  formulated  as  that  of 
reducing  or  not  reducing  the  allowances 
to  the  unemployed,  he  was  for  the  im- 
employed.  As  the  solitary  survivor  of 
Cabinet  rank  in  the  labour  party  after  the 
election  of  1931,  he  was  chosen  by  the 
party  to  be  leader  of  the  opposition  in  the 
House  of  Commons ;  in  that  arduous  post 
his  warmth  of  heart  and  his  unfaltering 
courage  excited  respect  even  from  his 
opponents.  In  1935,  however,  an  issue 
arose  which  presented  his  pacificism  with 
a  formidable  dilemma — ^that  of  the  en- 


forcement of  sanctions  against  Italy  in  its 
attack  on  Abyssinia,  a  fellow  member  of 
the  League  of  Nations.  Although  Lansbury 
had  accepted  the  League  as  fundamental 
to  the  party's  foreign  policy,  he  now  found 
it  impossible  to  subscribe  to  the  view  that 
loyalty  to  the  League  might  imply  the  use 
of  force  against  an  aggressor.  At  the  con- 
ference held  on  the  eve  of  the  general 
election  in  1935,  finding  himself  in  a  small 
minority  on  this  issue,  he  resigned  the 
leadership.  Opinions  differed,  and  will 
continue  to  differ,  about  the  wisdom  of  the 
policy  of  unilateral  disarmament  which  he 
advocated  on  the  ground  that  if  Great 
Britain  only  would  give  a  lead,  other 
coimtries  would  be  sure  to  follow.  In  1935 
in  a  volume  of  reminiscences  entitled 
Looking  Backwards  and  Forwards,  his 
pacificist  position  is  uncompromisingly  set 
out ;  in  another  book.  My  Quest  for  Peace 
(1938),  he  describes  a  series  of  journeys  to 
the  capitals  of  Europe,  in  which,  hoping 
against  hope,  he  talked  to  the  heads  of 
states.  As  the  shadow  of  war  grew  deeper, 
he  retired  more  and  more  from  active 
politics,  and  died  in  London  7  May  1940. 
He  had  been  sworn  of  the  Privy  CoimcU  in 
1929. 

In  his  person,  Lansbury  was  identified 
throughout  his  very  active  life  with  the 
East  End  of  London,  and  was  widely 
known  as  the  John  Bull  of  Poplar,  a 
designation  suggested  in  part  by  his 
appearance,  the  ruddy-complexioned  face 
with  its  side-whiskers  surmounting  a  tall, 
erect  figure  invariably  clothed  in  a  double- 
breasted  blue  serge  suit,  in  part  by  the 
long  battles  associated  with  his  public  life 
in  Poplar,  when  he  and  his  colleagues  on 
the  council  cheerfully  went  to  prison 
rather  than  submit  to  the  action  of  the 
Ministry  of  Health  in  surcharging  the 
municipaUty  for  the  high  rates  imposed 
during  a  period  of  severe  unemployment. 
In  his  own  person,  and  in  the  wide  devo- 
tion which  he  inspired  within  the  labour 
movement  and  beyond  it,  he  represented 
the  truth  that  the  inspiration  of  British 
socialism  is  derived  rather  from  the  Bible 
than  from  I^rl  Marx.  Whereas  the  lay- 
preachers  in  the  movement  are  normally 
found  among  the  nonconformists,  Lans- 
bury was  throughout  his  life  an  Anglican 
whose  links  with  theosophy  and  Indian 
religious  movements  made  him  sympa- 
thetic and  tolerant  to  the  most  various 
creeds  and  faiths.  Both  his  socialism  and 
his  pacificism  sprang  from  strong  spirit- 
ual conviction;  both  were  potent  rather 
than  precise.    His  career  can  hardly  be 


525 


Lansbury 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


appreciated  without  some  sense  of  his 
personality :  this  non-smoker  and  teetotal- 
ler was  a  man  of  powerful  physique,  genial, 
vigorous,  companionable,  hearty;  the 
father  of  a  large  family,  who  attracted 
children  and  was  attracted  by  them  every- 
where; a  man  who  could  arouse  great 
popular  audiences  to  enthusiasm  as, 
without  a  trace  of  embarrassment,  he 
talked,  in  a  great  booming  voice,  of  love  as 
the  sole  basis  for  national  and  international 
action. 

[The  Times,  8  May  1940 ;  George  Lansbury, 
My  Life,  1928 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Mary  Agnes  Hajviilton. 

LASZLO  DE  LOMBOS,  PHILIP 
ALEXIUS  (1869-1937),  painter,  whose 
original  name  was  Fulop  Elek  von 
LA.SZL6,  was  born  in  or  near  Budapest 
28  April  1869,  the  eldest  son  of  Adolphus 
Laszlo,  tailor,  and  was  brought  up  in  poor 
circumstances,  having  very  little  formal 
education.  While  still  a  mere  child,  under 
thirteen  years  old,  he  worked  for  a  scene- 
painter  and  learned  photographic  re- 
touching. In  his  adolescence  he  studied  at 
the  Industrial  Art  School  and  the  National 
Drawing  School,  Budapest. 

At  the  age  of  nineteen  Laszlo  won  a 
state  scholarship  which  took  him  to  Venice. 
After  a  brief  stay  he  returned  to  Budapest, 
whence  he  went  on  to  Munich  Academy, 
studying  there  under  Alexander  von 
Liezen-Mayer :  he  subsequently  won  the 
Bavarian  silver  medal  in  1892.  There 
followed  a  spell  at  the  Academie  Julian, 
in  Paris,  under  Jules  Lefebvre  and  Benja- 
min Constant.  Back  in  Hungary  in  1891, 
he  won  the  grand  prize  of  the  Hungarian 
Art  Society.  He  speciaUzed  in  portraiture, 
attracted  attention  in  1894  by  his  portrait 
of  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria,  and  in 
1899  painted  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph 
and  Prince  Chlodwig  Hohenlohe-Schil- 
lingsfiirst,  and  in  1900  Pope  Leo  XIII. 
For  the  last  two  pictures  he  was  awarded 
gold  medals  at  the  Paris  Salon  and  the 
earUer  one  placed  liim  hors  concours  there. 

Laszlo  now  pushed  rapidly  forward  into 
the  position  of  a  sought-after  portrait- 
painter.  He  moved  to  London  in  1907, 
and  his  services  were  soon  in  great  demand 
among  the  famous.  He  painted  King 
Edward  VII  in  that  year,  and  built  up  an 
enormous  practice  which  in  due  course 
included  such  sitters  as  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, Lord  Roberts,  and  Lord  Haldane 
He  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  1910,  and  an 
hereditary  nobleman  of  Hungary  in  1912 ; 
he  was  officially  honoured  by  many  other 


countries;  and  on  his  deathbed  he  wa 
awarded  the  order  of  Matthias  Corvinua 
Hungary's  highest  honour  for  art. 

Ldszlo  was  not  naturalized  as  a  BritisI 
subject  until  29  August  1914.  During  tl 
war  of  1914-1918  he  committed  sunc 
indiscretions,  such  as  sending  money 
his  relatives  in  Hungary  and  using  tl 
Dutch  diplomatic  bag  for  correspondenc 
He  was  interned  in  September  1917,  an^ 
in  June  1919  a  naturalization  (revocation| 
committee  sat  to  determine  whether 
certificate  should  be  revoked.  It  foimd 
however,  no  evidence  of  disaffection 
disloyalty,  and  so  the  naturalization  wa 
upheld. 

Once  the  passions  of  war  had  subsided 
Laszlo  quickly  got  into  his  stride  agaii 
Many  of  his  friends  felt  that  the  accuse 
tions  of  disloyalty  had  been  provoked  bjj 
the  spite  of  jealous  rivals ;  in  any  event '. 
life  had  for  long  been  moulded  in  tl 
British  pattern.  He  had  married  in  19C 
Lucy  Madeleine,  sixth  daughter  of  Her 
Guinness,  of  Burton  Hall,  Stillorgan, 
Dublin,  and  had  five  sons,  who  were 
brought  up  to  speak  English  only; 
daughter  died  in  infancy.  He  worke4 
busily  on  at  his  Hampstead  home  until ' 
death  there  22  November  1937. 

Laszlo  had  a  pleasing,  courteous,  ar 
exuberant  manner,  and  was  very  populs 
in  society.  His  status  as  a  portrail^ 
painter  is  not  with  the  more  eminer 
masters,  for  he  had  neither  deep  psycho 
logical  penetration  nor  a  highly  nervou 
and  individual  line.  But  he  was  very  fa 
from  being  a  mere  journeyman.  A  rapi 
worker,  who  could  throw  off  a  stylia 
portrait  in  an  hour  or  two,  he  used 
rectangle  of  canvas  to  the  best  advantage 
produced  an  impeccable  likeness,  ai 
imparted  an  air  of  distinction  to  his  sitte^ 
even  though  not  all  of  them  possessed 

Laszlo  held  various  one-man  shows, 
the  French  Gallery,  Messrs.  Agnew'| 
Messrs.  I&ioedler's,  and  elsewhere, 
a  posthumous  exhibition  was  held 
Messrs.  Wildenstein's.  He  joined  tl 
Royal  Society  of  British  Artists  in  1907 
an  honorary  member  and  for  a  time  act 
as  president.  He  also  belonged  to  tl 
Royal  Society  of  Portrait  Painters,  was  \ 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts,  ar 
was  elected  a  vice-president  just  before .' 
death.  To  the  'How  to  Do  It'  series 
The  Studio  he  contributed  (in  coUaboi 
tion  with  Mr.  Alfred  Lys  Baldry)  a  mon<j 
graph  on  Painting  a  Portrait  (1934);  ai 
a  paper  on  'The  Art  of  our  Day'  (re 
before  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts  in  1936) 


526 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lawrence,  A.  T. 


expressed  outspoken  views  on  the  more 
eccentric  schools. 

Laszlo  is  represented  at  the  Tate 
Gallery,  the  Luxembourg,  and  the  Galleria 
d'Arte  Moderna  in  Rome.  In  1911  he 
painted  a  self-portrait,  by  the  request  of 
the  Italian  government,  for  the  Ufflzi 
Gallery,  Florence. 

[The  Times,  24,  25,  26,  27,  28  June  1919, 
23,  24,  25  November  1937;  Daily  Telegraph, 
23  November  1937 ;  Owen  Rutter,  Portrait  of 
a  Painter.  The  Authorized  Life  of  Philip  de 
Ldszld,  1939 ;  The  Work  of  P.  A.  de  Laszlo, 
with  a  foreword  by  A.  L.  Baldry,  1921 ;  The 
Studio,  September  1923;  Ulrich  Thieme  and 
Felix  Becker,  Allgemeines  Lexikon  der  Bilden- 
den  Kiinstler,  vol.  xxii,  1928.] 

Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

LAWRENCE,  ALFRED  TRISTRAM, 
first  Baron  Trevethin  (1843-1936),  lord 
chief  justice  of  England,  was  born  at 
Pontypool  24  November  1843,  the  eldest 
son  of  David  Lawrence,  surgeon,  of  Ponty- 
pool, by  his  wife,  Elizabeth,  daughter  of 
Charles  Morgan  Williams.  Intending  to 
study  medicine,  he  left  Mill  Hill  School 
early,  but  at  nineteen,  having  watched 
Hardinge  Giffard  (later  Lord  Halsbury) 
and  Henry  Matthews  (later  Lord  Llandaff, 
qq.v.)  in  a  case  in  which  some  property  of 
his  father  was  concerned,  he  asked  leave 
to  go  to  the  bar.  He  entered  Trinity  Hall, 
Cambridge  (of  which  he  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  in  1908),  and  was  placed 
second  in  the  first  class  in  the  law  tripos 
of  18G6.  In  1869  he  was  caUed  to  the  bar 
by  the  Middle  Temple  (of  which  he  be- 
came a  bencher  in  1904  and  treasurer  in 
1914)  and  in  due  course  joined  the  Oxford 
circuit.  He  soon  acquired  a  busy  and 
varied  practice  on  circuit  and  in  London, 
and  was  accepted  as  a  sound  lawyer  and  a 
reasonable  and  adroit  advocate,  not  only 
by  his  cUents  but  by  the  judges  before 
whom  he  appeared.  From  first  to  last  he 
had  a  ready  eye  for  the  essential  principles 
of  his  case,  and  a  gift  of  clear  and  persistent 
exposition.  In  1882  he  was  made  junior 
coimsel  to  the  Admiralty  and  in  1885  re- 
corder of  the  royal  borough  of  Windsor. 
In  this  office,  which  he  held  until  his 
elevation  to  the  bench,  he  became  the 
friend  and  imofficial  adviser  of  the  dean, 
Randall  Davidson  [q.v.] ;  and  the  future 
archbishop  consulted  him  on  many  of  the 
problems  arising  in  the  court  of  Queen 
Victoria.  Indeed,  throughout  his  Ufe,  a 
host  of  friends,  yovmg  and  old,  sought  and 
received  Lawrence's  wise  and  sympathetic 
coimsel. 

Family  responsibilities  were  probably 


the  reason  why  Lawrence  delayed  to  take 
silk  until  1897,  and  he  was  already  in  the 
sixties  when  in  1904  he  was  raised  to 
the  bench.  The  appointment  received  the 
cordial  and  unanimous  approval  of  the  pro- 
fession and  was  amply  justified  in  the 
result.  His  grasp  of  essentials  both  in  fact 
and  law  was  such  that  scarcely  any  of  his 
decisions  came  up  for  criticism  or  revision 
to  the  House  of  Lords.  His  mind  was  clear 
and  vigorous,  and  free  from  any  trace  of 
prejudice  or  eccentricity.  His  apprecia- 
tion of  principle  was  intuitive,  and  he  had 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  human  nature. 
His  patience  and  deliberation  ensured  not 
only  that  every  case  was  fully  and 
thoroughly  heard  but  that  every  Utigant 
should  feel  that  it  was  so.  It  was  in  April 
1921,  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven,  that  he 
was  appointed  to  the  office  of  lord  chief 
justice  of  England,  vacant  owing  to  the 
acceptance  by  R.  D.  Isaacs,  Lord  Reading 
[q.v.],  of  the  viceroyalty  of  India.  He  was 
immediately  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
and  created  Baron  Trevethin,  of  Blaen- 
gawney,  Monmouthshire,  in  August  of  the 
same  year. 

In  March  1922,  in  his  seventy -ninth 
year,  Trevethin  resigned  his  great  office. 
His  tenure  of  it  had  been  too  brief  to 
leave  any  great  mark  on  the  history  of  the 
EngUsh  justiciary,  but  it  was  long  enough 
to  enhance  his  reputation  as  a  judge  of 
sotmd  wisdom  and  wide  experience.  He 
also  rendered  important  pubUc  service  as 
president  of  the  Railway  and  Canal  Com- 
mission, of  the  War  Compensation  Court 
from  1920  to  1922,  and  of  the  Admiralty 
Transport  Arbitration  Board  from  1922. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  gifts  would 
have  been  of  high  value  in  the  judicial 
functions  of  the  House  of  Lords  had  not 
sensitiveness  of  his  incipient  deafness 
made  him  shrink  from  inflicting  incon- 
venience on  others.  Accordingly,  he 
retired  to  his  beautiful  home  in  Brecon- 
shire  and  Uved  a  country  Ufe  for  fourteen 
more  years.  On  3  August  1936  he  was 
fishing  in  the  Wye  above  Builth  Wells 
when  he  died  at  the  great  age  of  ninety- 
two. 

In  1875  Trevethin  married  his  cousin, 
Jessie  Elizabeth  (died  1931),  daughter  of 
George  Lawrence,  of  Moreton  Court,  near 
Hereford,  and  sister  of  Sir  Walter  Law- 
rence [q.v.],  and  had  four  sons,  the  youngest 
of  whom  predeceased  him.  The  eldest  son, 
Alfred  CUve,  became  Treasury  sohcitor 
and  king's  proctor,  and  died  in  1926, 
leaving  a  daughter.  The  second  son, 
Charles  Trevor  (bom  1879),  succeeded  his 


527 


Lawrence,  A.  T. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


father  as  second  baron ;  and  the  third  son, 
Geoffrey,  made  a  judge  of  the  King's 
Bench  division  in  1932,  became  a  lord 
justice  of  appeal  in  1945,  and  after  pre- 
siding over  the  trial  of  the  war  criminals 
at  Nuremberg  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Baron  Oaksey,  and  appointed  a  lord  of 
appeal  in  ordinary  in  1947.  Lord  Treve- 
thin  also  had  one  daughter. 

In  his  young  days  Trevethin  won 
distinction  as  a  horseman,  not  only  in  the 
hiuiting  field  but  as  a  successful  rider  in 
point-to-point  races  and  steeplechasing ; 
in  his  middle  years  he  was  a  well-known 
and  popular  figure  on  the  golf  links, 
particularly  at  Nairn  and  Woking ;  and  in 
his  retirement  he  was  a  devoted  angler. 
It  is  sufficiently  remarkable  to  record 
that,  at  the  age  of  ninety-two,  he  was 
still  capable  of  killing  heavy  salmon  in 
the  Wye. 

A  portrait  of  Lord  Trevethin  by  R.  G. 
Eves  hangs  in  the  Middle  Temple ;  there 
are  also  portraits  by  Sir  WiUiam  Orpen 
and  J.  Hanson  Walker  at  Abemant, 
Builth  Wells,  his  home  (now  the  residence 
of  his  son),  and  another,  by  A.  Cluysenaar, 
at  Middleton  House,  near  Banbury.  A 
cartoon  of  him  by  Spy'  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  26  October  1907. 

[The  Times,  4  August  1936;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Nigel  G.  Davidson. 

LAWRENCE,    THOMAS    EDWARD 

(1888-1935),  known  as  'Lawrence  of 
Arabia',  was  bom  at  Tremadoc,  North 
Wales,  15  August  1888,  the  second  in  a 
family  of  five  sons.  His  father,  Thomas 
Robert  Chapman  (who  had  assumed  the 
name  of  Lawrence),  the  younger  son  of  an 
Anglo-Irish  landowning  faimly,  had  fol- 
lowed up  a  sound  classical  schooling  with 
an  agricultural  course  and  some  years  of 
continental  travel  and  mountaineering; 
he  lived  on  private  means  permitting  of 
comfort  though  not  luxury;  became 
keenly  interested  in  church  architecture 
and  in  photography;  and  was  an  enthu- 
siastic yachtsman,  shot,  and  (from  the 
early  days  of  the  safety  bicycle)  cyclist. 
His  mother,  Sarah  Maden,  the  daughter 
of  a  Sunderland  engineer,  was  brought  up 
in  the  Highlands  and  afterwards  in  Skye. 
Both  parents  were  devout,  evangeUcal 
members  of  the  Church  of  England. 

Having  learnt  his  letters  from  hearing 
his  elder  brother  taught  them,  Lawrence 
read  newspapers  and  books  at  the  age  of 
four,  began  Latin  at  six,  and  entered  the 
Oxford  High  School  at  eight.    From  the 


age  of  twelve  he  covered  his  tuition 
expenses  by  scholarships  at  school  and  a 
Welsh  exhibition  at  Jesus  College,  Oxford. 
Deep  love  of  Uterature,  archaeology,  and 
architecture,  particularly  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  led  him  to  choose  as  a  thesis  for  the 
modem  history  school  'The  Influence  of 
the  Crusades  on  European  MUitary  Archi- 
tecture— ^to  the  End  of  the  Xllth  Century' 
(pubhshed  in  1936  as  Crusader  Castles). 
After  bicycle  tours  throughout  England 
and  France  he  journeyed  alone,  on  foot 
and  without  baggage,  through  Syria, 
Palestine,  and  the  southern  fringe  of 
Turkey.  In  1910  he  obtained  a  first  class 
in  history,  partly  on  his  thesis,  and  was 
awarded  a  four  years'  senior  demyship  for 
travel  by  Magdalen  College  at  the  instance 
of  D.  G.  Hogarth  [q.v.],  Lawrence's  life- 
long friend,  who  in  1911  sent  him  on  the 
British  Museum  expedition  that  was  ex- 
cavating the  Hittite  city  of  Carchemish. 
There,  after  an  interval  in  Egypt,  he 
returned  next  year,  assisting  (Sir)  C. 
Leonard  WooUey  until  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1914 ;  of  this  he  wrote,  'it  was  the 
best  Ufe  I  ever  Uved'.  He  acquired  some 
Arabic,  together  with  the  habit  of  eating 
Arab  food  and  wearing  Arab  clothes. 
From  January  to  March  1914  he  and 
Woolley  carried  out  an  archaeological 
survey  of  the  Negeb  and  country  south  of 
Beersheba  for  the  Palestine  Exploration 
Fund  (which  in  1915  published  their 
report  under  the  title  of  Wilderness  of 
Zin),  joining  Captain  Stewart  Newcomb^ 
who  was  already  surveying  that  area  f(fl 
the  War  Office.  ■ 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Law- 
rence, being  below  standard  height  (then 
raised  to  5  feet  5  inches)  obtained  but  a 
sedentary  commission  in  the  Geographical 
Section,  General  Staff  of  the  War  Office. 
Dispatched  to  Military  InteUigence  in 
Egypt  when  Turkey  joined  the  central 
powers,  he  spent  two  years  in  what  was 
later  called  the  Arab  Bureau,  which 
became  by  1916  the  Intelligence  Service 
for  the  Arab  campaign.  In  the  October 
of  that  year  he  accompanied  to  Jidda 
(Sir)  Ronald  Storrs,  who  had  initiated  the 
negotiations  which  culminated  in  tl 
Arab  Revolt,  and  presented  Lawrence 
the  Sharif  Abdullah,  second  son 
Husain,  Grand  Sharif  of  Mecca, 
obtained  from  Husain  an  introduction 
his  third  son,  Faisal,  who  at  that  moment 
was  retreating  discomfited  before  a 
Turkish  advance  from  Medina.  Turkish 
strength  in  the  Hejaz  still  amounted  to 
nearly  15,000  rifles,  10,000  of  which  held 


528 


i 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lawrence,  T.  E. 


Medina,  2,500  the  railway  between  Medina 
and  Amman,  including  the  strongly  garri- 
soned port  of  Aqaba,  and  1,200  the  port  of 
Wajh.  The  Arabs  in  their  anxiety  pressed 
for  the  dispatch  to  the  Hejaz  of  a  British 
brigade,  which  Lawrence,  on  his  return  to 
Egypt,  opposed  as  too  cumbersome,  and 
was  himself  dispatched  as  liaison  officer 
and  adviser  to  Faisal,  whose  confidence  he 
soon  won  and  whose  tribal  levies  he  helped 
to  organize. 

The  secret  of  Lawrence's  ascendancy, 
physical,  intellectual,  and  moral,  is  best 
explained  in  his  own  words:  'Among  the 
Arabs  there  were  no  distinctions,  tradi- 
tional or  natural,  except  the  unconscious 
power  given  a  famous  shaikh  by  virtue  of 
his  accompUshment :  and  they  taught  me 
that  no  man  could  be  their  leader  except 
he  ate  the  ranks'  food,  wore  their  clothes, 
lived  level  with  them,  and  yet  appeared 
better  in  himself.'  Preferring  to  contain 
rather  than  to  assault  or  starve  the  10,000 
Turks  in  Medina  and  thus  compel  the 
enemy  to  tie  down  additional  troops  to 
maintain  them,  Lawrence  induced  Faisal 
to  threaten  their  conmiunications  by 
moving  north  and  attacking  the  Hejaz 
railway,  which  thenceforth  passed  pro- 
gressively out  of  effective  Turkish  control. 
It  was  his  theory  and  practice  that  the 
Arabs  should  become  '  an  influence  (as  we 
might  be),  an  idea,  a  thing  invulnerable, 
intangible,  without  front  or  back,  drifting 
about  Uke  gas,  a  vapour,  blowing  where 
we  listed' ...  'tip  and  run :  not  pushes,  but 
strokes  . . .  the  smallest  force  in  the  quick- 
est time  at  the  farthest  place'.  After  the 
storming  of  Wajh  Lawrence  left  Faisal 
there  to  establish  his  headquarters,  and 
rode  on  into  the  interior,  rousing  the 
northern  tribes  and  passing  behind  the 
enemy  lines  in  Syria.  Returning,  he  fell 
in  with  a  force  of  the  Howaitat  tribe, 
under  the  celebrated  Auda  Abu  Tayi,  with 
it  routed  a  Turkish  battalion  near  Ma' an, 
and  in  August  1917  took  and  occupied 
Aqaba  for  Faisal.  Having  thus  brought 
the  whole  Hejaz  south  of  Aqaba,  except- 
ing Medina,  under  Arab-British  control, 
Lawrence  was  promoted  major  and  was 
awarded  British  and  French  decorations 
which  he  subsequently  refused. 

The  climax  of  Lawrence's  campaign 
began  when,  hurrying  to  Egypt  to  obtain 
supplies  for  starving  Aqaba,  he  offered 
Sir  Edmund  (later  Viscount)  Allenby 
[q.v.],  the  newly  arrived  commander-in- 
chief,  'to  hobble  the  enemy  by  his  preach- 
ing if  given  stores  and  arms  and  a  fund  of 
two  hundred  thousand  sovereigns  to  con- 


vince and  control  his  converts',  and 
Allenby  briefly  replied:  'Well,  I  will  do 
for  you  what  I  can.'  Lawrence  was  given 
all  he  asked,  and  the  fund  was  later  in- 
creased to  half  a  miUion  pounds ;  thence- 
forward he  directed  Arab  levies,  now 
brigaded  with  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  and  operating  as  a  mobile  right 
wing.  Having  defeated  the  Turks  heavily 
in  the  model  engagement  of  Tafila,  he  con- 
centrated upon  scientific  train-wrecking 
with  such  success  that  Medina  became 
virtually  isolated,  and  the  Turks,  their 
rail-guards  extended  to  Aleppo,  offered  a 
reward  of  £20,000  for  the  capture  of  'al 
Urans,  destroyer  of  engines',  in  whose 
protection  sixty  out  of  his  bodyguard  of 
ninety  Arabs  lost  their  lives.  Towards  the 
end  of  1917,  while  reconnoitring  alone  the 
railway  junction  of  Deraa,  Lawrence  was 
seized  (but  not  recognized),  forcibly  en- 
Usted  in  the  Turkish  army,  and  beaten 
senseless,  but  by  dawn  he  had  escaped. 
Next  summer  he  persuaded  Faisal  to 
leave  Aqaba  in  favour  of  Qasr  Azrak  for 
the  advance  upon  Damascus.  Finally, 
having  broken  up  the  Turkish  Fourth 
Army  east  of  the  Jordan,  Lawrence  led 
the  Arab  troops  up  to  Damascus  on 
1  October  1918,  some  hours  ahead  of  the 
British,  chivalrously  allowing  Sharif  Nasir 
to  precede  his  entry;  and  preserved  it 
against  serious  threats  of  reverting  to  the 
Turks,  until  Allenby  arrived  three  days 
later.  '  In  the  crucial  weeks  while  AUenby 's 
stroke  was  being  prepared  .  .  .  nearly  half 
of  the  Turkish  forces  [some  2,000  sabres 
and  12,000  rifles]  south  of  Damascus  .  .  . 
were  distracted  by  the  Arab  forces.  With 
some  relatively  light  assistance  from 
Chaytor's  Force  these  Turkish  masses 
were  paralysed  by  an  Arab  contingent 
that  counted  less  than  3,000  men,  and  of 
which  the  actual  expeditionary  core  was 
barely  600  strong.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
find  in  the  whole  history  of  war  as  extra- 
ordinary a  case  of  economy  of  force  in 
distraction.'  The  whole  payments  for  the 
Arab  revolt  amounted  to  four  millions  in 
gold,  of  which  about  half  came  back  in 
purchases  of  food  and  clothing. 

His  task  done,  Lawrence  retired.  'The 
East  was  sucked  dry.  Never  outstay  a 
climax'  was  his  light  self -dismissal,  behind 
which,  however,  pressed  heavily  the 
physical  toll  of  the  sun,  the  snow,  and  the 
sand,  battle,  murder,  and,  never  to  be  re- 
deemed or  forgotten,  the  cUmax  of  out- 
rage in  Deraa.  He  reached  England  on 
Armistice  Day  after  four  years'  absence, 
and  having  done  his  utmost  (though  not 


529 


Lawrence,  T.  E. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


to  his  own  satisfaction)  for  Faisal  and  the 
Arab  cause  at  the  Peace  Conference, 
settled  down  to  the  writing  of  his  adven- 
tures. In  November  1919  he  was  elected 
a  research  fellow  of  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford,  and  in  1921  was  called  by 
Mr.  Churchill  as  political  adviser  to  the 
newly  formed  Middle  Eastern  Department 
in  the  Colonial  Office.  The  partnership 
was  entirely  successful.  Faisal  (whose 
ejection  by  the  French  from  Damascus 
had  been  the  culmination  of  Lawrence's 
disillusionment)  was  made  king  of  Iraq, 
which  was  soon  to  become  an  independent 
state :  and  shortly  afterwards  the  threat  to 
Palestine  of  an  unsettled  Arab  Trans- 
jordan  was  removed  by  the  appointment 
of  Faisal's  elder  brother,  Abdullah,  as  its 
ruling  prince  on  the  condition  that  he,  and 
his  future  subjects,  did  not  interfere  with 
French-mandated  Syria.  Feeling  that 
(apart  from  Syria  and  Palestine,  both 
already  committed  to  the  League  of 
Nations)  his  'Arab  honour'  was  satisfied, 
and  that  he  had  gained  his  'outlet'  from 
public  affairs,  Lawrence  insisted  on  his 
release  from  the  Colonial  Office  in  June 
1922,  and  in  August  enlisted  in  the  ranks 
of  the  Royal  Air  Force,  changing  his  name 
to  J.  H.  Ross  in  order  to  escape  publicity, 
and  again  in  1923  to  T.  E.  Shaw.  This 
latter  change  was  legalized  by  deed  poll  in 
1927.  Discharged  from  the  Royal  Air 
Force  because  his  identity  became  dis- 
closed, he  sought  refuge  in  the  Tank 
Corps,  but  in  August  1925  returned  to 
the  Royal  Air  Force.  Tliis  took  him  in 
1926  to  the  North- Western  Frontier  of 
India  whence,  in  deference  to  Russian 
suspicions,  he  was  recalled  in  1928.  As  an 
aircraftman,  neither  attaining  nor  desiring 
officer's  rank,  he  spent  happily  the  last  six 
years  of  his  service,  latterly  testing,  super- 
vising, and  even  designing  high-speed  and 
power  motor-craft  at  Plymouth,  and  later 
on  the  Solent.  His  service  expired  at 
Bridlington  in  February  1935,  and  he  was 
retired  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  sad  at 
leaving  his  work  and  comrades  in  the 
Royal  Air  Force.  He  bicycled  to  Clouds 
Hill,  his  three-roomed  cottage  at  Boving- 
ton,  Dorset,  and  remained  there,  un- 
settled, and  evading  the  appointments 
thrust  upon  him  in  connexion  with  the 
expansion  of  the  Royal  Air  Force,  yet 
unable  to  enjoy  his  unaccustomed  leisure 
which  he  planned  to  spend  in  exploring, 
by  bicycle,  the  scenery  and  monuments 
of  England.  On  13  May,  swerving  on 
his  powerful  motor-cycle  to  avoid  two 
boys  bicycling  abreast,  he  was  violently 


thrown, .  and  after  lingering  unconscious 
for  five  days,  died  in  Bovington  Camp 
Hospital  19  May  1935.  He  never  mar- 
ried. 

Lawrence  was  slightly  but  strongly 
built.  His  growth  had  been  checked  by 
breaking  a  leg  in  his  'teens.  His  forehead 
was  high ;  the  line  of  his  face  vertical  and, 
in  proportion  to  the  depth  of  his  head, 
long.  His  hair  was  long  and  fair  and  un- 
ruly, parted  and  brushed  sideways.  He 
had  a  straight  nose,  piercing  blue  eyes, 
a  firm  full  mouth,  strong  square  chin,  and 
fine,  careful,  accomplished  hands.  He 
could  be  the  best  company  in  the  world, 
holding  his  own  with  Mr.  Churchill  oi 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw:  he  could  also  retire 
within  himself  in  any  company.  He  pre- 
ferred the  society  of  men  to  that  of  women, 
with  very  few  exceptions,  and  had  friends 
in  all  classes.  Books  gave  him  almost  as 
much  companionship,  and  he  was  widely 
read  in  French,  Latin,  and  Greek,  as  weE 
as  in  English.  He  was  a  judge  of  painting, 
sculpture,  architecture,  and  craftsman- 
ship of  every  kind ;  and  had  a  true  appre- 
ciation of  music,  which  he  trained  and 
gratified  on  a  large  collection  of  carefully 
tended  gramophone  records.  He  preferred 
neither  to  smoke  nor  to  drink  alcohol,  and 
ate  sparingly;  but  he  yielded  himseli 
almost  voluptuously  to  the  'dope'  ol 
high  speed,  on  the  swiftest  motor-cycles 
At  eighty  or  ninety  miles  per  hour  he 
achieved  'a  sense  of  moulding  the  hiIL« 
and  dales'. 

Unique  in  kind  as  were  Lawrence's 
exploits,  their  chance  of  historic  surviva 
would  have  been  uncertain  had  he  nol 
himself  recorded  them  in  his  brilliant  anc 
arresting  Seven  Pillars  of  Wisdom  (1935^ 
which  was  twice  re-written  during  th( 
years  1919  and  1920,  after  the  origina 
manuscript  had  been  lost.  Into  his  style 
based  originally  upon  Travels  in  Arabic 
Deserta  (1888)  by  the  venerated  C.  Mj 
Doughty  [q.v.],  Lawrence  poured  the; 
conscious,  conscientious  devotion  of  the! 
artist-craftsman  which  he  had  lavishecj 
upon  his  maps,  his  machinery,  and  his 
plans  for  battle.  'Words',  he  wrote,  'gel 
richer  every  time  they  are  deliberatelj 
used  . . .  but  only  when  deliberately  used' j 
and  again,  more  significantly,  'Writin^j 
has  been  my  inmost  self  all  my  life,  anci 
I  can  never  put  my  full  strength  into  any| 
thing  else.'  Lawrence  would  not  have  thf! 
book  published  in  his  Ufetime,  but  issuecj 
in  1926  for  subscription  about  a  hundrec| 
copies  superblv  printed  and  illustrated  bjj 
the  best  artists  of  the  day.    The  loss  ol| 


580 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Lawrence,  W.  R. 


£11,000  over  tliis  thirty  guineas  issue  was 
more  than  covered  by  his  abridged  version, 
The  Revolt  in  the  Desert,  published  next 
year  (1927)  at  tliirty  shillings:  but  the 
surplus  was  given  to  charity.  Lawrence 
also  organized  the  re-publication  in  1921 
(with  an  admirable  introduction)  of 
Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta  (the  only  fruit 
of  his  residence  at  All  Souls)  and  made  in 
1924  a  pseudonymous  version,  Tfie  Forest 
Giant,  otLe  Gigantesque  by  A.  le  Corbeaux, 
and  under  his  own  name  a  prose  transla- 
tion of  the  Odyssey,  commissioned  from 
the  United  States  of  America  and  pub- 
lished in  1932.  He  wrote  a  remarkable,  if 
sometimes  brutal,  picture  of  his  early  days 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  entitled  The  Mint, 
of  wluch,  however,  he  forbade  publication 
until  1950,  although  a  copyright  edition 
of  fifty  copies  (ten  of  which  were  for  sale, 
prohibitively  priced)  was  arranged  in 
America  in  1926. 

None  can  begin  to  realize  the  unsus- 
pected, the  bewildering  variety  and  versa- 
tility of  Lawrence,  before  as  well  as  after 
his  Arabian  exploits,  until  he  has  read 
The  Letters  of  T.  E.  Lawrence,  selected  and 
edited  by  Mr.  David  Garnett  in  1938.  It 
has  indeed  been  said  that  he  would  have 
survived  (as  would  Edward  Fitzgerald 
without  Omar  Khayyam)  if  only  as  a  letter- 
writer.  The  letters  emphasize  the  strange 
blend  of  contrasts  and  oppositions  that 
made  up  his  elusive,  enigmatic,  and  para- 
doxical personality.  Imperious  but  re- 
tiring, logical  yet  intuitive,  profoundly 
impressive  and  provokingly  puckish, 
on  equal  terms  with  field-marshals 
and  Cabinet  ministers,  great  writers, 
mechanics,  scholars,  and  slaves,  he  be- 
queathed the  example  of  one  who  com- 
bined physical  prowess  and  courage  under 
the  open  sky  with  passionate  self-dedica- 
tion to  the  testament  of  the  great  humani- 
ties, which  he  chose  to  enjoy  in  poverty 
rather  than  hazard  the  artificiality  and 
time-wasting  servitude  of  high  position ; 
even  without  his  work,  without  his  book, 
he  was  a  standard  and  a  touchstone  of 
reality  in  life. 

Among  the  portraits  of  Lawrence  are 
several  by  Augustus  John,  including  a 
painting  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
and  a  pastel  by  Eric  Kennington  at  All 
Souls  College,  Oxford,  made  for  Seven 
Pillars  of  Wisdom.  The  portrait  painted 
by  James  McBey  soon  after  LawTcnce's 
entry  into  Damascus  hangs  in  the  Im- 
perial War  Museum.  There  is  a  bronze 
bust  by  Eric  Kennington  in  the  crypt  of 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  a  posthumous 


effigy,  also  by  Eric  Kennington,  in  St. 
Martin's  church,  Wareham. 

[The  Times,  20  May  1935 ;  T.  E.  Lawrence, 
Seven  Pillars  of  Wisdom,  1935,  Secret  Des- 
patches from  Arabia,  1939,  Oriental  Assembly, 
1939,  and  Men  in  Print,  1940;  B.  H.  Liddell 
Hart,  T.  E.  Lawrence,  1934;  The  Letters  of 
T.  E.  Lawrence,  edited  by  David  Garnett, 
1938;  Charles  Edmunds,  T.  E.  Lawrence, 
1935 ;  R.  H.  Kiernan,  Lawrence  of  Arabia, 
1936;  Vyvyan  Richards,  T.  E.  Lawrence, 
1939 ;  Clare  Sydney  Smith,  The  Golden  Reign, 
1940;  Elizabeth  W.  Duval,  T.  E.  Lawrence, 
A  Bibliography,  1938 ;  B.  H.  Liddell  Hart  and 
R.  Graves,  T.  E.  Lawrence  to  his  Biographers, 
1938 ;  Sir  Ronald  Storrs,  Orientations,  1937 ; 
T.  E.  Lawrence,  by  his  Friends,  edited  by 
A.  W.  Lawrence,  1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Ronald  Storrs. 

LAWRENCE,  Sir  WALTER  ROPER, 

first  baronet  (1857-1940),  Indian  civil  ser- 
vant, was  born  at  Moreton  Court,  near 
Hereford,  9  February  1857,  the  fifth  son 
of  George  Lawrence,  J.P.,  of  Moreton,  by 
his  second  wife,  Catharine,  daughter  of 
Edward  Lewis,  of  Wenvoe,  Glamorgan- 
shire. He  was  educated  at  Cheltenham 
College  and  passed  first  into  the  Indian 
civil  service  in  1877.  After  two  years'  pro- 
bation at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  he  went 
to  India  and  began  liis  official  experience 
as  assistant  commissioner  in  the  Kurram, 
where  he  saw  the  closing  stages  of  the 
second  Afghan  war.  With  his  brilliant 
record  he  escaped  any  long  period  of  dis- 
trict work,  which  was  apt  to  narrow  the 
outlook  of  the  Indian  civil  servant,  and 
his  opportunity  came  in  1889  when  he  was 
appointed  settlement  commissioner  in 
Kashmir.  A  settlement — the  adjustment 
of  the  revenue  dues  between  the  cultivator 
and  the  state — may  well  make  or  mar  the 
career  of  any  civilian,  especially  when 
carried  out  in  an  Indian  state  where  the 
susceptibiUties  of  the  ruling  house  have 
to  be  weighed.  Lawrence  emerged  trium- 
phantly ;  his  work  was  good  and  stood  the 
test  of  time;  the  volume  in  which  he 
recorded  his  experiences.  The  Valley  of 
Kashmir  (1895),  remains  a  standard  work. 
When  the  highest  offices  in  the  service 
were  opened  to  him,  Lawrence  abandoned 
his  Indian  career  and  returned  to  England 
in  1896  to  be  cliief  agent  to  H.  A.  B. 
Russell,  Duke  of  Bedford  [q.v.],  until  Lord 
Curzon  recalled  him  to  India  at  the  end  of 
1898  to  be  his  private  secretary.  Although 
less  in  the  public  eye,  Lawrence's  services 
in  this  post  were  of  the  highest  order. 
He  was  the  emollient  between  a  great 
viceroy,  impatient  to  carry  through  his 
first  twelve  reforms,  and  an  administration 


581 


Lawrence,  W.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


which  resented  being  hustled;  yet  his 
methods  were  unobtrusive ;  he  never  posed 
as  the  secretary  who  was  'running'  the 
viceroy. 

Five  years  later  Lawrence  again  left 
India  and  embarked  on  active  business  and 
public  work  in  England.  India  reclaimed 
him  in  1905-1906,  for  in  the  previous  year 
he  had  been  appointed  chief  of  the  staff 
to  the  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales  on 
their  visit,  and  his  tact  and  accessibility, 
his  wide  knowledge  of  India  and  the  ruling 
princes,  contributed  materially  to  the  suc- 
cess of  that  long  and  exacting  tour.  There 
followed  years  of  continuous  activity  in 
England,  including  a  short  period  (1907- 
1909)  as  member  of  the  Council  of  India ; 
he  resigned  because  it  interfered  on  a  nar- 
row ruling  with  his  business  interests.  He 
was  one  of  the  elder  statesmen,  always 
called  in  or  consulted  when  Indian  affairs 
were  under  consideration,  the  trusted 
counsellor  of  ministers  and  of  all  who 
sought  guidance  on  India.  He  gathered 
up  his  experiences  in  a  last  book.  The 
India  we  Served  (1928),  which  is  stamped 
with  the  mellow  wisdom  and  generous 
appreciation  of  India  and  its  peoples  so 
characteristic  of  all  his  service. 

LawTcnce  was  appointed  K.C.I.E.  in 
1903  and  G.C.I.E.  in  1906,  in  which  year 
he  was  created  a  baronet  in  recognition  of 
his  work  during  the  royal  tour.  In  1917 
he  was  appointed  C.B.  and  G.C.V.O.  in 
1918.  He  married  in  1885  Lilian  Gertrude 
(died  1929),  daughter  of  John  Gwynne 
James,  of  Ayleston  Hill,  Hereford,  and 
had  two  sons.  He  died  at  Wokingham 
25  May  1940,  and  was  succeeded  as  second 
baronet  by  his  elder  son,  Roland  (born 
1886). 

A  cartoon  of  Lawrence  by  'Spy'  ap- 
peared in  Vanity  Fair  15  Jvme  1905. 

[The  Times,  27  May  1940 ;  W.  R.  Lawrence, 
The  India  we  Served,  1928 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Stanley  Reed. 

LAWS,  ROBERT  (1851-1934),  pioneer 
missionary,  the  only  son  of  Robert  Laws, 
cabinet-maker  of  Aberdeen,  by  his  first 
wife.  Christian,  daughter  of  Alexander 
Cruickshank,  an  Aberdeenshire  crofter, 
was  born  at  Aberdeen  28  May  1851. 
Apprenticed  to  his  father's  trade,  he 
attended  evening  school.  Later,  com- 
bining half-day  manual  work  with  univer- 
sity classes,  he  studied  arts  at  Aberdeen, 
followed  by  theology  at  Edinburgh,  and 
medicine  at  Aberdeen  and  Glasgow,  his 
steadfast  purpose  being  to  follow  in  the 
footsteps  of  David  Livingstone. 


Laws  was  ordained  on  26  April  1875  to 
the  ministry  of  the  United  Presbyterian 
Church  of  Scotland  by  the  presbjrtery  of 
Aberdeen  and  he  was  sent  as  medical 
officer,  second  in  command,  with  a  Scot- 
tish Free  Church  expedition  on  21  May 
1875,  to  found  a  mission  in  Central  Africa 
to  be  named  'Livingstonia'.  Under  his 
supervision,  a  48-foot  sectional  steamship 
was  assembled  at  the  mouth  of  the  Zam- 
bezi River,  dismantled  at  the  Murchison 
Cataracts,  and,  after  a  seventy-mile  por- 
tage, reconstructed  on  the  Upper  Shire.  It 
reached  Lake  Nyasa  on  12  October,  sixty- 
three  days'  voyage  from  the  coast,  the  first 
steamship  to  float  on  any  African  lake. 
Contacts  were  made  with  tribes  repre- 
senting fifteen  different  languages,  and  for 
sixteen  years  missionary  work  was  pur- 
sued beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  any  Euro- 
pean nation. 

From  1877  Laws,  now  in  full  control, 
planned  a  series  of  mission  stations  along 
the  western  shore  of  Lake  Nyasa  and  at 
strategic  inland  sites.  He  opened  his  first 
school  in  1876 ;  when  he  left  Africa  in  1927, 
there  were  over  700  primary  schools, 
several  secondary  schools  and  teacher- 
training  centres,  and  a  central  institution, 
the  Overtoun  Institution  (of  which  he  was 
principal),  providing  educational,  theo- 
logical, medical,  technical,  and  agricul- 
tural instruction,  which  he  visualized  as 
the  nucleus  of  a  university.  His  goal  was 
a  Bible-reading,  self-governing,  self-sup- 
porting, self-extending  Church,  with 
schools,  staffed  by  African  Christian 
teachers,  as  the  basic  evangelizing  agency. 
He  baptized  his  first  convert  in  1881,  the 
earnest  of  a  Christian  community  which, 
by  1927,  numbered  60,000  with  thirteen 
ordained  African  pastors. 

In  the  interests  of  missionary  work 
Laws  visited  Canada,  the  United  States 
of  America,  Germany,  and  Nigeria  as  well 
as  carrying  out  extensive  exploration  of 
central  African  areas  devastated  by  tribal 
warfare,  slavery,  superstition,  and  primi- 
tive savagery.  He  was  moderator  of  the 
General  Assembly  of  the  United  Free 
Church  for  1908,  and  from  1912  to  1916 
he  served,  at  the  governor's  request,  as 
senior  unofficial  member  of  the  legislative! 
council  of  Nyasaland.  His  achievements, 
earned  his  appointment  as  C.M.G.  in  1923i 
and  he  was  elected  F.R.G.S.  in  1884,  andj 
F.R.S.G.S.  in  1900.  The  university  o\ 
Aberdeen  conferred  upon  him  the  honorary j 
degrees  of  D.D.  in  1891  and  of  LL.D.  in| 
1925,  and  the  city  of  Aberdeen  bestowed  itsj 
freedom  upon  him  in  1928.  In  1929  Mount 


632 


9  Mount 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lawson 


Nyamkowa  was  officially  re-named  Mount 
Laws. 

Laws  married  in  1879  Margaret  Troup, 
daughter  of  Charles  Gray,  and  had  one 
daughter.  He  died  in  a  London  nursing 
home  6  August  1934'. 

A  bronze  plaque  of  Laws,  produced 
under  the  direction  of  W.  B.  Fagan,  was 
erected  in  1936  at  the  Livingstonia  Mis- 
sion Station.  A  plaster  cast  of  this  is  in 
Christ's  College,  Aberdeen. 

[Laws's  letters  and  diary,  and  Reminiscenses 
of  Livingstonia,  1934;  W.  P.  Livingstone, 
Laws  of  Livingstonia,  1921.] 

Leslie  Dtjncan. 

LAWSON,  Sir  HARRY  LAWSON 
WEBSTER  LEVY-,  second  baronet, 
second  Baron  and  Viscount  Burn- 
H^VM  (1802-1933),  newspaper  proprietor, 
was  born  in  London  18  December  1862, 
the  elder  son  of  Edward  Levy-Lawson, 
first  Baron  Burnham  [q.v.],  by  his  wife, 
Harriette  Georgiana,  only  daughter  of 
the  actor-manager  Benjamin  Nottingham 
Webster  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where  he  was 
awarded  a  first  class  in  modern  history  in 
1884.  A  successful  speaker,  he  was  elected 
secretary  of  the  Union.  Five  months  be- 
fore his  final  examination  he  married 
Olive,  eldest  daughter  of  General  Sir 
Henry  Percival  de  Bathe,  fourth  baronet. 

Politics  rather  than  journalism  attracted 
Lawson  at  first,  and  at  the  general  election 
of  1885  he  was  returned  as  liberal  member 
for  West  St.  Pancras,  being,  at  twenty- 
two,  'baby'  of  the  new  House  of  Com- 
[mons.  Losing  that  seat  in  1892,  he  became 
Imember  for  the  Cirencester  division  at  a 
by-election  in  1893  and  was  again  defeated 
in  the  hberal  debacle  of  1895.  Not  until 
ten  years  later,  after  he  had  left  the  liberal 
party  on  the  home  rule  issue,  did  he  re- 
enter parliament,  at  another  by-election, 
as  unionist  member  for  the  Mile  End  divi- 
sion of  the  Tower  Hamlets,  which  seat, 
after  losing  it  in  1906  and  regaining  it  in 
January  1910,  he  held  until  he  succeeded 
to  the  barony  in  1916.  He  was  called  to 
the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1891. 

Lawson  did  not  limit  the  sphere  of  his 
public  work  to  parliament,  for  he  never 
neglected  an  opportunity  of  usefulness.  In 
1889  he  was  elected  to  the  first  London 
County  Council  as  representative  of  West 
St.  Pancras,  and  served  until  1892.  He 
served  again,  as  representative  of  White- 
2hapel,  from  1897  to  1904,  and  was  mayor 
3f  Stepney  from  1907  to  1909. 

In  1903,  when  his  father  was  raised  to 


the  peerage,  the  managing-proprietorship 
of  the  Daily  Telegraph  was  handed  over 
to  Lawson,  and  it  became  the  principal 
interest  and  the  pride  of  his  exceptionally 
busy  life.  He  retained  it  until  1928,  when, 
after  his  appointment  to  the  Indian  Statu- 
tory Commission,  he  took  with  deep  regret 
the  step  of  making  over  the  property  to 
other  owners.  Wliile  he  held  it  he  had 
always  declined  to  accept  ministerial  office 
on  the  ground  that  the  independence  of 
his  newspaper  might  be  compromised ;  for 
he  took  consistently  the  highest  view  of 
the  functions  and  obligations  of  journal- 
ism. During  the  twenty -four  years  of  his 
control  he  became,  as  his  father  had  been, 
a  leading  figure  in  the  London  newspaper 
world  and  its  chief  spokesman  throughout 
the  Empire,  holding  for  long  periods  the 
presidency  of  the  Newspaper  Press  Fund, 
the  chairmanship  of  the  Newspaper  Pro- 
prietors' Association,  and  the  presidency 
of  the  Institute  of  Journalists  and  the 
Empire  Press  Union.  He  was  president  of 
the  Imperial  Press  Conferences  held  in 
Ottawa  and  Melbourne  in  1920  and  1925. 

Lawson  rejoiced  in  lending  the  energetic 
support  of  his  newspaper  to  great  purposes 
independent  of  politics.  The  firm  founda- 
tion of  Anglo-Belgian  friendship,  for 
example,  owed  much  to  the  advocacy  of 
the  Daily  Telegraph.  Another  cause  which 
he  did  all  that  he  could  to  forward  was 
that  of  the  Territorial  army.  For  many 
years  he  had  held  a  commission  in  the 
Royal  Bucks.  Hussars,  and  commanded 
the  regiment  from  1902  to  1913.  On  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1914  he  rejoined,  and 
took  a  leading  part  in  training  the  second 
reserve  regiment.  In  recognition  of  these 
services  he  was  advanced  to  a  viscountcy 
in  1919,  having  been  a  member  of  the  Com- 
panionship of  Honour  since  its  foundation 
in  1917.  He  was  appointed  G.C.M.G.  in 
1 927.  He  was  also  the  recipient  of  numerous 
foreign  decorations,  and  several  univer- 
sities, both  at  home  and  abroad,  conferred 
honorary  degrees  upon  him. 

Both  before  and  after  his  succession  to 
the  title  Burnham  enjoyed  a  notable 
reputation  as  the  ideal  chairman  for  public 
assemblies  of  every  kind.  He  had  served 
his  apprenticeship  as  a  member  of  such 
bodies  as  the  royal  commission  on  civil 
establishments  (1889-1894),  the  Speaker's 
conference  on  electoral  reform  (1916), 
wherein  he  moved  the  resolution  which 
led  to  the  enfranchisement  of  women  in 
the  Reform  Act  of  1918,  and  the  joint 
conference  on  the  reform  of  the  House  of 
Lords  under  the  chairmanship  of  Lord 


S88 


Lawson 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Bryce  (q.v.,  1918).  He  had  served,  too, 
on  various  bodies  dealing  with  imperial 
questions,  which  were  among  his  special 
interests.  Apart  from  his  wide  experience 
of  pubhc  affairs  he  was  fitted  for  the  duties 
of  chairmansliip  by  his  fair-mindedness, 
moderation,  and  genial  temper.  Govern- 
ments in  need  of  a  workable  report  on  a 
matter  of  difficulty  turned  naturally  to 
Burnham. 

Burnham's  most  signal  work  in  this 
respect  was  done  as  chairman  of  the 
Standing  Joint  Committee  representing 
teachers  and  local  education  authorities 
which  in  1920  formulated  new  scales  of 
pay  for  teachers  in  all  state  schools.  In 
subsequent  disputes  he  acted  as  arbitrator, 
and  the  result  of  his  long  and  laborious 
work  was  the  establishment  of  the  '  Burn- 
ham  scales',  which  still  form  the  basis  of 
the  teachers'  charter  of  remuneration. 

Another  notable  success  was  Burnham's 
chairmanship  of  the  third,  fourth,  and 
ninth  International  Labour  Conferences 
held  at  Geneva  in  1921,  1922,  and  1926. 
His  securing  respect  for  the  rules  of  order 
in  this  assembly  was  recognized  as  a  tri- 
umph of  personality.  He  was  also  presi- 
dent of  the  Pubhc  Health  Congresses  held 
at  Bordeaux  in  1924  and  Ghent  in  1927, 
and  chairman  of  the  first  World  Press 
Conference,  held  at  Geneva  in  1927. 

Burnham's  membership  (1927-1930)  of 
the  Indian  Statutory  Commission  under  the 
chairmansliip  of  Sir  John  (later  Viscount) 
Simon  was  the  last  public  service  of  his 
career.  The  incessant  hard  work  entailed 
by  two  long  visits  to  every  part  of  India 
left  their  mark  on  his  health.  In  1933  he 
was  one  of  eight  peers  who  sat  on  the  Joint 
Select  Committee  appointed  to  consider  the 
government's  proposals  for  Indian  reform, 
and  he  had  attended  one  of  its  meetings 
just  before  his  death.  He  died  in  his  sleep 
at  his  London  house  20  July  of  that  year. 

For  most  of  his  life  Burnliam  was  active 
in  the  management  and  fijiance  of  hospi- 
tals and  other  works  of  charity ;  for  many 
years  he  served  on  the  council  of  King  Ed- 
ward's Hospital  Fund  for  London.  In  1921 
he  gave  to  the  City  of  London,  in  memory 
of  his  father,  the  estate  adjoining  Burnham 
Beeches  which  he  named  Fleet  Wood. 

Burnham's  only  child  was  a  daughter 
and  the  viscountcy  became  extinct  on  his 
death.  He  was  succeeded  as  third  baronet 
and  third  baron  by  his  brother,  WUliam 
Arnold  Webster  (born  1864). 

[The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph,  21  July 
1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  C.Bentley. 


LEATHES,  Sir  STANLEY  MOR- 
DAUNT  (1861-1938),  historian  and  ad- 
ministrator, was  born  in  London  7  May 
1861,  the  elder  son  of  Stanley  Leathes 
[q.v.],  prebendary  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
professor  of  Hebrew  in  King's  College, 
London,  and  rector  of  Much  Hadham, 
Hertfordshire,  by  his  wife,  Matilda, 
daughter  of  Martin  Butt,  rector  of  East 
Garston,  Berkshire.  He  was  educated  at 
Eton,  where  he  was  a  king's  scholar  from 
1873  to  1880,  and  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, of  which  he  was  also  a  scholar,  and 
where  he  was  awarded  a  first  class  in  part  i 
of  the  classical  tripos  of  1882  and  was 
second  chancellor's  medallist  in  1884.  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  Trinity  in  1886, 
and  serv^ed  the  college  as  lecturer  in 
history  from  1892  to  1903.  As  a  teacher 
he  is  described  by  his  pupils  as  accurate 
and  lucid,  and  the  same  qualities  appear 
in  his  writings. 

With  Lord  Acton,  Leathes  helped  to 
plan,  and  with  (Sir)  A.  W.  Ward  and 
(Sir)  G.  W.  Prothero  [qq.v.]  he  edited 
(1901-1912),  the  Cambridge  Modern  History, 
and  himself  wrote  the  chapters  on  'Italy  and 
Her  Invaders',  'France',  'Habsburg  and 
Valois',  'Henry  IV  of  France',  'Riche- 
heu',  'Mazarin',  'Modern  Europe',  and 
'  Great  Britain ',  a  hst  which  shows  his  own 
chief  interests .  During  these  years  Leathes 
lived  in  college  rooms  (13  Nevile's  Court). 
He  took  a  full  share  in  the  business  and 
social  hfe  of  the  coUege,  being  somewhat 
of  a  bon  vivant.  His  chief  recreation  was 
riding  and  hunting ;  he  was  often  out  with 
the  Cambridgeshire  hounds  on  a  Friday 
their  near  day,  and  occasionally  went  bj 
train  to  Huntingdon  for  a  Cambridgeshirt 
Tuesday  or  a  FitzwilUam  Saturday. 

In  1903  Leathes  was  offered  and  ac 
cepted  the  post  of  secretary  to  the  civi 
service  commission  and  left  Cambridge 
In  1907  he  became  a  commissioner,  anc 
from  1910  to  1927  he  was  first  commis 
sioner.  He  also  served  as  chairman  o 
several  government  committees  on  specia 
questions,  and  from  January  to  Novembe: 
1918  he  was  in  charge  of  the  staff  anc 
accommodation  in  the  Ministry  of  Food 
In  1911  he  was  appointed  C.B.  and  K.CBi 
in  1919.  I 

Leathes  also  continued  to  write,  h' 
1911  he  published  (under  a  pseudonyin| 
Vox  Clamantis,  and  later  (under  his  ovnj 
name)  The  People  of  England  (3  vols.! 
1915-1923)  and  Rhythm  in  English  Poetry 
(1935).  He  never  married.  For  some  tim' 
after  leaving  Cambridge  he  lived  in  thj 
Temple,  and  afterwards  shared  with/ 
584 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lethaby 


Rev.  J.  A.  Nairn  a  house  near  Maiden- 
head. He  died  at  Gloucester  25  July  1938. 

[The  Times,  27  July  1938 ;  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  records ;  private  information ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  W.  C.  D.  Dampieb. 

LEE,  VERNON  (pseudonym),  author. 
[See  Paget,  Violet.] 

LE  STRANGE,  GUY  (1854-1933), 
orientalist,  was  born  at  Hunstanton,  Nor- 
folk, 24  July  1854,  the  youngest  of  the 
three  sons  of  Henry  L'Estrange  Styleman 
le  Strange  [q.v.],  of  Hunstanton  Hall,  an 
amateur  decorative  painter,  by  his  wife, 
Jamesina  Joyce  Ellen,  youngest  daughter 
of  John  Stewart,  M.P.,  of  Belladrum, 
Inverness-shire.  He  was  educated  at  Clif- 
ton and  the  Royal  Agricultural  College, 
Cirencester,  and  later  spent  long  periods 
abroad,  first  with  his  mother  in  Paris  and 
after  his  marriage  in  1887  to  Wanda  Irene, 
eldest  daughter  of  William  Cornwallis 
Cartwright,  M.P.,  of  Aynho  Park,  North- 
amptonshire, he  lived  in  Florence.  Of  this 
marriage  there  were  no  children. 

It  was  while  he  was  in  Paris  that  le 
Strange's  interest  in  oriental  studies  was 
awakened  by  his  contact  with  Julius  Mohl, 
professor  of  Persian  at  the  College  de 
France,  the  husband  of  Mary  Mohl  [q.v.], 
who  persuaded  him  in  spite  of  extremely 
bad  sight  to  learn  Persian.  At  the  same 
time  he  also  studied  Arabic.  In  1877  he 
travelled  to  Persia,  where  he  remained 
until  1880,  the  first-fruits  of  the  visit 
being  an  edition  (with  W.  H.  D.  Haggard, 
1882)  of  the  Vazir  of  Lankuran,  a  Persian 
comedy,  enlivened  by  some  \sitty  and  racy 
notes.  The  title-page,  which  calls  the  work 
'a  text-book  of  colloquial  Persian  for  the 
use  of  travellers ',  shows  le  Strange's  pre- 
occupation with  the  practical  side  of 
oriental  scholarship;  and  it  was  always 
characteristic  of  him  to  be  concerned  more 
with  subject-matter  than  with  philology. 
It  was  not  until  many  years  later,  in  1915, 
that  he  again  published  a  Persian  text, 
the  Nuzhat  al-Qulub.  In  the  meantime  he 
worked  at  the  historical  geography  of  the 
Middle  Eastern  Moslem  lands,  and  it  is  in 
this  field  that  he  made  his  chief  contribu- 
tion to  oriental  scholarship.  He  began  in 
1884,  while  staying  at  Haifa  with  his 
brother-in-law  Laurence  Oliphant  [q.v.], 
with  a  translation  of  Muqaddasi's  Descrip- 
tion of  Syria,  including  Palestine  (pub- 
lished in  1886),  which  was  followed  by 
Palestine  under  the  Moslems  (1890),  Bagh- 
dad under  the  Abbasid  Caliphate  (1900), 


and  The  Lands  of  the  Eastern  Caliphate 
(1905). 

After  his  wife's  death  in  1907  le  Strange 
settled  in  Cambridge,  becoming  a  member 
of  Pembroke  College,  of  which  his  friend 
E.  G.  Browne  [q.v.]  was  a  fellow.  With 
Browne  and  others  he  became  active  in 
the  affairs  of  the  memorial  fund  to  E.  J.  W. 
Gibb  [q.v.],  the  publications  of  which  in- 
clude several  works  edited  or  translated 
by  him — a  remarkable  achievement  for  a 
man  with  his  degree  of  defective  sight.  In 
1912  he  became  almost  totally  blind,  yet 
refused  to  be  overcome  by  his  difficulties. 
Not  only  did  he  continue  his  oriental 
work  but  he  took  up  the  study  of  Spanish, 
publishing  a  selection  of  Spanish  Ballads 
(1920)  and  translations  of  the  Relaciones 
of  Don  Juan  of  Persia  (1926)  and  of 
Clavijo,  Embassy  to  Tamerlane,  1403-1406 
(1928).  In  1890  he  had  pubUshed  a  three- 
volume  edition  and  translation  of  Tfie 
Correspondence  of  Princess  Lieven  and  Earl 
Grey.  He  died  at  Cambridge  24  December 
1933. 

[The  Times,  27  December  1933 ;  Journal  of 
the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  April  1934 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  R.  Levy. 

LETHABY,     WILLIAM     RICHARD 

(1857-1931),  author  and  architect,  was 
born  at  Barnstaple  18  January  1857,  the 
only  son  of  Richard  Pyle  Lethaby,  of 
Barnstaple,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Rowe  Crago. 
He  gave  early  indication  of  artistic  lean- 
ings. He  passed  from  the  local  school  of 
art  into  the  office  of  Alexander  Lauder, 
an  architect  in  the  town,  and  later  into 
that  of  Richard  Waite  of  Derby. 

In  1879  Lethaby  won  the  Soane  medal- 
lion, for  architectural  study  abroad,  of 
the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects, 
and  in  1881  the  Pugin  studentship;  an 
appointment  in  the  office  of  R.  N.  Shaw 
[q.v.]  followed.  He  thus  had  a  share  in 
the  design  of  New  Scotland  Yard  (1891). 
In  this  year  he  began  independent  prac- 
tice, and  his  chief  works  were  big  country 
houses,  including  High  Coxlease,  Hamp- 
shire ;  Avon  Tyrell  on  the  borders  of  the 
New  Forest;  Melsetter,  in  the  Orkneys; 
and  a  church  at  Brockhampton  in  Here- 
fordshire. 

Soon  after  joining  Shaw,  Lethaby  be- 
came a  member  of  the  Society  for  the 
Protection  of  Ancient  Buildings,  coming 
into  contact  with  William  Morris  and  the 
architect  PhiUp  Webb  [qq.v.],  an  associa- 
tion which  was  probably  the  strongest 
influence  in  his  life.  He  and  Wel)b  were 
neighbours  in  Gray's  Irm  until  1900,  and 


585 


Lethaby 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


i 


intimate  friends  until  Webb's  death  in 
1915.  In  1922  Lethaby  said:  'The  happy 
chance  of  close  intimacy  with  Philip  Webb 
the  architect,  at  last  satisfied  my  mind 
about  that  mysterious  thing  we  call "  archi- 
tecture". From  him  I  learnt  that  what 
I  was  going  to  mean  by  architecture  was 
not  mere  designs,  forms,  and  grandeurs, 
but  buildings,  honest  and  human,  with 
hearts  in  them.' 

It  is,  however,  as  a  teacher,  author,  and 
critic  rather  than  as  a  practising  architect 
that  Lethaby  is  remembered.  He  was  one 
of  the  organizers  and  a  principal  of  the 
London  County  Council  Central  School  of 
Arts  and  Crafts  in  1894  and  in  1900 
became  the  first  professor  of  design  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Art,  South  Kensington. 
He  was  master  of  the  Art  Workers  Guild 
in  1911. 

In  1906  Lethaby  was  invited  to  become 
surveyor  to  the  dean  and  chapter  of  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  in  this  year  his  book 
Westminster  Abbey  and  the  King's  Crafts- 
men was  published,  a  work  that  has  ever 
since  been  recognized  as  the  best  founda- 
tion for  the  architectural  and  artistic  study 
of  the  Abbey  buildings.  His  single  aim 
throughout  his  term  of  office  (which  closed 
in  1928)  was  to  preserve  the  buildings  by 
constant  daily  care,  and  to  avoid  the  addi- 
tion of  new  work.  He  was  responsible  for 
the  skilful  cleaning  which  revealed  so  much 
of  the  long-hidden  colour  of  monuments 
and  fabric.  His  influence  in  this  sphere 
spread  far  beyond  Westminster.  He  was 
the  recognized  supreme  authority  on  the 
care  of  old  buildings. 

Lethaby' s  pubhshed  works  illustrate  the 
width  of  his  architectural  and  artistic 
interests.  Mediaeval  Art  .  .  .  312-1350 
(1904,  revised  ed.  1912)  covers  art  and 
architecture  in  north-west  Europe,  and  the 
Mediterranean  as  far  east  as  Pahnyra  and 
Baalbec.  Londinium,  Architecture  and  the 
Crafts  appeared  in  1923.  A  small  volume 
entitled  Home  and  Country  Arts  (also  1923) 
marks  his  keen  interest  and  appreciation 
of  the  work  of  ordinary  people.  'Art  is 
best  thought  of  as  fine  and  sound  ordinary 
work ',  he  said  at  a  gathering  in  his  honotu*, 
and  'Life  is  best  thought  of  as  service'. 
His  other  works  include  Architecture, 
Mysticism  and  Myth  (1892),  Leadwork 
(1893),  The  Church  of  Sancta  Sophia  (with 
Harold  Swainson,  1894),  Architecture 
(1912),  Form  in  Civilization  (1922),  West- 
minster Abbey  Re-examined  (1925),  and 
Philip  Webb  and  his  Work  (Builder,  1925 ; 
posthumously  published  in  book  form 
1935).     Numerous   articles   appeared   in 


various   journals,   notably    Archaeologia, 
and  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Institute  jdta 
British  Architects.  ^1 

A  small  man,  slender,  and  dehcate, 
Lethaby  was  a  strong  personality.  He 
possessed  high  gifts  as  a  lecturer,  and  the 
power  of  commimicating  his  own  enthusi- 
asm to  his  audience.  He  disliked  pretence 
and  sham;  but  he  was  ever  sympathetic 
towards  all  honest  effort.  The  character 
of  his  literary  work  often  suggests  a  mind 
so  clear  that  it  must  have  had  the  power 
to  reject  ideas  which  had  no  reasonable 
basis,  and,  as  is  the  fact  with  so  many 
ideas  about  architecture,  are  useless  be- 
cause they  cannot  be  defined.  Lethaby 's 
strong  grasp  of  his  subject  is  a  marked 
feature  of  his  writings. 

Lethaby  married  in  1901  Edith  (died 
1927),  daughter  of  Howard  Crosby,  of 
New  York,  and  had  no  issue.  He  died  in 
London  17  July  1931  and  was  buried 
in  the  churchyard  at  Hartley  Wintney  in 
Hampshire:  a  stone  in  the  pavement  of 
the  west  walk  of  the  Great  Cloister  at 
Westminster  Abbey  commemorates  him 
there. 

[Journal  of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British 
Architects,    20    February    1932;    Lethaby's  j 
works;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  G.  Noppen. 

LEVY-LAWSON,  Sir  HARRY  LA« 
SON  WEBSTER,   Viscount   Buknham  ^ 
(1862-1933),  newspaper  proprietor.    [See 
Lawson.] 

LINDSAY,  DAVID  ALEXANDER 
EDWARD,  twenty-seventh  Earl  of 
Crawford  and  tenth  Earl  of  Balcarres 
(1871-1940),  politician  and  art  connois- 
seur, was  born  at  Dunecht  House,  Aber- 
deen, 10  October  1871,  the  eldest  of  the 
six  sons  of  James  Ludovic,  twenty-sixth 
Earl  of  Crawford  and  ninth  Earl  of  Bal- 
carres, astronomer,  collector,  and  biblio- 
phile [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Emily  Florence, 
second  daughter  of  Colonel  Edward  Bootle 
WUbraham.  He  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
was  president  of  the  Union  in  1894.  At 
the  general  election  of  1895  he  entered 
parhament  as  conservative  member  for 
the  Chorley  division  of  Lancashire  (in 
which  Haigh  Hall,  then  the  family  seat, 
is  situated),  and  he  continued  to  represent 
it  until  his  succession  to  the  peerage  in 
1913,  being  known  as  Lord  Balcarres  be- 
fore that  date.  He  was  an  active  politi- 
cian, and  served  as  a  party  whip  from 
1903  to  1913.   On  the  outbreak  of  war  in 


536 


D.N.B.  1981-1»40 


Lindsay,  W.  M. 


1914  he  enlisted,  without  disclosing  his 
identity,  as  a  private  in  the  Royal  Army 
Medical  Corps,  and  served  for  several 
months  before  being  identified  and  com- 
missioned as  second  lieutenant.  In  July 
1916  he  was  extracted  from  the  army, 
much  against  his  will,  in  order  to  enter 
the  Cabinet  as  president  of  the  Board  of 
.Vgriculture  and  Fisheries,  and  was  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council.  Subsequently  he 
became  in  succession  lord  privy  seal  (1916- 
1919),  chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lan- 
caster (1919-1921),  first  commissioner  of 
Works  (1921-1922),  and  unpaid  minister 
of  transport  (1922).  As  party  whip  he  was 
actively  concerned  in  the  negotiations 
with  regard  to  the  conservative  party 
leadership  in  the  House  of  Commons  in 
1011,  and  as  first  commissioner  of  Works 
he  had  the  congenial  task  of  administering 
the  Ancient  Monuments  Act  of  1913. 

On  the  break-up  of  Lloyd  George's 
government  in  1922  Crawford  resigned, 
and  his  active  political  hfe  came  to  an  end. 
But  his  more  characteristic  work  as  a 
representative  of  artistic  interests  then 
began.  Art  had  always  been  one  of  his 
prime  concerns.  He  had  a  fine  collection 
of  pictures  in  his  house  at  7  Audley  Square, 
partly  inherited,  partly  acquired  by  him- 
self. In  1903  he  had  published  a  study  of 
Donatello,  and  in  1909  a  volume  on  The 
Evolution  of  Italian  Sculpture.  He  became 
an  elected  trustee  of  the  British  Museum 
in  1923,  and  was  an  active  member  of  the 
standing  committee.  He  was  chairman  of 
the  Royal  Fine  Art  Commission,  founded 
in  1924.  He  was  also  a  trustee  of  the 
National  Gallery  and  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery,  a  member  of  the  royal  com- 
missions on  historical  manuscripts  and 
historical  monuments  (of  which  latter  he 
became  chairman),  chairman  of  the  Coun- 
cil for  the  Preservation  of  Rural  England, 
a  member  of  the  council  of  the  British 
School  at  Rome,  a  member  and  eventually 
president  (1936)  of  the  Roxburghe  Club, 
and  a  fellow  (1900)  and  eventually 
president  (1924^1929)  of  the  Society  of 
x\ntiquaries.  To  the  Roxburghe  Club 
he  presented  in  1926  an  edition  of  the 
sixteenth-century  school-book,  the  Vul- 
^aria  Puerorum  of  William  Horman  [q.v.], 
with  an  introduction  by  M.  R.  James 

[q.v.]. 

Crawford's  position  as  the  acknowledged 
representative  of  cultural  interests  in 
general  was  recognized  by  many  distinc- 
tions. He  was  appointed  K.T.  in  1921, 
was  chancellor  of  Manchester  University 
from  1923,  and  received  honor^^^y  doctor- 


ates from  the  imiversities  of  St.  Andrews, 
Manchester,  Cambridge,  Edinburgh,  and 
Liverpool.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  (1924),  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford  (1923),  and 
of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Archi- 
tects, and  was  secretary  for  foreign  corre- 
spondence of  the  Royal  Academy. 

Besides  his  early  works  on  artistic  sub- 
jects, Crawford  contributed  a  very  full 
article  on '  Museums  of  Art '  to  the  eleventh 
edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica 
(1911),  and  presidential  addresses  to  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries  {Antiquaries  Jour- 
nal, vols.  v-ix). 

Although  he  occasionally  appeared 
somewhat  brusque  and  dictatorial  in  the 
expression  of  his  opinions,  Crawford  was 
in  fact  open-minded  and  ready  to  accept 
the  views  of  others.  He  was  pleasant  in 
social  intercourse  and  quite  devoid  of  self- 
assertion.  He  married  in  1900  Constance 
Lilian  (died  1947),  youngest  daughter  of 
Sir  Henry  Carstairs  Pelly,  third  baronet, 
member  of  parliament  for  Huntingdon, 
and  had  two  sons  and  six  daughters,  the 
third  of  whom  predeceased  her  father.  He 
died  at  Haigh  Hall,  near  Wigan,  8  March 
1940,  and  was  succeeded  as  twenty -eighth 
earl  by  his  elder  son,  David  Alexander 
Robert  (born  1900). 

The  best  portraits  of  Lord  Crawford  are 
a  half-length  by  Glyn  Philpot  (1913),  in 
the  possession  of  his  heir,  and  a  more 
informal  portrait,  seated,  by  James  Gunn 
(1939)  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
Another  portrait  by  Gunn  is  at  Manchester 
University,  and  the  family  owns  a  head 
in  charcoal  by  G.  F.  Watts,  an  etching  by 
G.  L.  Brockhurst,  and  a  three-quarter- 
length  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt. 

[Antiquaries  Journal,  vol.  xx,  1940;  Obi- 
tuary Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  9,  January  1941  (portrait) ;  Sir  (Joseph) 
Austen  Chamberlain,  Politics  from  Inside, 
1936;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] F.  G.  Kenyon. 

LINDSAY,      WALLACE      MARTIN 

(1858-1937),  classical  scholar,  was  bom  at 
Pittenweem,  Fife,  12  February  1858,  the 
fourth  and  youngest  son  of  Alexander 
Lindsay,  Free  Church  minister  there,  by 
his  wife,  Susan  Irvine  Martin,  and  brother 
of  Thomas  Martin  Lindsay  [q.v.].  From 
Edinburgh  Academy  he  entered  Glasgow 
University  as  first  bursar  at  the  age  of 
sixteen.  In  1877  he  graduated  with  first 
class  honours  in  classics  and  second  class 
honours  in  philosophy  and  proceeded, 
as  Snell  exhibitioner,  to  Balliol  College. 


537 


Lindsay,  W.  M. 


DJ^JB.  1981-1940 


Oxford.  There  he  obtained  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1878)  and  in  liter ae 
humaniores  (1881).  He  studied  for  a  year 
at  Leipzig  University;  on  his  return  he 
was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Jesus  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and,  after  spending  two  years 
as  assistant  in  humanity  at  Edinburgh 
University,  took  up  tutorial  duty  at  Jesus 
in  1884.  There  he  remained  for  fifteen 
years:  in  1899  he  was  appointed  professor 
of  humanity  in  the  university  of  St. 
Andrews,  and  he  was  holding  that  office 
at  the  time  of  his  death  at  St.  Andrews,  as 
the  result  of  a  road  accident,  21  February 
1937.  He  was  unmamed. 

A  rare  combination  of  critical  acumen 
and  untiring  industry  made  Lindsay  one 
of  the  greatest  of  British  Latinists ;  both 
in  philology  and  in  palaeography  he  was 
the  outstanding  figure  of  his  time  and  his 
position  was  recognized  by  election  to 
membership  of  many  of  the  learned 
societies  of  Europe  and  America.  The 
most  striking  characteristic  of  his  work 
was  method.  He  was  an  accomphshed 
Hterary  scholar  of  elegance  and  taste,  but, 
although  he  valued  these  things,  he  de- 
voted his  life  to  the  austere  work  of 
scientific  scholarship.  With  intense  con- 
centration he  confined  himself  to  the 
course  which  was  marked  out  for  him  as 
one  inquiry  led  to  another  as  its  pre- 
Uminary  or  its  complement,  shirking  no 
labour,  however  tedious,  in  the  determina- 
tion to  make  each  step  of  his  advance 
secure. 

Lindsay's  philological  studies  in  Ger- 
many had  brought  him  into  contact  with 
the  new  comparative  methods,  and  the 
first  task  which  he  set  himself  was  a 
scientific  treatment  of  Latin  philology. 
The  Latin  Language  (1894)  was  immedi- 
ately accepted  as  a  standard  work  and 
estabUshed  his  reputation  both  in  Great 
Britain  and  on  the  continent.  He  had 
broken  new  ground  in  using  Celtic  to  illus- 
trate Latin,  and  in  order  to  find  new  early 
Irish  material  he  made  a  search  for  glosses 
in  the  Latin  manuscripts  in  Italian 
libraries.  These  researches  led  to  two  large 
undertakings,  critical  editions  of  Martial 
(1903)  and  Plautus  (1904-1905),  and  to 
several  ancillary  studies.  Plautus  involved 
the  preparation  of  editions  of  the  lexico- 
graphers. Nonius  (1902)  and  Festus  (1912), 
and  of  Isidore's  Etymologiae  (1911).  Study 
of  manuscripts  had  shown  him  that  much 
detailed  work  in  palaeography  remained 
to  be  done,  and  in  a  series  of  monographs, 
culminating  in  Notae  Latinae  (1915),  which 
collected    the    abbreviation-symbols    of 


early  Latin  manuscripts,  he  continued  tl 
work  of  Traube  and  recorded  the  fruits 
investigations  in  most  of  the  continent 
Ubraries.  Festus  had  suggested  a  nel 
study,  that  of  the  medieval  glossaries 
a  source  for  supplementing  the  text ;  pui 
suing  this  with  characteristic  thorough- 
ness, he  exposed  the  origin  and  nature  of 
the  glossaries  and,  with  collaborators,  pro- 
duced the  five  volumes  of  Glossaria  Latina 
(1926-1932).  In  the  midst  of  this  vast 
labour  he  found  time  to  return  not  only  to 
the  dramatists,  producing  Early  Latin  Verse 
(1922)  and  an  edition  of  Terence  (1926), 
but  also  to  palaeography,  conducting  from 
1922  to  1929  a  new  journal,  Palaeographia 
Latina  (6  vols.),  mostly  written  by  him- 
self, and  in  1928  becoming  co-editor  of  the 
Italian  Monumenti  Palaeografici  Veronesi, 
of  which  Part  II  (1934)  was  almost  whollj 
his  work.  To  British  and  foreign  journa 
he  contributed  a  steady  stream  of  article 
and  notes  distinguished  by  alertness 
observation  and  by  verve  of  style. 

Lindsay  was  always  ready  to  help 
interested  student,  but,  although  he  som^ 
times  knew  more  about  his  pupils  tl 
they  imagined,  he  had  little  patience  wit 
routine  teaching,  and  university  busine 
did  not  appeal  to  him.  He  loved  tl 
country  and  the  open  air,  and  in  vacatioi 
when  he  was  not  abroad,  was  always 
the  Highlands,  taking  long  walks  on  tl 
hills.  He  knew  his  own  abilities,  but  nev^ 
paraded  them;  he  made  no  pretence 
omniscience  and  was  generous  in  appi 
elation  of  other  men's  work.  He  was 
dry-as-dust  pedant,  but  fuU  of  wit  and 
his  young  days  a  hvely  companion ;  aft 
he  left  Oxford,  deafness  cut  him  off  moi 
and  more  from  society  and  from  tl 
pleasures  of  golf  and  music,  but  he  neve 
lost  his  gaiety  and  zest.  In  his  eightiet 
year  he  was  as  debonair  as  ever  and 
the  vigour,  in  mind  and  body,  of  a  yoi 
man. 

Lindsay  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Jesus  CoUege,  Oxford,  in  1928,  and  a 
fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1905.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Glasgow,  Heidelberg,  Dublin, 
and  Groningen. 

[The  Times,  22  February  1937;  H.  J.  Rose, 
Wallace  Martin  Lindsay,  1858-1937  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  Academy  (embodying 
a  memorandum  and  a  bibliography  by  Lind- 
say himself),  vol.  xxiii,  1937 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] C.  J.  FOKDYCE. 

LIPTON,  Sir  THOMAS  JOHNSTONE, 
baronet  (1850-1931),  grocer  and  yachts- 


588 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lipton 


man,  was  bom  in  a  tenement  house  in 
Glasgow  10  May  1850,  the  only  surviving 
son  of  Thomas  Lipton.  The  father,  a  poor 
labourer  from  Shannock  Green  Mills,  near 
Clones,  CO.  Monaghan,  had  left  Ireland 
\s  ith  his  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of  Frank 
Jolmstone,  of  Kilrid,  Clones,  because  of 
the  potato  famine,  and  in  Glasgow  worked 
successively  in  a  warehouse  and  as  time- 
keeper in  a  cotton-mill,  before  opening  a 
siTiall  grocer's  shop.  In  this  enterprise  he 
was  aided  by  his  wife,  a  shrewd  and  kindly 
woman,  whose  salutary  example  was  fre- 
quently praised  by  her  son  in  the  days  of 
liis  prosperity. 

Lipton  was  already  at  work  in  his 
father's  shop  at  the  age  of  nine.  A  year 
or  two  later  he  was  employed  at  half  a 
crown  a  week  by  a  stationer.  He  quickly 
moved  on  to  a  shirt  shop,  where  he  earned 
four  shillings,  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
sailed  in  a  Bums  Uner  for  the  United 
States  of  America,  landing  there  with  no 
more  than  thirty  shillings  in  his  pocket. 
He  secured  employment  first  on  a  Virginia 
tobacco  plantation  and  later  in  the  rice- 
fields  of  South  Carolina.  Tiring  of  this 
heavy  drudgery,  he  eventually  stowed 
away  in  a  ship  bound  from  Charleston  to 
New  York,  revealing  his  presence  en  route 
with  an  offer  to  work.  In  New  York  he 
worked  in  a  big  grocer's  shop ;  but  at  the 
age  of  twenty  he  became  homesick,  saved 
up  his  passage  money,  and  returned  to 
Glasgow.  In  keeping  with  that  penchant 
for  publicity  which  was  later  to  contribute 
so  much  towards  the  foundation  of  his 
fortunes,  he  timed  his  return  for  a  Satur- 
day afternoon,  when  the  neighbours,  free 
from  work,  were  able  to  see  him  drive  up 
to  his  parents'  door  in  a  cab,  with  a 
rocking-chair  and  a  barrel  of  flour  ostenta- 
tiously displayed  on  the  roof. 

Lipton  at  once  began  work  in  his  father's 
grocery  store.  Within  the  year  he  had 
raised  £100,  and  on  his  twenty-first  birth- 
day (1871)  he  opened  his  own  shop  in 
Stobcross  Street,  Glasgow.  By  obtaining 
supplies  of  butter,  bacon,  and  eggs  from 
Ireland  he  was  able  to  ehminate  middle- 
men's profits  and  so  to  undersell  his  rivals. 
His  premises  were  kept  scrupulously  clean 
and  he  worked  long  hours.  He  operated 
on  a  cash  basis,  made  many  journeys  to 
Ireland  for  stock,  and  earned  a  reputation 
as  an  enterprising  tradesman,  supplying 
good  food  at  a  low  price. 

At  the  age  of  twenty -four  Lipton  opened 
his  second  shop,  and  others  followed  in 
rapid  succession.  He  was  a  pioneer  in  the 
art  of  publicity,  devising  one  advertising 


scheme  after  another,  amusing  the  public 
and  spreading  his  name  abroad.  He  would 
stage  an  elaborate  procession  for  the  open- 
ing of  a  new  shop,  publicly  parade  through 
the  streets  of  Glasgow  a  monster  cheese, 
which,  when  cut  by  students,  was  found 
to  contain  gold  coins,  or  hire  a  balloonist 
to  drop  leaflets  entitling  the  holders  to 
substantial  prizes. 

This  pubUcity  was  backed  up  by  sound 
stock  and  fair  prices.  Lipton  opened  up 
trade  in  London  (to  which  he  transferred 
his  firm's  headquarters  in  1889),  and  so 
greatly  expanded  his  business  that  at  the 
age  of  thirty  he  was  a  millionaire.  He  ran 
his  own  printing  and  paper-bag  works,  and 
in  Chicago  set  up  a  factory  capable  of 
killing  and  dressing  300  to  400  pigs  a  day. 
This  was  followed  by  another  plant  in  the 
same  city  which  had  a  daily  output  of 
4,000  hogs.  In  1889  Lipton  acquired  his 
own  tea  plantations  in  Ceylon. 

Up  to  1897  Lipton  had  given  the  whole 
of  his  energies  to  business  and  had  had 
virtually  no  outside  interests.  He  now 
began  to  dispense  some  of  his  great  wealth 
in  munificent  charity,  and  to  show  that 
keenness  for  yacht-racing  which  was  to 
win  him  an  international  reputation  in 
sporting  circles. 

In  this  year  (1897)  the  Princess  of  Wales 
had  a  scheme  for  the  provision  of  meals 
for  poor  people,  but  was  £25,000  short  of 
the  £30,000  which  she  needed.  Lipton 
provided  it,  and  a  few  years  later  when 
she  sponsored  a  poor  people's  restaurant, 
he  provided  the  whole  cost  of  £100,000. 

The  year  1898  brought  Lipton  a  knight- 
hood and  saw  the  formation  of  the  Umited 
liability  company,  Lipton,  Ltd.,  and  the 
purchase  of  the  steam  yacht  Erin,  on 
board  which  he  was  to  entertain  many 
distinguished  people,  including  King  Ed- 
ward VII. 

In  1899  Lipton  issued  his  first  challenge 
for  the  America's  cup  with  the  yacht 
Shamrock  I.  He  was  defeated  then,  and 
again  year  after  year,  but  yacht-racing 
became  an  all-absorbing  interest  on  which 
he  lavished  a  fortune.  His  numerous 
attempts  on  the  cup  over  a  period  of  thirty 
years  cost  him  something  Uke  £1,000,000. 
He  did  not  take  the  helm  himself,  but 
employed  professional  skippers  (notably 
Sycamore  and  Heard)  and  was  represented 
on  board  by  his  friend  Colonel  Duncan 
NeUl.  Although  Lipton  never  won  the  cup 
he  earned  from  the  Americans  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  'the  world's  best  loser' ;  and 
in  1930,  after  his  fifth  challenge,  with 
Shamrock  V,  they  presented  him  with  a 


639 


Lipton 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


gold  cup  and  an  album  of  signatures  in 
appreciation  of  his  sportsmanship. 

Lipton  was  appointed  K.C.V.O.  in  1901 
and  created  a  baronet  in  the  following  year. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  plied  the 
Erin  between  Marseilles  and  Salonica  with 
medical  supplies  until  she  was  sunk  by  a 
submarine.  He  kept  up  his  connexion 
with  Lipton,  Ltd.  until  1927,  when  he 
retired,  retaining  the  title  of  life  president. 
He  died  at  his  home  in  London  2  October 
1931.  He  was  unmarried,  and  bequeathed 
most  of  his  fortune  to  charitable  institu- 
tions in  Glasgow. 

Lipton  will  be  remembered  as  one  of 
the  most  successful  business  men  of  his 
time,  and  a  devotee  of  the  great  sport  of 
yachting,  whose  splendid  hospitality,  good 
humour,  and  inability  to  accept  defeat 
made  him  virtually  an  ambassador  of 
goodwill  from  Great  Britain  to  America. 
In  business  he  was  shrewd,  hard-working, 
and  honest,  but  he  owed  his  success  to  an 
association  of  those  qualities  with  a  per- 
ception of  the  power  of  advertising  which 
far  outstripped  that  of  most  of  his  con- 
temporaries. During  his  yacht-racing 
period,  which  embraced  the  last  thirty- 
three  years  of  his  life,  he  became  known 
as  a  lavish  and  genial  host,  whose  lifelong 
abstention  from  alcohol  and  tobacco  in  no 
way  impaired  his  hospitality.  His  unusual 
insight  into  other  men's  mental  processes 
was  of  the  highest  use  in  the  business  and 
social  worlds  ahke.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  City  lieutenancy,  and  was  at  one  time 
honorary  colonel  of  the  6th  volunteer 
battalion,  Highland  Light  Infantry. 

Of  a  portrait  of  Lipton  by  (Sir)  Hubert  von 
Herkomer  1897  the  present  whereabouts 
are  unknown;  a  drawing  by  Edouard 
Pizzella,  of  New  York,  hangs  in  the  head 
offices  of  Lipton,  Ltd.,  in  London.  A  car- 
toon of  him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity 
Fair  19  September  1901. 

[The  Times,  3  October  1931 ;  T.  C.  Bridges 
and  H.  H.  Tiltman,  Kings  of  Commerce,  1928 ; 
Sir  T.  J.  Lipton,  Leaves  from  the  Lipton  Logs, 
1931 ;  Literary  Digest,  17  October  1931 ;  Allied 
Staff  Magazine,  December  1931 ;  private  in- 
formation.] Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

LOCK,  WALTER  (1846-1933),  warden 
of  Keble  College,  Oxford,  and  professor  of 
divinity,  was  born  at  Dorchester,  Dorset, 
14  July  1846,  the  second  son  of  Henry 
Lock,  solicitor,  of  Dorchester,  and  a  mem- 
ber of  a  well-knoAvn  family  there,  by  his 
wife,  Susannah  Ware,  daughter  of  William 
May,  of  Bridgwater.  He  was  educated  at 
Marlborough,  whence  he  gained  a  scholar- 


ship at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford.  H| 
was  awarded  a  first  class  in  classic 
moderations  (1867)  and  in  literae  humar 
iores  (1869),  and  won  the  Hertford  (1867 
and  Craven  (1870)  scholarships.  In  1871 
was  president  of  the  Union.  In  1869 
had  been  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Magda 
len  College,  which  he  held  imtil  1892,  an^ 
in  1870  to  one  of  the  fu-st  'tutorships' 
Keble  College,  of  which  he  became  sul 
warden  in  1881.  The  religious  and  theo- 
logical standpoint  of  this  very  liberally 
minded  follower  of  the  original  Tractarians 
is  revealed  in  his  essay  on  'The  Church' 
in  Lux  Mundi  (1889),  John  Keble,  a  Bio- 
graphy (1893),  and  The  Bible  and  Christian 
Life  (1905).  At  the  end  of  the  century  he 
was  appointed  the  first  general  editor  of 
the  Westminster  Commentaries  on  the  Re- 
vised Version,  but  he  best  showed  his 
own  matured  cautious  (sometimes  over- 
cautious) scholarship  in  his  Critical  and 
Exegetical  Commentary  on  the  Pastoral 
Epistles  (1924).  He  was  ordained  deacoi 
in  1872  and  priest  in  1873,  and  in  18t 
was  appointed  Dean  Ireland's  professor  > 
exegesis  of  Holy  Scripture.  He  held  tl 
chair  until  1919  when  his  election  to  tl 
Lady  Margaret  professorship  of  divinity 
(with  a  canonry  at  Christ  Church)  heralde 
his  resignation  in  1920  of  the  wardenshij 
of  Keble  College  which  he  had  held  sine 
1897.  From  the  Lady  Margaret  chair 
retired  in  1927,  having  been  elected  to 
honorary  fellowship  at  Magdalen  in  1897 
and  at  Corpus  Christi  in  1920,  and  to 
honorary  membership  of  the  council  of 
Keble  College  in  the  last  named  year. 

In  1892  Lock  married  Jane  Cecil,  eldest 
daughter  of  Charles  Heathcote  Campion, 
rector  of  Westmeston,  Sussex,  and  had 
one  son  and  four  daughters.  He  died  at 
Oxford  12  August  1933. 

Whether  as  a  member  of  the  Hebdo- 
madal Council,  on  which  he  served  from 
1896  to  1919,  or  as  chairman  of  the  board 
of  faculty  of  theology,  or  as  a  member  of 
the  council  of  St.  Hugh's  Hall  (later  Col- 
lege), Oxford,  Lock  showed  himself  not 
unsympathetic  to  new  ideas  and  new 
causes.  He  supported  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  women  and  strove  successfully  for 
the  abolition  of  the  denominational  re- 
strictions on  admittance  to  the  degrees  of 
B.D.  and  D.D.  He  was  to  the  end  a  lucid 
lecturer  and  a  compelling  preacher:  his 
seminars  were  attended  by  most  post- 
graduate theological  students.  At  Keble 
College,  throughout  his  fifty  years  of  ser- 
vice, his  lovable  personality,  deternuned 
tactfulness,  and  directive  energy  shaped 


540 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lodge,  O.  J. 


its  destiny  and  profoundly  influenced  its 
members. 

A  portrait  of  Lock  by  C.  W.  Furse 
(1895)  hangs  in  the  hall  of  Keble  College. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1933;  The  Clock 
Tower  (magazine  of  the  Keble  Association), 
November  1933 ;  Oxford  Magazine,  12  October 
1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  C.  Simpson. 

LODGE,  ELEANOR  CONSTANCE 

(1869-1936),  liistorian  and  principal  of 
Westfield  College,  London,  was  born  at 
Hanley,  Staffordshire,  18  September  1869, 
the  youngest  child  and  only  daughter  of 
OUver  Lodge,  merchant,  afterwards  of 
Wolstanton,  Staffordshire,  by  his  wife, 
Grace,  youngest  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
Joseph  Heath.  Of  the  eight  brothers  who 
preceded  her  the  eldest  was  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge  [q.v.]  and  the  fotirth  Sir  Richard 
Lodge  [q.v.].  Educated  at  private  schools, 
the  turning-point  in  her  life  came  in  1890 
when  she  went  up  to  Lady  Margaret  Hall, 
Oxford,  taking  the  final  honour  school  of 
modern  history  in  1894.  She  found  lasting 
happiness  in  her  chosen  subject,  in  out- 
door sports,  and  in  congenial  friendships. 
At  the  Ecole  des  Chartes  and  the  Ecole 
des  Hautes  Etudes  in  Paris  (1898-1899) 
she  began  researches  into  the  English  rule 
in  Gascony,  which  resulted  in  several  im- 
portant studies,  especially  'The  Estates 
of  the  Archbishop  and  Chapter  of  Saint- 
Andre  of  Bordeaux  under  English  Rule', 
published  in  Oxford  Studies  in  Social  and 
Legal  History,  vol.  iii  (1912),  and  The 
English  Rule  in  Gascony  (1926).  She  also 
published  other  notable  books  as  well  as 
articles  in  British  Academy  Social  and 
Economic  Records  (1927)  and  the  Cam- 
bridge Medieval  History,  vol.  v  (1926). 
Many  vacations  were  spent  working 
in  French  archives  and  exploring  the 
remote  countryside  on  foot  or  bicycle.  In 
the  spring  of  1918  she  took  charge  of  the 
Oxford  Women's  Canteens  for  French 
Soldiers  in  Champagne,  shared  in  the  re- 
treat before  the  Germans,  and  then  nursed 
in  Paris. 

Appointed  librarian  of  Lady  Margaret 
Hall  in  1895,  Miss  Lodge  was  history  tutor 
from  1899  to  1921,  becoming  vice-principal 
also  in  1906.  She  played  an  important 
part  in  the  second  stage  of  the  develop- 
ment of  university  and  college  life  for 
women  in  Oxford.  She  gave  to  her  pupils 
her  own  ardent  desire  for  knowledge  and 
regard  for  thoroughness  and  truth;  she 
worked  wholeheartedly  for  the  welfare  of 
Lady  Margaret  Hall  and  furthered  by  her 


statesmanship  the  admission  in  1920  of 
women  as  fuU  members  of  the  university. 
From  1921  to  1931  Miss  Lodge  was 
principal  of  Westfield  College,  Hainpstead, 
and  here  too  she  strengthened  her  college 
internally,  furthering  in  particular  the 
building  of  the  chai)el  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  library,  and  she  helped  to 
secure  its  recognition  as  one  of  eight  col- 
leges forming  the  central  part  of  the  uni- 
versity of  London.  She  gave  public  service 
on  the  Hampstead  borough  council  and 
served  also  on  the  councils  of  educational 
and  learned  bodies,  often  as  president.  In 
1928  she  was  the  first  woman  to  obtain 
the  degree  of  D.Litt.  of  Oxford  University 
and  in  1932  she  was  appointed  C.B.E.  The 
university  of  Liverpool  conferred  upon  her 
the  honorary  degree  of  Litt.D.,  and  she 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Lady 
Margaret  Hall  and  of  Westfield  College. 
She  died  at  Windsor  after  a  long  illness 
1 9  March  1 936 .  Her  vivid  and  spontaneous 
book  of  memories,  Terms  and  Vacations 
(published  posthumously  in  1938),  was  the 
expression  of  her  gratitude  for  all  that  a 
university  education  had  meant  to  her, 
and  revealed  the  simplicity  of  her  charac- 
ter, the  quality  of  her  unselfishness,  her 
tireless  energy,  and  her  keen  sense  of 
humour.  A  portrait-head  in  chalk  by 
L,  Leslie  Brooke  (1916)  and  an  oil-painting 
by  J.  B.  Souter  (1931)  are  at  Lady  Mar- 
garet Hall,  and  an  oil-painting  by  (Sir) 
G.  F.  Kelly  hangs  at  Westfield  CoUege. 

[E.  C.  Lodge,  Terms  and  Vacations,  edited 
by  Janet  Spens,  1938 ;  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Past 
Years,  1931;  Lady  Margaret  Hall:  A  Short 
History,  1923 ;  University  and  college  reports, 
calendars,  registers,  and  journals;  personal 
knowledge.]  Evelyn  Jamison. 

LODGE,      Sir     OLIVER      JOSEPH 

(1851-1940),  scientist  and  first  principal 
of  Birmingham  University,  was  born  at 
PenkhuU,  Staffordshire,  12  June  1851,  the 
eldest  of  the  eight  sons  of  Oliver  Lodge, 
afterwards  of  Wolstanton,  Staffordshire, 
who  had  built  up  a  prosperous  agency  for 
the  supply  of  materials  used  in  the  pottery 
industry.  He  was  brother  of  Sir  Richard 
Lodge  and  of  Eleanor  Constance  Lodge 
[qq.v.].  On  both  the  paternal  and  maternal 
sides,  Lodge  came  of  a  family  of  school- 
masters and  clergymen.  His  maternal 
grandfather,  Joseph  Heath,  was  head- 
master of  a  school  at  Lucton  in  Hereford- 
shire, and  his  paternal  grandfather,  Oliver 
Lodge  (who  was  the  father  of  a  family  of 
twenty -five  children.  Lodge's  father  being 
the  twenty-third),  was  a  native  of  Ireland 


541 


Lodge,  O.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


and  became  incumbent  of  Barking  in 
Essex  and  headmaster  of  Barking  School. 
Unremitting  industry  was  the  note  of  the 
PenkhuU  household:  Lodge's  mother, 
Grace,  youngest  daughter  of  Joseph  Heath, 
was  a  remarkable  woman  who  could  find 
time  to  rear  a  large  family,  to  manage  a 
country  house  and  farm,  to  keep  the  books 
of  her  husband's  business,  and  to  take  up, 
as  a  hobby,  photography  by  the  wet  pro- 
cess. 

At  eight  years  of  age  Lodge  entered 
Newport  Grammar  School  in  Shropshire 
where  he  spent  four  unhappy  years  and 
was  then  transferred  as  a  private  pupil  to 
the  charge  of  the  rector  of  Combs  in  Suf- 
folk. At  fourteen  his  schooldays  ended; 
his  father  wished  him  to  inherit  the  agency 
which  he  had  established  and,  until  his 
twenty-second  year,  Lodge  was  deeply 
immersed  in  the  routine  of  business,  but 
not  wholly,  for  a  maternal  aunt,  who  had 
already  introduced  him  to  some  know- 
ledge of  astronomy,  invited  him  periodi- 
cally to  stay  in  London,  where  he  attended 
classes  in  chemistry  and  geology  and, 
above  all,  a  course  of  lectures  on  heat 
given  by  John  Tyndall  [q.v.].  He  used  to 
call  this  course  an  eye-opener  and  it  prob- 
ably determined  his  future.  He  won  an 
exhibition  under  the  Science  and  Art  De- 
partment and,  his  father  unwillingly  con- 
senting, there  followed  a  period  of  study 
at  the  Royal  College  of  Science  under 
T.  H.  Huxley,  (Sir)  Edward  Frankland, 
and  Frederick  Guthrie  [qq.v.],  and  at 
University  College  under  W.  K.  Clifford 
[q.v.],  Olaus  Henrici,  and  George  Carey 
Foster.  For  some  years  Lodge  filled  a  post 
as  demonstrator  in  physics  in  Carey 
Foster's  laboratory.  During  this  period 
he  graduated  D.Sc.  (1877)  and  published 
papers  on  the  flow  of  electricity  in  plane 
sheets,  on  models  illustrating  the  flow 
of  electricity  through  various  media, 
on  thermo-electricity,  on  the  induction 
balance  of  D.  E.  Hughes  [q.v.],  on  thermal 
conductivity,  and  on  the  foundations  of 
mechanics.  In  1881  Lodge  was  appointed 
to  the  chair  of  physics  at  the  newly 
foimded  University  College  in  Liverpool. 
During  his  tenure  of  this  chair  he  carried 
out  those  researches  which  established  his 
reputation  as  a  physicist  and  for  which 
the  Royal  Society  (of  which  he  had  been 
elected  a  fellow  in  1887)  in  1898  awarded 
him  its  Rumford  medal. 

Forward-looking  as  was  Lodge's  mind, 
he  was  essentially  a  child  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  in  nothing  is  this  more  appar- 
ent than  in  his  devotion  to  the  concept 


of  an  ether.  His  great  experiments  are 
intimately  related  to  this  concept  and  fall 
into  two  categories,  wireless  and  the 
relative  motion  of  matter  and  ether. 

Lodge's  contributions  to  wireless  were 
many  and  some  of  them  were  fundamental. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  his  early  experi- 
ments would  have  led  him  to  the  discovery 
of  electro-magnetic  radiation  had  he  not 
been  anticipated  by  Heinrich  Hertz;  in 
his  discourse  to  the  Royal  Institution  in 
1891  he  showed  experiments  which  fore- 
shadowed the  ultra  short-wave  advances 
of  a  later  generation;  his  discovery  that 
metals  in  loose  contact  tend  to  stick  to- 
gether when  electro-magnetic  radiation 
falls  upon  them  formed  the  basis  for  the 
construction  of  a  primitive  receiver ;  and 
his  famous  patent  of  1897  diagnosed  the 
disease  which  afflicted  early  transmitters 
and  prescribed  the  remedy  therefor ;  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  his  experiments 
and  investigations  were  the  major  influ- 
ence in  making  spark  telegraphy  possible. 

So  with  Lodge's  heroic  experiments  on 
the  relative  motion  of  matter  and  ether. 
Interest  in  the  ether  was  reawakened  by 
the  announcement  of  the  principle  of  inter- 
ference by  Thomas  Young  [q.v.]  in  1801 
and,  until  the  closing  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  it  was  considered  a  doubt- 
ful question  whether  the  ether  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  moving  matter  was  or 
was  not  carried  along  by  the  moving 
matter ;  an  historic  experiment  by  Albert 
Abraham  Michelson  and  Edward  William 
Morley  in  1887  was  considered  to  be  de- 
cisive in  favour  of  a  convected  ether. 
Lodge,  however,  in  1893  mounted  two 
parallel  steel  disks,  three  feet  in  diameter 
and  one  inch  apart,  on  a  conunon  vertical 
axis,  and  spun  them  round  at  a  very  high 
speed,  sending  two  rays  of  light  in  opposite 
directions  round  the  space  between  the 
disks  and  observing  their  interference. 
The  experiment  was  sensitive  and  the 
answer  was  clear ;  the  ether  was  not  carried 
along  in  the  space  between  the  disks.  This 
fundamental  contradiction  served  to  usher 
in  a  new  era  of  theory,  which  culminated 
in  the  reign  of  relativity. 

In  1900  Lodge  was  appointed  principal 
of  the  new  university  of  Birmingham — 
the  first  of  the  modern  EngUsh  civic  uni- 
versities to  receive  a  charter — and  his 
active  career  as  an  experimental  physicist 
ended.  His  influence  in  shaping  the  de- 
velopment of  the  young  university  was 
profound  and  characteristic.  He  had 
neither  taste  nor  capacity  for  the  day-to 
day  details  of  routine  administration,  ani* 


542 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lodge,  R. 


indeed,  he  made  it  a  condition  of  his 
appointment  that  such  matters  should  be 
left  in  the  hands  of  the  vice-principal.  But 
Lodge  had  strong  views  on  the  framing  of 
the  general  policy  of  a  modern  university, 
and  it  is  in  the  main  due  to  his  wise  and 
skilful  guidance  that  the  university  of 
Birmingham  has  become  the  university 
of  the  Midlands  and  that  its  ideals  have 
not  been  narrowed  by  over-devotion  to 
specialization,  whether  in  the  sciences  or 
in  humanist  studies. 

The  British  Association  played  a  con- 
siderable part  in  Lodge's  scientific  and 
social  life,  and  between  his  first  meeting, 
the  Bradford  meeting  of  1873,  and  his  last, 
the  Blackpool  meeting  of  1936,  there  were 
very  few  meetings  which  he  missed.  In 
1891  he  was  president  of  Section  A  (mathe- 
matics and  physics),  and  at  the  Birming- 
ham meeting  of  1913  he  was  president  of 
the  association. 

Two  major  interests  dominated  Lodge's 
intellectual  life,  physical  and  psychical 
research.  His  active  interest  in  psychic 
phenomena  dates  from  the  Liverpool 
period  where,  about  1883,  he  carried  out 
some  pioneer  experiments  in  thought- 
transference,  and  his  investigations  of  the 
famous  mediums,  Mrs.  Piper  and  Eusapia 
Palladino,  are  of  great  importance.  Lodge 
paid  close  attention  to  the  mental  and 
physical  sides  of  psychical  research;  in 
order  to  explain  Mrs,  Piper's  results  an 
appeal  to  telepathy  at  least  was  necessary, 
whereas  in  the  investigation  of  Eusapia 
Palladino,  Lodge  and  Charles  Richet,  with 
whom  he  worked,  were  convinced  that 
they  had  witnessed  instances  of  telekine- 
sis. In  the  opinion  of  a  competent  judge 
Lodge's  influence  has  been  greater  as  a 
philosopher  of  psychical  research  than  as 
a  practical  investigator.  He  concluded,  on 
the  evidence  observed  by  him,  that  the 
mind  survives  the  dissolution  of  the  body, 
and  he  consistently  expounded  the  instru- 
ment theory  of  the  relation  between  body 
and  mind. 

Lodge  wrote  many  books  on  many  sub- 
jects. Of  his  scientific  works  mention  may 
be  made  of  Signalling  across  Space  without 
Wires  (1897),  The  Ether  of  Space  (1909), 
Talks  about  Wireless  (1925),  and  Advancing 
Science  (1931):  of  his  works  on  psychical 
research  Raymond  (1916)  caught  the  pub- 
lic ear,  but  My  Philosophy  (1933)  contains 
the  latest  expression  of  his  considered 
views  on  life  generally.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  thirteen  imiver- 
sities;  was  president  of  the  Physical 
Society  (1899-1900)  and  of  the  Society  for 


Psychical  Research  (1901-1904  and  1932) ; 
and  was  knighted  in  1902.  He  resigned 
his  post  of  principal  of  the  university  of 
Birmingham  in  1919  when,  proposing  to 
devote  the  rest  of  his  life  to  the  study  of 
the  ether  of  space,  he  retired  to  Lake,  near 
Salisbury.  There  he  died  22  August  1940. 

In  1877  Lodge  married  Mary  Fanny 
Alexander  (died  1929),  daughter  of  a  sea- 
captain,  Alexander  Marshall ;  they  had  six 
sons  and  six  daughters.  The  youngest  son, 
Raymond,  was  killed  in  the  war  of  1914- 
1918. 

There  are  two  portraits  of  Lodge  painted 
by  Sir  George  Reid ;  one  is  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  university  of  Birmingham,  the 
other  is  at  Flore  House,  Northampton.  A 
third  portrait,  painted  by  Bernard  Munns, 
is  in  the  Birmingham  City  Art  Gallery. 
A  marble  bust  by  C.  J.  Allen  is  in  the 
University  Library,  Liverpool.  A  cartoon 
by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  4 
February  1904. 

[Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Past  Years.  An  Auto- 
biography, 1931 ;  Letters  from  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
compiled  and  annotated  by  J.  A.  Hill,  1932 ; 
Theodore  Besterman,  A  Bibliography  of  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge,  1935 ;  Olntuary  Notices  of  Fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  10,  December  1941 
(portrait) ;  Proceedings  of  the  Physical  Society, 
vol.  liii,  1941  (portrait) ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.]       Allan  Ferguson. 

LODGE,  Sir  RICHARD  (1855-1936), 
historian  and  teacher,  was  born  at  Penk- 
huU,  Staffordshire,  20  June  1855,  the 
fourth  son  of  Oliver  Lodge,  merchant, 
afterwards  of  Wolstanton,  Staffordshire, 
by  his  wife,  Grace  Heath.  He  was  brother 
of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  Eleanor  Constance 
Lodge  [qq.v.].  Educated  at  Christ's  Hos- 
pital, he  came  up  in  1874  to  Balliol  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  as  an  exhibitioner,  being 
awarded  a  Brackenbury  scholarship  the 
following  year.  After  winning  the  Stan- 
hope (1875)  and  the  Lothian  (1876)  essay 
prizes,  he  was  awarded  a  first  class  in 
modern  history  in  1877  and  elected  a  fel- 
low of  Brasenose  College  in  1878.  He 
acted  first  as  lecturer  and  then  as  tutor  in 
modern  history  and  became  vice-principal 
in  1891.  In  1894  he  was  appointed  first 
professor  of  modern  history  at  the  univer- 
sity of  Glasgow,  remaining  there  until 
1899,  when  he  succeeded  (Sir)  G.  W.  Pro- 
thero  [q.v.]  in  the  chair  of  modern  history 
at  Edinburgh  and  retained  the  professor- 
ship until  liis  retirement  in  1925.  From 
1911  to  1925  he  was  dean  of  the  faculty 
of  arts. 

Between  1878  and  1894  Lodge  was  one 
of  a  small  group  of  college  history  tutors, 


548 


Lodge,  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


which  included  Edward  Armstrong  [q.v.], 
A.  L.  Smith  [q.v.],  A.  H.  Johnson,  and 
C.  R.  L.  Fletcher  [q.v.],  who,  by  their 
lectures,  teaching,  organizing  ability,  and 
disciphned  enthusiasm,  made  the  honour 
school  of  modern  history  at  Oxford.  Lodge 
shared  with  his  brother  Oliver  a  superb 
gift  of  lucid  exposition,  which  he  took  with 
him  in  the  maturity  of  his  powers  both  to 
Glasgow  and  to  Edinburgh.  His  influence 
on,  and  his  interest  in,  his  students  of 
every  type  and  of  both  sexes  were  deep 
and  sincere,  notably  in  imparting  a  high 
standard  of  critical  tests  in  the  handling 
of  historical  material  and  a  realization  of 
the  importance  of  truth  in  history  as  the 
basis  of  any  sound  citizenship.  His  tall, 
lean  figure  with  its  fine  blue  eyes  and  irre- 
sistible smile  enhanced  the  spoken  word 
whether  in  lecturing  or  in  personal  inter- 
course. Lodge  had,  also,  a  marked  capa- 
city for  administration  which  he  proved 
both  in  his  college  at  Oxford  and  parti- 
cularly at  Edinburgh,  where  his  impressive 
personality  and  capacity  for  work  made 
him  a  notable  influence  both  in  the  uni- 
versity and  in  many  spheres  of  civic  life. 
A  convinced  liberal  aU  his  life,  he  had 
become  one  of  the  leading  public  figures 
in  Scotland  by  the  time  of  his  retire- 
ment. 

Lodge  left  Edinburgh  to  reside  at  Har- 
penden,  Hertfordshire,  He  employed  his 
retirement  up  to  his  last  illness  in  original 
and  industrious  research  on  the  manu- 
script sources  of  British  foreign  policy 
from  1688  to  1760.  His  chief  printed 
works  are  A  History  of  Modern  Europe 
(from  1453  to  1878),  which  went  through 
many  editions  after  its  appearance  in 
1885 ;  Richelieu  (1896) ;  The  Close  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  1273-1494  (1901);  vol. 
viii  (1660-1702)  of  Longman's  Political 
History  of  England  (1910) ;  Great  Britain 
and  Prussia  in  the  Eighteenth  Century 
(1923,  the  Ford  lectures  for  1921-1922); 
Studies  in  Eighteenth-Century  Diplomacy, 
1740-1748  (1930);  The  Private  Correspon- 
dence of  Sir  Benjamin  Keene  (1933) ;  and 
'The  College  under  the  Later  Stuarts' 
{Brasenose  College  Quatercentenary  Mono- 
graphs, vol.  ii,  part  i,  1909). 

Lodge  was  knighted  in  1917  for  his 
academic  and  public  services.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Glasgow  (1905),  Manchester  (1912),  and 
Edinburgh  (1926),  and  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Brasenose  College 
(1911),  a  distinction  which  gave  him  un- 
quaUfled  satisfaction,  but  he  was  certainly 
disappointed  in  1916  at  not  being  ap- 


pointed principal  of  Edinburgh  University 
as  successor  to  Sir  WiUiam  Turner.  The 
vacancy  in  the  headship  of  Brasenose 
when  Charles  Henry  Sampson  succeeded 
Charles  Buller  Heberden  as  principal  in 
1920  came  too  late  to  cause  Lodge  dis- 
appointment. He  was  president  of  the 
Royal  Historical  Society  from  1929  to 
1933.  He  married  in  1882  Annie  Gwendo- 
line, daughter  of  Henry  Morgan,  of  Nor- 
wich, who  survived  him.  They  had 
three  sons,  of  whom  the  eldest  and 
youngest  predeceased  their  father,  the 
youngest  having  been  killed  in  the  war 
of  1914-1918,  and  four  daughters,  of 
whom  the  eldest  predeceased  her  father. 
He  died  in  London  after  an  operation 
2  August  1936, 

On  his  retirement  from  Edinburgh 
Lodge  was  presented  with  his  portrait  (by 
WilUam  Nicholson),  a  replica  of  which  now 
hangs  in  the  university ;  it  was  subscribed 
for  by  several  hundred  contributors  from 
both  inside  and  outside  the  university, 
and  a  deserved  tribute  was  paid  on  the 
occasion  to  his  services  to  the  university 
and  city. 

[The  Times,  4  and  6  August  1936 ;  Scotsman, 
4  August  1936;  Oxford  Magazine,  29  Octo- 
ber 1936 ;  Margaret  Lodge,  Sir  Richard  Lodge, 
1946 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Chakles  Grant  Robertson. 

LOTHIAN,    eleventh    Marquess    fl 
(1882-1940),    journalist    and    statesman. 
[See  Kerr,  Philip  Henry.] 

LOUISE       CAROLINE      ALBERTA 

(1848-1939),  princess  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  Duchess  of  Argyll,  was  born  at 
Buckingham  Palace  18  March  1848,  the 
sixth  child  and  fourth  daughter  of  Queen 
Victoria.  She  was  the  most  beautiful  and 
not  the  least  gifted  of  the  Queen's  daugh- 
ters, and  her  intelUgence  and  wit  made  her 
a  favourite  with  her  father  and  attracted 
the  notice  of  Carlyle.  In  1871  the  Princess 
married  John  Douglas  Sutherland  Camp- 
bell, Marquess  of  Lome,  who  in  1900  suc- 
ceeded his  father  as  ninth  Duke  of  Argyll 
[q.v.].  She  was  the  first  member  of  the 
royal  family  for  more  than  fifty  years  to 
contract  matrimony  with  a  subject  of  the 
sovereign,  and  the  innovation  (especially 
as  the  bridegroom  was  a  Scotsman)  had 
the  strong  approval  of  the  Queen.  There 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

Princess  Louise  spent  five  years  (18' 
1883)  in  Canada  as  the  consort  of  the 
governor-general,  and  a  memorial  of 
stay  is  the  name  given  to  Lake  Louise  n( 


ie|y 

4.1.A 


544 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Love 


Laffan  in  the  Rocky  Mountains.  After 
their  return  to  this  country,  the  princess 
and  liOrd  Lome  were  able  to  promote  the 
causes  which  they  had  at  heart  with 
singular  unanimity,  as  both  were  endowed 
with  the  same  literary  and  artistic  tastes. 
Leading  an  extremely  quiet  and  retired 
life,  giving  only  small  parties,  eschewing 
royal  functions  as  far  as  possible,  and  not 
showing  over-much  attention  to  the  con- 
ventions of  her  station,  the  princess  wrote 
articles  for  magazines  imder  the  nom  de 
plume  of  'Myra  Fontenoy ',  and  made  her 
home  at  Kensington  Palace  a  rendezvous 
for  artists  and  sculptors,  of  whom  the  chief 
was  Sir  J.  E.  Boehm  [q.v.],  and  who  also 
numbered  among  them  (Sir)  Alfred  Gilbert 
[q.v.],  J.  Seymour  Lucas,  and  Sir  Law- 
rence Alma-Tadema  [q.v.].  Of  the  causes 
to  which  the  princess  gave  her  support  the 
Ladies'  Work  Society,  which  enabled  poor 
ladies  to  gain  a  living  from  needlework, 
was  perhaps  nearest  to  her  heart,  but  far 
more  important  was  the  impetus  which 
she  gave  to  the  education  of  women,  for 
under  her  strong  encouragement  the 
National  Union  for  the  Higher  Education 
of  Women  was  founded  in  1872.  She  was 
its  first  president,  and  the  growth  and 
spread  of  high  schools  for  girls  all  over  the 
country  will  probably  be  her  most  lasting 
and  influential  work.  She  was  not  content 
to  be  a  mere  figurehead,  but  followed  the 
work  closely,  and  took  an  active  share  in 
it  by  means  of  speeches,  letters  to  the 
press,  and  an  especial  interest  in  the 
teaching  of  art. 

As  a  working  artist,  the  princess  early 
exhibited  gifts  as  a  sculptress,  and  she  was 
iostructed  by  Mary  Thornycroft  [q.v.].  Of 
the  princess's  works  the  best  known  is  the 
marble  statue  of  Queen  Victoria  at  Ken- 
sington Palace  overlooking  the  Round 
Pond.  The  monument  to  Prince  Henry  of 
Battenberg  in  Whippingham  church,  near 
Cowes,  is  also  highly  esteemed,  and  she 
designed  the  memorial  in  St.  Paul's  Cathe- 
dral to  the  Canadian  soldiers  who  fell  in 
the  South  African  war. 

After  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  death  in 
1914,  the  princess  lived  a  life  yet  more 
retired,  and  divided  her  time  between 
London  and  Roseneath  House  in  Dum- 
bartonshire. In  1919  she  was  given  the 
colonelcy-in-chief  of  the  Argyll  and 
Sutherland  Highlanders.  After  long  en- 
joyment of  good  health  she  died  at  Ken- 
sington Palace  in  her  ninety-second  year 
3  December  1939. 

[The  Times,  4  and  8  December  1939 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]     Dorothy  Cantelupe. 


LOUISE  VICTORIA  ALEXANDRA 
DAGMAR  (1867-1931),  princess  royal  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  Duchess  of 
Fife,  was  bom  at  Marlborough  House 
20  February  1867,  the  third  child  and 
eldest  daughter  of  the  Prince  and  Princess 
of  Wales.  She  was  educated  at  home  and 
developed  a  strong  taste  for  outdoor  life. 
In  1889  the  princess  married  Alexander 
William  George  Duff,  sixth  Earl  of  Fife, 
who  was  eighteen  years  her  senior  and 
was  created  a  duke  on  his  marriage:  by  a 
special  remainder  of  1900,  the  dukedom 
of  Fife  passed  to  the  princess's  daughters 
and  their  male  issue.  This  union  enabled 
the  princess  to  live  in  entire  privacy,  and, 
in  the  stretches  of  the  Dee  at  Mar  Lodge, 
near  Braemar,  and  in  the  Deveron  at  Duff 
House,  near  Banff,  to  indulge  freely  in  her 
favourite  sport  of  salmon-fishing,  in  which 
she  developed  exceptional  skill.  In  1905 
the  princess  was  declared  princess  royal 
and  her  two  daughters.  Lady  Alexandra 
Duff  (later  Princess  Arthur  of  Connaught) 
and  Lady  Maud  Duff  (later  Countess  of 
Southesk),  were  created  princesses  with 
the  title  of  'highness'.  On  13  December 
1911,  as  the  princess  and  her  family  were 
travelling  to  Egypt  for  the  sake  of  her 
health,  which  was  never  robust,  their  ship 
was  wrecked  in  a  gale  near  Cape  Spartel. 
The  princess  refused  to  leave  imtil  all  the 
women  and  children  on  board  had  been 
taken  off,  and  the  hardships  endured  by 
the  party  were  severe  as  the  boat  which 
was  taking  them  to  land  was  swamped. 
The  death  of  the  duke  at  Assuan  29 
January  1912  was  hastened  by  this  mis- 
adventure. After  continuing  to  Uve  in 
retirement,  the  princess  died  at  her  house 
in  Portman  Square  4  January  1931. 

[The  Times,  5  January  1931 ;  private  in- 
formation.] 

LOVAT,  fourteenth  (sometimes 
reckoned  sixteenth)  Baron  (1871-1933). 
[See  Eraser,  Simon  Joseph.] 

LOVE,  AUGUSTUS  EDWARD 
HOUGH  (1863-1940),  mathematician  and 
geo-physicist,  was  born  17  April  1863  at 
Weston-super-Mare,  the  second  son  of 
John  Henry  Love,  surgeon,  later  police- 
surgeon  to  the  borough  of  Wolver- 
hampton, where  the  family  lived  until  the 
death  of  the  father  in  Love's  later  Cam- 
bridge days.  His  mother  was  Emily 
Serle.  He  had  two  sisters,  with  the  younger 
of  whom  he  was  on  terms  of  especial 
affection;  after  their  father's  death  she 


545 


Love 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


kept  house  for  him  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
He  was  unmarried. 

Love  entered  Wolverhampton  Grammar 
School  in  1874.  He  gave  little  indication 
whilst  at  school  of  the  career  which  was  to 
follow.  In  1881  he  was  awarded  a  sizar- 
ship  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  to 
which  he  went  up  in  1882.  He  was  at  first 
doubtful  whether  to  read  classics  or 
mathematics,  but  chose  the  latter  and 
gradually  came  to  the  top  of  his  year.  He 
was  elected  scholar  of  the  coUege  in  1884, 
was  second  wrangler  in  the  mathematical 
tripos  of  1885,  and  was  awarded  the  first 
Smith's  prize  in  1887,  after  being  elected  in 
1886  into  a  fellowship  at  St.  John's  which 
he  retained  until  1899,  occupying  the  post 
of  college  lecturer  in  mathematics  most  of 
that  time.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1894. 
In  those  Cambridge  days  began  his  long 
association  with  the  London  Mathematical 
Society,  which  he  served  as  secretary 
(1895-1910)  and  as  president  (1912-1919). 
In  1926  he  was  awarded  the  society's  De 
Morgan  medal. 

In  1898  Love  was  elected  to  the  Sedleian 
chair  of  natural  philosophy  at  Oxford,  a 
position  which  he  held  until  his  death. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Queen's  CoUege, 
Oxford,  in  1927,  when  he  was  also  elected 
an  honorary  fellow  of  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge.  He  was  awarded  a  Royal 
medal  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1909,  and 
its  Sylvester  medal  in  1937.  He  became 
an  associate  of  the  Italian  Accademia  dei 
Lincei,  and  a  corresponding  member  of  the 
Institut  de  France. 

Love's  chosen  field  of  research  was  the 
theory  of  elasticity  of  soUds  in  its  mathe- 
matical setting,  and  its  application  to 
problems  of  the  earth's  crust.  On  this 
subject,  and  on  problems  of  hydro- 
dynamics and  electromagnetism  involving 
kindred  differential  equations,  he  contri- 
buted to  various  journals  some  fifty  odd 
memoirs.  His  main  technical  contribu- 
tions to  mathematical  theory  are  perhaps 
his  discovery  of  what  are  known  as  'Love 
waves'  (1911)  and  his  theory  of  bi- 
harmonic  analysis  (1929).  The  latter  is 
unsuitable  for  description  here,  but  'Love 
waves'  can  briefly  be  sketched.  His 
accoimt  of  them  was  pubhshed  in  Some 
Problems  of  Geodynamics  (1911),  the  essay 
for  which  he  had  been  awarded  the  Adams 
prize  of  the  university  of  Cambridge. 
J.  W.  Strutt,  third  Baron  Rayleigh  [q.v.], 
had  discovered  the  possibility  in  a  soUd  of 
a  type  of  surface  wave  consisting  of 
vertical  and  horizontal  components  which 
decayed  exponentially  with  depth.  These 


edy 


seemed  to  be  of  importance  for  seismolo; 
but  difficulties  arose  in  identifying  the: 
with  the  observed  'long  waves'  whicl 
occur  late  in  a  seismic  disturbance.  Lovi 
investigated  the  possibiUty  of  the  propi 
gation  of  a  purely  distortional  surfa 
wave,  and  found  that  such  could  exist  in 
heterogeneous  medium.    In  these  wav( 
the     disturbance    is    purely    horizon 
(transverse  to  the  direction  of  propaga- 
tion), and  the  wave-velocity,  unUke  that  of 
'Rayleigh  waves',  depends  upon  wave- 
length. '  Love  waves '  have  proved  of  con- 
siderable importance  in  the  hands  of  later 
investigators,  who  have  been  able  to  infer, 
from  their  application  to  seismograms, 
indications  of  the  thickness  of  the  upper 
layer  of  the  earth's  crust. 

Love,  however,  wiU  be  remembere 
chiefly  as  the  author  of  what  througho 
his  fife  was  a  standard  work,  A  Treatise 
the  Mathematical  Theory  of  Elasticity 
(1892-1893;  later  editions  1906,  1920, 
1927).  This  is  a  fine,  scholarly  work, 
written  with  an  historical  sense ;  imhurried 
in  style,  massive  in  lecture,  satisfying  in 
its  fullness.  It  gives  the  general  theory  o; 
stress  and  strain;  of  the  conditions 
equilibrium  and  stability  of  elastic  pla 
shells,  and  sohds ;  of  torsion  of  rods  a 
the  bending  and  vibrations  of  beams ;  an( 
of  the  transmission  of  force.  It  remains 
permanent  monument  to  the  acade: 
aspect  of  elasticity.  The  treatment 
throughout  severely  analytical,  but 
took  form  too  early  to  incorporate  ti 
tensor  calculus. 

Love   had   a   certain   whimsicality 
manner  and  appearance  which  endear( 
him  to  his  many  friends.    Although  n< 
experimenter,   he   was   a   typical   rep: 
sentative   of  the   characteristic   Engl 
school     of    applied     mathematics,     ani 
notably  continued  the  mathematical  tra^ 
tion  of  Sir  G.  G.  Stokes,  J.  Clerk  Maxwe 
[qq.v.]  and  Lord  Rayleigh.    He  died 
Oxford  5  June  1940. 

[The  Times,  6  June  1940;  Obituary  Notice 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9,  Januai 
1940  (portrait  and  bibliography) ;  Nature,  21 
September  1940;  Journal  of  the  Londo^ 
Mathematical  Society,  vol.  xvi,  1941  (biblio 
graphy) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  A.  MiLNK. 

LOW,  Sir  SIDNEY  JAMES  MARI 
(1857-1932),  author  and  journalist,  wa 
bom  at  Blackheath  22  January  1857. 
father,  Maximilian  Loewe,  a  Hungaris 
Jew,  fled  to  England  in  1848,  establishe 
himself  successfully  in  business  in  the  Citj 


546 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lowry 


of  London,  and  married  Therese  Schacherl, 
daughter  of  a  Viennese  rabbi.  Sidney  was 
the  eldest  child  in  their  family  of  six  sons 
and  five  daughters.  He  was  educated  at 
King's  College  School,  Strand,  and  in  1876 
went  with  a  scholarship  to  Pembroke 
College,  Oxford.  But  in  1877  he  migrated 
to  Balliol  as  an  exhibitioner  (he  was  later 
a  Brackenbury  scholar)  and  was  awarded 
a  first  class  in  modern  history  in  1879. 
From  boyhood  he  was  attracted  to  litera- 
ture and  history.  Between  1883  and  1885 
he  was  lecturer  on  constitutional  history  at 
King's  College,  London;  in  1884,  with 
Frederic  Sanders  PuUing,  he  published  his 
first  book,  The  Dictionary  of  English 
History.  About  1883  Low  began  contri- 
buting to  the  St,  James'' s  Gazette,  and  soon 
became  its  sub-editor  under  Frederick 
Greenwood  [q.v.],  whom  he  succeeded  as 
editor  in  1888.  His  editorship  was 
brilliant ;  the  circulation  of  the  St.  James's 
meagre;  its  influence  immense.  Low 
gathered  round  him  such  men  as  Andrew 
Lang,  George  Saintsbury,  Gilbert  Parker, 
H.  D.  Traill,  Herbert  and  J.  K.  Stephen ; 
and  gave  their  earliest  opportunities  to 
Rudyard  Kipling,  J.  M,  Barrie,  Anthony 
Hope,  and  many  others.  Resigning  the 
editorship  in  1897,  Low  was  next  year 
appointed  by  William  Heseltine  Mudford 
leader-writer  on  the  Standard,  of  which  Low 
was  literary  editor  in  1904-1905.  From 
1898  his  career  was  that  of  a  hard-working, 
brilliant,  and  trustworthy  journalist.  He 
dechned  the  editorship  of  the  Johannes- 
burg Star,  was  passed  over  for  that  of  the 
Morning  Post,  and,  because  of  age,  missed 
the  editorship  of  The  Times. 

Low's  masterpiece.  The  Governance  of 
England  (1904),  and  A  Vision  of  India 
(1906,  the  fruit  of  his  visit  as  special 
correspondent  on  the  royal  tour  of  1905) 
merited,  and  won,  wide  attention  and 
proclaimed  him  an  ardent  imperialist. 
They  were  followed  by  volume  xii  (1837- 
1901)  in  Longman's  Political  History  of 
England  (with  L.  C.  Sanders,  1907),  Egypt 
in  Transition  (1914),  Samuel  Henry  J  eyes 
(1915),  and  many  important  pamphlets. 
After  the  Governance,  Low's  most  notable 
contribution  to  Uterature  is  his  study 
of  De  Quincey  (1911).  He  contributed 
regularly  to  all  the  leading  monthly 
journals,  specializing  in  biographical  sub- 
jects such  as  Cecil  Rhodes,  on  whom  he 
published  a  miniature  masterpiece  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  for  May  1902. 

Low  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner 
Temple  in  1892,  and  was  knighted  in  1918. 
He  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1887  to 


Elsie  (died  1921),  daughter  of  John  Davi- 
son; secondly,  in  1924  to  Ebba  Cecilia, 
daughter  of  Captain  Gustaf  Hermann 
Emile  Bystrom,  of  Stockholm.  He  had 
no  children.  He  died  at  his  home  in 
Kensington  13  January  1932. 

Low's  friendships  were  wide  and  eclectic. 
He  loved  the  theatre,  society,  and  life. 
His  admiration  for  the  Empire,  and  under- 
standing of  it,  were  profound;  he  knew 
well  and  admired  Rhodes,  Cromer,  H.  M. 
Stanley,  Curzon,  Sir  Reginald  Wingate,  and, 
above  all,  Milner,  and  won  their  intimate 
confidences.  As  a  writer  and  journalist 
Low's  place  is  very  high ;  as  an  historian 
his  place,  if  modest,  is  assured. 

[Desmond  Chapman-Huston,  The  Lost  His- 
torian: A  Memoir  of  Sir  Sidney  Low,  1936 ; 
Low's  diaries ;  unpublished  letters  addressed 
to  Low ;  private  information.] 

Desmond  Chapman-Huston. 

LOWRY,  THOMAS  MARTIN  (1874- 
1936),  chemist,  was  born  at  Low  Moor, 
Bradford,  Yorkshire,  26  October  1874, 
the  second  son  of  Edward  Pearce  Lowry, 
afterwards  senior  Wesleyan  chaplain  at 
Aldershot,  by  his  wife,  Jemima  Hofland. 
From  Kingswood  School,  Bath,  Lowry 
proceeded  in  1893  with  a  Clothworkers 
scholarship  to  the  Central  Technical 
College,  South  Kensington,  where  he  came 
under  the  influence  of  H.  E.  Armstrong 
[q.v.].  His  chemical  abiUty  soon  showed 
itself  and  in  1896  Armstrong  appointed 
him  his  assistant.  He  held  this  office  until 
1913,  combining  it  from  1904  to  1913  ynth 
that  of  lecturer  in  chemistry  at  the  West- 
minster Training  College. 

In  1913  Lowry  was  appointed  head  of 
the  chemical  department  of  Guy's  Hospital 
medical  school  with  the  title  of  professor 
of  chemistry  in  the  imiversity  of  London. 
After  occupying  this  position  for  seven 
years  he  was  elected  in  1920  to  the  newly 
established  chair  of  physical  chemistry  at 
Cambridge,  where  W.  J.  Pope  [q.v.],  also 
a  former  pupil  of  Armstrong,  was  head  of 
the  department  of  chemistry,  and  during 
his  sixteen  years'  tenure  of  this  professor- 
ship he  developed  an  active  school  of  re- 
search, directed  mainly  to  the  investiga- 
tion of  optical  rotatory  power.  He  became 
a  member  of  Trinity  HaU. 

In  1898  in  Armstrong's  laboratory 
Lowry  discovered  that  freshly  prepared 
solutions  of  nitro-d-camphor  showed  a 
change  of  rotatory  power  with  time.  He 
termed  the  phenomenon  'mutarotation' 
and  referred  it  to  the  establishment  of  an 
equilibrium  between  nitro-d-camphor  and 


547 


Lowry 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


an  unknown  isomeride.  From  this  obser- 
vation he  was  led  on  the  one  hand  to  the 
study  of  polarimetry  and  on  the  other  to 
the  investigation  of  reversible  isomeric 
change  (which  he  termed  'dynamic  iso- 
merism') and  the  greater  part  of  his 
subsequent  work  lay  in  these  two  fields. 

Lowry  became  particularly  interested  in 
the  variation  of  rotatory  power  with  wave- 
length and  gave  the  Bakerian  lecture  to 
the  Royal  Society  in  1921  on  this  subject, 
in  collaboration  with  Dr.  Percy  Corlett 
Austin.  His  most  noteworthy  achieve- 
ments in  this  connexion  were  his  measure- 
ments of  the  rotatory  dispersion  of  quartz 
from  the  infra-red  to  the  far  ultra-violet 
and  his  discovery  that  one  of  the  charac- 
teristic frequencies  in  the  Drude  equation 
for  the  rotatory  dispersion  of  camphor 
coincides  with  the  characteristic  frequency 
of  the  carbonyl  group.  To  account  for  the 
latter  observation  he  advanced  his  hypo- 
thesis of  induced  dissymmetry  (1924). 
His  studies  on  isomeric  changes  of  the 
kind  which  he  termed  'prototropic'  yielded 
much  information  on  the  action  of  cata- 
lysts on  these  processes  and  led  him  to  an 
extended  definition  of  acids  and  bases, 
advanced  simultaneously  by  J.  N.  Bron- 
sted  (1923). 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Lowry  did 
valuable  service  in  overcoming  the  diffi- 
culties in  shell-filling  caused  by  the  poly- 
morphism of  ammonium  nitrate  and  was 
director  of  shell-filling  (1917-1919).  He 
wrote  several  books,  the  most  important 
of  which  was  his  treatise  on  Optical  Rota- 
tory Power  (1935).  He  was  elected  F.R.S. 
in  1914,  and  appointed  O.B.E.  in  1918, 
and  C.B.E.  in  1920.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Dublin 
and  Brussels.  He  married  in  1904  Eliza, 
eldest  daughter  of  CorneUus  Wood, 
Methodist  minister,  and  had  two  sons  and 
a  daughter.  He  died  at  Cambridge 
2  November  1936. 

[The  Times,  4  November  1936;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  6, 
January  1938  (portrait) ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.]  W.  H.  Mills. 

LUCAS,  Sib  CHARLES  PRESTWOOD 
(1853-1931),  civil  servant  and  historian, 
was  born  at  Glan-yr-Afon,  Crickhowel, 
Brecknockshire,  7  August  1853,  the  fourth 
and  youngest  son  of  Henry  John  Lucas, 
M.D.,  of  Glan-yr-Afon,  by  his  wife, 
Elisabeth,  daughter  of  George  Bevan, 
vicar  of  Crickhowel.  He  was  educated  at 
Winchester  where  he  was  head  of  the  roU 
in  1865  and  became  one  of  a  contemporary 


trio  of  distinguished  scholars  and  friendlj 
rivals,  the  other  two  being  (Sir)  R. 
Antrobus  and  G.  E.  Buckle  [q.v.].  Luca 
himself  won  an  open  exhibition  at  Bailie 
College,  Oxford,  and,  with  a  first  class 
classical  moderations  (1873)  and  in  literc 
humaniores  (1876),  was  awarded  the  chai 
cellor's  medal  for  a  Latin  essay  (1877). 

Having  been  placed  first  on  the  ch 
service  examination  Ust  of  1877,  Luca 
was  appointed  to  the  Colonial  Office  an^ 
eventually  became  an  assistant  unde| 
secretary  of  state  in  1897.  When  tl 
department  dealing  with  the  '  self-gover 
ing  Colonies'  was  reorganized  with  ii 
creased  dignity  and  importance  as  tl 
Dominions  Department  in  1907  Lucas  wa 
appointed  the  first  head  of  that  depai 
ment,  which  was  the  forerunner  of  tl 
Dominions  Office  established  in  1925. 
retired  in  1911.  He  was  appointed  C.l 
in  1901,  K.C.M.G.  in  1907,  and  K.C.B. 
1912.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lii 
coin's  Inn  in  1885. 

In  addition  to  being  a  civil  servant 
very  great  distinction  Lucas  was  thi 
author  of  numerous  valuable  books  about 
the  British  Empire.  He  projected  A 
Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Colonies, 
to  which  he  contributed  an  Introduction 
(1887);  he  was  also  responsible  for  vols, 
i-v,  part  1  (1888-1901).^  His  other  works 
include  The  Canadian  War  of  1812  (1906), 
A  History  of  Canada,  1763-1812  (1909), 
Greater  Rome  and  Greater  Britain  (1912), 
The  British  Empire  (1915),  The  Beginnings 
of  English  Overseas  Enterprise  (1917),  The 
Partition  and  the  Colonization  of  Africa 
(1922),  The  Story  of  the  Empire  ('British 
Empire'  series,  vol.  ii,  1924),  and  Religion, 
Colonising  and  Trade  (1930).  He  edited 
and  himself  wrote  much  of  the  work  en- 
titled The  Empire  at  War  (5  vols.,  1921- 
1926),  a  record  of  the  part  played  by  the 
Dominions  and  Colonies  in  war,  particu- 
larly in  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

If  'proper  words  in  proper  places'  is  the 
true  definition  of  style,  as  laid  down  by 
Swift,  everything  that  Lucas  wrote  bore 
that  hall-mark,  and  he  was  in  fact  a 
master  of  English  prose.  Election  to  a 
fellowship  at  All  Souls  College,  Oxford 
(1920-1927),  came  as  a  fitting  crown  to  his 
career  as  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  letters. 

His  simple  and  kindly  nature,  his  ster- 
ling character  and  ability,  and  his  un- 
equalled knowledge  of  colonial  affairs 
made  Lucas  Uked  and  respected  by  all 
ranks  in  the  Colonial  Office  and  by 
officials  and  others  from  the  Colonies  who 
came  to  see  him  in  London,  and  he  was 


548 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lucas,  E.  V. 


regarded  with  something  more  than  hking 
by  those  of  his  colleagues  whose  work 
brought  them  into  closest  contact  with 
him.  For  nearly  fifty  years  from  1881  he 
gave  much  of  his  spare  time  to  devoted 
and  inspiring  work  at  the  Working  Men's 
College  in  Great  Ormond  Street,  foimded 
by  F.  D.  Maurice  [q.v.]  and  Thomas 
Hughes  [q.v.],  of  which  he  became 
principal  in  1912.  He  died,  unmarried, 
in  London  7  May  1931. 

[The  Times,  8  May  1931 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  Risley. 

LUCAS,  EDWARD  VERRALL  (1868- 
1938),  journaUst,  essayist,  and  critic,  was 
born   at  Eltham,   Kent,   11  June  1868, 
the  second  of  the  four  sons  of  Alfred 
Lucas,  agent  for  insurance  companies  and 
building    societies,    by    his    wife,    Jane 
Drewitt.   Both  his  parents  were  Quakers, 
i  and  members  of  famiUes  where  interests 
I  had  mainly  been  in  farming,  banking,  and 
brewing,  but  on  his  mother's  side  he  was 
j  related  to  Lord  Lister  and  A.  W.  Verrall 
I   [qq.v.].    His  parents  moved  to  Brighton 
j  not  long  after  he  was  born,  so  that  he  was 
i  able  to  call  himself  a  Sussex  man,  and  to 
give  to  that  covmty  not  the  least  of  his 
loyalties.   Always  devoted  to  his  mother, 
i  he  had   less   affection  for  the   paternal 
I  regimen.     'I   got  from   my   father',   he 
wrote,  'very  httle  but  knowledge  of  what 
!  to  avoid  .  • .  and  learned  . . .  from  his  piety 
j  without  works  to  be  too  much  the  un- 
believer.'  It  is  possible,  however,  that  he 
derived  from  both  parents  his  incUnation 
to   avoid,   as   a   writer,   the   unpleasant 
realities  of  Ufe,  and  to  believe,  even  in 
war-time,  that  war  was  the  worst  of  evils. 
After  having  been  sent  to  no  less  than 
eleven  schools,  Lucas  was  apprenticed  at 
the  age  of  sixteen  to  a  Brighton  book- 
seller, and  after  two  years  joined  the  staff 
of  the  Stissex  Daily  News.  In  1892  he  was 
enabled,  through  the  gift  of  £200  from  an 
uncle,  to  go  to  London  and  attend  the 
lectures  of  W.  P.  Ker  [q.v.]  at  University 
College.  He  read  assiduously  and  in  1893 
began  his  journalistic  career  on  the  Globe, 
a  leading  evening  paper. 

Lucas's  early  struggles  left  him  some- 
thing of  a  cynic,  and  he  could  be  a  bitter 
satirist,  when  he  chose,  of  poUtical  and 
topical  affairs.  But  he  chose  seldom,  and 
emerged  more  and  more  as  an  apostle  of 
the  humanities,  and  if  no  optimist  himself, 
a  cause  of  optimism  in  others.  He  made  it 
more  and  more  his  aim  to  commiinicate 
the  deUght  which  he  found  in  art,  travel, 
and  letters  to  a  rapidly  growing  circle  of 


readers,  and  the  manner  that  he  cultivated 
for  this  purpose  was,  in  appearance,  so 
effortless,  that  only  by  its  readableness 
could  its  craft  be  ascertained.  As  a  young 
journalist,  he  spent  many  of  his  evenings 
translating  Maupassant,  not  for  pubhca- 
tion,  but  as  practice  in  style. 

Lucas's  publications  include  many 
anthologies  and  about  thirty  collections  of 
fight  essays,  on  almost  any  subject  that 
took  his  fancy,  and  some  of  the  titles 
which  he  gave  to  them,  Listeners  Lure 
(1905),  One  Day  and  Another  (1909),  Old 
Lamps  for  New  (1911),  Loiterer's  Harvest 
(1913),  Cloud  and  Silver  (1916),  A  Rover 
I  would  be  (1928),  indicate  sufficiently  the 
Ughtness,  gaiety,  and  variety  of  their 
contents.  Besides  these,  he  wrote  essays 
of  travel  in  many  places.  Highways  and 
Byways  in  Sussex  (1904),  A  Wanderer  in 
Holland  (1905),  A  Wanderer  in  Paris 
(1909),  A  Wanderer  in  Florence  (1912), 
Zigzags  in  France  (1925),  and  short  books 
on  painters,  notably  Vermeer  of  Delft 
(1922),  John  Constable  the  Painter  (1924), 
and  Vermeer  the  Magical  (1929).  He  pro- 
duced an  edition  of  The  Works  of  Charles 
and  Mary  Lamb  (7  vols.,  1903-1905)  and 
a  Life  of  Charles  Lamb  (2  vols.,  1905). 
'EUa'  indeed  was  his  idol,  but  his  devotion 
was  rather  to  the  urbane  companion  than 
to  the  learned  and  rather  wistful  recluse. 
He  used  occasionaUy  the  form  of  romance 
(Over  Bemerton's,  1908,  perhaps  the  best. 
Rose  and  Rose,  1921,  and  Genevrd's  Money, 
1922,  are  examples  in  this  kind,  slight, 
sentimental,  and  charming),  but  he  was 
accustomed  to  say  that  he  could  not  write 
a  novel,  because  no  novel  made  out 
human  beings  as  bad  as  they  reaUy  were. 
Of  the  painters  he  praised,  he  remarked : 
'I  know  very  little  about  pictures,  but  I 
like  to  write  about  them  for  the  benefit  of 
those  who  know  less.'  To  estimate  the 
permanent  value  of  his  work  is  difficult, 
but  he  undoubtedly  broadened  the  horizon 
of  culture  for  a  great  number  of  readers  by 
the  easy  introduction  which  he  gave  them 
to  books  that  they  would  not  otherwise 
have  read,  and  pictures  that  they  would 
not  have  seen ;  at  the  same  time,  he  helped 
to  liberate  the  language  of  the  critic  and 
the  essayist  from  undue  pedantry  and 
affectation.  Many  writers  in  this  field  who 
followed  him  owe  more  than  they  reaUze 
to  his  clarity;  many  readers  have  a  like 
debt  to  the  Uveliness  of  his  sympathies. 
Often  preferring  the  quaint  to  the  pro- 
found, and  claiming  neither  deep  study 
nor  creative  imagination,  he  established 
himself  by  dint  of  good  taste,  observation. 


549 


Lucas,  E.  V. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  wit  as  a  man  of  letters,  gaining  friend- 
ship and  admiration  alike  from  the  learned 
and  the  less  critical.  In  his  later  years, 
a  member  of  many  social  clubs,  he  added 
to  the  reputation  of  a  writer  that  of  a 
connoisseur  who  was  also  a  bon  vivant  and 
a  lavish  host.  He  was,  for  a  long  time,  a 
prolific  contributor  to  Punch  and  a 
member  of  its  staff,  and  in  1924  he 
became  chairman  of  Methuen's  Publishing 
Company,  with  which  he  had  been  long 
connected. 

Lucas  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  St.  Andrews  and 
Oxford.  He  was  appointed  C.H.  in  1932. 
He  married  in  1897  Florence  Elizabeth 
Gertrude,  daughter  of  James  Theodore 
Griffin,  colonel  in  the  United  States  army, 
and  had  a  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
26  June  1938. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Lucas  by  Ralph 
Peacock  in  the  offices  of  Punch.  The 
plaster  cast  of  a  bust  by  John  Tweed  is 
in  the  possession  of  the  sculptor's  family. 

[The  Times,  27  June  1938;  E.  V.  Lucas, 
Reading,  Writing  and  Remembering,  1932; 
Audrey  Lucas,  E.  V.  Lucas:  A  Portrait,  1939 ; 
personal  knowledge.]  E.  V.  Knox. 


LUNN,  SiK  HENRY  SIMPSON 
(1859-1939),  founder  of  the  travel  agency 
which  bears  his  name,  was  born  at  Horn- 
castle,  Lincolnshire,  30  July  1859,  the 
eldest  son  of  Henry  Ltmn,  afterwards  of 
West  Ashby  House,  Lincolnshire,  by  his 
wife,  Susanna,  daughter  of  Simpson 
Green,  of  Homcastle.  He  was  educated 
at  Homcastle  Grammar  School,  and  in 
1881  entered  Headingley  College,  Leeds, 
to  prepare  for  the  Methodist  ministry ;  he 
left  two  years  later  to  complete  his  course 
at  Trinity  CoUege,  Dubhn,  and  was  or- 
dained in  1886.  He  hoped  to  be  a  medical 
missionary  in  India,  and  graduated  in 
medicine  and  surgery  in  1887.  After  his 
marriage  in  the  last-named  year  he  went 
to  India,  but  iU  health  cut  short  his  mis- 
sionary career,  and  he  returned  to  England 
in  1888.  Some  remarks  on  the  standard 
of  living  of  Methodist  missionaries  in 
India  gave  great  offence  to  his  brother 
ministers.  As  a  consequence  he  contem- 
plated taking  orders  in  the  Church  of 
England,  but  no  denomination  was  broad 
enough  for  him.  In  1891  he  foimded  a 
paper  entitled  The  Review  of  the  Churches 
devoted  to  the  cause  of  reunion,  and  from 
this  arose  in  1892  the  Grindelwald  Con- 
ference of  religious  leaders,  which  became 
an  annual  event  until  1896.  The  organiza- 
tion of  these  meetings  interested  Lunn 

550 


icrs 

ite^_ 


un^Hi 

an^l 
;ne^" 


in  travel  and  hotel  work  in  Europe,  ai 
in  1892  he  began  to  arrange  tours:  in  19 
there  was  founded  the  hmited  compan; 
which  bears  his  name,  with  the  associat 
organizations  of  the  Hellenic  Travellers' 
Club  (1906)  and  Alpine  Sports,  Limit© 
(1908). 

During  the  South  African  war  L 
was  an  ardent  pro-Boer,  and  his  desire  to 
be  on  good  terms  with  all  nations  and 
peoples  led  to  his  being  accused  of  having 
German  sympathies,  and  brought  him 
much  unpopularity.  He  was  constantly 
dispatching  'goodwUl  tours'  about  the 
globe,  being  misled  by  his  humanitarian 
instincts  into  the  belief,  common  among 
some  earnest  liberals  until  1914,  that 
friendly  personal  relations  between  the 
intelligentsia  of  various  countries  could 
avail  against  the  forces  of  military  and 
economic  ambition.  Lvmn  was  a  follower 
of  Asquith,  and  twice  stood  unsuccessfully 
for  parUament  (January  1910  and  in  1923) 

After  the  war  of  1914-1918  L 
turned  more  to  his  religious  activities 
sat  upon  many  committees,  and  convene 
many  conferences.  In  1924  he  travelled 
round  the  world  with  his  wife  in  an 
ambitious  effort  to  promote  the  union  of 
the  Churches,  and  to  harness  them  to  the 
League  of  Nations.  Although  he  enjoyed 
unlimited  hospitaUty,  and  delivered  many 
speeches  and  sermons,  he  had  to  admit 
that  he  found  no  particular  grounds  for 
encouragement  as  regards  the  objects 
which  he  had  at  heart.  He  paid  two 
subsequent  visits  to  the  United  States  of 
America,  where  his  energy  and  powers  of 
preaching  were  much  appreciated. 

Lunn  maintained  to  the  end  of  his  life 
an  infectious  optimism  on  the  subject  of 
reunion,  and  a  simple  and  sincere  trust  in 
Providence.  If  his  opinions  invited  argu- 
ment, at  least  he  had  the  courage  of  them, 
and  as  a  man  his  character  never  lost  its 
charm.  His  own  religious  position  was 
that  of  Wesley,  a  Methodist  member  of 
the  Anghcan  Church. 

Lunn,  who  was  knighted  in  1910, 
married  in  1887  Ethel,  daughter  of  Canon 
Thomas  Moore,  rector  of  Midleton,  co. 
Cork,  and  had  three  sons,  Arnold,  Hugh, 
later  known  as  Hugh  Kingsmill,  and  Brian, 
and  one  daughter,  who  predeceased  her 
father.  He  died  in  London  18  March  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Limn  by  John  Collier 
(1910)  is  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 


[The  Times,  20  March  1939;  Sir  Henry 
Lunn,  Chapters  from  My  Life,  1918,  and 
N earing  Harbour,  1934.] 

Alfred  Cochrane, 


I 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Lynch 


LYGON,  WILLIAM,  seventh  Earl 
Beauchamp  (1872-1938),  politician,  was 
bom  in  London  20  February  1872,  the 
elder  son  of  Frederick  Lygon,  sixth  Earl 
Beauchamp  [q.v.],  by  his  first  wife.  Lady 
Mary  Catherine,  only  daughter  of  the  his- 
torian Philip  Henry  Stanhope,  fifth  Eari 
Stanhope  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and 
succeeded  his  father  in  1891,  the  day 
before  his  nineteenth  birthday. 

From  the  first  Beauchamp  was  pre- 
cociously interested  in  public  affairs. 
When  he  was  twenty-three  he  was  elected 
mayor  of  Worcester;  at  twenty-five  he 
was  a  member  of  the  London  School 
Board.  At  twenty-seven  (1899)  he  was 
appointed  by  Lord  Salisbury  governor  of 
New  South  Wales.  It  was  not  a  very 
successful  experiment:  for  so  responsible 
a  post  he  was  still  rather  too  young. 

Beauchamp  returned  to  England  in 
1902  to  find  the  Balfour  government  in 
the  throes  of  a  conversion  to  protection. 
Although  brought  up  in  the  conservative, 
high  church  tradition  of  his  family,  he  was 
personally  an  uncompromising  free  trader, 
and  was  soon  so  much  alienated  from  the 
government's  economic  policy  that  he 
joined  the  liberals.  Naturally  they  re- 
ceived him  with  open  arms.  He  was 
wealthy  and  influential,  a  model  landlord, 
a  clear  and  competent  speaker,  an  ideal 
chairman,  and  a  popular  and  generous 
host. 

Beauchamp's  marriage  in  1902  to  the 
Duke  of  Westminster's  beautiful  sister. 
Lady  Lettice  Mary  Elizabeth,  younger 
daughter  of  Victor  Alexander  Grosvenor, 
Earl  Grosvenor,  and  granddaughter  of 
Hugh,  first  Duke  of  Westminster  [q.v.], 
certainl}'^  added  to  his  influence.  Their 
magnificent  receptions  at  Halkyn  House, 
their  big  town  mansion  in  Belgrave  Square, 
were  events  of  high  importance  in  the 
London  season,  and  a  rallying  point  for 
liberals  all  over  the  country.  After  the 
liberal  triumph  of  1906,  Beauchamp  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  he  entered 
the  Cabinet  in  1910  as  lord  president  of  the 
Council.  A  few  months  later  he  was  ap- 
pointed first  commissioner  of  Works.  In 
August  1914,  when  Lord  Morley  [q.v.]  and 
John  Burns  resigned  on  account  of  their 
opposition  to  the  government's  war  policy, 
Beauchamp  accepted  the  office  of  lord  presi- 
dent of  the  Council  held  by  the  former,  and 
retained  the  post  until  1915.  In  1916  he 
became  president  of  the  Free  Trade  Union. 
During  the  years  after  the  war  he  played 
a  considerable  part  in  the  efforts  made  to 


revive  the  fortunes  of  the  liberal  party, 
and  from  1924  to  1931  he  was  leader  of  the 
party  in  the  House  of  Lords.  In  1931  he 
suddenly  resigned  all  his  offices  but  one 
and  went  to  live  abroad. 

Lord  Beauchamp  was  appointed 
K.C.M.G.  in  1899  and  K.G.  in  1914.  From 
1913  to  1933  he  was  lord  warden  of  the 
Cinque  Ports,  and  from  1929  to  1931 
chancellor  of  London  University.  He  died 
in  New  York  15  November  1938,  and  was 
succeeded  as  eighth  earl  by  his  eldest  son, 
William  (bom  1903).  He  was  also  sur- 
vived by  his  youngest  son  and  his  four 
daughters.  His  wife  and  his  second  son 
both  predeceased  him  in  1936. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Stuart  Hodgson. 

LYNCH,  ARTHUR  ALFRED  (1861- 
1934),  author,  soldier,  and  politician,  was 
bom  at  Smythesdale,  Victoria,  Australia, 
16  October  1861,  the  fourth  son  of  John 
Lynch,  civil  engineer  and  mining  surveyor, 
a  native  of  Tiermaclane,  co.  Clare,  by  his 
wife,  Isabella,  daughter  of  Peter  McGregor : 
she  was  born  at  Perth  in  Scotland.  He 
went  to  school  at  Ballarat,  and  at  Mel- 
bourne University  he  graduated  as  M.A. 
and  as  a  civil  engineer.  Coming  to  Europe, 
he  first  studied  physics  and  psychology  at 
the  university  of  Berlin  (1888-1889).  He 
then  took  up  medicine  and  studied  at  the 
Hopital  Beaujon  in  Paris.  Later  in  life, 
during  a  parliamentary  recess,  he  ob- 
tained the  diploma  of  the  ficole  superieure 
d'electricite  in  Paris. 

In  1889  Lynch  turned  to  journalism, 
and  was  thus  engaged  in  London  for  six 
years,  in  the  course  of  which  he  stood  un- 
successfully for  Gal  way  city  in  1892.  In 
1896  he  was  a  war  correspondent  for  the 
Evening  News  in  the  Ashanti  campaign, 
and  from  that  year  until  1899  he  was 
the  Paris  correspondent  of  the  Daily 
Mail. 

On  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African 
war  Lynch  went  to  Pretoria  as  the  corre- 
spondent of  the  Paris  Le  Journal,  and 
immediately  on  arrival  in  January  1900 
joined  the  Boer  side  and  was  appointed 
colonel  of  'No.  II  Irish  Brigade',  a  group 
of  seventy  men  drawn  from  every  country 
in  Europe  except  Turkey.  When,  how- 
ever, he  had  done  six  months'  active 
campaigning,  he  returned  to  Paris  by  way 
of  New  York  after  the  republics  had  been 
over-nui.  These  exploits  gained  him 
election  to  parliament  as  member  for 
Galway  city  at  a  by-election  in  November 
1901,  but  when  he  came  to  England  in 


551 


Lynch 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


June  1902  to  take  his  seat,  he  was  arrested, 
tried  for  high  treason,  and  in  January 
1903  sentenced  to  death.  This  sentence 
was  immediately  commuted  to  penal 
servitude  for  Ufe.  Within  twelve  months 
he  was  released  on  ticket-of-leave  and 
went  to  Uve  in  Paris.  In  July  1907  he  was 
granted  a  free  pardon.  Having  qualified 
from  St.  Mary's  Hospital,  Paddington, 
he  began  in  1908  to  practise  medicine  in 
North  London,  and  continued  to  do  so 
until  his  death.  At  a  by-election  in  Sep- 
tember 1909  he  was  elected  nationaUst 
member  for  West  Clare,  for  which  he  sat 
until  1918,  his  parliamentary  activities 
during  the  war  being  chiefly  directed 
towards  a  more  vigorous  prosecution  of 
the  hostilities  against  Germany,  so  that  in 
1918  this  former  rebel  received  the  King's 
commission  as  a  colonel  for  the  purpose  of 
conducting  a  recruiting  campaign  in 
Ireland. 

Lynch's  writings  include  Uterary  and 
scientific  criticism,  philosophy,  bio- 
graphical studies,  fiction,  and  verse,  his 
output  being  in  general  characterized  by 
disparagement  of  estabUshed  contem- 
porary figures.  Intellectually  an  ambitious 
man,  he  believed  himself  to  be  one  of  the 
outstanding  minds  of  the  age,  a  fact  which 
affords  a  clue  to  much  of  his  career.  Thus 
his  'deepest  motive'  in  joining  the  Boers 
was,  according  to  himself,  to  show  that  he, 
a  thinker,  was  the  equal  or  superior  of 
men  of  action.  His  most  considerable 
work  is  his  Principles  of  Psychology  (1923), 
which,  in  his  opinion,  'is  destined  to  be 
a  lamp  to  the  feet  of  men  when  the  British 
Empire  itself  is  forgotten'.  This  judge- 
ment has  not  received  general  endorse- 
ment. 

Lynch  married  in  1895  Annie,  daughter 
of  the  Rev.  John  Donor  PoweU.  He 
died,  without  issue,  in  London  25  March 
1934. 

[A.  A.  Lynch,  My  Life  Story,  1924;  The 
Times  Law  Reports  of  treason  trials ;  private 
information.]  Donal  O'Suixivan. 

LYONS,  JOSEPH  ALOYSIUS  (1879- 
1939),  prime  minister  of  Australia,  was 
bom  at  Stanley,  Tasmania,  15  September 
1879,  the  fourth  son  of  the  eight  children 
of  Michael  Lyons,  an  estate-manager  for 
the  Van  Diemen's  Land  Company  in 
north-western  Tasmania ;  later  his  father 
bought  a  butchery  and  a  bakery  at  Ulver- 
stone.  His  mother  was  Ellen,  daughter  of 
John  Carroll.  His  parents  had  emigrated 
from  Ireland. 

VHien  Lyons  was  nine  years  old  his 


father  failed  in  business  and  broke  do 
in  health.  Young  Lyons  took  a  post 
supplement  the  family  income,  but  la' 
his  aunts,  the  Misses  Carroll,  enabled 
to  continue  his  schooling.  At  sixteen 
became  a  student-teacher,  and  at  twen 
he  was  in  charge  of  a  small  rural  schoi 
In  1907  Lyons  underwent  a  year's  trai 
ing  course  at  the  new  Teachers'  College  in 
Hobart,  and  qualified  to  enter  the  tmive 
sity.  Soon  afterwards  his  pohtical  ae 
vities  became  the  subject  of  a  debate 
parliament,  and  a  motion  to  'disciplin< 
him  failed  by  one  vote.  He  was  th 
invited  to  stand  as  a  labour  candidate 
the  Tasmanian  parliament,  and  in  19i 
was  returned  for  Wilmot,  which  he  rep: 
sented  until  1929. 

In  1914  the  labour  party  took  office 
Tasmania  and  Lyons  was  appoint 
treasurer,  and  also  minister  for  education 
and  for  railways;  in  this  period  he  did 
much  to  extend  the  system  of  state  high 
schools.  When  the  government  was  d 
feated  in  1916  he  became  leader  of  t] 
opposition.  Labour  remained  in  oppos: 
tion  until  1923,  when  Lyons  became 
premier  and  treasurer  though  without  a 
majority  in  the  House.  By  1925  the  budget 
showed  the  first  surplus  since  1918,  and 
labour  gained  an  absolute  majority  in  the 
assembly  for  the  first  time.  Besides  being 
premier  and  treasurer,  Lyons  was  also 
minister  for  railways  from  1923  to  1924 
and  for  mines  from  1925  until  1928,  when 
the  labour  government  was  defeated.  In 
October  1929  he  contested  the  Common- 
wealth elections,  and  was  returned  for 
Wilmot  with  a  sound  majority.  He 
promptly  became  postmaster-general  and 
minister  for  public  works  in  Mr.  Sculhn's 
(labour)  government. 

In  July  1930  the  Commonwealth 
treasurer,  Mr.  Edward  Granville  Theodore, 
was  forced  to  resign  and  Lyons  became 
acting-treasurer.  In  November,  while 
Mr.  James  Henry  Scullin  was  in  London, 
the  labour  caucus  voted  for  the  compul- 
sory conversion  of  an  internal  loan  of 
£28,000,000.  Lyons  defeated  this  move, 
and  mainly  by  his  own  efforts  carried 
out  a  successful  voluntary  conversion 
in  December.  In  January  1981  Mr. 
Theodore  was  re-appointed  treasurer, 
and  Lyons  at  once  resigned  from  the 
Cabinet.  He  was  totally  opposed  to 
the  treasurer's  financial  plans  to  bring  the 
Commonwealth  Bank  under  Treasurj^ 
control.  In  March  1931  he  opposed  these 
plans  in  the  House  and  was  expelled  from 
the  party  together  with  five  supporters. 


552 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lyons 


These  members  joined  with  the  nationalist 
party  in  May  to  form  the  United  Australia 
party  under  the  leadership  of  Lyons,  The 
rejection  of  its  banking  legislation  by  the 
Senate  finally  forced  Mr.  ScuUin's  govern- 
ment to   reduce   expenditure.     In  June 
1931  the  Commonwealth  and  all  the  states 
accepted  the  Premier's  Plan,  which  com- 
bined deflationary  measures  to  balance 
budgets  with  some  expansionist  measures 
to  promote  recovery.    The  plan  had  the 
support    of   both    the    government    and 
opposition  leaders,  but  a  section  of  the 
labour  party  remained  hostile  to  it  and 
brought  down  Mr.  ScuUin's  government  in 
November     1931.      In     December     the 
United  Australia  party  won  a  sweeping 
victory,  and  Lyons  became  prime  minister 
\  in  the  following  January,  pledged  to  carry 
i  out  the  Premier's  Plan. 
I     From  1932  to   1935  Lyons  as  prime 
I  minister    and    treasurer    had    the    main 
[responsibility  for  financial  policy.   Early 
in  1932  the  New  South  Wales  government 
'  of  Mr.  John  Thomas  Lang  defaulted  again 
ion     overseas     interest     payments;     the 
Commonwealth    assumed    responsibility 
and  took  steps   to   recover  the   money. 
From  1933  economic  conditions  improved, 
and  Australian  recovery  poUcy  proved  one 
of  the  most  successful.    Lyons's  govern- 
iment  was  returned  in  September  1934, 
and,  for  the  third  time  in  succession,  in 
October   1937   with   reduced   majorities. 
Besides    the    office    of    prime    minister, 
Lyons    was    also    minister    for    health 
{(November    1935-February    1936)    and 
I  vice-president  of  the  Executive  Council 
(November  1935-November  1937).  He  led 
the  Australian  delegation  to  the  Imperial 
Conference  in  1935,  and  with  his  wife 
attended  the  silver  jubilee  of  King  George 

V.  In  1937  they  again  represented 
Australia  at  the  coronation  of  King  George 

VI,  and  the  prime  minister  attended  the 
Imperial  Conference.  For  his  services 
Lyons  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
(1932),  and  appointed  C.H.  (1936).  He  re- 
ceived the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  the  universities  of  Cambridge  and 
Melbourne  and  the  freedom  of  the  cities  of 
Edinburgh,  London,  and  Aberdeen.  He 
died  at  Sydney  7  April  1939. 

Lyons's  break  with  the  labour  party 
was  one  of  the  most  spectacular  events  in 
recent  Australian  history.  It  was  the  out- 
come of  a  disquiet  that  had  been  growing 
for  a  long  time.  As  a  Roman  CathoUc  he 
had  been  perturbed  in  1921  by  the  party's 
adoption  of  socialism  as  its  aim.  In 
Commonwealth  politics  he  disUked  the 


'advanced'  views  of  some  of  his  col- 
leagues, including  Mr.  Theodore's  views 
on  finance.  To  this  was  added  a  personal 
distrust,  for  Mr.  Theodore  had  become 
wealthy;  Lyons  himself  died  poor.  His 
break  with  his  party  was  due  to  honest 
differences ;  most  of  the  party  agreed  with 
Lyons  in  rejecting  Mr.  Lang's  poUcy  of 
repudiation,  but  accepted  Mr.  Theodore's 
plans.  The  Australian  electorate  sup- 
ported Lyons,  although  Mr.  Theodore's 
plans  have  later  been  realized.  Economists 
have  since  doubted  whether  the  deflation- 
ary measures  of  the  Premier's  Plan  were 
altogether  desirable,  but  they  agreed  then 
that  it  was  the  only  practicable  policy. 
The  latter  years  of  Lyons's  government 
are  more  open  to  criticism.  After  1933  a 
much  bigger  pubUc  works  programme  was 
desirable.  While  the  international  situa- 
tion rapidly  grew  worse,  defence  expendi- 
ture increased  very  slowly.  On  the  other 
hand,  Lyons  established  the  Department 
of  External  Affairs  as  an  independent  de- 
partment in  1935  and  began  the  system 
of  Australian  diplomatic  representation 
abroad.  Nothing  was  done  to  carry  out 
the  recommendations  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  Austrahan  monetary  and 
banking  systems  (1937),  although  they 
were  generally  approved  by  economists. 
A  National  Insurance  Act  was  passed 
(1938),  but  was  shelved  mainly  because 
of  opposition  from  the  government's  own 
supporters.  Thus  Lyons's  later  years  were 
not  marked  by  any  great  positive  achieve- 
ments. He  was,  however,  very  generally 
Uked,  for  he  was  kindly  and  unostentatious. 
His  personal  relations  with  many  former 
labour  colleagues  remained  friendly,  even 
after  he  had  broken  with  them  poUtically. 
He  had  the  patience,  tact,  and  tolerance 
necessary  for  the  successful  working  of 
parliamentary  democracy.  But  he  is 
remembered  chiefly  for  his  leadership  in 
the  crisis  of  1931.  Ordinary  men,  confused 
by  the  differences  within  the  labour  party, 
and  knowing  little  of  economics,  turned 
readily  to  Joseph  Lyons,  whose  honesty 
and  beUef  in  economy  they  could  easily 
understand. 

Lyons  married  in  1915  Enid  Muriel, 
daughter  of  WilUam  Charles  Burnell,  saw- 
miller,  of  Burnie,  Tasmania.  They  had  six 
sons,  one  of  whom  predeceased  his  father, 
and  six  daughters.  His  wife  gave  him 
valuable  help  in  his  work.  She  was  elected 
to  the  Commonwealth  parhament  for 
Darwin  (Tasmania)  in  1943  and  was 
appointed  G.B.E.  in  1937. 

There    is    a    portrait    of    Lyons    by 


558 


Lyons 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


W.   B.  Mcliines  in    Parliament    House, 
Canberra. 

[Argus  (Melbourne)  and  Herald  (Mel- 
bourne), passim;  The  Times,  8  April  1939; 
E.  O.  G.  Shann  and  D.  B.  Copland,  The  Crisis 
in  Australian  Finance  1929  to  1931,  1931,  and 
The  Battle  of  the  Plans,  1931 ;  D.  B.  Copland, 
Australia  in  the  World  Crisis,  1929-1933, 
1934 ;  R.  I.  Downing,  'The  Planning  of  Public 
Investment  in  Australia',  International  Labour 
Review,  October  1945 ;  Commonwealth  Parlia- 
mentary Handbook,  1901—1930,  1930 ;  private 
information.]  Herbekt  Burton. 

LYTE,  Sir  HENRY  CHURCHILL 
MAXWELL  (1848-1940),  deputy  keeper 
of  the  public  records  and  historian,  was 
born  in  London  29  May  1848,  the  only  son 
of  John  Walker  Maxwell  Lyte,  of  Berry 
Head,  near  Brixham,  by  his  wife,  Emily 
Jeannette,  daughter  of  Colonel  John 
Craigie,  of  the  East  India  Company's 
service.  He  was  grandson  of  the  hymn- 
writer  Henry  Francis  Lyte  [q.v.],  and 
through  his  mother  was  descended  from 
the  elder  brother  of  the  great  Duke  of 
Marlborough.  Educated  at  Eton  and 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  he  graduated  in 
the  school  of  law  and  modern  history  in 
1870. 

In  1875  Lyte  published  his  first  book, 
A  History  of  Eton  College,  1440-1875,  and 
in  1886  A  History  of  the  University  of 
Oxford  from  the  Earliest  Times  to  the  Year 
1530,  standard  works  which  still  retain 
their  value.  During  the  same  period  he 
wrote  a  number  of  reports  for  the  His- 
torical Manuscripts  Commission,  including 
notable  accounts  of  the  muniments 
belonging  to  the  dean  and  chapter  of 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  the  Duke  of 
Rutland's  manuscripts  at  Belvoir  Castle. 
In  1886,  when  he  was  still  only  thirty- 
seven,  he  was  appointed,  at  a  critical 
moment,  to  the  deputy  keepership  of  the 
public  records,  a  post  which  he  held  with 
great  distinction  for  forty  years. 

By  this  time  the  impulse  given  by  the 
foundation  in  1838  of  the  Public  Record 
Office  had  died  away.  The  schemes  of  Sir 
Francis  Palgrave  and  Sir  T.  Duffus  Hardy 
[qq.v.]  to  pubhsh  the  records  in  extenso 
had  broken  down:  the  department  was 
slack  and  riven  by  personal  jealousies. 
With  cautious  persistence  Lyte  altered  all 
this,  and  infused  fresh  energy  into  the 
office.  The  premises  were  rebuilt:  the 
vast  accumulation  of  documents  was 
sorted:  and  the  chief  classes  made  avail- 
able for  reference  in  a  new  series  of  Lists 
and  Indexes.  Above  all,  he  instituted  and 
carried  far  towards  completion  the  in- 


Ul 

I 


valuable  series  of  Calendars  of  the  Chance 
Rolls.  Among  his  own  publications,  t] 
great  edition  of  the  Book  of  Fees  (part 
1920,  part  ii,  1923)  and  Historical  Notes 
the  use  of  the  Great  Seal  of  England  (19: 
are  noteworthy. 

In  1926,  being  then  seventy -eight  yei 
of  age,  Lyte  resigned  to  make  way  for 
younger  man.  A  shrewd  administrator 
and  an  understanding  chief  (if  somewhat 
aloof),  he  had  long  ere  this  turned  the 
office  into  a  vigorous  and  efficient  depart- 
ment. A  loyal  staff  of  able  men  co- 
operated in  a  long  series  of  publications 
which  have  at  once  assisted  and  pro- 
foundly influenced  the  development  of 
modern  historical  research.  Official  recog- 
nition of  his  services  came  early,  for  he  was 
appointed  C.B.  in  1889  and  K.C.B.  in 
1897;  he  was  an  original  fellow  of  t] 
British  Academy,  and  in  1929  his  ol 
university  conferred  upon  him  the  honorai 
degree  of  D.Litt.  A  kindly  man,  keenly 
interested  in  genealogy,  with  artistic 
leanings  and  a  taste  for  photography,  he 
retained  his  good  health  and  zeal  for  study 
to  the  last,  dying  after  a  short  illness  at 
Wells,  Somerset,  28  October  1940,  at  the 
age  of  ninety-two.  His  hfework  was  the 
creation  of  a  new  and  better  tradition 
the  conduct  of  the  Public  Record  O 
and  it  remains  as  his  monument 

Lyte  married  in  1871  Frances  Fownes 
(died  1925),  elder  daughter  of  James 
Curtis  Somerville,  J.P.,  of  Dinder  House, 
Wells,  and  had  three  sons  and  three 
daughters. 

[Charles  Johnson,  Sir  Henry  Churchill 
Maocwell-Lyte,  1848-1940  in  Proceedings  of 
the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi,  1940  (por- 
trait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

V.  H.  Galbraith. 

LYTTELTON,  Sir  NEVILLE 
GERALD  (1845-1931),  general,  was 
born  at  Hagley,  Worcestershire,  28 
October  1845,  the  third  of  the  eight  sons 
of  George  WiUiam  Lyttelton,  fourth  Lord 
Lyttelton  [q.v.],  by  his  first  wife,  Mary, 
second  daughter  of  Sir  Stephen  Richard 
Glynne,  eighth  baronet,  and  sister  of 
Mrs.  William  Ewart  Gladstone.  He  was 
brother  of  Arthur  Temple  Lyttelton  [q.v.] 
and  Alfred  Lyttelton  [q.v.] .  He  came  from 
a  home  devoutly  Anglican  and  was  edu- 
cated at  Eton,  whence  in  1865  he  joined 
the  Rifle  Brigade  and  went  to  Canada 
where  he  helped  to  suppress  the  Fenian 
rising  of  1866.  In  1867  he  acted  as 
secretary  to  the  commission  dealing  with 
the  Oregon  boundary  dispute. 


554 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Lytton 


After  having  been  posted  to  various 
I ) laces  in  England,  Ireland,  and  India 
(where  he  served  in  the  expedition  of 
1877-1878  against  the  Jowaki  Afridis), 
Lyttelton  became  private  secretary  to 
II.  C.  E.  Childers  [q.v.]  who  had  been 
appointed  secretary  of  state  for  war  in  the 
liberal  government  of  1880,  but  in  1882  he 
took  part  in  the  Egyptian  campaign  as 
aide-de-camp  to  Sir  J.  M.  Adye  [q.v.]  to 
whom,  as  governor  of  Gibraltar,  he 
became  military  secretary  from  1883  to 
1885.  From  the  latter  year  until  1890  he 
was  military  secretary  to  Lord  Reay  [q.v.], 
governor  of  Bombay,  and  after  joining  the 
3rd  battalion  of  his  regiment  at  JuUunder 
as  second  in  command  he  returned  to 
England  in  1893,  having  shortly  before 
been  promoted  to  command  the  first 
battalion.  He  then  commanded  the  second 
battalion  in  Ireland.  In  1894  he  was 
appointed  assistant  adjutant-general  at 
the  War  Office  and  assistant  mihtary 
secretary  in  1897.  But  the  next  year  he 
went  to  the  Sudan  in  command  of  a 
brigade,  and  was  present  at  the  battle  of 
Omdurman.  In  1899  he  commanded  the 
2nd  Infantry  brigade  at  Aldershot. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  South  Africa, 
Lyttelton,  who  was  sent  to  Natal  in 
command  of  the  4th  brigade  and  succes- 
sively thereafter  commanded  the  2nd  and 
4th  divisions,  was  held  to  be  one  of  the  few 
senior  officers  who  emerged  with  enhanced 
reputation  from  that  unsatisfactory  epi- 
sode, credit  accruing  to  him  from  his 
handhng  of  his  troops  at  Spion  Kop, 
Vaal  Krantz,  and  the  relief  of  Lady  smith. 
He  used  to  contrast  the  battle  of  Om- 
durman where  '50,000  fanatics  streamed 
across  the  open  regardless  of  cover  to 
certain  death'  with  Colenso,  'where  I 
never  saw  a  Boer  all  day  . . .  and  it  was  our 
men  who  were  the  victims'.  After  having 
commanded  in  the  eastern  Transvaal,  in 
the  operations  against  General  C.  R.  De 
Wet  [q.v.],  and  in  Natal  once  more,  he 
became  commander-in-chief  in  South 
Africa  in  succession  to  Kitchener  from 
June  1902  until  January  1904.  These 
years  saw  little  of  military  importance, 
but  he  and  Lady  Lyttelton  exerted  them- 
selves to  bring  Briton  and  Boer  together 
as  much  as  possible,  and  he  and  General 
Louis  Botha  [q.v.]  discussed  the  conduct 
of  the  war  with  great  interest. 

The  most  important  phase  of  Lyttelton's 
mihtary  career  opened  on  his  appoint- 
ment as  chief  of  the  General  Staff  and  first 
military  member  of  the  Army  Coimcil  in 
1904.    It  was  during  his  four  years  of 


office  that  the  Expeditionary  Force  was 
built  up.  Lyttelton's  preponderating 
interest  was  in  the  traim'ng  of  the  staff  and 
the  formation  of  the  Officers'  Training 
Corps.  In  this  and  in  two  other  matters, 
events  were  to  justify  him:  in  a  dispute 
with  H.  O.  Amold-Forster  [q.v.]  over  the 
introduction  of  a  heavier  type  of  artillery, 
wherein  he  won  his  point,  and  in  his  criti- 
cism of  the  changes  in  staff  organization 
inaugurated  by  Kitchener  in  India,  of 
which  he  strongly  disapproved  and  to 
which  he  attributed  the  misfortunes  of 
the  Mesopotamian  campaign. 

In  1908  Lyttelton,  who  had  been  pro- 
moted full  general  in  1906,  went  to  Ireland 
as  commander-in-chief,  and  in  1912  he 
was  appointed  governor  of  the  Royal 
Hospital,  Chelsea,  a  post  which  he  held 
until  his  death  which  took  place  there 
6  July  1931. 

Lyttelton  was  mentioned  in  dispatches 
and  received  a  brevet  of  Ueutenant- 
colonel  after  the  battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir 
(1882),  and  he  was  again  mentioned  after 
Omdurman  (when  he  was  promoted 
major-general)  and  in  the  South  African 
war  (when  he  was  promoted  heutenant- 
general).  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1897, 
K.C.B.  in  1902,  G.C.B.  in  1907,  and 
G.C.V.O.  in  1911,  and  he  was  sworn  of  the 
Irish  Privy  Council  in  1908.  He  married 
in  1883  Katharine  Sarah,  youngest 
daughter  of  James  Archibald  Stuart- 
Wortley  [q.v.],  and  was  survived  by  her 
and  by  their  three  daughters,  the  eldest 
of  whom  married  C.  F.  G.  Masterman 
[q.v.],  and  the  youngest,  W.  L.  Hichens 
[q.v.]. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Lji^telton  by 
Archibald  Stuart- Wortley  at  Hagley  Hall, 
and  there  are  two  by  Harris  Brown,  the 
one  at  the  Royal  Hospital,  Chelsea,  and 
the  other  in  the  possession  of  his  second 
daughter,  Mrs.  Arthur  Grenfell.  A  cartoon 
of  him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
5  September  1901. 

[The  Times,  7  July  1931 ;  Sir  Neville  Lyttel- 
ton, Eighty  Years,  1927 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Lucy  Masterman. 

LYTTON,     Sir    HENRY    ALFRED 

(1865-1936),  actor,  whose  original  name 
was  Henry  Alfred  Jones,  was  born  in 
Kensington  3  January  1865  (he  always 
gave  the  date  erroneously  as  3  January 
1867),  the  only  son  of  Henry  Jones, 
jeweller,  by  his  second  wife,  Martha 
Lavinia  Harris.  He  was  educated  at 
St.  Mark's  School,  Chelsea,  where  he  took 
part  in  amateur  theatrical  performances 


555 


Lytton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  whence  he  ran  away  in  an  unsuccessful 
endeavour  to  become  a  professional  actor. 

A  few  years  later,  in  1882,  Lytton  made 
his  first  appearance  on  the  professional 
stage  at  the  Philharmonic  Theatre,  Ishng- 
ton,  in  The  Obstinate  Bretons,  in  the  caste 
of  which  was  his  future  wife,  Louie, 
daughter  of  William  Webber,  of  London, 
whom  he  married  in  1884.  Through  her 
influence  he  secured  an  engagement  with 
the  D'Oyly  Carte  Opera  Company,  and 
made  his  first  appearance  at  the  Royalty 
Theatre,  Glasgow,  in  February  1884  in 
the  chorus  of  Princess  Ida.  He  appeared 
under  the  name  of  II.  A.  Henri,  his  wife's 
stage  name  being  Louie  Henri.  He  re- 
mained with  the  D'Oyly  Carte  Company 
only  a  short  time  before  joining  another 
touring  company,  the  London  Comedy 
and  Operetta  Company. 

Early  in  1887  Lytton  was  engaged  by 
Richard  D'Oyly  Carte  [q.v.]  at  the  Savoy 
Theatre,  London,  as  understudy  to  George 
Grossmith,  the  elder  [q.v.].  Fortune 
smiled  on  him  almost  immediately,  for  in 
January  1887,  a  week  after  the  production 
of  Ruddigore,  by  (Sir)  W.  S.  Gilbert  and 
Sir  Arthur  Sullivan  [qq.v.],  his  principal 
fell  ill,  and  Lytton  made  a  great  success  in 
Grossmith's  part  of  Robin  Oakapple.  It 
was  after  this  success  that,  at  the  sugges- 
tion of  Gilbert,  he  adopted  the  name  of 
Ljiiton.  He  then  toured  with  the  D'Oyly 
Carte  Company  for  several  years,  and  it 
was  not  until  April  1897  that  he  again 
appeared  in  London  when,  at  the  Savoy 
Theatre,  he  succeeded  George  Grossmith 
as  Ferdinand  the  Fifth  in  His  Majesty. 
From  1897  to  1899  he  appeared  at  the 
Savoy  in  revivals  of  The  Yeomen  of  the 
Guard,  The  Grand  Duchess,  The  Gondoliers, 
Trial  by  Jury,  and  H.M.S.  Pinafore,  in- 
creasing his  reputation  very  considerably. 

In  July  1899  Lytton  undertook  the 
management  of  the  Criterion  Theatre, 
London,  producing  a  farcical  comedy. 
The  Wild  Rabbit,  by  George  Arliss  which, 
however,  was  unsuccessful.  He  returned 
to  the  Savoy  in  the  same  year,  and  re- 
mained there  until  1903,  playing  leading 
parts  in  The  Rose  of  Persia  (1899),  The 
Pirates  of  Penzance  (1900),  Patience  (1900), 
The  Emerald  Isle  (1901),  lolanthe  (1901), 
Merrie  England  (1902),  and  A  Princess  of 
Kensington  (1903). 

During  the  next  six  years  Lytton  was 
seen  at  various  London  theatres,  in  The 
Earl  and  the  Girl  (Adelphi,  1903),  The  Talk 
of  the  Town  (Adelphi,  1905),  The  White 
Chrysanthemum  (Criterion,  1905),  The 
Spring  Chicken  (Gaiety,  1906),  The  Little 


Michus  (Daly's,  1906),  and  My  Barli^ 
(Hicks,  1907). 

Lytton  returned  to  the  Savoy  in  Ap^ 
1908  to  appear  for  the  first  time  at  tl 
theatre  in  The  Mikado.  From  that 
imtil  his  retirement  in  1934  he  play^ 
exclusively  in  the  repertory,  in  Lond<[ 
and  the  provinces.  He  played  no  fe\ 
than  thirty  characters  in  these  operas 
during  his  career,  and  appeared  in  all  his 
famous  parts  during  the  seasons  at  the 
Prince's  Theatre  in  1919,  1921,  1924,  and 
1926,  and  again  at  the  Savoy  in  1929-1930 
and  1932-1933.  His  performances  as  John 
Wellington  Wells  in  The  Sorcerer,  Sir 
Joseph  Porter  in  H.M.S.  Pinafore,  Major- 
General  Stanley  in  The  Pirates  of  Penzance, 
Reginald  Bunthorne  in  Patience,  the  Lord 
Chancellor  in  lolanthe,  Ko-Ko  in  The 
Mikado,  Robin  Oakapple  in  Ruddigore, 
Jack  Point  in  The  Yeomen  of  the  Guard, 
and  the  Duke  of  Plaza-Toro  in  The  Gondo- 
liers were  luiexceUed,  either  by  his  pre- 
decessors or  his  successors.  It  is  remark- 
able that  he  was  not  the  original  exponent 
of  any  of  these  parts,  but  his  popularity  in 
them  was  extraordinary.  Undoubtedly 
his  best  impersonation  and  his  own 
favourite  part  was  his  Jack  Point,  which 
was  full  of  intensely  human  appeal, 
romance,  and  pathos.  He  made  his  last 
appearance  with  the  D'Oyly  Carte  Com- 
pany at  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  Dublin,  in 
June  1934. 

For  twenty-six  years  Lytton  was  the 
mainstay  of  the  company,  and  in  1930, 
when  he  was  knighted,  he  was  entertained 
at  luncheon  by  500  men  and  women  repre- 
sentative of  the  stage,  literature,  art, 
politics,  the  law,  and  commerce.  After  the 
celebration  of  his  stage  jubilee,  he  received 
a  national  testimonial,  and  among  the 
signatories  of  the  album  which  accom- 
panied the  gift  were  the  prime  minister, 
Ramsay  MacDonald,  Stanley  Baldwin, 
and  Lloyd  George,  the  presentation  being 
made  by  the  last-named.  At  Christmas 
1934  he  entered  on  his  last  engagement 
when,  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre, 
Birmingham,  he  acted  as  the  Emperor  in 
the  pantomime  Aladdin,  his  first  and  only 
part  in  pantomime. 

According  to  his  own  confession  Lytton 
could  not  read  a  fine  of  music,  and  all  his 
songs  were  taught  him  by  his  wife,  who 
played  them  over  and  over  again  until  he 
had  mastered  them.  He  possessed  a  light, 
pleasant  voice  with  crystal-clear  diction, 
a  high  sense  of  comedy,  a  remarkably  keen 
sense  of  'timing'  which  gave  poise  and 
distinction-  to  every  part  which  he  imder- 


556 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


MacAlister 


took,  and  his  acting  always  appeared  to 
be  perfectly  spontaneous. 

Lytton  died  in  London  15  August  1936, 
ind  was  survived  by  his  wife  (died  1947) 
iind  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  A  son 
was  killed  in  1917  while  serving  in  the 
Royal  Flying  Corps;  two  others  died  in 
infancy.  He  was  the  author  of  two  books. 
The  Secrets  of  a  Savoyard  (1922)  and  A 
Wandering  Minstrel  (1933). 

[The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph,  17  August 
1936;  Who's  Who  in  the  Theatre,  1936:  Sir 
H.  A.  Lytton,  The  Secrets  of  a  Savoyard,  1922, 
and  A  Wandering  Minstrel,  1933;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Parker. 

MacALISTER,  Sik  DONALD,  first 
baronet  (1854-1934),  physician,  principal 
and  vice-chancellor  and,  later,  chancellor 
of  the  university  of  Glasgow,  was  born  at 
Perth  17  May  1854,  the  second  son  of 
Donald  MacAlister,  by  his  wife,  Euphemia, 
second  daughter  of  Angus  Kennedy,  of 
Bowmore,  Islay.  The  MacAlisters  had 
ilong  been  settled  on  Lochfyneside  as  land- 
jholders  and  later  as  crofters  and  fisher- 
men, but  the  elder  Donald  MacAlister  had 
become  a  publishers'  agent,  living  succes- 
sively, in  Glasgow,  Perth,  Aberdeen,  and, 
from  1864  until  his  death  in  1881,  in 
Liverpool  where  he  was  with  the  firm  of 
Blackie  &  Son.  He  had  a  large  family  and 
narrow  means,  so  that  his  son  had  not 
jonly  to  provide  for  his  own  education  but, 
lin  his  early  manhood,  to  bear  the  greater 
part  of  the  maintenance  and  education  of 
ihis  younger  brothers  and  sisters.  After 
attending  various  schools,  MacAlister 
went  in  1866  to  Liverpool  Institute,  then 
under  the  direction  of  the  Rev.  John 
Sephton,  to  whose  teaching  and  guidance 
jMacAlister  owed  much.  In  1873  he 
entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  as 
a  scholar,  though  also  elected  elsewhere. 
He  read  mathematics,  and  finished  his 
coiu'se  in  January  1877  as  senior  wrangler 
and  first  Smith's  prizeman.  In  November 
1877  he  was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at 
St.  John's.  He  remained  a  fellow  of  the 
college  until  the  end  of  his  life,  and  was 
senior  tutor  from  1900  to  1904. 

After  a  brief  and  happy  interlude  as  a 
mathematical  master  at  Harrow,  Mac- 
Alister turned  to  his  original  intention  of 
studying  medicine,  first  at  Cambridge, 
later  in  1879  at  St.  Bartholomew's 
Hospital,  and  for  a  short  time  at  Leipzig. 
In  1881  he  settled  in  Cambridge,  and  took 
up  medical  teaching,  investigation,  and 
practice :  he  held  the  positions  of  Linacre 


lecturer,  of  deputy  to  the  regius  professor 
of  physic  (Sir  George  Paget,  q.v.),  and 
in  1884,  when  he  graduated  M.D.,  of 
physician  to  Addenbrooke's  Hospital.  In 
this  work  he  had  great  success,  and  won 
wide  recognition  in  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  and  in  other  schools.  He  was 
elected  F.R.C.P.  in  1886  and  gave  the 
Goulstonian  lecture  on  'The  Nature  of 
Fever'  in  1887;  a  year  later  he  delivered 
the  Croonian  lecture.  He  had  been 
editor  of  the  Practitioner  since  1882,  and 
held  this  post  for  thirteen  years.  His  main 
energies  were  already  drawn  to  organiza- 
tion and  administration ;  he  took  an  active 
part  in  college  and  university  affairs.  A 
decisive  event  was  his  election  in  1889  as 
the  representative  of  Cambridge  on  the 
General  Medical  Council.  This  became  one 
of  his  chief  fields  of  activity;  he  was  a 
member  for  forty-four  years,  and  for 
twenty-seven  years  (1904-1931)  he  was 
president. 

In  1907  MacAlister  was  nominated  for 
appointment  by  the  Crown  as  principal 
of  the  university  of  Glasgow.  In  his 
twenty-two  years  of  office,  broken  as  they 
were  by  the  war  of  1914-1918,  he  pre- 
sided over  a  great  expansion  of  the  univer- 
sity. To  a  remarkable  degree  he  gained 
the  confidence  of  city  and  imiversity  alike, 
and  gathered  support  both  for  his  building 
programme  and  for  the  endowment  of 
teaching  posts.  His  health  was  never 
completely  reliable ;  but  he  had  immense 
resolution,  industry,  and  staying  power, 
and  accomplished  at  Glasgow,  in  London, 
and  farther  afield  a  great  volume  of  work. 
Apart  from  the  affairs  of  the  General 
Medical  Council,  he  took  a  leading  part  in 
the  general  imiversity  business  of  the 
country.  He  was  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  Universities'  Bureau  of  the  British 
Empire,  and  was  for  many  years  chairman 
of  the  standing  committee  of  vice- 
chancellors  and  principals  of  the  British 
universities.  He  served  on  many  govern- 
ment commissions,  including  the  Treasury 
Committee  of  1908  on  the  imiversity  of 
Wales,  the  commission  on  the  Queen's 
University,  Belfast,  and  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  civil  service  (1912-1915). 
On  medical  matters,  he  was  chairman  of 
the  British  Pharmacopoeia  committee, 
and  had  a  large  share  in  the  preparation 
of  the  British  Pharmacopoeia  in  1898  and 
its  revision  in  1914.  He  was  chairman  of 
the  medical  consultative  committee  of 
the  Scottish  Board  of  Health  and  had  a 
long  and  active  association  with  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Highlands  and  Islands 


557 


MacAlister 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


medical  service  board.  He  was  also  vice- 
chairman  of  the  Carnegie  United  Kingdom 
Trust. 

MacAUster  was  fond  of  travel,  and 
acquired  languages  with  astonishing  ease. 
His  most  widely  known  publication  is 
Echoes  (1907),  a  volume  of  translations  in 
verse  from  and  into  most  modern  European 
languages.  He  had  a  special  interest  in 
Russian  and  Romani,  and  was  president 
of  the  G5T)sy  Lore  Society  in  1915.  In 
reUgion  he  was  a  staunch  Presbyterian. 

MacAlister  held  honorary  doctorates 
from  thirteen  universities  at  home  and 
abroad.  He  was  appointed  K.C.B.  in  1908 
and  created  a  baronet  in  1924.  He  re- 
ceived the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Glasgow 
in  1924,  and  after  his  resignation  of  the 
principalship  in  1929  he  was  elected 
chancellor  of  the  university. 

MacAlister  married  in  1895  Edith 
Florence  Boyle,  eldest  daughter  of  his 
distant  kinsman  Alexander  MacaUster, 
professor  of  anatomy  at  Cambridge ;  there 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage.  He  died 
at  Cambridge  15  January  1934. 

A  portrait  of  MacAUster  was  painted  in 
1924  by  Maurice  Greiffenhagen  for  the 
General  Medical  Coimcil.  Glasgow  Uni- 
versity commissioned  one  to  be  painted 
by  George  Henry,  which  is  now  in  the 
senate  room.  A  replica  of  the  portrait  by 
Greiffenhagen  was  presented  to  his  wife, 
together  with  a  bust  by  George  Paulin. 

[The  Times,  16  January  1934;  E.  F.  B. 
MacAlister,  Sir  Donald  MacAlister  of  Tarbet, 
1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  J.  W.  Hetherington. 

McCARDIE,  Sir  HENRY  ALFRED 

(1869-1933),  judge,  was  bom  at  Edg- 
baston  19  July  1869,  the  son  of  an  Irish- 
man, Joseph  William  McCardie,  merchant, 
of  Edgbaston.  His  mother,  Jane  Elizabeth 
Hunt,  was  English.  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Middle  Temple  in  1894,  and 
read  in  the  chambers  of  (Judge)  James 
John  Parfitt,  at  Birmingham.  He  joined 
the  Midland  circuit  and  became  a  bencher 
of  his  Inn  in  1916.  In  the  same  year  he 
was  appointed  a  judge  of  the  King's  Bench 
division. 

McCardie  had  two  characteristics  which 
tended  to  place  him  in  a  category  of  his 
own  among  judges.  Most  judges  keep  in 
the  forefront  of  their  minds  the  reflection 
that  their  duty  is  to  decide  the  case  before 
them  and  not  to  deliver  a  dissertation  on 
the  whole  of  the  law  involved.  This  is  the 
explanation  of  the  loose  phraseology 
sometimes  employed  by  judges  in  their 


judicial  pronouncements,  which  mislc 
students  and  necessarily  drives  them 
supplement  their  study  of  original  autl 
rities  by  much  resort  to  text-books.  B^ 
McCardie's  judgements  read  as  though  he 
had  consciously  prepared  them  for  the  host 
of  law  students,  contemporary  and  futvire. 
Their  proUxity  was  inspired,  not  by  any 
vain  wish  to  make  a  parade  of  his  immense 
learning,  but  by  a  single-hearted  desire  to 
fulfil  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  true 
judicial  function.  A  certain  lord  chan- 
cellor aptly  described  him  as  '  the  greatest 
master  of  case-law  of  our  time'.  His 
learning  extended,  too,  outside  the  limits 
of  EngUsh  case-law.  In  Cohen  v.  Sellar 
(1926)  he  was  faced  with  the  curious 
question  whether  a  man  who  has  pro- 
mised to  marry  a  woman,  and  fails,  with- 
out legal  justification,  to  carry  out  his 
promise,  can  demand  the  return  of  the 
engagement  ring.  McCardie  reached  the 
negative  conclusion  through  a  long  chain 
of  intricate  reasoning,  based  not  only  upon 
an  exhaustive  study  of  the  English 
authorities,  but  also  upon  the  most  pro- 
found research  into  Roman  and  continental 
law.  His  second  peculiarity,  which  he 
shared  with  the  famous  Louis  Dembitz 
Brandeis,  one  of  the  ablest  judges  who 
ever  graced  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  of  America,  was  his  convic- 
tion that  the  consideration  of  social 
problems,  as  well  as  that  of  judicial  pre- 
cedents, should  form  part  of  the  tools  of  a 
judge's  trade.  In  pursuance  of  this  view, 
he  deUvered  himself  freely  of  all  sorts  of 
aphorisms  on  many  burning  topics  of  the 
day.  This  habit  was  by  no  means  always 
popular  either  with  his  judicial  brethren 
or  with  some  outside  the  legal  profession. 
Thus  he  held  a  firm  opinion  that  it  might 
sometimes  be  a  moral  duty  to  carry  out 
an  operation  for  abortion.  His  expression 
of  this  opinion  from  the  bench  in  1981 
was  much  criticized,  but  it  is  worthy  of 
note  that  it  was,  in  effect,  vindicated  in 
the  famous  case  of  R.  v.  Bourne  (1939), 
where  it  was  held  that  in  all  abortion  trials 
the  onus  is  on  the  Crown  to  prove  that  the 
operation  was  .  not  performed  with  the 
object  of  preserving  the  hfe  of  the  mother. 
In  Place  v.  Searle  (1932),  an  action  by  a 
husband  against  the  enticer  of  his  wife,  he 
gave  vent  to  a  long  disquisition  on  tin 
status  of  married  women  from  the  socio- 
logical point  of  view,  for  which  he  incurred 
the  rebuke  of  Lord  Justice  Scrutton  [q.v.] 
in  the  Court  of  Appeal.  But  the  case 
which  rendered  him  the  target  for  much 
political  rancour  was  O^Dwyer  v.  Nair  in 


558 


A 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


McCormick 


1924.  This  was  a  libel  action,  arising  out 
of  the  Amritsar  disturbances  in  1919,  and 
especially  the  drastic  action  of  Brigadier- 
General  R.  E.  H.  Dyer  [q.v.],  which  was  a 
cardinal  point  in  the  case.  McCardie,  who 
never  lacked  the  courage  of  his  convic- 
tions, took  occasion  to  record  deliberately 
his  considered  opinion  that  the  action  of 
Dyer  was  right,  and  that  the  secretary  of 
state  for  India  had  acted  wrongly  in  re- 
moving him  from  the  army.  He  spoke 
with  full  knowledge  that  his  remarks 
would  cause  great  dissatisfaction  in  certain 
quarters.  Nor  was  he  disappointed,  for 
George  Lansbury  [q.v.]  put  down  a 
motion  in  the  House  of  Commons  for  an 
address  to  the  King  praying  for  McCardie's 
removal  from  the  bench.  Although  he  was 
supported  by  the  assurance  that  in  calling 
the  attention  of  the  jury  to  the  evidence  on 
that  particular  point,  he  had  done  nothing 
but  his  plain  duty,  an  assurance  rendered 
jioubly  sure  by  the  approval  of  many  of 
'liis  judicial  brethren,  nevertheless  his 
pieart  was  greatly  wounded  by  the  vin- 
j:lictiveness  of  the  attacks  upon  him, 
Iwhich  made  him  intensely  unhappy.  The 
whole  episode  must  have  inspired  his 
ivritten  words,  which  might  serve  as  a 
Tiodel  for  any  aspirant  to  the  bench, 
Judges  seek  no  popularity.  They  will  not 
y^ield  to  the  passing  winds  of  popular 
;jxcitement.' 

!  Among  McCardie' s  most  famous  criminal 
leases  should  be  mentioned  the  trials  in 
11922  of  Henry  Jacoby  for  the  murder  of 
Lady  White,  and  of  Ronald  True  for  the 
nurder  of  Olive  Young.  Among  his  many 
ivil  decisions  it  is  difficult  to  make  the 
proper  selections.  Maclenan  v.  Segar 
1917)  is  a  classic  authority  on  the  extent 
)f  an  innkeeper's  liabihty  to  his  guest  for 
he  safety  of  his  premises.  In  1918,  in 
Wnylor,  Benzon  and  Co.  v.  Krainische 
Industrie  Gesellschaft,  in  which  McCardie 
leld  a  contract,  entered  into  between  a 
British  and  an  Austrian  company  before 
he  war,  to  have  been  dissolved,  notwith- 
tanding  a  suspension  clause,  by  the  out- 
)reak  of  war,  he  expressed  doubt  of  Lord 
lalsbury's  view  that  no  court  can  invent 
I  new  head  of  public  policy,  and  said: 
Public  poUcy  is  a  variable  thing.  It  must 
luctuate  with  the  circumstances  of  the 
ime.'  In  Jeffrey  v.  Bamford  (1921)  he  laid 
lown  that  a  partnership  for  the  purpose  of 
;arrying  on  a  bookmaker's  business  is  not 
ier  se  illegal.  In  Phillips  v.  Britannia 
iygienic  Laundry  Co.  (1923)  he  held  that 
•ne  who  had  broken  a  statutory  order  by 
(ringing  on  a  road  a  motor-car  with  a 


defective  axle  did  not,  by  that  mere 
breach,  render  himself  liable  to  a  civil 
action  at  the  suit  of  a  person  injured 
thereby.  In  Gayler  and  Pope  v.  Davies 
(1924)  he  enunciated  the  principle  that  if 
a  horse  is  left  unattended  in  a  public  street 
and  bolts,  this  is  prima  facie  evidence  of 
negligence  against  its  owner.  All  these, 
and  many  others,  represent  vital  contri- 
butions by  a  great  and  learned  judge  to 
the  vast  fabric  of  the  Common  Law,  which 
he  faithfully  served  with  all  his  might. 

The  political  attacks  made  upon  him 
may  have  led  to  the  deep  fits  of  depression 
from  which  McCardie  suffered,  and  in  one 
of  which  he  died  by  his  own  hand  in 
London  26  April  1933.  He  never  married. 

[The  Times,  27  and  29  April  1933 ;  George 
Pollock,  Mr.  Justice  McCardie,  1934.] 

H.  G.  Hanbury. 

McCORMICK,  WILLIAM  PATRICK 
GLYN  (1877-1940),  vicar  of  St.  Martm- 
in-the-Fields,  London,  was  born  at  Hull 
14  June  1877,  the  fourth  child  and  third 
son  of  Joseph  McCormick,  vicar  of  Holy 
Trinity  church,  Hull,  afterwards  canon  of 
York  Minster,  rector  of  St.  James's  church, 
Piccadilly,  and  an  honorary  chaplain  to 
the  king,  by  his  wife,  Frances,  daughter  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Gregory  Haines,  of 
the  East  India  Company's  service,  and 
granddaughter  of  Hugh,  first  Viscount 
Gough  [q.v.].  McCormick  was  educated 
at  Llandaff  Cathedral  School,  Exeter 
School,  and  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 
He  was  ordained  deacon  in  1900  and  priest 
in  1901,  and  in  1902  went  to  South  Africa 
as  an  army  chaplain,  intending  to  make 
this  his  career.  He  soon  realized  the  urgent 
need  of  a  Christian  ministry  on  the  Rand, 
so  in  1903  he  went  to  Jumpers  Deep  Mine, 
Cleveland,  and  lived  with  the  men  in  their 
quarters.  It  was  very  uphill  work,  but  his 
warm  friendliness,  coupled  with  his 
prowess  at  Rugby  football  and  at  cricket 
soon  made  him  very  popular.  He  started 
the  parish  of  St.  Patrick's,  Cleveland, 
raising  the  money  for  building  the  church 
and  vicarage.  In  1910  he  was  appointed 
rector  of  St.  John's  church,  Belgravia, 
Johannesburg,  and  in  the  same  year 
married  Ada  Miriam,  daughter  of  George 
Herbert  Shelton,  of  the  Stock  Exchange, 
a  kinsman  of  William  Morris.  By  her  he 
had  a  son  and  three  daughters. 

McCormick  was  on  leave  in  England  at 
the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914,  and  joined 
the  army  as  a  chaplain  one  month  later, 
seeing  active  service  in  France.  From 
1915  to  1917  he  was  senior  chaplain  to  the 


659 


McCormick 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Guards  division;  from  1917  to  1918 
deputy-assistant-chaplain-general  to  the 
XIV  Corps;  and  from  1918  to  1919 
assistant-chaplain-general  at  Boulogne.  In 
1917  he  was  awarded  the  D.S.O.,  and  he 
was  four  times  mentioned  in  dispatches. 
On  his  return  to  England  in  1919  he  was 
appointed  vicar  of  Croydon;  from  1923  to 
1927  he  was  an  honorary  canon  of  Canter- 
bury Cathedral;  and  from  1928  until  his 
death  he  was  an  honorary  chaplain  to  the 
king.  When  H.  R.  L.  Sheppard  [q.v.] 
resigned  the  living  of  St.  Martin-in-the- 
Fields  in  1927,  McCormick  was  appointed 
vicar,  and  so  remained  until  his  death.  It 
was  no  easy  task  to  follow  a  man  like 
Sheppard,  but  no  one  could  have  done  it 
so  successfully  as  McCormick.  He  carried 
on  the  work  of  his  predecessor  and  ex- 
tended it  in  many  ways.  At  the  end  of  his 
life  he  suffered  from  heart  trouble,  and  the 
strain  of  the  war,  which  involved  turning 
the  crypt  into  a  shelter  for  use  in  air-raids, 
probably  hastened  his  death  in  London 
16  October  1940. 

McCormick  was  an  outstanding  person- 
aUty  with  a  shrewd  brain  and  the  gift  of 
briuging  out  the  best  in  people.  Although 
not  a  great  orator,  he  could  hold  his  con- 
gregations, whether  in  church  or  on  the 
air,  by  his  simplicity  and  utter  sincerity. 
Apart  from  the  warm  friendliness  of  his 
manner,  his  most  distinctive  characteris- 
tics were  his  shioing  faith,  his  serenity, 
and  his  selfless  humility. 

A  memorial  plaque  to  McCormick  is  in 
the  crypt  of  St.  Martin-in-the-Fields. 

[R.  J.  Northcott,  Pat  McCormick,  1941; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
C.  Joyce  E.  Holuns. 

MACDONALD,  Sir  GEORGE  (1862- 
1940),  numismatist,  classical  scholar  and 
archaeologist,  and  civil  servant,  was  bom 
at  Elgin  30  January  1862,  the  third  son 
of  James  Macdonald,  a  master  at  Elgin 
Academy  and  an  antiquary,  by  his  wife, 
Margaret  Raff.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Ayr  Academy,  of  which  his  father  was 
then  rector,  and  at  Edinburgh  University, 
where  he  had  a  distinguished  career. 
Thence  he  proceeded  in  1884  to  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  obtaining  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1885)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1887).  From  1887  to  1892  he 
was  a  member  of  the  staff  of  the  Kelvin- 
side  Academy,  Glasgow,  and  was  subse- 
quently (1892-1904)  a  lecturer  in  Greek  at 
the  university.  In  1904  he  was  appointed 
assistant  secretary  of  the  Scottish  Educa- 
tion   Department,    ultimately    becoming 


secretary  (1922-1928).  A  departmental 
connexion  with  the  Royal  Scottish  Museum 
caused  him  to  be  nominated  to  the  royal 
commission  on  museums  and  galleries 
(1927-1930)  and  following  thereon  to  the 
standing  commission  (1931):  he  was  re- 
appointed for  a  further  period  of  seven 
years  in  1938.  He  also  became  a  member 
of  the  fine  arts  commission  for  Scotland 
on  its  institution  in  1927.  From  1918 
onwards  he  was  one  of  the  two  reporters 
for  the  Carnegie  Trust  for  the  universities 
of  Scotland  under  the  research  scheme. 
He  was  also  a  member  of  the  university 
grants  committee  from  1933  onwards. 

Besides  being  a  distinguished  admini- 
strator, Macdonald  was  also  a  skilled 
numismatist  and  archaeologist  and  an 
eminent  authority  on  Romano-British 
history  and  antiquities.  The  Hunterian 
collection  of  coins  in  Glasgow  University 
had  long  claimed  his  attention,  and  be- 
tween 1899  and  1905  he  produced  his 
catalogue  of  Greek  and  Roman  coins  ia 
that  collection,  a  work  which  placed  him 
in  the  front  rank  of  numismatists  and 
which  was  'crowned'  by  the  Academic  des 
Inscriptions  et  Belles -Lettres  and  which 
brought  him  the  award  of  the  Prix  Allier 
de  Hauteroche  (1907).  He  was  a  frequent 
contributor  to  the  Numismatic  Chronicle 
and  in  1905  he  delivered  in  Edinburgh  the 
Rhind  lectures  in  archaeology  which  were 
published  in  the  same  year  as  Coin  Types, 
their  Origin  and  Development.  Many  numis- 
matic societies,  both  British  and  foreign, 
claimed  him  as  a  member,  and  in  1935  he 
was  president  of  the  Royal  Numismatic 
Society,  which  had  awarded  him  its  medal 
in  1913. 

With  an  interest  inherited  from  his 
father  in  the  Antonine  Wall  between  the 
Forth  and  the  Clyde,  Macdonald  devoted 
much  of  his  leisure  to  establishing  its  line 
and  in  excavating  its  forts.  A  course  of 
Dalrymple  lectures  deUvered  in  Glasgow 
in  1910  on  this  subject  subsequently 
formed  the  main  strand  of  his  Roman  Wall 
in  Scotland  (1911).  A  close  friendship  withi 
F.  J.  Haverfield  [q.v.]  led  to  the  publica-l 
tion  in  1924,  after  Haverfleld's  death,  of 
his  Ford  lectures  in  their  joint  names; 
under  the  title  of  The  Roman  Occupationl 
of  Britain.  His  authoritative  work  onj 
Romano-British  history  was  fully  recog-l 
nized  abroad  and  his  reputation  as 
scholar  was  enhanced  by  his  regular  c( 
tributions  to  Pauly-Wissowa's 
Encyclopddie  from  1923  to  the  close 
his  life. 

Many    honours    were    conferred 


560 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Macdonald,  H.  M. 


Macdonald.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1916  and  K.C.B.  in  1927.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Oxford,  and  Cam- 
bridge. He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1913,  and  an  honorary 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh 
in  1933  and  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  in 
1936 ;  he  was  also  an  honorary  member  of 
the  Royal  Scottish  Academy  and  a  trustee 
of  the  National  Library  of  Scotland.  He 
was  president  of  the  Society  for  the  Pro- 
motion of  Roman  Studies  from  1921  to 
1926  and  of  the  Classical  Associations  of 
England  and  Wales  (1931)  and  of  Scotland 
(1936).  At  the  time  of  his  death  he  was 
president  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries 
of  Scotland,  chairman  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  ancient  and  historical 
monuments  of  Scotland,  and  a  member 
of  the  advisory  board  for  Scotland  to 
the  ancient  monuments  department  of 
the  Office  of  Works. 

Macdonald  married  in  1897  Margaret 
Tannahill,  daughter  of  George  Younger, 
a  Glasgow  merchant,  and  had  a  son  and 
a  daughter  who  predeceased  her  father. 
He  died  in  Edinburgh  9  August  1940. 

Macdonald's  portrait  by  Maurice  Greif- 
fenhagen,  at  present  with  the  Scottish 
Education  Department,  will  eventually  be 
placed  in  the  Scottish  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

[The  Times,  12  August  1940;  A.  O.  Curie, 
Sir  George  Macdonald,  1862-1940  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvii,  1941 
(portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  O.  CtJRUE. 

MACDONALD,     HECTOR     MUNRO 

(1865-1935),  mathematical  physicist,  was 
born  in  Edinburgh  19  January  1865,  the 
elder  son  of  Donald  Macdonald,  originally 
of  Kiltearn,  Ross,  by  his  wife,  Annie, 
daughter  of  Hector  Munro,  of  Kiltearn. 
His  earliest  education  was  in  Edinburgh, 
but  after  the  removal  of  his  parents  to 
Feam  in  Easter  Ross,  he  went  to  school 
there,  and  later  to  the  Royal  Academy, 
Tain,  and  Old  Aberdeen  Grammar  School. 
He  graduated  at  the  university  of  Aber- 
deen in  1886  with  first  class  honours  in 
mathematics  and  was  awarded  a  Fullerton 
scholarship.  Proceeding  to  Clare  College, 
Cambridge,  as  a  foundation  scholar,  he 
graduated  as  foiurth  wrangler  in  1889,  was 
elected  in  1890  into  a  fellowship  at  Clare, 
which  he  held  until  1908,  and  in  1891  was 
awarded  the  second  Smith's  prize. 

In  the  last  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Macdonald  pubUshed  many  papers  of 


a  pure-mathematical  character,  on  the 
relations  between  convergent  series  and 
asymptotic  expansions,  the  zeros  and  the 
addition  theorem  of  Bessel  functions, 
various  Bessel  integrals,  spherical  har- 
monics, and  Fourier  series.  But  his  per- 
manent reputation  as  a  discoverer  will 
probably  rest  chiefly  on  a  group  of  re- 
searches in  mathematical  physics,  the 
origin  of  wliich  may  be  traced  to  the 
announcement  by  Cambridge  University 
in  1899  of  the  Adams  prize  subject  for 
1901 , '  The  improvement  of  existing  know- 
ledge in  respect  of  .  .  .  the  modes  and 
periods  of  free  electric  vibrations  in  sys- 
tems of  charged  bodies,  and  the  radiation 
from  them  .  .  .  the  theory  of  wireless  tele- 
graphy'. Macdonald  submitted  an  essay 
which  won  the  prize.  The  great  advance 
made  in  it  was  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  diffraction  at  the  edge  of  a  perfectly 
conducting  (i.e.  totally  reflecting)  prism, 
which  was  solved  by  a  method  admitting 
of  extension  to  any  transparent  or  metallic 
prism  of  which  the  optical  constants  are 
known, 

Macdonald's  essay  was  published  under 
the  title  Electric  Waves  in  1902.  About 
this  time,  Guglielmo  (afterwards  Marchese) 
Marconi  succeeded  in  sending  wireless  sig- 
nals across  the  Atlantic :  and  the  problem 
of  explaining  the  mechanism  of  such  trans- 
mission attracted  the  attention  of  mathe- 
maticians. The  question  may  be  put  thus : 
the  electric  waves  generated  by  the  send- 
ing apparatus  differ  from  waves  of  Ught 
only  by  having  a  longer  wave-length, 
which  is,  nevertheless,  small  compared 
with  the  radius  of  the  earth ;  the  curved 
surface  of  the  earth  may,  therefore,  be 
expected  to  form  a  sort  of  shadow,  effec- 
tively screening  the  receiving  apparatus 
at  a  distance ;  how,  then,  does  it  happen 
that  in  practice  the  waves  penetrate  into 
the  region  of  the  shadow  ? 

To  Macdonald  belongs  the  credit  of 
having  been  the  first  to  formulate  the 
problem  as  one  of  diffraction,  and  of 
having,  in  a  series  of  papers  published 
between  1903  and  1914,  solved  it.  The 
fact  that  wireless  signals  are  much  stronger 
than  his  final  theory  would  lead  the 
student  to  expect,  and  that  consequently 
the  diffraction  explanation  cannot  account 
for  the  facts,  does  not  diminish  the  im- 
portance of  his  achievement:  for  it  was 
necessary  to  find  the  answer  to  the  diffrac- 
tion problem  before  accepting  the  (physi- 
cally) more  complicated  theory  that  a 
layer  exists  in  the  upper  rarefied  region 
of  the  atmosphere,  which  acts  as  a  reflector 


561 


Macdonald,  H.  M. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


for  electro-magnetic  waves  of  great  wave- 
length, so  that  between  this  layer  and  the 
earth's  surface  the  waves  spread  with  only 
two-dimensional  divergence. 

Macdonald's  later  papers  (eight  were 
produced  in  his  seventh  decade)  and  his 
book  Electro-magnetism  (1934)  continued 
the  main  study  of  his  life,  the  radiation, 
transmission,  and  reflection  of  electric 
waves.  He  never  seemed  to  be  affected 
by  the  tremendous  upheaval  caused  by 
the  discoveries  of  the  twentieth  century — 
relativity  and  quantum-mechanics. 

In  1904  Macdonald  left  Cambridge  on 
being  appointed  to  the  chair  of  mathe- 
matics in  his  old  university  of  Aberdeen, 
where  his  ability  as  an  administrator  soon 
made  him  the  most  influential  member  of 
the  senatus.  In  1907  he  was  elected  as  one 
of  the  representatives  of  the  senatus  on 
the  university  court,  of  which  he  remained 
a  member  (except  when  absent  on  govern- 
ment service  during  the  war)  for  the  rest 
of  his  life,  attending  his  last  meeting  only 
a  week  before  his  death.  Brought  up  on 
a  farm,  and  with  the  further  experience 
of  estate  management  gained  as  acting 
senior  bursar  of  Clare,  he  naturally  took 
up  specially  the  oversight  of  the  university 
lands  and  buildings;  his  conception  of  a 
cite  universitaire  for  the  neighbourhood  of 
King's  College  has  left  a  permanent  im- 
press on  that  region. 

The  value  of  Macdonald's  scientific  work 
was  recognized  by  his  election  in  1901  to 
the  fellowship  of  the  Royal  Society,  of 
which  he  was  awarded  a  Royal  medal  in 
1916.  He  was  president  of  the  London 
Mathematical  Society  in  1916-1918,  was 
elected  into  an  honorary  fellowship  at  Clare 
in  1914,  and  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  from  Glasgow  University  in  1934. 
A  portrait  painted  by  R.  G.  Eves  was 
presented  by  his  friends  to  the  university 
of  Aberdeen  in  1933. 

Macdonald  never  married.  He  died  at 
Aberdeen  after  a  short  illness  16  May  1935. 

[The  Times,  17  May  1935 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4,  December 
1935  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Edmund  T.  Whittaker. 

Macdonald,    james    ramsay 

(1866-1937),  labour  leader  and  statesman, 
was  born  in  a  two-roomed  'but  and  ben' 
at  Lossiemouth,  Morayshire,  a  grey,  low- 
land village  of  fishermen  and  farmworkers 
in  the  parish  of  Drainie,  within  a  few 
hours'  walk  of  the  Highlands,  12  October 
1866.  Isabella  Ramsay,  his  grandmother, 
a    woman    of   exceptional    courage    and 


character,  had  successfully  reared  her  four 
yoimg  children  after  being  left  penniless 
by  an  absconding  husband.  Of  these,  the 
youngest,  Anne,  said  to  have  been  the 
most  intelligent  of  the  family,  when  work- 
ing at  a  farm  in  the  parish  of  Alves,  near 
Elgin,  became  with  child  by  the  head 
ploughman,  John  MacDonald,  a  High- 
lander from  the  Black  Isle  of  Ross.  She 
did  not  marry,  and  her  son  was  bom  in 
her  mother's  cottage.  The  pecuUar  cir- 
cumstances of  MacDonald's  childhood  may 
well  have  accovmted  for  the  unusual  later 
combination  of  mental  toughness,  physical 
courage,  and  extreme  sensitiveness  in  his 
character. 

At  Drainie  school,  where  the  fees  were 
eightpence  a  month,  the  boy  studied 
Euclid  and  the  ancient  tongues,  and  de- 
voured such  books  as  were  available  in  his 
grandmother's  cottage  or  were  lent  him 
by  a  consumptive  watchmaker,  who  intro- 
duced him  to  the  works  of  Dickens.  Before 
he  was  fifteen  he  was  head  of  the  school. 
For  a  short  while,  after  leaving,  he  worked 
on  a  farm,  but  when  he  was  about  sixteen 
the  'dominie'  of  Drainie  invited  him  to 
become  a  pupil  teacher,  at  seven  pounds 
ten  shilhngs  a  year.  With  the  free  run  of 
the  '  dominie's '  shelves  he  made  the  ac-  [ 
quaintance  of  Shakespeare,  of  Carlyle's 
tory  socialism,  Ruskin's  sociaUst  aesthe- 
tics, and  Henry  George's  then  extremely 
influential  Progress  and  Poverty.  Although 
he  was  fundamentally  of  a  religious  turn 
of  mind,  with  an  unfailing  reverence  for 
what  he  called  'the  grand,  crowned 
authority  of  life',  an  obstinate  streak  of 
rationalism  combined  with  that  instinct 
of  the  insurgent,  which  sprang  perhaps 
from  his  fatherless  childhood,  to  prevent 
any  of  the  rival  Scottish  orthodoxies  from 
gaining  his  allegiance. 

In  1885,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  Mac- 
Donald  obtained  employment  in  Bristol 
from  a  clergyman  who  was  inaugurating 
a  boys'   and  youiig  men's  guild  there. 
Chance  thus  brought  him  to  what  was  at 
that  time  almost  the  only  Enghsh  city  in 
which  there  was  some  nucleus  of  socialist 
activity.  This  was  a  branch  of  the  Social  j 
Democratic  Federation,  foimded  in  1881 , 
as  the  Democratic  Federation  by  H.  M.  I 
Hyndman  [q.v.],  which  professed  those  | 
Marxian  doctrines  which  MacDonald  was  | 
to  spend  so  much  of  his  later  life  in  com- 
bating.  He  joined  the  branch,  and  took 
his  share  in  its  members'  persistent  but 
unsuccessful  efforts  at  outdoor  evangelism. 
Meanwhile  he  became  an  enthusiastic  geo- 
logist, and  spent  on  books  money  which 


562 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


should  have  gone  on  food  and  clothes. 
Before  the  end  of  the  year,  however,  he 
had  returned  to  Lossiemouth  with  the  few 
pounds  which  he  had  contrived  to  save, 
and  the  resolve  that,  when  he  next  left 
home,  he  would  return  successful,  or  not 
return  at  all. 

A  few  months  later  MacDonald  went 
south  again,  this  time  to  London.  The 
post  which  he  had  hoped  to  obtain  was 
filled  a  day  before  his  arrival,  and  for  a 
while  he  nearly  starved,  tramping  the  city 
in  search  of  work  and  living  mainly  on 
oatmeal  sent  from  home — for  which  he 
scrupulously  paid — and  hot  water.  He  is 
said  to  have  found  employment  on  the 
very  day  on  which  his  last  shilling  was 
spent — the  addressing  of  envelopes,  at  ten 
shillings  a  week,  for  the  newly  formed 
Cyclists'  Touring  Club.  A  little  later,  as 
an  invoice  clerk  in  a  warehouse  at  fifteen 
shillings,  he  'lived  like  a  fighting-cock', 
helped  his  mother,  paid  fees  at  the  Birk- 
beck  Institute  and  other  places  of  educa- 
tion, and  saved  money  into  the  bargain. 
In  later  life  he  seldom  spoke  of  these  early 
struggles,  but  they  certainly  coloured  his 
political  creed  and  reinforced  the  belief, 
which  he  sometimes  afterwards  expressed, 
in  the  power  of  extreme  poverty  to  breed 
'the  aristocratic  virtues'.  Before  long, 
however,  thanks  to  underfeeding  and  over- 
work— he  was  spending  every  spare  mo- 
ment on  reading  science — his  health  broke 
down  completely  and  he  was  compelled  to 
return  home. 

By  1888  MacDonald  was  back  in  Lon- 
don, and,  after  another  period  of  unem- 
ployment, was  fortunate  enough  to  be 
chosen  as  private  secretary  to  Thomas 
Lough,  Gladstonian  parliamentary  candi- 
date for  West  IsUngton,  with  whom  he 
remained  until  1891.  Thus  for  the  first 
time  he  came  into  contact  with  the  politi- 
cally minded  middle  class.  He  was  still 
speaking  at  open-air  meetings  for  the 
Social  Democratic  Federation,  and  in 
1887  he  was  present  in  Trafalgar  Square 
on  the  celebrated  'Bloody  Sunday'  (13 
November).  But,  what  was  far  more  signi- 
ficant, in  1886  he  joined  the  Fabian 
Society.  Conscious  that  by  now  'almost 
all  organisations  contain  elements  making 
for  Socialism'  this  body  had  set  its  face, 
almost  from  the  first,  against  'revolu- 
tionary heroics',  and  concentrated  upon 
conciliating  and  harnessing,  instead  of 
antagonizing,  the  latent  forces  of  the  age 
as  did  the  social  democrats,  MacDonald 
found  its  middle  class  and  eminently  prac- 
tical environment  a  novel  and  congenial 


atmosphere.  In  particular  the  Fabians 
had  wisely  resolved  to  eschew  all  the  dis- 
tracting shibboleths  of  those  vague  ideal- 
ists, so  prominent  in  the  'eighties  and 
'nineties,  who  were  ready  to  embrace  any 
cult,  from  vegetarianism  to  bimetallism, 
provided  that  it  was  labelled '  progressive '. 
MacDonald  was  never  a  crank. 

Nevertheless,  the  Fabians  were  scarcely 
more  quaUfied  than  the  Social  Democratic 
Federation  to  convert  the  man  in  the 
street,  and  it  was  not  until  1893,  with  the 
foundation  of  the  independent  labour 
party,  that  there  appeared  a  body  capable 
both  of  fusing  the  working  class,  skilled 
and  unskilled,  into  poUtical  unity,  and  of 
popularizing  socialist  doctrines.  It  stood 
both  for  independent  labour  representa- 
tion as  against  alUance  with  one  or  other 
of  the  traditional  parties,  and  for  social- 
ism. Of  both  aims  MacDonald  wholly 
approved  and  in  1894  he  appUed  for 
membership  in  a  personal  letter  to  Keir 
Hardie.  At  the  general  election  of  1895 
he  stood  as  independent  labour  party 
candidate  for  Southampton,  polling  only 
886  votes.  At  this  time  he  was  earning 
a  slender  income  by  journaUsm,  and  it  is 
remarkable  evidence  of  the  resolute  pro- 
cess of  self-education  upon  which  he  had 
embarked  that  he  should  have  been  in- 
vited to  contribute  a  considerable  number 
of  articles  to  this  Dictionary. 

In  the  following  year  MacDonald  mar- 
ried Margaret  Ethel,  daughter  of  John 
Hall  Gladstone,  F.R.S.,  of  Pembridge 
Square,  London,  and  a  great-niece  of  Lord 
Kelvin  [q.v.].  Her  father  was  both  a  dis- 
tinguished scientist  and  an  active  social 
and  reUgious  worker — he  was  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association — and  Margaret  Gladstone  had 
been  attracted  to  socialism  through  her 
own  social  work  in  Hoxton  and  elsewhere. 
The  marriage  opened  a  new  life  for  Mac- 
Donald. Not  only  did  it  mean  financial 
independence,  but  the  influence  of  his  wife 
began  insensibly  to  colour  his  own  views. 
'She  saw  spirit  in  everything',  he  wrote 
of  her  after  her  death ;  and  thenceforth 
the  faint  streak  of  rationalism  seems  to 
fade  out  of  him,  and  he  was  carried  yet 
farther  from  the  bleak  materialism  of 
Marx.  Margaret  MacDonald  also  possessed 
a  genius  for  friendship  which  MacDonald 
himself  had  always  lacked,  and  she  made 
their  new  home  at  3  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields 
the  centre  of  a  wide  circle  of  friends.  Here 
their  six  children  were  born,  and  despite 
the  unceasing  public  activities  of  both 
parents  their  family  life  was  exceptionally 


563 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1981^1940 


happy  and  united.  The  next  few  years 
were  filled  with  expanding  activities. 
There  was  foreign  travel,  which  marriage 
had  made  possible,  and  for  which  Mac- 
Donald  retained  a  passion  to  the  end  of 
his  Ufe.  There  were  the  regular  gatherings 
in  his  home  of  labour  and  socialist  prota- 
gonists, and  friends  and  well-wishers  from 
overseas.  Moreover,  in  1900  MacDonald 
had  become  secretary  of  the  labour 
representation  committee,  the  germ  of 
the  labour  party:  he  held  the  post  until 
1912,  and  was  treasurer  from  1912  to  1924. 
Since  1896  he  had  been  a  member  of  the 
national  administrative  council  of  the 
independent  labour  party  (where  he  was 
regarded  as  markedly  cautious),  and  from 
1894  to  1900  he  served  on  the  executive 
committee  of  the  Fabian  Society  (which 
considered  him  a  dangerous  intransigent). 
From  1901  to  1904  he  represented  Central 
Finsbury  on  the  London  County  Council. 
The  acquisition  through  his  marriage  of  an 
upper-middle-class  social  background  un- 
doubtedly accelerated  MacDonald's  rise  to 
prominence  in  the  labour  movement.  It 
was,  for  example,  a  strong  recommendation 
for  his  secretaryship  of  the  labour  repre- 
sentation committee  that  he  was  not  depen- 
dent upon  the  trade  unions  for  an  income. 
With  Hardie,  MacDonald  drafted  the 
resolution  by  which  in  1899  the  Trades 
Union  Congress  convened  a  special  con- 
gress to  devise  plans  for  returning  more 
labour  members  to  the  next  parliament. 
He  was  largely  responsible  for  next  year's 
decision  representing  a  compromise  be- 
tween the  traditional  hberal-labourism  of 
the  Trades  Union  Congress  and  the  class- 
war  socialism  of  the  Social  Democratic 
Federation — to  set  up  the  labour  repre- 
sentation committee,  which  in  1906  be- 
came the  labour  party.  He  had  taken  an 
active  part  in  the  resistance  to  the  South 
African  war,  and  his  What  I  Saw  in  South 
Africa  (1903)  was  based  upon  a  journey 
undertaken  with  his  wife  on  the  morrow 
of  the  peace.  More  significant  was  Social- 
is  mand  Society  (1905).  the  whole  argument 
of  which  is  characteristically  based  upon 
the  analogy  between  politics  and  biology. 
Not  unnaturally  this  book  rejects,  as  anti- 
quated, Marxism  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
class  war,  'on  the  threshold  of  scientific 
sociology,  but  hardly  across  it'.  At  the 
general  election  of  1906  he  was  returned 
for  Leicester,  which  he  had  unsuccessfully 
contested  in  1900.  All  but  five  of  the 
twenty-nine  successful  labour  repre- 
sentation committee  candidates,  and  Mac- 
Donald among  them,  owed  their  success 


to  an  electoral  arrangement  made  with  the 
liberals,  a  fact  which  goes  far  to  explain 
labour  political  strategy  during  the  next 
few  years.  The  new  party  was  bound  to 
support  the  liberals  because  the  liberals 
were  now  about  to  estabUsh  the  new  sys- 
tem of  social  insurance,  which  was  sound 
coUectivist  doctrine,  but  it  was  also  bound 
to  support  them  because  it  owed  most  of 
its  own  seats  to  liberal  complaisance. 

From  the  first  MacDonald  attended 
regularly,  and  spoke  frequently,  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  at  once  estab- 
lished his  reputation;  'a  born  parlia- 
mentarian '  was  Lord  Balfour's  subsequent 
verdict.  In  public  as  in  private  life  there 
was  an  impenetrable  hinterland  in  Mac- 
Donald; it  would  often  be  his  strength, 
and  sometimes  his  weakness,  that  in  a 
sense  he  was  always  a  man  of  mystery. 
His  writings — Socialism  appeared  in  1907 
and  The  Awakening  of  India,  which  has 
been  described  as  the  best  short  book  on 
India  ever  written  by  a  tourist,  in  1910 — ' 
helped  to  mark  him  out  as  not  only  the 
most  distinguished  spokesman  but  the 
most  distinguished  thinker  of  the  labour 
group  in  parliament.  But  perhaps  it  was 
his  dominating  influence  in  the  indepen- 
dent labour  party,  at  this  time  the  'prae- 
torian guard'  of  the  labour  movement, 
which  was  most  significant  for  the  fortunes 
of  the  country,  and  which  eventually  most 
affected  his  own  career.  As  chairman 
from  1906  to  1909,  and  as  a  leading  figure' 
for  many  years,  he  did  more  than  anyone 
else  to  implant  in  a  society  abounding 
with  visionaries  and  extremists  his  own 
practical  instinct  for  moderation.  The 
triumph  of  moderation  is  never  inevitable, 
imless  moderates  of  sufficient  stature  are 
forthcoming,  and  but  for  the  influence  of 
MacDonald  during  this  seminal  phase  the 
labour  party  between  the  two  wars  might 
have  preferred  revolution  to  evolution. 
Meanwhile  the  world-wide  joiu-neyings, 
which  did  much  to  give  him  his  grasp  of 
foreign  affairs,  were  continviing.  Each 
summer  from  1907  to  1916  he  was  on  the 
continent  on  a  political  mission;  in  1906,! 
with  his  wife,  he  embarked  upon  a  world 
tour,  and  in  1909  they  visited  India.         i 

MacDonald  retained  his  seat  at  the  twoj 
general  elections  of  1910,  and  in  1911  he; 
became  chairman  of  the  parliamentary' 
labour  group.  It  was  in  this  year  that  he' 
suffered  a  crushing  blow  in  the  loss  of  hisj 
wife,  which  followed  that  of  his  youngest! 
son  eighteen  months  previously.  With  his' 
wife's  death  MacDonald's  social  circle! 
contracted;  his  natural  sensitiveness  and 


564 


i 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


aloofness  revived;  thenceforth  he  was 
always  in  a  sense  a  lonely  man.  The  short 
memoir  of  his  wife  which  he  wrote  for 
private  circulation  that  year  was  expanded 
and  published  in  1912  as  Margaret  Ethel 
MacDonald.  It  is  a  most  moving  tribute 
and  an  unconscious  portrait  of  the  author 
as  well  as  of  his  wife. 

1911-1914  were  years  of  international 
tension,  and  industrial  strife.  MacDonald 
was  closely  involved  in  negotiation  over 
the  great  railway  strike  of  August  1911, 
which  was  the  cUmax  of  a  series  of  savage 
industrial  disputes.  In  parliament  on  16 
August  he  deplored  the  strikes  but  argued 
that  the  business  of  the  House  was  not 
merely  to  talk  law  and  order  but  to  listen 
to  the  men's  case,  and  to  realize  that 
behind  it  there  was  a  long  history  of  social 
injustice.  Industrial  unrest  persisted  into 
1912  and  MacDonald  continued  to  put 
the  case  of  the  strikers  to  parliament,  to 
exhort  them  to  patience  and  discipline, 
and  to  advise  on  parliamentary  tactics. 
Throughout  these  years,  in  which  support 
in  parliament  for  the  hberal  government 
had  to  be  combined  with  socialist  propa- 
ganda in  the  country,  there  were  recurrent 
complaints  of  the  moderation  and  'sub- 
servience' of  the  parliamentary  labour 
group,  and  in  particular  of  MacDonald, 
its  leader ;  but  in  spite  of  all  he  contrived 
to  retain  the  confidence  of  the  party,  and 
even  of  the  independent  labour  party. 
The  successful  struggle  for  moderation 
within  his  own  party  lent  all  the  more 
force  to  his  denunciation  in  1914  of  Sir 
Edward  Carson  and  those  conservatives 
who  planned  violent  resistance  in  Ulster 
to  the  government's  policy  of  home  rule : 
'let  them  start  that  sort  of  appeal  to  law- 
lessness and  anarchy  . . .  and  he  would  not 
like  to  prophesy  as  to  who  was  going  to 
write  the  last  sentence'.  In  December 
1912  he  paid  a  second  visit  to  India,  as 
a  member  of  the  royal  commission  on  the 
public  services  in  India.  He  signed  the 
subsequent  Report  with  some  reserva- 
tions, but  embodied  what  he  had  learnt 
at  greater  length  in  his  The  Government  of 
India  (1919). 

On  5  August  1914,  the  day  after  the 
declaration  of  war  on  Germany,  Mac- 
Donald resigned  his  chairmanship  of  the 
party,  which  declined  to  support  his  pro- 
posal that  labour  members  should  oppose 
the  government's  demand  for  a  war  credit 
of  £100  millions.  On  the  same  day  the 
executive  and  the  parliamentary  group 
had  resolved  ' .  .  .  that  it  has  opposed  the 
policy  which  has  produced  the  war,  and 


that  its  duty  now  is  to  secure  peace  at  the 
earliest  possible  moment  on  such  condi- 
tions as  will  provide  the  best  opportunities 
for  the  re-establishment  of  amicable  feel- 
ings  between   the   workers   of  Europe'. 
Both  MacDonald  and  the  majority  of  his 
colleagues  could  claim  that  throughout 
the  years  of  war  which  followed  he  and 
they  alike  were  faithfully  discharging  the 
duty  thus  defined ;  yet  while  they  were  to 
become  loyal  supporters  of  the  war-time 
coalition,  recruiting  orators,  and  Cabinet 
ministers,  he  was  soon  to  be  the  best- hated 
man  in  Great  Britain,  widely,  although 
quite    erroneously,    regarded    as    a    pro- 
German  and  a  pacificist.   Yet  the  views 
which,  despite  violence  and  misrepresenta- 
tion, MacDonald  continued  to  expound 
throughout   the   war   accurately,   if  not 
always  altogether  lucidly,  embodied  the 
substance  of  the  original  resolution.  Great 
Britain   was   wrong   to   enter   the   war; 
having  entered  it  she  must  win  it;  yet 
even  in  war-time  the  rational  temper  of  the 
moderate  must  somehow  be  preserved, 
lest  the  eventual  peace  be  of  that  vin- 
dictive kind  which  must  ensure  further 
wars.   That  the  war  must  be  won  he  had 
no  doubt ;  and  although  he  would  not  join 
in  the  highly  coloured  oratory  of  the  re- 
cruiting platform,  he  told  his  audiences 
that  'those  who  can  enlist,  ought  to  enlist, 
those  who  are  working  in  mmiition  fac- 
tories   should    do     so    whole-heartedly'. 
Early  in  December  1914  he  went  to  Bel- 
gium as  a  volimteer  member  of  a  British 
ambulance  attached  to  the  Belgian  army 
— only  to  be  promptly  sent  back  to  Eng- 
land on  instructions  from  home.   A  fort- 
night later  he  returned,  with  a  pass  from 
Lord  Kitchener,  as  an  official  visitor  and 
showed  much  coolness  under  fire  during 
an  adventurous  journey  with  Colonel  John 
Edward  Bernard  Seely  (later  Lord  Motti- 
stone).   But  although  he  was  always  for 
winning  the  war,  he  did  not  cease  to 
believe,  and  to  say,  that  Great  Britain  had 
been  wrong  to  embark  upon  it.    Indeed 
the  use  to  which  German  propagandists 
were  able  to  put  some  of  his  strictures  on 
British  foreign  poUcy  did  much  to  make 
him  appear  as  an  enemy  of  his  country. 
But  his  main  theme  was  the  necessity  for 
keeping    aUve,    even    in    war-time,    the 
generous  and  unimpassioned  temper  of 
peace.    He  was  never  a  pacificist,  yet, 
excluded  from  the  platform  of  the  official 
labour  party,  he  necessarily  worked  closely 
with  the  independent  labour  party,  the 
membership  of  which  was  overwhelmingly 
pacificist.   Temperamentally  a  moderate, 


565 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


and  now  more  than  ever  standing  for  a 
middle  course,  he  was  never  wholly  at  ease 
with  the  violence  and  illogicality  of  much 
of  the  independent  labour  party  propa- 
ganda. Partly  no  doubt  for  this  reason  he 
had  been  largely  instrumental  in  founding, 
in  September  1914,  an  ad  hoc  organization, 
the  Union  of  Democratic  Control,  which 
included  many  Uberals  as  well  as  socialists, 
and  the  object  of  which  was  to  secure  a 
democratic  foreign  policy.  Another  war- 
time organization  on  the  platforms  of 
which  he  was  able  to  speak,  the  National 
Council  for  Civil  Liberties,  also  included 
liberals  as  well  as  socialists  in  its  member- 
ship. Whatever  his  platform,  however, 
every  meeting  at  which  MacDonald  spoke 
was  a  potential  riot,  and  the  popular 
press  did  much  to  provoke  violence,  by 
attributing  to  him  provocative  sayings 
invented  by  itseK,  and  encouraging  the 
public  to  break  up  his  meetings.  In  com- 
parisoA  with  MacDonald  the  other  spokes- 
men of  the  opposition,  including  the 
pacificists,  were  ignored,  and  he  became 
the  personification  of  all  that  the  average 
patriotic  citizen  disliked  and  mistrusted. 
The  courage  with  which  MacDonald  sus- 
tained this  concentration  of  venom  did 
much  to  deepen  the  devotion  of  his  fol- 
lowers, and  earned  him  a  new  affection 
even  among  the  orthodox  labour  majority. 
Indeed  it  was  to  his  new  hold  over  both 
wings  of  the  party,  and  particularly  over 
the  independent  labour  party,  that  he 
was  to  owe  his  return  to  the  leadership  in 
1922,  and  therefore  the  premiership  in 
1924. 

The  welcome  extended  by  MacDonald 
and  his  friends  to  the  first  Russian  revolu- 
tion, that  of  Kerensky  and  the  moderates, 
of  March  1917  was  long  quoted  against 
him  as  if  it  had  been  accorded  to  the  later 
revolution  of  Lenin  and  the  Bolsheviks. 
But  the  first  revolution  had  appeared  to 
herald  the  estabhshment  of  democracy, 
the  disavowal  of  imperiaUsm,  and  an  early 
negotiated  peace.  When,  however,  a  dele- 
gation from  the  labour  party  and  the 
independent  labour  party,  which  included 
MacDonald,  was  about  to  sail  from  Aber- 
deen to  visit  the  provisional  government 
at  Petrograd,  with  the  permission  of  the 
British  Cabinet,  the  crew  of  its  ship  re- 
fused to  sail  if  MacDonald  and  two  other 
members  were  to  be  allowed  to  travel. 
This  incident,  which  was  widely  reported, 
served  to  discredit  MacDonald  yet  further. 
It  is  just  possible  that  if  the  delegation 
had  been  permitted  to  sail  its  visit  might 
have  assisted  the  Kerensky  government 

566 


to  resist  the  subsequent  onslaught  of  the 
Bolsheviks.  The  two  wings  of  the  labour 
party,  however,  in  which  there  had  been 
no  formal  split,  were  brought  closer  to- 
gether by  the  resignation  that  August  of 
Arthur  Henderson  [q.v.]  from  the  coali- 
tion War  Cabinet,  over  the  question  of  the 
socialist  conference  to  be  held  in  Stock- 
holm. Thenceforth,  until  the  end  of  the 
war,  MacDonald  and  Henderson  spoke 
very  much  the  same  language,  and  each 
helped  the  other  to  gain  the  ear  of  that 
wing  of  the  party  to  which  he  had  hitherto 
been  suspect.  MacDonald  warmly  wel- 
comed President  Wilson's  Fourteen  Points 
but  was  doubtful  whether  at  this  late  hour 
the  declaration  would  avail  to  stave  off 
a  'military'  peace.  As  the  war  ended  he 
was  respected  by  the  bulk  of  his  party, 
and  was  the  object  of  the  passionate  devo- 
tion of  an  influential  minority  in  it,  but 
for  the  general  pubUc  he  was  stUl  the  most 
unpopular  and  mistrusted  man  in  Britain, 
and  at  the  general  election  in  December 
1918  he  was  defeated  at  West  Leicester 
by  just  over  14,000  votes. 

In  February  of  the  following  year  Mac- 
Donald was  active  as  a  delegate  to  the 
International  Socialist  Conference  at 
Berne,  which  he  hoped  to  see  paving  the 
way  to  a  conciliatory  peace,  but  wliich 
was  soon  rent  by  that  conflict  between 
revolutionary  communism  and  parlia- 
mentary socialism  with  which  MacDonald 
was  chiefly  occupied  during  the  next  few 
years.  In  1920  he  succeeded  in  persuading 
the  annual  conferences  of  both  the  inde- 
pendent labour  party  and  the  labour  party 
to  reject  communism.  Thereafter  the  ex- 
tremists seceded,  and  the  subsequent  con- 
centration of  their  hostiUty  upon  Mac- 
Donald did  much  to  restore  his  reputation 
with  the  general  public.  In  March  1921 
he  was  defeated  by  a  narrow  majority  at 
a  by-election  at  East  Woolwich,  in  which 
his  opponents  made  much  play  with  his 
war  record,  but  at  the  general  election  of, 
1922,  with  the  rising  tide  of  reaction; 
against  Lloyd  George's  coahtion,  he  wasj 
returned  with  a  comfortable  majority  for 
the  Aberavon  division  of  Glamorganshire., 
He  was  at  once  elected  chairman  of  the 
parliamentary  labour  party,  after  a  closei 
contest  with  Mr.  John  Robert  Clynes,i 
thanks  primarily  to  the  enthusiastic  sup-i 
port  of  the  so-called  Clydeside  group  ofi 
left-wing  socialists,  with  whose  extremej 
views  MacDonald  was  to  be  constantly  inj 
conflict  throughout  the  rest  of  his  career.] 
Since  the  labour  members  now  outnum-j 
bered   the   hberals   he   at   once   becamei 


amei 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


official  leader  of  the  opposition,  and  it  was 
probably  now  that  his  gifts  as  a  House  of 
Commons  man  were  most  conspicuous. 

At  the  general  election  of  1923  the 
labour  party,  with  191  seats,  was  again 
more  powerful  than  the  liberals,  and  the 
two  together  were  strong  enough  to  defeat 
the  conservative  government.  A  vote  of 
no  confidence  having  been  carried  on  17 
January  1924,  MacDonald  did  not  hesitate 
to  form  the  first  labour  government,  al- 
though it  could  only  exist  upon  sufferance. 
He  was  then  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 
He  made  what  was  thought  by  many  to 
be  the  mistake  of  himself  filling  the  office 
not  only  of  prime  minister  but  of  foreign 
secretary.  Inevitably  his  preoccupation 
with  foreign  affairs  made  it  difficult  for 
him  to  do  himself  full  justice  as  leader  of 
the  House,  and  it  probably  diminished  his 
interest  in  the  domestic  programme  of  his 
government.  Moreover,  the  twofold  re- 
sponsibility involved  a  severe  physical 
strain;  for  MacDonald  was  conscientious 
almost  to  a  fault,  and  he  never  acquired 
the  art  of  delegating  responsibility ;  it  was 
said  of  him  that  he  had  been  known,  when 
prime  minister,  to  look  up  trains  for  one 
of  his  secretaries.  His  diplomacy  was  on 
the  whole  successful.  He  foimd  France 
and  Germany  disposed  for  conciliation, 
came  to  an  understanding  with  the  French 
prime  minister,  M.  Herriot,  whose  outlook 
was  much  the  same  as  his  own,  and 
accepted,  on  behalf  of  this  coimtry,  the 
Experts'  Report  on  German  Reparations. 
The  Allied  Conference  of  July  in  London 
was  summoned  to  translate  this  Report 
into  action,  and  led  to  the  settlement  of 
the  following  month.  In  September,  at 
Geneva,  MacDonald  and  Herriot  together 
proposed  a  protocol  for  security,  arbitra- 
tion, and  disarmament,  which  was  subse- 
quently drafted,  though  never  ratified. 

In  domestic  affairs,  however,  Mac- 
Donald's  touch  appeared  to  be  less  certain. 
He  made  little  attempt  to  conciliate  the 
liberals,  on  whose  support  his  government 
depended,  and  although  he  was  in  fact  by 
no  means  comfortable  with  his  Clydeside 
supporters,  the  impression  got  abroad  that 
he  was  unduly  subservient  to  them.  The 
abrupt  reversal  in  August  of  the  govern- 
ment's previous  intention  not  to  guarantee 
a  loan  to  the  Russian  government  was 
ascribed  to  the  intervention  of  backbench 
Russophils,  and  about  the  same  time  the 
abandonment  of  the  prosecution  of  a 
journalist  charged  with  inciting  the  armed 
forces  to  mutiny  was  also  denounced  by 
the  opposition  as  a  concession  to  forces 


outside  the  Cabinet,  and  brought  about 
the  defeat  and  resignation  of  the  govern- 
ment. MacDonald's  premiership  had  sub- 
stantially increased  his  own  reputation; 
and  it  was  gratefully  recognized,  even  by 
opponents,  that  in  parliamentary  tradition, 
in  public  ceremonial,  and  in  the  relations 
of  Cabinet  and  Crown  there  had  been  no 
breach  with  tradition ;  but  in  the  election 
which  followed  in  October  1924  the  pub- 
lic was  prevented  from  pronouncing  a 
clear-cut  verdict  on  the  record  of  his 
government  by  the  publication  a  few  days 
before  polling-day  of  the  so-called  Zino- 
viev  letter.  The  precise  significance  of  this 
document  was  not  understood  by  the  pub- 
lic, even  after  MacDonald's  explanation, 
delayed  by  the  exigencies  of  a  strenuous 
election  tour,  had  reached  it;  but  the 
letter,  as  presented  by  his  opponents, 
served  to  strengthen  the  vague  general 
impression  that  the  labour  government 
had  been  discreditably  subservient  to  ex- 
tremist influences.  This  was  the  charge  of 
which  MacDonald's  whole  career  had  been 
an  emphatic  repudiation,  and  after  the 
election,  in  which  his  party  lost  forty-one 
seats,  it  was  again  his  influence  which 
secured  the  emphatic  repudiation  of  com- 
mimism  by  the  labour  party  conference 
of  1925. 

Extremist  influences,  however,  were  in 
the  ascendant  in  the  industrial  wing  of  the 
movement,  and  the  following  year  saw 
the  abortive  General  Strike.  MacDonald 
had  always  disapproved  of  'direct  action', 
and  behind  the  scenes,  although  the  ex- 
tremists had  not  sought  his  advice,  he  did 
his  best  to  avert  the  explosion.  Having 
failed  he  felt  bound,  as  leader  of  a  party 
so  closely  allied  to  the  Trades  Union  Con- 
gress, to  acquiesce  in  what  followed.  In 
1927  he  just  survived  a  severe  illness  con- 
tracted during  a  visit  to  the  United  States 
of  America,  but  recovered  rapidly  enough 
to  play  a  principal  part  in  drafting  the 
party  manifesto  Labour  and  the  Nation 
(1928),  a  lengthy  document  which  charac- 
teristically combined  a  comprehensive 
programme  of  reform  with  a  restatement 
of  theory  and  a  renewed  repudiation  of 
communism.  Before  the  general  election 
in  May  1929  he  undertook  an  exacting 
nation-wide  speaking  campaign  which 
contributed  markedly  to  the  victory  of  his 
party:  he  himself  was  returned  for  the 
Seaham  division  of  county  Durham.  With 
287  seats  labour  was  for  the  first  time  the 
strongest  party. 

For  the  administration  which  he  now 
formed  MacDonald  was  mainly  concerned 


567 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


to  select  colleagues  whose  outlook  was 
akin  to  his  own ;  trade  unionism  was  not 
so  strongly  represented  as  in  1924,  and  the 
extremists  were  almost  wholly  excluded. 
This  time  he  did  not  attempt  to  combine 
the  office  of  foreign  secretary  with  the 
premiership,  but  he  continued  to  devote 
his  attention  chiefly  to  foreign  affairs,  on 
which,  he  believed,  all  else  depended. 
After  conversations  with  General  Dawes, 
the  American  ambassador,  and  a  visit  to 
President  Hoover  in  the  United  States — 
the  first  to  be  made  by  a  prime  minister 
of  Great  Britain — he  succeeded  in  bringing 
about  a  revival  of  the  Naval  Conference, 
which  was  held  in  London  in  January 

1930.  Agreement  was  reached  between 
Great  Britain,  the  United  States,  and 
Japan  and  it  seemed  that  a  genuine  ad- 
vance towards  naval  disarmament  had 
been  made.  Meanwhile  the  Hague  Con- 
ference, at  which  Philip  Snowden  [q.v.] 
effectively  represented  Great  Britain,  had 
removed  the  obstacles  to  the  apphcation 
of  the  Young  Plan  for  the  payment  of 
reparations.  Once  again,  however,  the 
government's  domestic  record  was  less 
satisfactory,  at  any  rate  to  socialists.  Its 
difficulties  were  due  partly  to  the  breach 
between  MacDonald  and  the  independent 
labour  party,  partly  to  the  steady  darken- 
ing of  the  general  economic  horizon.  An 
informal  understanding  with  the  Uberals 
meant  that  for  the  first  time  labour  was 
not  merely  in  office  but  in  power.  It  was 
all  the  easier,  therefore,  for  the  govern- 
ment to  disregard  its  left-wing  critics,  and, 
except  that  they  persuaded  it  to  relax  the 
regulations  governing  unemployment  in- 
surance, they  exercised  scarcely  any  influ- 
ence on  domestic  policy.  At  the  annual 
conference  of  the  party  a  vote  of  censure 
by  the  rebels  was  early  defeated,  thanks 
to  a  fighting  speech  by  MacDonald.  At  the 
first  Indian  Romid  Table  Conference,  held 
towards  the  end  of  1930,  his  skilful  chair- 
manship was  generally  admired,  although 
the  gulf  between  Hindus  and  Moslems  was 
not  bridged.  But  throughout  the  year, 
with  the  deepening  of  the  universal  eco- 
nomic depression,  unemployment  rose, 
and  its  cost  had  been  greatly  increased  by 
the  more  generous  conditions  of  benefit. 
The  Report  of  the  economy  committee  set 
up  under  the  chairmanship  of  Sir  George 
(later  Lord)  May,  published  on  31  July 

1931,  estimated  a  deficit  of  £120,000,000 
by  April  1932.  The  Report,  which  made 
the  financial  position  of  the  coiuitry 
appear  even  more  precarious  than  it 
actually  was,  was  followed  by  a  flight  of 


foreign  investors  from  the  potmd,  and  a 
serious  drain  on  British  gold  reserves. 
Throughout  the  subsequent  meetings  of 
the  special  economy  committee  of  the 
Cabinet,  and  of  the  Cabinet  itself,  Mac- 
Donald pressed  for  economies  sufficient  to 
balance  the  budget.  Some  of  his  col 
leagues,  however,  although  ready  to  accept 
reductions  of  expenditure  totalling  more 
than  £56,000,000  were  not  prepared  to  face 
a  further  saving  of  £22,000,000  on  unem 
ployment  insurance,  to  which  the  general 
council  of  the  Trades  Union  Congress, 
which  was  consulted  on  20  August,  had 
shown  itself  resolutely  opposed.  After 
prolonged  discussions  within  the  Cabinet, 
and  negotiations  which  it  had  sanctioned 
with  the  leaders  of  the  other  parties,  Mac- 
Donald had  to  report  to  the  King  on  the 
morning  of  23  August  that  his  colleagues 
could  not  agree.  Later  that  Sunday  the 
King  saw  Sir  Herbert  Samuel  and  Baldwin 
separately,  and  at  night  again  received 
MacDonald,  who  tendered  the  resignation 
of  the  labour  government.  The  King 
urged  MacDonald  to  reconsider  his  own 
position,  and  next  morning,  at  Mac- 
Donald's  request,  the  King  held  a  con- 
ference of  the  three  party  leaders  at 
Buckingham  Palace,  and  within  a  few 
hoiu^  MacDonald  had  formed  an  all-party 
government  in  conjunction  with  the 
leaders  of  the  conservative  and  liberal 
parties.  Although  Snowden,  J.  H. 
Thomas,  and  Lord  Sankey  followed  him 
into  the  'national'  government,  Mac- 
Donald had  made  no  attempt  to  carry  the 
bulk  of  his  party  with  him,  and  he  was 
at  once  succeeded  in  its  leadership  by 
Henderson.  Yet  at  first  he  regarded  the 
coalition  as  no  more  than  a  temporary 
expedient  for  overcoming  the  financial 
crisis,  after  which  parties  were  to  revert 
to  their  normal  alinement.  Inevitably, 
however,  subsequent  controversy,  let  alone 
the  bitterness  with  which  many  of  his 
former  colleagues  and  followers  now  as-j 
sailed  him,  made  the  breach  permanent,  i 
Some  of  his  critics,  indeed,  maintained; 
that  in  forming  the  new  government  he 
had  yielded  to  the  temptations  of  what^ 
Lord  Passfield  called  'the  aristocratic 
embrace',  and  even  that  he  had  himself 
long  plotted  to  bring  about  the  fall  of' 
his  own  government.  There  can  be  no' 
doubt,  however,  that  at  the  outset  of  the  i 
crisis  he  had  expected  to  fall  permanently ' 
from  power,  or  that  he  did  not  at  first! 
desire  the  coaUtion  to  outlast  the  imme- 
diate crisis. 

The  exodus  of  short-term  capital  com- 


568 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


pelled  the  new  government  to  abandon 
the  gold  standard  which  it  had  been 
formed  to  defend,  but  it  was  not  long 
i  »cfore  confidence  was  restored  and  foreign 
capital  was  pouring  in  again.  In  the  elec- 
tion which  followed  in  October  the 
oovernment,  appealing  for  a  virtually  free 
hand  or  'doctor's  mandate',  secured  all 
hut  fifty-nine  seats.  MacDonald  him- 
self won  a  remarkable  personal  triumph 
at  Seaham,  which  had  been  hitherto  as 
impregnable  a  labour  stronghold  as  any 
in  the  country. 

MacDonald  now  formed  his  fourth  ad- 
ministration, with  an  unchallengeable 
majority  composed  of  the  conservative 
and  liberal  parties  and  a  small  'national' 
labour  group,  which  at  first  exercised  an 
influence  disproportionate  to  its  size. 
MacDonald  fovmd  himself  at  ease  with  his 
new  colleagues,  and  is  said  to  have  done 
much  to  preserve  harmony  between  them. 
Snowden  and  the  free-trade  liberals,  al- 
though retained  for  a  while  by  the  '  agree- 
ment to  differ'  on  tariffs  announced  on 
22  January  1932,  left  the  coaUtion  after 
the  preferential  tariff  agreements  reached 
at  Ottawa  that  summer.  The  government, 
however,  pressed  on  with  a  programme  of 
domestic  retrenchment  and  reform,  which 
included  a  number  of  socialist  measures, 
notably  in  agriculture.  MacDonald  con- 
tinued to  regard  the  European  situation 
as  the  key  to  domestic  recovery,  and  de- 
spite operations  for  glaucoma  in  each  eye 
in  February  and  May  of  1932  he  presided 
at  a  Four  Power  Conference  in  London  in 
April  and  was  present  at  the  Disarmament 
Conference  in  Geneva  in  the  same  month. 
He  was  mainly  responsible  for  the  sum- 
moning of  the  abortive  World  Economic 
Conference  of  1933  in  London,  which  was 
doomed  by  the  refusal  of  President  Roose- 
velt's government  to  agree  to  the  stabiUza- 
tion  of  currency.  MacDonald  was  also  the 
author  of  the  draft  convention  which 
saved  the  Disarmament  Conference  from 
collapse.  He  was  always  a  believer  in  per- 
sonal diplomacy,  and  his  visits  to  Paris 
and  Rome  did  much  to  bring  about  a  con- 
sultative pact  between  Great  Britain, 
France,  Italy,  and  Germany.  By  now, 
however,  the  shadow  of  Hitler  was  begin- 
ning to  fall  across  the  European  scene,  and 
MacDonald,  with  his  colleagues,  was  con- 
vinced that  appeasement  must  thenceforth 
be  pursued  simultaneously  with  a  restora- 
tion of  Great  Britain's  dangerously  im- 
paired defences.  The  White  Paper  on 
National  Defence  of  March  1935,  which 
heralded  a  programme  of  rearmament, 


bore  not  only  his  initials  but  clear  evidence 
of  his  drafting.  Three  months  later  (7 
Jiuie)  he  resigned  the  premiership,  and 
assumed  the  sinecure  office  of  lord  presi- 
dent of  the  Council. 

MacDonald's  powers  were  clearly  im- 
paired by  prolonged  overstrain:  he  had 
probably  worked  longer  hours  than  any 
previous  prime  minister.  The  remorseless 
vendetta  waged  against  him  by  a  few  of 
his  former  associates  had  also  had  its 
effect.  He  had  not  played  a  prominent 
part  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  late, 
partly  because  the  government's  huge 
majority  rendered  personal  intervention 
seldom  necessary  and  partly  owing  to  his 
preoccupation  with  foreign  affairs,  but 
partly  also  because  he  was  conscious  that 
failing  health  had  begun  to  make  his 
speaking  involved  and  obscure.  At  the 
general  election  in  November  1935  his 
courageous  decision  to  contest  Seaham 
imdoubtedly  contributed  to  the  victory  of 
the  'national'  coalition,  and  to  the  sur- 
vival of  the  small  'national'  labour  group, 
but  his  own  defeat  was  inevitable.  He  was 
returned,  however,  at  a  by-election  in 
January  1936  for  the  Scottish  Universities. 
He  died  suddenly  9  November  1937,  on 
a  holiday  voyage  to  South  America,  and 
after  his  body  had  lain  in  state  in  the 
cathedral  of  Bermuda  and  after  a  funeral 
service  in  Westminster  Abbey,  he  was 
buried  beside  his  wife  in  Spynie  church- 
yard, near  Lossiemouth.  He  left  two  sons, 
of  whom  the  younger,  Malcolm,  was  at 
the  time  secretary  of  state  for  Dominion 
affairs,  and  three  daughters. 

MacDonald  was  somewhat  above  middle 
height.  His  face,  with  its  sensitively 
chiselled  features  and  large  and  luminous 
eyes,  was  that  of  an  artist  rather  than  a 
statesman.  He  had  always  been  a  hand- 
some man,  but  in  later  life,  when  his  dark 
waving  hair  had  turned  white,  and  there 
was  a  marked  suggestion  of  strain  and 
self-restraint  about  eyes  and  mouth,  his 
appearance  was  particularly  striking.  He 
had  a  taste  for  physical  hardship  and 
danger  and  was  a  great  walker.  His  two 
collections,  Wanderings  and  Excursions 
(1925)  and  At  Home  and  Abroad  (1936), 
contain  many  of  his  travel  experiences. 
He  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
imiversities  of  Glasgow  (1924),  Edinburgh 
(1925),  Wales  (1926),  Oxford  (1931),  and 
McGill  (1929).  In  the  year  of  the  General 
Strike  it  was  proposed  at  Cambridge 
that  an  honorary  degree  should  be 
conferred  upon  him,  but  he  refused  to 
accept   one   which  at  that  time  would 


569 


MacDonald,  J.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


certainly  have  been  passed  only  by  a 
majority. 

Portraits  of  MacDonald  by  Solomon  J. 
Solomon  (presented  to  him  in  1912  by  the 
labour  party)  and  by  Ambrose  McEvoy 
are  in  the  possession  of  his  family,  who 
also  own  portraits  by  Augustus  John  and 
Sir  John  La  very  (unfinished),  as  well  as 
two  bronze  busts  by  Jacob  Epstein  (1926 
and  1931)  and  one  by  Felix  Joubert  (c. 
1936).  Another  portrait  by  Lavery  ( 1 931 ) , 
and  a  bronze  bust  by  Epstein  (1934), 
a  copy  of  one  of  those  mentioned  above, 
are  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times  and  Manchester  Guardian,  10 
November  1937 ;  Lord  Elton,  Life  of  James 
Ramsay  MacDonald  (1866-1919),  1939 ;  Lord 
Snowden,  An  Autobiography,  2  vols.,  1934; 
Reports  of  the  annual  conference  of  the  labour 
party  and  independent  labour  party;  pri- 
vate information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Elton. 

MACDONELL,   Sir  PHILIP  JAMES 

(1873-1940),  colonial  judge,  was  born  in 
London  10  January  1873,  the  eldest  son 
of  the  journalist  James  Macdonell  [q.v.], 
by  his  wife,  Annie,  daughter  of  Daniel 
Harrison,  of  Beckenham,  Kent,  and  niece 
of  Mary  Howitt  [q.v.].  He  was  nephew  of 
the  jurist  Sir  John  Macdonell  [q.v.].  After 
being  educated  at  Clifton  under  J.  M. 
Wilson  [q.v.],  he  went  up  to  Brasenose 
College,  Oxford,  as  a  Hulme  exhibitioner 
at  the  age  of  seventeen.  He  was  president 
of  the  Union  in  1895,  after  obtaining  a  first 
class  in  modern  history  in  1894.  He  took 
his  B.A.  degree  in  1897,  in  which  year  he 
represented  Oxford  against  Cambridge  as 
a  fencer. 

In  1900  Macdonell  was  called  to  the  bar 
by  Gray's  Inn  (of  which  he  was  Bacon 
scholar),  but  the  same  year  he  went  out 
to  South  Africa  and  was  war  correspon- 
dent of  The  Times  until  1902.  This  proved 
to  be  a  turning-point  in  his  life  and  thence- 
forth he  served  the  British  Empire  in 
three  continents.  Beginning  his  legal 
career  in  the  Transvaal  and  continuing  it 
in  Northern  Rhodesia,  he  was  secretary  to 
the  Transvaal  Native  Commission  in  1903 
and  assistant  crown  prosecutor  (Wit- 
watersrand  Court)  from  1907  to  1908.  In 
the  last-named  year  he  was  appointed 
public  prosecutor  and  legal  adviser  to  the 
Chartered  Company  in  north-west  Rhode- 
sia, and  from  1911  to  1918  filled  the  same 
posts  in  Northern  Rhodesia.  In  1911, 
during  a  visit  to  England,  he  took  his 
B.C.L.  degree.  From  1918  to  1927  he  was 
a  judge  of  the  Northern  Rhodesia  High 


Court.  Even  after  he  had  left  Africa  Mi 
donell  retained  to  the  end  of  his  life  a  lo" 
of  that  coimtry  and  an  intense  interest  in 
its  peoples  and  problems.  He  became 
chief  justice  of  Trinidad  and  Tobago  and 
president  of  the  West  Indian  Court  ol, 
Appeal  in  1927,  and  from  1930  to  1936, 
when  he  retired,  he  was  chief  justice  oi! 
Ceylon. 

Macdonell  was  knighted  in  1925,  and  in 
1939  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  and 
became  a  member  of  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee. In  1938,  two  years  after  his  retire- 
ment, he  was  sent  on  a  commission  to 
report  and  advise  (to  the  Colonial  Office) 
on  a  complicated  problem  of  inter-tribal 
jurisdiction  in  the  Balovale  District, 
Northern  Rhodesia.  He  wrote  charac- 
teristically of  this  work : '  I  cannot  tell  you 
what  a  pleasure  the  work  is — ^to  get  back 
into  the  old  atmosphere;  to  be  received 
on  an  equality  by  men  who  are  absolutely 
au  fait  with  native  matters ;  the  constant  i 
dialogues  of  experts  day  after  day;  and 
the  having  to  try  and  master  a  most  deli- 
cate and  intricate  problem — truly  I  am 
a  lucky  man  to  have  been  given  this  duty.' 

Macdonell  always  keenly  enjoyed  his 
work ;  his  memory  was  remarkable  and  his 
mind  moved  with  extraordinary  rapidity. 
'I  never  knew  a  man  who  got  through 
work  faster',  said  a  fellow  judge.  A 
natural  impatience  and  vehemence — ^per-i 
haps  a  Celtic  inheritance  from  highland! 
ancestors — ^were  tempered  by  quick  kind- 
ness and  generosity.  He  had  many  and 
lasting  friendships.  He  was  a  good  classi- 
cal scholar  and  was  wont  to  take  the 
Odyssey  with  him  on  his  constant  voyages. 
In  1940  he  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Brasenose  College.  The  later  years  of 
his  Ufe  were  spent  in  Scotland — for  which 
he  had  a  romantic  attachment — at  Gate- 
house-of-Fleet,  Galloway.  Early  in  the 
war  of  1939-1945  he  undertook  to  preside 
over  the  tribunal  dealing  with  military 
exemptions  sitting  in  Manchester.  Here, 
worn  out  by  overwork,  he  fell  ill  and  died 
at  a  nursing  home  in  Southport  15  Decem- 
ber 1940. 

Macdonell  married  in  1910  Aline, 
yoimgest  daughter  of  William  Drew, 
chartered  accoimtant,  of  Glasgow;  they 
had  no  children. 

[The  Brazen  Nose  (magazine  of  Brasenose 
College,  Oxford),  November  1939  and  June 
1941 ;  personal  knowledge.]       Amice  Lee. 

McDOUGALL,  WILLIAM(1871-1938), 
psychologist,  was  bom  at  Chadderton, 
Lancashire,  22  June  1871,  the  second  son 


570 


D,N.B.  1931-1940 


McDougall 


of  Isaac  Shimwell  McDougall,  manu- 
facturing chemist,  of  Higher  Broughton, 
Lancashire,  by  his  wife,  Rebekah  Smalley. 
After  attending  a  private  school  in  Lanca- 
shire, he  went  at  the  age  of  fourteen  to 
the  Real-Gymnasium  at  Weimar  for  part 
of  a  year.  He  then  proceeded  to  the  Owens 
(  ollege,  Manchester,  where  he  first  studied 
languages,  history,  and  mathematics,  but, 
influenced  by  the  works  of  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, Charles  Darwin,  and  Thomas  Huxley, 
soon  turned  to  biology.  In  1890,  after 
graduating  with  first  class  honours  (spe- 
ciaUzing  in  geology  in  his  last  year),  he 
proceeded  with  a  scholarship  to  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  and  obtained  first 
classes  in  both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences 
tripos  (1892,  1894).  Having  decided  upon 
a  medical  career,  McDougall  entered  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital  in  1894.  Here  he 
carried  out  experiments  in  the  laboratory 
of  (Sir)  Charles  Scott  Sherrington,  but 
after  reading  William  James's  Principles 
of  Psychology  he  began  to  doubt  whether 
medical  practice  w^ould  satisfy  him.  In 
1898  he  agreed  to  join  the  Cambridge 
anthropological  expedition  to  the  Torres 
Straits,  and  with  William  Halse  Rivers 
Rivers  he  carried  out  a  survey  of  the 
sensjory  endowment  of  the  natives  of  that 
region.  He  also  developed  wide  and  lasting 
anthropological  interests. 

In  November  1897  McDougall  was 
elected  into  a  fellowship  at  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  and  began  to  make  a 
systematic  study  of  contemporary  psycho- 
logy. On  the  advice  of  James  Ward  [q.v.], 
professor  of  mental  philosophy  and  logic 
at  Cambridge,  he  joined  G.  E.  Miiller  at 
Gottingen,  and  continued  laboratory 
work  on  colour  vision  and  on  attention. 
On  his  return  to  England  he  lectured  and 
demonstrated  on  psychology  under  James 
SuUy  at  University  College,  London,  from 
1902  to  1904.  During  this  period  McDou- 
gall pubhshed  papers  on  various  problems 
of  physiological  psychology,  especially  on 
vision.  He  had  helped  to  found  the  British 
Psychological  Society  in  1901.  He  also 
began  to  prepare  for  work  on  social 
psychology. 

In  1903  McDougall  was  elected  Wilde 
reader  in  mental  philosophy  at  Oxford  and 
soon  opened  an  experimental  research 
laboratory.  Five  years  later  (1908)  he 
published  his  Introduction  to  Social  Psy- 
chology. This  book  gained  a  great  reputa- 
tion throughout  the  whole  civihzed  world, 
and  probably  did  more  than  any  other 
single  publication  to  stimulate  study  of 
the  foundations  of  social  behaviour.   His 


views,  strongly  opposed  to  any  mechan- 
istic interpretation  of  human  conduct, 
were  further  expressed  in  Body  and  Mind 
(1911)  and  Psychology:  the  Study  of  Be- 
haviour (1912).   During  the  war  of  1914- 

1918  McDougall  served  as  a  major  with 
the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  and  was 
fully  occupied  with  the  study  and  treat- 
ment of  nerve  cases  among  fighting  men 
until  the  middle  of  1919. 

In  1920  McDougall  became  professor  of 
psychology  at  Harvard  University,  and 
entered  upon  an  extremely  controversial 
period  of  his  career.  In  books,  articles, 
and  lectures  he  advocated  what  he  called 
'hormic'  psychology.  He  thought  that 
the  most  fundamental  feature  of  all  human 
activity  is  'goal  searching',  the  simplest 
form  of  which  he  found  in  instincts.  He 
opposed  behaviourism,  which  was  then 
flourishing,  particularly  in  America.  His 
second  most  influential  work.  An  Outline 
of  Psychology,  was  published  in  1923,  and 
was  followed  in  1926  by  An  Outline  of 
Abnormal  Psychology.  Both  were  systema- 
tic treatises.  Then,  too,  McDougall  began 
his  Lamarckian  experiment,  which  was 
planned  to  demonstrate  the  inheritance 
of  acquired  characteristics  through  many 
generations  of  rats.  This  he  regarded  as  his 
'most  important  contribution  to  science'. 

McDougall  left  Harvard  in  1927  in  order 
to  become  professor  of  psychology  at  Duke 
University,  North  Carolina.  Here  he  con- 
tinued his  experiments  on  inheritance,  and 
wrote  many  books  of  a  more  or  less  popu- 
lar nature,  some  systematic,  some  dealing 
with  current  affairs,  some  on  general  prob- 
lems of  eugenics.  He  also  more  fully 
developed  his  long-standing  interests  in 
psychical  research. 

In  1912  McDougall  was  elected  F.R.S. 
and  a  fellow  of  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Oxford.  He  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  D.Sc.  from  Manchester  University  in 

1919  and  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1938. 
He  married  in  1900  Annie  Aurelia,  daugh- 
ter of  Henry  Hickmore,  government  con- 
tractor, of  Brighton,  and  had  three  sons 
and  two  daughters:  the  eldest  son,  who 
was  kiUed  flying,  and  the  younger  daugh- 
ter predeceased  him.  He  died  at  Durham, 
North  CaroUna,  28  November  1938. 

McDougall  was  tall  and  handsome,  with 
an  impressive  voice  and  manner.  In  his 
early  days  he  was  no  mean  athlete.  His 
influence  upon  contemporary  psychology 
was  very  great.  He  can  fairly  be  regarded 
as  the  real  inspiration  of  a  wide  and 
intensive  study  of  social  psychology  in  the 


571 


McDougall 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


English-speaking  world.  Among  contem- 
porary psychologists  he  was  the  most 
powerful  advocate  of  an  idealistic  outlook 
upon  human  life  and  activity.  Many 
excellent  judges  consider  that  his  early 
work  on  physiological  psychology  was  his 
best. 

[The  Times,  29  November  1938;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (portrait  and  bibliography) ; 
British  Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  xxix,  1938- 
1939 ;  a  brief  autobiography  in  A  History  of 
Psychology  in  Autobiography,  edited  by  Carl 
Murchison,  vol.  i,  1930 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
F.  C.  Bartlett. 


M'FADYEN,  JOHN  EDGAR  (1870- 
1933),  Scottish  biblical  scholar,  was  born 
in  Glasgow  17  July  1870,  the  eldest  child 
in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  four 
daughters  of  James  Hemphill  M'Fadyen, 
of  Glasgow,  manager  of  the  publishing 
department  of  the  Evening  Citizen  and  the 
Weekly  Citizen  newspapers,  by  his  wife, 
Jane  McKee.  He  received  his  early  educa- 
tion at  Hutcheson's  Boys'  Grammar 
School,  Glasgow,  and  at  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity, at  which,  after  a  distinguished  career, 
he  graduated  M.A.  with  a  first  class  in 
classics,  being  the  most  conspicuous 
graduate  of  his  year  (1890).  He  proceeded 
to  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  as  SneU  exhibi- 
tioner, and  was  awarded  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1892)  and  a  second 
class  in  liter ae  humaniores  (1894).  He  won 
the  junior  (1893)  and  the  senior  (1896) 
Hall-Houghton  Septuagint  prizes  and  the 
Denyer  and  Johnson  scholarship  (1897). 
In  1894  he  returned  to  Glasgow  as  a 
George  A.  Clark  classical  scholar,  in  order 
to  take  the  theological  course  at  the  Free 
Church  College  (later  Trinity  College), 
where  he  came  under  the  inspiring  influ- 
ence of  A.  B.  Bruce  [q.v.],  (Sir)  George 
Adam  Smith,  T.  M.  Lindsay  [q.v.],  James 
Stuart  Candlish,  and  Henry  Drummond 
[q.v.].  A  semester  spent  during  this  period 
at  Marburg  increased  his  scholarly  equip- 
ment, and  when  in  1898  he  finished  his 
theological  course,  he  was  appointed  to 
the  chair  of  Old  Testament  literature  and 
exegesis  in  Knox  College,  Toronto,  and 
took  with  him  to  Canada  his  newly 
married  wife,  Marie,  daughter  of  Amts- 
gerichtsrat  Wilhelm  Scheffer,  of  Eschwege, 
Hesse.  He  remained  in  Toronto  until 
1910,  when  he  was  recalled  to  Glasgow, 
to  occupy  the  chair  of  Old  Testament  lan- 
guage, literature,  and  theology  in  Trinity 
College  where  he  remained  vmtil  his  death 
in  Glasgow  24  December  1933.    He  had 


nas. 

i 


two  sons  and  a  daughter,  who  pre- 
deceased her  father.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  Pine  Hill  Divinity  Hall, 
HaUfax  (1910)  and  the  university  of  Glas- 
gow (1911). 

In  the  second  half  of  the  ninetee: 
century,  the  scientific  theory  of  evolutii 
influenced  deeply  men's  thoughts  o 
ceming  the  world  and  human  life  and 
destiny,  and  the  prevalent  belief  in  the 
steady  progress  of  human  thought  and 
achievement  made  a  vogue  of  philosophi 
cal  materialism.  It  was  inevitable  that,  at 
such  a  time,  the  books  of  the  Bible  should 
be  examined  in  accordance  with  the  canons 
of  literary  and  historical  criticism,  with 
the  result  that  many  generally  accepted 
ideas  were  severely  disturbed  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures  was  directly  challenged. 
It  was  M'Fadyen's  main  work  to  be  a 
mediator  of  the  new  learning,  both  to 
those  who  had  been  disturbed  by  it  and 
to  those  who  desired  to  profit  by  it. 

It  is  intelligible,  therefore,  that  one 
of  M'Fadyen's  early  publications  was  a 
volume  of  apologetic  with  the  title  Old 
Testament  Criticism  and  the  Christian 
Church  (1903).  Apart  from  his  repeated 
revisions  (1914-1930)  of  the  Introductory 
Hebrew  Grammar  of  A.  B.  Davidson  [q.v.], 
M'Fadyen  did  not  devote  himself  to  lin- 
guistic or  philological  studies;  his  work 
was  predominantly  exegetical,  homiletical, 
and  devotional.  His  translations  of  various 
books  of  the  Old  Testament  into  modem 
speech  satisfied  an  urgent  need ;  exegetical 
studies  such  as  A  Cry  for  Justice  (1912) 
and  The  Problem  of  Pain  (1917)  were 
evidence  of  genuine  scholarship  and  of 
living  faith ;  whilst  in  volumes  such  as  The 
Use  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  Light  of 
Modern  Knowledge  (1922),  The  Approach 
to  the  Old  Testament  (1926),  and  A  Guide  to 
the  Understanding  of  the  Old  Testament 
(1927),  he  showed  the  essential  tmity  and 
the  spiritual  content  of  that  collection  of 
books. 

Upon  his  own  students  M'Fadyen  exer- 
cised a  profound  influence.  His  rich 
scholarship  yoked  to  the  grace  and  humi- 
Uty  of  his  character  made  him  a  teacher 
beloved.  But  his  influence  extended  far 
beyond  the  classroom.  By  the  written  and 
the  spoken  word  he  made  many  people 
his  debtors,  both  in  this  country  and  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

[Glasgow  Herald,  26  December  1933;  Ex- 
pository Times,  March  1934;  W.  I.  Addison, 
The  SneU  Exhibitions,  1901.] 

John  Mauchline. 


572 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Mackay 


M'INTOSH,  WILLIAM  CAR- 

MICHAEL  (1838-1931),  zoologist,  was 
bom  at  St.  Andrews  10  October  1838,  the 
only  son  of  John  M'Intosh,  builder  and 
town  councillor,  of  St.  Andrews,  by  his 
wife,  Eliza,  third  daughter  of  Robert 
Mitchell,  linen  manufacturer.  His  youngest 
sister,  Roberta,  married  A.  C.  L.  G.  Giin- 
ther  [q.v.];  she  was  a  gifted  artist  and 
executed  many  of  the  illustrations  for  her 
brother's  works.  After  schooldays  at 
Madras  College,  St.  Andrews,  he  entered 
the  university,  but  soon  transferred  to 
Edinburgh  in  order  to  study  medicine.  He 
graduated  M.D.  with  distinction  and  gold 
medal  in  1860  and  specialized  in  the  study 
of  mental  disease.  In  1863  he  became 
medical  superintendent  of  Perth  District 
Asylum  at  Murthly,  a  post  which  he  held 
for  the  next  twenty  years.  From  his  boy- 
hood he  had  been  interested  in  natural 
history,  and  at  Edinburgh  he  was  especi- 
ally influenced  by  John  Goodsir  [q.v.],  the 
anatomist,  and  G.  J.  Allman  [q.v.],  the 
zoologist,  the  latter  of  whom  he  accom- 
panied on  dredging  excursions  in  the  Firth 
of  Forth.  He  began  early  the  long  series 
of  faunistic  papers  which  were  continued 
until  the  last  years  of  his  life.  A  number 
of  these  papers  were  reprinted  in  The 
Marine  Invertebrates  and  Fishes  of  St. 
Andrews  (1875)  with  a  supplement,  Addi- 
tions to  the  Marine  Fauna  of  St.  Andrews 
(1927).  His  most  important  work  in  pure 
zoology  was  his  great  Monograph  of  the 
British  Marine  Annelids,  published  in  four 
foUo  volumes  by  the  Ray  Society ;  the  first 
two  parts  of  this  work,  published  in  1873 
and  1874,  dealt  with  the  nemertine  worms, 
a  group  not  now  included  in  the  anneUda. 
Thereafter  the  work  was  laid  aside,  to  be 
resumed  in  1900  and  completed  in  1923. 
Hardly  less  important  was  his  report  on 
the  polychaete  worms  obtained  by  the 
Challenger  expedition,  which  appeared  in 
two  volvunes  in  1885,  and  a  shorter  report 
(1887)  describing  the  greatest  zoological 
novelty  obtained  by  the  expedition,  the 
animal  to  which  he  gave  the  name 
Cephalodiscus. 

In  1882  the  chair  of  natural  history  in 
the  vmiversity  of  St.  Andrews  became 
vacant  and  M'Intosh,  abandoning  his 
medical  career,  returned  to  his  native  city 
as  professor  of  zoology,  a  position  which 
he  occupied  imtil  his  retirement  in  1917. 
In  1883  he  was  appointed  to  conduct 
investigations  on  behalf  of  a  royal  com- 
mission on  Scottish  sea  fisheries,  and  for 
this  purpose  the  first  marine  laboratory 
in  this  country  was  estabUshed  at  St. 


Andrews.  The  results  of  this  period  of  his 
work  are  sununed  up  in  Life  Histories  of 
British  Marine  Food-Fishes  (with  Arthur 
Thomas  Masterman,  1897)  and  The  Re- 
sources qf  the  Sea  (1898). 

M'Intosh  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1877 
and  was  awarded  a  Royal  medal  in  1899. 
He  was  also  elected  F.R.S.  (Edinburgh) 
in  1869,  having  been  awarded  the  Neill 
medal  in  1868 ;  he  was  vice-president  from 
1927  to  1930.  In  1924  he  received  the 
Linnean  medal  of  the  Linnean  Society. 
He  was  president  of  the  Ray  Society  from 
1913  until  his  death.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  luiiversities  of  St.  An- 
drews, Edinburgh,  Oxford,  and  Durham. 
He  was  primarily  a  descriptive  zoologist, 
and,  as  such,  his  writings  on  the  poly- 
chaete and  especially  the  nemertine  worms 
will  long  remain  indispensable  to  the 
student  of  these  groups.  In  fishery  re- 
search he  was  one  of  the  pioneers,  and 
although  many  of  his  conclusions  have 
been  invahdated  by  later  work,  he  had  a 
clearer  conception  of  the  broad  outlines 
of  marine  ecology  than  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries. 

M'Intosh  died,  unmarried,  at  St.  An- 
drews 1  April  1931.  A  portrait  of  him  by 
James  Caw,  undated  but  probably  painted 
soon  after  1880,  hangs  in  the  rooms  of  the 
Linnean  Society,  BurUngton  House. 

[The  Times,  2  April  1931;  Proceedings  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  ex,  B,  1932  (portrait) ; 
Nature,  2  May  1931 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
W.  T.  Calman. 

MACKAY,  JAMES  LYLE,  first  Eakl 
OF  Inchcape  (1852-1932),  shipowner,  was 
born  at  Arbroath  11  September  1852,  the 
yoimger  son  of  James  Mackay,  shipmaster 
and  shipowner,  of  Arbroath,  by  his  wife, 
Deborah,  daughter  of  Alexander  Lyle,  of 
Canada.  From  his  earUest  years  he  lived 
in  the  world  of  shipping;  at  the  age  of 
eight  he  accompanied  his  father  on  a 
voyage  to  Archangel,  narrowly  escaping 
death  by  drowning.  In  1862  his  father 
was  drowned  crossing  the  Atlantic  and  his 
mother  died  two  years  later.  Young  Mac- 
kay was  then  at  Elgin  Academy  and  of  his 
education  he  said,  '  I  was  fonder  of  boats 
than  of  books,  I  was  a  froward  sort  of  a 
boy  . . .  extremely  naughty  . . .  who  would 
never  come  to  any  good.  .  .  .  Eventually 
I  was  brought  to  heel  by  four  years  of 
the  strict  discipline  of  an  office.'  Leaving 
school  at  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  em- 
ployed for  a  few  months  as  scrivener  in 
a  lawyer's  office,  then  he  was  apprenticed 
to  a  rope-maker  in  Arbroath ;  at  nineteen 


578 


Mackay 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


he  went  to  London  as  an  employee  at  £50 
a  year  of  Messrs.  Gellatly,  Hankey,  Sewell 
&  company,  and  it  was  his  work  there 
and  at  Gravesend  which  brought  him 
into  daily  contact  with  ships,  men  of  the 
sea,  and  the  seaborne  commerce  of  London. 
These  interests  were  to  dominate  his  life, 
and  the  first  opportunity  of  satisfying  them 
came  when  in  1874  he  was  appointed  to  the 
staff  of  Messrs.  Mackinnon  Mackenzie  & 
company,  of  Calcutta. 

Although  the  Suez  Canal  had  been 
opened  in  1869,  the  British  mails  in  1874 
were  still  being  sent  by  the  'overland' 
route,  and  Mackay,  who  was  eventually 
to  become  vice-president  of  the  Suez  Canal 
Company,  made  his  first  voyage  to  India, 
not  through  the  available  canal,  but  by 
Alexandria,  Cairo,  and  Suez.  In  1878  he 
was  appointed  to  Bombay,  where  once 
more  a  great  opportunity  awaited  him. 
The  failure  in  that  year  of  the  City  of 
Glasgow  Bank  ruined  the  Bombay  agents 
of  the  British  India  Steam  Navigation 
Company,  and  Mackay  was  chosen  by 
Mackinnon,  Mackenzie  &  company  to  act 
in  their  place.  Within  two  years  he  was 
given  a  partnership  with  an  interest  in  the 
Bombay  firm.  Bombay  was  not  only  the 
port  of  entry  to  India  but  was  the  centre 
of  a  vast  entrepot  trade  extending  from 
Durban  to  Basra  and  from  Suez  to 
Colombo;  and  it  was  characteristic  of 
Mackay  that  he  had  already  set  himself 
by  personal  visits  to  the  trading  agents  to 
build  up  a  local  and  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  conditions  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  His 
knowledge  thus  acquired,  cemented  by  his 
miusually  tenacious  memory,  was  of  im- 
mense value  in  his  task,  varied  as  it  was 
with  demands  for  the  carriage  of  troops 
and  stores  in  connexion  with  the  Russo- 
Turkish  war  of  1877-1878  and  the  Zulu 
war  of  1879.  This  connexion  with  East 
Africa  was  perhaps  more  romantic  than 
that  with  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Red 
Sea,  for  a  service  from  Aden  to  Zanzibar 
established  in  1873  led  to  the  foiuidation 
in  1888  by  Sir  WilUam  Mackinnon  [q.v.] 
of  the  British  East  Africa  Company,  and 
the  foundation  of  the  British  East  African 
possessions,  which,  with  promptitude  on 
the  part  of  the  government,  might  have 
included  the  territory  which  came  to  be 
German  East  Africa  and  is  now  Tan- 
ganyika. 

Returning  to  Calcutta  in  1883,  Mackay 
became  president  of  the  Bengal  chamber 
of  commerce,  holding  the  post  from  1890 
to  1893,  and  was  confronted  with  the 
burning  question  of  the  Indian  currency. 


From  1891  to  1893  he  served  on  the' 
legislative  council,  and  in  1892,  soc 
after  having  been  elected  president  of 
Indian  Currency  Association,  the  vicerc 
H.  C.  K.  Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Lord  Lat 
downe  [q.v.],  who  had  picked  him  out 
British  commercial  circles,  selected  him  tot 
put  their  views  before  the  Indian  cmrency  i 
committee  sitting  in  London  under  Farrer, 
Lord  Herschell  [q.v.].  There  is  little  doubt 
that  his  evidence  was  of  great  weight  in 
framing  the  policy  which  led  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  Indian  currency  on  the  gold 
standard.  By  the  time  he  left  India,  he 
was  senior  partner  in  the  firms  of  Mac- 
kinnon, Mackenzie,  &  company  and  of 
Macneill  &  company,  and  through  his 
reorganization  of  Binny  &  company,  of 
Madras,  his  field  of  enterprise  embraced 
the  jute,  tea,  and  coal  industries  of  Bengal, 
the  cotton  and  wool  industries  of  Madras, 
the  seaborne  trade  between  India  and 
Burma,  the  Persian  Gulf  and  East  Africa, 
and  many  ancillary  companies  in  the| 
hinterland  of  these  areas.  He  also  founded  \ 
the  Australian  house  of  Macdonald,  ^ 
Hamilton  &  company. 

In  1893  Mackay  came  home  for  good  to  ■ 
take  charge  of  the  London  office  of  the  | 
British  India  Company,  and  his  influence 
in  the  City  rapidly  grew  as  director  and 
chairman  of  a  host  of  companies,  some 
connected  with  shipping,  such  as  the  Suez 
Canal  Company  of  which  he  became  vice- 
president  and  chairman  of  the  London 
committee.  Others  were  banking  corpora- 
tions such  as  the  P.  &  O.  and  the 
National  Provincial  Banks.  He  was  thrice 
president  of  the  chamber  of  shipping  of 
the  United  IQngdom  (1903,  1918,  1919) 
and  in  1926  president  of  the  International 
Shipping  Federation.  Nevertheless,  the 
government  called  on  him  for  his  services. 
From  1897  to  1911  he  was  a  member  of 
the  council  of  the  secretary  of  state  for 
India  as  official  member  to  represent  the 
non-oflflcial  point  of  view.  In  1901  he  was 
appointed  by  the  British  government 
special  commissioner  and  plenipotentiary 
in  the  negotiations  with  China  to  secure 
uniform  currency  in  that  country,  and  to 
abolish  likin  and  other  duties  which 
clogged  the  flow  of  goods  between  the 
interior  of  China  and  the  treaty  ports. 
Although  the  treaty  of  Shanghai  was 
signed  in  1902,  it  failed  of  its  object,  not 
from  any  fault  of  Mackay,  who  treated 
the  Chinese  negotiators  with  a  patience 
and  perseverance  that  were  in  startling 
contrast  to  the  directness  which  marked 
his  approach  to  all  matters.    On  retiring 


574 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Mackennal 


from  the  India  Council  in  1911  Mackay 
was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Inch- 
cape,  of  Strathnaver,  in  the  county  of 
Sutherland. 

During  and  after  the  war  of  1914-1918 
Inchcape  continued  his  services  on  a  multi- 
tude of  government  committees:  in  1917 
he  was  made  a  member  of  the  committee 
of  imperial  defence,  from  1921  to  1922  he 
served  on  the  national  economy  (Geddes) 
committee,  and  from  1922  to  1923  he  was 
chairman  of  the  committee  on  Indian 
retrenchment.  His  work  for  the  govern- 
ment did  not  interfere  with  his  business 
life  which  was  chiefly  centred  on  the 
London  office  of  the  British  India  Com- 
pany, and  in  1914  Inchcape,  on  becoming 
chairman,  revived  proposals  for  the  fusion 
of  the  company  with  the  P.  &  O.  Company, 
with  which  the  British  India  had  always 
been  on  amicable  terms,  and  carried  them 
through.  Under  this  agreement,  the  P.  & 
O.  Company  purchased  the  whole  ordinary 
stock  of  the  British  India  Company  and 
part  of  the  preference  stock,  so  that 
£12,600,000  sterling  and  1,250,000  tons  of 
shipping  were  now  brought  under  one 
direct  authority.  In  1916  this  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  fusion  of  the  New  Zealand 
Shipping  Company  and  its  subsidiary  the 
Federal  Line;  next  year  by  that  of  the 
Union  Steamship  Company  of  New  Zea- 
land, the  Hain  and  Nourse  lines,  and  in 
1920  by  that  of  the  General  Steam  Naviga- 
tion Company,  while  in  1919  an  interest 
had  been  obtained  in  the  Orient  Line.  In 
its  final  form,  the  group  unified  a  capital 
of  twenty-three  millions  with  a  tonnage 
not  far  short  of  two  millions. 

In  this  remarkable  fusion  of  different 
interests,  each  serving  a  particular  trade 
and  having  its  own  special  problems,  Inch- 
cape's  claim,  which  he  always  pressed,  to 
allow  the  individual  fuU  play  to  originate, 
develop,  and  achieve,  was  most  amply  and 
vividly  illustrated.  It  was  not  amalgama- 
tion so  much  as  unification,  for  to  each  of 
the  constituent  parts  there  was  allowed 
full  and  imtrammelled  liberty  to  develop 
its  own  individuality.  Each  was  left  to 
seek  and  find  its  own  objective,  to  secure 
it  perhaps  even  in  competition  with  an- 
other member  of  the  group.  The  dead 
hand  of  uniform  formaUsm,  of  seeking  and 
sheltering  behind  a  superior  authority, 
was  abhorrent  to  Inchcape,  and  wholly 
absent  from  his  conception  of  the  unifica- 
tion which  he  had  thus  estabUshed. 

Inchcape  was  never  a  politician,  although 
he  was  once  nominated  as  a  candidate  for 
Plymouth  and  made  one  or  two  election 


speeches  when,  on  his  return  home  from 
India,  he  was  induced  for  a  very  brief 
period  to  consider  entering  politics.  He 
was  a  declared  liberal,  but  in  1926  he 
crossed  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Lords  to 
the  conservative  benches.  He  was  an 
ardent  and  convinced  free  trader,  and  he 
bitterly  resented  the  encroachment  of  the 
activities  of  the  state  into  the  life  of  the 
individual,  believing  that  its  fimction 
should  be  limited  to  defence,  the  main- 
tenance of  law  and  order,  and  the  strictest 
economy  in  finance,  leaving  to  the  citizen 
the  opportunity  of  self-help  and  self- 
development,  particularly  in  matters  of 
trade,  commerce,  and  industry.  The  cur- 
tailment of  the  liberties  of  the  subject 
which  was  imposed  during  and  after  the 
war  of  1914r-1918  was  particularly  repug- 
nant to  him,  and  he  foiuid  especial  pleasure 
in  his  discharge,  almost  single-handed,  of 
the  stupendous  task  of  selling  for  the 
Exchequer  the  fleet  of  ships  built  here  or 
acquired  from  the  enemy  during  the  war, 
for  £35,000,000,  as  against  the  expense  of 
£850.  He  will  go  down  to  future  genera- 
tions as  the  most  prominent  figure  of  his 
time  in  British  shipping. 

Inchcape  was  appointed  K.C.I.E.  in 
1894,  G.C.M.G.  in  1902,  K.C.S.I.  in  1910, 
and  G.C.S.I.  in  1924;  he  was  advanced  to 
the  degree  of  a  viscoimt  in  1924  and  to 
that  of  Earl  of  Inchcape  and  Viscoimt 
Glenapp  in  1929.  He  married  in  1883  Jane 
Paterson,  daughter  of  James  Shanks,  of 
Rosely,  Arbroath,  a  leading  Scottish 
engineer.  She  sui^ived  him  until  1937 
with  one  son  and  three  of  their  four 
daughters ;  the  third  daughter  was  lost  at 
sea  in  1928  in  an  attempt  to  fly  the 
Atlantic.  He  died  at  Monaco,  on  board 
his  yacht  Rover,  23  May  1932,  and  was 
succeeded  as  second  earl  by  his  son,  Ken- 
neth (1887-1939). 

Portraits  of  Inchcape  by  de  lidszlo  are  at 
the  P.  «fe  O.  and  the  Chamber  of  Shipping. 

[The  Times,  24  May  1932 ;  Hector  Bolitho, 
James  Lyle  Mackay,  first  Earl  of  Inchcape, 
1936;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] M.  M.  S.  GXJBBAY. 


MACKENNAL,  Sm  (EDGAR)  BERT- 
RAM (1863-1931),  Australian  sculptor, 
was  born  in  Melbourne  12  June  1863,  the 
second  son  of  John  Simpson  Mackennal, 
by  his  wife,  Sarah  Hyde.  His  father  was 
an  architectural  sculptor,  who  was  born 
in  Ayrshire  and,  after  being  articled  to  a 
Liverpool  sculptor,  emigrated  in  1852  to 
Melbovune,  where  he  carried  out  work  of 


575 


Mackennal 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


an  architectural  character  on  several  of  its 
principal  buildings.  Bertram  Mackennal 
studied  first  under  his  father  and  at  the 
National  Gallery  School  in  Melbourne.  At 
the  age  of  eighteen  he  came  to  London, 
chiefly  to  study  the  Elgin  marbles,  and 
entered  the  Royal  Academy  Schools.  Dis- 
satisfied with  the  routine  there,  he  left 
after  a  very  short  time  and  went  to  Paris, 
where  he  worked  in  several  studios,  ac- 
quiring variety  and  freedom  of  style. 
Returning  to  England,  he  secured  a  posi- 
tion as  head  of  the  art  department  in  a 
pottery  at  Coalport,  Shropshire.  He  first 
exhibited  about  1886,  and  three  years 
later  he  won  the  competition  for  the 
decoration  of  Government  House,  Mel- 
bourne. This  took  him  back  to  Australia, 
but  in  two  years  he  was  again  in  Paris, 
where  he  gained  his  first  great  success  with 
the  figure  of  'Circe',  which  received  an 
honourable  mention  in  the  Salon  of  1893, 
and  attracted  a  good  deal  of  attention  at 
the  Academy  the  following  year.  It  is  now 
in  the  National  Gallery  of  Victoria,  Mel- 
bourne. 

The  marble  figure  of  'Oceanus',  com- 
missioned by  the  Union  Club  of  Sydney ; 
the  South  African  War  Memorial  for  IsUng- 
ton ;  the  memorials  to  Queen  Victoria  for 
Lahore,  Blackburn,  and  Austraha;  and 
the  pediment  of  the  Local  Government 
Board  office,  Westminster,  followed  at 
intervals,  and  in  1910  Mackennal  was 
called  upon  to  design  the  coronation  medal 
of  King  George  V,  and  also  the  obverse  of 
the  new  coinage,  to  supersede  the  Edward- 
ian design  of  G.  W.  De  Saulles  [q.v.] ;  in 
recognition  of  this  he  was  in  1912 
appointed  M.V.O.  He  was  then  commis- 
sioned, with  (Sir)  Edwin  Lutyens  as  archi- 
tect, to  execute  the  national  memorial  to 
King  Edward  VII  in  St.  George's  Chapel, 
Windsor.  This  was  unveiled  in  1921,  when 
King  George  advanced  him  as  K.C.V.O. 
Among  other  important  works  by  Mac- 
kennal are  the  national  memorial  to  Gains- 
borough at  Sudbury,  Suffolk;  the  tomb 
of  Sir  Redvers  Buller  in  Winchester 
Cathedral ;  the  equestrian  statue  of  King 
Edward  VII  in  Waterloo  Place ;  the  nude 
male  figure, '  Here  Am  I ',  for  Eton  playing 
fields ;  and  the  war  memorial  to  members 
of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  in  the  porch 
of  St.  Stephen's  Hall.  In  the  last  year  of 
his  life  Mackennal  was  commissioned  by 
King  George  to  execute  a  portrait  in 
marble  of  Queen  Alexandra  to  be  placed 
on  the  wall  of  Sandringham  church.  He 
was  elected  A.R.A.  in  1909  and  R.A.  in 
1922,  but  he  did  not  exhibit  at  the  Aca- 


demy after  1929,  when  he  was  representee 
by  the  figures  of  a  soldier  and  a  sailor  foi 
the  Anzac  memorial  at  Sydney.  He  L 
represented  at  the  Tate  Gallery  by  'Th( 
Earth  and  the  Elements',  a  small  grouj 
of  four  figures  in  marble,  a  Chantrey  pur 
chase  of  1907,  and  'Diana  Wounded',  j 
life-size  marble  figure,  a  Chantrey  pur 
chase  of  1908.  Mackennal  revisited  Aus 
tralia  in  1901  and  again  in  1926,  when  th( 
sales  at  an  exhibition  of  his  work  estab 
lished  a  record  for  sculpture  in  th( 
Dominion. 

In  forming  an  estimate  of  Mackennal'i 
ability  as  a  sculptor  it  is  necessary  to  dis 
count  the  artistically  irrelevant  circum 
stances  that  he  was  the  first  Australiai 
artist — the  first  overseas  artist,  indeed— 
to  be  elected  to  the  Royal  Academy,  th( 
first  to  have  a  work  purchased  for  the  Tat< 
Gallery,  and  the  first  to  be  knighted.  Bu 
making  full  allowance  for  any  discrepancy 
between  his  reputation  and  his  powers,  h< 
must  be  pronounced  to  have  been  a  bril 
liant  'all  round'  sculptor  and  a  master  o 
his  craft,  particularly  in  the  treatment  o 
marble,  with  poetical  imagination  and  J 
peculiar  elegance  of  style. 

Mackennal  married  in  1884  Agnes  (diec 
1947),  daughter  of  Henry  Spooner,  o 
London,  and  had  a  daughter.  He  diet 
suddenly  at  his  home,  Watcombe  Hall 
Watcombe,  Torquay,  10  October  1931. 

[The  Times,  12  October  1931;  WiUian 
Moore,  The  Story  of  Australian  Art,  1934 
Kineton  Parkas,  Sculpture  of  To-day,  vol.  i 
1921 ;  private  information.] 

Chaki^s  Makriott. 

MACKENZIE,  Sib  ALEXANDEI 
CAMPBELL  (1847-1935),  composer  am 
principal  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music 
was  bom  in  Edinburgh  22  August  1847 
the  eldest  son  of  Alexander  Mackenzie,  h} 
his  wife,  Janet  Campbell.  He  inherite( 
musical  talent,  his  great-grandfathe 
having  been  a  member  of  the  Forfarshirt 
militia  band,  his  grandfather  a  profes 
sional  violinist,  and  his  father  leader  o 
the  orchestra  at  the  Theatre  Royal,  Edin 
burgh,  and  editor  of  the  National  Dane- 
Music  of  Scotland  (1859). 

At  the  age  of  ten,  after  leaving  Hunter'ii 
School,  Edinbvurgh,  Mackenzie  was  sent  U 
study  music  at  Sondershausen  in  Thurin' 
gia.  He  hved  with  the  family  of  a  membe: 
of  the  ducal  orchestra,  attended  the  Real 
schule,  and  entered  the  conservatoriun, 
where  he  studied  under  K.  W.  Ulrich  anv 
Eduard  Stein ;  in  1861  he  joined  the  ducaj 
orchestra  as  second  violinist.   On  cominfi 


676 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Mackenzie,  A.  C. 


to  London  in  1862  he  won  the  king's 
scholarship  at  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Music,  and  with  P.  P.  C.  Sainton  [q.v.]  as 
his  master  for  the  violin,  Charles  Lucas 
[q.v.]  for  composition,  and  Frederick 
Bowen  Jewson  for  the  piano,  completed 
his  training  there  in  1865. 

Thus  equipped  Mackenzie  settled  (1866- 
1881)  in  Edinburgh,  where  he  became 
known  as  a  violinist,  gave  chamber  con- 
certs at  which  Schumann's  pianoforte 
quartet  and  quintet  were  for  the  first  time 
played  in  Scotland  (1870),  was  organist  of 
St.  George's  church,  Charlotte  Square,  and 
was  appointed  in  1873  conductor  of  the 
Scottish  Vocal  Music  Association.  Mean- 
while, he  found  time  to  compose  a  piano- 
forte trio  and  a  string  quartet,  besides  a 
pianoforte  quartet  in  E  flat  published  at 
Leipzig.  Hans  von  Biilow,  who  had  seen  the 
proof-sheets  of  this  work,  later  made  the 
composer's  acquaintance.  It  was  through 
this  meeting  that  Mackenzie's  overture 
'Cervantes' ,  performed  at  Sondershausen  in 
1877,  was  produced  at  Glasgow  two  years 
later  under  von  Billow's  direction.  Soon 
after,  two  other  orchestral  works  appeared, 
'Rhapsodic  Ecossaise'  and  'Burns'  (his 
second  Scottish  rhapsody),  played  at  Glas- 
gow in  1880  and  1881  respectively,  (Sir) 
August  Manns  [q.v.]  conducting.  About  this 
time  choral  works  were  also  occupying  his 
attention.  One  of  these,  a  cantata  entitled 
'The  Bride',  received  a  hearing  at  the 
Worcester  festival  of  1881. 

But  overwork  began  to  undermine  Mac- 
kenzie's health.  After  a  period  of  rest 
abroad  he  soon  recovered  and  decided  to 
remain  in  the  warmer  climate  of  Italy. 
Save  for  just  over  a  year  in  England  (1885) 
he  made  Florence  his  headquarters  for 
seven  years  (1881-1888).  There  he  settled 
down  to  compositions  of  larger  scale.  Be- 
sides purely  instrumental  works  he  wrote 
operas  and  oratorios,  including  the  opera 
Colomba  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  Lon- 
don, by  the  Carl  Rosa  Company  in  1883, 
and  the  oratorio  'The  Rose  of  Sharon', 
one  of  the  successes  of  the  Norwich  festival 
of  1884.  A  violin  concerto  written  for  Sara- 
sate  was  played  at  the  Birmingham  festi- 
val of  1885  and  six  pieces  for  the  violin 
(including  'Benedictus')  were  a  feature  of 
Monday  Popular  Concerts  at  the  St.  James's 
Hall  (1888)  with  Lady  Halle  [q.v.]  as 
soloist.  During  the  season  of  1885-1886 
Mackenzie,  as  conductor  of  the  Novello 
oratorio  choir  in  London,  met  Gounod  and 
Dvorak.  He  had  already  estabUshed  a  firm 
friendship  with  Liszt  who  paid  his  final 
visit  to  England  primarily  in  order  to  hear 


his  'Saint  Elizabeth'  performed  under  Mac- 
kenzie's direction  at  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Music  in  1886. 

On  the  death  of  Sir  George  Macfarren 
[q.v.]  in  October  1887  Mackenzie  was 
appointed  to  succeed  him  as  principal  of 
the  Academy.  From  1888  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1924  he  was  responsible  for  its 
administration.  His  first  task  was  to  set 
his  house  in  order.  Supported  by  royal 
patronage  and  by  a  sympathetic  board  of 
directors  and  committee  of  management, 
reforms  were  initiated.  The  professorial 
staff  became  a  more  cohesive  body. 
Generous  donors  gave  sums  of  money  to 
found  scholarships.  The  scope  and  influ- 
ence of  his  own  experience  broadened  the 
musical  education  which  the  Academy  was 
meant  to  provide.  He  established  links 
with  the  then  recently  founded  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Music,  which,  with  the  friendly 
co-operation  of  (Sir)  C.  H.  H.  Parry  [q.v.], 
culminated  in  the  formation  (1889)  of  the 
Associated  Board  of  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Music  and  the  Royal  College  of  Music — an 
examining  body,  later  known  as  the  Asso- 
ciated Board  of  the  Royal  Schools  of  Music, 
the  work  of  which  in  stimulating  musical 
effort  among  boys  and  girls  of  school  age 
has  had  far-reaching  effects  throughout 
Great  Britain  and  the  Dominions. 

From  1892  to  1899  Mackenzie  was 
conductor  of  the  Philharmonic  Society's 
concerts  which  brought  him  into  close  per- 
sonal touch  with  composers,  conductors, 
and  executant  artistes  of  international 
repute — Tschaikowsky  (whose  'Pathetic 
symphony  Mackenzie  introduced  to  Lon- 
don), Saint-Saens,  Grieg,  Strauss,  Busoni, 
and  Joachim.  His  intimate  knowledge  of 
German  and  Italian  made  him  quite  at 
home  with  them.  Such  knowledge,  coupled 
with  his  cosmopolitan  musicianship,  emi- 
nently fitted  him  to  be  president  (1908- 
1912)  of  the  International  Musical  Society : 
he  presided  over  congresses  at  Vienna 
(1909)  and  London  (1911),  at  the  latter  of 
which  British  music  in  its  manifold  aspects 
was  performed. 

The  new  national  trend  based  on  folk- 
song 'begun  by  Parry  the  Englishman, 
Mackenzie  the  Scot,  and  Stanford  the 
Irishman'  was  manifest  by  the  end  of  the 
century,  and  in  1903  Mackenzie  himself 
undertook  a  six-weeks'  tour  of  Canada  at 
the  invitation  of  Dr.  Charles  Harriss  in 
order  to  study  the  possibilities  of  Canadian 
folk-song.  Many  contemporary  British 
works  then  introduced  by  Mackenzie  gave 
impetus  to  choral  festival  competitions 
throughout  the  Dominion .  At  the  Academy 


577 


l-p 


Mackenzie,  A.  C. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


he  taught  composition,  conducted  the 
students'  orchestra,  and  lectured,  besides 
attending  to  his  administrative  work.  The 
move  in  1911  from  Tenterden  Street  to 
the  new  building  at  York  Gate,  Maryle- 
bone  Road,  and  the  centenary  celebrations 
(1922),  with  a  performance  of  his  opera 
The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  provide  ample 
testimony  to  his  gifts  of  organization. 
Many  students,  now  distinguished  mem- 
bers of  their  profession,  remember  his 
genial  friendship  and  wise  leadership  with 
gratitude. 

Of  his  works  with  opus  numbers  (they 
total  90)  it  is  significant  that  nearly  half 
were  written  before  Mackenzie  became 
principal  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music. 
It  is  probable  that  by  these  his  merits  as 
a  composer  will  be  assessed.  'The  Cotter's 
Saturday  Night',  one  of  his  most  effective 
works  for  chorus  and  orchestra,  was  pro- 
duced during  the  year  of  his  appointment 
and  finds  him  true  to  national  folk-song 
tradition,  as  does  also  the  music  of  the 
Little  Minister  (1897).  His  operas  and 
oratorios  might  have  achieved  greater  suc- 
cess had  he  been  blessed  with  better  libret- 
tists. Although  among  his  instrumental 
works  neither  symphony  nor  sonata  is  to 
be  found,  what  he  did  produce  gives  him 
an  honoured  place  among  the  composers 
of  his  time. 

Mackenzie  was  knighted  in  1895  and 
appointed  K.C.V.O.  in  1922.  His  many 
academic  distinctions  included  the  honor- 
ary degree  of  doctor  of  music  of  the  uni- 
versities of  St.  Andrews,  Cambridge, 
Edinburgh,  and  Oxford,  the  honorary 
LL.D.  of  Glasgow  and  Leeds,  and  the 
honorary  D.C.L.  of  McGill.  He  was  also 
a  member  of  the  Royal  Swedish  Academy 
and  received  the  gold  medals  for  arts  and 
sciences  of  Hesse-Darmstadt  and  Saxe- 
Coburg.  He  married  in  1874  Mary  Melina 
(died  1925),  daughter  of  John  Bumside, 
of  Edinburgh,  and  had  a  daughter.  He  died 
in  London  28  April  1935. 

A  portrait  of  Mackenzie  painted  by 
Rene  de  I'Hopital  in  1923  is  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music.  A 
cartoon  of  him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  14  January  1901. 

[The  Times,  29  April  1935 ;  Sir  A.  C.  Mac- 
kenzie, A  Musician's  Narrative,  1927 ;  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  iii,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes ;  Oxford  Com- 
panion to  Music,  edited  by  Percy  Scholes,  6th 
ed.,  1945.]  MoiR  Carnegie. 


MACKENZIE,  JOHN  STUART  (1860- 
1985),  philosopher,  was  bom  at  Spring- 


burn,  Glasgow,  29  February  1860, 
younger  son  of  Thomas  Mcli^enzie,  by ' 
wife,  Janet  Brown.  He  and  a  brothe 
three  years  his  senior  comprised  the  whol 
family  of  Thomas  McKenzie,  an  intrepii 
but  not,  in  the  worldly  sense,  special! 
successful  Scotsman  who,  after  havin 
been  in  business  in  some  branch  of  th 
clothing  trade  in  Glasgow,  emigrated  i 
1868  with  his  family  to  South  Americ 
where  he  was  overtaken  by  disastei 
Within  a  short  time  of  their  arrival  lii 
wife,  and,  some  months  afterwards,  h 
himself,  died ;  and  the  children  had  to  b 
brought  back  to  Scotland  to  the  care  o 
relatives.  The  elder  boy  went  into  en 
gineering  in  which  he  did  well,  while  John 
who  was  sent  to  the  Glasgow  High  School 
after  a  brilliant  career  at  Glasgow  Univer 
sity,  and  after  having  been  awarded  th 
Shaw  fellowship  at  the  university  of  Edin 
burgh,  found  himself  urged  by  his  chie 
philosophical  teacher,  Edward  Caird  [q.v. : 
to  take  up  the  subject  of  social  philosophy 
in  preference  to  the  study  of  Hegel,  which 
for  him,  had  lain  'nearer  to  the  heart' 
desire'.  Thus  it  happened  that  his  ShaT 
lectures,  delivered  during  his  tenure  (1884 
1889)  of  the  fellowship,  constituted  ai 
'Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy',  anc 
were  published  under  that  title  in  1890. 

Meantime,  in  1886,  Mackenzie  ha< 
entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  as  i 
scholar.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in  th 
moral  sciences  tripos  of  1889.  But  mucl 
more  important  than  any  gaining  of  dis 
tinctions  at  Cambridge  were  the  friend 
ships  which  he  contracted  there;  ii 
particular  that  of  a  youth  of  kindrec 
tastes,  six  years  junior  to  him,  whom  hi 
found  much  absorbed,  as  he  himself  ha( 
once  been,  in  Herbert  Spencer,  and  whom 
not  uncharacteristically,  he  would  appea: 
to  have  urged  towards  the  Hegehan  re 
searches  from  which  he  himself  had  beei 
led  to  abstain.  This  was  J.  M.  E.  M'Tag 
gart  [q.v.]  whose  later  influence  on  hii 
own  pupils  gave  the  impetus  to  much  ii 
the  early  development  of  those  tendenciei 
in  philosophy  which  have  since  (during 
the  first  half  of  the  twentieth  century 
been  especially  associated  with  Cambridge 
In  1890  Mackenzie  was  elected  into  a  fellow 
ship  at  Trinity  which  he  held  until  1896' 
In  1895  he  was  appointed  professor  o;' 
logic  and  philosophy  at  University  Coli 
lege,  Cardiff,  a  post  from  which  he  retiree i 
in  1915  at  the  early  age  of  fiifty-five,  iii 
order,  chiefly,  'to  have  time  to  write'! 

It  is  not  imphed,  of  course,  that  Maci 
kenzie  had  not  already  written.    Besides 


578 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


McKenzie,  R.  T. 


his  Shaw  lectures,  his  Outlines  of  Meta- 
physics (1902),  and  his  Lectures  on  Human- 
ism (1907)  he  had  produced,  as  far  back 
as  1893,  that  notable  Manual  of  Ethics 
which  seemed,  somewhat  to  his  astonish- 
ment, to  have  made  his  name  famihar 
almost  wherever  ethics  were  taught  and 
English  was  spoken.  But  what  he  would 
probably  have  regarded  as  his  chief  works 
were  published  during  and  after  the  war 
of  191^1918.  They  are  Elements  of  Con- 
structive Philosophy  (1917),  Outlines  of 
Social  Philosophy  (1918),  Fundamental 
Problems  of  Life  (1928),  and,  finally,  a  small 
but  comprehensive  volume  which  should 
be  included  here,  entitled  Cosmic  Problems 
(1931).  His  Arrows  of  Desire  (1920)  is  in 
the  nature  of  a  collection  of  occasional 
essays  on  popular  subjects,  although  it  is 
perhaps  his  most  readable  book.  The 
university  of  Glasgow  conferred  upon  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  in  1911 
and  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1934. 

Mackenzie  married  in  1898  Hettie  Milli- 
eent,  daughter  of  Walter  William  Hughes, 
of  Bristol,  herself  an  educationist  and 
writer,  who  was  head  of  the  Department 
for  the  Training  of  Teachers  at  Cardiff 
both  before  her  marriage  and  after.  There 
were  no  children  of  the  union.  He  died  at 
Brockweir,  near  Chepstow,  6  December 
1935. 

As  a  representative  of  the  later  phase 
of  the  neo-Hegelian  school  of  British 
idealistic  philosophy,  Mackenzie  invites 
comparison,  as  a  teacher  and  writer,  with 
liis  early  friend  M'Taggart.  Their  ulti- 
mate metaphysical  faith  was  the  same ; 
but  Mackenzie  had  nothing  of  that  intense 
need  for  precise  statement  and  rigidly 
concatenated  argument  which  character- 
ized M'Taggart.  He  was  not  a  'dry  light', 
as  Caird  had  once  remarked  to  him.  He 
held  the  universe  to  be,  indeed,  an  order ; 
but  creative  imagination  must  be  the  key 
to  it  rather  than  logic.  And  this  seems  in 
later  years,  although  the  personal  link  was 
never  broken,  to  have  drawn  him  rather 
away  from  M'Taggart's  thought,  and  to 
have  led  him  to  see  the  chief  promise  for 
the  future  of  philosophy  in  such  thinkers 
as,  for  example,  Mr.  Edward  Douglas 
Fawcett  who,  although  groping  rather 
more  in  the  dark,  appealed  to  him  as 
perhaps  pointing  nearer  to  the  dawn. 

[John  Stuart  Mackenzie,  edited  by  his  wife 
(portrait),  1936 ;  J.  H.  Muirhead,  John  Stuart 
Mackenzie,  1860-1935  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxi,  1935 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  W.  Scott. 


McKENZIE,  (ROBERT)  TAIT  (1867- 
1938),  Canadian  sculptor  and  expert  in 
physical  culture,  was  born  at  Ramsay, 
Ontario,  26  May  1867,  the  second  of  the 
three  sons  of  William  McKenzie,  a  minister 
of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  by  his 
wife,  Catherine  Shiells.  His  father  soon 
moved  to  the  neighbouring  village  of  Al- 
monte, where  Tait  McKenzie's  youth  was 
spent.  He  was  educated  at  Ottawa  Col- 
legiate Institute  and  McGill  University, 
where  he  graduated  B.A.  in  1889  and  M.D. 
in  1892.  After  appointments  as  house  sur- 
geon at  Montreal  General  Hospital  (1893), 
and  as  a  ship's  surgeon  (1894),  he  settled 
in  practice  at  Montreal  and  was  for  a  year 
house  physician  to  the  governor-general 
of  Canada.  While  practising  as  an  ortho- 
paedic surgeon,  McKenzie  held  many  uni- 
versity appointments,  all  connected  with 
his  profession  and  some  of  them  reflecting 
his  interest  in  art  and  sport.  He  was  in 
succession  medical  director  of  physical 
training,  demonstrator,  and  later  lecturer, 
in  anatomy  at  McGill  University ;  and  he 
also  acted  as  lecturer  on  artistic  anatomy 
to  the  Montreal  Art  Association  and  at 
the  Harvard  University  summer  school 
and  the  Olympic  lecture  course  at  St. 
Louis  (1904).  From  1904  to  1931  he  was 
professor  of  physical  education  in  the  uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania.  During  the  war 
of  1914-1918  he  served  in  the  Royal  Army 
Medical  Corps  with  the  temporary  rank  of 
major.  He  was  president  of  the  Society 
of  Directors  of  Physical  Education  in  Col- 
leges (1912),  and  of  the  American  Physical 
Education  Association  (1913-1915),  and 
was  a  fellow  of  the  Pliiladelphia  College 
of  Physicians  and  the  American  Medical 
Association.  He  published  two  books. 
Exercise  in  Education  and  Medicine  (1910), 
a  text-book,  and  Reclaiming  the  Maimed, 
a  handbook  on  physiotherapy. 

About  1902  McKenzie  began  to  exhibit 
sculpture,  chiefly  athletic  in  character,  at 
the  Salon,  the  Royal  Academy,  and  other 
art  institutions  in  England  and  the  United 
States  of  America.  His  earlier  works 
might  all  be  described  as  celebrations  of 
youth  in  active  exercise,  but  later  he  exe- 
cuted several  memorials.  The  most  im- 
portant of  these  in  Great  Britain  are  the 
statue  of  General  Wolfe  in  Greenwich 
Park,  the  gift  of  Canada  to  England,  the 
model  for  which  was  exhibited  at  the 
Academy  in  1929 ;  the  Scottish- American 
War  Memorial  in  Princes  Street  Gardens, 
Edinburgh;  and  the  Cambridge  War 
Memorial.  There  are  statuettes  by  him  in 
the  Fitzwilliam  Museum,  the  Ashmolean 


670 


McKenzie,  R.  T. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Museum,  and  the  royal  collection  at  Bal- 
moral. His  memorial  statue  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  G.  H.  Baker  is  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  Ottawa ;  there  are  heroic  statues 
by  him  of  'The  Youthful  Franklin'  and 
George  Whitefield  at  the  university  of 
Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia;  and  monu- 
mental portraits  by  him,  chiefly  plaques 
in  relief,  decorate  the  campus  of  more  than 
one  other  American  university.  He  is 
represented  by  smaller  works  at  the  Metro- 
politan Museum  of  Art,  New  York,  and  in 
the  art  galleries  of  Ottawa,  Montreal,  and 
St.  Louis.  For  the  stadium  in  Stockholm 
he  designed  a  medallion,  'Joy  of  Effort', 
and  for  his  distinguished  services  in  sculp- 
ture at  the  Olympic  games  of  1912  King 
Gustavus  V  of  Sweden  awarded  him  the 
King's  medal. 

McKenzie's  artistic,  anatomical,  and 
athletic  interests  were  so  closely  connected 
that  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  form  a 
just  estimate  of  his  rank  as  a  sculptor. 
The  combination  of  medicine  or  surgery 
with  painting  or  sculpture  is  not  uncom- 
mon in  the  history  of  art,  but  McKenzie 
differed  fundamentally  from  all  the  in- 
stances that  can  be  recalled  in  that  in  his 
case  the  connexion  was  direct.  Sir  Francis 
Seymour  Haden  [q.v.]  was  a  landscape 
etcher,  and  Henry  Tonks  [q.v.]  excelled 
in  domestic  genre,  and  their  aims  in  repre- 
sentation were  exclusively  artistic.  Even 
when  the  work  of  McKenzie  is  compared 
with  antique  sculpture  concerned  with 
muscular  movement,  such  as  the  Disco- 
bolus and  the  Laocoon,  a  difference  in 
approach  is  apparent,  because  in  them  the 
aim  was  formal,  the  difference  being 
sharpened  by  the  circumstance  that  Mc- 
Kenzie also  executed  a  'Discus  Thrower'. 
He  gave  direct  plastic  expression  to  his 
ruling  passion  for  bodily  fitness,  and  in 
that  respect  he  may  be  called  unique. 

McKenzie  married  in  1907  Ethel,  eldest 
daughter  of  John  O'Neil,  of  Hamilton, 
Ontario;  there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Philadelphia  29 
April  1938. 

A  drawing  was  made  of  McKenzie  at 
work  on  'The  Discus  Thrower'  by 
Violet  Oakley,  and  a  head  was  carved 
in  mahogany  by  Boris  Blai. 

[C.  E.  C.  Hussey,  Tail  McKenzie,  A  Sculp- 
tor of  Youth  (containing  a  chronological  list  of 
his  works  to  1929),  1929;  William  Colgate, 
Canadian  Art,  1920-1940,  1943;  Kineton 
Parkes,  The  Art  of  Carved  Sculpture,  vol.  i, 
1931 ;  private  information.] 

Charles  Marriott. 


McKERROW,  RONALD  BRUNLEES 

(1872-1940),  scholar  and  bibliograpl 
was  born  at  Putney  12  December  1( 
the  only  son  of  Alexander  McKerrow,  < 
engineer,  and  grandson  of  William  McKer- 
row [q.v.].  His  mother  was  Mary  Jane 
elder  daughter  of  Sir  James  Brunleej 
[q.v.].  From  Harrow  he  proceeded  tt 
King's  College,  London,  and  thence  tc 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  wor 
the  chancellor's  English  medal  in  1895  anc 
graduated  in  medieval  and  modern  Ian 
guages  in  1897.  After  three  years  (1897- 
1900)  as  professor  of  English  in  th( 
Government  School  of  Foreign  Languages 
at  Tokyo,  he  settled  in  London  and  en 
gaged  in  literary  and  critical  work,  be 
coming  in  1908  a  director  of  the  publishing 
firm  of  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  and  in  191^ 
honorary  secretary  (jointly  with  Alfrec 
William  Pollard)  of  the  Bibliographica 
Society.  The  society  remained  throughoul 
one  of  his  chief  concerns,  and  for  it  h( 
produced  two  exhaustive  monographs  or 
Printers''  and  Publishers'  Devices  in  Eng 
land  and  Scotland  1485-1640  (1913)  am 
Title-page  Borders  used  in  England  anc 
Scotland,  1485  to  1640  (with  Frederic 
Sutherland  Ferguson,  1932).  His  editior 
of  the  works  of  the  Elizabethan  writei 
Thomas  Nashe,  undertaken  at  the  sug 
gestion  of  A.  H.  BuUen  [q.v.],  appearec 
in  five  volumes  between  1904  and  1910 
and  was  at  once  recognized  as  setting  i 
standard  in  English  editing.  In  1925  Me 
Kerrow  founded  the  Review  of  Englis) 
Studies,  which  he  continued  to  edit  unti 
his  death,  combining  the  task  from  193^ 
to  1937  with  the  editorship  of  The  Library 
the  organ  of  the  Bibliographical  Society 
His  Introduction  to  Bibliography  fa: 
Literary  Students  (1927)  is  an  authoritativ* 
guide  to  everything  in  the  material  pro 
duction  of  printed  books  that  can  bear  or 
the  study  and  editing  of  English  literature 
The  last  ten  years  of  his  life  were  devotee 
to  the  great  critical  edition  of  Shakespean 
that  he  undertook  for  the  Clarendon  Press 
A  substantial  portion,  comprising  most  o 
the  early  plays,  was  in  fact  prepared,  bui 
the  only  part  published  before  his  deatl 
was  the  slender  but  important  volume  o 
Prolegomena  for  the  Oxford  Shakespeare 
(1939),  in  which  he  laid  down  what  h« 
considered  to  be  the  principles  of  text 
construction  and  explained  his  methods  o 
applying  them.  In  this  and  other  worki 
he  probably  did  more  than  any  man  t(| 
place  the  editing  of  English  hteraturd 
upon  a  scientific  basis.  Such  was  in  ta^ 
his  ultimate  aim  throughout.    In  biblioi 


580 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Mackintosh 


graphy  his  powers  of  observation,  memory, 
and  inference  combined  to  give  him  a  sure 
insight  into  mechanical  processes.  But 
this  and  much  else  was  for  him  ancillary 
to  the  critical  study  of  literature,  and  his 
wide  knowledge  and  experience  were 
placed  ungrudgingly  at  the  service  of 
others.  If,  as  some  thought,  a  certain 
intolerance  of  speculation  where  certainty 
was  admittedly  unattainable  led  him  to 
impose  too  severe  a  curb  on  the  liberty  of 
an  editor,  he  rendered  invaluable  service 
in  keeping  criticism  sane  and  informed, 
and  in  basing  it  firmly  on  recognized  and 
clearly  defined  principles. 

McKerrow  was  Sandars  reader  in  biblio- 
graphy at  Cambridge  University  in  1928- 
1929,  was  awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the 
Bibliographical  Society  in  1929,  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1932,  and  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  Ph.D.  from  Louvain  University  in  1927. 
He  married  in  1915  Amy,  daughter  of 
William  Bonnet,  of  Conway,  and  had  twin 
sons.  He  died  at  Picket  Piece,  Wendover, 
20  January  1940. 

[The  Times,  22  January  1940 ;  W.  W.  Greg, 
Ronald  Brunlees  McKerrow,  1872-1940  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvl, 
1940  (portrait) ;  The  Library,  4th  series,  vol. 
xxi,  1941  (containing  a  list  of  his  writings) ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge,] 

W.  W.  Greg. 

]VL\CKINTOSH,  HUGH  ROSS  (1870- 
l!»36),  Scottish  theologian,  was  born  at 
Paisley  31  October  1870,  the  fourth  child 
and  younger  son  of  Alexander  Mackin- 
tosh, minister  of  the  Gaelic  Free  church 
atPaisley,  by  his  wife,  Jannet  Ross.  Partly 
because  of  early  delicate  health,  and  partly 
because  both  his  parents  died  before  he 
was  ten  years  old,  a  large  part  of  his  child- 
hood and  boyhood  was  spent  in  the  High- 
lands, his  second  home  being  a  country 
manse,  at  Edderton  in  Ross-shire,  where 
he  was  brought  up  by  an  aunt.  He  was 
educated  at  the  Neilson  Institution,  Pais- 
ley, the  Royal  Academy,  Tain,  and  George 
Watson's  College,  Edinburgh.  In  1888  he 
entered  Edinburgh  University,  where  he 
specialized  in  classics  and  philosophy,  in 
the  latter  of  which  he  graduated  with  first 
class  honours,  being  awarded  the  Ferguson 
scholarship  in  1893.  There  he  was  deeply 
influenced  by  Andrew  Seth,  afterwards  A. 
S.  Pringle-Pattison  [q.v.].  Subsequently 
he  studied  theology  at  the  New  College, 
Edinburgh,  where  he  was  influenced  by 
A.  B.  Davidson  [q.v.]  and  Marcus  Dods 
[q.v.],  and  at  the  universities  of  Freiburg, 


Halle,  and  Marburg,  at  a  time  when  Rit- 
schlianism  was  in  the  ascendant  in  German 
theology.  He  was  ordained  to  the  ministry 
of  the  Free  Church  in  1897  and  until  1901 
was  minister  of  Queen  Street  church,  Tay- 
port,  and  then  for  three  years  (1901-1904) 
first  minister  of  Beechgrove  church,  Aber- 
deen. In  the  last-named  year  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  systematic  theology 
at  the  New  College,  Edinburgh,  and  he  held 
this  chair,  which  after  the  union  (1929)  of 
the  United  Free  Church  with  the  Church 
of  Scotland  became  in  1935  the  chair  of 
Christian  dogmatics  in  the  university  of 
Edinburgh,  until  his  death.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Edinburgh,  Oxford,  and  Marburg.  In  1899 
he  married  Jessie,  third  daughter  of  David 
Air,  of  Dunmore,  Dimdee,  and  had  one 
son  and  three  daughters.  He  died  after 
a  very  short  illness  at  Stornoway,  in  the 
course  of  a  conference  of  highland  lay- 
missionaries,  8  June  1936. 

While  Mackintosh  was  a  keen  church- 
man, and  preached  very  frequently,  his 
main  activity  was  theological  teaching 
and  writing.  Beginning  with  a  somewhat 
Calvinistic  heritage,  he  was  strongly 
affected  by  the  new  developments  of  bibli- 
cal criticism  that  were  causing  such  a  stir 
in  the  Scotland  of  his  youth,  and  also  by 
the  Ritschlianism  which  he  had  begun  to 
imbibe  at  Marburg  from  the  teaching  of 
Wilhelm  Herrmann,  with  whom  he  main- 
tained a  lasting  friendship.  He  helped  to 
introduce  Ritschlianism  to  the  English- 
speaking  world  by  translating  (in  colla- 
boration with  Dr.  A.  B.  Macaulay,  1900) 
the  most  important  of  the  three  volumes 
of  Albrecht  Ritschl's  great  work.  The 
Christian  Doctrine  of  Justification  and 
Reconciliation.  Mackintosh's  own  work 
plainly  shows  the  influence  of  Ritschl. 
Yet  he  was  critical  of  the  Ritschlian  theo- 
logy at  many  points,  and  he  cannot  fairly 
be  called  a  Ritschlian.  In  the  matter  of 
Christology,  which  is  the  subject  of  his 
magnum  opus.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Person 
of  Jesus  Christ  (1912),  his  position  is  along 
the  lines  of  the  kenotic  theories,  with 
strong  emphasis  both  on  the  actual  per- 
sonality of  the  human  and  historical  Jesus 
and  on  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God. 
When  the  'dialectical'  theology  of  Karl 
Barth  took  the  world  by  storm,  Mackin- 
tosh was  both  appreciative  and  critical,  as 
can  be  learnt  from  chapter  viii  of  his  Types 
of  Modern  Theology,  Schleiermacher  to 
Barth  (published  posthmnously  in  1937), 
a  book  in  which  his  own  position  in  theo- 
logy may  well  be  studied  indirectly. 


681 


Mackintosh 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Mackintosh  was  never  involved  in  hot 
theological  controversy,  nor  did  he  found 
a  school  of  thought.  Yet  it  is  not  difficult 
to  indicate  his  peculiar  contribution  and 
his  distinctive  influence.  He  heralded 
somewhat  prophetically  the  return  to  dog- 
ma, the  return  to  eschatology,  and  the 
retiu"n  to  church-consciousness  which  are 
now  so  unmistakable.  From  the  start 
there  ran  through  his  thinking  a  strong 
sense  of  'the  divine  initiative',  and  its 
priority  over  human  effort,  which  the 
'dialectical'  theology  has  more  recently 
been  emphasizing.  Most  characteristic  of 
all,  perhaps,  is  Mackintosh's  emphasis  on 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  as  the  central  boon 
offered  in  the  Gospel.  To  him  the  divine 
forgiveness  was  the  supreme  miracle  which 
ought  to  be  the  starting-point  and  norm 
of  all  man's  thinking  as  to  what  miracle 
means ;  and  indeed  his  whole  interest  in 
theology  was  conditioned  by  the  constant 
reflection  that  Christian  truth  is  a  thing 
that  has  to  be  preached  to  sinful  men  in 
need  of  pardon ;  so  that  it  is  not  surprising 
to  find  him  devoting  one  whole  book  to 
this  great  subject.  The  Christian  Experi- 
ence of  Forgiveness  (1927). 

Although  keeping  aloof  from  church 
politics  Mackintosh  took  his  share  of  eccle- 
siastical responsibility,  and  on  two  occa- 
sions when  the  General  Assembly  set  up 
committees  on  the  re-statement  of  the 
Faith,  he  was  made  convener  and  bore  a 
large  share  of  the  burden.  In  1932  he  was 
elected  moderator  of  the  General  Assembly 
of  the  Chiu-ch  of  Scotland. 

Mackintosh's  portrait  was  never  painted, 
but  an  enlarged  photograph  which  hangs 
in  the  senate  room  of  the  New  College, 
Edinburgh,  gives  an  excellent  likeness. 

[The  Times,  10  June  1936 ;  H,  R.  Mackin- 
tosh, Sermons,  with  Memoir  by  A.  B.  Macau- 
lay,  1938 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  M.  Baillie. 

McLaren,  charles  benjamin 

BRIGHT,  first  Baron  Aberconway, 
(1850-1934),  barrister  and  man  of  busi- 
ness, was  born  at  Edinburgh  12  May 
1850,  the  eldest  son  of  Duncan  Mc- 
Laren [q.v.],  member  of  parliament  for 
Edinburgh,  by  his  third  wife,  PrisciUa, 
daughter  of  Jacob  Bright,  of  Green  Bank, 
Rochdale,  and  sister  of  John  Bright  [q.v.], 
the  radical  statesman,  after  whom  he 
was  named.  His  elderlhalf-brother  John, 
Lord  McLaren  [q.v.],  became  a  Scottish 
judge. 

McLaren  was  educated  at  Edinburgh 
University   where  he  graduated  in  1870 


with  first  class  honours  in  philosophy  and 
won  the  Ferguson  and  Hamilton  scholar- 
ships. After  completing  his  education  at 
the  universities  of  Bonn  and  Heidelberg 
he  took  to  journalism  in  Edinburgh  and 
contributed  numerous  leading  articles  tc 
the  Scotsman.  Soon,  however,  he  turned 
to  the  English  law  and  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1874,  developing 
in  due  course  a  solid  Chancery  practice. 

In  view  of  his  family  associations  it  was 
natural  that  McLaren  should  be  attracted 
to  the  liberal  cause  in  politics,  and  he 
entered  the  House  of  Commons  at  the 
general  election  in  1880  as  member  foi 
Stafford.  In  1886  he  voted  for  Gladstone's 
home  rule  bill  in  the  famous  division  or 
the  second  reading,  but  was  defeated  a1 
the  ensuing  general  election.  In  1892  he 
was  returned  for  the  Bosworth  division  oj 
Leicestershire,  a  constituency  for  which  he 
sat  continuously  imtil  1910,  when  he  was 
succeeded  there  by  his  elder  son.  He  was 
created  a  baronet  in  1902,  was  sworn  ol 
the  Privy  Council  in  1908,  and  in  191 L 
on  Asquith's  recommendation,  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Aberconway,  oi 
Bodnant  in  the  county  of  Denbigh. 

In  1877  McLaren  had  married  Laura 
Elizabeth,  only  daughter  of  Henry  Davis 
Pochin,  of  Bodnant,  Denbighshire,  anothei 
radical  member  of  parliament,  and  an 
associate  of  his  father  and  his  vmcle  John 
Bright.  They  had  two  sons,  the  youngei 
of  whom  was  killed  in  action  in  1917,  and 
two  daughters.  On  her  father's  death  she 
inherited  his  property  in  North  Wales  and 
the  considerable  fortune  which  he  had 
acquired  as  a  manufacturing  chemist  and 
industrialist.  This  circmnstance  had  some 
effect  in  determining  the  later  course  ol 
McLaren's  career,  for  in  1897,  the  year  inj 
which  he  took  silk,  he  gave  up  his  practice 
at  the  bar  and  tm*ned  to  the  direction  ol 
various  industrial  companies  in  which  his 
wife  held  an  extensive  interest ;  and  as  his 
legal  experience  had  been  largely  in  the 
field  of  company  and  mercantile  law  this 
transition  came  easily  to  him.  He  became 
chairman  of  John  Brown  &  company,  the 
Clydeside  shipbuilders,  who  during  his' 
term  of  office  launched  many  great  war- 
ships and  liners ;  chairman  of  the  Metro-I 
politan  Railway  Company ;  of  the  Tredegar  j 
Iron  and  Coal  Company;  of  the  Sheep- i 
bridge  Iron  and  Coal  Company;  and  of' 
various  other  concerns.  He  was  much! 
interested  in  the  historical  side  of  thej 
development  of  British  heavy  industries! 
and  wrote  a  book  on  the  subject 
Basic  Indicstries  of  Great  Britain  (1927) 


582 


ct,   TM 
\.927)M 

I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Maclean 


Aberconway  and  his  wife  spent  much 
lime  at  their  home  at  Bodnant,  which 
commands  a  fine  view  over  the  motmtains 
nf  North  Wales.  Lady  Abercon  waybe- 
cume  an  expert  in  gardening,  and  in  col- 
laboration with  her  elder  son,  Henry, 
developed  the  grounds  both  at  Bodnant 
and  at  her  other  home  at  Antibes  in  the 
south  of  France  into  gardens  of  beauty 
and  wide  botanical  fame.  She  also  had 
talent  as  an  artist  in  pastels.  She  was  a 
shrewd  woman  of  business  and  for  long 
a  keen  supporter  of  the  cause  of  women's 
rights  and  suffrage.  During  the  war  of 
1914-1918  she  turned  her  London  house 
into  a  hospital  for  servicemen  and  directed 
it  herself,  for  which  services  she  was  ap- 
pointed C.B.E.  She  died  at  the  Chateau 
de  la  Garoupe,  Antibes,  4  January  1933. 

Aberconway  was  a  man  of  genial  tem- 
perament whose  abilities  led  him  to  a 
uniformly  successful  career.  His  associa- 
tions being  as  they  were,  he  may  be  called 
fortunate  in  having  lived  through  the  full 
tide  of  liberal  political  supremacy  and 
freedom  of  industrial  enterprise.  He  died 
in  London  23  January  1934,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded as  second  baron  by  his  elder  son, 
Henry  Duncan  (born  1879). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Aberconway  by 
G.  Fiddes  Watt  at  Bodnant,  where  there 
are  also  portraits  of  himself  and  Lady 
Aberconway  by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo. 

[The  Times,  24  January  1934 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Martin  McLaren. 

MACLEAN,  Sir  DONALD  (1864^-1932), 
politician,  was  born  at  Farn worth,  Lanca- 
shire, 9  January  1864,  the  elder  son  of 
John  Maclean,  a  master  cordwainer,  of 
Farn  worth,  later  of  Kilmoluag  on  the 
island  of  Tiree,  and  Mounthill,  Carmar- 
then. His  mother,  Agnes  Macmellin,  was 
a  highland  lady  of  good  birth  who  habitu- 
ally talked  Gaelic  in  her  family  circle.  She 
died  in  1924  at  the  age  of  ninety -one. 

Maclean,  who  was  educated  at  Haver- 
fordwest and  Carmarthen  grammar 
schools,  was  early  devoted  to  a  legal 
career.  He  was  admitted  as  solicitor  in 
1887,  and  practised  in  Cardiff  and  London. 
His  political  career  began  in  1906,  when, 
after  three  unsuccessful  contests,  he  won 
a  sensational  victory  for  the  liberals  at 
Bath  where  he  had  been  defeated  six  years 
before.  He  lost  the  seat  in  January  1910: 
from  December  1910  to  1922  he  was  mem- 
ber for  Peebles.  He  was  a  popular  and 
respected  but  not  particularly  distin- 
guished member  until  1911,  when  he  was 
appointed  chairman  of  ways  and  means 


and  deputy  Speaker,  a  position  which  he 
held  until  1918,  being  the  first  solicitor  to 
hold  this  office,  for  which  his  handsome 
presence,  his  cool  judgement,  and  his  im- 
perturbable good  humour  and  patience 
admirably  qualified  him.  But  he  laid  the 
real  foundation  of  his  reputation  by  the 
indefatigable  diligence  with  which  he 
handled  during  the  earlier  war  years  the 
rather  dreary  and  technical  odds  and  ends 
of  war-time  administration.  In  1916  (when 
he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council)  he  was 
made  chairman  of  the  Treasury  committee 
on  enemy  debts,  and  of  the  London  mili- 
tary appeals  tribunal.  The  next  year,  in 
which  he  was  appointed  K.B.E.,  he  was 
also  chairman  of  the  reconstruction  com- 
mittee of  the  Poor  Law.  In  1924  he  was 
chairman  of  the  committee  on  the  regi- 
stration of  dock  labour,  and  in  1926  of  the 
inter-departmental  committee  on  the 
effect  of  social  insurance  on  migration. 
The  Ministry  of  Health,  established  in 
1919,  owed  its  shape  and  form  largely  to 
a  Maclean  committee's  report. 

The  dramatic  climax  of  Maclean's  career 
occurred  in  1918,  for  he  was  one  of  the 
little  band  of  twenty-nine  independent 
liberals  returned  in  the  general  election  of 
that  year.  They  met  in  such  extreme 
dejection  that  it  was  seriously  proposed 
to  disband  the  party  altogether.  '  If  we  go 
out  of  that  door  without  forming  a  party,' 
Maclean  is  reported  to  have  said,  'Liberal- 
ism will  go  under  for  a  generation.' 
Largely  by  his  influence,  the  liberal  parlia- 
mentary party  was  formed,  with  Maclean 
himself  as  chairman  (1919-1922) ;  and 
largely  by  his  cool  and  able  leadership  it 
grew  steadily  in  influence  and  numbers. 
In  the  general  election  of  1922  he  himself 
was  defeated,  but  his  party  carried  fifty- 
nine  seats.  Like  most  Uberals  at  that 
time,  his  electoral  career  was  stormy.  He 
was  defeated  at  Kilmarnock  in  1923,  and 
at  East  Cardiff  in  1924.  But  in  1929  he 
was  elected  for  North  Cornwall  and  re- 
tained the  seat  until  his  death.  He  was 
a  member  of  the  Uberal  'shadow  Cabinet' 
which  helped  to  form  the  all-party  govern- 
ment on  24  August  1931,  and  he  was  later 
one  of  the  four  ministers  who  threatened 
to  resign  when  that  government  decided 
to  adopt  a  tariff  policy  and  were  only 
with  difficulty  persuaded  by  the  prime 
minister,  Ramsay  MacDonald,  to  'agree 
to  differ'. 

Maclean  had  accepted  the  post  of  presi- 
dent of  the  Board  of  Education  in  the 
government.  After  the  general  election  in 
October  1931  the  appointment  was  con- 


583 


Maclean 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


aS! 


firmed  with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet.  He  was 
not  long  enough  at  the  Education  Office 
to  initiate  any  poUcy,  or  do  more  than 
help  to  soothe  the  teachers,  at  that  time 
furious  at  the  cuts  in  their  salaries.  Per- 
sistent overwork  had  undermined  his 
strength,  and  he  died  suddenly  in  London 
15  June  1932  as  the  result  of  a  heart 
attack. 

Maclean  married  in  1907  Gwendolen 
Margaret,  eldest  daughter  of  Andrew 
Devitt,  of  Oxted,  Surrey.  His  wife  and 
his  four  sons  and  one  daughter  survived 
him:  the  eldest  son  was  killed  on  active 
service  in  1943. 

[The  Times,  16  June  1932 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Stuakt  Hodgson. 

Mclennan,  sm  john  cunning- 
ham  (1867-1935),  Canadian  physicist, 
was  born  at  IngersoU,  Ontario,  14  April 
1867,  the  son  of  David  McLennan,  from 
Aberdeenshire,  miller  and  later  grain- 
dealer,  by  his  wife,  Barbara,  daughter  of 
John  Cunningham,  of  Stewarton,  Ayr- 
shire. After  receiving  a  sound  primary 
education  at  the  coUegiate  institutes  in  the 
towns  of  Clinton  and  Stratford,  he  taught 
in  country  schools  for  some  years  in  order 
to  obtain  funds  for  entering  the  university 
of  Toronto  in  1888.  After  graduating  as 
head  of  his  class  with  first  class  honours 
in  physics  in  1892,  he  served  for  six  years 
as  assistant  demonstrator  in  that  subject 
and  then  spent  a  year  (1898-1899)  at 
Cambridge  studying  under  (Sir)  J.  J. 
Thomson  [q.v.]  at  the  Cavendish  labora- 
tory, to  which  he  returned  in  later  years 
for  intellectual  refreshment.  Thereafter 
eight  more  years  of  excellent  work  at 
Toronto,  as  demonstrator  (1899),  associate- 
professor  (1902),  and  director  of  the 
physics  laboratory  (1904),  gave  him  an 
unchallengeable  claim  to  the  chair  of 
physics  when  it  fell  vacant  in  1907.  With 
characteristic  energy  he  set  himself  to 
enlarge  and  invigorate  his  department; 
the  McLennan  laboratory  in  the  fine 
modern  physics  building  at  Toronto, 
which  has  an  equipment  unexcelled  any- 
where, is  his  lasting  monument.  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  (Canada)  in  1903. 

A  first-rate  lecturer  and  tutor  for  his 
students ,  McLennan's  influence  was  exerted 
continuously  for  the  improvement  of 
teaching  standards  and  the  encourage- 
ment of  research  in  his  university,  of 
which  he  was  throughout  his  life  a  very 
devoted  son.  He  was  the  leading  spirit  in 
organizing  an  Alumni  Association,  which 
raised  the  $50,000  required  to  match  the  i 


contribution  of  the  government  of  Ontai 
for  building  a  convocation  hall,  and  h( 
later  (1913-1916)  served  as  president  ^ 
the  association. 

Even  before  the  war  of  1914-1( 
McLennan's  industrious  energy  inresea^ 
had  won  for  him  recognition  as  an  auti 
rity  upon  radio-activity  and  cosmic  rays 
and,  after  the  outbreak  of  war,  a  report 
which  he  made  upon  the  helium  resources 
of  the  British  Empire,  particularly  ol 
Canada,  led  to  the  construction  from  his 
designs  of  a  plant  at  Calgary,  Alberta, 
which  successfully  extracted  helium  from 
natural  gases.  But  before  it  was  running, 
he  had  been  summoned  to  London  in 
1917  by  the  British  Admiralty,  and  there, 
in  collaboration  with  Ernest  (later  Lord) 
Rutherford  [q.v.]  and  other  scientists,  he 
accomplished  what  the  former  described 
as  'work  of  outstanding  importance  .  .  . 
in  combating  the  submarine  menace '  and 
in  the  same  year  was  appointed  O.B.E.  for 
his  services.  In  1919  he  acted  as  scientific 
adviser  to  the  Admiralty. 

After  the  war  McLennan  returned  to  his 
teaching  work  and  having  acquired  a  good 
supply  of  helium,  set  himself  to  develop 
low  temperature  research,  to  equip  his 
laboratory  for  spectroscopic  investiga- 1 
tions,  and  create  in  it  a  cryogenic  branch. 
In  his  post-war  career  he  succeeded  in 
1923  in  liquefying  helium,  but  one  of  his 
most  important  achievements  was  when,  in 
association  with  Professor  G.  M.  Shrum, 
he  reproduced  in  1925  the  well-known 
'auroral  green  line',  which  had  baffled 
earlier  investigators.  The  high  reputation 
of  McLennan  and  the  school  of  physics 
which  he  had  built  up  attracted  graduate 
students  from  all  over  the  world,  and  it  was 
a  fitting  reward  for  his  work  that  in  1930 
he  was  appointed  dean  of  graduate  studies 
two  years  before  his  retirement  in  1932. 

Idleness,  however,  was  foreign  to 
McLennan's  nature,  and  his  work  on  a 
royal  commission  in  Ontario  on  the  treat- 
ment of  cancer  had  so  greatly  impressed 
him  with  the  urgent  need  for  remedies  for 
this  dread  disease  that  he  decided  to 
migrate  to  Great  Britain  and  embrace  an 
opportunity  offered  there  for  studying  the 
radium  treatment  of  cancer  by  physical 
tests.  A  special  laboriatory  and  cUnic 
were  established  for  him  and  four  grammes 
of  radium  were  lent  by  the  Radium  Beige 
Corporation,  and  he  was  immersed  in  this 
work  with  his  habitual  ardour  when  he 
died  suddenly  near  Abbeville,  while 
travelling  in  a  train  from  Paris  to  London, 
9  October  1935. 


584 


D.N.B.  1031-1940 


Macleod 


In  1935  McLennan  was  appointed 
K.B.E.  for  his  services  to  science;  and 
honorary  degrees  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  universities  of  Toronto,  Man- 
chester, Liverpool,  and  McGill.  Elected 
F.R.S,  in  1915,  he  was  a  Royal  medallist 
in  1927  and  Bakerian  lecturer  of  the 
society  in  1928  and  its  vice-president  in 
1933-1934 ;  he  was  president  of  the  Royal 
Canadian  Institute  (1915-1916)  and  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Canada  (1924r-1925). 
He  wTote  no  important  book  but  was 
the  author  of  numerous  papers  on  such 
subjects  as  radio-activity,  electrical  con- 
duction in  gases,  spectroscopy,  and  the 
liquefaction  of  helium  and  other  gases. 

McLennan  was  an  eminent  physicist; 
'clear-sighted,     swift    in     decision    and 
energetic  in  action,  his  qualities  stood  him 
in  good  service,   and   many  stories   are 
current  in  illustration  of  his  driving  power 
and  almost  ruthless  disregard  of  persons 
and  difficulties  that  stood  in  his  way'.  He 
supplemented  his  marked  abilities  as  a 
I  teacher  and  his  unflagging  zeal  for  re- 
I  search  with  a  notable  gift  for  the  popular 
I  exposition  of  his  scientific  lore,  which  over 
!  the  years  made  a  great  contribution  to  the 
''  education  of  the  Canadian  public  about 
i  the  value  of  scientific  research.   As  presi- 
!  dent '  of  the  Royal   Canadian   Institute, 
which  had  this  work  as  its  objective,  he 
was   one    of   the    prime   movers    in    the 
successful  campaign  for  the  establishment 
at   Ottawa   of  the   magnificent  national 
laboratories    of   the    National    Research 
Council,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  most 
influential  members.    McLennan  had  his 
detractors,  who  accused  him  of  a  weakness 
for  the  well-to-do  and  of  a  fondness  for 
self-advertisement,  but  he  had  also  a  wide 
circle  of  admirers  and  friends.    He  liked 
club  life  and  social  functions,  being  him- 
self generous  in  his  hospitality ;  in  politics 
he  was  a  strong  conservative   and  im- 
perialist. He  married  in  1910  Elsie  Monro 
(died    1933),    daughter    and    heiress    of 
Wilham  Ramsay,   whisky   merchant,   of 
Bowland,     Midlothian;     there    were    no 
children  of  the  marriage. 

A  portrait  of  McLennan  by  Augustus 
John  hangs  in  the  physics  building  at 
the  university  of  Toronto. 

[The  Times,  10  and  14  October  1935 ;  H.  H. 
Langton,  Sir  John  Cunningham  McLennan. 
A  Memoir  (bibliography  and  portrait),  1939 ; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait) ;  Transactions 
ind  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Canada,  third  series,  vol.  xxx,  1936  (portrait) ; 
Nature,   23  January   1932   and   19   October 


1935 ;  Proceedings  of  the  Physical  Society, 
vol.  xlviii,  1936 ;  private  information.] 

J.  A.  Stevenson. 


MACLEOD,  JOHN  JAMES  RICKARD 

(1876-1935),  physiologist  and  biochemist, 
was  born  at  New  Clunie,  near  Dunkeld, 
Perthshire,  6  September  1876,  the  son  of 
Robert  Macleod,  Free  Church  minister  of 
New  Cliuiie,  by  his  wife,  Jane  Guthrie 
McWalter.  He  was  educated  at  Aberdeen 
Grammar  School  and  at  Marischal  College, 
whence  he  graduated  M.B.,  Ch.B.  with 
honours  in  1898  and  was  awarded  the 
Anderson  travelling  fellowship.  He  worked 
for  a  year  at  Leipzig  and  Berlin,  and  on 
his  return  was  appointed  demonstrator  of 
physiology  at  the  London  Hospital 
Medical  College  under  Sir  Leonard  Hill. 
In  1901  he  was  appointed  to  a  Mackinnon 
research  studentship  of  the  Royal  Society, 
and  the  following  year  he  became  a 
lecturer  in  biochemistry  at  the  London 
Hospital.  In  1903,  at  the  early  age  of 
twenty-seven,  he  was  appointed  professor 
of  physiology  at  the  Western  Reserve 
University,  Cleveland,  Ohio,  where  he 
remained  until  1918  when  he  became  pro- 
fessor of  physiology  at  Toronto.  During 
his  last  two  years  at  Cleveland  he  had  been 
engaged  in  various  war  duties  and  had 
acted  for  part  of  the  winter  session  of  1916 
as  professor  of  physiology  at  McGiU 
University,  Montreal.  In  1928  he  was 
appointed  regius  professor  of  physiology 
at  Aberdeen,  a  post  which  he  held  in  spite 
of  steadily  increasing  disability  until 
his  death  there  16  March  1935.  He 
married  in  1903  Mary  Watson,  daughter 
of  Robert  McWalter,  of  Paisley;  they 
had  no  children. 

Macleod's  name  will  always  be  associated 
with  the  discovery  of  insulin.  His  interest 
in  diabetes  began  in  1905,  and  before  the 
discovery  of  insulin  in  1921  he  had 
published  some  thirty-seven  papers  on 
problems  connected  with  the  metabolism 
of  carbohydrates.  Like  many  other 
workers  in  the  field  Macleod  believed  that 
there  was  probably  an  internal  secretion 
of  the  pancreas  which  prevented  the 
accumulation  of  sugar  in  the  blood.  When 
in  October  1920  (Sir)  Frederick  Grant 
Banting  came  to  him  with  a  request  for 
assistance  in  an  attempt  at  the  extraction 
of  the  hypothetical  pancreatic  secretion 
Macleod  recognized  the  feasibility  of  the 
proposed  experiments,  but  he  had  no 
reason  to  think  that  Banting  would  suc- 
ceed when  so  many  well-trained  physio- 
logists had  failed.  However,  in  May  1921 


585 


Macleod 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Macleod  gave  Banting  the  use  of  a  labora- 
tory, with  experimental  animals  and  the 
services  of  an  assistant.  Banting,  in  co- 
operation with  Professor  Charles  Herbert 
Best,  obtained  in  a  few  months  a  promis- 
ing extract  which  did  exert  a  beneficial 
effect  on  experimental  diabetes.  The 
original  idea  which  started  this  particular 
fundamental  research  was  certainly  Bant- 
ing's, but  without  the  facilities,  advice, 
and  co-operation  provided  by  Macleod  and 
others  it  is  doubtful  if  the  investigation 
would  have  reached  such  early  success. 
With  a  group  of  workers  attacking  various 
problems  under  Macleod's  direction,  clear- 
cut  and  speedy  results  were  obtained,  and 
the  value  of  insuUn  in  the  control  of 
diabetes  was  fully  established.  Macleod 
was  responsible  for  the  adoption  of  the 
name  'insulin',  a  name  that  had  been 
suggested  by  Sir  E.  A.  Sharpey-Schafer 
[q.v.]  about  1916  for  what  at  that  time 
was  the  hypothetical  secretion  of  the 
pancreas. 

In  an  attempt  to  throw  some  light  on 
the  mode  of  action  of  insulin  Macleod 
reverted  to  a  line  of  research  which  had 
attracted  him  almost  at  the  outset  of  his 
career.  In  1908,  stimulated  by  Claude 
Bernard's  theories,  he  had  studied  the 
possible  role  of  the  nervous  system  in  the 
causation  of  hyperglycaemia.  His  last 
serious  research,  published  in  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Royal  Society  in  1932,  was 
concerned  with  the  possible  existence  of  a 
diabetogenic  centre  in  the  brain.  Problems 
of  carbohydrate  metabolism  did  not  ex- 
haust the  range  of  his  interests  and  he 
carried  out  much  research  in  other  fields. 
His  earUest  paper,  in  1899,  was  on  the 
phosphorus  content  of  muscle,  and  was 
followed  by  papers  on  such  diverse  sub- 
jects as  compressed-air  sickness,  the  bio- 
chemistry of  carbamates,  lactic  acid 
metabolism,  chemistry  of  the  tubercle 
bacillus,  electric  shock,  purine  bases,  and 
the  physiology  of  respiration.  Between 
1899  and  1933  he  published,  sometimes 
alone,  but  more  often  in  collaboration, 
nearly  200  papers,  and  those  of  his  pupils, 
working  under  his  direction,  amounted 
to  another  hundred.  He  was  the  author  of 
books  entitled  Practical  Physiology  (1903), 
Diabetes,  its  Pathological  Physiology  (1913), 
Fundamentals  of  Human  Physiology  (with 
R.  G.  Pearce,  1916,  4th  ed.  1936),  Physio- 
logy and  Biochemistry  in  Modern  Medicine 
(1918,  7th  ed.  1935),  Laboratory  Manual  in 
Physiology  (1919),  Insulin  and  its  Use  in 
tlie  Treatment  of  Diabetes  (with  W.  R. 
Campbell,  1925),  Carbohydrate  Metabolism 


and  Insulin  (1926),  and  The  Fuel  of 
(1928). 

Macleod  was  deeply  interested 
medical  education  and  acted  as  associ 
dean  of  the  medical  faculty  at  Toronto  ai 
as  dean  at  Aberdeen.  His  greatest  achieve- 
ment was  as  a  teacher  and  director  oi 
research.  His  engaging  personality  and 
cheery  optimism  in  the  face  of  many  trials 
inspired  the  affection  and  devotion  of  all 
who  worked  with  him.  He  had  many 
interests  outside  the  laboratorj%  being  well 
read  and  devoted  to  the  arts,  particularly 
painting ;  he  was  also  a  keen  gardener  and 
golfer. 

Macleod's  share  in  the  discovery  oi 
insuUn  was  recognized  by  the  award  of 
many  honours.  In  1923  he  shared  the 
Nobel  prize  for  medicine  jointly  with 
Banting.  Macleod  divided  his  share  of  the 
prize  with  Professor  James  Bertram 
Collip,  and  Banting  divided  his  with  Best, 
He  was  Cameron  prizeman  at  Edinburgh 
(1923),  Beaumont  lecturer  at  Detroit 
(with  Banting,  1923),  Vanuxen  lecturei 
at  Princeton  (1928),  and  Herter  lecturer  at 
Johns  Hopkins  University  (1933).  He  was 
president  of  the  American  Physiological 
Society  (1922-1923)  and  of  the  Royal 
Canadian  Institute  (1925-1926);  he  was 
elected  F.R.S.  of  Canada  (1919),  ol 
London  (1923),  and  of  Edinburgh  (1932), 
and  F.R.C.P.  (London)  under  the  special 
by-law,  in  1930.  He  was  an  honorary 
member  of  many  learned  societies  and 
institutions  at  home  and  abroad.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Aberdeen,  Pennsylvania, 
Toronto,  and  Western  Reserve  and  the 
Jefferson  Medical  College. 

There  is  a  portrait  medallion  of  Macleod 
in  bronze  by  Emanuel  Hahn  (1928)  in 
the  medical  building  at  Toronto  Univer- 
sity. 

[The  Times,  18  March  1935 ;  Lancet,  1935, 
vol.  i,  p.  716  (portrait),  British  Medical  Jour- 
nal, 1935,  vol.  i,  p.  624  (portrait);  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4. 
December  1935  (portrait) ;  Biochemical  Jour- 
nal, vol.  xxix,  1935 ;  Quarterly  Journal  oj 
Experimental  Physiology,  vol.  xxv,  1935.  Both 
Macleod  and  Banting  gave  accounts  of  the 
researches  leading  to  the  discovery  of  insulin 
in  their  joint  Beaumont  foundation  lectures 
(1923);  Banting's  Cameron  prize  lecture  on 
'The  History  of  Insulin',  Edinburgh  Medical 
Journal,  January  1929,  should  also  be  con- 
sulted.] W.  J.  Bishop. 

MACMILLAN,  Sm  FREDERICK  OR- 
RIDGE  (1851-1936),  publisher,  was  born 
at  Cambridge  5  October  1851,  the  eldei 


586 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


McMillan,  M. 


sun  of  Daniel  Macmillan  [q.v.],  joint 
founder  in  1843  with  his  younger  brother, 
Alexander  Macmillan,  of  the  bookselling 
and  publishing  firm  of  Macmillan  &  com- 
pany, by  his  wife,  Frances,  only  daughter 
of  Charles  Orridge,  a  Cambridge  chemist. 
He  was  educated  at  Uppingham  under 
l-Mward  Thring  [q.v.],  was  trained  in  the 
family  firm,  then  at  Cambridge,  and  sub- 
sequently spent  five  years  at  its  branch  in 
New  York  where  in  1874  he  married 
Georgiana  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Warrin,  of  Newtown,  Long  Island.  In 
1876  he  returned  to  England  as  a  partner 
to  begin  his  long  career  in  the  London 
house  then  situated  in  Bedford  Street. 
He  had  personal  experience  of  printing 
and  bookselling,  as  well  as  every  side  of 
publishing,  including  'town  travelling'; 
and  was  one  of  the  few  publishers  with 
first-hand  knowledge  of  all  the  techni- 
calities of  his  exacting  profession.  He  took 
a  keen  personal  interest  in  the  New  York 
branch  of  the  business  which  in  1890 
became  an  independent  firm  under  the 
name  of  the  Macmillan  Company,  with  the 
London  partners  as  directors.  Following 
his  uncle's  lead  Macmillan  built  up  a 
world-wide  organization  with  branches  in 
Canada,  Australia,  India,  and  elsewhere, 
and  established  for  it  an  international  repu- 
tation second  to  none.  He  was  a  man  with 
genuine  taste  and  sound  judgement, 
seldom  misled  by  the  prejudices  of  his 
'readers',  but  in  selecting  manuscripts  for 
publication  was  inclined  to  shy  at  extremes 
whether  of  emotion  or  of  manner.  He  had 
a  natural  courtesy ;  enjoyed  the  personal 
friendship  of  many  of  his  distinguished 
authors ;  and  maintained  the  generous  and 
hospitable  tradition  set  by  his  father  and 
uncle. 

Macmillan  was  president  of  the  Pub- 
lishers Association  in  1900-1902  and  1911- 
1913,  and  played  the  leading  part  in 
establishing  the  'net  book  agreement' 
(1890)  now  regarded  as  the  Magna  Carta 
of  the  trade.  He  took  a  share  in  framing 
the  Copyright  Act  of  1911  and  served  on 
the  royal  commission  on  paper  in  1916. 
He  was  a  trustee  of  the  Booksellers' 
Provident  Institution,  and  was  knighted 
in  1909  for  his  work  as  chairman  (from 
1903)  of  the  board  of  management  of  the 
National  Hospital  for  the  Paralysed  and 
Epileptic,  Queen  Square.  He  was  ap- 
pointed C.V.O.  in  1928. 

Macmillan  exercised  a  dominating  in- 
fluence in  the  councils  of  the  book  trade, 
but  at  the  end  of  his  career  he  found  him- 
self, as  a  sturdy  individualist,  opposed  to 


the  new  spirit  of  co-operation  which 
followed  the  reports  of  the  joint  committee 
of  publishers  and  booksellers  in  1928- 
1929.  Nevertheless  at  the  age  of  eighty 
he  was  young  enough  to  write  to  the  leader 
of  the  new  movement :  '  I  am  sure  you  will 
believe  me  when  I  say  that  if  I  do  not 
always  agree  with  my  juniors  I  do  not  take 
it  for  granted  that  they  are  wrong. ' 

Macmillan  died  in  London  1  Jime  1936 ; 
he  had  no  children  and  was  succeeded  in 
his  business  by  his  nephews,  the  sons  of 
his  brother,  Maurice  Macmillan. 

[The  Times,  2  June  1936 ;  Charles  Morgan, 
The  House  of  Macmillan,  1843-1943,  1943; 
The  Net  Book  Agreement  (privately  printed), 
1924;  F.  A.  Mumby,  Publishing  and  Book- 
selling, 1930;  F.  D.  Sanders,  British  Book 
Trade  Organization,  1939;  private  informa- 
tion.] Stajo^ey  Unwin. 

McMillan,    Margaret    (iseo- 

1931),  educationist,  was  born  at  West- 
chester, New  York  State,  20  July  1860, 
the  second  of  the  three  daughters  of  James 
McMillan,  who  had  emigrated  as  a  youth 
to  the  United  States  from  Glen  Urquhart, 
Inverness -shire.  On  one  of  his  visits  home 
he  married  (1858)  Jean  Cameron,  from 
Dochfour,  near  Inverness,  and  settled  with 
her  at  Westchester.  The  father,  who 
came  of  crofter  stock,  interested  himself 
in  fibre  manufacture,  but  died  in  1865, 
and  the  mother,  impoverished,  returned 
with  her  two  surviving  daughters  to 
Inverness. 

Miss  McMillan  was  educated  at  Inver- 
ness High  School,  and  studied  music  at 
Frankfort-on-Main  in  order  to  fit  herself 
for  the  career  of  a  finishing  governess: 
later  she  studied  languages  at  Geneva  and 
Lausanne.  Subsequently  she  was  trained 
for  the  stage,  but  her  desire,  inspired  by 
the  clan  motto,  Miseris  succurrere  disco, 
led  her  in  1892  to  devote  her  activities  to 
social  reform,  and  in  1893  she  was  'called' 
to  the  laboiu-  'church'  at  Bradford  in 
Yorkshire,  where  she  became  a  member  of 
the  independent  labour  party  (founded 
there  in  January  of  that  year)  and  was 
widely  known  as  the  'labour  prophetess 
of  the  north'.  However,  she  was  diverted 
to  interest  in  schoolchildren  by  her  elec- 
tion to  the  local  school  board  in  November 
1894,  and  about  1899  she  compelled  the 
first  recorded  medical  inspection  of  school- 
children, at  the  Usher  Street  schools, 
which  was  carried  out  in  her  presence  by 
Dr.  James  Kerr,  afterwards  medical 
officer  to  the  London  County  Council. 
This  success,  and  her  subsequent  influence 


587 


McMillan,  M. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


with  the  officials  of  the  Board  of  Educa- 
tion, made  her  the  undoubted  founder  of 
medical  inspection  in  English  elementary 
schools. 

In  1902  Miss  McMillan  left  Bradford  for 
London,  where  she  joined  her  elder  sister, 
Rachel  McMillan  (1859-1917).  After 
establishing  at  Bow  in  1908  a  children's 
clinic  which  had  to  be  partially  closed  two 
years  later,  the  sisters  began  work  in  1910 
at  Deptford,  where  their  new  clinic  met 
with  immediate  success:  it  received  a 
grant  from  the  London  County  Council  in 
1911  for  dental  treatment  and  in  1912  for 
eye  and  ear  treatment.  The  McMillans 
also  created  camp  schools  for  boys  and 
girls  and  a  nursery  school  for  infants. 
During  the  war  of  1914-1918  they  com- 
pleted the  establishment  of  the  pioneer 
open-air  nursery  school  for  children  under 
five  years  of  age,  which  attracted  world- 
wide interest:  the  new  building  was 
opened  by  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  [q.v.]  in  1917. 
In  1930  the  new  building  of  the  Rachel 
McMillan  College  at  Deptford  (previously 
known  as  the  Rachel  McMillan  Training 
Centre),  for  training  students  in  nursery 
school  work,  was  opened  by  Queen  Mary. 
It  was  Margaret  McMillan's  last  achieve- 
ment. 

In  creative  power  and  her  influence  in 
promoting  legislation,  Miss  McMillan  un- 
doubtedly affected  the  education  of 
elementary  schoolchildren  more  than  any 
other  person.  As  a  writer,  she  obtained 
renown  at  home  and  abroad ;  her  speeches 
were  compelUng  and  eloquent ;  her  organiz- 
ing powers  were  used  with  efficiency  and 
adventurous  skill,  and  all  her  work  for  the 
welfare  of  the  children  was  inspired  by 
strong  spiritual  and  religious  motives. 

Miss  McMillan  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in 
1917  and  C.H.  in  1930.  She  died  at  Harrow 
29  March  1931.  A  portrait  of  her,  painted 
by  John  Mansbridge,  hangs  in  the  Rachel 
McMillan  College. 

[The  Times,  30  March  1931 ;  A.  Mansbridge, 
Margaret  McMillan,  Prophet  and  Pioneer, 
1932 ;  Margaret  McMillan,  Life  of  Rachel  Mc- 
Millan, 1927;  D'Arcy  Cresswell,  Margaret 
McMillan,  1948 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Albert  Mansbridge. 

McMURRICH,    JAMES    PLAYFAIR 

(1859-1939),  Canadian  anatomist,  was 
born  at  Toronto,  Canada,  16  October  1859, 
the  son  of  John  McMurrich,  by  his  wife, 
Janet  Dickson.  He  was  educated  at  Upper 
Canada  College  and  at  the  university  of 
Toronto,  whence  he  graduated  B.A.  (1879) 
and  M.A.  (1881).   At  the  age  of  twenty- 


three  he  became  professor  of  biology  at  the 
Ontario  Agricultural  College  (1882-1884), 
and  then  went  to  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity as  instructor  in  osteology  and 
mammalian  anatomy  (1884^-1886);  at  the 
same  time  he  studied  for  his  Ph.D.,  which 
he  took  in  1885.  His  early  academic 
career  was  noted  for  numerous  changes 
and  a  rapid  rise.  He  held  in  succession  the 
professorships  of  biology  at  Haverford 
College,  Pennsylvania  (1886-1889),  of 
animal  morphology  at  Clark  University, 
Worcester,  Massachusetts  (1889-1892), 
of  biology  at  the  university  of  Cincinnati 
(1892-1894),  and  of  anatomy  at  the 
university  of  Michigan  (1894-1907). 
Having  refused  the  chair  of  anatomy  at 
Yale  University,  he  was  appointed  to 
Toronto  as  professor  of  anatomy  in  1907 
and  held  this  chair  until  his  retirement  in 
1930,  when  he  was  made  professor 
emeritus.  He  acted  as  dean  of  the  school 
of  graduate  studies  from  1922  until  1930. 
He  died  at  his  home  at  Toronto  9  February 
1939.  In  1882  he  married  Katie  Moodie 
(died  1932),  daughter  of  J.  J.  Vickers, 
of  Toronto,  and  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter. 

McMurrich  was  the  author  of  A  Text- 
Book  of  Invertebrate  Morphology  (1894, 
2nd  ed.  1896),  The  Development  of  the 
Human  Body  (1902,  7th  ed.  1923),  and 
of  more  than  a  hundred  papers  on 
morphology  and  embryology.  He  was  a 
leading  authority  on  the  actiniaria  or 
sea-anemones.  He  was  keenly  interested  in 
the  history  of  science  and  his  Leonardo  da ' 
Vinci,  the  Anatomist  (1452-1519)  (1930),  | 
is  an  authoritative  estimate  of  da  Vinci's 
position  as  an  anatomist  and  physiologist, 
based  on  a  thorough  study  of  the  facsimile 
reproductions  of  the  manuscripts.  He 
translated  Johannes  Sobotta's  Atlas  and 
Text  Book  of  Human  Anatomy  (1906- 
1907),  edited  Henry  Morris's  Human 
Anatomy  (4th  ed.  1907),  and  wrote  the| 
sections  on  the  muscular  and  vascular  i 
systems  in  George  Arthur  Piersol's  Human 
Anatomy  (1907). 

McMurrich  was  elected  F.R.S.  (Canada)  i 
in  1909  and  was  posthumously  awarded 
the  Flavelle  medal  in  1939.  He  was 
president  of  the  Society  of  Naturalists 
(1907),  the  American  Association  ofj 
Anatomists  (1908),  the  Royal  Society  ot 
Canada  (1922),  and  the  American  Associa- 
tion for  the  Advancement  of  Science 
(1922),  and  was  chairman  of  the  Biological 
Board  of  Canada  (1926-1934).  He  was 
also  a  member  of  the  North  American 
commission    on    fisheries    investigations 


588 


D.N.B.  1931-1040 


McNeile 


(1921-1939).  He  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  universities  of 
Michigan  (1912),  Cincinnati  (1923),  and 
Toronto  (1931). 

A  portrait  of  McMurrich  by  Kenneth 
Forbes  is  in  the  anatomy  building  at  the 
university  of  Toronto. 

[Minutes  of  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Canada,  1939  (portrait) ;  The  Times, 
18  February  1939 ;  Canadian  Medical  Associa- 
tion Journal,  vol.  xl,  p.  409,  1939;  Lancet, 
1939,  vol.  i,  p.  481 ;  Anatomical  Record,  vol. 
Ixxiv,  supplement,  1939  (portrait).] 

W.  J.  Bishop. 

AIACNAMARA,      THOMAS      JAMES 

(1861-1931),  politician,  was  born  in  the 
barracks  at  Montreal  23  August  1861,  the 
only  son  of  Thomas  Macnamara,  a 
Crimean  veteran,  a  sergeant  in  the  47th 
Foot  (later  the  Loyal  North  Lancashire 
Regiment).  He  came  to  England  at  an 
early  age  and  was  educated  at  St.  Thomas's 
school,  Exeter,  and  the  Borough  Road 
Training  College  for  Teachers.  He  became 
a  school-teacher,  his  last  post  being  that  of 
head  of  a  board  school  in  Bristol  for  eight 
years.  In  1892  he  came  to  London  as 
editor  of  the  Schoolmaster,  the  organ  of  the 
National  Union  of  Teachers,  of  which  he 
was  elected  president  in  1896.  In  the 
general  election  of  1895  he  unsuccessfully 
contested  the  borough  of  Deptford  as  a 
liberal,  but  he  was  returned  in  1900  for 
North  Camberwell,  and  represented  that 
constituency  (which  in  1918  became 
North-West  Camberwell)  continuously  for 
twenty-four  years.  In  1907  he  was  ap- 
pointed parliamentary  secretary  to  the 
Local  Government  Board  and  in  the  next 
year,  parliamentary  and  financial  secretary 
to  the  Admiralty.  In  1911  he  was  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council. 

During  his  parliamentary  life  Mac- 
namara became  more  and  more  associated 
with  Lloyd  George  who  in  1920  made  him 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet  as  the  first 
minister  of  labour,  a  post  which  he  held 
for  two  years  during  a  period  of  severe 
industrial  depression.  He  retained  his 
seat  in  1922  and  1923,  but  he  was  de- 
feated in  1924.  In  1929  he  failed  at 
Walsall  and  did  not  again  enter  parlia- 
ment, but  continued  to  be  of  service 
to  Lloyd  George  as  an  organizer  and 
a  speaker  on  liberal  platforms.  As  a 
speaker  on  platforms  he  earned  a  well 
known  reputation  and  by  his  energy  he 
deserved  the  nickname  of  'Fighting  Mac'. 
In  some  of  the  books  which  he  wrote 
on   his    experiences   as    a    schoolmaster, 


he  displayed  a  pleasant  sense  of  humour, 
and  he  was  a  prolific  writer  on  social 
questions. 

Macnamara  married  in  1886  Rachel, 
eldest  daughter  of  Angus  Cameron,  of 
Rannoch,  Perthshire,  and  of  Bristol,  and 
had  three  sons  and  a  daughter.  In  1898 
he  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  the  university  of  St.  Andrews  and  in 
1907  that  of  M.A.  from  the  university  of 
Oxford.  He  died  in  London  4  December 
1931. 

A  cartoon  of  Macnamara  by  'Spy' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  9  October  1907. 

[The  Times,  5  December  1931.] 

E.  I.  Caklyle. 

McNEILE,  (HERMAN)  CYRIL 
(1888-1937),  soldier,  and  novelist  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Sapper,  was  born  at 
Bodmin  28  September  1888,  the  son  of 
(Captain)  Malcolm  McNeile,  R.N.,  later 
governor  of  the  Royal  Naval  Prison, 
Lewes,  by  his  wife,  Christiana  Mary  Slog- 
gett.  He  was  educated  at  Cheltenham 
College  and  at  the  Royal  Military 
Academy,  Woolwich.  Joining  the  Royal 
Engineers  in  1907,  he  was  gazetted  captain 
in  1914,  and  served  throughout  the  war  of 
1914-1918,  winning  the  M.C. 

McNeile  retired  from  the  army  in  1919 
with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel  and  his 
best  known  story.  Bull-dog  Drummond, 
published  a  year  after  his  retirement,  was 
sub-titled  'the  adventures  of  a  demo- 
biUsed  officer  who  found  peace  dull'. 
Writing  under  the  pseudonym  of '  Sapper ', 
he  had  already  published  several  books, 
most  of  them  dealing  with  war-time  ex- 
periences, but  it  was  Bull-dog  Drummond 
that  made  him  famous  as  a  writer  of 
'thrillers'.  A  dramatized  version  ran 
successfully  at  Wyndham's  Theatre, 
London,  in  1921-1922  with  (Sir)  Gerald 
du  Maurier  [q.v.]  playing  the  title  part, 
and  was  later  given  in  New  York  with 
equal  success,  whilst  in  1929  the  produc- 
tion of  a  film  version  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  a  series  of  films  of  varying  merit 
based  on  the  Bull-dog  Drummond  stories 
which  McNeile  published  almost  every 
year  until  his  death.  None  of  these 
sequels  has  the  merit  of  the  original  book, 
which,  lacking  any  literary  pretensions, 
is  excellent  as  a  straightforward  story  of 
exciting  if  improbable  adventure. 

McNeile  married  in  1914  Violet  Baird, 
daughter  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Arthur 
Sholto  Douglas,  of  the  Cameron  High- 
landers, and  had  two  sons.  He  died  at 
West     Chiltington,     near     Pulborough, 


589 


McNeile 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Sussex,  14  August  1937,  of  illness  trace- 
able to  liis  war  service. 

[The  Times,  16  August  1937 ;  S.  J.  Kunitz 
and  H.  Haycraft,  Twentieth  Century  Authors: 
a  Biographical  Dictionary  (New  York),  1942.] 
Georgina  Battiscombe. 

McNeill,  JAMES  (1869-1938),  Indian 
and  Irish  civil  servant,  was  born  at 
Glenarm,  co.  Antrim,  27  or  29  March 
1869,  the  youngest  son  of  Archibald 
McNeill,  of  Camegies  in  the  Glens,  who 
had  been  trained  as  a  shipbuilder,  owned 
a  bakery  which  served  the  coastal  area 
between  Cushendun  and  Cushendall,  and 
also  farmed  in  a  small  way.  His  mother 
was  Rosetta  Macauley,  who  on  her 
mother's  side  traced  an  ancestry  back  to 
the  O'Neills,  Earls  of  Tyrone,  chieftains  of 
Catholic  Ulster  before  the  Plantations. 
In  the  once  remote  Glens  of  Antrim,  justly 
celebrated  for  their  wild  beauty,  the 
Roman  Catholics  have  survived  as  a 
majority  and  constitute  a  little  nationalist 
enclave  in  the  unionist  dominion  of  north- 
east Ulster.  Like  the  Catholic  populations 
in  other  parts  of  the  north  the  people  of 
the  Glens  possess  a  strong  sentiment  of 
local  patriotism,  and  James  McNeill 
always  sustained  strong  nationalist  and 
United  Ireland  opinions  alongside  of  a 
pride  in  his  Ulster  descent  and  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  Ulster  character,  without 
distinction  of  creed. 

McNeill  passed  his  early  childhood  in 
the  Glens,  and  there  acquired  that  love  of 
nature  and  of  out-door  life  which  he  ever 
combined  with  the  tastes  of  a  student. 
After  attending  the  local  national  school 
for  a  year  or  two  he  was  sent  south  to  his 
uncle,  the  Rev.  Charles  Macauley,  a  pro- 
fessor at  Maynooth,  under  whose  care  he 
remained  while  he  was  being  educated  at 
Belvedere,  the  large  Jesuit  day  school  in 
Dublin,  where  he  met  with  so  many  suc- 
cesses, particularly  in  classics  and  history, 
that  he  was  advised  to  direct  his  course 
towards  the  Indian  civil  service.  He  pre- 
pared for  the  examination  at  Blackrock 
College,  near  Dublin,  and  afterwards  at 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  In  1890 
he  went  out  to  the  Bombay  Presidency. 
His  first  important  work  was  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  general  administration  report 
for  1895-1896,  the  year  of  the  beginning  of 
the  bubonic  plague  epidemic,  and  at  the 
time  of  his  retirement,  during  the  winter 
of  1914-1915,  he  was  commissioner  of  the 
central  division  of  the  presidency  and  an 
additional  member  of  the  imperial  legis- 
lative council  of  India.   In  every  respect, 


including  that  of  amusement — he  became 
during  these  years  a  fine  shot  and  horse- 
man and  an  expert  at  pig-sticking — the 
Ufe  of  India  suited  him ;  and  if  he  left  the 
service  at  forty-five,  the  earhest  retiring 
age,  it  was  not  to  seek  leisure  but  to  place 
his  abilities  at  the  disposal  of  his  native 
country,  then  at  a  crisis  of  her  history. 
His  lively  sense  of  Indian  grandeur  and 
destinies  had  won  him  the  trust  of  the 
Indian  leaders  with  whom  his  work 
brought  him  in  contact.  Yet  he  had  not 
disguised  his  view  that  the  evolution  of 
India  towards  political  freedom  would  be 
a  long  process  owing  to  the  racial  and 
religious  compUcations  involved.  j 

On  his  return  to  Ireland,  McNeill  made 
his  home  near  Dublin  with  his  brothers 
Charles  and  John,  the  latter  a  prominent 
figure  in  the  Irish  National  Volunteers,  in 
politics  a  leader  of  Sinn  Fein,  and,  as  a 
scholar,  closely  associated  with  the  Gaelic 
revival.  After  the  Easter  rebellion  of  1916, 
John  McNeill,  although  not  a  participant, 
was  compromised  in  its  antecedents  and 
was  arrested,  narrowly  escaping  execu- 
tion.   James  McNeill,  who  had  hitherto 
been  chiefly  interested  in  the  political  and 
economic  aspects  of  the  Gaelic  revival, 
now  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  political 
movement  led  by  Mr.  de  Valera  which 
triumphed  throughout  nationalist  Ireland 
at  the  elections  of  December  1918,  and  in 
1922,  after  the  British  government  had 
come  to  terms  in  the  previous  December 
with  the  representatives  of  Dail  Eireann 
(of  which  John  McNeill  was   Speaker), 
James  McNeill  helped  to  draft  the  consti- 
tution of  the  new  state.  In  the  same  year 
he  was  appointed  chairman  of  the  Dublin 
county    council,   and    acted    on   several 
occasions  as  arbiter  between  employers 
and  workmen.    In  1923  he  was  sent  to 
London  as  high  commissioner  of  the  Irish 
Free  State,  a  position  for  which  his  long 
official  experience  in  high  administrative 
posts  made  him  peculiarly  fitted.    The 
negative  results  of  the  Ulster  Boundary 
Commission  (1924-1925),  upon  which  his 
brother  presented  the  case  for  Irish  unity, 
were  a  great  disappointment  to  him,  but 
he  remained  faithful  to  the  'Dominion' 
settlement    of    1921,    and    in    1928    he 
accepted  the  governor-generalship  of  the 
Irish  Free  State. 

It  was  explained  at  the  time  by  one  of 
the  Irish  ministers  that,  as  a  result  of  the 
Imperial  Conference  of  1926,  the  governor- 
general  was  no  longer  a  representative  or 
agent  of  the  British  government,  but  had 
been  appointed  by  the  King  on  the  advice 


590 


J 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


McNeiU,  R.  J. 


of  the  Irish  government  and  held  '  in  all 
respects  the  same  position  in  relation  to 
the  administration  of  public  affairs  in  a 
Dominion  as  is  held  by  His  Majesty  the 
King  in  Great  Britain'.  UnUke  T.  M. 
Healy  [q.v.],  his  predecessor  in  the  office, 
McNeill  was  a  man  of  gentle  speech  who 
had  made  no  personal  enemies,  and  the 
appointment  met  with  general  approval, 
especially  in  literary  and  artistic  circles, 
where  IVIrs.  McNeill  had  been  well  known, 
both  in  Dublin  and  in  London.  But  in 
1931  the  accession  of  Mr.  de  Valera's 
Fianna  Fail,  or  republican  party,  to  power 
made  the  position  of  a  governor-general, 
however  tactful  and  unassuming  he  might 
be,  extremely  uneasy.  As  an  earnest  of  its 
ultimate  intention  to  abolish  the  office 
altogether,  the  new  government  set  about 
reducing  it  to  obscurity,  and  at  the 
Eucharistic  Congress  of  1932  McNeill  was 
excluded  from  welcoming  the  visitors  in 
:iiis  official  capacity.  For  all  the  gentleness 
of  his  manner  there  was  Ulster  iron  in 
McNeill's  character  and  he  challenged  the 
conduct  of  the  executive  council  towards 
his  office  in  a  correspondence  which  he 
printed  in  the  Irish  Times  on  12  July  1932. 
Personally  he  would  have  been  glad  to 
resign-  but,  as  a  matter  of  principle,  he 
wished  to  force  the  executive  council  to  get 
rid  of  him  by  means  of  the  constitutional 
machinery  at  its  disposal,  and  finally  it 
was  in  accordance  with  advice  tendered 
by  Mr.  de  Valera  to  King  George  V  that 
McNeill  relinquished  the  office  of  governor- 
general  in  October  1932.  He  Uved  long 
enough  to  see  the  establishment  of  a  new 
constitution  in  which  the  governor-general 
was  replaced  by  a  president  and  Eire  (in 
Enghsh  'Ireland')  defined  as  a  repubhc  in 
'external  association'  with  the  British 
Commonwealth;  but  he  would  have  pre- 
ferred to  such  changes  an  approach  to 
unity  with  Ulster.  He  enjoyed  six  years  of 
retirement  on  a  small  estate  near  Dublin, 
and  died  in  London  12  December  1938. 

McNeill  married  in  1923  Josephine, 
daughter  of  James  Aheme,  of  Fermoy, 
CO.  Cork ;  there  was  no  issue  of  the  mar- 
riage. 

A  crayon  drawing  of  McNeill  by  Louis 
Raemakers  is  in  the  possession  of  Mrs. 
Josephine  McNeill,  and  a  portrait  in  oils 
by  Sarah  Purser  is  in  the  possession  of 
Mr.  J.  J.  Auchmuty. 

[The  Times  and  Irish  Times,  13  December 
1938 ;  Studies  (a  biographical  notice  of  John 
VIcNeill  by  Fr.  John  Ryan,  S.J.),  December 
1945;  Denis  Gwynn,  The  Irish  Free  State, 
1922-1927,  1928.]  Joseph  Hone. 


McNeill,  ronald  john,  Baron 

CusHENDUN  (1861-1934),  Irish  politician, 
was  bom  at  Torquay  30  April  1861,  the 
only  surviving  son  of  Edmund  McNeill,  a 
landowner,  of  Craigdurm,  Craigs,  near 
Cushendun,  co.  Antrim,  who  held  land 
agencies,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  eldest  daughter 
of  Alexander  Miller,  of  Ballycastle,  co. 
Antrim.  The  McNeills,  who  had  settled  in 
Antrim  in  1676,  were  of  Scottish  origin; 
they  could  trace  their  descent  from  Torquil 
MacNeill,  chief  of  the  Clan  Neill  (bom 
c.  1380).  Ronald  McNeill  was  educated  at 
Harrow  and  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
where  he  was  awarded  a  second  class  in 
modern  history  in  1884.  In  1888  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn,  but  he 
abandoned  the  law  for  journalism  and 
politics. 

In  1899  McNeill  was  appointed  assistant 
editor,  and  in  1900  editor,  of  the  St. 
James's  Gazette,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
1904.  He  unsuccessfully  fought  four  elec- 
tions, in  West  Aberdeenshire  (1906), 
South  Aberdeen  City  (February  1907  and 
January  1910),  and  Kirkcudbrightshire 
(December  1910),  before  he  was  elected, 
unopposed,  at  a  by-election  in  July  1911, 
conservative  member  for  the  East  or 
St.  Augustine's  division  of  Kent,  known 
since  1918  as  the  Canterbury  division,  a 
seat  which  he  held  for  sixteen  years.  From 
1906  to  1911  he  was  assistant  editor  of  the 
eleventh  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,  to  which  he  contributed  some 
remarkably  diverse  articles,  on  subjects 
ranging  from  recent  legislation  in  Australia 
and  the  history  of  the  Fenians  to  lawn 
tennis  and  rackets.  In  1907  he  published 
his  first  book.  Home  Rule:  its  History  and 
Danger,  which  was  followed  in  1908  by 
two  contributions  to  composite  works, 
'Socialism'  in  The  New  Order,  edited  by 
Lord  Malmesbury,  and  'The  History  of 
Australia  and  New  Zealand'  in  The  His- 
torian's History  of  the  World,  edited  by 
Henry  Smith  WUUams.  His  last  and  most 
important  work,  published  in  1922,  was 
Ulster's  Stand  for  Union,  in  which  he 
stated  the  Ulster  unionists'  case  with 
clarity,  force,  and  precision. 

McNeill  belonged  to  the  group  of  con- 
servatives who  were  called  'die-hards', 
and  was,  as  a  result  of  his  imperial  studies, 
a  'whole-hogger'  in  the  matter  of  tariff 
reform.  His  impulsive  temper,  which 
caused  him,  during  the  debates  on  home 
rule  in  November  1912,  to  hurl  a  Blue 
Book  at  the  head  of  Mr.  Winston  Churchill, 
then  first  lord  of  the  Admiralty,  joined  to 
his    extreme    opinions    on    controversial 


591 


McNeill,  R.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


matters,  made  many  persons  under- 
estimate his  ability ;  and  surprise  was  ex- 
pressed even  by  members  of  his  own  party 
when  in  1922  after  the  downfall  of  Lloyd 
George's  second  coalition  government, 
Bonar  Law  appointed  him  parliamentary 
under-secretary  for  foreign  affairs.  But 
his  skill  and  patience  in  debate,  and  his 
general  industry,  soon  won  him  regard 
from  those  most  surprised;  and  no  one 
murmured  when  Baldwin,  in  forming  his 
first  and  second  ministries  (1923  and  1924), 
retained  McNeill  in  that  office.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1924.  In 
November  1925  he  became  financial 
secretary  to  the  Treasury,  his  chief  being 
no  other  than  Mr.  Winston  Churchill.  In 
October  1,927  he  succeeded  Lord  Cecil  of 
Chelwood  as  chancellor  of  the  duchy  of 
Lancaster,  which  office,  together  with  a 
seat  in  the  Cabinet,  he  held  until  1929. 
In  November  1927  he  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Cushendun,  taking  his 
title  from  the  village  in  Antrim  where  he 
held  his  property. 

For  a  short  time  Cushendun  held  Lord 
Cecil's  office  as  chief  British  representative 
to  the  League  of  Nations,  and,  during  a 
sitting  of  the  preparatory  disarmament 
commission  on  19  March  1928,  he  de- 
livered a  denunciation  of  the  Russian 
scheme  for  the  immediate  abolition  of  all 
armed  forces,  which  caused  the  conference, 
according  to  the  New  York  Times,  to 
break  '  into  scarcely  precedented  cheering. 
In  the  international  arena,  a  new  person- 
age had  arrived.'  The  London  Times, 
describing  the  speech,  said  that  'every  old 
Leaguer  present  declared  it  to  be  the 
greatest  speech  ever  delivered  at  a  League 
meeting.  Lord  Cushendun  attacked  the 
Russian  scheme  until  the  Soviet  delegates 
seemed  at  one  moment  ready  to  rush  from 
the  room.'  From  August  to  December 
1928,  when  Sir  Austen  Chamberlain,  the 
foreign  secretary  [q.v.],  was  ill,  McNeill 
was  acting  secretary  of  state  for  foreign 
affairs  and  chief  British  representative  at 
the  meetings  of  the  Council  and  Assembly 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  One  of  his 
functions  during  this  time  was  to  sign  in 
Paris  on  27  August  the  Kellogg  pact  under 
which  war  was  outlawed. 

McNeill,  who,  perhaps  because  of  his 
impulsive,  but  generous,  temper,  was  ad- 
mired by  his  opponents  little  less  than  by 
his  friends,  was  a  tall  man,  but,  since  he 
was  remarkably  well-built,  looked  less  tail 
than  he  actually  was.  He  claimed,  nor 
was  his  claim  disputed,  to  be  the  tallest 
barrister  of  his  time:  he  was  just  over 


6  feet  6  inches.  He  was  twice  marrie 
first,  in  1884  to  Elizabeth  Maud  (c 
1925),  fifth  daughter  of  WiUiam  BoUtlj 
of  Polwithen,  Penzance,  and  had  tl 
daughters,  the  second  of  whom  pre- 
deceased her  father;  secondly,  in  1930  to 
Catherine  Sydney  Louisa  (died  1939), 
daughter  of  Sir  Mortimer  Reginald  Mar- 
gesson,  and  had  no  children.  He  died  at 
Cushendun  12  October  1934. 

[Belfast  Telegraph,  12  October  1934 ;  Belfast 
News-Letter,  13  October  1934;  The  Times, 
13  October  1934;  private  information.] 

St.  John  Ervine. 

MACPHAIL,  Sir  (JOHN)  ANDREW 
(1864f-1938),  pathologist  and  author,  was 
born  at  Orwell,  Prince  Edward  Island, 
24  November  1864,  the  third  son  of' 
William  Macphail,  of  Orwell,  by  his  wife, 
Catherine  Moore,  daughter  of  Finlay 
Smith.  Both  came  of  highland  Scottish 
stock.  He  was  educated  locally,  at  Prince  of 
Wales  College,  Charlottetown,  and  at  the 
age  of  seventeen  was  acting  as  head- 
master of  Fanning  School,  Prince  Edward 
Island.  At  McGill  University  he  gradu- 
ated in  medicine  in  1891,  afterwards 
studying  for  a  time  at  the  London  Hospital. 
His  success  as  a  practising  specialist  and 
lecturer  in  pathology  at  Montreal  at  the  I 
Western  Hospital  and  at  the  Protestant! 
Hospital  for  the  Insane  (1895-1906)  led  to 
his  appointment  in  1907  to  the  chair  of 
medical  history  in  McGill  University, 
which  he  held  for  thirty  years.  His 
academic  duties  left  him  time  to  under- 
take the  editorship  of  both  the  Canadian 
Medical  Journal  and  the  University 
Magazine  and  in  the  latter,  which  he 
made  the  leading  intellectual  review  of 
Canada,  he  found  scope  to  express  his  own 
views  fearlessly  and  to  encourage  promis- 
ing young  Canadian  writers. 

Macphail  had  published  three  volumes 
of  essays  and  a  novel.  The  Vine  of  Sibmah 
(1906),  before  the  war  of  1914-1918  called 
him  to  medical  service  in  France  with  the 
sixth  Canadian  Field  Ambulance  and  later  ] 
at  the  Canadian  Overseas  Army's  head- 
quarters. During  the  war  he  published  an ' 
anthology  of  tragic  verse,  Tfie  Book  of. 
Sorrow  (1916),  and  a  life  of  John  McCrae,  ^ 
the  Canadian  soldier-poet,  under  the  title  i 
In  a  Flanders  Field  (1918).  In  1917  he| 
delivered  the  Cavendish  lecture  at  Cam-j 
bridge.  For  his  war  services  he  was| 
knighted  in  1918  and  appointed  O.B.E.  inj 
1919.  He  received  the  honorary  degree  of  I 
LL.D.  from  McGill  in  1921 .  After  the  war  I 
he  gave  up  editorial  work  but  continued! 


592 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Macpherson 


to  write  freely  for  Canadian  and  British 
reviews  and  to  produce  books.  An  English 
translation  (1921)  of  Louis  Hemon's  well- 
mown  novel  Marie  Chapdelaine  was 
bllowed  by  a  volume  on  the  medical 
iervices  for  the  Canadian  official  history 
:.f  the  war  (1925),  Three  Persons  (1929), 
md  The  Bible  in  Scotland  (1931).  He  also 
eft  for  posthumous  publication  a  semi- 
iutobiographical  volume,  The  Master^s 
Wife  (1939),  which  tells  the  story  of  the 
jviacphail  family  in  Canada  and  has  been 
onsidered  the  best  story  ever  written  of 
)ioneer  life  in  Canada. 

A  man  of  marked  individuality  and 
p-eat  mental  versatility,  Macphail  was  a 
)rominent  figure  in  the  literary  world  of 
[Canada  and  in  his  later  years  a  famous 
tharacter  in  Montreal.  He  wrote  with 
;qual  skill  upon  medicine,  politics,  eco- 
nomics, military  affairs,  and  religion  in  a 
ivid,  pungent  style,  spiced  with  an 
briginal  vein  of  ironic  wit.  His  views  were 
jilso  original,  for,  while  he  was  a  firm  con- 
krvative  and  staunch  imperialist,  he  was 
ji  keen  free-trader  and  his  rigid  presby- 
jerianism  did  not  prevent  him  from  being 
{t  steady  champion  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
i  ^'rench-  Canadians . 

Macphail  married  in  1893  Georgina 
died  1902),  youngest  daughter  of  George 
liuU  Burland,  of  Montreal,  and  had  a  son 
jmd  a  daughter.  He  died  at  Montreal 
i!3  September  1938. 

I  A  portrait  of  Macphail  by  Alphonse 
j'ongers  (1924)  is  in  the  possession  of  the 
iamUy. 

'  [The  Times,  24  September  1938;  British 
dedical  Journal,  1938,  vol.  ii,  p.  723  (por- 
rait) ;  Lancet,  1938,  vol.  ii,  p.  807 ;  Canadian 
den  and  Women  of  the  Time,  2nd  ed.  1912 ; 
Vho  's  Who  in  Canada  (portrait) ;  personal 
nowledge.]  J.  A.  Stevenson. 

MACPHERSON,  (JAMES)  IAN,  first 
Jaron  Strathcarron  (1880-1937),  was 
)om  near  Newtonmore,  Inverness-shire, 
4  May  1880,  the  second  son  of  James 
lacpherson,  J.P.,  of  Newtonmore,  by  his 
rife,  Anne,  daughter  of  James  Stewart. 
Educated  locally  and  at  George  Watson's 
'ollege,  Edinburgh,  he  graduated  M.A. 
nd  LL.B.  at  Edinburgh  University,  where 
le  was  senior  president  of  the  Students' 
lepresentative  Council  and  president  of 
he  Liberal  Association.  Called  to  the  bar 
•y  the  Middle  Temple  in  1906,  he  com- 
bined legal  practice  with  journaUsm  and 
(olitics,  and  after  having  unsuccessfully 
ontested  Wigtownshire  and  East  Ren- 
rewshire  at  the  two  general  elections  of 


1910,  he  was  returned  at  a  by-election  in 
1911  as  liberal  member  for  Ross  and 
Cromarty.  He  held  the  seat  until  his 
retirement  at  the  end  of  1935,  for  the  last 
four  years  as  a  liberal  national.  A  parlia- 
mentarian almost  by  instinct,  he  was  soon 
prominent  in  the  liberal  land  campaign 
and  presided  over  the  Scottish  branch  of 
the  inquiry.  Prom  1914  to  1916  he  was 
parliamentary  secretary  to  the  under- 
secretary of  state  for  war,  from  1916  to 
1918  under-secretary  of  state  for  war,  and 
from  1918  to  1919  vice-president  of  the 
Army  Council  (deputy  secretary  of  state 
for  war).  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1918.  When  the  government 
was  reconstituted  in  January  1919, 
Macpherson,  the  youngest  minister  in  the 
Cabinet,  was  chosen  for  the  thankless  and 
perilous  post  of  chief  secretary  for  Ireland. 
An  ardent  home  ruler,  although  as  a 
Presbyterian  not  forgetful  of  the  North, 
he  was  convinced  that  repressive  measures 
were  not  enough  and  he  strove  for  a  con- 
structive policy.  In  daily  danger,  he 
carried  on  undaunted,  but  the  situation 
grew  steadily  worse.  After  a  year  of  in- 
creasing tension  in  Ireland,  with  doubts 
and  vacillation  at  Westminster,  Mac- 
pherson brought  forward  the  Cabinet's 
legislative  proposals.  The  bill  passed  its 
second  reading  on  31  March  1920  and 
reached  the  Statute  Book  in  December, 
but  Macpherson,  frustrated  in  his  hopes  of 
a  more  liberal  approach,  had  resigned  on 
3  April.  His  health  had  suffered  under  the 
strain,  but  wdth  characteristic  courage  he 
went  straight  to  the  Ministry  of  Pensions 
where,  with  a  task  that  appealed  to  his 
human  sympathies,  he  accomplished  his 
best  administrative  work,  culminating  in 
the  Pensions  Act  of  1922,  the  keystone  of 
pensions  policy  until  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  of  1939-1945. 

With  the  fall  of  the  coalition  govern- 
ment in  1922  Macpherson  at  the  age  of 
forty -two  passed  out  of  office.  Service  for 
Scotland  had  been  the  ruling  passion  of 
this  warm-hearted  Gael — regarded  by 
many  as  the  representative  Highlander  of 
his  time — and  although  the  Scottish  Office 
eluded  him,  he  made  his  mark  in  many 
other  ways  upon  contemporary  Scottish 
and  especially  highland  life.  His  interest 
in  GaeUc  studies  was  both  academic  and 
practical,  and  Lord  Alness  has  testified 
that  it  was  Macpherson  who  induced  him 
to  insert  the  Gaelic  clause  in  the  Education 
Act  of  1918.  He  became  a  K.C.  in  1919, 
a  bencher  of  his  Inn  in  1930,  and  recorder 
of  Southend  in  1931.  Apart  from  his  legal 


598 


Qq 


Macpherson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


work  he  was  interested  in  later  years  in 
imperial  trade,  abating  the  rigour  of  his 
free-trade  principles  to  advocate  the 
claims  of  primary  producers. 

Combining  highland  courtesy  with  the 
urbanity  of  a  man  of  the  world,  Mac- 
pherson was  popular  alike  with  political 
friends  and  with  opponents.  He  was  an 
impressive  speaker,  and  with  his  com- 
mand of  picturesque  imagery  and  poetic 
phrase  was  especially  welcome  on  high- 
land platforms.  He  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity and  was  a  freeman  of  the  royal  burgh 
of  Dingwall.  Created  a  baronet  in  1933, 
Macpherson  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Baron  Strathcarron,  of  Banchor,  Inver- 
ness-shire, in  1936.  In  1915  he  married 
Jill,  only  daughter  of  (Sir)  George  Wood 
Rhodes,  first  baronet,  and  had  a  son 
and  two  daughters.  He  died  suddenly  in 
London  14  August  1937  and  was  succeeded 
as  second  baron  by  his  son,  David  William 
Anthony  Blyth  (born  1924). 

[The  Scotsman  and  The  Times,  16  August 
1937.]  George  A.  Waters. 


MADDEN,  Sir  CHARLES  EDWARD, 

first  baronet  (1862-1985),  admiral  of  the 
fleet,  was  born  at  Brompton,  Gillingham, 
Kent,  5  September  1862,  the  second  son 
of  Captain  John  William  Madden,  of  the 
Fourth  (King's  Own)  Regiment,  by  his 
wife,  Emily,  second  daughter  of  John 
Busby,  of  Kingstown ;  he  was  descended 
from  a  long  line  of  Anglo-Irish  families. 
He  entered  the  Britannia  as  a  naval  cadet 
in  1875  and  on  promotion  to  midshipman 
in  1877  was  sent  to  the  Alexandra,  the 
flagship  of  (Sir)  Geoffrey  Hornby  [q.v.], 
in  the  Mediterranean,  and  served  in  her 
throughout  that  famous  command.  In 
1880  he  went  to  the  Ruby,  a  corvette  in 
the  East  Indies  squadron,  for  two  and  a 
half  years,  being  promoted  sub-lieutenant 
in  her  in  1881.  Soon  after  promotion  to 
lieutenant  in  1884  he  decided  to  speciaUze 
in  torpedo  and  spent  two  years  in  the 
Vernon  torpedo  school  with  an  additional 
six  months  as  staff  officer  of  that  establish- 
ment. In  1892  he  was  appointed  torpedo 
lieutenant  of  the  Royal  Sovereign,  flagship 
of  the  Channel  squadron,  and  in  1893 
resumed  his  post  as  staff  officer  of  the 
Vernon  until  promoted  commander  in 
1896.  After  three  years  at  sea  as  com- 
mander of  the  cruiser  Terrible  and  the 
battleship  Caesar  he  returned  to  the 
Vernon  in  1899  for  a  further  two  years, 
being  promoted  captain  in  June  1901.  A 
year  later  he  became,  for  two  years,  flag 

594 


captain  in  the  Good  Hope  (cruiser  squadron 
to  Admiral  (Sir)  Wilmot  Hawkswortl 
Fawkes,  who  had  been  his  captain  in  tb 
Terrible  and  since  been  naval  private 
secretary  to  the  first  lord.  During  thi 
sei^ce  he  took  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v. 
on  his  memorable  visit  to  South  Africa  a 
the  end  of  1902. 

In  February  1905  Captain  (Admiral  o 
the  Fleet  Sir)  H.  B.  Jackson  [q.v.]  wa 
brought  by  Lord  Selborne  from  th' 
command  of  the  Vernon  to  the  Admiralt; 
as  third  sea  lord  and  controller.  Jacksoi 
was  the  greatest  scientific  naval  officer  o 
his  generation,  and  asked  for  Madden 
now  a  leading  torpedo  specialist,  to  be  hi 
naval  assistant.  It  was  the  time  of  tb 
great  reforms  of  Sir  John  (afterward 
Lord)  Fisher  [q.v.]  in  fleet  redistribution 
dockyard  administration,  and  shipbuild 
ing  policy,  and  Madden  soon  became  on' 
of  his  most  trusted  instruments  in  carryin; 
them  out.  Fisher  had  already,  in  th 
previous  October,  named  Madden  to  Lor( 
Selborne  as  one  of  the  'five  best  brain 
in  the  navy  below  the  rank  of  admiral 
and  in  December  (1904)  secured  hi 
appointment  as  a  member  of  the  epoch 
making  'ships  designs  committee'  whicl 
produced  the  Dreadnought  and  Invindbl 
designs  for  battleships  and  armourec 
cruisers  (later  styled  battle-cruisers).  / 
year  later  he  made  Madden  his  own  nava 
assistant,  a  post  which  he  held  unti 
August  1907.  During  those  stormy  year 
Madden's  soimd  judgement  and  coo! 
common  sense  were  of  the  utmost  valui; 
to  his  great  chief.  He  was  then  glad  to  ge  j 
to  sea  again,  this  time  as  captain  of  th(| 
Dreadnought  herself,  and  as  chief  of  stai 
to  Sir  Francis  Bridgeman  [q.v.],  com 
mander-in-chief  of  the  Home  Fleet.  Ii 
December  1908  he  was  brought  back  t( 
Whitehall,  first  as  naval  private  secretar 
to  Reginald  McKenna  until  January  191( 
and  then  as  fourth  sea  lord  until  Decembe: 
1911. 

Madden  had  reached  flag  rank  in  Apri 
1911  with  unusually  short  sea  service  as  i 
post-captain,  and  only  fourteen  months 
fleet  experience,  but  he  was  now  to  be  aii 
sea  continuously  for  over  eleven  years  aii 
a  flag  officer  in  the  main  British  Fleet! 
including  the  whole  period  of  the  war  o:' 
1914r-1918.  He  commanded  the  flrsl| 
division.  Home  Fleet  (flag  in  the  St; 
Vincent)  during  1912,  the  third  cruise]| 
squadron  (flag  in  the  Antrim)  during  1913| 
and  then  the  second  cruiser  squadron  (flaj 
in  the  Shannon)  until  the  eve  of  the  out- 
break of  war.     When  Admiral  Sir  J.  R 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Madden 


(afterwards  Earl)  Jellicoe  [q.v.]  was 
appointed  to  take  over  the  command  of  the 
Grand  P'leet  he  asked  for  his  wife's  brother- 
in-law,  Madden,  who  had  been  designated 
to  rejoin  the  Board  of  Admiralty  as  third 
sea  lord  and  controller,  to  accompany  him 
as  chief  of  staff.  Madden  was  accord- 
ingly sent  to  the  Iron  Duke  (Jellicoe's 
flagship)  on  4  August  1914  and  remained 
in  her  until  Jellicoe  became  first  sea  lord 
in  November  1916,  having  been  promoted 
acting  vice-admiral  in  June  1915  and 
confirmed  in  that  rank  immediately  after 
the  battle  of  Jutland.  In  Jellicoe's  Jut- 
land dispatch  of  18  June  1916  Madden's 
brilliant  work  as  his  chief  of  staff  was 
recorded  thus:  'Throughout  a  period  of 
twenty-one  months  of  war  his  services 
have  been  of  inestimable  value.  His  good 
judgment,  his  long  experience  in  fleets, 
special  gift  for  organization,  and  his 
capacity  for  unlimited  work,  have  all  been 
of  the  greatest  assistance  to  me,  and  have 
relieved  me  of  much  of  the  anxiety  in- 
:5eparable  from  the  conduct  of  the  fleet 
during  the  war.  In  the  stages  leading  up 
to  the  fleet  action  and  during  and  after 
the  action  he  was  always  at  hand  to  assist, 
and  his  judgment  never  at  fault.  I  owe 
him  njore  than  I  can  say.' 

On  the  change  of  chief  command  in  1916 
Madden  was  appointed  to  the  command  of 
the  first  battle  squadron,  as  second  in 
command  of  the  Fleet,  with  the  acting 
rank  of  admiral  (flag  in  the  Marlborough 
and  later  in  the  Revenge),  and  retained  it 
until  April  1919,  having  been  confirmed 
as  admiral  in  February  of  that  year. 
When  Sir  David  (afterwards  Earl)  Beatty 
q.v.]  hauled  down  his  flag  as  commander- 
n-chief  of  the  Grand  Fleet  and  the  war 
organization  of  the  navy  was  broken  up, 
Madden  was  appointed  to  the  command 
)f  the  newly  constituted  Atlantic  Fleet 
flag  in  the  Queen  Elizabeth)  which  he  held 
Tom  1919  to  1922. 

In  the  autumn  of  1919  Madden  was 
created  a  baronet  and  granted  £10,000 
)y  a  vote  of  parliament,  and  on  finally 
;oming  ashore  in  August  1922  he  received 
letter  of  appreciation  from  the  Board  of 
Vdmiralty  for  'the  manner  in  which  he 
xercised  command  of  the  Atlantic  Fleet 
md  for  his  services  to  the  Royal  Navy  and 
o  the  Empire '.  He  was  at  once  appointed 
irst  and  principal  naval  aide-de-camp  to 
he  king  and  was  promoted  admiral  of  the 
leet  in  July  1924.  He  served  in  1923-1924 
s  chairman  of  the  conunittee  on  the 
unctions  and  training  of  royal  marines, 
nd  in  1925,  under  the  chairmanship  of 


Lord  Chelmsford  [q.v.],  on  that  for  the  list 
of  executive  officers  of  the  navy.  He  then 
retired  to  Broadstone,  Poorest  Row, 
Sussex,  until  July  1927,  when,  on  the 
recommendation  of  W.  C.  (afterwards 
Viscount)  Bridgeman  he  was  selected  to 
succeed  Lord  Beatty  as  first  sea  lord. 
Two  years  later  he  would  have  been  placed 
on  the  retired  list,  but,  in  order  to  retain 
him  in  office,  Bridgeman  procured  a 
special  order  in  coiuicil  to  secure  his 
remaining  admiral  of  the  fleet  on  the 
active  list  supernumerary  to  establish- 
ment, so  long  as  he  held  appointment  as 
first  sea  lord. 

Madden  thus  returned  to  the  Board 
after  over  fifteen  years  to  find  very  differ- 
ent responsibilities  and  problems  awaiting 
him.  Disarmament  was  in  the  air  and  very 
strong  and  persistent  pressure  was  brought 
to  bear  on  the  Admiralty  to  restrict  the 
shipbuilding  programme,  which  was  the 
principal  cause  of  dispute  with  the  United 
States  of  America  at  the  abortive  Geneva 
naval  conference  at  the  moment  when  he 
assumed  office.  The  Admiralty  contention 
had  been  and  remained  that  seventy 
cruisers  were  required.  But  Madden  had 
reluctantly  to  accept  Cabinet  decisions 
reducing  the  previously  agreed  programme 
of  construction  and  by  the  time  Ramsay 
MacDonald's  labour  government  came 
into  power  in  1929  it  had  consequently 
become  impracticable  to  reach  the  standard 
total.  With  much  misgiving  therefore 
Madden  felt  obliged  under  protest  to 
assent  to  a  lower  standard  of  fifty  which 
was  confirmed  in  the  London  naval  treaty 
of  1930.  He  finally  retired  from  the  Board 
and  the  active  list  in  July  1930. 

Madden  was  awarded  numerous  honours 
and  decorations.  He  was  mentioned  in 
dispatches  for  service  at  Suez  in  1883,  and 
was  appointed  C.V.O.  in  1907,  K.C.B.  in 
January  1916,  and  K.C.M.G.  for  his  ser- 
vices at  Jutland.  He  received  the  rank  of 
commander  of  the  Legion  of  Honour. 
The  Russian  Order  of  St.  Anne,  the  military 
Order  of  Savoy,  and  the  Japanese  grand 
cordon  of  the  Rising  Sun  were  conferred 
upon  him  in  1917.  He  was  admitted  to  the 
rank  of  grand  officer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  in  1918,  and  at  the  end  of  the  war 
he  was  appointed  G.C.B.  and  given  the 
Belgian  Order  of  Leopold,  the  French 
croix  de  guerre  (bronze  palms),  and  the 
Chinese  Order  of  the  Striped  Tiger.  He  was 
appointed  G. C.V.O.  in  1920  and  a  member 
of  the  Order  of  Merit  in  1931,  The  honor- 
ary degree  of  LL.D.  was  conferred  upon 
him  by  Cambridge  University  in  1919,  and 


595 


Madden 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


that  of  D.C.L.  by  Oxford  University  in 
1928. 

Madden  acquired  during  his  long  career 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  every  detail  of 
his  profession  and  was  universally  esteemed 
as  a  man  upon  whom  complete  reliance 
could  be  placed  in  any  task  which  he  was 
set.  His  manner  was  modest  and  un- 
assuming ;  he  was  popular  and  an  excellent 
host :  he  had  no  enemies,  but  did  not  easily 
make  friends.  The  parts  which  fell  to  him 
to  play  during  the  war  of  1914-1918  he 
played  to  perfection.  As  chief  of  staff 
to  Jellicoe  he  was  responsible  for  much  of 
the  organization  of  the  fleet,  and  by  the 
care  and  tact  with  which  he  carried  out  his 
chief's  instructions  he  contributed  largely 
to  its  efficiency.  While  in  the  closest  con- 
fidential intimacy  with  Jellicoe,  he  was 
more  an  interpreter  of  his  views  than  a 
contributor  to  their  formation.  As  second- 
in-command  to  Beatty,  while  kept  fully 
informed  of  all  developments  and  con- 
sulted on  major  problems,  he  was  not  a 
man  to  put  forward  or  insist  on  strong 
views  of  his  own,  and  difficulties  which 
might  have  arisen  had  he  been  of  less  loyal 
personality  or  more  ambitious  character 
were  non-existent,  although  he  was  over 
eight  years  older  than  Beatty. 

As  first  sea  lord  Madden  was  ill  at  ease 
in  dealing  with  politicians  who,  without 
directly  challenging  the  validity  of  the 
Admiralty's  assessment  of  the  proper 
standards  of  naval  defence,  urged  the 
undesirability  of  proceeding  with  ship 
construction  in  face  of  the  opposition  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  and,  when 
MacDonald  began  his  proposals  for  the 
conference  which  produced  the  London 
naval  treaty  by  accepting  the  reduction 
to  a  total  of  fifty  cruisers,  Madden  did  not 
feel  justified  on  constitutional  grounds  in 
going  to  the  length  of  resignation  as  a 
protest.  In  private  life  he  was  a  devout 
churchman,  a  thorough  sportsman,  and 
was  devoted  to  his  family.  During  his 
retirement  he  was  greatly  interested  in 
local  affairs  and  gave  much  time  to  support 
of  the  British  Legion. 

Madden  married  in  1905  Constance 
Winifred,  third  and  youngest  daughter  of 
Sir  Charles  Cayzer,  first  baronet,  and 
sister  of  Countess  Jellicoe,  and  had  two 
sons  and  four  daughters.  He  died  in 
London  5  June  1935,  and  was  succeeded 
as  second  baronet  by  his  elder  son, 
Charles  Edward  (born  1906). 

Madden's  portrait  is  included  in  Sir 
Arthur  Cope's  picture  'Some  Sea  Officers 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1921,  in  the 


National  Portrait  Gallery,  and  there  is  a 
charcoal  and  watercolour  drawing  of  him 
by  Francis  Dodd  in  the  Imperial 
Museum. 

[Admiralty  records ;  private  informatioi 
Vincent  W.  Baddelei 

MAITLAND,  Sir  ARTHUR 
BERT  DRUMMOND  RAMSAY-STEEL*, 
first  baronet  (1876-1935),  politician  and 
economist.    [See  Steel-Maitland.] 

MAITLAND,  JOHN  ALEXANDER 
FULLER-  (1856-1936),  musical  critic  and 
connoisseur,  was  born  in  London  7  April 
1856,  the  only  child  of  John  Fuller-Mait- 
land,  by  his  wife,  Marianne,  only  child  ol 
George  Noble,  of  Duffryn,  Glamorgan- 
sliire.  He  was  grandson  of  Ebenezei 
FuUer-Maitland,  a  prominent  member  oi 
the  Clapham  Sect.  In  1862  his  fathei 
built  the  house  in  Phillimore  Gardens, 
Kensington,  which  FuUer-Maitland  in-j 
herited,  and  which  was  for  fifty  years  hisi 
home  and  a  very  famous  centre  for  musical! 
gatherings.  ' 

Owing  to  delicate  health,  FuUer-Mait- 
land was  educated  privately,  except  foi 
three  terms  at  Westminster,  but  in  1875 
he  entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge; 
this  proved  to  be  the  turning-point  in  his 
career,  for  he  then  came  under  the  in- 
fluence of  (Sir)  C.  V.  Stanford  and  W 
Barclay  Squire  [qq.v.]  and  entered  upor; 
what  he  called  five  or  six  years  of '  musica  | 
amateurity'.  He  was  invited  about  ISSlj 
by  (Sir)  George  Grove  [q.v.]  to  contribute 
to  his  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians 
and  in  1882  Grove  introduced  him  to  John 
(later  Viscount)  Morley  [q.v.],  editor  o; 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  of  which  Fuller 
Maitland  then  became  the  musical  critic 
but  W.  T.  Stead  [q.v.]  succeeded  Morlej 
as  editor  in  1883,  and  in  1884  Fuller 
Maitland  was  dismissed.  The  same  year 
however,  he  became  the  musical  critic  o: 
the  Guardian  and  in  1889  he  succeedec 
Francis  Hueffer  [q.v.]  as  musical  critic  o: 
The  Times.  This  post  he  held  until  191] 
when  he  retired  to  Borwick  Hall,  neai 
Carnforth.  He  married  in  1885  Charlott< 
Elizabeth  (died  1931),  eldest  daughter  o 
WiUiam  Squire,  of  Feltham  Hill,  Middlesex  | 
and  sister  of  Barclay  Squire;  there  wer<} 
no  children  of  the  marriage.  He  died  a 
Borwick  Hall  30  March  1936. 

For  many  years  Fuller-Maitland  was  i 
prominent  figure  in  English  musical  lifCi 
Criticism  was  his  chief  activity;  and  th<| 
influence  which  he  wielded  was  wide  anc 
wholesome.    He  was  not  endowed  witl 


506 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Margoliouth 


originality  of  insight,  nor  with  special 
gifts  of  style;  but  he  had  high  ideals, 
extensive  knowledge,  and  untiring  en- 
thusiasm. His  tastes  were  in  the  main 
conservative ;  but  he  took  a  keen  interest 
in  many  different  kinds  of  music.  He  was 
an  early  researcher  into  folksong  and 
medieval  choralism,  and  (in  collaboration 
with  Squire)  produced  the  authoritative 
edition  of  the  Fitzwilliam  Virginal  Book 
(1894-1899) ;  he  was  a  Purcell  scholar,  and 
contributed  vol.  iv  (The  Age  of  Bach  and 
Handel,  1902)  to  the  Oxford  History  of 
Music.  Among  those  who  were,  roughly 
speaking,  his  contemporaries,  Brahms, 
Joachim,  Parry,  and  Stanford  Avere 
nearest  to  his  heart ;  and  he  wrote  books 
on  all  four.  He  also  edited,  with  many 
personal  contributions,  the  second  edition 
of  Grove's  Dictionary  (1904-1910).  Per- 
haps the  most  significant  book  of  his  large 
output  is  A  Door-keeper  of  Music  (1929), 
an  autobiogTaphy  from  childhood  to 
retirement :  attractively  full  of  good  sense 
and  pleasant  humour,  it  portrays  in  vivid 
fashion  many  varied  scenes  of  the  social 
and  artistic  life  of  Victorian  and  Ed- 
wardian England. 

Fuller-Maitland  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  D.Litt.  from  Durham  University 
and  was  an  associate  of  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Fine  Arts,  Brussels. 

[The  Times,  31  March  1936;  Cambridge 
Review,  30  October  1936 ;  J.  A.  Fuller-Mait- 
land, A  Door-keeper  of  Music,  1929  (portrait) ; 
Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians, 
4th  ed.,  vol.  ii,  edited  by  H.  C.  Colles ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.] 

Bruce  L.  Richmond. 

Ernest  Walker. 

MALET,  LUCAS  (pseudonym),  novelist. 
[See  Harrison,  Maky  St.  Leger.] 

MARGOLIOUTH,  DAVID  SAMUEL 
(1858-1940),  classical  scholar  and  oriental- 
ist, was  bom  in  London  17  October  1858, 
the  only  son  of  Ezekiel  Margoliouth,  of 
Bethnal  Green,  an  AngUcan  missionary  to 
the  Jews,  who,  it  is  said,  had  been  a  rabbi, 
and  a  nephew  of  Moses  Margoliouth  [q.v.], 
an  Anglican  divine.  His  mother  was  Sarah 
Iglitzki.  He  was  elected  to  a  scholarship 
at  Winchester  College  in  1872,  and  was 
probably  the  most  erudite  boy  who  had 
ever  passed  through  College.  In  1877  he 
proceeded  to  New  College,  Oxford,  of 
which  as  scholar,  fellow  (1881),  and  honor- 
ary fellow  (1937),  he  remained  an  orna- 
ment until  his  death.  He  obtained  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1878)  and 


in  literae  humaniores  (1880).  In  1889 
Margoliouth  was  elected  Laudian  pro- 
fessor of  Arabic  in  the  university  of 
Oxford,  a  position  which  he  held  until 
his  retirement  in  1937.  In  1899  he  was 
ordained,  and  proved  to  be  a  preacher 
of  curious  dignity  and  eloquence.  He 
travelled  extensively  abroad,  especially 
in  the  Middle  East,  and  in  1914,  after 
escaping  with  difficulty  from  Switzerland, 
he  immediately  offered  his  services  to  the 
War  Office,  which  sent  him  with  his  wife 
to  India,  to  lecture,  as  it  proved,  with 
marked  success.  After  1918  he  spent  much 
time  in  Bagdad  and  the  regions  near, 
where  he  built  up  a  reputation  for  knowing 
Islamic  things  better  than  most  learned 
Moslems  themselves,  and  also  for  great 
personal  kindness  towards  Eastern 
scholars.  In  1931,  as  his  active  teaching 
diminished,  he  gave  up  his  house  in 
Oxford  and  went  to  live  on  Boars  Hill. 
Two  years  later  (1933)  by  the  death  of  his 
wife,  Jessie  Payne,  daughter  of  Robert 
Payne  Smith  [q.v.],  dean  of  Canterbury, 
whom  he  had  married  in  1896,  he  lost  the 
close  companion  and  fellow  student  of 
thirty-seven  years,  but  continued  his  work 
undaunted.  They  had  no  children.  He 
died  in  London  22  March  1940. 

At  the  time  of  his  death  Margohouth 
had  among  the  Islamic  peoples  of  the 
East,  and  indeed  among  oriental  scholars 
in  Europe,  'an  almost  legendary  reputa- 
tion'. Even  as  an  undergraduate  his 
contemporaries  regarded  him  with  a  sort 
of  stupefaction.  It  was  intelligible  that 
a  Winchester  scholar  should  win  the  Hert- 
ford and  Ireland  scholarships  (1878)  in  his 
first  year  and  proceed  to  sweep  up  the 
Craven  (1881)  and  Derby  (1882)  scholar- 
ships; but  when  he  went  on  to  take  the 
Pusey  and  EUerton  Hebrew  scholarship 
(1879),  the  Houghton  Syriac  prize  (1880), 
the  Boden  Sanskrit  scholarship  (1881), 
and  the  Kennicott  Hebrew  scholarship 
(1882),  he  ceased  to  be  quite  human.  The 
impression  was  deepened  by  his  exotic 
and  vivid  appearance — Questo  hel  animal 
feroce,  as  an  ItaUan  lady  described  him — 
and  his  deep,  bell-like  voice.  Indeed, 
although  not  strikingly  Jewish  in  appear- 
ance, he  bore  about  him  some  marks  of 
Eastern  origin.  His  ancestors  at  one  time 
lived  in  Poland,  but  had  arrived  there 
from  the  farther  East. 

As  a  classical  tutor  Margoliouth  was  too 
far  removed  from  his  pupils'  standard. 
He  might  be  inspiring,  but  he  was  not 
encouraging.  His  lectures  were  apt  to 
set  the  few  undergraduates  who  followed 


597 


Margoliouth 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


them  off  in  pursuit  of  abstruse  problems, 
reading  scholia  and  'poaching  in  Suidas 
for  unUcensed  Greek'.  By  1884  he  had 
published  two  httle  books  on  Greek 
tragedy,  Studia  Scenica  (1883)  and  an 
edition  of  the  Agamemnon  (1884).  It  may 
have  been  disappointment  at  the  recep- 
tion of  these  books  which  led  him  to 
forsake  Greek,  at  least  temporarily,  and 
since  the  chair  of  Arabic  happened  to  faU 
vacant,  to  become  a  candidate  for  that. 
It  was  not  that  he  specially  admired 
Arabic  hterature :  he  was  attracted  by  the 
survival  of  Arabic  as  a  spoken  language 
and  the  vast  range  of  problems  which  it 
opened  up.  UnUke  most  scholars,  he  was 
a  brilliant  linguist,  and  although  some- 
what silent  in  English,  he  became  full  of 
conversation  when  addressed  in  Arabic  or 
Turkish. 

After  his  appointment  as  Laudian  pro- 
fessor MargoUouth's  main  work  was,  of 
course,  Arabic,  although  he  wrote  prefaces 
in  vigorous  Latin  and  pubhshed  two  or 
three  parerga  in  Greek.  He  had  already 
in  1887  published  Analecta  Orientalia  ad 
Poeticam  Aristoteleam,  in  which  the  Arabic 
and  Syriac  translations  are  edited  and 
used  for  the  textual  criticism  of  the  Greek 
text.  This  valuable  little  book  was  fol- 
lowed up  twenty-four  years  later  (1911) 
by  an  edition  of  The  Poetics  of  Aristotle, 
translated  from  Greek  into  English  and 
from  Arabic  into  Latin,  with  a  revised 
text,  commentary,  glossary,  and  ono- 
masticon.  This  is  a  strange  work.  It  seems 
as  if  Margoliouth,  irritated  at  the  mass  of 
conventional  criticism  which  has  been 
showered  upon  the  Poetics,  was  deter- 
mined at  every  point  to  dig  deeper,  and 
even  to  exaggerate  his  corrections.  His 
later  venture  in  Greek  scholarship  was  less 
fortvmate.  Always  fond  of  puzzles  and 
anagrams,  he  found  in  the  first  seven  lines 
of  the  Iliad  and  the  first  ten  of  the  Odyssey 
anagrams  containing  the  name  of  Homer 
with  details  of  his  birth,  life,  and  method. 
When  a  critic  showed  that  by  the  same 
method  of  anagram  the  Medea  and  some 
other  plays  could  be  made  to  state  that 
they  also  were  written  by  Homer,  he 
retorted  by  producing  not  merely  'signa- 
tures' by  anagram  but  also  dates,  in  the 
first  three  couplets  of  various  tragedies. 
It  is  difficult  to  know  how  far  he  was  serious 
in  these  exercises  of  ingenuity. 

But,  of  course,  his  reputation  rests  not 
on  these  parerga  but  on  his  oriental 
studies.  In  the  years  following  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  Laudian  chair  a  series  of 
erudite  publications — Arabic  Papyri  of  the 


Bodleian  Library  (1893),  a  translation  o 
part    of    Baidawi's    Koran-Commentar 
(Chrestomathia   Baidawiana,    1894),    anJ 
The  Letters  of  AhuH-'Ald  (1898)— testiflec 
to  his  mastery  of  some  of  the  most  difficul 
and  intricate  branches  of  Arabic  litera 
ture.    After  his  marriage  he  was  largely 
occupied  in  collaboration  with  his  wife  or 
A  Compendious  Syriac  Dictionary  foundec 
on  her  father's  Thesaurus  Syriacus  (1896- 
1903,  supplement  to  Thesaurus,  1927)  bul 
found  time  to  issue  a  series  of  biblica 
studies,  mostly  of  a  controversial  kind 
One  controversy  was  concerned  with  the 
Hebrew  fragment  of  Ecclesiasticus  which 
was  brought  back  from  the  East  in  189( 
by  Agnes  [Smith]  Lewis  [q.v.J  and  led  tc 
the  discovery  of  further  fragments  amon| 
the  Bodleian  and  British  Museum  papyri 
Margoliouth    insisted     that     the    newlj 
discovered    text    was    not    original    bul 
merely  a  translation  from  the  Persian 
which  in  turn  had  been  translated  from  t 
corrupt  text  of  the  Greek.  He  also  main- 
tained that  the  original  text  of  Eccle 
siasticus  was  written  in  rabbinical  Hebrew 
a  theory  which  involved  the  conclusior 
that    other    biblical    books,    written    ir 
classical  Hebrew,  must  be  far  earlier  thar 
scholars  have  placed  them.  He  published 
at  this  time  Lines  of  Defence  of  the  Biblica, 
Revelation  (1900),  an  edition  of  Proverbs 
Ecclesiastes,  and  the   Song  of  SolomoU' 
in  the  'Temple'  Bible   (1902),  and   Tht 
Synoptic  Gospels  as  Independent  Witnessa 
( 1 903) .  Another  controversy  ranged  round 
the  famous  Hebrew  papyri  discovered  at 
Elephantine,  which  apparently  prove  the 
existence  of  a  Jewish  community  in  Uppei 
Egypt  as  early  as  the  fifth  or  even  sixtl: 
century  b.c.   Margoliouth  suspected  thai 
the  papyri  were  modern  forgeries,  and 
although  he  made  few  converts  to  this 
view  he  produced  some  points  difficult  tc 
answer. 

With  the  appearance  of  Mohammed  am 
the  Rise  of  Islam  in  the  'Heroes  of  the 
Nations'  series  (1905)  Margoliouth  for  thf 
first  time  came  before  the  wider  public 
as  an  interpreter  of  Islam.  This  study 
was  followed  by  Mohammedanism  in  the 
'Home  University  Library'  (1911)  and  hy. 
his  Hibbert  lectures  on  the  Early  Develop] 
ment  of  Mohammedanism  (deliyeTedialdlSl 
published  in  1914),  as  well  as  a  number  ol 
articles  contributed  to  various  encyclo- 
paedias. All  three  books  had  a  substantia] 
success,  and  have  stood  for  a  generatioBi 
as  the  standard  English  works  on  theiij 
subjects.  Amongst  orientalists,  however 
they  had  a  somewhat  mixed  reception 


598 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Marlowe 


und  their  ironical  tone  sometimes  in- 
furiated his  Moslem  readers.  A  similar 
reception  met  the  publication  of  his 
Schweich  lectures  on  The  Relations  between 
Arabs  and  Israelites  prior  to  the  Rise  of  Islam 
(delivered  in  1921,  published  in  1924). 
Even  more  startling  was  an  article  pub- 
lished in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
•Society  in  192.5  denying  the  authenticity 
I  all  that  pre-Islamic  Arabian  poetry 
.vliich  is  regarded  with  such  especial 
admiration  by  many  experts  in  Arabic 
literature.  In  his  last  book,  the  volume  on 
Mohammed  in  Blackie's  'What  did  they 
Teach  ? '  series  (1939),  the  views  expressed 
in  his  earlier  books  are  sturdily  reasserted, 
but  the  careful  reader  may  perhaps  detect, 
in  spite  of  the  familiar  irony  and  astrin- 
gence  of  style,  some  slight  softening  of 
their  harder  edges. 

It  was  in  editing  and  translating  Arabic 
texts  that  Margoliouth's  scholarship  found 
its  most  congenial  field.  His  prodigious 
memory,  which  carried  without  effort  the 
fruits  of  a  vast  range  of  reading  in  many 
languages,  was  an  unequalled  instrument 
for  this  task.  The  series  of  six  volumes  of 
Yaqut's  Dictionary  of  Learned  Men 
(edited  in  Arabic  1907-1927),  comprising 
volumes  i  and  iii  and  an  abstract  of 
volume  iv  of  the  original  (volume  i  and  the 
full  text  of  volume  iv  are  apparently  lost), 
was  his  most  celebrated  editorial  achieve- 
ment. But  to  some  Arabists  his  less 
famous  texts — the  turgid  and  allusive 
Letters  of  AbuH-^Ald  and  the  discursive 
Table-Talk  of  at-Tanukhi  (Table-Talk  of  a 
Mesopotamian  Judge,  1921) — gave  a  more 
brilliant  exhibition  of  his  powers.  As  a 
translator  his  scrupulous  accuracy  and 
ease  of  diction  are  seen  in  his  versions  of 
the  Chronicle  of  Miskawaih  (text  by  H.  F. 
Amedroz)  published  under  the  title  of 
The  Eclipse  of  the  Abbasid  Caliphate 
(7  vols.,  1920-1921),  of  the  Table-Talk 
(1922),  and  the  DevdVs  Delusion  of  Ibn 
al- Jauzl  which  appeared  serially  in  Islamic 
Culture  (vols,  ix-xii,  1935-1938). 

Margoliouth  took  an  especial  delight 
in  subjects  which  called  as  much  for 
ingenuity  as  for  profound  knowledge. 
Hence  the  particular  appeal  which  Arabic 
papyrology  had  for  him.  He  spent  years 
in  classifying  and  interpreting  the  mass  of 
often  fragmentary  papyri  in  the  Crawford 
collection  belonging  to  the  John  Rylands 
Library  at  Manchester  (preliminary  edi- 
tion, Select  Arabic  Papyri  of  the  Rylands 
Collection,  1909;  complete  catalogue, 
1933). 

In    England    Margoliouth    had    many 


public  interests  and  was  by  no  means 
deficient  in  practical  energy  and  ability. 
He  worked  zealously  on  the  council  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society,  of  which  he  was 
director  in  1927  and  president  from  1934 
ll  1937,  and  which  awarded  him  its  gold 
medal  in  1928.  He  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  British  Academy  in  1915  and 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.Litt. 
from  Durham  University  in  1922.  He 
was  president  of  the  Eastern  Question 
Association  in  1910;  for  many  years  he 
was  chairman  of  the  governing  body  of  the 
Warneford  Hospital  for  mental  diseases, 
Headington,  Oxford. 

Margoliouth's  irony,  so  alarming  to 
strangers,  came,  it  would  seem,  from  the 
depths  of  his  nature.  It  was  part  of  a 
profound  scepticism,  against  which  in 
religious  matters  he  defended  himself  by 
the  assumption  of  an  extreme  and  almost 
paradoxical  orthodoxy,  but  which  other- 
wise pervaded  his  general  outlook.  Never 
was  a  learned  man  less  apt  to  wax  enthu- 
siastic over  the  value  of  learning.  He  liked 
solving  abstruse  problems.  What  really 
stirred  him  was  pity  for  human  suffering. 
When  it  came  to  that,  all  irony  and  scepti- 
cism fell  away ;  he  was  ready  to  give  most 
generously  both  of  time  and  money.  In 
his  last  years  the  persecution  of  the  Jewish 
people,  it  may  almost  be  said,  'haunted 
him  like  a  passion ' ;  he  worked  for  them 
as  he  had  worked  before  for  the  AssjTians 
and  Armenians. 

He  was  certainly  a  man  of  most  massive 
learning  and  great  ingenuity.  In  problems 
of  literature  his  judgement  seems  often  to 
have  been  imbalanced,  a  fault  which  was 
the  more  conspicuous  because  he  never 
'played  for  safety'  or  took  refuge  in 
vagueness.  He  had  an  immense  memory. 
He  was  never  slipshod,  never  unprepared. 
No  scholar  of  his  generation  left  so  deep 
and  permanent  a  mark  on  oriental 
studies. 

The  best  portrait  of  Margoliouth  is  the 
drawing,  made  when  he  was  a  young  man, 
by  William  Rothenstein  in  Oxford  Charac- 
ters (1896).  There  is  a  portrait  of  him 
by  Harriet  Halhed  in  the  Griffith  Insti- 
tute, Oxford,  painted  about  the  time  of 
his  marriage. 

[The  Times,  23  March  1940;  Gilbert  Mur- 
ray, David  Samuel  Margoliouth,  1858-1940  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi, 
1940 ;  personal  knowledge.]  Gilbert  Murray. 

MARLOWE,  THOMAS  (1868-1935), 
journalist,  born  at  Portsmouth  18  March 
1868,  was  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas  Henry 


599 


Marlowe 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Marlowe,  of  Auchnacloy,  co.  Tyrone,  by  his 
wife,  Kate,  daughter  of  John  Conway.  He 
was  educated  at  Queen's  College,  Galway, 
with  a  view  to  becoming  a  doctor,  and  at 
the  London  Hospital,  but  he  changed  his 
mind  and  entered  journalism  in  Dublin. 
From  there  he  went  to  Manchester  as  a 
reporter  and  in  that  capacity  joined  the 
staff  of  the  Star  when  it  was  founded  by 
T.  P.  O'Connor  [q.v.]  in  1888.  Six  years 
later  he  was  engaged  by  Alfred  and  Harold 
Harmsworth  [qq.v.]  for  service,  still  as  a 
reporter,  with  the  Evening  News.  Pro- 
moted to  be  news  editor,  he  gave  such 
solid  proof  of  ability  that  in  1899  he  was 
at  the  age  of  thirty-one  made  managing 
editor  of  the  three-year-old  Daily  Mail. 

Although  little  known  to  the  public, 
Marlowe  was  soon  a  prominent  figure  in 
the  newspaper  world.  The  rapid  increase 
in  the  circulation  of  the  Daily  Mail  during 
the  early  part  of  the  twentieth  century 
was  attributed  largely  to  his  soimd  judge- 
ment combined  with  a  readiness  to  adopt 
new  methods  and  a  quick  eye  for  fresh 
talent.  With  so  active  and  all-pervading 
a  chief  proprietor  as  Alfred  Harmsworth 
(Lord  Northcliffe),  the  editor  had  of 
necessity  to  take  second  place,  but  his 
shrewd  caution,  tempering  the  bold  enter- 
prise of  the  other,  was  of  great  value,  as 
Northcliffe  testified,  writing  generously  of 
Marlowe's  grasp  of  world  affairs,  happy 
knack  of  avoiding  monotony,  and  'the 
mixture  of  English  and  Irish  in  him  that 
gives  both  force  and  variety'. 

With  Harold  Harmsworth  (Lord 
Rothermere),  who  succeeded  his  brother 
as  controller  of  the  Daily  Mail  in  1922, 
Marlowe's  relations  were  not  at  aU  times 
so  smooth.  In  NorthcUffe  he  recognized 
a  newspaper  genius  and  was  willing  to 
defer  to  the  intuitions,  even  to  fall  in  with 
the  freaks,  of  so  adventurous  a  spirit. 
Rothermere  did  not  call  himself  a  journal- 
ist and  many  of  his  vagaries  in  the  field 
of  foreign  politics  seemed  to  Marlowe  so 
ill  advised  as  to  be  damaging  to  the  paper. 
In  1926,  therefore,  he  decided  to  retire  and 
went  to  live  in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  His 
health  had  suffered  from  the  difficult 
periods  through  which  he  had  gone.  He 
had  for  some  time  been  very  deaf  and  his 
friends  saw  with  regret  that  he  had  grown 
old  beyond  his  years.  He  died  at  sea, 
returning  from  a  visit  to  South  Africa, 
3  December  1935.  He  married  in  1889 
Alice  Warrender,  second  daughter  of  John 
Morrison  Davidson,  barrister  and  jour- 
nalist, and  had  four  sons,  of  whom  the 
two  elder  predeceased  their  father,  and 


four  daughters,  of  M'hom  two  survi^ 
him. 

[The  Times,  6  December  1935 ;  private  I 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  Hamilton  Fyfi 

MARR,  JOHN  EDWARD  (1857-193! 
geologist,  was  born  at  Poulton  le  Sands. 
Morecambe,  Lancashire,  14  Jtme  1857,  the 
third  son  and  youngest  of  the  nine  children 
of  John  Marr,  a  partner  in  a  silk  miU  and 
small  trader,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Simpson. 
His  father  was  of  Scottish  descent,  his 
ancestors  belonging  to  the  clan  Macdonald. 
He  was  educated  at  Lancaster  Grammar 
School,  and  in  1875  went  to  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  with  an  exhibition, 
which  was  later  turned  into  a  foimdation 
scholarship.  In  1878  he  was  placed  in  the 
first  class  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos, 
with  geology  as  his  main  subject. 

Marr  then  spent  four  years  at  Cam- 
bridge as  a  university  extension  lecturer. 
His  lectures  were  on  geology  with  parti- 
cular attention  to  the  relationship  between 
geology  and  scenery,  a  subject  which  he 
developed  later  in  his  book  The  Scientific 
Study  of  Scenery  (1900,  9th  ed.  1943),  in 
many  ways  a  pioneer  work  in  this  branch. 

For  a  short  time  Marr  acted  as  deputy 
to  A.  H.  Green  [q.v.]  at  Leeds  University 
before  returning  to  Cambridge,  and  in 
1881  he  was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at 
St.  John's  College,  which  he  held  until  the 
end  of  his  life.  In  1886  he  was  appointed 
university  lecturer  in  geology  vmder 
Thomas  McKenny  Hughes,  and  was  the 
leader  of  the  team  which  raised  the  school 
of  geology  at  Cambridge  to  pre-eminence 
amongst  the  universities  of  Great  Britain. 
In  1917,  on  the  death  of  Hughes,  he  was 
appointed  to  the  Woodwardian  chair  of 
geology,  from  which  he  resigned  in  1930 
for  reasons  of  ill  health. 

It  was  natiu-al  that  Marr,  who  had  spent 
his  early  life  in  the  Lake  District  and 
North  Wales,  should  be  attracted  to  the 
study  of  the  palaeozoic  strata,  particu- 
larly when  working  in  Cambridge  with  the 
tradition  of  Adam  Sedgwick  [q.v.]  still 
kept  strongly  to  the  fore  by  Hughes.  One 
of  his  earliest  pieces  of  work  was  to  visit 
the  lower  palaeozoic  rocks  of  Bohemia, 
then  being  worked  upon  by  Joachim  Bar- 
rande.  It  was  here  that  Marr,  as  a  young 
student,  showed  that  Barrande's  theory 
of  'colonies'  was  untenable,  and  that  the 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  was  to  be 
found  in  the  complex  earth  movements  of 
the  district. 

Many  other  papers  on  the  palaeozoic 


600 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Marshall 


rocks  and  their  fauna  appeared,  and  Man- 
acquired  a  worldwide  reputation  as  the 
authority  on  the  rocks  of  this  age.  Later 
he  devoted  much  time  to  the  elucidation 
of  the  glacial  and  postglacial  deposits  of 
the  Cambridge  area,  again  advancing  a  new 
interpretation,  which  in  its  major  points 
has  been  upheld  by  later  workers. 

It  was  not,  however,  as  a  writer  of 
scientific  papers  and  books  that  Marr 
exerted  most  effect  upon  geology  and 
geologists.  As  a  teacher  his  influence  was 
marked  on  a  long  series  of  pupils  from 
Cambridge.  In  the  lecture-room,  but  more 
particularly  in  his  home  and  in  the  field, 
his  teaching  was  of  the  highest  quality; 
here  his  pupils  soon  became  more  his 
friends  than  mere  pupils,  and  his  humorous 
stories  made  them  unconscious  of  receiving 
instruction.  In  the  field  Marr  had  a 
natural  flair  for  picking  out  the  most  im- 
portant features  in  a  geological  succession, 
and  although  in  early  life  he  lost  one  eye 
and  his  sight  was  poor,  this  facility  stayed 
with  him  to  the  end.  He  was  insistent 
upon  accurate  detail  of  observation,  and 
demanded  it  from  his  pupils. 

Besides  his  work  at  Cambridge,  Marr 
spent  much  energy  upon  the  work  of  the 
Geological  Society  of  London,  acting  as  a 
member  of  the  council  for  thirty-four 
years  in  aggregate,  and  as  president  from 
1904  to  1906.  His  advice  and  common- 
sense  counsel  smoothed  over  numerous 
awkward  controversies.  He  received  the 
Woolaston  medal  in  1914,  the  highest 
award  of  the  society. 

In  1891  Marr  was  elected  F.R.S.,  and  in 
1930  received  a  Royal  medal  of  the 
society.  He  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  Ph.D.  from  the  university  of  Prague  in 
1908.  In  1896  he  was  president  of  the 
geological  section  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion meeting  at  Liverpool  and  he  delivered 
the  Tyndall  lecture  at  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion in  1906. 

In  1893  Marr  married  Amy  Birkett 
(died  June  1933),  daughter  of  John  Stubbs, 
of  Shap  Wells,  Westmorland,  and  had  a 
son,  who  lost  his  life  by  enemy  action  in 
1942.  He  died  at  Cambridge  1  October 
1933. 

A  portrait  of  Marr  by  Kenneth  Green 
(1925)  hangs  in  the  Sedgwick  Museum, 
Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  2  October  1933;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  3, 
December  1934  (portrait) ;  Quarterly  Journal 
of  the  Geological  Society  of  London,  vol.  xc, 
1934 ;  Nature,  18  November  1933 ;  Proceedings 
of  the  Geological  Association,  vol.  xlv,  1934 ; 


Geological  Magazine,  July  1916;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  B.  R.  King. 


MARSHALL,  Sir  WILLIAM  RAINE 

(1865-1939),  lieutenant-general,  was  born 
at  Stranton,  near  Hartlepool,  29  October 
1865,  the  younger  son  of  William  Marshall, 
of  Foggy  Furs,  Stranton,  solicitor,  by  his 
wife,  Elizabeth  Raine.  Educated  at 
Repton  and  at  the  Royal  MiUtary  College, 
Sandhurst,  he  was  commissioned  to  the 
Sherwood  Foresters  in  January  1885.  The 
first  eight  years  of  his  service  were  spent 
with  the  1st  battalion  of  the  regiment, 
mainly  in  Ireland,  where  he  made  a 
reputation  as  a  horseman,  which  he  had 
increased  on  the  polo-groimd  and  the  race- 
course when  in  1893  he  was,  on  promo- 
tion to  captain,  transferred  to  the  2nd 
battalion  in  India.  In  1897  he  was  chosen 
to  fill  a  vacancy  in  the  1st  battalion  of 
The  Queen's  Own  Royal  West  Kent 
Regiment  in  the  Malakand  campaign  and 
was  present  at  the  action  of  Landakai 
(16  August).  In  October  of  that  year  he 
returned  to  the  2nd  Sherwood  Foresters 
for  the  Tirah  expedition,  in  which  he  led 
his  company  with  the  Gordon  Highlanders 
in  the  storming  of  Dargai  and  was  at  the 
capture  of  the  Arhanga  and  Sampagha 
passes. 

Marshall  was  with  his  battalion  in 
Malta  in  1899,  when  the  Malta  command 
was  ordered  to  raise  mounted  infantry 
companies  in  the  South  African  war,  and 
his  fame  as  a  horseman  marked  him  out 
for  service  with  one  of  these.  His  company 
formed  part  of  the  7th  Mounted  Infantry 
battalion,  and  he  led  it  in  the  fighting 
roimd  Bethlehem  and  the  Witte  Bergen, 
where  he  was  slightly  wounded,  in  the 
summer  of  1900.  In  the  following 
November  he  took  a  leading  part  in  the 
actions  roimd  Bothaville,  in  which  his 
commander,  Lieutenant-Colonel  P.  W.  J. 
Le  GaUais,  was  killed.  General  Sir  Ian 
Hamilton,  who  commanded  the  Mounted 
Infantry  division  in  South  Africa,  wrote 
of  this  action  in  the  introduction  to 
Marshall's  Memories  of  Four  Fronts  (1929) : 
'  Marshall  was  awarded  the  rare  distinction 
of  a  double  Brevet.  A  fine  reward,  but 
could  they  have  given  him  less  when,  by 
his  cool  yet  desperate  valour,  he,  and  he 
alone,  had  saved  the  whole  column  from 
destruction?  He  would  no  doubt  have 
got  the  Victoria  Cross  as  well :  also,  after- 
wards, another  Victoria  Cross  at  the 
Dardanelles;  only,  being  each  time  the 
senior  on  the  spot,  there  never  was  anyone 


601 


Marshall 


D.N.B.  1081-1&40 


1 


to  recommend  him.'  The  South  African 
war  brought  Marshall  the  brevets  of  major 
and  of  lieutenant-colonel,  and  when  in 
1908  he  became  a  substantive  major, 
promotion  to  brevet-colonel  followed 
automatically.  In  1911  he  was  appointed 
assistant  commandant  of  the  Moimted 
Infantry  School  at  Longmoor  and  in  the 
February  of  the  next  year  was  given  com- 
mand of  the  1st  battalion  of  the  Sherwood 
Foresters  in  India. 

In  October  1914  Marshall's  battalion 
was  ordered  home  to  form  part  of  the  8th 
division,  with  which  he  served  in  the 
winter  of  1914-1915  in  the  water-logged 
trenches  in  front  of  Neuve-Chapelle,  where 
he  was  slightly  wounded.  In  January  1915 
he  was  chosen  to  command  the  87th  brigade 
of  the  famous  29th  division,  then  forming 
for  the  Gallipoli  campaign.  He  was  in 
command  at  the  landing  at  'X'  beach  on 
25  April  and,  as  at  Botha ville,  his  coolness 
and  quick  decisions  saved  the  situation 
when  the  Turks  counter-attacked.  He 
was  again  slightly  wounded.  Twice  in  the 
early  operations  on  the  peninsula  he  was 
in  temporary  command  of  the  29th  divi- 
sion and,  his  reputation  as  a  leader  estab- 
lished, he  was  promoted  major-general  in 
Jime  1915,  commanding  successively  the 
42nd,  29th,  and  53rd  divisions.  The  53rd, 
reduced  to  a  skeleton  by  casualties,  was 
sent  in  the  late  autumn  to  Egypt  to  refit, 
Marshall  remaining  to  help  in  the  evacua- 
tion. 

From  Gallipoli  Marshall  went  to  Salonika 
to  command  the  27th  division,  with  which 
he  served  from  January  to  September 
1916,  a  period  of  stagnation  on  the  Mace- 
donian front.  He  was  then  given  com- 
mand of  the  III  (Indian)  Corps  in  Meso- 
potamia, where  in  August  Sir  F.  S. 
Maude  [q.v.]  had  been  appointed  com- 
mander-in-chief of  a  reorganized  army. 
Marshall  led  this  corps  in  the  operations 
which  culminated  in  the  defeat  of  the 
Turks  at  Kut  el  Amara  (24  February  1917) 
and  the  capture  of  Bagdad  (11  March). 
When  Maude  died  of  cholera  in  November, 
Marshall  was,  to  his  surprise,  appointed 
commander-in-chief  of  the  Mesopotamia 
Expeditionary  Force.  His  methods  were 
different  from  those  of  his  predecessor. 
He  wrote  in  Memories  of  Four  Fronts: 
'No  one  knew  what  policy  had  been  dic- 
tated to  Maude  nor  what  his  plans  were,  but 
one  could  not  well  sit  with  folded  hands  so 
long  as  there  were  Turkish  forces  within 
possible  striking  distance.  .  .  .  When  I 
first  took  over  command  I  had  felt  it  my 
duty  to  try  to  live  up  to  the  example  of 


ray  distinguished  predecessor  in  the 
matter  of  work  in  the  office,  but,  with  mj 
very  able  Staff  to  cope  with  the  details  ol 
the  various  problems  which  presentee 
themselves,  and  confining  myself  to  majoi 
points  on  which  a  decision  was  required 
I  very  soon  began  to  curtail  my  offia 
hours. '  The  time  saved  was  spent  mainlj 
with  his  troops.  Marshall's  immediatt 
task  was  to  make  Bagdad  secure  againsi 
a  Turco-German  counter-attack,  and  ir 
this  he  succeeded.  He  realized  thai 
Palestine  had  become  strategically  the 
more  important  theatre  and  readily  re 
leased  a  division  to  reinforce  Sir  Edmunc 
(later  Viscount)  Allenby  [q.v.].  Despite 
this  he  finished  the  war  in  Mesopotamit 
triumphantly  by  enforcing  the  surrendei 
of  the  Tiu-kish  army  on  the  upper  Tigris 
(October  1918). 

After  being  promoted  lieutenant-genera 
in  January  1919,  Marshall  was  appointee 
commander-in-chief.  Southern  Command 
India,  in  the  following  August.  He  arrived 
in  November.  Peace-time  administratior 
made  no  appeal  to  him,  and  in  1924,  the 
year  after  his  term  of  command  expired 
he  retired  from  the  army  and  gave  himsel 
up  to  a  life  of  coimtry  pursuits.  He  wa; 
colonel  of  the  Sherwood  Foresters  frorr 
1930  to  1935. 

Marshall  made  no  pretence  of  being  { 
student  of  war.  He  was  a  natural  leadei 
of  men,  of  imperturbable  courage,  with  f  j 
quick  eye  for  the  essential  in  a  critical 
situation,  and  the  gift  of  coming  to  the 
right  decision  quickly. 

Marshall  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1916 
K.C.B.  in  1917,  K.C.S.I.  in  1918,  ane: 
G.C.M.G.  in  1919,  and  was  awarded  manj 
foreign  orders.  He  married  in  1905 
Enmiie,  daughter  of  John  Hett,  of  Head 
lam  Hall,  co.  Durham,  and  widow  of  Johr 
Stephen-Stephen,  of  Edinburgh  and  Elgin 
He  had  no  childreri.  He  died  of  hearl 
failure  at  Bagnoles  de  I'Orne,  France, 
29  May  1939.  j 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Marshall  in  the 
Officers'  Mess,  Sherwood  Foresters,  Derby 
and  another  is  included  in  J.  S.  Sargent's 
picture  'Some  General  Officers  of  the 
Great  War',  painted  in  1922,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times,  1  June  1939 ;  Sir  W.  R.  Mar 
shall,  Memories  of  Four  Fronts,  1929 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  F.Maurice. 


MASSON,  Sir  DAVID  ORME  (1858-i 
1937),  chemist,  was  born  in  Londori 
13  January  1858,  the  only  son  of  Davie 


602 


DJ^^.B.  1981-1040 


Masson 


Masson  [q.v.],  the  historiographer  royal 

I  for  Scotland,  who  was  then  professor  of 

English  literature  at  University  College, 

I.ondon,   by   his   wife,   Emily   Rosaline, 

eldest    daughter    of    Charles    Orme,    of 

llampstead.     In    London    and    then    in 

iMinburgh  Masson's  childhood  and  youth 

were  strongly  coloured  by  the  literary 

influences   of  his   father's   and   mother's 

circles    which    included    the    Tennyson 

I  brothers,  the  pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood, 

j  Coventry     Patmore,     Mazzini,     Carlyle, 

Browning,  and  Huxley. 

In  Edinburgh  Masson  attended  the 
Academy  and  then  the  University, 
I  graduating  in  both  arts  and  science. 
'  After  a  period  at  Gottingen,  he  joined 
the  staff  of  University  College,  Bristol, 
in  1880,  engaging  in  work  with  (Sir) 
William  Ramsay  [q.v.]  on  atomic  volumes. 
Returning  in  1882  to  Edinburgh  to  a  re- 
search fellowship  in  chemistry,  he  pub- 
lished several  papers  on  glyceryl  trinitrite 
and  trinitrate,  and  on  salts  of  organic 
bases  such  as  sulphines.  In  1886  he 
married  Mary,  second  daughter  of  (Sir) 
John  Struthers  (1823-1899,  q.v.),  pro- 
fessor of  anatomy  in  Aberdeen  Univer- 
sity, and  migrated  to  Australia,  having 
accepted  an  invitation  to  the  chair  of 
chemistry  in  the  university  of  Melbourne. 
For  thirty-seven  years  he  was  a  pro- 
minent figure  in  the  academic  life  of  a 
rapidly  growing  city. 

Despite  the  handicaps  of  isolation  and 
heavy  teaching  responsibilities,  Masson's 
original  scientific  work  was  extensive  and 
of  a  high  order.  Apart  from  studies  asso- 
ciated with  the  periodic  classification  of 
the  elements,  his  chief  interests  lay  in  the 
development  of  the  theory  of  solution  as 
originally  put  forward  by  Svante  A. 
Arrhenius,  Jacobus  Hendricus  van  't 
Hoff,  Wilhelm  Ostwald,  and  their  school, 
and  in  interpreting  the  chemical  dynamics 
of  such  reactions  as  that  of  hydrogen 
peroxide  on  potassium  cyanide,  the  de- 
composition of  cyanates,  and  the  decom- 
position of  persulphuric  acid  and  its  salts 
in  aqueous  solution.  His  paper  on  the 
velocity  of  the  migration  of  ions  was  a 
particularly  valuable  contribution  in  its 
time  (Philosophical  Transactions  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  cxcii,  1899).  A 
problem  in  theoretical  interpretation 
always  attracted  him  rather  than  one  in 
design  or  manipulation  of  apparatus ;  and 
in  his  later  years  he  contributed  much 
to  the  development  of  ideas  on  the  con- 
stitution of  atoms,  and  again  to  the  theory 
of  dissociation  of  electrolj^es  in  water. 


From  1910  Masson  became  absorbed 
more  and  more  in  university  administra- 
tion and  in  outside  public  work.  In  1911- 
1913,  as  president  of  the  Australasian  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science, 
he  took  the  leading  part  in  organizing 
the  visit  of  the  British  Association  to 
Australia  in  1914.  He  actively  assisted 
the  first  expedition  imder  (Sir)  Douglas 
Mawson  to  the  Antarctic  in  1911-1914; 
and  again  in  1929-1931  he  was  chairman 
of  the  committee  responsible  for  the 
British,  Australian,  and  New  Zealand 
Antarctic  research  expedition.  During  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  served  on  many 
special  committees  dealing  with  munitions 
and  naval  matters  and  did  notable  work 
from  1915  onwards  in  drafting  the  scheme 
leading  to  the  establishment  of  a  Common- 
wealth Institute  of  Science  and  Industry, 
which  in  1926  was  reorganized  as  the 
Council  for  Scientific  and  Industrial 
Research,  on  which  he  served  imtil  his 
death.  Retirement  from  active  teaching 
in  1923  gave  him  increased  opportvmity 
for  outside  interests  which  included  service 
on  several  business  directorates. 

The  Melboiune  University  Chemical 
Society,  the  Society  of  Chemical  Industry 
of  Victoria,  and  the  Australian  Chemical 
Institute  were  aU  initiated  by  Masson  and 
so  (with  Sir  T.  W.  Edgeworth  David,  q.v.) 
was  the  AustraUan  National  Research 
Council.  He  presided  over  the  second 
Pan-Pacific  Scientific  Congress  held  in 
Melbourne  and  Sydney  in  1923. 

Masson  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1903,  and 
appointed  C.B.E.  in  1918,  and  K.B.E.  in 
1923:  he  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  Edinbiu"gh  University  in 
1924.  A  Masson  lecturership  was  estab- 
lished in  his  honour  by  the  National 
Research  Coimcil,  and  a  Masson  memorial 
scholarship  by  the  Australian  Chemical 
Institute. 

Personal  charm,  broad  vision,  originality 
and  independence  of  mind,  clarity  of  ex- 
position, and  perfect  integrity  made 
Masson  a  powerful  influence  in  his  adopted 
university  and  Dominion.  To  him  and  to 
his  two  colleagues  Sir  Walter  Baldwin 
Spencer  [q.v.],  biologist,  and  Sir  Thomas 
Lyle,  physicist,  the  science  schools  of 
Melbourne  University  will  be  for  ever 
deeply  indebted.  Masson  died  in  Mel- 
bourne 10  August  1937.  He  had  one  son, 
who  became  vice-chancellor  of  the  uni- 
versity of  Sheffield,  and  two  daughters, 
the  younger  of  whom  predeceased  her 
father. 

A  portrait  of  Masson  by  W.  B.  Mclnnes 


603 


Masson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


hangs  in  the  Wilson  hall  of  the  university 
of  Melbourne. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (portrait) ;  pri- 
vate information ;  i>ersonal  knowledge.] 

David  Rivett. 

MATHEW,  THEOBALD  (1866-1939), 
lawyer  and  wit,  was  born  in  London 
5  December  1866,  the  elder  son  of  the 
judge  Sir  James  Charles  Mathew  [q.v.], 
by  his  wife,  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Edwin 
Biron,  vicar  of  Lympne,  Kent.  He  was  a 
great-nephew  of  his  namesake.  Father 
Theobald  Mathew  [q.v.],  the  temperance 
advocate,  and  a  brother-in-law  of  John 
Dillon  [q.v.].  His  parents,  devout  Roman 
Catholics  and  admirers  of  Cardinal  New- 
man, sent  him  to  the  Oratory  School, 
Edgbaston,  and  to  the  cardinal's  old 
college,  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
matriculated  in  1885  and  graduated  with 
a  second  class  in  modern  history  in  1888: 
throughout  his  life  he  remained  greatly 
attached  to  his  college  and  cherished  the 
friendships  which  he  formed  there. 

Mathew  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lin- 
coln's Inn  (his  father's  Inn)  in  1890:  he 
became  a  bencher  of  the  Inn  in  1916,  and 
would  have  been  treasurer,  had  he  lived, 
in  1940.  He  was  in  chambers  with  (Sir) 
Joseph  Walton  [q.v.],  afterwards  judge  of 
the  High  Court,  and  he  there  acquired  a 
profound  knowledge  of  English  law  and 
an  unswerving  respect  for  its  traditions. 
He  practised  as  a  junior  on  the  common 
law  side  until  he  was  over  seventy  years 
of  age,  for,  like  his  father,  he  never  took 
silk ;  and  he  deliberately  preferred  to  keep 
his  forensic  work  within  reasonable 
dimensions. 

Mathew  first  came  into  public  notice  in 
1896  as  the  editor,  with  (Sir)  Malcolm 
Macnaghten,  of  the  Commercial  Cases, 
being  the  reports  of  proceedings  before  the 
Commercial  Court,  which  began  its  exis- 
tence, imder  the  inspiration  of  Mathew's 
father,  in  1895 ;  the  introduction  to  the 
first  volume  of  this  series  has  always  been 
regarded  as  the  most  authoritative  state- 
ment of  the  reasons  that  led  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Commercial  Court.  In  1902  he 
published  a  small  volume  entitled  Practice 
of  the  Commercial  Court.  He  was  recorder 
of  Margate  from  1913  to  1927  and  of 
Maidstone  from  1927  to  1936. 

But  Mathew's  fame  amongst  his  con- 
temporaries was  not  based  upon  his  pro- 
fessional career.  Far  beyond  legal  circles 
he  was  well  known  as  one  of  the  great  wits 
of  his  generation.    He  saw,  with  Irish 


5 


intuition,  the  funny  side  of  everything 
and  he  had  the  rare  gift  of  expressing  him- 
self, at  the  luncheon  table,  in  chambers, 
at  the  Garrick  Club,  and  elsewhere,  in 
swift  and  in  impromptu  sayings  which 
were  treasured  and  repeated  by  his  in- 
numerable friends,  and  came,  in  course  ol 
time,  to  be  an  unwritten  saga  of  plaisan- 
teries.  This  rich  endowment  of  humour 
was  aided  by  his  personal  appearance :  he 
was  small  and  insignificant  in  stature,  and 
wore  piijce-nez  behind  which  his  smile 
was  concealed,  and,  with  this  background, 
he  had  a  deep  and  resonant  voice  in  which 
his  witticisms  were  enounced.  They 
always  seemed  to  be  spontaneous.  One 
such  remark  may  here  be  recalled,  as 
typical  of  the  rest.  Visiting  the  library  of 
another  Inn,  at  that  time  notorious  for 
its  recruitment  of  students  from  equa- 
torial Africa,  Mathew  had  to  make  his 
way  through  ranks  of  these  dusky  lawyers. 
At  length  he  saw  the  white  face  of  a 
friend,  held  out  his  hand  in  greeting,  and 
said:  'Dr.  Livingstone,  I  presume.'  That 
tale  has  become  legendary,  but  it  shows 
admirably  how  happily  and  quickly  his 
mind  reacted  to  the  situation  in  which  he 
found  himself.  And  his  jokes  were  never 
tainted  by  any  kind  of  malice.  That,  no 
doubt,  is  one  reason  why,  as  was  said  in 
an  obituary  notice,  'no-one  in  the  Temple 
was  so  widely  known  or  so  well-beloved'. 
For  fifty  years  'Theo',  as  he  was  imiver- 
sally  called,  could  have  laid  claim  to  this 
vmique  position  amongst  his  contem- 
poraries. He  was  also  a  superb  after- 
dinner  speaker. 

Happily  Mathew's  reputation  as  a  wit 
is  not  solely  dependent  upon  verbal 
tradition,  for  in  1925  he  began  to  contri- 
bute to  the  Law  Journal  a  weekly  series 
of  'Forensic  Fables',  illustrated  by  his 
own  skilful  pen-and-ink  sketches  of  the 
characters.  These  were  subsequently 
published  as  a  separate  voliune  in  1926, 
and  were  followed  by  Further  Forensic 
Fables  (1928)  and  by  two  series  of  Final 
Forensic  Fables  (1929  and  1932).  Never 
before,  in  the  history  of  English  law,  has 
such  brilliant  and  penetrating  light  been 
thrown  upon  the  cursus  curiae  as  it 
presents  itself  to  the  practising  lawyer  of 
the  day.  And  Mathew  did  not  hesitate  to 
portray  in  his  gallery,  in  the  thinnest 
disguise,  some  famous  personalities  of 
the  time:  easily  identifiable  are  the  'old 
hand'  with  his  somewhat  improfessional 
methods;  the  fashionable  leaders  who 
settled  the  case  when  neither  of  them 
could  understand  the  question  addressed 


604 


DJJ.B.  1981-1940 


Maud 


to  them  by  the  erudite  judge ;  the  'tearful 
performer';  the  sagacious  soUeitor  who 
had  'Law  for  the  MilUon '  bound  in  a  cover 
lettered  with  the  name  of  an  old  law  re- 
port. It  is  believed  that  Mathew's  reputa- 
tion for  many  years  to  come  will  be 
sustained  by  these  four  slender  volumes. 

Mathew  also  collected  in  a  volume 
entitled  For  Lawyers  and  Others  (1937) 
some  learned  articles  which  he  contributed 
from  time  to  time  to  periodicals,  and  he 
was  a  contributor  to  this  Dictionary. 

Mathew  married  in  1898  Ruth,  daughter 
lit'  the  Rev.  George  Henry  Rigby  and  niece 
of  Sir  John  Rigby  [q.v,]  ;  he  had  five  sons 
and  two  daughters.  He  died  in  London 
20  June  1939. 

Sir  William  Orpen  [q.v.]  made,  on  the 
back  of  a  dinner  menu,  a  sketch  of  Mathew 
which  is  in  the  possession  of  the  family ; 
it  is  a  good  example  of  Orpen's  skill  in 
portraiture. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
P.  A.  Landon. 

MATHIESON,  WILLIAM  LAW  (1868- 
1938),  historian,  was  born  at  Wardie, 
Leith,  25  February  1868,  the  third  surviv- 
ing son  of  George  Mathieson,  shipowner, 
by  his  wife,  Isabella  Melrose.  He  was 
educated  at  Edinburgh  Academy  and 
University ;  at  the  latter  he  distinguished 
himself  in  the  history  classes  and  won  the 
lord  rector's  prize  in  1893.  Possessed  of 
modest  means  which  he  supplemented  by 
tutoring,  he  settled  down  to  a  scholar's 
uneventful  life  in  Edinburgh.  In  his  early 
years  he  contributed  to  W.  E.  Henley's 
National  Observer  and  reviewed  for  the 
Athenaeum.  By  his  first  historical  work, 
Politics  and  Religion,  A  Study  in  Scottish 
History  from  the  Reformation  to  the  Revo- 
lution (2  vols.,  1902),  he  stepped  into  the 
front  rank  of  contemporary  historians. 
Scotland  and  the  Union  .  .  .  1695-1747 
(1905),  The  Awakening  of  Scotland  .  .  . 
1747-1797  (1910),  and  Church  and  Reform 
in  Scotland  .  .  .  1797-1843  (1916)  com- 
pleted his  interpretation  of  Scottish 
history.  Primarily  interested  in  move- 
ments, especially  in  the  connexion  be- 
tween Church  and  State,  Mathieson  is  the 
historian  of  the  growth  of  the  moderate 
tradition  in  Scotland.  Based  on  a  thorough 
study  of  the  printed  sources,  his  interpre- 
tation is  distinguished  by  'a  philosophic 
charm  and  impartiality  which  humanized 
controversies  and  periods  which  are  still 
too  often  the  prey  of  partisan  bitterness'. 
His  generalities  are  vivified  by  apt  illu- 
stration, brilliant   historical  portraiture. 


and  a  certain  'demurely  trenchant  wit'. 
The  same  qualities  characterize  all  his 
work,  although  his  later  style  tended  to  be 
too  concentrated.  He  next  turned  to 
cognate  aspects  of  English  history  in 
England  in  Transition,  1789-1832  (1920) 
and  the  more  original  English  Church 
Reform,  1815-1840  (1923),  a  sketch  of  a 
hitherto  neglected  subject.  Finally,  his 
studies  of  the  slave  trade,  a  virtually  un- 
worked  field,  won  him  a  place  among  the 
historians  of  the  British  Empire.  He 
published  four  volumes  between  1926  and 
1936,  the  first  being  British  Slavery  and 
its  Abolition,  1823-1838,  and  the  last  The 
Sugar  Colonies  and  Governor  Eyre,  1849- 
1866.  He  also  wrote  the  chapter  on  'The 
Emancipation  of  the  Slaves,  1807-1838' 
for  the  Cambridge  History  of  the  British 
Empire,  vol.  ii  (1940). 

A  scholar  of  genial  personality,  Mathie- 
son died  at  Wardie  26  January  1938.  In 
1910  he  married  Christian  Mary  (died 
1941),  third  daughter  of  James  Shaw, 
J. P.,  sheriff  of  London  and  Middlesex  in 
1874-1875;  there  was  no  issue  of  the 
marriage.  He  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  Aberdeen  Univer- 
sity in  1912.  His  portrait  by  D.  Gordon 
Shiels  is  in  the  Scottish  National  Portrait 
Gallery,  Edinburgh. 

[The Scotsman,  27  January  1938 ;  The  Times, 
3  February  1938 ;  Edinburgh  Academy  Regis- 
ter, 1914 :  Bruce  Dickins.  'Thumbnail  Sketch  of 
an  Edinburgh  Scholar',  Edinburgh  Biblio- 
graphical Society's  Transactions,  vol.  ii  (1938- 
1945),  1946 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Henry  W.  Meikle. 

MAUD  CHARLOTTE  MARY  VIC- 
TORIA (1869-1938),  princess  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  Queen  of  Norway, 
was  born  at  Marlborough  House  26 
November  1869,  the  fifth  child  and  third 
and  youngest  daughter  of  the  Prince  and 
Princess  of  Wales.  Her  versatile  and 
vivacious  character  took  full  advantage 
of  the  education  of  the  time  and  the  many 
distinguished  visitors  to  Marlborough 
House  and  Sandringham  gave  her  numer- 
ous friends  and  a  very  wide  knowledge  of 
world  affairs,  while  she  fully  appreciated 
her  mother's  love  of  music  and  art. 

Princess  Maud's  love  of  coimtry  life,  her 
horses,  and  her  dogs  was  fully  gratified 
when  in  1896  she  married  Prince 
Christian  Frederick  Charles  George  Valde- 
mar  Axel,  second  son  of  the  Crown  Prince 
(afterwards  King  Frederick  VIII)  of  Den- 
mark, and  made  her  home  at  Appleton 
House,  Sandringham,  where  her  only  child 
Alexander   Edward    Christian    Frederick 


605 


Maud 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


(Crown  Prince  Olav)  was  born  in  1903. 
When  Prince  Charles  (as  he  was  known) 
was  elected  to  the  throne  of  Norway  in 
1905,  taking  the  name  of  King  Haakon 
VII,  Queen  Maud  entered  into  her  duties 
and  learnt  the  ways  of  her  new  country, 
which  could  not  be  better  exemplified  than 
in  her  upbringing  of  her  son  in  the  sports 
of  the  country,  yachting  and  ski-ing,  at 
which  he  excelled  at  a  very  early  age. 
Very  soon  the  Queen  had  laid  out  an 
English  garden  at  Bygdo  Kongsgaard, 
which  she  loved  to  show  to  all  her  friends, 
and  whenever  it  was  possible  for  her,  she 
was  to  be  seen  riding  and,  when  the  snow 
came,  running  on  skis. 

Queen  Maud's  great  love  of  children  and 
animals  led  her  to  support  any  good 
cause,  but  quietly  and  almost  shyly,  ac- 
cording to  her  nature ;  many  a  musician 
and  artist  will  remember  her  personal 
encoxn:agement.  Except  during  the  war 
of  1914-1918  the  Queen  was  able  to 
visit  Appleton  every  year  her:  last 
public  appearance  in  this  coimtry  was  at 
the  coronation  of  her  nephew  IQng  George 
VI  in  1937.  She  died  in  London  20 
November  1938,  and  was  buried  in  Oslo. 

[The  Times,  21  November  1938;  personal 
knowledge.] 

MAUDE,  AYLMER  (1858-1938),  trans- 
lator and  expounder  of  the  works  of  Count 
Leo  Tolstoy,  was  born  at  Ipswich  28 
March  1858,  the  yotmger  son  of  Francis 
Henry  Maude,  perpetual  curate  of  Holy 
Trinity  church,  Ipswich,  by  his  wife,  Lucy 
Thorp,  who  came  of  Quaker  stock. 
Maude  was  educated  at  Christ's  Hospital, 
but  in  1874  he  was  sent  to  the  Lyceum  at 
Moscow  for  two  years.  After  earning  his 
living  as  a  tutor  in  Enghsh  from  1877  to 
1880,  he  married  in  1884  Louisa, 
daughter  of  James  Stewart  Shanks,  a 
British  business  man  in  Moscow,  and  was 
employed  in  a  large  carpet  factory  there 
as  business  manager  and  later  as  director 
until  1897,  when  he  and  his  wife  returned 
to  England  and  settled  first  at  Purleigh  in 
Essex,  where  there  was  a  Tolstoyan 
colony,  and,  on  the  dispersal  of  the  colony 
in  1901,  at  Great  Baddow. 

Before  leaving  Russia,  however,  Maude 
had  made  the  acquaintance  and  close 
friendship  of  Tolstoy.  He  did  not  wholly 
accept  Tolstoy's  views,  and  he  frankly 
disapproved  of  Tolstoy's  suspicions  of  the 
motives  of  persons  who  differed  from  him. 
Nevertheless  this  friendship  was  the 
foundation  of  Maude's  claim  to  be  re- 
membered, for  he  devoted  the  rest  of  his 


life  almost  entirely  to  the  translation  oi 
all  the  works  of  Tolstoy  and  to  expound- 
ing his  ideas  in  Britain.  In  all  this  work  h( 
was  substantially  assisted  by  his  wife,  whc 
in  1900  translated  Tolstoy's  Resurrection 
Maude  was  manager  of  the  migration  oi 
the  persecuted  Doukhobors  from  the 
Caucasus  to  Canada,  to  which  Tolstoy  had 
devoted  the  proceeds  of  that  novel. 

Of  the  works  of  Tolstoy,  Anna  Karenina, 
War  and  Peace,  and  My  Confession  were 
among  those  jointly  translated  by  Maude 
and  his  wife.  So  too  were  in  general  the 
plays  and  the  shorter  stories.  Maude  him- 
self translated  the  works  on  religion,  art, 
and  sociology,  and  after  re-visiting  Tolstoy 
at  Yasnaya  Polyana  in  1902  he  was 
authorized  to  write  the  Life  of  Tolstoy 
which  appeared  in  two  volumes  {The  First 
Fifty  Years,  1908 ;  The  Later  Years,  1910) 
and  was  completed  shortly  before  Tolstoy's 
death.  All  these  works,  with  Maude's 
notes  and  introductions,  were  included  in 
the  monumental  edition  of  the  works  of 
Tolstoy  published  in  twenty-one  volumes 
from  1928  to  1937.  For  his  work  as  an 
interpreter  and  translator  of  Tolstoy,  he 
was  awarded  a  civil  list  pension  of  £100 
in  1932. 

Besides  the  translations,  Maude  also 
wrote  some  independent  treatises  which 
include  Tolstoy  and  his  Problems  (1901) 
and  A  Peculiar  People,  the  Doukhobors 
(1905) ;  and  he  appeared  as  a  vigorous  i 
defender  of  Dr.  Marie  Stopes  {The 
Authorized  Life  of  Marie  C.  Stopes,  1924, 
and  Marie  Stopes:  her  Work  and  Play, 
1933). 

In  the  war  of  1914-1918  Maude  went 
with  the  expedition  of  the  North  Russian 
Relief  Forces  as  a  lectvu-er  for  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association.  His 
lectures,  particularly  on  Tolstoy,  were  of 
the  greatest  value,  not  only  to  British  but 
also  to  Allied  troops  in  Russia,  while  his 
knowledge  of  Russian  literature  made  him 
a  most  valuable  liaison  officer  with  the 
leading  Russians,  both  military  and  civil. 
Maude  died  at  Great  Baddow  25  August 
1938,  and  was  survived  by  his  wife,  who 
died  in  1939.  There  were  four  sons  of  the 
marriage. 

A  portrait  of  Maude  by  Emily  Shanks 
is  in  the  possession  of  his  son  Mr.  Arnor " 
Maude. 

[The  Times,  26  August  1938;  private  ii 
formation.]  Janko  Lavrin. 


I 


MAXSE,  LEOPOLD  JAMES  (1864^ 
1932),  jom-nalist  and  political  writer,  wa'- 
born  in  London  11  November  1864,  the 


606 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1»40 


Maxwell 


second  child  and  younger  son  of  Admiral 
Frederick  Augustus  Maxse  [q.v.],  by  his 
wife,  Cecilia,  daughter  of  Colonel  James 
Steel,  who  came  of  a  family  of  Cumber- 
land squires.  He  was  a  nephew  of  Sir 
H.  B.  F.  Maxse  [q.v.].  His  father,  who 
had  had  little  education  owing  to  service 
at  sea,  was  determined  that  his  children 
should  have  what  he  had  missed.  In  his 
home  every  subject  was  questioned  and 
discussed ;  there  was  no  church-going,  but 
great  account  was  taken  of  character,  and 
much  attention  paid  to  sport  and  exercise. 
The  Maxses  often  went  to  France  and 
were  intimate  with  French  people,  but  one 
friendship  was  noteworthy,  for  the  ad- 
miral's eye  for  real  value  in  human  beings 
drew  him  to  Clemenceau,  friendship  with 
whom,  begun  in  1872,  developed  into  a 
family  intimacy  and  affected  Leo  Maxse 
all  his  life,  while  it  is  known  that  Clemen- 
ceau in  later  years  relied  upon  his  judge- 
ment. 

Maxse  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  at 
King's  CoUege,  Cambridge,  where  he  made 
a  reputation  for  wit  and  independence  of 
all,  even  undergraduates',  conventions, 
but  nevertheless  became  president  of  the 
Union.  Although  he  was  awarded  a  second 
class-  in  the  historical  tripos  of  1886,  he 
never  troubled  to  take  his  degree,  and  it 
was  one  of  his  sayings  that  he  could  never 
understand  why  people  liked  letters  after 
their  names  or  titles  before  them.  After 
Cambridge,  Maxse  went  on  a  grand  tour 
for  a  year  to  India,  Australia,  New  Zea- 
land, Canada,  and  the  United  States  of 
America,  from  which  he  returned  a  con- 
firmed imperialist.  His  plans  for  being 
called  to  the  bar  and  standing  for  parlia- 
ment were  ended  by  a  serious  illness,  but 
after  three  years  of  frustration.  Admiral 
Maxse  in  1893  bought  the  National  Review 
and  gave  it  to  his  son,  who,  it  was  thought, 
could  do  as  much  or  as  little  work  on  the 
review  as  his  health  allowed.  Through 
interest  in  the  work  he  recovered  to  better 
though  never  perfect  health.  Outwardly 
indeed  his  life  was  imeventful,  but  under 
him  the  National  Review  became  an  out- 
standing periodical,  for  not  only  had  he  a 
sure  knowledge  of  human  natiu*e,  but  his 
wit,  the  pungency  of  his  style,  and  his  lack 
of  vanity  attracted  journalists,  politicians, 
and  statesmen  alike.  In  London,  where 
he  settled  soon  afterwards,  he  discovered 
a  prodigious  power  of  serious  work ;  he 
began  to  influence  public  affairs,  and  his 
judgement  was  not  often  at  fault.  As 
early  as  1899  he  showed  his  prescience 
when,  on  being  offered  the  editorship  of  a 


great  colonial  newspaper,  he  refused, 
saying :  '  I  must  stay  in  England  to  warn 
people  of  the  German  danger.'  He 
attacked  alike  the  scandals  of  the  Dreyfus 
and  the  Marconi  affairs,  and  in  1925  he 
was  almost  alone  in  deploring  the  return 
to  the  gold  standard.  His  deep  under- 
standing and  admiration  for  France  led 
him  to  transports  of  indignation  when  he 
contemplated  the  efforts  of  this  country 
towards  a  rapprochement  with  the  Ger- 
mans. He  foresaw  war  after  1919  as  he 
had  foreseen  it  before  1914,  and  he  be- 
lieved that  if  the  Germans  were  plainly 
told  that  this  country  would  fight  for  what 
it  cared  for  and  maintain  its  armaments, 
war  could  be  prevented.  He  deplored  the 
waste  of  time  and  energy  represented  by 
the  League  of  Nations,  and  his  imperial- 
ism led  him  to  denounce  as  treachery  the 
proposed  abdication  of  British  imperial 
responsibilities  in  favour  of  Geneva.  He 
was  a  confirmed  democrat,  believing  in 
the  excellence  of  ordinary  m^p's  judge- 
ment, and  holding  that  if  the  public  had 
been  told  the  truth  it  would  have  rejected 
all  this  unsound  doctrine. 

Maxse  married  in  1890  Katharine,  the 
gifted  eldest  daughter  of  Vernon  Lushing- 
ton,  K.C.,  of  Cobham.  She  died  in  1922 
without  issue.  Maxse  himself  died  in 
London  22  January  1932. 

{The  Times,  23  January  1932;  personal 
knowledge.]  V.  Milner. 

MAXWELL,  Sir  HERBERT 
EUSTACE,  seventh  baronet,  of  Monreith 
(1845-1937),  coimtry  gentleman,  poli- 
tician, and  miscellaneous  writer,  was  born 
in  Edinburgh  8  January  1845,  the  fourth 
(but  only  survivor)  of  the  five  sons  of  Sir 
William  Maxwell,  sixth  baronet,  by  his 
wife,  Helenora,  third  and  youngest 
daughter  of  Sir  Michael  Shaw-Stewart, 
fifth  baronet,  of  Greenock  and  Blackball. 
His  early  education  at  home  and  at  private 
schools  aroused  his  interest  in  natural 
history  and  allied  subjects,  and  it  was 
developed  and  extended  by  the  tutor  who 
prepared  him  for  Oxford,  after  what  he 
himself  described  as  three  years  of  '  insen- 
sate indolence'  at  Eton.  During  his  year 
at  Christ  Church  (1864-1865)  he  failed  to 
pass  responsions,  the  first  step  towards  a 
commission  in  the  Scots  Fusilier  Guards. 
Nevertheless,  he  had  acquired  much 
miscellaneous  information  outside  the  nor- 
mal subjects  of  school  and  university,  on 
which  he  was  to  base  the  self-education  of 
later  years.  The  lack  of  purpose  in  his  early 
life  was  mainly  due  to  the  religious  tenets 


607 


Maxwell 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  his  parents.  Belonging  as  they  did  to  the 
Catholic  Apostolic  Church,  and  believing 
that  the  Second  Advent  was  imminent, 
neither  they  nor  their  children  felt  the 
necessity  for  planning  for  the  future.  He 
settled  at  Monreith,  helping  his  father  to 
manage  the  estate,  acquiring  a  imique 
knowledge  of  the  people  and  countryside 
of  Wigtownshire,  of  which  he  was  lord- 
lieutenant  from  1903  to  1935,  and  estab- 
lishing his  reputation  as  a  sportsman  in 
angling,  shooting,  and  horsemanship. 

After  his  father's  death  in  1877  Max- 
well entered  parliament  as  conservative 
member  for  Wigtownshire.  He  was 
an  assiduous  lord  of  the  Treasury  from 

1886  to  1892,  besides  serving  on  various 
commissions.  As  chairman  of  the  tariff 
reform  party  in  the  House  of  Commons  in 
1903,  he  was  closely  associated  with  the 
policy  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.].  In 
1906  he  did  not  seek  re-election  owing  to 
financial  circumstances,  which  were  also 
the  stimulus  of  his  literary  work.  Between 

1887  and  1932,  beginning  with  novels,  he 
wrote,  in  addition  to  several  biographies, 
books  on  topography,  natural,  local,  and 
national  history,  archaeology,  horticul- 
ture, and  sport,  as  well  as  making  nimier- 
ous  contributions  to  scientific  and  other 
periodicals.  He  had  a  charming,  if  too 
facile,  pen,  but  such  remarkable  versatility 
precluded  deep  research.  His  Memories  of 
the  Months  ran  to  seven  series  (1897- 
1922),  of  which  the  first  three  reached 
revised  editions  (1931-1932).  Robert  the 
Bruce  and  the  Struggle  for  Scottish  Inde- 
pendence (1897)  and  a  Life  of  Wellington 
(1899)  are  typical  of  his  historical  work. 
His  editing  of  the  Creevey  Papers  (2  vols., 
1903)  provided  a  valuable  supplement  to 
the  Greville  Memoirs.  His  Rhind  lecturer- 
ships  in  archaeology  at  Edinburgh  (1893 
and  1911),  presidency  of  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries  of  Scotland  (1900-1913),  and 
chairmanship  of  the  National  Library  of 
Scotland  (1925-1932),  testified  to  his 
services  to  learning.  Other  distinctions 
included  that  of  privy  councillor  (1897), 
F.R.S,  (1898),  and  K.T,  (1933).  He  also 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Glasgow  and  Dvu-ham. 

A  personality  of  much  charm,  and  the 
most  prominent  of  scholarly  country 
gentlemen  in  Scotland,  Maxwell  died  at 
Monreith  30  October  1937  at  the  age  of 
ninety -two.  He  married  in  1869  Marj^ 
(died  1910),  eldest  daughter  of  Henry 
.  Fletcher-Campbell,  of  Boquhan,  Stirling- 
shire, and  had  two  sons  and  three 
daughters.  Both  his  sons  predeceased  him 


(the  younger  died  of  wounds  received 
Antwerp  in  1914)  and  he  was  succeec 
as  eighth  baronet  by  his  grandson,  Ayr 
(born  1911).  A  portrait  by  Oswald  Birlj 
is  at  Monreith, 

[Sir  H.  Maxwell,  Evening  Memories,  198 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Sod 
No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait).] 

Henry  W.  Meikle. 

MAXWELL  LYTE,  Sm  HENRY 
CHURCHILL  (1848-1940),  deputy  keeper 
of  the  public  records  and  historian.  [See 
Lyte.] 

MELBA,  Damk  NELLIE  (1861-1931), 
prima  donna,  whose  married  name  was 
Helen  Porter  Armstrong,  was  bom 
19  May  1861  at  Doonside,  Richmond,  a 
suburb  of  Melbourne,  Australia,  the  elder 
daughter  and  third  child  of  David  Mitchell, 
by  his  wife,  Isabella  Ann  Dorn.  Both 
parents  were  natives  of  Forfarshire ;  the 
mother  was  of  Spanish  descent.  David  i 
Mitchell,  a  man  of  strong  character,  had 
arrived  in  Australia  with  one  sovereign  in 
his  pocket  and  became  a  pioneer  in  a 
number  of  enterprises,  in  all  of  which  he 
succeeded,  and  his  children  therefore  grew 
up  in  good  circumstances.  Music  was  one 
of  the  interests  and  accomplishments  of 
the  household.  Nellie  Mitchell,  encouraged 
to  sing  from  her  earliest  childhood,  sang  at 
six  years  of  age  at  a  school  concert  organ- 
ized by  her  aunts  in  the  Richmond  town 
hall,  gaining  an  enthusiastic  encore. 
Later  she  was  sent  to  the  Presbyterian 
Ladies'  College  in  East  Melbourne,  where 
the  professor  of  singing  was  Madame 
Christian,  who,  a  former  colleague  of  Sir 
Charles  Santley  [q.v.],  had  settled  in 
Australia  and  later  became  a  mm. 
Madame  Christian  was  a  pupil  of  the 
famous  singing  teacher  Manual  Garcia 
[q.v.],  and  from  her  Nellie  Mitchell  first 
learnt  the  principles  of  vocalism  of  the 
great  school  which  Madame  Mathilda 
Marchesi,  also  the  pupil  of  Garcia,  and  at 
one  time  deputy  for  him,  later  unfolded 
fully  to  her,  and  to  which,  as  she  always 
insisted,  she  owed  the  development  and 
preservation  of  her  voice.  Before  leaving 
Australia  she  had  some  lessons  from  an  old 
Italian  opera  singer,  Signor  Cecchi,  but  in 
her  autobiography.  Melodies  and  Memories 
(1925),  she  does  not  refer  to  them  with 
satisfaction. 

David  Mitchell  was  averse  to  his 
daughter  embarking  on  the  career  of  a 
professional  singer,  but  after  her  marriage 
in  December  1882  (dissolved  in  1900)  to  a 


608 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Melba 


young  Irishman,  Charles  Nesbitt  Frederick 
Armstrong,  youngest  son  of  Sir  Andrew 
Armstrong,  first  baronet,  of  Gallen  Priory, 
King's  County,  manager  of  a  sugar  planta- 
tion in  Port  Mackay,  she  lived  a  desolate 
and  lonely  life  in  the  heart  of  the  bush  in 
a  small  house  with  a  galvanized  iron  roof. 
At  length  her  father  paid  her  passage  to 
England,  and  after  giving  a  farewell 
concert  Nellie  Armstrong  in  the  spring  of 

1886  sailed  for  England  with  her  only 
child,  a  son.  Her  reception  in  London  was 
by  no  means  encouraging.  She  sang  to 
Sir  Arthur  Sullivan  [q.v.],  who  said  that 
after  a  year's  further  study  he  might  be 
able  to  offer  her  a  small  part  in  The 
Mikado.  Wilhelm  Ganz,  however,  accom- 
panist and  friend  of  Patti,  arranged 
opportunities  for  her  to  sing  at  Prince's 
jHall,  Piccadilly,  and  at  the  Freemasons' 
iHall  in  the  City,  but  the  audiences  were 
'small,  and  the  experience,  in  spite  of  some 

(uigratulations,  Mrs.  Armstrong  found 
disheartening.  She  therefore,  having  been 
;i;iven  in  Australia  a  letter  of  introduction 
to  Madame  Mathilde  Marchesi,  decided  to 
jgo  to  Paris  and  present  it.  The  famous 
(teacher,  testing  her  voice  thoroughly, 
irecognized  its  possibilities,  and  also  found 
a  character  full  of  determination  to  pursue 
the  hard  path  of  a  serious  student  of 
singing.  So  sure  was  Marchesi  of  the 
success  in  store  for  Nellie  Armstrong  that 
in  the  middle  of  the  first  interview  she 
j  went  out  of  the  room  to  inform  her  husband 
that  she  had  'found  a  star'. 

After  a  year's  lessons,  the  famous  entre- 
meneur  Maurice  Strakosch,  hearing  her 
in  Madame  Marchesi's  studio,  offered 
j" Melba' — as  she  called  herself  at  her  first 
jappearance  in  Paris — a  ten  years'  con- 
jtract,  which  was  duly  signed.  Immediately 
|ifterwards  came  a  better  offer  from  the 
ifianagement  of  the  Theatre  de  la  Monnaie 
n  Brussels.  This  Marchesi  advised  Melba 
;o  accept,  assuring  her  that  Strakosch,  an 
)ld  friend,  would  not  make  any  difficulty. 
He  did,  however;  but  an  impasse  was 
Iramatically  solved  by  his  sudden  death, 
ind  Melba' s  appearance   on   13  October 

1887  as  Gilda  in  Verdi's  Rigoletto  was  an 
extraordinary  triumph,  the  entire  Brussels 
Jress  proclaiming  the  advent  of  an  artiste 
)f  the  first  rank. 

Soon  after  this,  (Sir)  Augustus  Harris 
q.v.]  engaged  the  successful  debutante 
or  his  first  season  of  Italian  opera  at 
-ovent  Garden,  and  Melba  made  her  debut 
here  as  Lucia  in  Donizetti's  Lucia  di 
^ammcrmoor  on  24  May  1888.  Atthecon- 
;lusion  of  the  opera  it  was  clear  that  she 


had  captured  the  public,  and  she  had 
instantly  won  the  suffrages  of  society, 
making  more  friends  among  the  wealthy 
patrons  of  the  Royal  Italian  Opera  than 
any  prima  donna  of  the  period.  There 
was  some  reserve,  however,  on  the  part  of 
the  press  from  the  point  of  view  of  com- 
plete operatic  artistry,  but  the  extra- 
ordinary beauty  of  the  strikingly  fresh 
voice,  perfectly  even  through  its  compass 
of  two  and  a  half  octaves  (B  flat  to  Fill), 
used  with  an  art  that  seemed  nature  in 
perfection,  was  freely  recognized. 

On  8  May  1889  Melba  made  her  first 
appearance  at  the  Paris  Opera  as  Ophelie 
in  Ambroise  Thomas's  Hamlet  and  studied 
the  parts  of  Marguerite  in  Faust  and 
Juliette  with  Gounod  himself.  Sarah 
Bernhardt  also  went  to  infinite  pains  in 
assisting  Melba  to  realize,  in  a  way  suited 
to  her  individuality,  the  dramatic  possi- 
bilities of  the  characters  which  she  had  to 
assume  on  the  operatic  stage,  but  she 
never  became  a  really  good  actress.  Yet 
the  critics,  on  her  first  appearance,  hailed 
her  as  such  and  did  not  appreciate  her  voice. 

Less  than  a  month  later  Melba  returned 
to  Covent  Garden,  largely  through  the 
influence  of  Lady  de  Grey  (later  Mar- 
chioness of  Ripon),  who  overcame  some 
hesitation  on  the  prima  donna's  part,  and 
she  appeared  (15  June)  in  the  first  per- 
formance ever  given  in  England  of 
Gounod's  Romdo  et  Juliette  in  French, 
with  Jean  de  Reszke  as  Romeo  and 
Edouard  de  Reszke  as  the  Friar.  A 
marked  advance  in  Melba's  acting  and 
singing  had  taken  place:  the  association 
of  Melba  with  the  brothers  De  Reszke  was 
an  operatic  landmark,  and  thenceforth 
she  took  part  regularly  in  every  Covent 
Garden  season. 

Melba's  position  was  now  assured,  and 
her  public  life  was  passed  in  singing  at 
various  capitals  of  the  world,  although  it 
was  not  until  1893  that  she  first  visited 
the  United  States,  where  she  sang  at  the 
World's  Fair  in  Chicago.  Her  visit  to  St. 
Petersburg  in  1891  was  noted  for  two 
things ;  the  Tsar's  command  to  lay  aside 
the  tradition  that  only  Russian  should  be 
sung  at  the  Imperial  Opera  House,  so  that 
Melba  and  her  colleagues  could  sing 
Romdo  et  Juliette  in  French,  and  the  invita- 
tion given  to  her  to  sing  in  private  to 
Anton  Rubinstein,  who  was  already  in 
failing  health.  Again  when  in  the  follow- 
ing year  she  sang  at  the  Scala  at  Milan  at 
the  beginning  of  a  brilliant  tour  in  Italy, 
Verdi  went  to  hear  her,  and,  inviting  her  to 
his  house,  went  with  her  through  the 


609 


Melba 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Desdemona  music  in  Otello  and  praised  her 
rendering.  In  1893,  in  fulfilment  of  a 
promise  made  to  the  composer,  she  intro- 
duced the  part  of  Nedda  in  Pagliacci  to 
the  British  public  at  Co  vent  Garden.  For 
her,  Saint-Saens  composed  the  title-role 
of  HiUne  which  she  studied  while  travel- 
ling in  the  train  during  a  tour  of  Canada 
and  the  United  States  in  1903,  and  in 
which  she  sang  at  Monte  Carlo  in  1904. 
The  last  opera  which  she  added  to  her  list 
of  twenty-five  was  La  Boheme,  and  she 
sang  in  it  first  at  Philadelphia  in  1898, 
having  studied  it  with  the  composer  in 
Italy  earlier  in  the  year.  So  much  did  the 
part  appeal  to  her,  that  she  exerted  her 
personal  influence  and  got  La  Boheme 
accepted  at  Covent  Garden,  and  'Melba 
nights'  there  became  for  a  generation  of 
opera  lovers  her  appearance  in  that  role. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  when  she  re- 
visited her  native  land  in  1902,  after  an 
absence  of  sixteen  years,  'Australia's 
queen  of  song'  was  greeted  with  a  rare  en- 
thusiasm. She  never  forgot  Australia, 
visiting  it  not  infrequently,  and  after  her 
retirement  in  1926  she  settled  there  finally 
at  Coombe  Cottage  near  Coldstream  in 
Victoria.  In  1918  she  was  appointed 
D.B.E,  and  was  thenceforth  known  as 
Dame  Nellie  Melba:  in  1927  she  received 
the  G.B.E.  Another  order  which  she 
received  was  that  of  Science,  Art,  and 
Music,  which  was  pinned  on  her  breast  in 
1904  by  Queen  Alexandra  after  a  state 
concert  at  Buckingham  Palace  in  honoiu- 
of  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand. 

Melba's  kindness  of  heart  was  wide  and 
her  charitable  acts  many.  When  in  1906 
Oscar  Hammerstein's  enterprise  in  grand 
opera  at  the  Manhattan  Opera  House 
seemed  doomed  to  disaster,  and  she  was 
advised  by  friends  in  New  York  not  to 
fulfil  her  engagement,  she  came  to  the 
rescue,  although  the  circumstances  called 
for  considerable  courage ;  but  her  success 
was  greater  than  ever  before,  and  the 
audiences  were  extraordinary.  She  raised 
over  £100,000  for  the  Red  Cross  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918.  Towards  yovmg  singers 
she  constantly  showed  interest,  inculcat- 
ing the  method  she  used,  which  she  held 
could  alone  bring  out  the  full  beauty  of  the 
human  voice,  and  preserve  it.  She  showed 
her  camaraderie  by  appearing  in  1922- 
1923  in  London  with  the  British  National 
Opera  Company,  an  organization  which 
was  making  a  praiseworthy  effort  to 
further  the  cause  of  opera  in  English. 

Melba's  voice  was  not  of  an  instantly 
arresting  strength,  but  it  had  that  power 


of  expansion  in  a  large  building  which  is  a 
characteristic  of  beautiful  singing.  It  was 
this  'Stradivari'  quality  which  won  the 
admiration  of  the  violinists  Joachim  and 
Sarasate.  The  technique  was  invariably 
impeccable:  scale  passages  were  like 
strings  of  pearls,  and  Melba's  shake  was 
perfect  in  its  distinctness,  evenness,  and 
limpidity.  Melba  was  favoured  in  appear- 
ance by  nature  and  she  preserved  her 
physical  advantages  by  careful  living. 
When  she  retired,  her  intonation  was  still 
perfect,  her  technique  imimpaired,  and 
her  voice  still  wonderfully  fresh  and  '  girl- 
like'. She  died  at  Sydney  23  February 
1931. 

A  bust  of  Melba  was  made  by  (Sir)  Ber- 
tram Mackennal  [q.v.]  in  September  1899. 
Melba  presented  it  to  the  National  Gallery, 
Melbom-ne,  and  it  was  unveiled  by  Lord 
Brassey,  then  governor  of  Victoria. 

[Nellie  Melba,  Melodies  and  Memories 
1925 ;  Agnes  G.  Murphy,  Melba.  A  Biography} 
1909 ;  Herman  Klein,  Cfreat  Women  Singers  oy 
My  Time,  1931 ;  Grove's  Dictionary  of  Musi( 
and  Musicians,  4th  ed.,  vol.  iii,  edited  bj 
H.  C.  Colics;  Arthur  Mason  in  Musica, 
Opinion,  1  April  1931 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
J.  Mewbubn  Levien. 

MELLANBY,  JOHN  (1878-1939) 
physiologist,  was  born  at  West  Hartlepool 
12  June  1878,  the  second  of  the  three  sons 
of  John  Mellanby,  manager  of  a  ship- 
building yard  at  West  Hartlepool,  by  hi' 
wife,  Mary  Isabella  Lawson,  of  Edin-I 
burgh.  From  Barnard  Castle  School  hf 
won  a  scholarship  at  Emmanuel  CoUege.i 
Cambridge,  in  1896 ;  he  was  placed  in  the 
first  class  in  both  parts  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1899  and  1900,  physiology) 
In  1902,  after  a  year's  post-graduate  work 
he  was  put  in  charge  of  the  new  research 
laboratories  of  Messrs.  Burroughs,  Well- 
come &  company,  manufacturing  chem- 
ists, at  Brockwell  Park,  Heme  Hill.  Afteij 
three  years  he  went  to  Manchester  irj 
order  to  do  the  clinical  work  for  thej 
medical  degree ;  he  took  his  M.D.  ( Cantab.  1 
in  1907.  ! 

Mellanby  then  worked  as  a  G.  H.  Lewesl 
research  student  at  Cambridge  until  ir' 
1909  he  was  appointed  lecturer  in  charg( 
of  the  physiological  department  at  St 
Thomas's  Hospital  medical  school,  a  posi! 
which  became  a  professorship  in  the 
university  of  London  in  1920;  there  h<! 
stayed  imtil  he  was  appointed  WaynflettI 
professor  of  physiology  in  the  university 
of  Oxford  in  1936,  thereby  becoming  J 
fellow  of  Magdalen  College. 


610 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Mercer 


Mellanby's  work  is  contained  in  some 
sixty  papers,  mostly  in  the  Journal  of 
Physiology  and  the  Proceedings  of  the 
Royal  Society.  The  most  important  deal 
with  three  main  subjects,  the  proteins  of 
the  blood,  coagulation,  and  the  secretion 
of  the  pancreas.  His  duties  at  Brockwell 
Park,  connected  with  the  preparation  of 
diphtheria  antitoxin,  provided  him  with 
ample  supplies  of  horses'  blood  and  while 
there  he  laid  the  foundation  of  work  to 
which  he  returned  again  and  again 
throughout  his  life. 

Mellanby's  first  paper,  on  'Globulin' 
(1905),  was  important  in  showing,  first, 
that  in  the  solution  of  globulin  by  electro- 
lytes bivalent  ions  are  four  times  as 
efficient  as  univalent:  secondly,  that  the 
conductivity  due  to  the  ions  is  not 
diminished  by  the  presence  of  the  globulin ; 
thirdly,  that  the  long  current  belief  that 
globulin  could  be  separated  from  albumin 
by  fractional  precipitation  with  neutral 
sulphates  was  mistaken;  much  more 
albumin  than  globulin  is  thrown  down  in 
serum  by  half  saturation,  for  instance, 
with  ammonium  sulphate  and  also  at 
lower  concentrations :  fourthly,  that  some 
eighty  per  cent,  of  the  protein  in  serum  is 
compounded  with  un-ionized  salts ;  for  if 
serum  was  frozen  in  a  long  vertical  tube, 
then  thawed  and  removed  in  a  number  of 
layers,  each  layer  contained  more  solids 
than  the  layer  next  above  it,  protein  and 
salts  in  the  same  proportion,  the  lowest 
maybe  ten  times  as  much  as  the  upper- 
most. If  the  protein  was  coagulated  and 
removed  the  conductivity  at  the  original 
temperature  increased  in  proportion  to 
the  amount  of  protein  removed. 

In  work  on  coagulation  Mellanby  de- 
vised a  method  for  isolating  prothrombase, 
finally  (1930)  as  a  dry  white  powder  that 
could  be  kept  and  retain  its  properties  for 
months;  and  by  a  related  method  ob- 
tained refined  preparations  of  thrombase 
(1933).  With  these  purified  products  the 
study  of  coagulation  was  put  on  a  surer 
basis,  as  his  own  work  showed. 

In  work  on  the  pancreas  Mellanby 
showed  that  the  curdling  of  milk  in  the 
stomach  is  due  to  pepsin,  thus  explaining 
the  secretion  of  'rennet'  by  fish,  and  that 
the  curdling  by  pancreatic  juice  is  due  to 
trypsin.  As  this  action  on  milk  can  be 
demonstrated  with  far  smaller  amounts  of 
trypsin  than  any  other  action  on  proteins, 
he  used  it  for  a  delicate  method  of  estimat- 
ing the  amount  of  trypsin,  which  has 
proved  valuable.  He  also  added  to  exact 
knowledge  of  the  other  enzymes  secreted 


by  the  pancreas.  And  in  the  matter  of 
secretin  he  corrected  many  errors  in  the 
original  description  of  its  properties, 
formation,  and  mode  of  action,  and 
especially  showed  that  the  secretion  which 
it  induced  consisted  of  little  more  than  an 
alkaline  fliuid,  the  appropriate  medium  for 
the  action  of  the  pancreatic  enzymes,  and 
contained  none  of  those  enzymes  them- 
selves. Finally  in  1932  he  succeeded  in 
obtaining  preparations  of  secretin  as  a 
fine  white  powder  of  which  1/40  of  a 
milligram  injected  into  the  bloodstream 
of  a  cat  gives  unmistakable  evidence  of 
activity.  One  of  his  latest  publications 
(1938)  dealt  with  the  action  of  secretin  on 
the  liver,  which  resembles  that  which  it 
has  on  the  pancreas.  In  this  work  he 
describes  interesting  observations  on  the 
formation  and  circulation  of  bile  salts. 

Mellanby  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1929. 
He  was  editor  of  Physiological  Abstracts 
for  many  years  and  had  been  a  member  of 
the  Medical  Research  Council  since  1936. 
He  had  a  happy  disposition,  but  he  shrank 
from  accepting  any  responsibility  outside 
his  own  department.  He  married  in  1911 
Alice  Mary,  daughter  of  Joseph  Watson, 
solicitor,  of  Barrhead,  and  had  a 
daughter.  He  died  at  Oxford  15  July 
1939. 

[The  Times,  17  July  1939 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8,  January 
1940  (portrait) ;  British  Medical  Journal, 
1939,  vol.  ii,  p.  256;  Lancet,  1939,  vol.  ii, 
p.  226.]  J.  B.  Leathes. 

MERCER,  JAMES  (1883-1932), 
mathematician,  was  born  at  Bootle, 
Liverpool,  15  January  1883,  the  son  of 
Thomas  Mercer,  an  accovmtant,  by  his 
wife,  Sarah  Alice  Mercer.  He  was  educated 
at  University  College,  Liverpool,  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
obtained  a  scholarship  in  1902.  He  was 
bracketed  senior  wrangler  with  John 
Edensor  Littlewood  in  1905,  was  a 
Smith's  prizeman  in  1908,  and  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  Trinity  in  1909.  After  a  short 
period  of  service  as  an  assistant  lecturer 
in  Liverpool  University,  he  was  recalled 
to  Cambridge  as  a  fellow  and  mathematical 
lecturer  of  Christ's  College  in  1912,  and, 
up  to  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914,  was 
active  in  both  teaching  and  research.  He 
served  as  a  naval  instructor  during  the 
years  1914  to  1918,  and  was  present  in 
that  capacity  at  the  battle  of  Jutland. 

The  high  hopes  raised  by  Mercer's  early 
mathematical  work  were  never  fully 
realized.   He  resumed  his  activity  on  his 


611 


Mercer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


return  to  Cambridge,  and  was  elected 
F.R.S.  in  1922  ;  but  his  healtli,  which  had 
always  been  imcertain,  began  to  fail,  and 
led  to  his  resignation  of  his  lecturership  in 
1926.  He  never  recovered  his  powers,  and 
died  suddenly  in  London  21  February 
1932.  He  married  in  1911  Annie,  fourth 
daughter  of  William  Barnes,  of  Walton, 
near  Liverpool,  and  left  a  son. 

Mercer,  although  he  wrote  compara- 
tively little,  and  almost  all  of  it  before  he 
was  thirty,  was  a  mathematician  of  high 
originality  and  great  skiU,  who  made 
important  advances  in  more  than  one 
branch  of  analysis.  He  was  one  of  the 
first  English  mathematicians  to  occupy 
himself  with  the  then  novel  theory  of 
integral  equations,  to  which,  and  to  the 
closely  related  theory  of  orthogonal  series, 
he  contributed  a  number  of  striking 
theorems.  One  theorem  in  particular, 
concerning  'kernels'  with  positive  'eigen- 
values', has  become  famous,  and  appears 
imder  his  name  in  every  treatise  on  the 
subject.  A  second  'Mercer's  theorem',  of 
an  entirely  different  kind,  plays  an  impor- 
tant part  in  the  modern  theory  of  divergent 
series;  and  these  two  theorems  alone  are 
enough  to  secure  for  him  a  permanent 
place  in  the  history  of  mathematics. 

{Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  2,  December  1933  (portrait); 
Journal  of  the  London  Mathematical  Society, 
vol.  viii,  1933 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  G.  H.  Hakdy. 

MERRIVALE,  first  Baron  (1855- 
1939),  judge  and  politician.  [See  Duke, 
Hknby  Edward.] 

MERZ,   CHARLES   HESTERMAN 

(1874-1940),  electrical  engineer,  was  born 
at  Gateshead-upon-Tyne  5  October  1874, 
the  eldest  child  of  John  Theodore  Merz, 
a  naturalized  British  subject  of  German 
descent,  who  was  an  industrial  chemist 
and  author  of  A  History  of  European 
Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  (1896- 
1914).  His  mother  was  Alice  Mary, 
daughter  of  Edward  Richardson,  a  well- 
known  Quaker  of  Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 
Charles  Merz,  his  two  brothers,  and  his 
sister,  were  brought  up  in  a  highly  intel- 
lectual atmosphere  at  The  Quarries, 
Benwell,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  which 
became  the  home  of  the  Merz  family. 
Here  were  to  be  met  persons  who  took  an 
active  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  day, 
political,  economic,  religious,  literary,  and 
scientific,  and  this  environment  doubtless 
had  an  important  bearing  on  the  develop- 


ment of  the  character  and  mental  outlook 
of  Charles  Merz. 

Owing  to  his  mother's  Quaker  connexion, 
Merz  was  educated  at  Bootham  School, 
York,  after  which  he  studied  at  the  Arm- 
strong College  (later  King's  College),  New- 
castle-upon-Tyne. In  1893  he  went  sa 
a  pupil  to  the  Pandon  Dene  generating 
station  of  the  Newcastle-upon-Tynt 
Electric  Supply  Company  which  had  been 
founded  in  1889  by  his  father  and  Roberl 
Spence  Watson  [q.v.],  who  had  married 
his  mother's  sister.  In  1894  he  became  8 
pupil  at  the  Robey  engineering  works  ir 
Lincoln.  Sometime  later  he  was  engaged 
at  the  Bankside  station  of  the  City  ol 
London  Electric  Lighting  Company,  super- 
intending contracts  for  the  British  Thom- 
son-Houston Company,  manufacturers  ol 
electrical  plant,  of  which  company  hii 
father  was  at  that  time  a  director.  At  the 
age  of  twenty-three  he  was  appointed 
manager  and  engineer  to  operate  the  plant 
which  the  British  Thomson-Houstor 
Company  had  provided  for  electricitj 
supply  in  Croydon.  So  successful  was  ht 
in  this  that  he  was  given  charge  of  s 
similar  and  larger  contract  at  Cork  which 
also  included  tramways.  Here  it  was  thai 
he  came  into  contact  with  Williani 
McLellan,  who  in  1902  became  his  partnei 
in  the  well-known  firm  of  Merz  and 
McLellan,  consultative  electrical  engineers 
(established  first  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
and  later  in  London  also),  imtil  the  latter's 
death  in  1934. 

When  the  Walker  and  Wallsend  Gas 
Company  was  seeking  legal  sanction  foi 
the  establishment  of  an  electricity  supply 
for  shipyards  and  other  industrial  worfc 
on  Tyneside,  young  Merz  was  asked  to| 
assist  the  company  in  its  parliamentary! 
bill.  On  the  successful  conclusion  of  this| 
application  he  and  McLellan  were  ap-l 
pointed  consulting  engineers  for  the  scheme! 
and  took  up  residence  at  Newcastle-upon-i 
Tyne.  Merz  was  only  twenty-five  yearsi 
old  when  in  1899  this  work  was  com 
pleted. 

Merz  and  McLellan  designed  the  Nep-' 
tune  Bank  power  station  at  Wallsend 
which  was  inaugurated  by  Lord  Kelvin 
in  1902,  this  being  the  first  station  in 
Great  Britain  to  generate  3-phase  current 
at  what  was  then  the  high  voltage 
of  5,500.  This  pioneer  electric  powerj 
supply  undertaking  was  shortly  after-| 
wards  transferred  to  the  Newcastle-upon-l 
Tyne  Electric  Supply  Company,  and  underi 
Merz's  guidance  it  and  its  sister  companiesj 
were  combined  to  constitute  the  Northi 


612 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Methuen 


Eastern  Electric  Supply  Company  which 
used  to  cover  the  whole  of  the  north-east 
coast.  Upon  the  obvious  success  of  this 
undertaking  were  based  the  important 
Electricity  Company  Acts  of  1902.  The 
same  year  Merz  was  responsible  for  a 
second  pioneer  undertaking  in  the  electri- 
fication of  the  North-Eastern  Railway 
between  Newcastle  and  Tynemouth, 

Before  a  parliamentary  committee 
Merz  was  a  superb  expert  witness,  calm, 
collected,  lucid,  accurate,  and  penetrating. 
These  characteristics  were  conspicuously 
in  evidence  during  the  protracted  pro- 
ceedings of  the  Administrative  County  of 
London  electric  power  bill  in  1904-1905 
when  he  was  only  thirty  years  of  age. 
After  passing  all  committee  stages  the  bill 
failed  through  lack  of  parliamentary  time, 
and  a  great  opportunity  for  consolidating 
the  chaotic  London  position  was  lost. 
!  In  1907  Merz  visited  Australia  in  order 
to  report  on  the  electrification  of  the 
Melbourne  suburban  railway  system  which 
lie  supervised  in  1912.  This  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  widespread  association  with 
I  power  supply  and  railway  electrification 
I  abroad,  and  he  made  frequent  visits  in 
relation  thereto  to  Australia,  the  Argen- 
tine, South  Africa,  India,  and  the  United 
i  States  of  America. 

i  In  addition  to  carrying  on  his  varied 
;and  extensive  practice  as  a  consultative 
I  electrical  engineer,  Merz  served  his  country 
I  in  several  other  respects.  He  was  chair- 
Inian  of  the  electric  power  supply  sub- 
I  committee  of  the  coal  conservation 
I  committee  (1916),  of  the  report  of  which 
a  far-reaching  outcome  is  the  electric 
'grid'  system  of  Great  Britain.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  organ- 
ized for  the  first  lord.  Sir  Eric  Geddes 
[q.v.],  the  new  Department  of  Experiment 
and  Research  at  the  Admiralty,  of  which 
he  became  the  first  director. 

Although  Merz  was  a  vice-president  of 
the  Institution  of  Electrical  Engineers 
(1912-1915),  his  dislike  of  public  speaking 
restrained  him  from  accepting  nomination 
for  the  presidency,  but  he  greatly  valued 
the  bestowal  (1931)  of  the  Faraday  medal 
by  the  institution,  as  well  as  the  honorary 
degree  of  D.Sc.  (1932)  conferred  upon  him 
as  '  a  pioneer  in  the  new  era  of  three-phase 
electrical  transmission  in  this  country '  by 
the  university  of  Durham,  and  the  vice- 
presidency  of  the  Royal  Institution,  in 
which  he  took  a  deep  interest.  He 
haracteristically  declined  all  pecimiary 
recompense  or  titular  honours  in  respect 
of  his  work  for  the  government. 


Merz  married  in  1913  Stella  AUce 
Pauline,  daughter  of  Edmimd  de  Satur, 
of  Dublin,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
He,  his  two  children,  and  two  servants 
were  killed  by  an  enemy  bomb  at  his  home 
in  Kensington  15  October  1940.  The 
house  was  completely  demolished,  only 
Mrs.  Merz  escaping,  although  injured. 

Merz  possessed  a  mind  orderly  to  an 
extraordinary  degree,  as  well  as  the  faculty 
of  dealing  with  both  the  broad  essentials 
of  a  problem  and  the  details  of  its  execu- 
tion, and  his  equable  temperament  was 
invaluable  in  matters  of  controversy. 
Taken  all  in  all  he  has  some  claim  to 
be  regarded  in  his  own  sphere  as  the 
principal  electrical  engineer  of  his  time. 
He  was  an  appreciative  employer  and  a 
warm  friend.  He  combined  deep  religious 
feeling  with  a  strong  love  of  nature,  in 
particular  of  the  Lake  District,  where  he 
spent  many  happy  holidays. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Merz  by  Arnold 
Mason  at  the  Institution  of  Electrical 
Engineers. 

[Personal  knowledge.] 

R.  A.  S.  Redmaynk. 

METHUEN,  PAUL  SANFORD,  third 
Baron  Methuen,  of  Corsham  (1845- 
1932),  field-marshal,  was  born  at  Corsham 
Court,  Wiltshire,  1  September  1845,  the 
eldest  of  the  three  sons  of  Frederick  Henry 
Paul  Methuen,  second  Baron  Methuen,  by 
his  wife,  Anna  Horatia  Caroline,  only  child 
of  John  Sanford,  vicar  of  Nynehead, 
Somerset.  He  was  descended  from  a 
brother  of  John  Methuen  [q.v.],  the  nego- 
tiator of  the  '  Methuen  treaty '  with  Portu- 
gal. His  grandfather  Paul  Methuen,  first 
Baron  Methuen  (1779-1849),  represented 
Wiltshire  in  several  parliaments. 

Methuen  was  educated  at  Eton  and, 
after  two  years'  service  in  the  Royal  Wilt- 
shire Yeomanry,  joined  the  Scots  Fusilier 
Guards  as  ensign  and  lieutenant  in 
November  1864,  being  promoted  lieu- 
tenant and  captain  in  December  1867; 
captain  and  lieutenant-colonel  in  July 
1876;  and  regimental  major  in  October 
1882,  after  serving  as  adjutant  of  the  1st 
battalion  from  August  1868  to  November 
1871.  He  held  several  staff  appoint- 
ments, as  brigade  major.  Home  District 
(1871-1876),  as  mihtary  attache  in  Berhn 
(1878-1881),  as  assistant  adjutant  and 
quartermaster-general.  Home  District 
(1881-1884),  and  as  deputy  adjutant- 
general  in  South  Africa  (1888-1890).  He 
saw  active  service  at  Amoaful  in  the 
Ashanti  campaign  of  1873-1874  on  the 


618 


Methuen 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


staff  of  Sir  Garnet  (later  Viscount)  Wolse- 
ley  [q.v.],  and  was  commandant  at  head- 
quarters in, Egypt  for  three  months  in 
1882,  being  present  at  the  battle  of  Tel- 
el-Kebir.  He  had  received  his  brevet- 
colonelcy  in  1881.  He  served  in  the 
expedition  of  Sir  Charles  Warren  [q.v.]  to 
Bechuanaland  in  1884-1885,  where  he 
commanded  Methuen's  Horse,  a  corps  of 
mounted  rifles  raised  for  the  expedition, 
and  obtained  his  first  experience  of  South 
Africa  and  of  the  Boers.  He  became  a 
substantive  colonel  in  November  1888, 
being  promoted  major-general  in  May  of 
that  year ;  he  commanded  the  Home  Dis- 
trict from  1892  to  1897,  having  succeeded 
his  father  in  the  title  in  1891.  In  1897  he 
served  as  press  censor  at  headquarters 
with  the  Tirah  expedition  and  was  pro- 
moted lieutenant-general  in  April  1898, 
and  on  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African 
war  he  was  given  command  of  the  1st 
division. 

By  the  time  Methuen  reached  South 
Africa,  early  in  November  1899,  the 
original  plans  had  had  to  be  abandoned, 
and  he  foimd  himself  committed  to  reliev- 
ing Kimberley  with  fewer  than  10,000 
men,  including  a  mere  handful  of  mounted 
troops.  For  lack  of  them,  although  he 
successfully  dislodged  the  Boers  from 
strong  positions  at  Belmont  (23  Novem- 
ber) and  Graspan  (25  November)  these 
successes  could  not  be  exploited  by  an 
effective  pursuit.  Attacking  again  on  28 
November  he  found  their  skilfully  chosen 
position  at  the  Modder  river  difficult  to 
capture,  but  his  left  eventually  secured  a 
passage  over  the  river  and  in  the  night  the 
Boers  acknowledged  defeat  by  retiring. 
He  was  slightly  wounded  in  the  engage- 
ment. It  has  been  suggested  (German 
Official  History,  vol.  v,  p.  851)  that  by 
pressing  on  at  once  before  the  'much 
shaken'  Boers  could  recover  from  three 
successive  reverses  much  might  have  been 
gained.  However,  the  troops  needed  rest, 
remounts,  and  reinforcements ;  difficulties 
over  communications  and  supplies  were 
serious  and  Kimberley  was  in  no  urgent 
need  of  immediate  relief.  But  the  suspen- 
sion of  the  advance  allowed  the  Boers 
to  draw  reinforcements  from  Kimberley 
and  Natal  and  to  make  their  next  posi- 
tion, at  Magersfontein,  really  formidable. 
Methuen's  attack  (11  December)  mis- 
carried, although  for  a  time  the  issue  himg 
in  the  balance ;  indeed,  the  German  critic 
suggests  that  success  might  have  been 
achieved  by  greater  vigour  in  pressing 
the  attack,  especially  on  the  part  of  the 


subordinate  commanders.  This  repulse, 
together  with  the  defeats  of  Lieutenant- 
General  Sir  William  Gatacre  at  Stormberg 
(10  December)  and  of  General  Sir  Redvers 
BuUer  [qq.v.]  at  Colenso  (15  December), 
was  a  terrible  shock  to  British  compla- 
cency, and  brought  home  to  everyone  the 
seriousness  of  the  problem  to  be  faced  and 
the  need  for  more  substantial  efforts. 
Methuen  became  the  target  for  much 
foolish,  ill-informed,  and  unjust  criticism, 
mainly  from  civilians  with  little  qualifica- 
tion for  forming  an  opinion  of  any  Value ; 
but  Buller  manfully  resisted  the  proposal 
to  make  Methuen  a  scapegoat  by  super- 
seding him  and  Lord  Roberts  not  only 
retained  him  in  his  command  but  em- 
phatically declared  that  the  task  set 
Methuen  had  been  impossible  with  that 
force.  Moreover,  no  army  had  as  yet  faced 
magazine  rifles  and  smokeless  powder  and 
the  training  of  the  first  troops  to  endure 
that  ordeal  was  likely  to  leave  room  foi 
improvement. 

During  the  operations  which  ended  in 
initial  failure  at  Paardeberg  (18  Februai^ 
1900),  Methuen  at  the  Modder  river  helped 
to  detain  General  Piet  Cronje  in  his  posi- 
tion. Subsequently  he  conducted  opera- 
tions in  the  Kimberley-Boshof  area  during 
the  advance  on  Pretoria  with  considerabk i 
success  and  continued  actively  engaged.; 
mainly  in  the  Western  Transvaal,  until 
the  end  of  the  war.  Most  officers  of  his 
seniority  had  gone  home,  but  he  remained 
chasing  the  elusive  C.  R.  de  Wet  [q.v.^ 
with  untiring  energy  and  persistence.  Hf 
never  spared  himself ;  if  he  was  assiduous 
for  his  troops,  his  unremitting  efforts  madt 
no  small  contribution  to  the  ultimate  suc- 
cess. If  he  achieved  no  spectacular  victory 
he  had  many  minor  successes,  notabl) 
against  General  Jacobus  Hendrik  de  U 
Rey  near  Klerksdorp  on  19  Februar} 
1901 ;  he  gave  his  opponents  no  rest,  made; 
many  captures,  thwarted  them  again  anc 
again,  and  gained  their  respect  as  well  as 
the  trust  and  affection  of  his  own  men. 
It  was  a  cruel  fate  which  led  to  his  bein^ 
beaten,  badly  wounded,  and  capturec 
towards  the  end  of  the  war,  at  Tweeboscl! 
(7  March  1902),  through  the  misconduct  oj 
the  undisciplined  and  half-trained  irregu! 
lars  who  constituted  the  majority  of: 
column. 

Appointed  colonel  of  the  Scots  Guaf 
in  May  1904,  an  appointment  which  gav(| 
both  him  and  the  regiment  great  pleasure  j 
Methuen  was  promoted  general  the  samel 
month  and  in  June  received  commanc 
of  the  IV  Army  Corps.    This  was  trans 


anR 

rave 
iurej 


614 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Meyrick 


Jbrmed  into  the  Eastern  Command  in  1905 
and  gave  him  the  opportmiity  of  putting 
into  practice  the  lessons  which  he  had 
learned  in  South  Africa,  particularly  with 

ard  to  accurate  rifle-fire.  As  a  trainer 
!  administrator  he  made  a  substantial 

ntribution  to  the  high  standard  of  train- 
iiij;  attained  by  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  in  1914. 

In  April  1908  Methuen  was  appointed 
general  officer  commanding-in-chief  in 
South  Africa,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
1912.  He  was  most  popular,  particularly 
with  his  former  opponents,  and  did  much 
by  improving  relations  between  Boers  and 
British  to  give  the  Union  of  South  Africa 
a  jTood  start.  He  was  governor  and  com- 
mander-in-chief of  Natal  in  1910.  He  was 
promoted  field-marshal  in  June  1911. 

Methuen's  service  did  not  end  here: 
jilthough  in  his  seventieth  year  he  was 
iippointed  governor  and  commander-in- 
chief  of  Malta  in  February  1915  and  re- 
tained the  post  until  May  1919.  Here,  as 
always,  he  was  indefatigable  and  never 
^l>ared  himself,  and  it  was  thanks  largely 
M  his  foresight  that  Malta  found  itself  well 
I  [  nipped  with  hospitals  and  staff  for  the 
Dardanelles  expedition.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  uni- 
versity of  Malta,  and  after  returning  home 
he  was  appointed  constable  of  the  Tower 
at  the  end  of  1919.  But  he  lived  chiefly  at 
Corsham  Court,  doing  much  to  help 
the  British  Legion,  the  Church  Lads'  Bri- 
gade, the  Boy  Scouts,  the  V.A.D.  organiza- 
tion, and  many  local  movements  and 
causes,  here,  as  in  the  army,  winning  the 
affection  and  respect  of  all  whom  he  met. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1882,  C.M.G.  in 
1886,  K.C.V.O.  in  1897,  K.C.B.  in  1900, 
G.C.B.  in  1902,  G.C.V.O.  in  1910,  and 
G.C.M.G.  in  1919. 

Methuen  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1878  to  Evelyn  (died  1879),  eldest  daughter 
(by  his  second  marriage)  of  Sir  Frederick 
Hutchinson  Hervey-Bathurst,  third  baro- 
net, of  Clarendon  Park,  Wiltshire,  and  had 
no  children  ;  secondly,  in  1884  to  his  cousin 
IMary  Ethel  (died  1941),  second  daughter 
of  William  Ayshford  Sanford,  of  Nynehead 
Court,  formerly  in  the  Colonial  Service, 
and  had  three  sons  and  two  daughters,  the 
elder  of  whom  predeceased  her  father.  He 
died  at  Corsham  Court  30  October  1932, 
and  was  succeeded  as  fourth  baron  by  his 
eldest  son,  Paul  Ayshford  (born  1886). 

Methuen's  influence  over  the  army  was 
widespread,  extending  even  beyond  the 
Brigade  of  Guards,  for  whom  he  worked 
in  every  way,  much  as  did  Sir  John  Moore 


for  the  Light  Brigade.  Chivalrous,  kindly, 
generous,  with  the  highest  standards  of 
duty  and  expecting  others  to  be  imbued 
with  the  same  ideals,  he  got  the  best  out 
of  those  with  whom  he  dealt  and  who 
could  not  fail  to  profit  by  so  fine  an 
example.  His  great  personal  courage, 
which  led  him  into  the  fighting  line  even 
when  in  high  command,  was  never  more 
conspicuous  than  at  Tweebosch,  and  his 
unselfishness  and  his  devotion  to  his  call- 
ing were  equally  conspicuous  along  with 
dignified  endurance  of  unreasonable 
criticism  and  an  assiduous  discharge  of  a 
great  variety  of  public  services. 

A  portrait  of  Methuen  by  John  Shirley 
Shirley-Fox  (1905)  hangs  in  Corsham 
Court. 

[The  Times,  31  October  1932;  Sir  J.  F. 
Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant,  (Official)  History 
of  the  War  in  South  Africa  1899-1902,  1906- 
1910;  German  Official  History  of  the  War  in 
South  Africa,  1904  (translated);  private  in- 
formation.] C.  T.  Atkinson. 

MEYRICK,  EDWARD  (1854r-1938), 
entomologist,  was  born  at  Ramsbury, 
Wiltshire,  24  November  1854,  the  eldest 
son  of  the  Rev.  Edward  Meyrick,  formerly 
fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  by  his 
wife,  Mary,  youngest  daughter  of  Alfred 
Batson.  His  ancestors  came  from  Wales 
and  he  was  collaterally  related  to  Row- 
land, Sir  Gelly,  Sir  John  (died  1659),  and 
Sir  Samuel  Rush  Meyrick  [qq.v.].  He  was 
educated  at  Marlborough  and  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a 
first  class  in  the  classical  tripos  of  1877. 
For  ten  years  he  taught  in  schools  in 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  and  from  1887 
to  1914  was  a  classical  master  at  his  old 
school.  From  1889  to  1914  he  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Marlborough  College  Natural 
History  Society,  and  many  of  those  whom 
he  infected  with  his  enthusiasm  and  love 
of  accuracy  remained  keen  naturalists 
while  some  achieved  great  distinction. 

In  the  lepidoptera  and  particularly  in 
the  microlepidoptera  of  distant  countries 
Meyrick  found  an  almost  unworked  field. 
In  hundreds  of  articles  in  many  scientific 
periodicals,  particularly  in  those  of  New 
Zealand,  Australia,  India,  and  South 
Africa,  and  also  in  a  privately  published 
periodical.  Exotic  Lepidoptera,  begim  in 
1912,  he  described  probably  some  twenty 
thousand  species  new  to  science.  But  he 
did  not  confine  himself  to  description.  He 
brought  his  exceptional  knowledge  of  dis- 
tribution to  bear  on  problems  of  geological 
history  and  he  undertook  a  comprehensive 


615 


Meyrick 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


reclassification  of  the  whole  order  lepi- 
doptera  on  the  basis  of  characters  which 
he  considered  showed  more  adequately  the 
natural  relationships.  These  ideas  he  used 
in  A  Handbook  of  British  Lepidoptera 
(1895)  of  which  a  revised  edition  appeared 
in  1928. 

Pioneer  work  on  so  large  a  scale  was 
naturally  not  immediately  accepted  in  its 
entirety  and  not  all  has  stood  the  test  of 
later  work,  but  Meyrick  was  the  first  to 
place  the  classification  of  insects  on  a 
scientific  basis :  he  was  one  of  the  greatest 
lepidopterists  there  has  ever  been,  and 
beyond  doubt  the  foremost  microlepido- 
pterist  of  his  time.  He  was  a  rapid  worker 
and  to  the  end  he  kept  his  astonishing 
activity,  his  eyesight,  and  his  dexterity  of 
hand.  A  fine  scholar,  he  never  allowed  his 
knowledge  and  love  of  the  classics  to  fade 
and  the  results  may  be  seen  in  the  clarity 
of  his  descriptions  and  the  accuracy  of  his 
scientific  nomenclature.  To  his  many 
correspondents  he  was  prompt,  courteous, 
and  generous,  and  he  bequeathed  to  the 
British  Museum  (Natural  History)  his 
remarkable  collection  of  some  himdred 
thousand  specimens,  with  his  own  water- 
colour  illustrations. 

Meyrick  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1904.  In 
1927  he  was  awarded  the  Captain  Scott 
memorial  medal  of  the  South  African  Bio- 
logical Society  for  his  contributions  to 
South  African  entomology.  In  1892  he 
married  Antonia,  daughter  of  Heinrich 
Eckhard,  a  lawyer  in  the  Rhenish  Pala- 
tinate, and  had  three  sons,  the  eldest  of 
whom  was  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
and  two  daughters.  He  died  at  Marl- 
borough 31  March  1938. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (bibliography  and 
portrait) ;  The  EntomologisV s  Monthly  Maga- 
zine, vol.  xxiv  (3rd  series),  1938 ;  The  Ento- 
mologist, vol.  Ixxi,  1938  (portrait);  Annual 
Reports  of  the  Marlborough  College  Natural 
History  Society,  No.  87,  1939 ;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Guy  Peibson. 

MILLIGAN,  GEORGE  (1860-1934), 
Scottish  divine  and  biblical  scholar,  was 
born  at  Kilconquhar,  Fife,  2  April  1860, 
the  eldest  son  of  the  parish  minister, 
William  Milligan  [q.v.],  who  later  in  the 
same  year  became  professor  of  biblical 
criticism  in  the  university  of  Aberdeen. 
His  mother  was  Anne  Mary,  daughter  of 
the  physician  and  essayist  David  Macbeth 
Moir  [q.v.],  known  as  'Delta'.  He  was 
elder  brother  of  Sir  William  Milligan  [q.v.]. 


I 


After  attending  the  Gymnasium  at  Aber- 
deen he  graduated  at  Aberdeen  University 
in  arts  (1879)  and  divinity  (1883),  study- 
ing also  at  the  universities  of  Edinburgh, 
Gottingen,  and  Bonn.  He  superintended 
the  early  development  of  St.  Matthew's 
church,  Edinburgh  (1883-1894),  becoming 
in  1887  its  first  ordained  minister.  In  the 
country  charge  of  Caputh,  Perthshire 
(1894-1910),  he  added  to  the  faithful  per- 
formance of  his  parochial  duties  an  assi- 
duous devotion  to  biblical  scholarship; 
and  stirred  by  a  lecture  of  Marcus  Dods 
[q.v.]  he  took  up  zealously  the  study  of 
the  accmnulating  stores  of  non-literary 
Greek  papjnri,  lecturing  on  the  subject  at 
Oxford  (1899),  Cambridge  (1904),  and  in 
the  United  States  of  America  (1909).  As 
regius  professor  of  biblical  criticism  in 
Glasgow  University  (1910-1932)  and  clerk 
to  the  senate  (1911-1930),  he  won  the 
confidence,  honour,  and  affection  of  all 
with  whom  he  had  to  do.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  imiversities  of 
Aberdeen  (1904),  Durham  (1919),  Glasgow 
(1932),  and  Edinburgh  (1933).  He  died  in 
Glasgow  25  November  1934. 

It  was  a  notable  pioneering  achievement 
for  Milligan  to  issue,  while  still  at  Caputh, 
a  standard  commentary  on  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians  (1908),  in 
which  inter  alia  he  applied  the  new  papyro- 
logical  evidence  to  a  re-examination  of  the 
Pauline  grammar  and  vocabulary.  He 
began  his  magnum  opus.  The  Vocabulary 
of  the  Greek  Testament  (1914-1929),  in  col- 
laboration with  J.  H.  Moulton  [q.v.],  and 
after  the  issue  of  part  ii  in  1915  completed 
it  single-handed ;  its  comprehensiveness 
and  accuracy  provided  a  foundation  for 
successors  to  build  upon,  while  in  read- 
ableness  and  human  interest  it  remains 
unsurpassed. 

Milligan  served  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land with  spontaneous  and  conscientious 
loyalty,  more  particularly  in  the  field  of 
religious  education;  and,  like  his  father 
and  his  father-in-law.  Dr.  John  Rankine, 
he  became  moderator  of  the  General  As- 
sembly (1923).  His  simplicity  and  sym- 
pathy, which  made  him  in  private  life  so 
covu-teous  and  approachable,  found  early 
expression  in  his  pastoral  ministry  and  in 
collections  of  children's  addresses,  and 
later  led  him  to  make  the  results  of 
scholarship  more  generally  available  in 
many  courses  of  lectures  and  published! 
volumes.  By  nature  placid,  receptive, 
fair-minded,  he  wrote  and  taught  with 
admirable  balance  and  lucidity. 

Milligan  was  twice  married :  first,  in  1891 


616 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


MiUs,  W. 


lo  Janet  Simpson  (died  1898),  daughter  of 
John  Rankine,  D.D.,  minister  of  Sorn, 
Ayrshire;  secondly,  in  1902  to  Margaret 
(  atherine,  daughter  of  Wilham  EUis  Gloag, 
j  Lord  Kincairney  [q.v.],  senator  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Justice.  One  son  was  born  of  each 
marriage. 

[Glasgow  Herald,  26  November  1934;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  G.  S.  Duncan. 

MILLS,      BERTRAM      WAGSTAFF 

i  1 S73-1938),  circus  proprietor,  was  born 
111  London  11  August  1873,  the  son  of 
Ilalford  Lewis  Mills,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Fenn  Wagstaff.  His  father,  who  was  the 
proprietor  of  a  coach-building  works  in 
Paddington,  owned  two  small  farms  in  the 
country,  one  at  Harefleld,  near  Rickmans- 
worth,  and  the  other  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles, 
where  he  sent  his  horses  to  rest.  It  was 
at  one  or  other  of  these  farms  that  Ber- 
tram spent  much  of  his  childhood,  and  it 
was  on  these  horses  that  he  was  taught  to 
ride.  He  left  school  before  he  was  fifteen, 
and  began  work  in  his  father's  business, 
t  lu veiling  from  show  to  show,  and  exhibit- 
ing carriages  all  over  Europe.  During  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  ser\'ed  in  the  Royal 
Army  Medical  Corps. 

It  was  after  the  war,  when  there  was 
little  coach-building  work  to  be  done,  that 
Mills  entered  the  circus  business.  A  care- 
less remark  after  seeing  a  circus  at  Olym- 
pia,  that  he  was  sure  he  coxild  put  on  a 
better  show,  was  taken  up  by  a  friend  who 
was  a  director  of  Olympia,  and  who  chal- 
lenged him  to  make  his  words  good.  The 
result  was  that  for  eighteen  years  (1920- 
1937)  at  Christmas  he  put  on  a  circus  at 
Olympia  which  came  to  be  recognized  as 
a  popular  entertainment.  It  was  built  up 
on  a  large  scale,  and  in  1929  he  extended 
his  activities  by  starting  the  Bertram  Mills 
tenting  circus,  with  which  he  toured  the 
provinces  from  April  to  October. 

Statistics  of  the  organization  are  in- 
teresting. The  tour  required  four  special 
trains  and  about  75  lorries  and  tractors  to 
transport  the  animals  and  circus  equip- 
ment. To  show  the  work  necessary  to 
secure  first-class  performers,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  in  1937  Mills  and  his  son 
travelled  something  like  50,000  miles  to 
collect  new  tiu-ns  from  all  parts  of  the 
world.  At  Olympia  alone  the  weekly 
expenses  ranged  between  £15,000  and 
£20,000  for  the  five  weeks'  season,  the 
attendance  at  which  averaged  70,000  a 
week.  Some  4,000  people  in  all  were  em- 
ployed, and  there  was  a  permanent  salary 
list  of  about  1,800  men  and  women  in  all 


sorts  of  callings.  The  road  show  cost 
£40,000  to  launch  and  the  running  ex- 
penses came  to  £2,500  a  week.  Among  the 
friends  of  Mills  who  took  a  great  interest 
in  the  concern  was  the  fifth  Earl  of  Lons- 
dale, who  accepted  the  presidency  of  the 
circus  company  in  1921. 

At  the  Richmond  horse  show,  where  for 
many  years  he  was  a  successful  exhibitor, 
Mills  was  a  familiar  figure.  He  always 
entered  for  the  coaching  Marathon  from 
Hyde  Park  to  the  show  ground  with  his 
'Old  Times'  London  to  Brighton  stage 
coach.  He  was  the  president  of  the  Show- 
men's Guild  from  1934  until  his  death.  In 
addition  to  his  labours  as  a  showman  and 
entertainer,  he  had  considerable  experi- 
ence of  local  government  work,  for  he  was 
a  member  of  the  London  County  Council 
for  ten  years  (1928-1938).  A  few  months 
before  he  died  he  had  been  adopted  as 
unionist  candidate  for  the  Isle  of  Ely. 

In  1901  Mills  married  Ethel,  daughter 
of  William  Notley,  of  Thorndon,  Suffolk. 
He  had  two  sons,  Cyril  Bertram  and  Ber- 
nard Notley.  His  last  wish  was  that  the 
circus  should  be  carried  on  by  his  sons, 
and  this  wish  they  faithfully  carried  out. 
He  died  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles  16  April 
1938.  A  man  of  much  ability  and  force  of 
character,  his  popularity  and  powers  of 
organization  were  remarkable.  It  can  have 
been  the  lot  of  few  to  give  so  much 
pleasure  to  young  and  old  alike. 

[The  Times,  18  April  1938.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

MILLS,  Sm  WILLIAM  (1856-1932), 
engineer,  was  born  at  Sunderland  24  April 
1856,  the  son  of  David  Mills,  shipbuilder, 
of  Sunderland,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Ann 
Kirkaldy.  The  earlier  part  of  his  working 
life  was  occupied  with  marine  engineering. 
On  leaving  school  at  the  age  of  fourteen 
he  began  a  seven  years'  apprenticeship 
with  Messrs.  George  Clark,  marine  en- 
gineers, of  Svmderland,  and  then  spent  a 
number  of  years  at  sea,  obtaining  a  first 
class  certificate  as  a  marine  engineer  (1884) 
and  gaining  experience  in  the  repair  of 
submarine  telegraph  cables.  For  a  short 
time  he  was  a  draughtsman  with  the 
Central  Marine  Engine  Works  at  West 
Hartlepool  and  assistant  outdoor  manager 
with  Messrs.  J.  Dickinson,  of  Sunderland. 
He  was  the  inventor  of  a  boat-disengaging 
gear  which  came  into  use  in  both  naval 
and  merchant  ships. 

Turning  from  marine  engineering  to 
metal-manufacturing  Mills  began  business 
on  his  own  account  as  a  general  engineer 


617 


Mills,  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


in  Sunderland  in  1885  and  established 
the  first  aluminium  foimdry  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  There,  and  also  at  works  which 
he  set  up  in  Birmingham  soon  afterwards 
(both  later  became  limited  companies 
under  the  style  of  WiUiam  Mills  Limited), 
he  turned  out  castings  for  the  motor-car 
and  aircraft  industries,  taking  out  several 
patents  for  improvements  in  foimdry  tech- 
nique. Early  in  1915  he  introduced  and 
opened  works  in  Birmingham  (Mills  Mimi- 
tions  Limited)  for  making  the  hand 
grenade  for  which  his  name  is  chiefly 
known  and  which  was  used  in  enormous 
quantities  by  the  British  and  their  allies 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918.  Its  principle 
was  derived  from  the  Roland  bomb,  a 
Belgian  invention,  but  by  working  out 
methods  of  preventing  both  premature 
explosion  and  failure  to  explode  he  con- 
tributed greatly  to  the  practical  efficiency 
of  the  weapon.  He  also  prepared  an  in- 
structional film  demonstrating  its  use  and 
delivered  lectures  on  the  subject.  His  ser- 
vices were  rewarded  by  a  knighthood  in 
1922  and  he  received  £27,750  from  the 
government,  but  he  failed  in  his  conten- 
tion that  he  was  not  liable  to  pay  income- 
tax  on  that  sum  and  was  wont  to  declare 
that  he  had  lost  money  by  the  grenade. 
He  was  chairman  of  the  James  Watt 
Memorial  Trust.  He  was  a  collector  of 
pictures,  china,  and  antiques.  In  1891  he 
married  Eliza  (died  1930),  daughter  of 
William  Vincent  Hodgson,  cotton  spinner, 
of  Manchester,  and  widow  of  John  R. 
Gandy,  of  Warrington ;  there  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage.  He  died  at 
Weston-super-Mare  7  January  1932. 

[The  Times,  8  January  1932 ;  Engineer  and 
Engineering,  15  January  1932.] 

H.  M.  Ross. 

MILNE,  Sir  (ARCHIBALD)  BERKE- 
LEY, second  baronet  (1855-1938),  ad- 
miral, the  yoiuiger  but  only  surviving  son  of 
Admiral  of  the  Fleet  Sir  Alexander  Milne, 
first  baronet  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Euphemia, 
youngest  daughter  of  Archibald  Cochran, 
of  Ashkirk,  Roxburgh,  was  born  at  his 
father's  official  residence  at  the  Admiralty 
2  Jime  1855.  He  was  grandson  of  Admiral 
Sir  David  Milne  [q.v.].  At  the  time  of  his 
birth  his  father  was  jvmior  naval  lord  and 
his  godfather  (Admiral  Sir)  M.  F.  F. 
Berkeley  (afterwards  Lord  Fitzhardinge, 
q.v.)  was  senior  naval  lord.  After  a  short 
period  at  Wellington  College  he  entered 
the  training  ship  Britannia  as  a  naval 
cadet  in  1869,  passing  out  as  midshipman 
in  1870.  In  that  rank  he  served  under  Sir 


E.  G.  Fanshawe  [q.v.]  in  the  flags! 
Royal  Alfred,  North  America  and  W( 
Indies  station,  and  imder  Captain  (af1 
wards  Sir)  George  Tryon  [q.v.]  in  t] 
Raleigh.  Promoted  sub-lieutenant  in  1875, 
he  was  advanced  to  lieutenant  in  1876, 
with  three  first-class  certificates.  He  then 
joined  Commodore  Sullivan,  South  Africa 
station,  in  the  corvettes  first  Tourmaline 
and  then  Active.  He  remained  on  that 
station  for  three  years,  being  transferred 
to  the  Boadicea  when  Captain  (afterwards 
Sir)  F.  W.  Richards  [q.v.]  succeeded  Sulli- 
van as  commodore,  but  for  most  of  the 
time  he  was  lent  for  service  on  shore 
during  the  Transkei  Kaffir  rebellion  of 
1877-1878  and  later  throughout  the  Zulu 
war  of  1879.  He  was  appointed  naval 
aide-de-camp  to  Lord  Chelmsford,  was 
wounded  at  the  battle  of  Ulundi  (3  July), 
and  was  several  times  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches. After  retiu-ning  to  England  later 
in  the  year  he  joined  the  Minotaur,  flag- 
ship of  Vice- Admiral  A.  W.  C.  Hood  (after- 
wards Lord  Hood  of  Avalon,  q.v.)  in  the 
Channel  squadron.  In  June  1882  he  was 
appointed  to  the  Orion  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  a  month  later,  on  Admiral 
(Sir)  Anthony  Hoskins  [q.v.]  leaving  the 
Board  of  Admiralty  in  order  to  bring  rein- 
forcements during  the  Egyptian  war,  he 
became  his  flag-lieutenant  in  the  Penelope 
and  was  present  at  the  battle  of  Tel-el- 
Kebir  (13  September).  Thus,  since  first 
going  to  sea  he  had  had  unusual  oppor- 
tunities of  service  under  the  most  distin- 
guished officers  of  the  day,  of  whom  three 
later  filled  his  father's  place  as  senior 
naval  lord. 

On  his  appointment  to  the  royal  yacht 
Victoria  and  Albert  in  October  1882,  Milne 
now  began  a  different  career  as  a  sea 
courtier.  He  rapidly  won  the  affection 
and  regard  of  the  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Wales,  and  spent  eight  of  the  next 
eighteen  years  in  royal  yachts,  finishing 
as  commodore  and  later  (1903-1905)  rear- 
admiral  in  charge  of  H.M.  yachts. 

Milne  was  promoted  commander  in  1884, 
and  captain  in  1891,  and  in  the  intervals 
between  turns  of  yacht  duty  he  was  com- 
mander in  the  Channel  squadron  flagships 
Minotaur  and  Northumberland  (1887-1889) 
and  captain  of  the  Trafalgar  (flagship, 
1894-1896),  Venus  (1897-1900)  in  the 
Mediterranean,  and  Jupiter  (1900-1904) 
in  the  Channel  squadron. 

In  his  sea-going  commands  Milne  had 
shown  himself  to  be  a  competent  and 
popular  officer,  so  that  after  reaching  flag- 
rank  in  April  1904,  and  leaving  the  com- 


618 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Milne 


mand  of  H.M.  yachts  sixteen  months  later, 
he  was  selected  to  be  second-in-command 
)f  the  Atlantic  Fleet  (flag  in  the  Vic- 
toriotis)  under  Admiral  Sir  William  May 
[q.v.]  (1905-1906)  and  of  the  Channel 
Fleet  (flag  in  the  Hibemia)  mider  Lord 
Charles  Beresford  [q.v.]  (1908-1909).  He 
was  then  (having  been  promoted  vice- 
admiral  in  May  1908)  transferred  to  the 
command  of  the  second  division  of  the 
Home  Fleet  (flag  in  the  King  Edward  VII) 
under  May  for  another  year. 

Promoted  admiral  in  September  1911, 
in  November  1912  Milne  hoisted  his  flag 
in  the  Good  Hope,  soon  to  be  replaced  by 
the  great  battle-cruiser  Inflexible,  as  com- 
mander-in-chief in  the  Mediterranean.  By 
July  1914,  when  war  seemed  imminent, 
his  force  had  been  much  strengthened 
and  included  three  battle-cruisers,  four  ar- 
moured cruisers,  four  light  cruisers,  and 
fourteen  destroyers. 

The  naval  situation  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean was  very  obscure  in  those  critical 
days.  It  was  unknown  whether  Italy 
would  join  her  allies  of  the  Triple  Alliance, 
or  even  whether  Austria  would  come  in  at 
once.  The  fast  new  German  battle-cruiser 
Goeben  was  at  large,  and  it  was  presumed 
would  try  to  get  out  into  the  Atlantic. 
Milne  had  been  informed  that  his  first  task 
should  be  to  assist  the  French  in  trans- 
porting their  African  army  and  to  try  to 
bring  to  action  any  fast  German  ship, 
particularly  the  Goeben,  which  might 
attempt  to  interfere.  At  the  same  time  he 
had  to  keep  a  watch  on  the  Adriatic  until 
the  decision  of  Italy  and  Austria  was 
i  known.  But  he  knew  nothing  of  the  actual 
intentions  of  the  French  authorities  and 
all  his  attempts  to  communicate  with 
them  failed.  In  this  dilemma  he  obtained 
Admiralty  authority  to  concentrate  his 
force  at  Malta.  In  the  end  the  French 
African  army  was  transported  without 
incident  under  escort  of  the  whole  French 
Mediterranean  fleet,  but  the  Goeben  and 
her  escort,  the  cruiser  Breslau,  after  coal- 
ing at  Messina  (a  neutral  port)  turned  east 
instead  of  west  and  slipped  through  to  the 
Dardanelles  and  Constantinople,  evading 
by  her  superior  speed  the  cruiser  squadron 
under  Admiral  (Sir)  Ernest  Troubridge 
[q.v.],  but  closely  pursued  as  long  as  pos- 
sible by  the  light  cruiser  Gloucester. 

There  was  a  tendency  in  the  press  and 
elsewhere  to  criticize  Milne  for  his  action 
or  inaction  in  this  confused  and  difficult 
situation.  But  he  had  faithfully  carried 
out  his  instructions ;  he  had  no  reason  then 
to  anticipate  any  understanding  between 


Germany  and  Turkey,  he  had  no  communi- 
cation from  the  French  naval  authorities 
about  the  transport  of  the  African  army ; 
he  knew  that  the  Goeben  was  faster  than  any 
of  his  ships  and  much  more  powerful  than 
aU  but  his  battle-cruisers,  two  of  which  had 
been  ordered  by  the  Admiralty  to  Gib- 
raltar to  prevent  the  Goeben  escaping  west- 
wards, and  he  was  uncertain  until  too  late 
whether  Italy  would  be  neutral  and  Austria 
an  enemy.  On  30  August  1914  the  Ad- 
miralty issued  a  statement  that  'his  con- 
duct and  dispositions  in  regard  to  the 
German  vessels  Goeben  and  Breslau  had 
been  the  subject  of  the  careful  examina- 
tion of  the  Board  with  the  result  that 
Their  Lordships  have  approved  the 
measures  taken  by  him  in  all  respects'. 

As  by  diplomatic  agreement  the  supreme 
command  in  the  Mediterranean  was  to  be 
assumed  by  the  French,  and  Milne  was 
senior  to  the  French  admiral,  he  returned 
home  in  his  flagship  on  18  August.  He  had 
been  offered  and  had  accepted  the  com- 
mand of  the  Nore,  but  this  post  was  subse- 
quently filled  by  Sir  George  Callaghan 
[q.v.]  who  had  been  relieved  in  command 
of  the  Grand  Fleet  by  Sir  John  (afterwards 
Earl)  Jellicoe  [q.v.] ;  and,  no  further 
opportunity  of  employment  occurring, 
Milne  was  placed  on  the  retired  Ust  at  the 
end  of  the  war. 

In  1921  Milne  published  a  small  book 
The  Flight  of  the  Goeben  and  the  Breslau 
in  which  he  challenged  the  accuracy  of  Sir 
Julian  Corbett's  account  of  the  affair  in 
the  (official)  History  of  the  Great  War. 
Naval  Operations  and  the  implied  censure 
of  his  conduct.  Milne's  book  sets  forth 
clearly  and  convincingly  his  own  account 
of  his  proceedings  and  justifies  the  official 
approbation  which  had  been  repeated  in 
the  Admiralty's  announcement  of  his  re- 
tirement in  1919. 

Milne  was  an  able  officer,  well  liked  in 
the  service  and  popular  in  London  society 
where  his  long  association  with  King 
Edward  VII  and  Queen  Alexandra  made 
him  a  well-known  figure.  He  was  a  keen 
fisherman  and  deer-stalker  and  a  good 
shot,  and  devoted  much  of  his  half-pay 
time  to  horticulture  at  his  ancestral  resi- 
dence of  Inveresk  Gate,  Musselbvu-gh.  He 
bequeathed  a  collection  of  rare  shrubs  and 
orchids  to  the  Edinburgh  Botanical 
Gardens. 

Milne's  association  with  the  court 
brought  him  a  number  of  foreign  distinc- 
tions, French,  German,  Greek,  Spanish, 
and  Norwegian,  as  well  as  the  C.V.O. 
(1903),  K.C.V.O.   (1904),  K.C.B.   (1909), 


619 


Milne 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  G.C.V.O.  (1912),  and  he  held  appoint- 
ments as  groom-in-waiting  to  King 
Edward  VII  and  extra  equerry  to  his 
three  successors.  He  died,  unmarried,  in 
London  5  July  1938  leaving  no  heir  to  the 
baronetcy. 

[Admiralty  records ;  Sir  Julian  S.  Corbett, 
(Official)  History  of  the  Great  War.  Naval 
Operations,  vol.  i,  1920 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

ViNCKNT  W.  BaDDELEY. 

MITCHELL,    REGINALD    JOSEPH 

(1895-1937),  aircraft  designer,  was  born 
in  the  village  of  Talke,  near  Stoke-upon- 
Trent,  20  May  1895,  the  eldest  of  the  three 
sons  of  Herbert  Mitchell,  a  Yorkshireman 
who  served  as  headmaster  successively  in 
three  Staffordshire  villages  and  later  estab- 
lished a  printing  business  in  Hanley.  His 
mother  was  Eliza  Jane  Brain,  whose 
family  lived  at  Longton,  near  Stoke-upon- 
Trent,  where  his  childhood  was  spent.  He 
was  educated  at  an  elementary  school  in 
Longton,  and  at  Hanley  High  School.  At 
the  age  of  sixteen  he  became  an  apprentice 
in  the  shops  of  Messrs.  Kerr,  Stuart  & 
company,  makers  of  locomotives  at  Stoke ; 
and  during  his  apprenticeship  went  to 
night  school  at  local  technical  colleges. 
His  subjects  there  were  engineering, 
mechanics,  mathematics,  and  drawing. 
After  a  thorough  training  at  the  bench  he 
passed  on  to  the  drawing  office,  and  while 
he  was  becoming  skilled  as  an  engineer,  he 
was  already  indulging  his  personal  interest 
in  aeroplanes  by  designing,  making,  and 
flying  model  gliders.  That  interest  per- 
sisted, and  in  1916,  before  he  was  twenty- 
two,  he  obtained  employment  at  the 
Supermarine  Aviation  Works  at  South- 
ampton, directed  at  that  time  by  Hubert 
Scott-Paine,  who  was  devoted  to  the  cause 
of  flying-boats.  Within  three  years, 
Mitchell  had  been  appointed  chief  engineer 
and  designer.  He  remained  with  the  firm, 
through  a  change  in  ownership  in  1923, 
until  his  death  at  Southampton  11  Jime 
1937,  and  for  the  last  ten  years  was  also 
a  director.  He  was  awarded  the  silver 
medal  of  the  Royal  Aeronautical  Society 
in  1927  and  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in  1931. 
In  1918  he  married  a  school-teacher, 
Florence,  daughter  of  Henry  James  Day- 
son,  farmer,  and  had  a  son. 

Mitchell  had  a  succession  of  military 
flying-boats  to  his  credit,  but  his  chief 
fame  rests  upon  the  design  and  develop- 
ment of  high-speed  float-seaplanes  for 
Schneider  trophy  races  between  1922  and 
1931  and  upon  the  ultimate  emergence  of 
the  Spitfire  fighter — the  most  renowned  of 


5 


all  fighter  aeroplanes  in  the  war  of  1939- 
1945.  The  Spitfire  exemplified  MitcheU's 
special  quality  of  combining  fine  lines  with 
great  structural  strength.  In  that  sense  it 
marked  the  union  of  practical  engineeriqj 
and  aerodynamic  knowledge  in  Mitchefl 
It  also  represented  that  orderly  if  briUiant* 
progression  in  Mitchell's  work  which  justi- 
fied the  kindly  criticism  since  made  that 
his  'second  thoughts  were  best'.  Before 
he  built  the  Spitfire  he  had  built  another 
fighter  to  specifications  laid  down  by  the 
Air  Ministry.  Having  finished  that  and 
satisfied  himself  as  well  as  everybody  else 
that  it  was  mediocre,  he  went  ahead  with 
his  own  ideas  and  in  1936  made  the  beauti- 
ful aeroplane  which  was  used  to  such 
deadly  purpose  from  the  beginning  of  the 
war  to  the  end.  Nearly  19,000  Spitfires 
were  built.  The  Spitfire  began  its  career 
with  a  top  speed  of  346  m.p.h.  and,  with 
more  power  and  slight  modifications,  it 
went  on  to  a  top  speed  of  460  m.p.h.  It 
remained  delightful  to  fly  right  to  the  end 
as  was  always  the  way  with  Mitchell's 
high-speed  aeroplanes.  His  first  Schneider 
trophy  winner  covered  the  course  at 
Venice  in  1927  at  281  m.p.h.;  his  third 
flew  the  course  at  Calshot  in  1931  at  340 
m.p.h.  During  that  period,  the  power  at 
his  disposal  rose  from  900  h.p.  to  2,600  h.p. 
and  with  it  came  more  weight  to  carry 
and  more  heat  to  be  dissipated.  His 
ingenuity  surmounted  these  difficulties  at 
little  sacrifice  in  size.  In  the  S.6  and  the 
S.6  B.  seaplanes  of  1929  and  1931  respec- 
tively, fuel  was  carried  in  the  floats,  oil 
was  cooled  in  channels  under  the  skin  of 
the  fuselage,  and  there  was  no  radiator. 
The  liquid  for  the  cylinder  jackets  was 
cooled  in  the  false  skin  of  the  wings.  In 
the  same  way  there  were  no  excrescences 
on  the  Spitfire  when  it  appeared.  The 
engine  was  completely  cowled  and  the 
radiator  was  little  more  than  a  slot  under 
the  starboard  wing.  The  wing  was  an 
almost  perfect  ellipse,  gently  tapered  and 
diminishing  in  thickness  towards  the  tips. 
The  Spitfire  looked  a  thoroughbred  and, 
in  a  way,  it  had  the  limitations  of  a 
thoroughbred,  for  its  duration  was  only 
1:|  hours ;  but  it  carried  eight  guns  in  the 
wing  and  a  reasonable  amount  of  ammuni- 
tion. It  did  what  Mitchell  expected  of  it 
and  it  delighted  a  hard-tried  generation. 
Mitchell's  merit  was  that  he  first  produced 
a  real  racing  aeroplane  and  then  applied 
the  same  formula  to  the  design  of  a  fighter. 
He  wedded  good  engineering  to  aero- 
dynamic grace  and  made  science  his  guide. 
In  consequence  he  always  knew  what  he 


620 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Monash 


was  doing.   His  forecast  of  top  speed  was 
never  wrong  by  more  than  4  ni.p.h. 

[The  Times,  12  June  1937 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] E.  Colston  Shepherd. 

MONASH,  Sir  JOHN  (1865-1931), 
Australian  general,  was  born  of  Jewish 
parentage  in  Melbourne  27  June  1865,  the 
only  son  of  Louis  Monash,  of  St.  James's 
Park,  Hawthorn,  Melbourne,  by  his  wife. 
Bertha  Manasse ;  his  parents  were  born 
and  married  in  Germany.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Scotch  College  and  at  the  univer- 
sity, Melbourne,  where  he  graduated  in 
arts,  engineering,  and  laws.  He  was  Argus 
scholar  with  honours  in  engineering. 

Monash  began  practice  as  a  civil  en- 
igineer  in  1884,  specializing  in  rail,  road, 
Ibridge,  and  water-supply  design  and  con- 
titruction.  From  his  earliest  student  days 
|lie  had  been  a  keen  and  enthusiastic  mem- 
|l)er  of  the  Australian  Citizen  Forces  and 
jin  1887  secured  his  first  commission  as  a 
ilieutenant  with  promotion  to  captain  in 
11895  and  major  in  1897.  In  this  connexion 
jtiis  power  of  lucid  exposition  was  noticed 
|by  (Sir)  Ian  Hamilton  and  other  officers 
visiting  Australia.  From  1900  he  con- 
centrated on  reinforced  concrete  construc- 
tion and  introduced  his  methods  into 
iVictoria,  Tasmania,  and  South  Australia. 
Iln  1901  he  was  given  command  of  the 
North  Melbourne  Artillery.  In  1905  he 
Ihad  been  promoted  lieutenant-colonel  in 
|the  Citizen  Forces  and  by  1913  had 
lachieved  his  full  colonelcy.  He  also  served 
as  an  officer  of  the  Intelligence  Corps  from 
11907  to  1914.  His  progress  in  the  engineer- 
ling  world  had  by  then  brought  him  to  the 
presidency  of  the  Victorian  Institute  of 
Engineers,  which  he  held  for  two  years. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Monash 
was  appointed  chief  censor  for  Australia 
but  only  held  the  post  for  a  month  as  his 
services  were  required  in  a  more  active 
field  of  operations.  He  was  put  in  com- 
mand of  the  4th  Infantry  brigade  and 
accompanied  it  to  Gallipoli  in  April  1915, 
and  was  promoted  brigadier-general  in 
July.  During  this  campaign  his  brigade 
was  engaged  in  defence  of  a  sector  which 
came  to  be  named  after  him,  Monash 
Valley,  and  later  it  was  employed  in  the 
fighting  at  Suvla  Bay.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  year  Gallipoli  was  evacuated  and 
Monash  was  mentioned  in  dispatches  three 
times  for  his  services  in  the  campaign. 

Monash  was  then  given  command  of  the 
3rd  Austrahan  division  in  July  1916  with 
the  rank  of  major-general,  and  after  train- 
ing the  division  in  England  he  proceeded 


with  it  to  France  (November  1916)  where 
it  took  part  in  the  battles  of  Messines 
(June  1917)  and  Passchendaele  (October 
1917),  the  third  battle  of  Ypres  (1917), 
and  the  defence  of  Amiens  (1918).  His 
great  and  obvious  capacity,  especially  in 
the  higher  commands,  was  soon  recog- 
nized and  he  succeeded  General  William 
(later  Lord)  Birdwood  in  command  of  the 
Australian  Army  Corps  in  France,  assum- 
ing the  command  in  May  1918  with  the 
rank  of  lieutenant-general. 

Monash's  great  forte  was  planning,  and 
to  this  objective  he  brought  to  bear  all 
his  training  and  experience  as  a  brilliant 
engineer.  His  plans  for  battle  were  blue- 
prints of  the  most  detailed  construction 
complete  to  the  last  detail,  and  so  well 
were  his  great  qualities  recognized  and 
appreciated  that  it  fell  to  him  with  the 
Australian  Army  Corps  successfully  to 
withstand  the  last  offensive  of  the  enemy 
in  the  late  spring  of  1918  and  to  launch 
the  great  Allied  offensive  of  August  1918. 
To  his  masterly  organization  and  his  bril- 
liance as  a  corps  commander  the  Allies 
owed  much  for  the  success  of  the  offensive 
and  his  great  achievements  with  the  corps 
during  the  ensuing  battles  earned  for  him 
recognition  as  one  of  the  ablest  corps  com- 
manders in  the  British  army.  After  the 
armistice  was  signed  he  was  appointed 
director-general  of  the  Department  of  Re- 
patriation and  Demobilization  of  the 
Australian  Imperial  Forces  in  Europe, 
Africa,  and  Asia,  and  for  his  untiring 
devotion  to  this  new  field  of  service  was 
mentioned  in  dispatches  eight  times.  On 
his  return  to  Australia  he  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Coimcil  of  Defence.  He  was 
promoted  full  general  in  1930  and  retired 
from  the  army  in  the  same  year. 

Monash's  great  organizing  ability  was 
still  further  recognized  in  a  new  field, 
when  in  1920  he  was  appointed  chairman 
of  the  Victorian  Government  State  Elec- 
tricity Commission  set  up  by  act  of  parlia- 
ment. He  accepted  the  invitation  in  1923 
to  become  vice-chancellor  of  Melbourne 
University  and  in  the  following  year  be- 
came president  of  the  Australasian  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science, 
a  post  which  he  occupied  for  two  years. 
In  1931  he  acted  as  official  representative 
of  the  Commonwealth  of  Australia  at  the 
inauguration  of  New  Delhi,  India ;  and  at 
this  time  was  director  and  chairman  of 
several  Indian  and  Commonwealth  com- 
panies. 

Monash  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1915, 
K.C.B.  in  1918,  and  G.C.M.G.  in  1919.  In 


621 


Monash 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1920  he  published  his  book  entitled  The 
Australian  Victories  in  France  in  1918 
which  was  a  tribute  to  the  great  merits  of 
the  Australian  soldier  in  the  field.  In 
addition  he  published  numerous  scientific 
papers  on  engineering  subjects  which  had 
been  presented  to  Austrahan  scientific 
societies,  and  also  his  presidential  ad- 
dresses. In  1920  Melbourne  University 
conferred  upon  him  the  honorary  degree 
of  doctor  of  engineering,  the  first  time  such 
a  degree  was  granted  by  an  Australian 
university.  He  also  received  honorary  de- 
grees from  the  universities  of  Oxford 
(D.C.L.),  Cambridge  (LL.D.),  and  Mel- 
bovu-ne  (LL.D.). 

Monash  was  without  doubt  the  most 
prominent  Australian  soldier  of  the  war 
of  1914-1918  and  when  he  died  at  his 
home,  Toorak,  Melbourne,  8  October  1931 
he  was  given  a  state  fimeral  by  the  city, 
and  many  fine  eulogies  were  paid  to  him. 
He  married  in  1891  Victoria  (died  1920), 
yoiuigest  daughter  of  Moton  Moss,  of  Mel- 
bourne, and  had  a  daughter. 

Portraits  of  Monash  by  Sir  John  Long- 
staff  (1918)  and  by  James  Quinn  are  at 
the  Australian  War  Memorial  at  Canberra 
where  there  is  also  a  bust  by  Paul  Mont- 
ford.  At  the  National  Gallery,  Melbourne, 
there  is  a  portrait  by  I.  M.  Cohen. 

[The  Times,  9  October  1931 ;  Argm  (Mel- 
bourne), 9  October  1931 ;  Fred  Johns,  An 
Australian  Biographical  Dictionary,  1934; 
Australian  Encyclopcedia,  1926;  War  Letters 
of  General  Monash,  edited  by  F.  M.  Cutlack, 
1934 ;  Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  History  of 
the  Great  War.  Military  Operations.  France 
and  Belgium,  1918,  vols,  ii-v,  1937-1947; 
C.  F.  Aspinall-Oglander,  (Official)  History  of 
the  Great  War.  Military  Operations.  Gallipoli, 
vols,  i  and  ii,  1929-1932;  C.  E.  W.  Bean, 
Official  History  of  Australia  in  the  war  of 
1914-1918,  12  vols.,  1922-1942.] 

C.  V.  Owen. 


MOND,     Sir     ROBERT     LUDWIG 

(1867-1938),  chemist,  industrialist,  and 
archaeologist,  was  born  at  Farnworth, 
near  Widnes,  Lancashire,  9  September 
1867,  the  elder  son  of  Ludwig  Mond  [q.v.], 
by  his  wife,  Frida,  only  child  of  Adolf 
Meyer  Loewenthal,  of  Cologne.  His 
yoimger  brother  was  Alfred  Moritz  Mond, 
first  Lord  Melchett  [q.v.].  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Cheltenham  College,  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge,  Ziirich  Polytechnicum,  Edin- 
burgh University ,  and  at  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity under  Lord  Kelvin. 

In  his  early  days  Mond  worked  in  his 
father's  factory  at  Winnington,  Cheshire, 


and  published  papers  (1922)  describing 
researches  on  metallic  carbonyls,  one 
which,  that  of  nickel,  was  used  for 
commercial  separation  of  that  metal 
the  Mond  Nickel  Company,  of  which 

became  chairman  in  1919.    He  also  t(  

part  in  the  investigations  which  led  to 
improvements  in  the  production  of  zinc  by 
the  electrolysis  of  zinc  chloride.  Although 
a  patient  and  resourceful  experimenter, 
his  special  contribution  was  not  so  much 
in  discovery,  as  in  making  possible  the 
work  of  those  whom  he  selected  to  assist 
him.  For  a  time,  after  his  father's  death 
in  1910,  he  applied  scientific  method  to 
farming  at  Combe  Bank,  Sevenoaks,  where 
he  was  a  pioneer  in  the  production  of  pure 
milk  from  a  selected  herd  of  dairy  cows. 
To  the  equipment  of  his  father's  benefac- 
tion, the  Davy-Faraday  research  labora- 
tory of  the  Royal  Institution,  he  gave 
much  thought  and  was  its  honorary  secre- 
tary for  life,  while  to  that  institution  he 
contributed  large  sums  for  its  reconstruc- 
tion in  1931. 

As  much  at  home  in  France  as  in  Great 
Britain,  Mond  contributed  largely  towards 
the  acquisition  of  the  Maison  de  la  Chimie 
in  Paris  for  meetings  of  French  chemi- 
cal societies  and  for  documentation  of 
chemical  literature.  He  regarded  it  as 
a  focus  for  chemistry  generally,  and  he 
gave  a  large  sum  to  the  fluids  of  the 
National  Covmcil  for  Chemistry.  He  also 
supported  the  cause  of  a  'Chemistry 
House'  in  this  coimtry.  The  Norman 
Lockyer  Observatory  at  Sidmouth  also  had 
his  support  by  the  gift  of  buildings  and  a 
photogi'aphic  equatorial  telescope.  He  also 
made  large  benefactions  to  the  universities 
of  Liverpool  and  Toronto. 

For  forty  years  Mond  had  an  abiding 
interest  in  archaeology.  As  a  worker  in  the 
field  and  as  a  generous  supporter  and 
organizer  of  expeditions  and  of  the  preser- 
vation of  antiquities,  he  was  responsible  in 
many  cases  for  the  publication  of  results. 
Early  in  the  century  he  explored  the 
mortuary  chapels  of  the  nobles  at  Thebes, 
working  personally  at  the  digging  for  three 
winters  with  Professor  Percy  Edward 
Newberry,  Howard  Carter  [q.v.],  Arthur 
E.  P.  B.  Weigall,  (Sir)  Alan  Gardiner,  and 
Ernest  J.  Mackay  as  colleagues.  The 
Theban  Necropolis  was  restored  and  pro- 
tected at  his  expense  and  a  catalogue  pub- 
lished by  him;  the  famous  tomb  of  the 
vizier  Ramose  was  cleared  and  described ; 
while  later,  in  1926,  Armant,  the  site  of 
Harmonthis,  was  attacked.  For  the  ex- 
cavation of  the  burial-place  of  the  sacred 


622 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Monro 


iJiuchis  Bulls  on  this  site  Mond  supported 
ei  large  staff,  including  Dr.  H,  Frankfort, 
'l''rcderick  William  Green,  and  Oliver 
Myers.  Detailed  descriptions  were  pub- 
ished  by  Mond  and  Myers  in  The 
Biicheum  (3  vols.,  1934)  and  The  Ceme- 
teries of  Armant  (2  vols.,  1937) ;  sixty-nine 
scholars  contributed  to  these  works.  In 
the  Eastern  and  Libyan  deserts  Mond 
financed  the  work  of  exploration  of  which 
accounts  were  published  (1937,  1938).  He 
was  also  the  chief  financial  supporter  of 
the  British  School  of  Archaeology  in  Pales- 
tine, under  Professor  John  Garstang,  and 
he  aided  the  work  of  (Professor)  Dorothy 
Garrod  in  her  exploration  of  the  cave 
deposits  of  Mount  Carmel,  where  valuable 
evidence  of  the  antiquity  of  man  in  the 
Near  East  has  been  obtained.  In  all  these 
enterprises  to  which  he  gave  generous 
financial  support  Mond's  chief  interest  was 
the  academic  and  instructional  aspect, 
I  eading  to  the  advancement  of  learning.  In 
liis  London  house  he  fitted  up  a  'Pharaoh 
Room '  to  display  treasures  which  he  had 
acquired,  but  for  the  most  part  he  gave 
these  to  museums  and  universities. 

Mond  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  Liverpool 
and  Toronto;  he  was  president  of  the 
iFaraday  Society  and  of  the  Societe  de 
iChimie  Industrielle ;  he  was  knighted  in 
1932  and  elected  F.R.S.  in  1938.  He  re- 
iceived  the  Messel  medal  in  1936.  He  was 
jtwice  married:  first,  in  1898  to  Helen 
lEdith  (died  1905),  third  daughter  of  Juhus 
{Levis,  in  whose  memory  he  founded  the 
Infants'  Hospital,  Vincent  Square,  and 
had  two  daughters;  secondly,  in  1922  to 
Marie  Louise,  daughter  of  Guillaume  Jean 
Le  Manach,  of  Belle-Isle-en-Terre,  Brit- 
tany, and  widow  of  Simon  Guggenheim. 
He  died  in  Paris  22  October  1938. 

There  is  a  full-length  portrait  of  Mond 
by  Sir  F.  O.  Salisbury  in  the  possession 
of  Lady  Mond  at  Belle-Isle-en-Terre; 
copies  belong  to  his  daughters.  A  marble 
bust  by  W.  C.  A.  King  also  belongs  to 
Lady  Mond,  and  a  full-length  marble  re- 
cumbent statue  by  A.  Circuscu  is  at 
Belle-Isle-en-Terre. 

[The  Times,  24  October  1938;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7, 
January  1939  (portrait) ;  Nature,  12  November 
1938;  Journal  of  the  Society  of  Chemical 
Industry,  vol.  Ivii,  1938.] 

R,  Robertson. 

MONRO,  HAROLD  EDWARD  (1879- 
1932),  poet,  editor,  and  bookseller,  was 
born  at  St.  Gilles  near  Brussels  14  March 


1879,  of  Scottish  ancestry,  the  son  of 
Edward  William  Monro,  civil  engineer,  by 
his  wife,  Arabella  Sophia  Margary.  His 
childhood  was  spent  in  Brussels  and  for 
some  years  he  was  bilingual.  At  the  age 
of  seven  he  was  living  at  Wells,  Somerset. 
He  was  educated  at  Radley  (1892-1896), 
and  spent  a  year  in  France  between 
leaving  school  and  going  up  to  Gonville 
and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  in  1898.  In 
1901  he  was  awarded  a  third  class  in  the 
medieval  and  modern  languages  tripos, 
and  in  the  summer  of  1902,  during  a  walk- 
ing tour  in  the  Harz  Mountains,  he  met 
his  first  wife,  Dorothy  Elizabeth,  daughter 
of  Frederick  Herbert  Browne,  school- 
master, whom  he  married  in  1903.  He  had 
intended  to  read  for  the  bar,  and  passed 
the  first  part  of  the  examination,  but  the 
prospect  of  marriage  upset  these  plans, 
and  he  became  a  land  agent  and  poultry 
farmer  in  Ireland,  where  he  stayed  for  two 
or  three  years. 

Retvu"ning  to  England  Monro  took  a 
house  near  Haslemere,  and  founded  the 
Samurai  Press  (Cranleigh,  Surrey),  from 
which  were  published  volumes  of  poems 
by  Mr.  Wilfrid  Wilson  Gibson  and  John 
Drinkwater  [q.v.],  and  a  little  book  by 
Monro  himself,  Proposals  for  a  Voluntary 
Nobility  (1907).  This  publishing  business 
was  not  a  success,  and  about  1907  Monro 
went  abroad  to  Florence  and  Switzerland 
(where  he  bought  a  mill  but  was  driven 
out  in  a  few  weeks  by  floods).  Between 
1906  and  1911  he  published  three  volumes 
of  verse  and  two  of  prose.  The  Evolution 
of  the  Soul  (1907)  and  The  Chronicle  of  a 
Pilgrimage  (a  walk  from  Paris  to  Milan, 
1910).  In  the  autumn  of  1911  he  came  to 
London,  founding  first  the  Poetry  Review, 
which  he  edited  during  1912,  and  next  (in 
January  1913)  the  Poetry  Bookshop  in 
Devonshire  Street,  Holborn,  which  he 
later  moved  to  Great  Russell  Street.  This 
was  not  a  commercial  success,  but  enjoyed 
a  great  reputation,  and  Monro  maintained 
it  until  his  death.  Here  he  started  a  series 
of  readings  by  poets  of  their  own  works  or 
of  their  favourite  poets,  and  these  con- 
tinued up  to  the  time  of  Monro's  death, 
and  a  large  number  of  the  poets  famous 
during  those  years  took  part  in  the  read- 
ings. He  also  founded  a  quarterly  journal 
called  Poetry  and  Dram,a  of  which  eight 
numbers  appeared  during  1913  and  1914. 
On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  August  1914 
Monro  became  an  officer  in  an  anti-aircraft 
battery,  but  was  later  drafted  for  duty  in 
the  War  Office. 

In    July    1919    Monro     foimded    the 


623 


Monro 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


{Monthly)  Chaphook  and  edited  it  until  it 
came  to  an  end  in  1925.  After  1911  he 
published  four  further  volumes  of  poetry, 
a  book  on  Some  Contemporary  Poets  [192.0), 
One  Day  Aivake  (a  morality,  1922),  and  an 
anthology  of  twentieth-century  poetry 
(1929).  The  first  two  of  these  books,  his 
two  magazines,  and  the  Poetry  Bookshop 
expressed  his  unselfish  enthusiasm  for 
poetry  quite  unlike  his  own,  which  Mr. 
T.  S.  Eliot  has  said  'will  remain  as  one 
variety  of  the  infinite  number  of  possible 
expressions  of  tortured  human  conscious- 
ness .  .  .  remain  because  ...  he  has  not 
simply  done  something  better  than  any- 
one else,  but  done  something  that  no  one 
else  has  done  at  all'. 

Monro  met  Alida  Klementaski  in  March 
1913.  She  worked  with  him  in  the  Poetry 
Bookshop  and  in  1920  became  his  second 
wife,  his  first  marriage,  by  which  he  had 
a  son,  having  been  dissolved  in  1916.  He 
was  crippled  by  increasing  ill  health  and 
pain  in  his  last  two  years,  and  died  at 
Broadstairs  16  March  1932. 

A  portrait  of  Monro  by  Jacob  Kramer 
is  reproduced  as  the  frontispiece  to  his 
Collected  Poems  (1933). 

[The  Collected  Poems  of  Harold  Monro, 
edited  by  Alida  Monro  (with  a  biographical 
sketch  by  F.  S.  Flint,  a  critical  note  by  T.  S. 
Eliot,  and  a  bibliography),  1933.] 

Frederick  Page. 

MONTAGUE,    FRANCIS    CHARLES 

(1858-1935),  historian,  was  born  in  Lon- 
don 31  August  1858,  the  eldest  son  of 
Francis  Montague,  of  St.  Margaret's, 
Twickenham,  by  his  wife,  Rosa  McCabe, 
daughter  of  a  Drogheda  merchant ;  he  was 
brother  of  C.  E.  Montague  [q.v.].  He  was 
a  precocious  child,  being  able,  it  was  said, 
to  read  Greek  at  the  age  of  eight.  From 
University  College  School  and  University 
College,  London,  he  went  to  Balliol  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  as  an  exhibitioner  in  1875. 
After  gaining  a  first  class  in  classical 
moderations  (1877)  and  in  liter ae  humani- 
ores  (1879)  he  became  a  prize -fellow  of 
Oriel  College  in  1881.  On  the  advice 
of  Benjamin  Jowett  he  declined  an  offer  of 
a  position  as  leader-writer  on  The  Times 
and  tried  his  fortune  at  the  bar,  to  which 
he  was  called  in  1883  by  Lincoln's  Inn.  In 
1891  he  returned  to  Oxford  and,  although 
he  never  married,  he  was  not  again  elected 
to  a  fellowship,  but  lived  in  a  house  of  his 
own  and  did  a  considerable  amount  of 
teacliing.  He  lectured  on  law  and  was 
later  (1893-1927)  lecturer  in  modern  his- 
tory at  Oriel    having  charge  for  many 


1 


years  of  historical  tuition  there,  and  ai 
taking  part  in  the  training  of  Candida 
for  the  Indian  civil  service  (1892-19: 
From  1893  to  1927  he  was  professor 
history  in  University  College,  London, 
which  he  had  become  a  fellow  in  1880: 
travelled  between  Oxford  and  London 
train  to  give  his  lectures. 

For  about  twenty  years  Montague  main- 
tained a  steady  output  of  historical  books, 
all  of  them  judicious,  accurate,  and  written 
in  excellent  English;  but  he  was  unfor- 
tunate in  never  having  the  literary  success 
that  he  deserved.  Besides  reviews,  an 
elementary  text -book  on  English  constitu- 
tional history,  contributions  to  the  Cam- 
bridge Modern  History,  and  editions  of 
Bentham's  Fragment  on  Government  (1891) 
and  Macaulay's  Essays  (1903),  he  pub- 
lished an  essay  on  The  Limits  of  Individual 
Liberty  (1885),  a  Life  of  Sir  Robert  Peel 
(1888),  and  volume  vii  (1603-1660)  in 
Longman's  Political  History  of  England 
(1907).  In  1930  he  was  elected  an  hone: 
ary  fellow  of  Oriel.  He  died  at  Oxf( 
8  April  1935. 

Montague  was  a  man  of  wide  reading 
and  of  distinguished  taste  in  literature  and 
the  arts.  There  was  much  of  the  eighteenth 
century  in  his  mind  and  outlook ;  he  was 
a  tolerant  rationalist  and  a  blameless  epi- 
curean. Short  in  stature  and  naturally 
shy  with  strangers,  he  seemed  ill-fitted  for 
his  first  profession,  nor  did  he  enjoy  lec- 
turing or,  except  with  his  best  pupils, 
teaching.  In  conversation  he  had  few 
equals.  He  spoke  in  well-formed  sentences, 
often  with  an  elegant  levity,  each  point 
sharpened  by  his  appropriate  but  some- 
times unexpected  choice  of  words.  'There 
are  two  things',  he  said,  'of  which  my 
knowledge  is  derived  entirely  from  books : 
they  are  love  and  war. ' 

[The  Times,  9  April  1935 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] G.  N.  Clark. 

MONTEFIORE,  CLAUDE  JOSEPH 
GOLDSMID-  (1858-1938),  Jewish  biblical 
scholar  and  philanthropist,  was  born  in 
London  6  Jime  1858.  He  was  the  younger 
son  of  Nathaniel  Mayer  Montefiore,  of 
London,  by  his  wife,  Emma,  daughter  of 
Sir  Isaac  Lyon  Goldsmid,  first  baronet 
[q.v.].  He  was  great-nephew  of  Sir  Moses 
Haim  Montefiore,  first  baronet  [q.v.], 
nephew  of  Anna  Maria  Goldsmid  and 
of  Sir  Francis  Henry  Goldsmid  [qq.v.], 
and  great-grandson  of  Mayer  Amschel  de 
Rothschild.  He  assiuned  the  additional 
surname  of  Goldsmid  by  letters  patent  in 
1883. 


624 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Moore 


Claude  Montefiore  was  educated  pri- 
vately and  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where 
lie  came  under  the  influence  of  the  religious 
liberalism  of  Benjamin  Jowett  [q.v.]  and 
)btained  a  first  class  in  literae  hutnaniores 
a  1881.  In  1881-1882  he  studied  in 
Uerlin  at  the  Anstalt  fiir  Wissenschaft  des 
Tudentums.  Here  he  met  a  learned  Ruma- 
lian  Jew,  Solomon  Schechter,  whom  he 
Drought  back  to  England  as  his  tutor  in 
•abbinic  literature.  Jowett  and  Schechter 
were  largely  responsible  in  determining 
VIontefiore's  mental  outlook  and  scholarly 
jursuits. 

Amply  endowed  with  wealth,  learning, 
ind  leisiu-e,  Montefiore  used  these  freely 
n  the  service  of  the  Anglo- Jewish  com- 
mimity,  in  furthering  both  Jewish  and 
ion- Jewish  educational  ventures,  and  in 
promoting  the  cause  of  liberal  reform 
rvithin  English  Jewry.  He  helped  to  main- 
ain  the  Cambridge  lecturership  in  rab- 
)inic  studies,  thus  fostering  the  fruitful 
,voTk  of  Solomon  Schechter,  Israel  Abra- 
jiams,  and  H.  M.  J.  Loewe  [q.v.].  He  was 
loint  editor  (1888-1908)  of  the  Jewish 
liuarterly  Review,  and  during  a  long  work- 
ing life  he  produced  a  steady  stream  of 
)ooks  and  articles  inculcating  his  own 
iberal- conceptions  of  Judaism  and  spread- 
ng  among  Christian  readers  a  knowledge 
!)f  the  rabbinic  writings  and  their  bearing 
j)n  the  teachings  of  the  Gospels  and  St. 
i?aul:  Liberal  Judaism  (1903),  T?ie  Synop- 
ic  Gospels  (2  vols.,  1909,  2nd  ed.  1927), 
^^ome  Elements  of  the  Religious  Teaching 
\<f  Jesus  (Jowett  lectm-es,  1910),  Outlines 
!>/  Liberal  Judaism  (1912,  2nd  ed.  1923), 
Judaism  and  St.  Paul  (1914),  Rabbinic 
'Merature  and  Gospel  Teachings  (1930), 
ind  A  Rabbinic  Anthology  (with  H.  M.  J. 
^oewe,  published  posthumously  1938). 

From  1888  onwards  Montefiore  was 
ictive  as  the  joint-fovmder,  inspiration, 
ind  mainstay  of  the  Jewish  Religious 
Jnion  for  the  Advancement  of  Liberal 
fudaism  and  of  the  Liberal  Jewish  syna- 
gogue in  London,  of  which  he  was  presi- 
lent  from  1910  until  his  death  and  where 
le  frequently  preached.  His  educational 
vork  included  a  conspicuous  share  in  the 
ffairs  of  the  Froebel  Society  and  Insti- 
ute,  the  Anglo-Jewish  Association,  of 
vhich  he  was  president  from  1896  to  1921, 
ind  the  University  College  of  Southamp- 
on,  of  which  he  was  president  from  1915 
0  1934. 

Montefiore  delivered  the  Hibbert  lec- 
ures  in  1892,  published  in  the  same  year 
iS  The  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  as 
llustrated  by  the  Religion  of  the  Ancient 


Hebrews ;  he  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  D.D.  from  the  university  of  Manchester 
(1921)  and  that  of  D.Litt.  from  the  uni- 
versity of  Oxford  (1927);  and  in  1930  he 
was  awarded  the  British  Academy  medal 
for  biblical  studies. 

Claude  Montefiore' s  most  distinctive 
contribution  was  in  the  field  of  New  Testa- 
ment scholarship.  To  him  was  due  in 
great  measiu'e  that  sympathetic  and  con- 
structive use  of  rabbinic  material  which 
characterized  British  and  American  stu- 
dents dm-ing  the  first  half  of  the  twentieth 
century. 

Montefiore  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1886  to  Therese  (died  1889),  daughter  of 
Lazar  Schorstein,  of  Renter's  Agency, 
London,  and  had  a  son;  secondily,  in 
1902  to  Florence  Fyfe  Brereton  (died 
December  1938),  youngest  daughter  of 
Richard  James  Ward ;  she  had  been  vice- 
principal  of  Girton  College,  Cambridge. 
He  died  in  London  9  July  1938. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Montefiore,  painted 
by  Oswald  Birley  in  1925,  in  the  New 
Liberal  Jewish  synagogue,  St.  John's 
Wood  Road;  and,  in  the  library  of 
University  College,  Southampton,  a  por- 
trait by  (Sir)  William  Rothenstein  (1928) 
and  a  bust  by  Benno  Elkan  (1934). 

[The  Times,  11  July  1938 ;  Liberal  Jewish 
Monthly,  September  1938  ;  Lucy  Cohen,  Some 
Recollections  of  Claude  Goldsmid  Montefiore 
1858-1938  (with  a  foreword  by  H.  A.  L.  Fisher 
and  a  bibliography),  1940;  F.  C.  Burkitt  in 
Speculum,  Religionis  (a  volume  of  essays  pre- 
sented to  Montefiore  on  the  occasion  of  his 
seventieth  birthday),  1929;  private  informa- 
tion.] H.  Danby. 

MONTMORENCY,  JAMES  EDWARD 
GEOFFREY  DE  (1866-1934),  legal 
scholar.   [See  De  Montmorency.] 

MOORE,       GEORGE       AUGUSTUS 

(1852-1933),  novelist,  was  born  at  Moore 
Hall,  Ballyglass,  on  the  shores  of  Lough 
Carra,  co.  Mayo,  24  February  1852.  His 
family,  which  had  good  but  not  indis- 
putable assurance  of  descent  from  the 
author  of  Utopia,  was  certainly  old  and 
distinguished,  a  Captain  George  Moore,  of 
Ballina,  having  been  '  vice-admiral  of  Con- 
naught'  imder  William  HI.  The  novelist's 
great-grandfather  made  a  fortime  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  built 
Moore  Hall,  which  was  burned  by  re- 
publicans in  1923.  His  son  George,  who 
had  a  tendency  towards  literature,  mar- 
ried Louisa  Browne,  granddaughter  of 
John  Browne,  first  Earl  of  Altamont,  thus 


625 


S8 


Moore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


linking  the  Moores  with  the  marquessate 
of  Sligo.  Louisa  having  been  brought  up  by 
nuns,  her  eldest  son,  George  Henry  Moore 
[q.v.j,  was  educated  at  Oscott  College, 
Birmingham,  and  in  1851  added  to  the 
family's  Roman  Catholic  connexions  by 
marrying  Mary,  eldest  daughter  of  Maurice 
Blake,  of  Ballinafad,  co.  Mayo.  Their 
eldest  son,  the  novelist,  although  sent  to 
Oscott  in  his  turn,  never  took  kindly  to 
the  Roman  Church  and,  in  later  life,  em- 
phatically repudiated  it. 

Moore's  childhood  and  early  youth, 
spent  chiefly  in  Ireland,  provided  him 
with  little  education  of  the  kind  which  he 
could  assimilate,  but  the  coimtryside,  the 
tenants,  the  servants,  and  the  racing 
stables  yielded  to  his  curious  and  observant 
mind  a  rich  store  of  memories.  His  father 
died  in  1870,  and  in  1873,  as  soon  as  Moore 
was  of  age,  he  set  out  for  Paris,  deter- 
mined to  paint.  Finding  that  he  had  not 
talent  enough,  and  having  the  courage  to 
admit  defeat,  he  put  away  his  brush  for 
ever  and  began  to  write.  The  growing 
embarrassment  of  his  estate  recalled  him 
from  France,  and  by  early  1880  he  was 
struggling  in  London  to  earn  a  living  by 
his  pen.  Little  had  been  visibly  accom- 
plished during  his  years  in  Paris,  but  he 
had  been  admitted  to  the  society  of  great 
artists,  had  absorbed  the  influences  of  im- 
pressionism in  painting  and  of  naturalism 
in  literature,  and  was  bursting  with  what 
were  then,  in  England,  aesthetically  revo- 
lutionary ideas.  What  he  lacked  was 
discipline,  which  he  ■\yas  temperamentally 
incapable  of  accepting  from  others,  and 
this,  with  an  industry  that  never  failed 
him,  he  now  began  to  apply  to  himself. 

Moore's  first  novel,  A  Modern  Lover, 
appeared  in  1883.  It  had,  as  a  story, 
originality  and  boldness,  but  the  treat- 
ment was  crude,  the  writing  incorrect.  It 
succeeded  in  drawing  attention  to  itself, 
but  scarcely  prepared  Moore's  acquain- 
tance, who  appear  still  to  have  regarded 
him  as  slightly  ridiculous,  for  the  firmness 
and  intelligence  of  A  Mummer^s  Wife 
(1885),  which,  owing  something  to  Zola 
and  in  its  principal  female  character  even 
more  to  Emma  Bovary,  has  good  claim  to 
be  considered  the  first  realistic  novel  in 
English  since  Defoe.  But  it  was  not  a 
masterpiece ;  the  writing  was  still  flawed ; 
Moore  was  still  serving  his  long  appren- 
ticeship. Although  A  Drama  in  Muslin 
(1886)  and  Confessions  of  a  Young  Man 
(1888)  added  to  his  reputation,  and  two 
voliunes  of  essays  established  him  as  a 
challenging  critic,  the  nine  years  following 


A  Mummer's  Wife  were  marked  by  the 
failure  of  four  novels  excluded  by  him 
from  his  collected  works,  and  Esther 
Waters,  his  earliest  book  unquestionably 
of  the  first  rank,  did  not  appear  until  1894. 

There  followed  another  doubtful  period 
of  nine  years.  In  Evelyn  Innes  (1898)  and 
Sister  Teresa  (1901)  there  was  a  garish- 
ness,  produced  by  a  social  phase  in  the 
artist's  life,  which  caused  him  afterwards 
to  reject  them  from  the  canon.  At  the 
turn  of  the  century  Moore  appears  to  have 
been  conscious  of  his  art  having  run  into 
a  barren  patch  and  of  a  need  to  seek  new 
pastures.  This  and  the  influence  of  an  old 
friend,  Edward  Martyn,  and  of  W.  B. 
Yeats  [q.v.]  led  to  his  leaving  England  in 
1901  and  settling  in  Dublin,  hot  with  the 
notion  of  becoming  a  leader  of  an  Irish 
renaissance.  Politics,  clericalism,  and 
Yeats  cooled  his  enthusiasm  for  this  ideal- 
istic project  and  he  returned  to  London 
after  ten  years;  but  his  Dublin  period 
served  his  purpose.  It  released  him,  at 
any  rate  for  a  time,  from  the  rich  and 
fashionable,  and  took  him  back  to  his 
native  country  and  the  deep  perceptions 
of  childhood.  A  volume  of  Irish  stories, 
The  Untilled  Field  (1903),  and  a  short 
novel.  The  Lake  (1905),  were  the  founda- 
tion of  his  later  style,  and  the  three  great 
volumes  of  autobiography,  Hail  and  Fare- 
well: Ave,  Salve,  and  Vale,  published  in 
1911,  1912,  and  1914,  had  their  root  in 
Ireland. 

From  1911  until  the  end  of  his  life 
Moore  lived  at  121  Ebury  Street.  He 
seldom  read  for  the  pleasure  of  reading  or 
lived  for  the  pleasure  of  living;  for  him 
literature  and  life  existed  chiefly  for  what 
he  could  wring  from  them  for  his  own 
books.  Although  impressionable  for  a  time 
by  any  person  or  any  aspect  of  art  that 
seemed  likely  to  serve  as  steel  to  his  flint, 
he  was  of  an  almost  ferocious  indepen- 
dence. As  a  man  he  was  unique.  He  could 
be  on  occasions  tempestuously  intolerant, 
and  yet  he  commanded  an  elaborate  and 
charming  courtesy.  No  one  to  him  was 
anonymous.  He  would  learn  about  foot- 
ball from  footmen,  and,  with  an  easy 
familiarity  that  belonged  to  the  eighteenth 
century,  was  interested  in  his  servants'  I 
personal  lives ;  and  yet,  if  a  housemaid  was  j 
clumsy,  he  could,  with  eighteenth-century ! 
directness,  throw  his  boots  at  her.  A| 
corresponding  candour  and  intimacy  mark 
his  autobiographical  writing.  It  is  unlike 
any  other  because  what  he  chiefly  cared 
for  in  it  was  to  tell  a  story  that  should 
conform   to   his   aesthetic   principles  of 


626 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Morgan,  C.  L. 


story-telling,  and  because,  having  this 
single  purpose,  he  treated  himself  and  his 
friends  with  a  ruthless  impartiality  of 
grace,  ridicule,  insight,  and  indiscretion. 
The  same  approach  to  criticism  gave  to  his 
writing  in  this  kind — even  to  the  mature 
Avowals  (1919)  and  Conversations  in  Ehury 
Street  (1924) — a  mingled  freshness  and 
rashness,  an  air  of  proceeding  newly 
minted  from  a  wilful  but  fearless  mind. 
Moore  was  never  'safe',  seldom  sure  of 
himself  for  long  even  when  writing,  and, 
after  his  work  was  published,  always  eager 
to  improve  it.  Certain  ideas  came  up  for 
treatment  again  and  again.  One,  the  idea 
of  celibacy,  may  be  watched  in  the 
volumes  of  short  stories,  Celibates  (1895), 
In  Single  Strictness  (1922),  and  Celibate 
Lives  (1927).  Another,  the  life  of  St.  Paul 
and  the  death  of  Jesus,  may  be  traced 
from  1911  onward  through  several  ver- 
sions of  his  play  The  Apostle  to  its  cul- 
mination in  The  Brook  Kerith  (1916),  This 
{novel  stands,  together  with  Hdoise  and 
Abelard  (1921),  at  the  peak  of  Moore's 
achievement  in  fiction,  although  good 
critics  have  given  almost  as  high  a  place 
to  A  Story-Teller's  Holiday  (1918).  But 
this  brilliant  treatment  of  old  Celtic 
legends  has  neither  the  depth  nor 
the  lovely  elegance  of  the  two  epics; 
nor  has  Aphrodite  in  Aulis  (1930)  their 
[strength. 

!  It  is  likely  that  Moore  will  be  remem- 
{bered  best  for  three  achievements:  for 
'Esther  Waters,  which  has  more  warmth 
land  compassion  than  any  other  work  of 
this;  for  Hail  and  Farewell  because  no 
jother  book  resembles  it ;  and  for  the  struc- 
jtural  firmness  and  supple  narrative  of  The 
\Brook  Kerith  and  Hdoise  and  Abelard.  In 
these  two  books  he  accomplished  the  pur- 
jpose  of  his  later  life— to  escape  from  the 
rubbed  jargon  and  journalistic  subjects  of 
ordinary  novels,  to  treat  in  prose  an  epic 
theme,  and  to  discover  a  language  and 
i  rhythm,  beautiful  and  dignified,  which 
should  yet  preserve  the  illusion  of  a  story 
melodiously  spoken.  Landor,  Pater,  and 
Balzac  were  his  masters,  and,  when  he 
rtTote  The  Lake  and  Ttie  Untitled  Field, 
Furgenev.  Such  masters  and  such  single- 
nindedness  were  unlikely  to  make  him 
jopular  in  England  between  the  wars  of 
1914  and  1939.  He  sought  lucidity  and 
the  melodic  line'  at  a  time  when  that 
juest  was  little  valued,  and  fashionable 
criticism  was  therefore  inclined  to  over- 
itress  his  limitations.  Of  these,  the  chief 
*ere  a  lack  of  mystical  intuition  and  an 
mpatience  of  metaphysics.    By  gigantic 


labour  he  did  much  to  overcome  them, 
and  of  this  The  Brook  Kerith  is  honourable 
proof.  When  he  had  a  subject  that 
avoided,  or  enabled  him  to  overcome, 
these  faults,  he  was  imri vailed,  and  his 
translation  of  The  Pastoral  Loves  of  Daph- 
nis  and  Chloe  (1924)  which  could  not 
tempt  him  to  them,  is,  as  prose,  of  rare 
beauty.  In  Esther  Waters,  the  first  realistic 
masterpiece  in  the  language,  and  in  Hdloise 
and  Abelard,  he  twice  did  what  none  other 
had  done  in  the  English  romantic  medium, 
and  it  is  improbable  that  these  services 
will  be  forgotten. 

In  his  middle  life  Moore  was  regarded 
by  many  as  a  shocking  or  scandalous 
writer,  for  he  made  no  concessions  to 
Victorian  prejudice.  In  his  later  years 
controversy  died  down;  the  school  of 
sociological  criticism  then  fashionable 
passed  him  by  in  silence.  To  a  great  mass 
of  novel  readers  he  was  unknown  even  by 
name,  and  he  received  no  honour  from  the 
universities  or  from  the  state.  Neverthe- 
less, on  his  eightieth  birthday  (1932),  a 
memorial  was  addressed  to  him  in  which 
a  group  of  distinguished  men  hailed  him 
as  'a  master  of  English  literature',  and, 
so  long  as  he  lived,  he  had,  after  Hardy's 
death,  a  strong  claim  to  be  considered  the 
chief  novelist  of  his  day,  Kipling's  great- 
ness being  different  in  kind.  He  died,  im- 
married,  in  London  21  January  1933. 

There  is  a  drawing  of  Moore  as  a  young 
man  by  Edouard  Manet ;  an  oil-painting 
by  Richard  Sickert  is  in  the  Tate  Gallery ; 
and  a  pastel  ('The  Red  Dressing-Gown') 
by  Henry  Tonks  is  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery.  He  also  figures  in  the  groups 
'Hommage  a  Manet'  (1909)  by  Sir  Wil- 
liam Orpen  in  the  Manchester  Corpora- 
tion Art  Gallery  and  'Saturday  Evening 
at  the  Vale'  by  Tonks  in  the  Tate 
Gallery. 

[The  Times,  23  January  1936 ;  G.  A.  Moore, 
Hail  and  Farewell,  1911-1914;  Joseph  Hone, 
The  Life  of  George  Moore  (with  bibliogi-aphy), 
1936 ;  Charles  Morgan,  Epitaph  on  George 
Moore,  1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Morgan. 

MOORE,  MARY  (1861-1931),  actress 
and  theatre  manager.  [See  Wyndham, 
Maky,  Lady.] 

MORGAN,  CONWY  LLOYD  (1852- 
1936),  comparative  psychologist  and  philo- 
sopher, was  born  in  London  6  February 
1852,  the  second  son  of  James  Arthur 
Morgan,  solicitor,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Ander- 
son.   He  received  his  early  education  at 


627 


Morgan,  C.  L. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


the  Royal  Grammar  School,  Guildford,  his 
parents  having  moved  to  Weybridge  a  few 
years  after  his  birth.  Here  the  discipline 
was  mainly  classical,  with  some  mathe- 
matics but  no  science.  He  was,  however, 
early  attracted  to  scientific  studies  and  at 
the  age  of  seventeen  he  entered  the  School 
of  Mines  in  London  with  the  intention  of 
becoming  a  mining  engineer,  and  became 
increasingly  interested  in  the  pursuit  of 
pure  science.  On  finishing  his  course,  in 
order  to  postpone  the  final  decision  about 
a  career,  he  accepted  a  post  as  private 
tutor  which  gave  him  the  opportunity  of 
extensive  travel  in  North  and  South 
America.  On  his  return  he  resumed  his 
scientific  studies,  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Science,  where  he  worked,  among  other 
teachers,  vmder  T.  H.  Huxley  [q.v.],  whose 
influence  upon  him  was  profound. 

During  this  later  period  as  a  student 
Lloyd  Morgan  undertook  a  certain  amount 
of  lecturing  and  teaching  in  schools,  but 
his  first  regular  professional  post  was  in 
South  Africa  at  the  Diocesan  College  at 
Rondebosch,  where  he  was  appointed  in 
1878  to  teach  not  only  the  physical 
sciences  in  general,  but  also  English  litera- 
ture and,  for  a  time,  constitutional  history. 
In  1884  he  returned  to  England  to  succeed 
W.  J.  SoUas  [q.v.]  in  the  chair  of  geology 
and  zoology  at  University  College,  Bristol, 
where  he  was  destined  to  pass  the  rest  of 
his  professional  career.  Three  years  later 
he  was  elected  principal  of  the  college,  a 
post  which  in  the  early  days  of  the  univer- 
sity colleges  was  regarded  as  compatible 
with  the  continued  tenure  of  a  chair.  But 
as  the  college  developed  the  administrative 
work  grew  with  it,  and  when  in  1909  the 
university  charter  was  granted,  Lloyd 
Morgan  only  accepted  the  vice-chancellor- 
ship of  the  new  university  in  order  to  give 
it  a  start.  In  the  following  year,  by  his 
own  wish,  he  resigned  and  resvuned  the 
work  of  his  chair,  now  renamed  the  chair 
of  psychology  and  ethics,  from  which  he 
retired  in  1919.  He  lived  on  in  Clifton  for 
some  years  and  even  on  one  or  two  occa- 
sions returned  to  the  university  to  give 
temporary  assistance  in  the  department 
of  philosophy,  as  it  had  now  become.  He 
finally  retired  to  Hastings,  where  he  died 
6  March  1936. 

As  principal,  Lloyd  Morgan's  impressive 
appearance,  his  upright  and  kindly  per- 
sonality, and  his  intellectual  eminence 
commanded  universal  respect  and  liking, 
particularly  among  ^those  most  closely 
associated  with  him,  but  he  had  little 
taste  for  administration  and  was  not  parti- 


cularly well  equipped  to  handle  some  of 
the  more  assertive  academic  politicians  of 
the  time.  On  the  other  hand  there  can  be 
no  reservations  about  the  value  of  his  ser- 
vicesJiQ  learning.  His  main  interest  in  the 
early  xiays  of  his  tenure  of  the  chair  at 
Bristol  was  on  the  side  of  geology,  but 
that  soon  gave  place  to  what  for  many 
years  occupied  the  centre  of  his  attention, 
the  study  of  animal  and  comparative  psy- 
chology. His  contributions  in  this  field 
were  pre-eminent.  Indeed,  it  would  not 
be  too  much  to  say  that,  in  the  English- 
speaking  world  at  any  rate,  he  was  one  of 
the  chief  founders  of  the  scientific  study 
of  animal  psychology.  He  was  among  the 
first  to  apply  systematically  the  methods 
of  scientific  experiment  to  the  subject. 
But,  besides  that,  his  work  was  note- 
worthy for  its  philosophical  analysis  and 
clarification  of  the  concepts  used  and  its 
establishment  of  sound  general  principles 
of  explanation  and  interpretation.  The 
results  of  his  investigations  appeared  in 
a  long  series  of  publications  of  which  the 
most  important  are  Animal  Life  and  Intel- 
ligence (1890-1891),  Habit  and  Instinct 
(1896),  Animal  Behaviour  (1900),  and  In- 
stinct and  Experience  (1912).  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1899,  being  the  first 
fellow  to  be  elected  for  psychological 
work,  and  he  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  D.Sc.  from  Bristol  University 
in  1910. 

In  his  later  years  Lloyd  Morgan's 
interest  turned  more  to  general  philo- 
sophical and  metaphysical  speculation.  In 
this  field  he  developed  and  gave  his  own 
interpretation  to  the  idea  of  the  emergence 
of  novelty  which  was  being  discussed  by 
Samuel  Alexander  [q.v.]  and  others  at 
that  period.  His  most  important  works 
in  this  field  of  investigation  are  his  two 
courses  of  Gifford  lectures  delivered  at 
St.  Andrews  University  in  1922  and 
1923  and  published  as  Emergent  Evolu-\ 
tion  (1923)  and  Life,  Mind  and  Spirit  \ 
(1926).  ; 

Lloyd  Morgan  married  in  1878  Enuly! 
Charlotte,  daughter  of  Henry  William' 
Maddoek,  vicar  of  All  Saints'  church,  St. 
John's  Wood,  and  had  two  sons,  the  elder  j 
of  whom  predeceased  him.  I 

A  portrait  of  Lloyd  Morgan,  painted  by  I 
Aiming  Bell  in  1921,  hangs  in  the  imiver-l 
sity  of  Bristol.  j 

[Bristol  Times  and  Mirror,  5  December  i 
1904;  British  Journal  of  Psychology,  July' 
1936 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  5,  December  1936  (portrait) ;  pri- 
vate information.]  G.  C.  Field. 


628 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Morgan,  G.  T. 


MORGAN,  Sir  GILBERT  THOMAS 

(1872-1940),  chemist,  was  born  at  Essen- 
don,  Hertfordshire,  22  September  1872, 
l:he  son  of  Thomas  Morgan,  butler,  of 
Essendon,  by  his  wife,  Marie  Louise  Cor- 
lay,  of  French-Swiss  nationality.  He  was 
jducated  at  the  Central  Foundation 
School,  Cowper  Street,  London,  whence 
he  passed  in  1886  to  the  Technical  Col- 
lege, Finsbury,  as  a  certified  student,  and 
under  the  stimulus  of  Silvanus  Phillips 
Thompson  [q.v.],  John  Perry,  and  Raphael 
Meldola  he  had  by  the  time  he  left  the 
college  in  1889  prepared  a  series  of  new 
derivatives  of  benzeneazo-/3-naphthol  and 
assisted  in  the  extraction  of  ceria  from 
cerite.  That  his  early  ventures  in  research 
were  on  various  small  problems  of  an 
entirely  different  nature  was  afterwards  to 
have  a  far-reaching  effect,  since  he  never 
pecialized  in  any  one  branch  of  chemistry, 
but  was  at  home  in  the  organic,  inorganic, 
ind  physical  branches  of  that  science. 

Morgan  left  Finsbury  in  1889  and  was 
'employed  as  assistant  chemist  for  five 
years  in  the  firm  of  Read  Holliday  &  com- 
ipany,  dye  manufacturers,  at  Huddersfield 
i| later  British  Dyes,  Ltd.),  whence,  for  the 
sake  of  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  he 
^ave  up  a  post  of  great  promise  in  order 
lo  perfect  himself  in  the  new  ideas  of 
iJacobus  Hendricus  van't  Hoff,  Svante  A. 
Arrhenius,  and  Wilhelm  Ostwald,  and  be- 
i^ame  at  a  mature  age  a  student  at  the 
jRoyal  College  of  Science.  Nomination  to 
Ithe  staff  was  the  prelude  to  appointment 
m  1912  as  professor  of  chemistry  at  the 
IRoyal  College  of  Science  in  Dublin;  in 
1916  he  returned  to  Finsbury  as  professor 
n  succession  to  Meldola,  and  in  1919  he 
was  elected  Mason  professor  of  chemistry 
it  Birmingham  University.  Six  years  later 
lie  crowned  his  career  as  the  first  director 
3f  the  Chemical  Research  Laboratory 
which  at  the  instance  of  Sir  Richard  Threl- 
'aU  [q.v.]  had  been  set  up  at  Teddington. 
In  1937  he  retired,  but  not  into  inactivity, 
^or  he  had  become  chairman  of  the  re- 
earch  fund  committee  of  the  Institute  of 
Brewing,  and  had  entered  actively  on  a 
lew  and  large  field  of  research  when  he  died 
it  Richmond,  Surrey,  1  February  1940. 

Throughout  his  life  Morgan  had  two 
Tiain  interests  in  his  work :  chemical  reac- 
ions  vmder  high  pressures  and  synthetic 
esins.  The  first  of  these  arose  from  his 
Jse  of  the  autoclave  at  Huddersfield, 
ivhere  he  produced  the  dyestuff  Titan 
I!omo  Blue  which  enjoyed  a  brief  period 
)f  high  popularity.  The  second  also  made 
ts  appearance  towards  the  end  of  his 


period  as  a  commercial  chemist,  for  he 
made  an  observation  which  in  other  hands 
assumed  unusual  importance.  By  the  con- 
densation of  phenol  with  formaldehyde  he 
obtained  a  clear  amber  resin,  possessing 
unexpected  physical  properties  but  use- 
less as  a  source  of  dyes ;  the  experiment 
was  therefore  laid  aside  and  forgotten, 
imtil  in  1906  the  first  of  the  Baekeland 
patents  for  the  manufacture  of  synthetic 
plastics  showed  how  narrowly  Morgan  had 
missed  a  fortune.  Research  into  colours 
and  the  improvement  of  autoclaves  to- 
gether with  co-ordinated  compounds  were 
still  his  chief  studies  at  Dublin  and  Bir- 
mingham, and  when  he  was  appointed 
director  of  the  laboratory  at  Teddington, 
it  was  these  two  subjects,  together  with 
the  examination  of  low-temperature  tars, 
that  he  made  its  basic  studies.  But  no 
man  was  less  of  a  specialist  than  Morgan, 
and  when  in  1916  he  went  back  to  Fins- 
bury he  was  in  a  position  to  place  a  wide 
knowledge  of  organo-metallic  compounds 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Chemical  Warfare 
Committee.  It  was  the  same  at  Tedding- 
ton, where  the  value  of  the  laboratory  was 
soon  recognized  and  additional  long-range 
investigations  were  undertaken  in  all 
manner  of  micro-biological  problems,  in- 
cluding those  of  water  pollution  and  the 
chemical  constituents  of  wood  smoke. 

Morgan's  publications  are  still  regarded 
as  authoritative;  they  include  Achieve- 
ments of  the  British  Chemical  Industry  in 
the  last  Twenty-five  Years  (Cantor  lectures. 
Royal  Society  of  Arts,  1939),  British 
Chemical  Industry.  Its  Rise  and  Develop- 
ment (1938),  Inorganic  Chemistry,  a  Survey 
of  Modern  Development  (1936),  and  Organic 
Compounds  of  Arsenic  and  Antimony 
(1918).  He  also  contributed  alone  or  in 
collaboration  over  350  original  scientific 
papers,  always  being  careful  to  acknow- 
ledge the  work  of  others ;  and  from  1903 
to  1906  he  was  editor  of  the  Journal  of 
the  Chemical  Society. 

Many  honours  were  bestowed  upon  Mor- 
gan :  he  was  appointed  O.B.E.  in  1920  and 
knighted  in  1936;  he  was  elected  F.R.S. 
in  1915,  and  he  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Dublin,  St.  An- 
drews, and  Birmingham.  In  1921  he  was 
awarded  the  gold  medal  of  the  Worshipful 
Company  of  Dyers ;  in  1931  he  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Society  of  Chemical  Industry, 
which  in  1939  awarded  him  its  medal ;  and 
of  the  Chemical  Society  in  1933.  He 
married  in  1912  Kathleen  Nembhard  (died 
1944),  daughter  of  George  Desborough. 
He  had  no  issue. 


@29 


Morgan,  G.  T. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


Morgan  possessed  an  extraordinarily 
retentive  memory  and  his  love  of  work 
was  matched  by  his  tireless  energy  and  his 
devotion  to  thoroughness  and  efflciency. 
He  was  one  of  the  very  few  men  who  are 
at  once  a  brilliant  research  chemist,  an 
inspiring  teacher,  and  a  good  organizer. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  9,  January  1941  (portrait) ;  Jour- 
nal of  the  Chemical  Society,  July  1941 ; 
Nature,  17  February  1940;  The  Times,  2 
February  1940;  Sir  G.  T.  Morgan,  'Personal 
Reminiscences  of  Chemical  Research',  Jour- 
nal of  the  Society  of  Chemical  Industry,  vol. 
Iviii,  1939,  and  (obituary  notice)  vol.  lix, 
1940;  Journal  of  the  Institute  of  Brewing, 
April  1940  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  C.  Irvine. 

MORISON,  Sir  THEODORE  (1863- 
1936),  educationist  and  writer,  was  born 
in  Malta  9  May  1863,  the  only  son  of  the 
author  James  Augustus  Cotter  Morison, 
and  grandson  of  James  Morison  (1770- 
1840)  [qq.v.].  His  mother  was  Frances 
Adelaide,  daughter  of  the  London  pub- 
lisher George  Virtue  and  sister  of  James 
Sprent  Virtue  [qq.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Westminster  and  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  obtained  a  second  class 
in  the  classical  tripos  of  1885.  The  fol- 
lowing year  he  went  to  India  as  tutor  to 
the  young  Maharajas  of  Chhaturpur  and 
Charkhari,  and  in  1889  was  appointed  a 
professor  at  the  Mohammedan  Anglo- 
Oriental  College  at  Aligarh.  The  aim  of 
Sir  Say y id  Ahmed  Khan,  founder  of  the 
coUege,  was  to  reconcile  orthodox  Moham- 
medan opinion  to  western  methods  of 
education  based  upon  Islamic  culture  and 
religion.  The  college,  later  the  Moslem 
University  of  Aligarh,  played  a  great  part 
in  the  Moslem  renaissance  in  India,  and 
Morison  had  much  to  do  with  its  develop- 
ment during  his  sixteen  years  at  Aligarh, 
the  last  six  of  which  were  spent  as  prin- 
cipal. Lord  Curzon  recognized  his  influ- 
ence by  nominating  him  as  an  additional 
member  of  his  legislative  council  for  1903- 
1904,  and  in  1904  Morison  was  chosen  to 
preside  over  the  All  India  Mohammedan 
Educational  Conference. 

In  1905  Morison  returned  to  England, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  following  year  John 
(later  Viscount)  Morley,  the  secretary  of 
state  for  India,  appointed  him  one  of  his 
advisers  on  the  Council  of  India,  a  position 
which  Morison  filled  until  1916.  In  1913 
Lord  Crewe  chose  him  to  be  a  member  of 
the  royal  commission  on  the  public  ser- 
vices in  India  under  the  chairmanship  of 
Sir  John  Poynder  Dickson-Poynder,  Lord 


Islington  [q.v.].  The  commission  com- 
pleted its  work  in  1915,  and  Morison, 
although  over  fifty,  took  a  commission  in 
the  Cambridgeshire  Regiment  (Territorial 
Force)  and  saw  service  as  a  political  offifl 
in  East  Africa  from  1916  to  1918.         W 

In  1919,  after  demobilization,  Morison 
became  principal  of  Armstrong  College 
(later  King's  College),  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne,  where  he  remained  until  1929, 
serving  as  vice-chancellor  of  Durham  Uni- 
versity from  1924  to  1926.  Under  his  con- 
trol the  college  made  marked  progress, 
and  he  devoted  his  attention  especially  to 
the  improvement  of  student  amenities.  In 
1933,  although  nearly  seventy,  he  became 
director  of  the  British  Institute  in  Paris. 
There  he  established  personal  relations 
with  the  imiversity  and  in  other  ways  im- 
proved the  academic  standing  of  the  insti- 
tute.  He  died  in  Paris  14  February  1936. 

Morison  married  in  1895  Margaret  (died 
1931),  daughter  of  Arthur  Cohen  [q.v.], 
barrister,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter, 
who  predeceased  her  father.  He  was  ap- 
pointed K.C.I.E.  in  1910,  K.C.S.I.  in  1917 
in  recognition  of  his  services  on  the  Isling- 
ton commission,  and  C.B.E.  in  1918.  He 
was  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour 
and  of  the  Belgian  Order  of  Leopold,  and 
in  1920  the  university  of  Durham  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L. 

A  portrait  of  Morison  by  T.  B.  Garvie 
(1930)  hangs  in  the  library  of  King's 
College,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

[The  Times,  15  February  1936;  The 
Northerner  (magazine  of  Armstrong  College, 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne),  November  1929;  pri- 
vate information.]       J.  C.  Powell-Price. 

MORRELL,  Lady  OTTOLINE  VIO- 
LET ANNE  (1873-1938),  was  born  in 
London  16  Jtme  1873,  the  only  daughter 
and  youngest  child  of  Lieutenant-General 
Arthur  Cavendish-Bentinck,  by  his  second 
wife,  the  younger  daughter  of  Henry 
Montague  Browne,  dean  of  Lismore, 
Augusta  Mary  Elizabeth,  who  was  created 
Baroness  Bolsover.  On  Ottoline's  half- 
brother  succeeding  in  1879  to  the  duke- 
dom of  Portland,  the  other  children  of 
Arthur  Cavendish-Bentinck  were  granted 
in  1880  the  precedence  of  the  children  of 
a  duke.  She  never  went  to  school  but 
was  educated  by  her  mother  at  Welbeck. 
Brilliant,  idealistic,  and  eccentric,  she 
early  found  herself  in  rebellion  against  the 
orthodox  traditionalism  of  her  home:  and 
in  1902  she  married  Philip  Edward  Morrell' 
(died  1943),  liberal  member  of  parliament 
for  South  Oxfordshire  (1906-1910)  andj 


680 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Morris 


Burnley  (1910-1918),  who  shared  her 
aesthetic  tastes  and  'advanced'  views. 
They  had  a  son,  who  died  in  infancy,  and 
a  daughter.  The  Morrells  settled  in  Lon- 
don where  Lady  Ottohne  soon  found  her 
true  mitier  as  the  centre  and  patroness  of 
a  bohemian  and  intellectual  circle  which 
was  to  include  some  of  the  most  distin- 
guished artists  and  writers  of  the  age, 
notably  Mr.  Bertrand  (afterwards  third 
Earl)  Russell,  D.  H.  Lawrence  [q.v.],  W.  B. 
Yeats  [q.v.],  Mr.  Walter  de  la  Mare, 
Mr.  T.  S.  Eliot,  Mr.  Augustus  John,  Mr. 
Henry  Lamb,  (Giles)  Lytton  Strachey 
[q.v.],  Virginia  Woolf,  Mr.  Aldous  Huxley, 
and  Mr.  Siegfried  Sassoon.  In  1913  the 
Morrells  left  London  for  Garsington  Manor, 
Oxfordshire,  where  Lady  Ottoline's  social 
activities  continued  until  they  were 
abruptly  broken  into  by  the  war  of  191 4- 
1918.  Both  she  and  Morrell  were  strong 
pacificists,  and  made  their  house  a  refuge 
for  conscientious  objectors,  whom  they 
generously  befriended.  After  the  war  the 
circle  revived  to  include  new  generations 
of  genius,  first  at  Garsington  and  after 
1924  at  10  Gower  Street,  London,  where 
Lady  Ottoline  lived  until  her  death  at 
Tvmbridge  Wells  21  April  1938.  She  was 
a  character  of  Elizabethan  extravagance 
and  force,  at  once  mystical  and  possessive, 
quixotic  and  tempestuous ;  with  the  result 
that  those  friendships  in  which  her  nature 
found  fulfilment  ended  sometimes  in  vio- 
lent quarrels.  But  she  was  a  figure  of  the 
first  importance  in  the  literary  and  artistic 
history  of  her  time.  She  did  much  to  help 
her  proteges,  whose  gifts  she  was  often  the 
first  person  to  recognize:  in  the  lives  of 
several  she  played  a  crucial  and  dramatic 
role :  and,  indeed,  her  own  personality  was, 
in  its  way,  a  considerable  work  of  art,  ex- 
pressing alike  in  her  conversation,  her  dress, 
and  the  decoration  of  her  houses,  a  fantas- 
tic, individual,  and  creative  imagination. 

There  are  portraits  of  Lady  Ottoline  (as 
a  child,  with  her  mother)  by  Alessandro 
Ossani  (1875),  by  Violet,  Duchess  of  Rut- 
land (1883),  and  by  James  Sant  (1883)  in 
the  possession  of  her  daughter,  Mrs.  Vino- 
gradoff;  and  another,  by  Jean  Edouard 
Lacretelle  (1879),  is  at  Welbeck.  A  portrait 
and  a  drawing  of  her  as  a  woman,  by 
Augustus  John,  also  belong  to  her  daugh- 
ter; and  another,  by  Henry  Lamb,  is  in 
the  possession  of  Viscount  Hambleden. 

[Personal  knowledge.]  David  Cecil. 

MORRIS,  EDWARD  PATRICK,  first 
Baron  Morris,  of  St.  John's  and  of  the 
City  of  Waterford  (1859-1935),  premier  of 


Newfoundland,  was  bom  at  St.  John's, 
Newfoimdland,  8  May  1859,  the  third  son 
of  Edward  Morris,  of  Waterford,  Ireland, 
and  later  keeper  of  the  poorhouse  at 
St.  John's,  by  his  wife,  Catherine,  daughter 
of  the  Rev.  John  Fitzgerald,  of  Tipperary. 
Morris  was  a  Roman  Catholic  and  was 
educated  first  at  St.  Bonaventure's  College 
in  St.  John's,  and  thereafter  at  the  uni- 
versity of  Ottawa.  He  entered  upon  the 
profession  of  the  law,  being  admitted  a 
solicitor  in  1884,  and  was  called  to  the 
Newfoundland  bar  in  1885,  taking  silk 
there  in  1896.  But  his  life's  work  lay  in 
politics.  In  the  same  year  that  he  was 
called  to  the  bar,  he  was  elected  at  the 
age  of  twenty-six  to  the  House  of  As- 
sembly as  liberal  member  for  St.  John's 
West,  and  he  held  the  seat  imtil  1919, 
that  is,  throughout  his  career.  He  first 
obtained  office  in  1889,  at  the  age  of 
thirty,  when  he  entered  the  Cabinet  of  Sir 
William  Whiteway  [q.v.]  as  minister  with- 
out portfolio,  and  was  acting  attorney- 
general  from  1890  to  1892  and  again  in 
1895. 

In  the  years  of  Morris's  political  career 
Newfoundland  had  a  stormy  and  trouble- 
some history,  and  he  was  associated  promi- 
nently with  most  of  her  critical  experiences. 
In  1895,  as  a  result  of  the  disastrous  fire 
in  St.  John's  of  1892,  the  bad  fishery 
season  of  1893,  and  the  banking  collapse 
of  1894,  negotiations  were  opened  with 
Canada  to  discuss  the  terms  upon  which 
Newfoundland  might  enter  the  Dominion. 
Morris  was  appointed  one  of  the  delegates, 
being  associated  on  this  occasion,  as  upon 
others,  with  (Sir)  Robert  Bond  [q.v.]. 
Morris  was  ready  to  be  convinced  that 
Newfoundland  should  join  the  federation, 
but  the  Canadian  terms  were  not  generous 
and  there  was  strong  opposition  in  New- 
foundland, and  especially  in  his  own  con- 
stituency, against  union.  In  the  result  the 
negotiations  were  abandoned.  In  1898 
Morris,  then  in  opposition,  played  a  de- 
cisive part  in  the  acceptance  of  the  '  Reid 
contract'.  The  government  of  Sir  James 
Winter  [q.v.],  which  had  assumed  office 
on  the  defeat  of  Whiteway  in  1897,  signed 
a  contract  with  (Sir)  Robert  Reid  [q.v.], 
which  virtually  sold  all  the  colony's  means 
of  commvmication  to  Reid.  Bond  strenu- 
ously opposed  the  contract,  but  Morris 
broke  with  his  party  and,  taking  seven 
others  with  him,  assisted  the  passage  of 
the  measure. 

From  1898  to  1900  Morris  led  a  group 
called  the  independent  liberal  party.  In 
1900  internal  dissensions  led  to  the  defeat 


631 


Morris 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  Winter's  government.  Bond  took  office 
and  formed  a  coalition  with  Morris,  who 
now  supported  a  revision  of  the  Reid  con- 
tract. Bond  remained  premier  vmtil  1909 
and  Morris  held  office  in  his  Cabinet  until 
1907,  being  attorney-general  and  minister 
of  justice  from  1902.  He  was  associated 
with  Bond  as  a  delegate  to  the  Colonial 
Office  in  1901  (as  he  had  been  in  1897)  to 
represent  Newfoxmdland's  interests  in  the 
negotiations  with  France  on  the  difficult 
question  of  French  fishing-rights  on  cer- 
tain specified  coasts  of  the  colony.  The 
negotiations  broke  down  and  a  settlement 
had  to  await  the  conclusion  of  the  entente 
cordiale  in  1904.  He  was  counsel  for  the 
British  government  in  the  North  Atlantic 
fisheries  dispute  conducted  at  The  Hague 
in  1910. 

In  1907  Morris,  who  had  been  knighted 
in  1904,  resigned  from  the  Bond  Cabinet 
owing  to  a  disagreement  with  the  premier 
on  a  trifling  point,  and  in  1908  became 
leader  of  a  group  known  as  the  people's 
party.  But  in  March  1909  he  became 
premier,  leading  a  coalition  of  the  liberals 
who  had  seceded  with  him  and  the  con- 
servative party,  which  he  had  opposed  so 
long,  under  the  name  of  the  'people's' 
party,  and  at  a  general  election  in  May, 
following  upon  a  period  of  extraordinary 
confusion  and  deadlock  in  the  House  of 
Assembly,  he  was  well  established  in  office. 
He  remained  premier  continuously  for 
nearly  nine  years.  Old-age  pensions  were 
introduced  by  his  government,  the  expan- 
sion of  education  and  of  agriculture  was 
stimulated,  and  considerable  railway  de- 
velopment—later to  prove  a  financial  bur- 
den— was  imdertaken.  He  represented 
Newfoxmdland  at  the  Imperial  Defence 
Conference  of  1909  and  at  the  Imperial 
Conference  and  the  coronation  in  1911. 
But  it  was  in  the  war  of  1914-1918  that 
he  made  his  greatest  contribution.  He  was 
a  leading  figure  in  the  movement  which 
led  to  the  organization  of  the  Royal  New- 
fomidland  Regiment  and  the  enlistment 
of  Newfoimdlanders  in  the  Royal  Navy. 
He  brought  Newfoundland  prominently 
into  the  coiuicils  of  the  Empire,  repre- 
senting her  at  the  Imperial  War  Con- 
ference of  1917  and  acting  as  a  member 
of  the  Imperial  War  Cabinet  from  1916  to 
1917.  He  was  thus  instrumental  in  lead- 
ing Newfoundland  forward  to  Dominion 
status,  in  association  with  the  other 
nations  of  the  British  Commonwealth.  In 
1917  Morris  reconstructed  his  government 
and  formed  a  coalition  to  include  repre- 
sentatives of  the  liberal  opposition.  Then 


at  the  end  of  the  year  he  decided  to  resi£ 
and  in  January  1918  he  was  succeed^ 
as  premier  by  (Sir)  William  Lloyd,  t| 
liberal  leader.  In  the  same  month  he  wl 
raised  to  the  peerage — a  rare  distinctioiT 
for    a    Dominion    statesman — as    Baron 
Morris,  of  St.  John's  and  of  the  City  of 
Waterford,  'for  his  long  and  distinguished 
services  to  the  Empire'. 

On  his  retirement  Lord  Morris  lived  in 
England  and  took  an  active  interest  in 
imperial  affairs  and  philanthropic  institu- 
tions. He  had  foimd  time  while  in  office 
to  edit  (1897-1905)  the  Newfoundland 
Law  Reports  for  the  periods  1817-1828 
and  1864-1903.  He  was  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council  and  received  honorary  de- 
grees from  the  imiversities  of  Oxford, 
Cambridge,  Glasgow,  and  Edinburgh  in 
1911,  and  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in 
1913;  he  was  an  honorary  freeman  of 
London,  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Manchester, 
and  Bristol,  He  was  a  man  of  great  vigoiu-, 
a  forceful  and  convincing  speaker,  of 
powerful  physique,  and  of  considerable 
personal  charm.  He  was  a  staunch  advo- 
cate of  the  rights  of  Newfoundland  and  at 
the  same  time  an  ardent  supporter  of  the 
British  Empire.  He  would  be  regarded  by 
many  as  the  greatest  in  the  line  of  New- 
foundland premiers ;  he  is  rivalled  only  by 
Bond. 

Morris  married  in  1901  Isobel  Langrishe 
(died  1934),  daughter  of  the  Rev.  William 
WeUman  Le  Gallais,  of  Jersey  and  New- 
foimdland,  and  widow  of  James  P.  Fox. 
He  died  in  London  24  October  1935,  and 
was  succeeded  as  second  baron  by  his  only 
child,  Michael  WiUiam  (born  1903). 

A  portrait  of  Morris  is  included  in  Sir 
James  Guthrie's  picture, '  Some  Statesmen 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1921-1930, 
in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times,  25  October  1935;  Newfound- 
land Royal  Commission  Report,  1933,  1938; 
Cambridge  History  of  the  British  Empire,  vol. 
vi,  1930 ;  private  information.] 

K.  C.  Wheare. 

MOTT,  Sir  BASIL,  first  baronet  (1859 
1938),  civil  engineer,  was  born  at  Leicester 
16  September  1859,  the  youngest  son  of 
Frederick  Thompson  Mott,  of  Birstall  Hill, 
near  Leicester,  by  his  first  wife,  Elizabeth 
Ann,  daughter  of  Isaac  Dobell.  He  was 
educated  at  Leicester  Grammar  School, 
the  International  College  at  Isleworth,  at 
Solothurn  in  Switzerland,  and  the  Royal 
School  of  Mines,  South  Kensington,  where 
he  won  the  Murchison  medal  in  18T9. 
After  some  years  as  a  mining  engineer  he 


632 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Moynihan 


t)ecame  assistant  and  then  partner  to 
James  Henry  Greathead  and  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  was  appointed  resident  en- 
cjineer  for  the  construction  of  the  City  and 
Houth  London  Railway.  The  work  was  of 
El  revolutionary  nature,  this  being  the  first 
deep-level  tube  to  be  constructed  and  the 
lirst  occasion  on  which  the  Greathead 
shield  was  used  on  a  large  scale.  The  line, 
from  the  Monument  to  Stockwell,  was 
opened  by  the  Prince  of  Wales  in  1890. 
Electric  traction  was  then  in  its  infancy 
and  Mott  assumed  responsibility  for  the 
running  of  the  line  until  the  many  unfore- 
seen diliiculties  of  operation  had  been 
overcome.  Some  years  later  (in  1896)  he 
entered  into  partnership  with  Sir  Ben- 
jamin Baker  [q.v.]  and  with  him  was 
responsible  for  the  construction  of  the 
second  deep-level  tube,  the  Central  Lon- 
don Railway,  from  the  Bank  to  Shepherd's 
Bush,  which  was  opened  in  1900. 

After  Baker's  death  in  1907,  Mott 
larried  on  his  own  practice  as  consulting 
engineer  with  his  partners  David  Hay, 
Mr.  David  Anderson,  and  later  Mr.  G.  L. 
(iroves.  He  visited  the  United  States  of 
America  and  was  responsible  for  the  intro- 
duction of  escalators  into  Great  Britain 
and,  as  consulting  engineer  to  the  London 
jPassehger  Transport  Board,  for  many 
[large  constructional  works  and  extensions 
to  the  London  tube  railways. 
j  Mott  was  associated  also  with  many 
important  bridge  schemes ;  among  others 
'the  widening  of  Blackfriars  bridge,  under- 
taken with  Baker  and  carried  out  after 
jthe  latter's  death,  the  widening  of  King- 
ston and  the  reconstruction  of  Southwark 
jbridges,  the  construction  of  Queensferry 
bridge  at  Chester,  and  the  single-span 
jhigh-level  road  bridge  at  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Mott 
served  on  several  government  committees, 
visiting  P'rance  and  India  and  advising  on 
various  defence  schemes. 

After  the  war  Mott  was  consulted  by 
the  Ministry  of  Transport  and  made  re- 
ports on  the  proposed  Charing  Cross 
bridge,  road  bridges  over  the  Forth  and 
the  Tay,  the  Channel  tunnel,  and  other 
important  schemes.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  Severn  Barrage  Committee  and  of  the 
government  Economic  Advisory  Commit- 
tee. In  1925  there  was  considerable 
anxiety  as  to  the  safety  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  and  Mott  was  appointed  chair- 
man of  the  works  committee  of  engineers 
and  architects  entrusted  with  the  pre- 
servation of  the  fabric ;  the  method  which 


was  adopted,  that  of  grouting  the  piers, 
aroused  some  controversy  at  the  time  but 
proved  entirely  successful. 

One  of  the  most  important  projects  for 
which  Mott  was  primarily  responsible  was 
the  Mersey  road  tunnel  connecting  Liver- 
pool and  Birkenhead;  ventilated  for 
petrol-driven  traffic,  it  is  in  length  and 
diameter  the  largest  sub-aqueous  timnel 
in  the  world.  It  was  opened  by  King 
George  V  in  1934. 

Mott  became  a  member  of  the  Institu- 
tion of  Civil  Engineers  in  1895,  and  was 
elected  vice-president  in  1920  and  presi- 
dent in  1924.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1918,  created  a  baronet  in  1930,  and 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1932.  He  was  an  asso- 
ciate of  the  Royal  School  of  Mines,  a  fellow 
of  the  Imperial  College  of  Science  and 
Technology,  and  a  member  of  the  Societe 
des  Ingenieurs  Civils  de  France. 

Mott  married  in  1887  Florence  Harmar 
(died  1923),  daughter  of  William  Parker, 
and  had  two  sons.  He  died  in  London 
7  September  1938,  and  was  succeeded  as 
second  baronet  by  his  elder  son,  Adrian 
Spear  (born  1889). 

A  portrait  of  Mott  by  Stanhope  Forbes 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers. 

[The  Times,  8  September  1938 ;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  the  Insti- 
tution of  Civil  Engineers,  vol.  x,  1938 ;  office 
records ;  personal  knowledge.] 

David  Anderson. 

MOUNT  TEMPLE,  Baron  (1867- 
1938),  politician.  [See  Ashley,  Wilfred 
William.] 

MOYNIHAN,  BERKELEY  GEORGE 
ANDREW,  first  Baron  Moynihan,  of 
Leeds  (1865-1936),  surgeon,  was  born  in 
Malta  2  October  1865,  the  only  son,  with 
two  elder  sisters,  of  Captain  Andrew 
Moynihan,  V.C,  of  the  90th  Regiment, 
afterwards  of  the  8th  Foot  (the  King's 
Regiment),  by  his  wife,  Ellen  Anne, 
younger  daughter  of  Thomas  Parkin, 
cabinet-maker,  of  Hurst,  near  Ashton- 
under-Lyne.  His  father,  who  was  Irish  by 
descent,  died  of  Malta  fever,  and  his 
mother  settled  at  Leeds  with  her  sister,  the 
wife  of  Police-Sergeant  Alfred  Ball. 

Moynihan  was  educated  at  Christ's 
Hospital  (1875-1881)  and  at  the  Royal 
Naval  School,  New  Cross  (1881-1883), 
where  his  chief  success  was  at  swimming, 
which  remained  his  favourite  recreation. 
He  was  a  boy  of  spirit  and  ability,  but 


633 


Moynihan 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


3 


made  no  mark  at  school.  On  his  eighteenth 
birthday  he  entered  the  Leeds  Medical 
School,  then  at  the  Yorkshire  College,  in- 
tending to  become  an  army  doctor.  He 
soon  discovered  an  aptitude  for  medicine 
and  worked  imremittingly  with  brilliant 
success.  He  was  dresser  to  Arthur  Fergus- 
son  McGill,  who  awakened  his  interest  in 
siu-gery,  and  he  qualified  M.B.  (London) 
in  1887.  He  was  then  appointed  house- 
surgeon  (1887-1889)  to  (Sir)  WiUiam  Mayo 
Robson  at  the  Leeds  General  Infirmary. 
During  the  winter  of  1889  he  worked  in 
Berlin  and  in  April  1890  became  resident 
surgical  ofiicer  at  the  Leeds  General  In- 
firmary. There  he  attracted  the  attention 
of  Thomas  Richard  Jessop,  the  leading 
practitioner  and  surgeon  in  the  district. 
He  was  admitted  F.R.C.S.  (England)  in 
1890  by  examination  and  in  1893  he 
graduated  M.S.  (London)  with,  a  gold 
medal.  He  set  up  as  a  consultant  in  Leeds 
in  1893,  acting  also  as  private  assistant  to 
Jessop.  A  vacancy  occurred  on  the  in- 
firmary staff  in  1894,  but  Moynihan  was 
not  elected.  He  was,  however,  appointed 
demonstrator  in  anatomy  at  the  Yorkshire 
College  and  in  1909  became  professor  of 
clinical  surgery  in  the  university  of  Leeds. 
In  1896  he  was  elected  assistant  surgeon 
to  the  infirmary,  becoming  surgeon  in 
1906  and  consulting  surgeon  on  retirement 
in  1926. 

Between  1896  and  1914  Moynihan 
gained  a  reputation  as  the  most  accom- 
plished surgeon  in  England,  and  among 
the  greatest  of  all  surgeons.  He  aimed  at 
perfection  of  technique,  developing  his  un- 
rivalled dexterity  to  assure  the  soundest, 
rather  than  the  most  brilliant  work,  al- 
though brilliance  was  his  native  gift.  He 
also  gave  much  thought  to  medical  care 
before  and  after  operation,  'making  the 
patient  safe  for  surgery'.  In  particular  he 
practised  and  preached  gentleness  in  mani- 
pulation. His  work  became  widely  known 
through  the  consununate  showmanship 
with  which  he  expounded  it  to  visitors, 
until  his  clinic  became  an  essential  place 
of  pilgrimage  for  British  and  American 
surgeons.  His  practice  grew  wide  but  he 
made  time,  by  early  rising,  to  write  several 
iniportant  books,  as  well  as  numerous 
articles.  He  collaborated  with  Mayo  Rob- 
son  in  Diseases  of  the  Stomach  and  their 
Surgical  Treatment  (1901),  and  Diseases  of 
the  Pancreas  aiid  their  Surgical  Treatment 
(1902).  He  had  lectured  at  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  in  1899,  but  his  pre- 
eminence was  hardly  recognized  in  Eng- 
land when  in  May  1903  he  was  invited 


ialH 
ana 


by  the  American  Surgical  Association  to 
read  a  paper  at  its  meeting  at  Phila 
delphia.  Here  he  formed  lasting  frie: 
ships  with  leading  surgeons,  especial 
William  J.  and  Charles  H.  Mayo  an" 
George  W.  Crile.  He  had  already  made 
innovations  towards  absolute  asepsis  in 
the  'ritual'  of  his  operating  theatre  and 
introduced  from  America  the  use  of  rubber 
gloves,  which  after  some  ridicule  became 
miiversally  worn  by  surgeons.  In  1903 
appeared  Surgical  Treatment  of  Gastric  and 
Duodenal  Ulcers  and  in  1904  Gallstones 
and  their  Surgical  Treatment,  which  be- 
came a  classic.  His  surgical  doctrine  was 
admirably  set  out  in  Abdominal  Operations, 
pubUshed  in  America  in  1905 ;  he  revised 
its  fourth  edition  in  1926.  Throughout 
this  period  Moynihan  was  studying  the 
differential  diagnosis  of  peptic  ulcers.  He 
gradually  satisfied  himself,  by  correlation 
of  symptoms  with  pathologic  changes 
found  at  operation,  of  the  precise  syn- 
drome of  the  duodenal  ulcer.  His  book  Duo- 
denal Ulcer  (1910)  established  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  clinical  scientist.  His  chain  of 
reasoned  observation  and  its  conclusion 
have  been  compared  to  the  discovery  of 
a  new  star. 

Moynihan  was  a  dominant  individualist 
with  an  eager  determination  to  achieve  h^l| 
projects  for  his  profession.  In  1909  ^| 
formed  a  club  for  visiting  surgical  clinics ; 
it  proved  successful  and  assumed  the  name 
'Chirurgical  Club',  which  in  1929  was 
altered  to  'Moynihan  Chirurgical  Club'. 
He  instigated  the  publication  of  the  British 
Journal  of  Surgery  in  1913 ;  and  he  pro- 
moted the  Association  of  Surgeons  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  formed  in  1920, 
Avith  equal  success.  j 

Moynihan  served  in  France  from  1914 
to  1915  as  a  consulting  surgeon,  rising  to 
the  rank  of  major-general  in  the  Array  | 
Medical  Service.  Later  he  was  chairman 
of  the  Council  of  Consultants  (1916-1919) 
and  a  member  of  the  Army  Medical  Ad- 
visory Board  (1917-1936).  In  October 
1917  he  spent  three  weeks  in  America;  he 
was  admitted  an  honorary  fellow  of  the 
American  College  of  Surgeons  and  achieved 
a  remarkable  success  as  an  orator  at  a 
series  of  patriotic  meetings.  He  had 
a  beautiful  voice  and  was  a  master  of 
clear,  rhetorical  EngUsh.  He  was  again  in 
America  in  1920  to  give  the  first  J.  B. 
Murphy  lecture  to  the  American  College 
of  Surgeons,  at  Montreal,  in  honour  of  the 
man  whom  he  called  the  greatest  surgeon 
of  all  time,  and  with  whom  he  shared 
many  characteristics. 


684 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Muirhead 


Moynihan  was  elected  to  the  council  of 
I  he  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  in  1912  and 
was  president  in  1926 ;  his  six  years'  rule 
gave  the  college  new  life  and  prestige.  There 
in  1920  he  gave  the  Bradshaw  lecture  on 
■  'J'he  Spleen  and  some  of  its  Diseases '  and 
ill  1927  the  Hunterian  oration,  speaking 
)!  the  achievements  of  Hunter  and  Lister, 
who  had  based  their  surgery  on  physio- 
logical principles,  an  ideal  which  Moynihan 
had  made  familiar  as  'the  pathology  of 
the  living'.  He  insisted  that  medical 
science  could  be  advanced  by  observation 
of  disease  in  the  operating  theatre  better 
than  by  post-mortem  dissection.  He  gave 
the  Romanes  lecture  at  Oxford  on  'The 
Advance  of  Medicine'  in  1932. 

He  was  elected  vice-chancellor  of  Leeds 
University  in  1924  and  was  given  the 
freedom  of  the  city  in  1926.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  fourteen  univer- 
sities in  many  parts  of  the  world. 

Moynihan  was  knighted  in  1912;  ap- 
pointed C.B.  in  1917  and  K.C.M.G.  m  1918 
and  created  a  baronet  in  1922,  he  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Moynihan, 
of  Leeds,  in  1929.  His  oratory  was  less 
successful  in  the  House  of  Lords  than  out- 
side, but  his  influence  secured  the  defeat 
of  the  registration  of  osteopaths  bill  in 
1935.  He  was  less  welcome  when  he  advo- 
cated the  legalization  of  euthanasia. 

Moynihan  married  in  1895  Isabella 
Wellesley,  second  daughter  of  Thomas 
Richard  Jessop,  F.R.C.S.,  of  Leeds.  Of 
this  singularly  happy  marriage  there  were 
born  a  son  and  two  daughters.  He  died  of 
shock  at  Carr  Manor,  Meanwood,  Leeds, 
his  home  since  1914,  7  September  1936, 
seven  days  after  the  death  of  Lady  Moyni- 
han. A  burial  in  Westminster  Abbey  was 
offered,  but  since  he  had  identified  his 
career  with  Leeds  he  was  buried  there  at 
Lawnswood  cemetery.  He  was  succeeded 
as  second  baron  by  his  son,  Patrick  Berke- 
ley (born  1906). 

Moynihan  was  at  all  times  self-aware 
and  even  histrionic ;  he  was  not  impervious 
to  flattery  and  latterly  showed  faults  of 
judgement,  probably  incipient  symptoms 
of  the  cerebral  failure  which  caused  his 
sudden  death.  He  fulfilled  his  own  de- 
scription of  the  ideal  surgeon:  'a  hand- 
some man  of  distinguished  presence,  a 
man  of  wide  knowledge  and  general  cul- 
ture, a  man  of  great  technical  skill  and 
sound  judgement,  and  a  man  of  compas- 
sionate heart'.  He  stood  six  feet  high  and 
was  broad  in  proportion ;  until  middle  Ufe 
his  hair  was  fiery  red;  his  hands  were 
blunt  and  muscular. 


A  portrait  of  Moynihan  by  Sir  Hubert 
von  Herkomer  (1912)  is  in  the  possession 
of  his  family ;  one  by  Richard  Jack  (1927) 
is  at  the  General  Infirmary,  Leeds,  with 
a  copy  by  the  artist  at  the  Royal  College 
of  Surgeons  (reproduced  in  colour  in  the 
British  Journal  of  Surgery,  July  1936).  A 
marble  bust  by  Sir  W.  Reid  Dick  is  at  the 
infirmary  (reproduced  in  the  British  Medi- 
cal Journal,  1940,  vol.  i,  p.  185),  and 
another,  by  F.  J.  Wilcoxson,  is  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons;  the  Leeds 
Medical  School  has  a  bronze  bust  by  the 
latter  and  a  bronze  cast  of  his  hands. 

[The  Times,  8  September  1936;  Donald 
Bateman,  Berkeley  Moynihan,  Surgeon,  1940 ; 
British  Medical  Journal,  1940,  vol.  i,  pp. 
601  and  649 ;  University  of  Leeds  Medical 
Society  Magazine,  vol.  vii,  1937  (biblio- 
graphy) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  R.  Le  Fanu. 

MUIRHEAD,  JOHN  HENRY  (1855- 
1940),  philosopher,  the  third  son  of  John 
William  Muirhead,  writer  to  the  signet,  of 
Glasgow,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Burns  (who 
claimed  a  connexion  with  Susan  Ferrier, 
the  novelist,  q.v.),  was  born  at  Glasgow 
28  April  1855.  Educated  at  the  Glasgow 
Academy,  he  proceeded  to  the  University 
where  he  graduated  M.A.  in  1875.  The 
year  previously  he  had  won  a  Snell  exhibi- 
tion at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  to  which 
he  went  up  in  Trinity  Term  1 875 .  Amongst 
his  intimate  friends  and  contemporaries 
were  (Sir)  Henry  Jones,  J.  S.  Mackenzie 
[qq.v.],  John  MacCunn,  and  W.  P.  Ker 
[q.v.].  After  obtaining  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1877)  he  was,  to  the 
surprise  of  the  college,  placed  in  the  second 
class  in  literae  humaniores  in  1879.  He 
was  proxime  accessit  for  the  Gaisford  prize 
for  Greek  prose  and  obtained  the  Chancel- 
lor's Latin  essay  prize  in  1881.  FaiUng  to 
obtain  a  fellowship,  he  became  assistant 
in  Latin  to  Professor  George  Gilbert  Ram- 
say at  Glasgow  University  from  1879  to 
1885,  when  he  left  to  study  philosophy 
and  theology  at  Manchester  New  College 
in  London,  and  thenceforward  philosophy 
was  the  subject  to  which  he  devoted  him- 
self until  his  death. 

In  1888  Muirhead  was  appointed  lec- 
turer in  mental  and  moral  science  at  the 
Royal  Holloway  College ;  he  also  lectured 
for  Bedford  College  and  the  London 
Society  for  the  Extension  of  University 
Teaching.  In  the  same  year  he  became 
editor  of  the  'Library  of  Philosophy',  a 
position  which  he  held  until  his  death.  In 
1891  he  helped  James  Bonar  and  others 


685 


Muirhead 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


to  found  the  Ethical  Society,  and  in  1892 
published  his  best  known  text-book,  The 
Elements  of  Ethics,  which  found  a  wide 
public.  He  also  edited  the  'Ethical 
Library'.  In  1896  he  was  appointed  pro- 
fessor of  philosophy  and  poUtical  economy 
in  the  Mason  College  at  Birmingham. 
After  the  conversion  of  the  college  into 
the  university  of  Birmingham  (1900), 
poUtical  economy  was,  to  Muirhead's  re- 
lief, constituted  as  a  separate  chair,  and 
he  retained  the  chair  of  philosophy  until 
his  retirement  in  1922. 

Muirhead's  mental  and  physical  vigour 
continued  unimpaired,  and  in  two  visits 
to  the  United  States  of  America  (1923  and 
1925-1928)  he  held  special  positions  as  a 
lecturer  and  visiting  professor  in  the  uni- 
versities of  CaUfomia  (Berkeley  and  Los 
Angeles).  Returning  to  Great  Britain  in 
1929,  he  devoted  himself  to  editing  the 
'Library  of  Philosophy',  acting  as  chair- 
man of  the  council  of  the  newly  founded 
British  Institute  of  Philosophy,  and  main- 
taining an  active  interest  in  the  m.odern 
developments  of  philosophy  at  home,  on 
the  continent,  and  in  the  United  States. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1931. 

Muirhead  was  far  from  being  simply  a 
stimulating  teacher  of  philosophy.  Always 
a  '  social  reformer '  in  many  spheres  of  civic 
endeavour,  at  Birmingham  he  played  an 
important  part  in  converting  the  Mason 
College  into  the  first  unitary  civic  univer- 
sity, and  for  twenty-six  years  was  even 
more  influential  in  the  life  of  the  city  than 
in  that  of  the  classroom  and  senate.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  his  simplicity  of  character, 
his  devotion  to  realizing  in  action  high 
ethical  principles,  his  sympath>^  with 
thinkers  and  systems  opposed  to  his  own 
views,  and  his  determination  to  find  a 
common  denominator  underlying  appa- 
rent antagonisms,  earned  for  him  in  all 
quarters  a  deep  respect  and  warm  affec- 
tion, increased  by  his  work  as  editor  of 
the  'Library  of  Philosophy'  in  which  he 
introduced  to  English  readers  many  not- 
able works  by  the  prominent  leaders  of 
every  school  of  thought,  British,  con- 
tinental, and  American. 

Philosophically,  as  a  young  man  he  had 
been  deeply  influenced  by  T.  H.  Green 
and  R.  L.  Nettleship  [qq.v.],  as  also  by 
Edward  Caird  (q.v.,  whose  life  he  wrote 
in  1921  in  collaboration  with  his  friend  Sir 
Henry  Jones),  and  later  by  F.  H.  Bradley 
and  Bernard  Bosanquet  [qq.v.],  so  that, 
although  his  chief  interest  was  ethics,  in 
wliich  his  main  problem  was  to  state  the 


relations  between  the  end  or  good  and  t] 
rule  or  obligation  for  achieving  it  (in  19; 
he  pubhshed  Rule  and  End  in  Morals),  he 
continued  to  be  throughout  his  career  a 
prominent  representative  of  the  British 
school  of  ideaUsts.  This  general  attitude 
is  maintained  particularly  in  Coleridge  as 
Philosopher  (1930)  which  is  the  best  ac- 
count of  Coleridge's  philosophy  with  em- 
phasis on  the  Platonic  elements  in  it, 
linking  up  the  exposition  with  The  Pla- 
tonic Tradition  in  Anglo-Saxon  Philosophy 
(1931)  which  leads  from  the  Platonists  of 
the  seventeenth  century  to  Muirhead's 
own  philosophical  position  and  contains 
a  study  of  Bradley's  metaphysics. 

Muirhead  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1892  to  Mary  Talbot  (died  1922),  daughter 
of  the  Rev.  Gilbert  Innes  Wallas,  and 
sister  of  Graham  Wallas  [q.v.] ;  secondly, 
in  1927  to  Pauline,  daughter  of  George 
Bailey,  who  survived  him.  There  was  no 
issue  from  either  marriage.  He  died  at 
Rotherfield,  Sussex,  24  May  1940,  with 
mental  powers  unabated.  JHI 

[The  Times,  27  May  1940;  Sir  C.  ^' 
Robertson  and  Sir  W.  D.  Ross,  John  Henry 
Muirhead,  1855—1940  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxvi,  1940  (with  bib 
liography  and  a  portrait);  private  informa 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Grant  Robertson, 


ON.  ^M 

ALH 

L860^ 


MUNRO-FERGUSON,  RON 

CRAUFORD,  Viscount  Novar  (1860- 
1934),  poUtician.   [See  Ferguson.] 

MURISON,  ALEXANDER-  FAL- 
CONER (1847-1934),  jurist  and  author, 
was  born  at  Walhowe,  in  the  parish  of 
Deer,  Aberdeenshire,  3  March  1847,  the 
eldest  of  the  four  sons  of  Alexander  Muri- 
son,  a  crofter  of  Walhowe,  by  his  wife, 
Elspeth,  daughter  of  William  Murison,  a 
crofter  of  Bridge-foot,  near  Fraserburgh, 
Aberdeenshire.  He  was  proud  to  recall 
that  he  had  once  acted  as  a  herd-boy  on  his 
native  hiUs.  In  his  autobiography,  written 
at  the  age  of  eighty-six,  he  has  vividly 
described  the  struggles  to  obtain  for  him 
a  better  education  than  that  afforded  by 
village  schools.  Having  won  a  bursary  at 
Aberdeen  Grammar  School,  he  showed  his 
gift  for  languages  by  winning  school  prizes 
for  Latin  and  Greek,  gaining  the  first  bur- 
sary at  Aberdeen  University,  and  gradu- 
ating with  first  class  honours  in  classics. 
He  then  returned  to  his  old  school  as  head 
English  master  (1869-1877),  and,  as  at 
London  and  Oxford,  his  passion  for  educa- 
tion and  scholarship  soon  proved  him  to 


636 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Murray,  G.  H. 


jhe  an  inspiring  teacher.  He  then  decided 
>n  the  venture  of  going  to  London,  where 
le  was  called  to  the  bar. by  the  Middle 
Temple  in  1881  and  supported  himself  by 
[teaching  and  by  journalism,  practising 
before  the  Privy  Council  and  the  Chancery 
division.  In  1883  he  succeeded  W.  A. 
Hunter  [q.v.],  to  whom  he  owed  much,  as 
professor  of  Roman  law ;  in  1901  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  jurisprudence ;  and 
in  1913  deputy  professor  of  Roman -Dutch 
law.  These  'part-time'  posts  at  Univer- 
sity College,  London,  he  held  concurrently 
until  he  retired  in  1925,  having  been  in 
the  service  of  the  college  as  professor  for 
forty -two  years,  during  which  he  had  also 
been  dean  of  the  faculty  of  laws  (1912- 
1924),  and  a  member  of  the  senate  of  the 
university  of  London  (1921-1924).  In 
1915  he  was  appointed  deputy  reader  in 
Roman  law  at  Oxford,  and  in  1916  deputy 
professor  to  Henry  Goudy,  on  whose  re- 
tirement from  the  regius  chair  of  civil  law 
in  1919  he  was  probably  precluded  by  his 
advanced  age  from  the  succession,  to 
which  his  friends,  knowing  his  learning 
and  admiring  the  moral  greatness  of  his 
character,  considered  him  fully  entitled. 
In  1924  he  was  appointed  K.C.  by  Lord 
Chancellor  Haldane. 

During  the  forty -two  years  in  which  he 
held  office  in  London,  Murison  set  himself 
the  stupendous  task  of  collating  the 
codices  of  the  text  of  Justinian's  Institutes, 
and  pursuit  of  this  aim  led  him  to  aU  the 
great  law  libraries  of  Europe,  always 
travelling  third  class  (and  on  one  occasion 
in  a  cattle-truck)  because  of  the  meagre- 
ness  of  his  stipendiary  pittance  and  the 
paucity  of  his  private  means.  But  his  im- 
mense erudition,  his  mastery  of  practically 
every  European  language  except  Turkish, 
his  accomplishment  as  a  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Hebrew  scholar,  combined  with  his  en- 
gaging modesty  and  charm,  made  him 
friends  everywhere  among  foreign  jurists, 
and  acquired  for  him  an  international 
reputation  for  scholarship.  Unfortunately 
the  colossal  undertaking  was  never  com- 
pleted, and  the  results  remain  in  manu- 
script in  voluminous  notebooks  in  the 
library  of  University  College,  London. 
Almost  the  only  published  contribution  in 
English  made  by  Murison  on  the  civil  law 
is  an  historical  introduction  on  'The  Ex- 
ternal History  of  Roman  Law'  prefixed 
to  the  second  edition  (1885)  of  Hunter's 
Roman  Law.  As  his  poverty  diverted  him 
from  pursuing  the  success  that  might  have 
been  his  at  the  bar,  by  enticing  him  into 
the  prodiiction  of  educational  text-books 


and  journalism  (he  joined  the  staff  of  the 
Daily  Chronicle  in  early  days  and  from 
1902  to  1912  was  editor  of  the  Educational 
Times),  so  also  the  versatility  of  his  mind 
led  him  to  play  truant  to  the  cause  of 
jurisprudence,  for  he  translated  the  whole 
of  Horace  (1931)  and  of  Pindar  (1933)  into 
verse,  Virgil's  Bucolics  and  Georgics  (1932), 
and  the  first  twelve  books  of  the  Iliad 
(1933)  into  English  hexameters,  and  Schil- 
ler's iVallenstein  (1931)  into  English  verse 
with  the  original  metres.  A  translation  of 
Books  xiii  to  xix  of  the  Iliad  remains  in 
manuscript.  In  Italy,  where  his  scholar- 
ship was  highly  esteemed,  he  published  a 
characteristic  treatise,  II  diritto  nei  poeti 
Latini  (1935)  which  was  read  at  the  Inter- 
national Congress  of  Roman  Law  held  in 
Rome  in  1933.  His  intellectual  vigour 
remained  unimpaired  to  the  last. 

The  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  was  con- 
ferred upon  Murison  in  1893  by  the  uni- 
versity of  Aberdeen,  for  the  lord  rectorship 
of  which  he  stood  against  Lord  Huntly  in 
1896  and  was  but  narrowly  beaten.  In 
politics  an  ardent  liberal,  he  unsuccess- 
fully contested,  at  four  general  elections, 
in  1900, 1906,  and  1910,  three  conservative 
strongholds,  the  Bridgeton  division  of 
Glasgow,  the  universities  of  Glasgow  and 
Aberdeen,  and,  twice,  the  Central  division 
of  Glasgow.  He  married  in  1870  Elizabeth 
(died  1924),  elder  daughter  of  William 
Logan,  shopkeeper,  of  Fetterangus,  Aber- 
deenshire, and  had  two  sons ;  the  younger. 
Sir  (James)  William  Murison  (died  1945), 
was  sometime  chief  justice  of  Zanzibar 
and  of  the  Straits  Settlements.  He  him- 
self died  at  Clapham  Common  8  June 
1934. 

[A.  F.  Murison,  Memoirs  of  88  Years  (1847- 
1934),  edited  by  A.  L.  Murison  and  Sir  J.  W. 
Murison,  privately  printed  1935  (bibliography 
and  portraits) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  H.  Morgan. 

MURRAY,  Sir  GEORGE  HERBERT 

(1849-1936),  civil  servant,  born  at  South- 
fleet,  Kent,  27  September  1849,  was  the 
eldest  son  of  George  Edward  Murray,  fel- 
low of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford,  and 
rector  of  Southfleet,  by  his  wife,  Penelope 
Frances  Elizabeth  Pemberton,  youngest 
daughter  of  Brigadier-Gteneral  John  Aus- 
tin. He  was  great-grandson  of  Lord 
George  Murray,  bishop  of  St.  David's 
[q.v.],  second  son  of  John,  third  Duke  of 
AthoU  [q.v.].  He  was  heir-presumptive 
to  the  dukedom  from  1865  to  1871  and 
second  heir-presumptive  at  the  time  of  his 
death.    Educated  at  Harrow  and  Christ 


637 


Murray,  G.  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Church,  Oxford,  he  obtained  his  degree  in 
the  school  of  liter ae  humaniores  in  1872, 
and  entered  the  Foreign  Office  the  next 
year  under  the  old  system  of  limited  com- 
petition after  nomination  by  the  secretary 
of  state,  but  he  was  transferred  to  the 
Treasury  in  1880,  and  appointed  a  second 
class  clerk  in  the  department  of  the  audi- 
tor of  the  civil  list.  Murray's  services  were 
utilized  for  several  royal  commissions :  in 
1886  he  was  secretary  to  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  depression  of  trade,  in  1887 
to  the  royal  commission  on  gold  and  silver ; 
and  in  1889  to  the  Western  Highlands  and 
Islands  of  Scotland  commission,  receiving 
high  praise  for  his  work.  He  was  private 
secretary  to  the  first  lord  of  the  Tre'asury 
(Mr.  Gladstone)  from  August  1892  to 
March  1894,  when  the  new  first  lord  (Lord 
Rosebery)  gave  him  the  same  appoint- 
ment. In  1897  he  was  appointed  chairman 
of  the  Board  of  Inland  Revenue ;  in  1899 
he  was  transferred  to  the  Post  Office  as 
secretary ;  and  in  1903,  on  the  retirement 
of  Sir  Francis  Mowatt,  he  was  appointed 
permanent  administrative  secretary  in 
conjunction  with  Sir  Edward  Walter 
Hamilton  [q.v.],  permanent  financial 
secretary.  On  Hamilton's  retirement  in 
1907  Murray  became  sole  permanent  secre- 
tary, and  in  1909  auditor  of  the  civil  list. 
He  retired  from  the  civil  service  in  1911. 
He  was  appointed  K.C.B.  in  1899,  G.C.B. 
in  1908,  and  G.C.V.O.  in  1920,  having 
been  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1910. 
Murray  was  an  excellent  civil  servant  of 
the  old  type.  The  Treasury  minute  on  his 
retirement  recorded  'My  Lords'  expression 
of  their  gratitude'  for  'his  indefatigable 
industry,  his  quick  and  acute  perception, 
his  complete  mastery  of  the  most  complex 
administrative  problems,  and  his  excep- 
tional powers  of  lucid  and  pointed  expres- 
sion' which  'presented  a  combination  of 
qualities  rarely  foimd  in  union,  and,  in  his 
case,  employed  with  single-minded  devo- 
tion in  the  service  of  the  State'.  He  was 
a  man  of  great  physical  and  constitutional 
strength  which  he  was  able  to  maintain 
in  spite  of  his  neglect  of  the  usual  methods 
of  exercise.  Although  he  was  among  the 
last  of  the  generation  which  lunched  not 
at  all  or  on  'a  biscuit  and  a  glass  of 
sherry',  he  enjoyed  the  good  things  of  life 
and  was  a  connoisseur  of  food,  wine,  and 
cigars.  For  many  years  he  was  a  member 
of  Grillions,  The  Club,  and  the  Society  of 
Dilettanti,  and  was  a  regular  attendant 
at  their  dinners.  He  was  a  famiUar  figure 
at  Brooks's,  where  he  was  for  long  chair- 
man of  the  library  committee.   After  his 


retirement  the  government  made  use 
his  services  on  several  committees;  ai 
on  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  he  took 
a  leading  part  in  the  management  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales's  Fund.    In  1915  he  was 
chairman  of  the  committee  on  the  employ, 
ment  of  soldiers  and  sailors  disabled  in  thfll 
war.  He  also  held  directorships  in  severlBI 
important  companies,  notably  the  West-  ' 
minster  Bank  and  the  Southern  Railway. 
He  was  elected  an  honorary  student  ol 
Christ  Church  in  1913. 

Murray  died  in  London  4  April  1936. 
He  married  in  1879  Helen  Mary  (died 
1932),  eldest  daughter  of  John  MulhoUand, 
afterwards  first  Lord  Dunleath,  and  had 
a  son.  Sir  Evelyn  Murray,  K.C.B. ,  who 
was  successively  secretary  to  the  Post 
Office  and  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Cus- 
toms and  Excise,  and  a  daughter. 

[The  Times,  6  April  1936 ;  Treasury  records ; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Maurice  Headlam. 

MURRAY,    GEORGE    REDMAYNE 

(1865-1939),  physician,  was  born  at  New- 
castle-upon-Tyne 20  June  1865,  the  eldest 
son  of  WiUiam  Murray,  M.D.,  a  physician 
with  a  reputation  for  shrewd  common 
sense  and  forthrightness,  and  with  a  deeper 
wisdom  which  reflected  itself  in  the  guid- 
ance of  his  son  to  those  men  and  those 
places  by  which  he  might  best  be  trained 
for  his  chosen  profession ;  his  mother  was 
Frances  Mary,  daughter  of  Giles  Red- 
mayne.  He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
graduated  with  first  class  honours  in  part  i 
of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  in  1886,  He 
then  joined  a  group  of  Cambridge  medical 
students  who  had  been  attracted  to  Uni- 
versity College  Hospital,  London,  by  the 
teaching  of  Sydney  Ringer  and  (Sir)  Victor 
Horsley  [qq.v.].  He  distinguished  himself 
at  his  teaching  hospital,  and  with  the 
Fellowes  and  Senior  gold  medals  passed 
his  final  examinations  in  1888.  He  gradu- 
ated M.B.  (Camb.)  in  1889  and  proceeded 
M.D.  (Camb.)  in  1896.  A  man  of  his 
qualities  was  quickly  affected  by  the  re- 
search enthusiasm  of  his  teachers,  and  this 
set  his  mind  upon  a  career  in  experimental 
medicine.  For  this  purpose  he  visited  the 
most  famous  of  the  medical  clinics  in 
Berlin  and  Paris  and  then  returned  to  his 
native  city  in  1891  to  begin  his  work  as 
pathologist  to  the  Hospital  for  Sick  Child- 
ren and  lecturer  in  bacteriology  in  the 
Durham  University  College  of  Medicine. 

Within  a  few  months  of  his  return  to 
Newcastle,  and  at  the  early  age  of  twenty- 


688 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Murray,  J.  H.  P. 


i\,  Murray  made  the  discovery  which 
nought  him  fame.  His  friend  Horsley, 
kvho  himself  was  working  on  the  physio- 
loy  of  the  thyroid  gland,  suggested  that 
iiyxoedema  might  be  cured  by  grafts  of 
iiimal  thyroid.  Murray  preferred  to  use 
n  extract  of  thyroid  gland  by  hypodermic 
ejection.  This  cured  a  myxoedematous 
kvoman,  and  he  published  his  results  in  the 
British  Medical  Journal  of  10  October 
1891,  under  the  heading  'Note  on  the 
Treatment  of  Myxoedema  by  Hypodermic 
[njections  of  an  Extract  of  the  Thyroid 
jland  of  a  Sheep'.  With  characteristic 
»re  he  followed  the  fate  of  this  woman 
md  reported  her  progress  in  the  British 
Medical  Journal  of  27  August  1892  and 
13  March  1920. 

This  discovery  opened  up  a  field  of 
nterest  and  research  in  the  medical 
iciences  which  led  to  a  new  knowledge  of 
;he  endocrine  glands  and  their  influence 
)n  health  and  personality.  With  his  repu- 
tation established  Murray  entered  into  the 
I'esponsible  posts  of  Heath  professor  of 
Comparative  pathology  at  Durham  in  1893, 
lind  of  physician  to  the  Royal  Victoria 
![nfirmary  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  in 
1898.  He  held  these  posts  until  1908.  He 
noved  to  Manchester  in  circumstances 
jvhich  proved  his  charm  and  honesty  of 
Purpose.  He  was  appointed  by  Man- 
phester  University  to  its  chair  of  medicine 
which  carried  with  it  the  privilege  of 
jeing  a  physician  to  Manchester  Royal 
[nfirmary.  The  choice  of  Murray  for  the 
i/acant  post  raised  a  storm  of  local  opposi- 
tion, but  he  entered  on  his  duties  with  so 
juiet  an  unconcern,  and  so  friendly  an 
ittitude,  that  his  worth  was  immediately 
jipparent  and  he  lived  out  his  professional 
life  in  Manchester  until  1925,  beloved  by 
lis  colleagues  and  admired  by  his  friends. 
The  responsibilities  of  university  and  pro- 
fessional life  deflected  him  from  experi- 
Tiental  medicine  to  teaching,  medical 
Dractice,  and  university  administration. 
His  later  writings  were  mainly  on  clinical 
ubjects. 

Murray  received  many  honours :  he  was 
president  of  the  Association  of  Physicians 
1936),  member  of  the  Medical  Research 
Committee  (later  Medical  Research  Coim- 
3il),  Goulstonian  (1899)  and  Bradshaw 
1905)  lecturer  to  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians,  of  which  he  had  been  a  fellow 
since  1898.  Honorary  degrees  were  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  Durham  and  Dublin 
Universities.  In  later  years  two  of  his 
tnost  practical  achievements  were  the 
ivork  which  he  did  as  a  member  of  the 


departmental  committee  of  the  Home 
Office  on  dust  diseases  in  card-room 
workers,  and  the  service  which  he  rendered 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918  as  a  consulting 
physician  to  the  British  forces  in  Italy. 
He  retired  from  active  work  a  few  years 
before  his  death,  which  took  place  at  his 
home  at  Mobberley,  Cheshire,  21  Septem- 
ber 1939.  He  married  in  1892  Annie, 
daughter  of  Edward  Robert  Bickersteth, 
a  well-known  Liverpool  surgeon,  a  cousin 
of  Edward  Bickersteth,  dean  of  Lichfield, 
and  of  Robert  Bickersteth,  bishop  of 
Ripon  [qq.v.].  They  had  three  sons,  two 
of  whom  were  killed  in  the  war  of  1914- 
1918,  and  a  daughter. 

[The  Times,  23  September  1939;  British 
Medical  Journal,  1939,  vol.  ii,  p.  707 ;  Lancet, 
1939,  vol.  ii,  p.  767  (portrait) ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] J.  C.  Spence. 

MURRAY,  Sir  (JOHN)  HUBERT 
(PLUNKETT)  (1861-1940),  Austrahan 
administrator  of  Papua,  was  born  in  Syd- 
ney, New  South  Wales,  29  December  1861, 
the  eldest  son  of  Sir  Terence  Aubrey  Mur- 
ray [q.v.],  by  his  second  wife,  Agnes  Anne, 
third  daughter  of  John  Edwards,  of  Lon- 
don. He  was  elder  brother  of  Dr.  Gilbert 
Murray. 

Murray  was  educated  at  Sydney  Gram- 
mar School,  and  in  England  at  Brighton 
College  and,  after  a  year  in  Germany,  at 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he  was 
a  classical  demy  and  graduated  with  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1882)  and  in 
literae  humaniores  (1885).  He  was  also  a 
fine  scholar  in  French  and  German.  He 
was  a  tall  man  of  fine  physique,  a  good 
boxer  (he  held  the  Queensberry  rules 
heavyweight  championship),  oarsman,  and 
swordsman.  After  being  called  to  the  bar 
by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1886,  he  practised 
as  a  barrister  in  Australia.  He  was  a  crown 
prosecutor  in  New  South  Wales,  and  in 
1901  and  1902  was  an  acting  district  court 
judge.  A  romantic  feeling  for  Ireland 
influenced  him  in  his  reversion  to  the 
Church  of  Rome  and  led  him  to  join  the 
New  South  Wales  Irish  Rifles,  of  which  he 
became  the  commander  during  the  South 
African  war.  Because  its  bulk  was  small 
and  the  matter  difficult,  he  carried  a  Pin- 
dar in  his  pocket  throughout  the  campaign 
and  read  it  five  times  through.  On  his 
return  to  Sydney  in  January  1901  he  held 
the  rank  of  major,  retiring  as  lieutenant- 
colonel. 

After  his  return  to  Australia  Murray 
entered  the  service  of  British  New  Guinea 
as  chief  judicial  officer,  taking  office  in 


639 


Murray,  J.  H.  P. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


September  1904.  In  April  1907  he  was 
appointed  acting  administrator,  and  in 
November  1908  became  lieutenant- 
governor.  He  held  this  position,  together 
with  that  of  chief  judicial  officer,  until  his 
death  at  Samarai,  Papua,  27  February 
1940.  He  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1914, 
and  K.C.M.G.  in  1925.  He  was  twice 
married:  first,  in  1889  to  Sybil  Maud 
(died  1929),  fifth  daughter  of  Richard 
Lewis  Jenkins,  M.D.,  of  Nepean  Towers, 
N.S.W.,  and  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter ; 
secondly,  in  1930  to  Mildred  Blanche 
Bloomfield,  daughter  of  Henry  Bloomfield 
Trench  and  widow  of  George  Arthur 
Pomeroy  Vernon. 

On  1  September  1906  the  administra- 
tion of  the  colony  was  taken  over  by  the 
Commonwealth  of  Australia  under  the 
Papua  Act  of  1 905 .  Papua  then  had  an  area 
of  about  93,000  square  miles,  with  a  Euro- 
pean population  in  1940  of  less  than  2,000 
and  about  300,000  natives,  broken  up  into 
innumerable  small  tribes  with  different 
languages.  There  was  little  fertile  groimd, 
much  was  precipitous  movmtain,  and  in  the 
west  were  extensive  dismal  swamps.  The 
natives  were  savages  of  stone-age  culture, 
many  of  them  headhimters  and  cannibals 
chiefly  for  ritual  purposes,  with  a  strong 
tradition  of  warfare  between  the  many 
small  tribes  or  villages,  but  with  great 
power  of  affection  and  fldeUty.  Murders 
of  white  men  were  formerly  frequent  when 
the  island  used  to  be  visited  by  'black- 
birders'  who  seized  natives  to  be  sold  as 
labourers  on  other  islands  or  in  Queens- 
land, but  in  the  latter  part  of  Murray's 
administration  their  activities  had  prac- 
tically ceased. 

It  was  during  the  first  decade  of  Mur- 
ray's administration  that  real  develop- 
ment of  European  copra  plantations  took 
place.  For  many  years,  however,  he  in- 
curred the  hostile  criticism  of  the  traders, 
of  the  planters,  and  of  the  miners.  He  was 
charged  with  being  the  enemy  of  the  white 
man  and  with  being  a  foolish  friend  of  the 
natives,  but  it  was  not  long  before  he 
secured  the  confidence  of  the  Protestant 
missions.  Nevertheless  as  late  as  1920  a 
public  meeting  in  Port  Moresby  demanded 
his  recall.  Ultimately  he  lived  down  all 
opposition.  He  prescribed  areas  for  each 
of  the  competing  missions.  He  secured 
the  exclusion  of  the  Territory  from  the 
application  of  the  Australian  Navigation 
Act,  which  was  threatening  to  strangle 
development.  He  introduced  land  and 
native  labour  ordinances  which,  after  in- 
curring much  opposition,  have  been  gener- 


)l 

lily 

1 


'tto 
'J 


ally  approved,  and  his  government  became 
a  model  administration  of  what  is  call 
a  native  community. 

Murray  built  a  strong  and  enduri 
administration  upon  foundations  worthily 
laid  by  Sir  William  Macgregor  [q.v.].  T 
basis  of  his  administration  rested  up 
an  understanding  of  the  mentality  of  tl 
natives.  He  contended  that  the  natives 
could  be  civilized  without  being  spoilt, 
and  that  they  must  move  towards  civiliza- 
tion or  disappear,  but  that  civilization 
should  not  mean  their  assimilation  to  the 
white  men  or  their  subjugation.  His 
annual  reports  are  equally  a  store-house 
of  humour  and  of  information  for  the 
anthropologist  and  others.  In  these  re- 
ports he  described  murder  as  the '  favourite 
crime '  of  the  Papuan,  but  explained  that 
what  to  a  European  was  murder  might 
a  Papuan  be  merely  a  high-spirited  advei 
ture  or  even  a  social  duty.  Murray 
no  prison  for  a  long  time ;  instead  he  made' 
the  murderers  walk  with  him  when  he 
went  on  circuit,  in  order  to  educate  them. 
He  illustrated  the  point  of  view  of  the 
native  by  telling  how  a  native,  on  realizing 
that  he  might  be  punished  for  the  murder 
of  a  girl,  exclaimed  in  astonishment,  'But 
there  are  plenty  of  girls  left. ' 

Murray  devoted  himself  in  the  first 
place  to  the  establishment  of  the  authority 
of  the  government  and  the  administration 
of  law  upon  a  basis  which  would  appeal  to 
the  native  mind.  He  undertook  and 
organized  extensive  patrols  throughout 
the  country,  sometimes  going  to  territory 
where  no  white  man  had  been  seen.  He 
insisted  on  justice  and  mutual  imder- 
standing.  On  some  occasions  he  even  re- 
sponded to  a  shower  of  arrows  by  sitting 
down  and  smoking,  and  when  the  arrows 
stopped,  putting  out  gifts  for  the  attackers 
to  come  and  take,  thereby  gaining  a  repu- 
tation for  invulnerability.  He  absolutely 
prohibited  pimitive  expeditions  against 
communities.  He  always  used  the  mini- 
mum of  force,  and  ultimately  the  natives 
realized  the  benefits  of  law  and  order 
under  an  administration  which  was  bene- 
volent but  not  weak. 

One  of  the  difficulties  which  confronted 
the  administration  was  the  universal  belief 
in  sorcery.  The  influence  of  the  sorcerers 
was  so  great  that  when  a  native  believed 
that  he  was  the  object  of  a  sorcerer's 
attentions  he  would  pine  away  and  die. 
Murray  sometimes  used  these  beliefs  in 
the  interests  of  the  natives.  When,  for 
example,  an  epidemic  of  smaU-pox  was 
threatened  he  had  to  consider  how  he 


640 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Murray,  J.  H.  P. 


ukl  induce  the  natives,  who  are  very 
luch  afraid  of  the  knife,  to  submit  to 
ucclnation.  He  explained  that  there  was 

powerful  sorcerer  in  the  west  who  was 
lo  I  losing  to  attack  the  people,  but  that, 

I  lie  people  had  a  government  mark  on 
itir  arms,  the  sorcerer  would  retire  dis- 
mifited  and  would  not  harm  them.  The 
;sult  was  that  the  people  willingly  and 
agerly  submitted  to  vaccination. 
j  From  the  beginning  of  his  administra- 
on,  Murray  not  only  declared  that  the 
'ojeet  of  Australian  administration  should 
■  the  welfare  of  the  native,  but  he  put 
lis  principle  into  practice.  He  strongly 
jmtended  that  this  policy  was  the  only 
plicy  that  could  wisely  be  adopted  from 
ji  Australian  point  of  view.  The  country 
!  not  suitable  for  any  extensive  European 
l^cupation,  and  if  the  natives  disappeared 
would  be  occupied  by  Asiatic,  and  prob- 
)ly  hostile,  races.  He  therefore  insisted 
i[)on  the  exclusion  of  Asiatic  immigrants 
Kd  aimed  always  at  the  preservation  of 
lie  native  race. 

!  When  Commodore  James  Elphinstone 
Irskine  annexed  New  Guinea  in  the  name 
'  the  Queen  in  1884  he  declared,  'Your 
nds  shall  be  secured  to  you.  Your  wives 
id  children  will  be  protected.'  This 
liclaration  was  taken  as  a  fundamental 
(rinciple  in  Murray's  policy.  He  con- 
dered  that  the  welfare  of  the  natives 
imanded  that  they  should  retain  the 
osest  connexion  with  the  land,  so  that 
ley  would  not  become  a  body  of  em- 
loyees  earning  wages  during  their  work- 
g  lives  and  then  falling  into  dull  and 
ilpless  destitution.  He  was  determined 
l»  prevent  the  creation  of  a  landless  pro- 
jtariat.  The  Land  Ordinance  provides 
liat  no  land  can  be  purchased  from  a 
itive  except  by  the  government,  and  not 
/en  by  the  government  unless  it  is  clear 
lat  the  natives  understand  the  trans- 
jJtion,  and  that  the  land  is  not  used  by 
jie  natives  or  required  for  them.  The 
suit  is  that,  out  of  an  area  of  about  57 
illion  acres,  1,800,000  acres  have  been 
Kjuired  by  the  government  from  the 
itives.  Only  about  24,000  acres  have  been 
ienated  by  the  government  in  freehold, 
ainly  to  missions,  and  about  200,000 
ires  in  leasehold. 

The  Native  Labour  Ordinance,  in  force 
om  time  to  time,  permitted  indentured 
bour,  which  Murray  regarded  as  a  neces- 
ty  for  the  time  being  in  the  ultimate 
terests  of  the  natives.  There  is  no  com- 
ilsory  recruiting  of  labour  and  the  inden- 
ire  of  women  is  forbidden,  as  destructive 


of  village  life.  No  native  could  be  inden- 
tured for  a  period  longer  than  three  years, 
and  the  system  was  very  carefully  policed. 

In  1915-1916  Murray  introduced  a 
native  tax,  based  on  the  village  as  the 
unit,  with  a  maximum  of  £1  per  head. 
The  proceeds  of  this  tax  are  used  for  the 
development  of  native  plantations,  and 
for  health,  educational,  and  recreational 
services  for  the  natives.  The  imposition 
of  the  tax  was  received  with  enthusiasm 
by  the  natives,  and  villages  which  had 
been  excluded  because  it  was  considered 
that  they  were  too  poor  to  pay  any  tax 
strongly  resented  their  exclusion  and  in- 
sisted upon  having  the  honour  of  paying 
the  tax. 

Murray  introduced  a  system  whereby 
education  is  in  the  hands  of  the  missions, 
a  subsidy  being  paid  by  the  government. 
The  English  language  is  taught  in  the 
native  schools.  Instruction  is  carefully 
devised  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  natives. 
No  attempt  has  been  made  to  introduce 
higher  education.  He  declared  that  some 
higher  developments  must  be  regarded  as 
non-essential  while  Papuan  British  sub- 
jects were  still  being  roasted  and  eaten 
within  twenty-four  hours  of  Port  Moresby. 

At  the  end  of  his  career,  Murray's 
achievements  met  with  wide  recognition. 
In  1923  the  following  tribute  was  paid  by 
the  League  of  Nations :  '  Papua  leads  the 
world  in  justice,  wisdom,  mercy,  and  the 
efficacy  of  her  rule. '  He  had  faced  a  prob- 
lem of  intense  difficulty  with  high  ideals 
which  were  derided  by  practical  men.  His 
active  interest  in  the  well-being  of  the 
natives  was  accompanied  by  patient  sym- 
pathy and  understanding.  He  was  a  re- 
served and  modest  man  who  abhorred  the 
spectacular,  but  pursued  a  chosen  course 
with  determination  and  courage.  Among 
his  chief  characteristics  were  self-disci- 
pline, mental  and  physical,  humour,  and 
a  dislike  of  pretence.  He  was  assiduous  in 
training  his  staff  and  the  men  whom  he 
trained  were  devoted  to  him.  As  a  soldier 
he  recognized  the  necessity  for  force  be- 
hind the  law  in  order  to  secure  respect  and 
obedience.  As  a  lawyer  he  appreciated  the 
basic  importance  of  justice  in  dealing  with 
primitive  races.  As  a  scholar  and  a 
humanist  he  had  an  insight  into  the  native 
mind  which  has  seldom  been  equalled.  In 
his  last  annual  report  (1938-1939)  he 
wrote  of  a  dancing-ground  in  a  native 
village  far  away  in  the  mountains,  where 
the  open  space  was  surrovmded  by  casu- 
arina  trees  'planted  apparently  because 
the  natives  Uke  "the  whistling  wind  blow- 


641 


Tt 


Murray,  J.  H.  P. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


ing  through  them";  and  perhaps  an  old 
man,  nurtured  in  the  outworn  scholarship 
of  Greek  literature,  may  be  allowed  to 
remember  the  pine  tree  that  whispered  to 
Thyrsis  in  the  first  Idyll  of  Theocritus'. 
In  1937  the  natives  presented  an  address 
to  him  in  which  they  said:  'We  people  of 
Papua  all  know  that  in  July,  1937,  you 
completed  thirty  years  as  Governor  of 
Papua.  During  all  those  years  we  have 
seen  your  good  works,  and  all  the  helpful 
things  you  have  done.  When  we  have 
come  to  speak  to  you,  you  have  not  closed 
your  ears,  nor  have  you  frowned  on  us, 
but  have  received  us,  and  listened  to  us, 
and  taken  action  for  us.  We  have  seen  all 
the  good  things  you  have  done  and  our 
happiness  is  great  because  of  you. 

'  Therefore  we  all  beg  of  you  not  to  leave 
us,  but  stay  here  as  our  Governor  for  years 
to  come.  For  we  know  you  and  how  you 
have  led  us  into  the  ways  of  your  laws, 
treating  white  people  and  ourselves  just 
the  same.  We  know  that  you  love  us  well, 
and  we  are  full  of  love  for  you  our 
Governor.' 

[The  Times,  29  February  1940;  J.  H.  P. 
Murray,  Papua  or  British  New  Guinea,  1912, 
Papua  of  To-day,  1925,  Annual  Reports  to 
the  Commonwealth  Government,  and  'The 
Scientific  Aspect  of  the  Pacification  of  Papua ', 
presidential  address  (Sydney)  1932,  Australa- 
sian Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science;  Australian  Quarterly,  September 
1940;  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Australian 
Historical  Society,  vol.  xxxi,  part  3,  1945 
(portrait) ;  Lewis  Lett,  The  Papuan  Achieve- 
ment, 1942  (portrait),  Papua,  its  People  and 
Promise,  1943,  and  Papuan  Gold,  1943 ;  W.  N. 
Beaver,  Unexplored  New  Guinea,  1920; 
C.  A.  W.  Monckton,  Some  Experiences  of  a 
New  Guinea  Magistrate,  3rd  ed.  1921,  and 
Last  Days  in  New  Guinea,  2nd  ed.  1922 ;  pri- 
vate information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  G.  Latham. 

MURRAY,  Sir  OSAVYN  ALEX- 
ANDER RUTHVEN  (1873-1936),  civil 
servant,  was  born  at  Mill  Hill  17  August 
1873,  the  fourth  son  of  the  lexicographer 
(Sir)  James  Augustus  Henry  Murray  [q.v.], 
then  a  schoolmaster,  by  his  second  wife, 
Ada  Agnes,  daughter  of  George  Ruthven, 
of  Kendal.  He  was  educated  at  the  Oxford 
High  School  as  a  day  boy  and  at  Exeter 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  held  a  classical 
scholarship  and  was  placed  in  the  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1893),  liter ae 
humaniores  (1895),  and  jurisprudence 
(1896).  In  1897  after  the  higher  civil 
service  competitive  examination  he  was 
appointed  to  the  Admiralty  secretariat. 
Later  in  the  year  he  won  the  Vinerian 


(law)  scholarship  but  decUned  the  offer  of 
a  resident  fellowship  in  law  at  St.  John's 
College .  As  resident  clerk  at  the  Admiralty 
from  1898  until  1901  he  came  into  close 
personal  relation  with  G.  J.  Goschen  [q.v.], 
then  first  lord,  who  made  him  his  assistant 
private  secretary;  from  1901  to  1904  he 
served  as  private  secretary  to  H.  0. 
Arnold-Forster  [q.v.]  and  E.  G.  Pretyman, 
when  they  were  parliamentary  and  finan- 
cial secretaries.  He  had  been  promoted  to 
be  assistant  principal  clerk  in  1903,  but 
he  did  not  take  up  this  post  until  1904. 

By  that  time  Murray's  exceptional 
ability  was  generally  marked  and  in  Octo- 
ber 1904  he  was  selected  for  the  post  of 
assistant  director  of  victualling  and  cloth- 
ing with  a  view  to  his  succeeding  Sir  Henry 
Yorke  as  director.  This  offer  of  novel  and 
important  work,  with  opportunities  of 
effecting  reforms  long  overdue,  in  a  most 
important  department,  appealed  to  Mur-| 
ray,  and  in  1905  he  succeeded  to  the, 
directorship.  During  his  six  years  in' 
charge  he  brought  about  a  veritable  revo- 
lution in  a  department  where  urgent  and 
drastic  reforms  were  needed  to  bring  con- 
ditions afloat  into  reasonable  accord  with 
modern  standards  prevailing  ashore.  The 
standard  ration  was  thoroughly  over- 
hauled, the  savings  system  (of  money 
taken  in  lieu  of  portions  of  the  ration) 
abolished,  a  messing  allowance  introduced, 
the  contract  canteen  arrangement  placed 
on  a  sound  footing,  a  school  of  cookery 
established  in  the  home  ports,  and  the 
present  general  messing  system,  whereby 
complete  daily  meals  are  provided  by  the; 
paymaster  from  general  stores,  experin 
mentally  inaugurated. 

Murray  was  brought  back  to  the  secre-j 
tariat  in  1911  as  the  assistant  (or  deputy)! 
secretary  of  the  Admiralty,  and  wasj 
actively  concerned  with  the  preparations 
for  war  as  the  danger  became  more  im- 
minent and  with  the  novel  problems  of 
administration  that  arose  on  its  outbreak. 
In  1917  Sir  Eric  Geddes  [q.v.]  was  made 
first  lord  with  instructions  to  effect  drasticj 
changes  in  the  government  of  the  office. 
After  a  short  hesitation  he  appointed 
Murray  as  permanent  secretary  in  place 
of  Sir  Graham  Greene  who  was  transferred 
to  the  Ministry  of  Munitions.  In  the  result 
Murray's  patience  and  tactful  advice,  with 
his  knowledge  of  the  traditions  of  the 
service,  were  of  great  value  in  securing  the 
smooth  working  of  the  reforms  that  were 
carried  out.  After  the  war  he  served  as| 
permanent  secretary  under  eight  ministers, 
who  relied  increasingly  on  his  ripe  experi' 


642 


tpen-j 

I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Mysore 


Etnce.  It  was  then  that  Murray's  most 
important,  though  unspectacular,  work 
was  accomplished.  As  accounting  officer 
lor  naval  expenditure  from  1921,  as  well 
iis  permanent  secretary,  he  was  responsible 
lor  the  supervision  and  criticism  of  all  pro- 
()osals  involving  cost,  at  a  period  when  the 
mpulse  to  cut  down  all  military  expendi- 
■>  was  strong.    By  his  clear  grasp  of 

.  atials  he  succeeded  in  so  steering  the 
course  of  navy  estimates  through  succes- 
sive administrations  that  a  strong  navy 
was  existing  and  ready  in  1939  when  war 
igain  broke  out. 

After  a  serious  illness  in  1933,  from 
tvhich  he  never  fully  recovered,  Murray 
iied  at  Roehampton  10  July  1936,  within 
1  few  months  of  his  intended  retirement. 

Naturally  reserved  in  manner,  and  not 
readily  making  friends,  Murray  was  never- 
:heless  universally  respected  not  only  for 
lis  remarkably  fine  intellect,  but  for  his 
ligh  character  and  devotion  to  duty.  His 
^hare  in  preserving  the  navy  on  an  ade- 
;[uate  basis  during  the  years  that  followed 
;he  war  was  very  great,  and  he  notably 
ncreased  the  prestige  of  his  historic  office 
it  a  time  when  a  lesser  man  might  easily 
lave  let  it  sink.  His  main  outside  interest 
^as  research  in  Devon  family  history,  in 
ivhich  he  became  a  recognized  authority. 

Murray  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1910, 
K.C.B.  in  1917,  and  G.C.B.  in  1931,  and 
ivas  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Exeter 
College  in  1919.  He  married  in  1900 
Vlildred  Octavia,  fourth  daughter  of  the 
Rev.  Septimus  March,  and  had  a  son  and 
I  daughter. 

[Lady  Murray,  The  Making  of  a  Civil  Ser- 
vant, 1940;  Admiralty  records;  personal 
cnowledge.]  Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

MYSORE,  Sir  Shri  KRISHNARAJA 
k\  ADIYAR  BAHADUR,  Maharaja  of 

1884-1940),  was  bom  4  June  1884,  the 
;lder  son  of  Maharaja  Sir  Shri  Chamara- 
endra  Wadiyar.  Ten  and  a  half  years 
ater  (February  1895)  he  succeeded  his 
ather  as  head  of  the  state.  During  his 
ninority,  his  mother,  a  woman  of  remark- 
ible  character,  ruled  the  country  as  regent 
rom  behind  the  purdah.  The  young 
Vlaharaja  was  carefully  educated;  he 
)wed  much  to  the  influence  in  his  forma- 
ive  years  of  a  distinguished  member  of 
he  Indian  civil  service,  (Sir)  Stuart  Eraser, 
vho  was  appointed  his  tutor  and  guardian. 
The  Maharaja  was  invested  with  full 
idministrative  powers  by  the  viceroy 
n  August  1902,  and  there  opened  a 
triking  chapter  in  the  history  of  India. 


The  young  ruler  found  to  his  hand  an 
administration  well  organized  on  modem 
lines,  with  an  efficient  civil  service.  The 
main  element  of  Mysore,  then  as  now,  is 
a  hardworking  Hindu  peasantry,  loyal  to 
the  ruling  house.  On  the  great  river 
Cauvery,  a  hydro-electric  installation  has 
been  set  up,  the  first  of  its  kind  in  India, 
and  the  use  of  electricity,  a  state  concern, 
has  made  deep  mining  possible  in  Kolar ; 
its  use  in  towns  and  villages  has  benefited 
industry,  particularly  the  silk  and  textile 
industries,  and  agriculture. 

Throughout  the  Maharaja's  rule  the 
people,  especially  the  peasantry,  were 
brought  into  close  touch  with  the  ad- 
ministration through  the  representative 
assembly,  set  up  in  1882,  a  body  of  250 
members  elected  on  a  broad  franchise, 
reflecting  the  opinion  of  the  countryside, 
to  which  the  government  almost  invariably 
gave  full  consideration.  A  growing  politi- 
cal consciousness  inspired  by  political 
movements  in  adjacent  British  provinces 
led  to  a  demand  for  further  reforms.  The 
Maharaja  did  not  hesitate  to  show  his 
confidence  in  the  loyalty  of  his  people,  and 
in  1922  he  introduced  a  system  of  popular 
government  approaching  that  which  had 
been  established  in  British  India  in  1920. 
Later  on,  popular  control  was  further 
extended;  a  minister  responsible  to  the 
elected  majority  in  the  legislative  council, 
set  up  in  1907,  was  appointed  to  the 
executive ;  wide  control  over  finance  and 
administration  was  conceded  to  the 
people's  representatives;  in  fact  the  sys- 
tem comes  very  near  to  constitutional 
monarchy. 

The  Maharaja's  political  sympathies 
extended  beyond  the  frontiers  of  the  state 
and  he  welcomed  the  prospect  of  a  federal 
India  in  which  the  states  would  partici- 
pate. Had  a  federation  come  into  being, 
there  is  little  doubt  that  he  would  have 
ensured  that  the  authentic  voice  of  Mysore 
would  be  heard  in  the  federal  assembly. 

Loyalty  to  old  friends  was  a  pleasing 
characteristic  of  the  Maharaja.  This 
quality  was  shown  in  a  marked  degree  in 
his  life-long  friendship  with  Mr.  Mirza 
Ismail,  a  Moslem  of  Persian  extraction 
(since  1930  Sir  Mirza  Ismail),  who  had 
been  a  companion  of  his  boyhood,  had 
shared  his  studies,  and  in  1925  became 
chief  minister.  The  Maharaja  gave  a  free 
hand  and  full  support  to  Sir  Mirza,  to 
whose  statesmanship  and  imagination  the 
progress  of  the  country,  both  in  the  politi- 
cal and  in  the  economic  field,  is  largely 
due. 


648 


Myi 


sore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


With  a  finely  developed  character  the 
Maharaja  combined  culture  with  perfect 
breeding.  In  his  youth  he  played  polo 
well;  in  his  later  years  he  excelled  at 
rackets,  squash  rackets,  and  lawn  tennis.  A 
strictly  orthodox  Hindu,  he  did  not  share 
his  table  with  Europeans;  nevertheless 
his  hospitality,  especially  on  the  occasions 
of  the  Birthday  and  Dussarah  weeks,  was 
widely  appreciated.  Only  towards  the  end 
of  his  Ufe,  in  1936,  did  he  visit  Europe. 
Although  a  great  patron  of  the  Brahmins, 
he  would  not  admit  their  claim  to  a  mono- 
poly of  Sanskrit  learning,  and  he  en- 
couraged its  study  among  non-Brahmins. 
He  did  much  to  encourage  Indian  music, 
while,  a  violinist  himself,  he  greatly  appre- 
ciated the  classical  music  of  the  West. 
His  death,  which  took  place  at  Mysore 
3  August  1940,  was  a  great  loss  to  India 
and  the  British  Commonwealth. 

The  Maharaja  was  appointed  G. C.S.I, 
in  1907  and  G.B.E.  in  1917.  In  his  youth 
he  married  a  Kathiawar  princess  but  had 
no  children,  and  he  was  succeeded  by  his 
nephew,  the  son  of  his  yoimger  brother. 

[Personal  knowledge.]       W.  P.  Bakton. 

NAIR,   Sir  CHETTUR  SANKARAN 

(1857-1934),    Indian    jurist,    etc.      [See 
Sankaran  Nair.] 

NAIRNE,  ALEXANDER  (1863-1936), 
scholar,  theologian,  and  mystic,  was  born 
at  Hunsdon,  Hertfordshire,  17  January 
1863,  the  eldest  child  and  elder  son  of 
Spencer  Nairne,  rector  of  Hunsdon,  by  his 
wife,  Marion  Walker,  daughter  of  John 
Marshall,  first  Lord  Curriehill  [q.v.],  and 
sister  of  John  Marshall,  second  Lord 
Curriehill,  both  Scottish  judges.  He  be- 
longed to  the  Sandford  branch  of  the 
Nairne  family  who  had  suffered  for  their 
Jacobite  sympathies.  His  ancestors  for 
several  generations  were  Scottish  ministers. 
His  grandfather  fought  as  a  midshipman 
at  the  battle  of  Copenhagen. 

Naime  was  educated  at  Haileybury  and 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  of  which  latter 
he  was  a  scholar.  He  obtained  first  classes 
in  the  classical  (1884)  and  theological 
(1886)  triposes,  two  university  prizes,  and 
a  university  scholarship.  He  was  a  fellow 
of  Jesus  from  1887  to  1893  and  again  from 
1917  to  1932  and  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  in  the  last-named  year.  He  was 
ordained  deacon  in  1887  and  priest  in 
1888,  and  was  curate  of  Great  St.  Mary's 
and  vice-principal  of  the  Clergy  Training 
School  at  Cambridge  from  1887  to  1889. 
He   was  then  successively  an  assistant 


master  at  Harrow  (1890-1892),  curate 
of  Hadleigh,  Suffolk  (1892-1894),  and 
rector  of  Tewin,  Hertfordshire  (1894- 
1912). 

From  1900  to  1917  Nairne  was  pro- 
fessor of  Hebrew  and  Old  Testament 
exegesis  in  King's  College,  London.  Here 
he  had  for  the  first  time  the  opportunity 
of  showing  his  special  ability.  His  lectures 
were  very  popular, '  a  curious  and  effective 
combination  of  detailed  information  and 
poetry,  touched  with  mysticism'.  It  was 
the  time  when  the  religious  world  of 
England  was  learning  about  the  'higher' 
criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
Nairne  was  one  of  the  most  successful  of 
those  who  introduced  this  new  aspect  of 
the  Bible.  'Nairne',  writes  one  of  his 
students,  'strengthened  my  faith  because 
he  made  it  clear  that  behind  all  the  diffi- 
culties there  was  something  very  real 
which  he  himself  believed.'  'I  think', 
Avrites  another,  'he  succeeded  in  conveying 
the  modern  view  of  the  Old  Testament, 
without  unduly  disturbing  the  minds  of 
men  who  had  been  brought  up  in  the  old 
fashioned  belief  about  it  and  he  did  this 
partly  by  his  power  of  making  us  feel  the 
magnificence  of  the  poetry,  and  partly  by 
his  own  evident  spiritual  life.  ...  I  was 
always  filled  with  wonder  at  the  extent 
of  his  learning ;  no  great  hterature  seemed 
unknown  to  him. ' 

From  1914  to  1922  Nairne  was  a  canon 
of  Chester  Cathedral,  where  the  stimulat- 
ing effect  of  his  scholarship  and  his 
personality  was  warmly  welcomed.  In 
1917  he  returned  to  Cambridge  as  fellow 
and  dean  of  his  old  college ;  he  was  vicar 
of  All  Saints'  church  until  1919,  Hulsean 
lecturer  in  1919-1920,  and  regius  professor 
of  divinity  from  1922  to  1932. 

Nairne's  position  at  Cambridge  was  a 
remarkable  one.  He  took  no  interest  in 
the  business  of  the  university  or  of  the 
theological  faculty,  but  he  had  a  wide 
personal  influence  upon  undergraduates 
and  dons  alike.  His  lectures  were  found 
stimulating  and  inspiring  by  all  except 
those  who  sought  easy  answers  to  exami- 
nation questions.  Men  felt  that  they  had 
seen  a  great  light,  which  they  could 
neither  describe  nor  reflect,  but  which  thqr 
were  glad  to  have  seen  for  a  moment, 
scholarship,  his  love  of  great  literati 
his  wide  range  of  knowledge,  his  sympat] 
with  artists,  poets,  and  men  of  science, 
made  his  influence  wide.  He  treated  all 
undergraduates  as  his  intellectual  equals, 
and  spoke  of  Shelley,  or  Sir  James  Frazer, 
author  of  the  Golden  Bough,  or  J.  M.  E. 


644 


J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Nathan 


MTaggart  the  philosopher,  almost  as 
,'()od  Christians,  for  they  seemed  to  him 
to  lie  in  touch  with  spiritual  realities. 
Ilccause  they  had  known  Naime  not  a 
tew  were  led  for  the  first  time  to  believe 
that  theology  was  a  respectable  study.' 
He  formed  a  society  for  undergraduates 
called  the  'Clouds',  which  met  once  a 
!week  to  read  Plato,  and  to  find  out  what 
Plato  really  meant.  His  rooms  were 
crowded.  After  some  years  the  members 
of  the  '  Clouds '  gave  him  a  book  written 
by  all  of  them  and  inscribed  to  v€0eAr^- 
yepera. 

Nairne's  books  are  without  the  parapher- 
nalia of  scholarship  or  criticism  but  they 
contain  much  fine  scholarship  and  much 
insight.  The  pedants  were  a  little  scorn- 
ful. The  Hebraists  said  that  he  did  not 
know  his  grammar,  but  some  felt  that  he 
understood  the  genius  of  the  language 
better  than  the  grammarians.  The '  higher ' 
critics  said  that  he  made  no  contribution 
to  their  studies.  That  was  no  doubt  true. 
He  was  suspicious  of  their  work,  but  to 
many  his  judgement  often  appeared  better 
than  theirs.  His  scholarly  instincts,  his 
poetic  sense,  his  religious  piety,  taught  him 
to  avoid  their  blunders,  but  he  was  never 
afraid  to  trust  his  reason.  He  wanted  to 
know  what  a  book  really  meant,  and  he 
saw  more  deeply  than  most.  His  book  on 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  The  Epistle  of 
Priesthood  (1913),  his  Hulsean  lectures. 
The  Faith  of  the  Neiv  Testament  (1914), 
and  The  Life  Eternal:  here  and  now  in  parti- 
cular are  books  which  take  the  reader 
deeper  into  truth  than  most  theological 
literature. 

Nairne  was  a  canon  of  St.  George's 
Chapel,  Windsor,  from  1921  until  his 
death,  which  took  place  at  Windsor 
15  March  1936.  In  1931  the  university  of 
St.  Andrews  conferred  upon  him  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.D.  He  married  in 
1889  Ethel  (died  1921),  daughter  of 
Lambart  Campbell  Edwards,  vicar  of 
Kingsbury,  Middlesex.  He  had  no 
children. 

Unworldly  and  not  interested  in  worldly 
affairs,  Nairne  was  a  man  of  radiant  charm 
and  kindness,  of  alertness  of  sympathy,  of 
a  goodness  which  compelled  almost  all 
who  met  him  not  only  to  like  him  but  to 
love  him. 

There  is  an  etching  of  Nairne's  head  by 
Francis  Dodd  in  the  old  library  at  Jesus 
College,  Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  16  March  1936;  Cambridge 
Review,  1  May  1936 ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.]  A.  C.  Headlam. 


NATHAN,  Sir  MATTHEW  (1862- 
1939),  soldier  and  civil  servant,  was  born 
in  Paddington  3  January  1862,  the  second 
son  of  Jonah  Nathan,  manufacturer,  by 
his  second  wife,  Miriam,  daughter  of 
Lewis  Jacobs,  of  London,  both  of  Jewish 
origin.  He  entered  the  Royal  Engineers 
from  the  Royal  Military  Academy  in  1880, 
and  saw  active  service  with  the  Sudan 
expedition  of  1884-1885,  and  with  the 
Lushai  expedition  in  1889,  being  pro- 
moted captain  in  the  last-named  year.  In 
1895  he  was  appointed  secretary  to  the 
Colonial  Defence  Committee  under  Joseph 
Chamberlain,  who  was  much  struck  by  his 
ability.  In  1898  he  was  promoted  major, 
and  in  1899  was  sent  to  Sierra  Leone  to 
administer  the  government  of  that  colony, 
and  a  year  later  was  made  governor  of  the 
Gold  Coast,  which  at  that  time  was  un- 
settled. After  three  years  of  energetic 
reform,  which  was  both  prudent  and 
popular,  he  was  transferred  to  Hong- 
Kong,  where  the  reputation  which  he  had 
already  made  was  confirmed.  In  1907  he 
was  promoted  brevet  lieutenant-colonel 
and  made  governor  of  Natal,  a  position 
which  he  held  until  1909  when  the  four 
South  African  colonies  were  conjoined  in 
the  Union  of  South  Africa.  In  that  year 
he  returned  to  England,  and  was  appointed 
secretary  to  the  General  Post  Office.  His 
success  led  to  his  promotion  in  1911  to 
the  chairmanship  of  the  Board  of  Inland 
Revenue. 

Shortly  before  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  Nathan  was  selected  by  the  govern- 
ment for  the  office  of  under-secretary  for 
Ireland,  and  was  sworn  a  member  of  the 
Irish  Privy  Council.  His  new  duties 
proved  more  difficult  than  any  that  he  had 
as  yet  undertaken.  When  the  Easter 
rebellion  broke  out  in  1916,  the  chief 
secretary,  Augustine  Birrell  [q.v.],  was  in 
England  and  Nathan  was  in  charge  at 
Dublin  Castle,  under  the  lord-Ueutenant, 
Lord  Wimborne  [q.v.].  Severe  criticism 
was  made  on  the  Irish  executive  for  its 
failure  to  warn  the  government  of  the 
danger.  The  lord-lieutenant  and  the  chief 
secretary  both  resigned,  but  the  former, 
who  resented  the  charge  of  neglect,  was 
persuaded  with  some  difficulty  to  resume 
office.  Nathan,  however,  was  not  re- 
instated, and  he  returned  to  England, 
where  he  was  secretary  to  the  Ministry  of 
Pensions  until  1919. 

In  1920  Nathan  was  appointed  governor 
of  Queensland,  a  post  which  he  held  for 
five  years.  He  had  to  deal  with  a  restless 
labour   government   under   Mr.   Edward 


645 


Nathan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Granville  Theodore/ wliich  abolished  the 
legislative  council,  extended  the  state 
railway  system,  and  acquired  the  Brisbane 
tramways.  Nathan  found  scope  for  his 
own  tastes  in  promoting  the  cause  of 
learning  by  setting  up  a  sub-committee  of 
the  Civil  Research  Committee,  the  recom- 
mendations of  which  led  to  the  Great 
Barrier  Reef  expedition  of  1928-1929. 
He  was  chancellor  of  Queensland  Univer- 
sity from  1922  to  1926,  and  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  in  1925.  He 
also  served  on  the  special  commission  on 
the  constitution  of  Ceylon  (1927-1928) 
and  as  chairman  of  the  colonial  secretary's 
advisory  committee  on  rubber  (1926- 
1928).  He  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1899, 
K.C.M.G.  in  1902,  and  G.C.M.G.  in  1908. 
After  retirement  from  public  life,  Nathan 
found  zest  in  the  study  of  local  history  and 
the  administration  of  the  coimty  of 
Somerset  where  he  made  his  home  at 
West  Coker.  He  died  there,  unmarried, 
18  April  1939. 

[The  Times,  19  April  1939.] 

Akthub  Cochkane. 

NAWANAGAR,  Maharaja  Shri 
RANJITSINHJI  VIBHAJI,  Maha- 
raja Jam  Saheb  or  (1872-1933),  Indian 
ruler  and  cricketer,  was  bom  at  the 
family  village  of  Sarodar  10  September 
1872,  the  son  of  Jadeja  Jiwansinhji,  a 
cadet  of  the  ruling  family.  The  ruling 
chief.  Jam  Vibhaji,  was  childless  and  an 
adopted  son  was  sought  in  the  Sarodar 
family.  A  youthful  uncle  having  been 
adopted  and  shortly  afterwards  poisoned, 
the  choice  fell  upon  Ranjitsinhji,  who  was 
regularly  adopted  in  1879  but  in  secret, 
owing  to  the  fate  of  his  predecessor.  His 
adoption  was  valid  by  law  and  custom, 
unless  a  son  were  later  born  to  the  adoptive 
father  by  an  acknowledged  wife.  When  in 
1882  Jam  Vibhaji  asked  that  his  son  by  a 
Moslem  woman  should  be  recognized  as 
his  heir,  although  she  was  not,  nor  could 
legally  be,  married  to  the  ruler,  the  Bom- 
bay government  refused  the  request. 
This  decision  was  overruled  by  the 
governor-general,  Lord  Ripon,  and  the 
boy  was  recognized  as  heir.  In  spite  of  the 
change  in  his  status,  Ranjitsinhji  con- 
tinued his  education  at  Rajkumar  College 
at  Rajkot,  and  showed  promise  of  great 
proficiency  at  games,  as  well  as  qualities 
which  led  the  principal  to  report  that  a 
better  or  manUer  boy  had  never  resided 
there;  and  in  1888  the  principal  took 
Ranjitsinhji  to  England,  with  a  consider- 
able allowance  from  the  Nawanagar  State. 


Ranjitsinhji  went  to  Trinity  Collej 
Cambridge,  in  1890  and  took  up  cricl 
with  zeal,  being  coached  by  profession) 
and  getting  every  game  that  he  coul 
mainly  from  Cambridge  clubs.  His  sco] 
in  Cambridge  town  cricket  attracted  soi 
attention,  and  after  playing  in  the  seniors' 
match  in  1892,  he  became  a  regular 
member  of  his  college  eleven.  For  the 
next  few  years  his  batting  developed 
season  by  season ;  in  1893  he  received  an 
early  trial  for  the  university  and  made  40 
in  the  next  match,  after  which  he  was 
never  dropped  again,  but  continued  to 
make  useful  scores,  showing  himself  an 
admirable  fieldsman  in  the  shps  and 
becoming  an  object  of  much  popularity 
and  interest. 

On  leaving  Cambridge  in  1893,  Ranjit- 
sinhji decided  to  remain  in  England  and 
to  quaUfy  by  residence  for  Sussex.    In 

1895  there  began  an  association  with  that 
county  which  lasted  until  1904,  and  he 
was  captain  of  the  team  from  1899  to 
1903.  His  first  appearance  for  Sussex  was 
at  Lord's  on  9  May  against  the  Marylebone 
Cricket  Club,  and  is  noticeable  because 
it  was  the  first  occasion  when  he  gave  an 
exhibition  of  the  long  innings  afterwards 
characteristic  of  his  batting.  He  scored  77 
not  out  and  150  in  a  style  which  an  ob- 
server described  as  that  of  a  wizard.   In 

1896  a  strong  Australian  team  came  to 
England  for  a  rubber  of  three  games  (the 
number  not  being  increased  to  five  until 
the  next  Australian  visit  in  1899).  After 
some  discussion  as  to  his  qualification, 
Ranjitsinhji  was  chosen  to  play  in  the 
second  test  match,  which  was  held  at 
Manchester  on  18  July.  AustraUa  won  the 
toss  and  scored  412  to  which  England 
replied  with  231  and  had  to  follow  on. 
England's  second  innings  was  the  triumph 
of  one  man,  Ranjitsinhji,  who  gave  a 
superb  display,  making  154  not  out,  the 
next  highest  score  being  41  from  A.  E. 
Stoddart  [q.v.]  and  the  total  for  the 
innings  was  305.  Thanks  to  some  fine 
bowhng  by  Tom  Richardson,  Australia 
lost  seven  wickets  in  getting  the  necessary 
125,  and  the  match,  which  looked  at  one 
time  Uke  a  walk-over,  ended  in  a  most 
severe  and  exciting  struggle. 

In  the  winter  of  1897-1898  Ranji^ 
sinhji  went  to  AustraUa  with  the  second 
of  the  two  teams  taken  out  by  Stoddart. 
The  tour  was  a  disappointment  owing  to 
Ulness  and  other  causes,  and  of  the  five 
test  matches  England  lost  four.  In  the 
single  match  won  by  England,  Ranjit- 
sinhji scored  175  on  a  hard  wicket  at 


646 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Nawanagar 


jiydney.  Many  observers  of  his  style  and 
methods  were  impressed  by  the  quickness 
[»f  his  eye  and  of  his  movements,  and  it  is 
interesting  to  know  that  he  said  that  the 
first  few  overs  which  the  AustraHan  fast 
bowler,  E.  Jones,  sent  down  to  him,  were 
he  fastest  he  ever  tried  to  play.  On  being 
asked  whether  he  could  see  them,  he 
replied  that  he  could  see  them  well 
enough,  but  could  not  get  his  bat  there  in 
time  to  make  connexion.  On  the  whole, 
considering  what  a  wonderful  batsman  he 
was,  he  was  never  as  great  a  success  in  test 
matches  as  might  have  been  expected,  and 
a  singular  spell  of  misfortune  befell  him 
in  1902  when  he  made  only  15  runs  in  four 
test  match  innings. 

In  run -getting,  Ranjitsinhji  set  new 
standards,  which  remained  tmtil  the  era 
of  (Sir)  Donald  Bradman  and  Walter  Ham- 
mond thirty  years  later.  He  was  the  first 
batsman  to  score  over  3,000  runs  in  a  season, 
an  aggregate  which  he  reached  in  1899  and 
again  in  1900.  He  was  absent  in  India  in 
1898,  but  in  the  nine  seasons  between  1895 
and  1904  he  was  never  lower  than  fifth  in 
the  averages  and  he  headed  them  three 
times  (1896,  1900,  and  1904).  He  played 
seventy-two  three-figure  innings  in  which 
foiu"teen  reached  200:  with  him  in  the 
Sussex  team  was  Commander  C.  B.  Fry, 
and  the  pair  were  a  formidable  obstacle 
to  the  attack. 

Quite  as  impressive  as  the  quantity  of 
runs  made  by  Ranjitsinhji  was  the  style 
in  which  they  were  made.  At  the  outset 
he  relied  chiefly  upon  back-play,  watching 
the  ball  closely  and  being  marvellously 
quick  in  dealing  with  the  fastest  deliveries. 
His  cutting  and  gliding  on  the  leg  side 
were  superb  in  their  certainty.  Later  he 
became  more  orthodox  in  his  methods  and 
scored  with  plenty  of  power  in  front  of  the 
wicket.  From  first  to  last  he  remained 
known  to  the  British  public  as  one  of  the 
greatest,  perhaps  the  greatest,  cricketer 
of  his  generation. 

After  the  season  of  1904  reasons  of  state 
obliged  Ranjitsinhji  to  return  to  India, 
but  he  came  back  to  English  cricket  again 
in  1908  and  1912,  playing  for  Sussex.  In 
1915  he  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  an  eye 
in  a  shooting  accident,  and  his  last 
appearance  in  the  cricket  field  was  in 
1920,  when  he  wanted  to  show  that 
it  was  possible  to  bat  with  only  one 
eye. 

Jam  Jasvatsinhji,  whose  recognition 
disinherited  Ranjitsinhji,  died  childless  in 
August  1906.  Ranjitsinhji's  claim  to 
succeed,  never  abandoned  by  him,  and 


warmly  supported  by  other  chiefs,  was 
admitted  by  the  government  of  India  and 
he  was  installed  in  March  1907.  His  state, 
although  moderately  prosperous  in  years 
of  good  rainfall,  was  liable  to  scarcity,  and 
generally  backward.  Although  the  new 
ruler's  personal  requirements  were  of  the 
simplest,  his  private  generosity  and  his 
view  as  to  the  need  of  maintaining  the 
reputation  of  the  state,  especially  on 
ceremonial  occasions,  added  to  the  burden 
of  the  expenditure  which  he  incurred  for 
the  improvement  of  the  state.  He  did  much 
to  provide  against  seasonal  scarcity  by  the 
construction  of  irrigation  works,  he  re- 
built his  capital  town,  Jamnagar,  and  he 
extended  road  and  rail  communications. 
For  the  bulk  of  the  revenue  thus  required 
the  Jam  Saheb  relied  on  the  development 
of  his  ports,  of  which,  like  the  other 
Kathiawar  states,  Nawanagar  had  re- 
tained control.  This  privilege  had  no 
great  value  so  long  as  the  facilities  of  the 
ports  for  ocean-going  vessels  were  few  and 
there  were  no  communications  by  rail  into 
the  interior.  The  Jam  Saheb,  however, 
set  himself  to  improve  the  ports  and  to 
take  advantage  of  the  great  market 
afforded  by  British  India.  The  land 
customs  line  which  had,  with  the  increase 
of  import  duties,  been  imposed  in  1905  in 
order  to  separate  the  Kathiawar  states 
from  British  India,  was  found  to  be  so 
inconvenient  in  practice  that  in  1917  the 
government  of  India  agreed  to  its  aboli- 
tion, on  condition  that  the  full  rates  of 
duty  were  levied  at  the  state  ports.  The 
states  were  allowed  to  retain  the  sums 
collected  by  them,  but  the  Indian  govern- 
ment reserved  the  right  to  reconsider  the 
arrangement  if  its  fiscal  interests  were 
seriously  affected.  The  imports  at  the 
Kathiawar  ports,  especially  Nawanagar, 
increased  so  rapidly,  assisted  as  they  were 
by  concessions  of  charges  which  could  not 
be  foregone  at  the  British  Indian  ports, 
and  also,  it  was  believed,  by  a  refund  of 
some  portion  of  the  duty  levied,  that  the 
loss  to  the  British  Indian  revenue  was 
considerable,  and  many  complaints  were 
received  from  Bombay  and  Karachi. 
These  causes  led  to  the  re-imposition  of 
the  land  customs  line  in  1927  and  formed 
a  subject  of  controversy  for  several  years. 
The  revenue  thus  received,  however, 
enabled  the  Jam  Saheb  to  maintain  a  high 
rate  of  expenditure,  and  to  improve  the 
resources  of  his  state  and  the  condition  of 
his  people. 

The  war  of  1914-1918  gave  the  Jam 
Saheb  the   opportimity   of  showing  his 


647 


Nawanagar 


D.N.B.  1931:-1940 


intense  loyalty  to  the  Empire  and  his 
affection  for  the  British  people.  He  threw 
the  resources  of  the  state  into  the  struggle 
and  himself  served  on  the  staff  in  France. 
The  shooting  accident  which  deprived  him 
of  an  eye,  although  it  terminatedhis  active 
service  and  impaired  his  health,  did  not 
check  his  development  as  an  Indian 
statesman.  At  Geneva  he  facilitated  the 
recognition  of  India  in  the  comity  of 
nations  by  his  personal  qualities  and  his 
talents  as  a  host. 

In  Indian  affairs,  the  Jam  Saheb's  own 
tendency  had  always  been  liberal  and  he 
sympathized  with  the  aspirations  of 
British  Indians  for  self-government,  but 
he  was  convinced  that  the  system  of  the 
Indian  states  was  that  most  in  accord  with 
the  real  Indian  tradition,  and  with  the 
welfare  of  the  state  subjects.  While, 
therefore,  he  agreed  with  the  acceptance 
by  the  states'  representatives  at  the 
Round  Table  Conference  (1930)  of  the 
principle  of  an  All-India  federation,  he 
realized  the  danger  to  the  states,  as  well 
as  to  the  continuance  of  India  within  the 
British  Commonwealth  which  was  in- 
volved in  federation  without  due  safe- 
guards. His  doubts  as  to  the  safety  of  the 
states  in  a  federation  increased  as  he 
realized  the  lack  of  unity  among  the 
princes  themselves.  He  had  taken  an 
active  part  in  the  formation  of  the 
Chamber  of  Princes  in  1921  and  became 
its  chancellor  in  1932,  a  position  involving, 
in  his  weakened  health,  much  sacrifice. 
Although,  in  his  own  belief,  a  dying  man, 
he  attended  the  meeting  of  the  chamber 
at  Delhi  in  March  1933,  and  emphasized 
the  danger  to  the  princes  unless  they  could 
establish  unity  in  their  ranks.  The  effort 
was  too  great,  and  on  his  return  he  died  at 
Jamnagar  2  April  1933. 

It  was  said  of  Ranjitsinhji  that  he 
first  put  India  on  the  map  for  the  ordinary 
Englishman.  The  position  originally  ob- 
tained by  his  prowess  at  cricket  could  not 
have  been  maintained  without  his  quahties 
of  patience,  foresight,  and  imderstanding 
of  men  of  all  races  and  classes.  Nor  should 
his  great  personal  charm  be  left  imre- 
corded.  He  was  not  only  the  perfect  host, 
but  the  perfect  guest. 

The  Jam  Saheb  was  appointed  K.C.S.I. 
in  1917,  G.B.E.  in  1919,  and  G.C.S.I.  in 
1923. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  the  Jam  Saheb, 
painted  by  H.  S.  Tuke  and  exhibited  at 
the  Royal  Academy  of  1909,  at  Jamnagar, 
and  a  statue  by  Herbert  Haseldine  (1931) 
stands  there  also. 


[Wisden's    Cricketers''    Almanack,   passu 
Official  records ;  Roland  Wild,  The  Biograpi 
of  Colonel  His  Highness  Shri  Sir  Ranjitsinhji, 
1934 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] P.  R.  Cadell.  hi 
Alfred  Cochrane.HI 

NEHRU,  Pandit  MOTILAL  (1861 
1931),  Indian  lawyer  and  Congress  leader, 
was  the  posthumous  son  of  a  wealthy 
Kashmiri  Brahmin,  Pandit  Gangadhar 
Nehru,  who  had  been  the  kotwal  (head  of 
police)  in  Delhi  city  under  the  last  of  the 
Mogul  emperors  up  to  the  Indian  mutiny. 
Born  at  Agra  6  May  1861,  Motilal  was 
brought  up  there  by  an  uncle,  Nand  Lai 
Nehru,  and  was  educated  at  Muir  College, 
Allahabad.  He  practised  as  a  vakil  from 
1883,  and  in  1895  was  enrolled  as  an 
advocate  of  the  High  Court,  Allahabad. 
The  very  lucrative  practice  which  he 
obtained  enabled  him  to  live  luxuriously. 
The  palatial  house  which  he  built, 
Ananda  Bhavan  (Joy's  Abode),  was  the 
scene  of  lavish  hospitality  to  British  and 
Indian  friends.  He  was  president  of  the 
United  Provinces  provincial  conference 
of  the  National  Congress  in  1907,  and  soon 
afterwards  became  a  member  of  the  local 
legislature. 

Nehru  presided  at  the  session  of  t 
National  Congress  held  at  Amritsar  at  t; 
end  of  1919.  Under  Gandhi's  influence 
threw  himself  into  the  first  non-co-opera-' 
tion  movement,  took  to  the  wearing  of 
khaddar  (homespun  cotton  cloth),  moved 
with  his  family  into  an  outbuilding,  and 
turned  his  fine  residence  first  into  a  free 
public  school,  and  then  into  the  permanent 
headquarters  of  the  All-India  Congress 
organization.  Suspending  his  practice  at 
the  bar,  he  travelled  about  the  country  in 
support  of  civil  disobedience  and  boycott 
of  the  elections  for  the  legislatures  under 
the  Montagu-Chelmsford  reforms.  In 
1921  he  underwent  six  months'  imprison- 
ment for  taking  part  in  an  unlawful 
(Congress)  assembly. 

In  the  following  year  Nehru  modified 
his  attitude  to  the  extent  of  forming  with 
C.  R.  Das,  the  BengaU  leader,  the  Swaraj 
party  on  a  programme  of  fighting  the 
general  election  at  the  end  of  1923  in  order 
to  wreck  the  central  legislative  assembly 
from  within.  On  the  death  of  Das  in  1925 
(the  year  in  which  Nehru  resumed  his 
practice  at  the  bar)  he  became  president 
of  the  party,  and  under  his  leadership  in 
the  House  it  merged  in  1926  with  the 
Congress  party.  An  astute  tactician,  an 
eloquent  debater  and  orator,  and  a  stern 
disciplinarian,  with  a  dignified  presence  in 


% 


648 


D.N,B.  1031-1940 


Newall 


j  his  white  homespun,  he  was  a  formidable 
[opposition  leader.  Government  measures 
were  resisted  and  much  delayed,  but  mere 
wrecking  tactics  were  abandoned,  and  the 
[party  took  its  full  share  in  the  work  of 
[select  committees. 

The  pandit  actively  promoted  the  boy- 
cott of  the  statutory  (Simon)  commission 
appointed  at  the  end  of  1927.  In  the 
following  spring  he  became  chairman  of  an 
'All  Parties  Conference'  and  of  the  com- 
mittee which  it  appointed  to  'determine 
the  principles  of  the  constitution  of  India'. 
The  resulting  Nehru  Report,  published 
a  few  months  later,  outlined  a  plan  of 
Dominion  status,  but  aroused  strong 
opposition  from  Moslem  and  other  minority 
interests.  The  annual  Congress  session 
held  at  Calcutta  under  his  chairmanship 
decided  on  intensified  non-co-operation  if 
the  plan  were  not  accepted  by  the  British 
government  within  twelve  months.  Meet- 
ing at  Lahore  at  the  end  of  1929,  a  year 
later,  under  the  chairmanship  of  the 
pandit's  extremist  son,  Jawaharlal,  the 
Congress  declared  that  the  proposals  of 
jthe  report  had  lapsed  and  demanded 
icomplete  independence. 

The  ageing  leader,  influenced  by  deep 
affection  for  his  son,  but  with  much  mis- 
igiving,  threw  the  weight  of  his  support 
ilnto  the  intensified  civil  disobedience 
campaign.  On  the  proscription  in  1930  of 
the  Congress  working  committee,  of  which 
jhe  was  chairman,  he  was  sentenced  to  six 
months'  imprisonment,  but  after  a  few 
weeks'  detention  was  released  on  grounds 
3f  ill  health.  He  died  at  Lucknow  6  Feb- 
ruary 1931,  and  his  ashes  were  consigned 
to  the  sacred  Ganges  at  Allahabad.  His 
wife,  whom  he  had  married  in  1882  and 
who  had  given  him  the  fullest  political 
mpport,  died  in  1938.  They  had  a  son 
ind  two  daughters. 

[The  Times,  7  February  1931 ;  All  Parties 
Conference  1928  [Nehru]  Report;  Jawaharlal 
Vehru,  Jawaharlal  Nehru,  an  Autobiography, 
1936  (portrait);  Annual  Register,  1927  to 
1931.]  F.  H.  Bhown. 

NEWALL,  Damk  BERTHA  SURTEES 
1877-1932),  better  known  as  Dame 
Bertha  Phillpotts,  educationist  and 
Scandinavian  scholar,  was  born  at  Bedford 
25  October  1877,  the  second  of  the  three 
laughters  of  James  Surtees  Phillpotts, 
leadmaster  of  Bedford  Grammar  School, 
ly  his  wife,  Marian  Hadfield,  daughter  of 
lohn  Cordery,  of  Hampstead.  She  was  a 
?reat-granddaughter  of  Henry  Phillpotts, 
Jishop  of  Exeter  [q.v.].   Miss  Phillpotts's 


early  education  was  received  from  masters 
of  the  grammar  school.  She  entered 
Girton  College,  Cambridge,  as  a  scholar 
in  1898  and  was  awarded  a  first  class 
(French  and  German)  in  the  medieval  and 
modern  languages  tripos  of  1901.  Be- 
tween 1901  and  1913  she  was  acquiring, 
extending,  and  deepening  her  knowledge 
of  Scandinavian  languages,  history, 
archaeology,  and  literature.  She  was 
Pfeiffer  student  of  the  college  (1903-1904, 
1905-1906),  and  in  1913  was  elected  first 
Lady  Carlisle  fellow  of  Somerville  College, 
Oxford.  When  in  Stockholm  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918  she  was  appointed 
clerical  assistant  at  H.M.  Legation  and 
also  acted  as  private  secretary  to  the 
British  minister.  Sir  Esme  Howard  [q.v.], 
and  was  appointed  O.B.E.  in  1918. 

Miss  Phillpotts  became  principal  of 
Westfield  College,  Hampstead,  in  1919, 
but  resigned  in  1921  on  being  invited  to 
return  to  her  own  college,  which  she  served 
as  mistress  from  1922  to  1925,  in  succession 
to  her  first  cousin  Miss  Katharine  Jex- 
Blake.  She  retired  on  the  grounds  that 
her  father  had  need  of  her,  and  she  was 
thereupon  elected  a  research  fellow.  In  a 
year's  time  she  found  herself  able  to 
accept  appointment  as  a  university 
lecturer  and  became  director  of  Scandi- 
navian studies  and  head  of  the  depart- 
ment of  other  languages  in  the  university 
of  Cambridge.  In  1929  she  was  appointed 
D.B.E.  She  married  in  1931,  as  his  second 
wife,  Hugh  Frank  Newall  (died  1944), 
F.R.S.,  emeritus  professor  of  astrophysics 
in  the  university  of  Cambridge,  and 
youngest  son  of  the  engineer  and  astro- 
nomer Robert  Stirling  Newall  [q.v.].  She 
died  at  Cambridge  20  January  1932,  and 
was  burled  beside  her  parents  in  Tunbridge 
Wells  cemetery.  She  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Northern  Anti- 
quaries, Copenhagen,  in  1911. 

At  the  head  of  two  colleges  in  a  time 
of  change,  Miss  Phillpotts,  during  short 
terms  of  office,  accomplished  much:  she 
improved  their  status  in  the  outside 
world  and  stimulated  their  intellectual  fife 
within.  During  her  mistress-ship  Girton 
received  its  charter  (1924).  She  was  the 
only  woman  member  of  the  statutory 
commission  for  the  university  of  Cam- 
bridge (1923-1927),  and  was  a  member  of 
the  statutory  commission  for  the  univer- 
sity of  London  (1926-1928). 

Dame  Bertha  Phillpotts  was  a  scholar 
as  well  as  an  administrator.  She  was 
recognized  as  an  authority  on  Scandi- 
navian subjects.  She  journeyed  to  Iceland 


640 


Newall 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


six  times  between  1903  and  1914,  and 
worked  in  libraries  and  visited  archives  in 
Stockholm,  Copenhagen,  and  a  number  of 
German  cities.  The  range  of  her  published 
works  suggests  but  does  not  fully  represent 
what  she  might  have  produced:  she  had 
planned,  especially,  a  history  of  Iceland 
for  which  notes  are  extant.  Her  last  book, 
Edda  and  Saga,  which  appeared  in  1931 
a  few  months  before  her  death,  perhaps 
shows  most  completely  the  nature  of  her 
mind  and  interest.  Her  first  book.  Kindred 
and  Clan  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  After 
(1913),  was  her  own  answer  to  her  own 
questions.  The  Elder  Edda  and  Ancient 
Scandinavian  Drama  (1920)  connects  epic 
in  poetry  and  early  drama  and  touches  on 
what  appeared  to  be  parallel  problems  in 
the  origins  of  Greek  tragedy,  a  theme  to 
which  the  writer  did  not  return,  and  which 
later  research  has  considerably  modified. 
Dame  Bertha  Phillpotts  possessed  great 
vitaUty  and  a  distinction  of  personaUty 
and  appearance.  A  portrait  of  her  by 
P.  A.  de  Laszlo  (1921)  is  at  Westfield 
College,  and  another,  by  Howard  Somer- 
ville  (1927),  is  at  Girton  College. 

[The  Times,  21,  25,  29  January,  12  February 
1932;  Manchester  Guardian,  21  January,  5 
February,  7  May,  13  June  1932;  Cambridge 
Review,  29  January  1932;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

M.  G.  Lloyd  Thomas. 

NEWBOLT,     Sib     HENRY     JOHN 

(1862-1938),  poet  and  man  of  letters,  was 
born  at  Bilston,  Staffordshire,  6  June 
1862,  the  elder  son  and  eldest  of  the  three 
children  of  Henry  Francis  Newbolt,  vicar 
of  St.  Mary's  church,  Bilston,  by  his 
second  wife,  Emily,  second  daughter  of 
George  Bradnock  Stubbs,  of  WalsaU  and 
Blymhill.  He  was  educated  at  Clifton  and 
in  1881  was  awarded  a  scholarship  at 
Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
graduated  with  a  first  class  in  classical 
moderations  (1882)  and  a  second  class  in 
literae  humaniores  (1885).  In  1887  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn;  he 
practised  law  for  twelve  years,  and — 'a 
real  claim  to  immortality' — contributed 
largely  to  the  Law  Digest;  but  he  was 
steadily  tending  the  while  towards  litera- 
ture. His  first  book,  Taken  from  the 
Enemy,  a  tale  of  the  Napoleonic  wars, 
appeared  in  1892  and  was  followed  by 
Mordred,  a  tragedy  in  blank  verse,  pub- 
lished in  1895;  in  the  following  year 
Andrew  Lang  spontaneously  printed  six 
poems  in  Longman's  Magazine,  and 
'Drake's    Drum',    immediately    famous. 


appeared  in  the  St.  Jameses  Gazette.  New- 
bolt  himself  relates  how  after  reading  this 
poem  with  silent  absorption,  his  friend 
Robert  Bridges  [q.v.]  declared,  'It  isn't 
given  to  a  man  to  write  anything  better 
than  that.  I  wish  I  had  ever  Avritten  an; 
thing  half  so  good. '  It  was  included  in 
collection  of  twelve  poems  entitled  A 
mirals  All  (1897)  four  editions  of  which 
raced  into  circulation  within  a  fortnight. 
Many  books  followed  from  i898  to  1932, 
various  in  theme  and  kind,  but  consistent 
in  the  diligent  and  fastidious  care  and 
thought  expended  upon  their  making; 
indeed,  owing  in  part  perhaps  to  his  train- 
ing in  the  law,  but  much  more  to  native 
impulse,  incUnation,  and  character,  he  can 
seldom,  if  ever,  have  failed  to  master  any- 
thing on  which  he  set  his  mind  and  heart. 
During  its  brief  lifetime  (1900-1904)  he 
edited  the  Monthly  Review.  He  served  at 
the  Admiralty  and  the  Foreign  Office  in 
the  years  of  war,  and  was  finally  controller 
of  wireless  and  cables.  In  1923,  at  the 
request  of  the  Committee  of  Imperial 
Defence,  he  luidertook  the  completion  in 
two  volumes  (iv  and  v)  of  the  official 
History  of  the  Great  War:  Naval  Operations, 
of  which  the  first  three  had  been  written 
by  Sir  J.  S.  Corbett  [q.v.].  He  was  de- 
voted in  honorary  service.  In  1919  he  was 
appointed  chairman  of  the  departmental 
committee  on  English  in  national  educa- 
tion and  wrote  the  introduction  to  the 
Report  (1921).  He  served  on  many 
commissions,  councils,  and  committees 
such  as  the  Royal  Literary  Fund,  the 
Central  Council  for  the  Care  of  Churches, 
the  Royal  Society  of  Literature,  and  he 
was  a  trustee  of  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery  (1928-1937).  He  was  knighted  in 
1915  and  appointed  C.H.  in  1922.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Bristol,  Glasgow,  St. 
Andrews,  Sheffield,  Toronto,  Oxford,  and 
Cambridge,  and  in  1920  he  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  his  college. 

Newbolt's  paternal  grandfather  was  a 
naval  officer,  and  his  early  ballads  were 
naturally  and  at  once  labelled  patriotic, 
and  he  himself  a  nautical  Kipling.  These 
spirited  poems  of  the  sea,  however,  were 
only  a  phase,  and  among  the  rest,  which 
are  both  classical  and  romantic  in  form, 
such  poems  as  'The  Non-Combatant', 
'Moonset',  'Master  and  Man',  and  especi- 
ally the  lovely  'Nightjar',  reveal  gifts  rich 
in  promise,  although  only  partially  ex- 
plored. His  faith  in  Christianity  and  the 
influence  of  tradition,  social,  historical, 
and  hterary,  was  paramount  in  his  mind 


i 


650 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Nickalls 


ind  work.  He  was  haunted  too  by  the 
seductive  problem  of  Time,  not  that  of  the 
lock  but  of  the  self  within,  and  by  a 
sense  of  the  past '  allied  to  the  idea  of  the 
Jupreme  Consciousness,  contained  in  a 
>oem  included  in  A  Perpetual  Memory 
a  collection  of  his  later  poems  pubUshed 
losthumously in  1939).  'Pre-incarnation', 
jQ  to  speak,  is  indeed  the  theme  of  his 
Aladore  (1914) — love-allegory,  fantasy, 
reverie,  fairy-tale ;  so  simple  and  hmpid  in 
ts  imposed  archaic  style  that  it  may 
jonceal  its  depth  and  its  full  meaning, 
[n  part  for  this  reason  it  was  his  Benjamin 
imong  his  own  books. 

Newbolt  was  a  full,  ready,  and  lucid 
speaker,  a  vivifying  conversationalist,  a 
pregnant  and  delightful  letter- writer.  He 
ivas  not  a  born  story-teller;  but  his 
romances  have  a  serene  and  imaginative 
rrace  now  rare  in  English  fiction.  In  his 
:;riticism,  well  equipped  and  both  subtle 
Imd  vigorous,  he  held  true  to  tradition; 
■)ut  his  mind  never  crystallized.  Gifted 
kith  an  imaginative  and  catholic  taste, 
:ie  welcomed  and  studied  innovation  in 
:ioetic  form  and  content,  was  a  zealous 
idmirer  of  Thomas  Hardy  [q.v.],  and  to 
my  promising  novice  he  proved  himself 
i  friend  in  need,  in  word  and  deed.  An 
enthusiast  by  nature,  he  could  hardly 
ivoid  a  tendency  to  optimism.  Spare  in 
igure,  aquUine  in  face,  with  a  finely 
noulded  head,  a  small  mouth,  and  a 
iominant  nose,  alert  and  ready  in  speech 
md  laughter,  he  surveyed  the  world, 
Tiend,  foe,  or  stranger,  from  grey-blue 
yes  at  once  intent,  penetrating,  and  con- 
:emplative.  Throughout  his  life  he  was 
aithful  to  his  idea  and  ideal  of  England 
md  Englishness.  In  spite  of  so  many 
iterary  pursuits  that  called  him  away 
rem  it,  poetry  was  his  inmost  and  Ufelong 
ievotion. 

Newbolt  married  in  1889  Margaret 
Edina,  fourth  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
i/Mlliam  Arthur  Duckworth,  of  Orchard- 
eigh,  Frome,  an  estate  which,  old  in  line- 
ige,  appealed  vividly  to  his  imagination 
ind  gave  him  the  legend  enshrined  in 
Fidele's  Grassy  Tomb'  and,  with  its 
island  church',  the  scene  of  his  romance 
Tlw  Old  Country  (1906).  At  this  time  also 
;wo  valuable  friends  and  influences  came 
nto  his  life,  Mary  Coleridge  [q.v.]  and  his 
wife's  cousin  Ella  Coltman.  There  were 
1  son  and  a  daughter  of  the  marriage.  He 
lied  in  London  19  April  1938. 

There  is  an  etching  of  Newbolt  by 
^\'iUiam    Strang    (1898)    in     the     Tate 

allery ;  a  silverpoint  by  the  same  artist 


(1898),  chalk  drawings  by  E.  H.  Kcn- 
nington  (1920)  and  (Sir)  William  Rothen- 
stein  (1920),  and  an  oil  painting  by 
Meredith  Frampton  (1930)  are  in  Lady 
Newbolt's  possession. 

[Sir  Henry  Newbolt,  My  World  as  in  my 
Time,  1932 ;  The  Later  Life  and  Letters  of  Sir 
Henry  Newbolt,  edited  by  his  wife  Margaret 
Newbolt,  1942 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

WaiiTer  de  la  Mabe. 

NICKALLS,  GUY  (1866-1935),  oars- 
man, was  the  third  son  of  Tom  Nickalls, 
of  Horton  Kirby,  Kent,  afterwards  of 
Patteson  Court,  Nutfield,  Surrey,  an 
original  member  of  the  London  Rowing 
Club,  by  his  wife,  Emily  Quihampton. 
He  was  born  at  Horton  Kirby  12  November 
1866,  and  like  his  brother  Vivian,  also  a 
prominent  oarsman,  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  Magdalen  College,  Oxford.  In 
early  youth  he  was  considered  to  be  of 
delicate  constitution,  but  after  he  had 
been  at  Eton  a  short  time  he  began  to 
develop  the  physique  and  stamina  which 
made  him  the  outstanding  oarsman  that 
he  eventually  became.  He  had  many  other 
interests  in  Ufe,  especially  in  connexion 
with  sport,  although  it  is  on  accovmt  of  his 
remarkable  successes  in  boat-racing  that 
his  name  will  always  remain  a  household 
word.  He  rowed  for  Eton  two  years, 
winning  the  Ladies'  plate  in  1885,  and 
five  years  for  Oxford  (1887-1891),  being 
a  member  of  the  winning  crew  the  last 
two  years.  His  Henley  successes  are  Ukely 
to  remain  a  record  for  all  time.  Over  this 
course  he  rowed  in  all  81  races,  of  which 
he  won  67  and  lost  13,  one  being  a  dead 
heat.  This  extraordinary  achievement 
includes  the  following  victories :  5  Diamond 
sculls,  6  Goblets  or  pair-oared  races,  7 
Stewards'  or  fovu-'Oared  races,  4  Grand 
Challenge  cups,  one  Olympic  eights,  and 
one  Ladies'  plate.  Probably  the  most 
notable  of  all  these  achievements  was  his 
rowing  at  No.  4  in  the  Leander  Olympic 
eight  at  the  age  of  forty-one  years  and 
eight  months.  In  writing  of  them  in  his 
autobiography  he  comments:  'I  do  not 
wish  for  a  moment  to  take  any  credit  to 
myself.  .  .  .  Nature  has  endowed  me  with 
a  fairly  strong  body,  a  constitution  of  iron, 
and  a  will  power  or  stubbornness  above 
the  average.  These  I  have  tried  my  best 
not  to  abuse,  and  any  man  so  built  and 
constituted,  given  my  opportunities,  could 
no  doubt  have  done  the  same.' 

From  1891  to  1922  Nickalls  was  a 
member  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  An 
enthusiast  in  all  things,  he  forced  his  way 


651 


Nickalls 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


into  the  army  at  the  age  of  forty-seven 
without  previous  military  experience.  He 
went  to  France  in  1917  as  superintendent 
of  the  physical  and  bayonet  training  of  a 
division  (afterwards  increased  to  three 
divisions),  and  remained  abroad  until  the 
end  of  hostilities.  Later  in  life  he  de- 
voted a  considerable  amount  of  his  time 
to  work  on  behalf  of  the  Worcester  College 
for  the  Blind,  and  was  successful  in  col- 
lecting a  considerable  sum  as  the  founda- 
tion of  a  permanent  endowment  fund. 

On  7  July  1935,  while  motoring  north 
for  his  annual  fishing  holiday  in  Scotland, 
Nickalls  met  with  a  motoring  accident, 
from  the  results  of  which  he  died  at  Leeds 
next  day.  It  is  unlikely  that  there  will  be 
seen  again  his  equal  as  an  oarsman  in 
power  and  endurance. 

Nickalls  married  in  1898  Ellen  Gilbey 
(died  August  1935),  daughter  of  Henry 
Gold,  J.P.,  of  Hedsor,  Buckinghamshire. 
There  were  two  sons  of  the  marriage,  Guy 
and  Rodney.  The  former  was  a  member 
of  the  winning  crew  in  the  boat-race  of 
1923,  when  president  of  the  Oxford 
University  Boat  Club,  and  created  a 
record  for  the  Grand  Challenge  Cup  with 
seven  wins,  while  the  younger  son  was 
captain  of  the  boats  at  Eton. 

[The  Times,  9  July  1935;  Guy  Nickalls, 
Life''s  a  Pudding  (published  posthumously), 
1939 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Harcourt  Gold. 

NOBLE,  MONTAGU  ALFRED  (1873- 
1940),  Australian  cricketer,  was  born  at 
Sydney  28  January  1873,  the  son  of 
Joseph  Noble,  by  his  wife,  Maria  Collins. 
He  came  into  notice  in  December  1894, 
when  playing  for  eighteen  Sydney  Juniors 
against  the  first  of  the  two  English  teams 
taken  out  to  Australia  by  A.  E.  Stoddart 
[q.v.].  The  visitors  were  without  their 
best  bowlers,  but  the  batting  of  the 
Juniors  was  remarkable.  Noble  scoring 
152  not  out,  and  Victor  Trumper,  another 
great  batsman  of  the  future,  67.  Noble 
then  received  a  trial  in  the  New  South 
Wales  team,  and  gradually  estabUshed  him- 
self as  a  cricketer  of  extraordinary  merit. 

When,  after  an  interval  of  three  years, 
Stoddart's  second  team  visited  Australia 
in  1897-1898,  Noble,  after  being  left  out 
of  the  first  test  match,  was  chosen  for  the 
remaining  four.  All  the  four  matches  in 
which  he  played  were  won  by  Australia, 
and  although  he  did  not  make  runs,  his 
bowling  accounted  for  19  wickets  at  an 
average  cost  of  20  runs  each. 

Noble  was  an  obvious  choice  for  the 


next  Australian  tour  in  England,  and  in 
the  season  of  1899  he  paid  the  first  of  his 
four  visits  to  this  country.  It  was  a 
summer  of  fine  weather  with  hard  wickets, 
and  only  one  of  the  tests  was  finished,  the 
Lord's  match,  which  England  lost  by  ten 
wickets.  In  the  fourth  game  the  Austra- 
lians owed  their  rescue  from  a  precarious 
position  to  the  stubborn  defence  of  Noble. 
To  the  English  total  of  372  they  replied 
with  196,  and  had  to  follow  on  nearly  200 
runs  behind.  Noble,  who  had  made  60 
not  out  in  the  first  innings,  followed  this 
up  with  89  in  the  second.  He  was  batting 
altogether  for  eight  and  a  half  hours,  and 
at  one  time  did  not  score  a  run  for  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour.  This  performance, 
although  tedious  to  watch,  was  remarkable 
as  an  example  of  endurance,  and  was 
effective  in  saving  the  game. 

As  a  captain  Noble's  reputation  stands 
high.  Although  he  did  not  captain  an 
Australian  eleven  in  this  country  until  he 
visited  it  for  the  fourth  time  in  1909,  in 
Australia  as  far  back  as  1903  he  had  been 
appointed  to  lead  the  home  eleven  against 
both  (Sir)  Pelham  Warner's  team,  and  the 
team  taken  out  by  A.  O.  Jones  in  1907- 
1908.  After  losing  the  first  of  these  cam- 
paigns, he  won  the  second,  and  in  March 
1908  a  testimonial  match  was  arranged  at 
Sydney  in  his  honour.  The  testimonial 
fund  exceeded  £2,000.  In  England  in  1909 
he  is  described  as  having  shown  himself  a 
courageous  and  enterprising  commander. 
He  won  the  toss  five  times,  and  two  out 
of  the  three  test  matches  that  were  finished. 
English  accounts  of  these  matches  that 
summer  consist  chiefly  of  violent  denun- 
ciations of  the  English  selection  com- 
mittee which,  by  putting  in  the  wrong 
men  and  leaving  out  the  right  ones,  ruined 
any  chance  that  England  might  have  had 
of  winning. 

As  an  all-round  test-match  player 
Noble  is  shown  by  his  figures  to  have  had 
no  equal.  Only  one  other  Australian 
cricketer,  George  Giffen,  can  challenge 
comparison  with  him  as  a  batsman  and 
bowler  combined.  Noble  played  in  39 
matches  against  England,  scoring  1,906 
runs  and  taking  115  wickets.  Giffen  in  31 
matches  scored  1,238  runs  and  took  lOJ} 
wickets.  Hitherto  only  one  other  cricketer, 
Wilfred  Rhodes,  has  made  over  1,000  runs 
and  taken  over  100  wickets  in  test  matches 
between  England  and  Australia. 

On  his  return  home  after  the  tour  of  1909 
in  England,  Noble  announced  his  intention 
of  retiring  from  first-class  cricket.  It  was 
shortly  after  this  that  differences  arose 


652 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Nuttall 


ixitween  the  Australian  board  of  control 
find  certain  of  its  principal  players,  the 
[•onsequence  being  that  the  triangular 
tournament  held  in  England  in  1912  lost 
much  of  its  interest  owing  to  the  weak 
r-epresentation  of  Australia. 

In  his  later  years  Noble  was  a  well- 
known  writer  and  lecturer  on  cricket.  He 
married  Elizabeth  Ellen  Ferguson  and 
had  three  sons  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at 
Sydney  22  June  1940. 

[The  Times,  24  June  1940;  Wisden's 
Cricketers^  Almanack,  passim;  private  in- 
I'ormation.]  Alfred  Cochrane. 

NORGATE,  KATE  (1853-1935), 
historian,  was  born  in  St.  Pancras, 
jLondon,  8  December  1853,  the  only  child 
lof  Frederick  Norgate,  bookseller,  later  a 
partner  in  the  firm  of  Messrs.  Williams  & 
jNorgate,  by  his  wife,  Fanny,  daughter  of 
i.John  Athow,  statuary,  stonemason,  and 
Isurveyor  of  the  Norwich  city  pavements. 
JHer  grandfather,  Thomas  Starling  Nor- 
Igate  [q.v.],  a  friend  of  William  Taylor 
1(1765-1836,  q.v.),  gave  her  a  link  with  the 
I  active  literary  group  which  throve  in 
Norwich  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  When  she  fell  under  the  spell  of 
John  -Richard  Green  [q.v.],  she  was  ready 
to  use  to  the  full  the  opportunities  which 
he  gave  her.  By  1877  she  had  already 
made  some  progress  with  her  first  book. 
Her  mother  is  said  to  have  accompanied 
her  to  the  British  Museum  and  to  have  sat 
by  her  in  the  reading-room.  Green  gave 
her  every  encouragement.  England  under 
the  Angevin  Kings,  in  two  volumes,  was 
published  in  1887,  four  years  after  his 
death.  Its  merits  were  recognized  at  once, 
notably  by  E.  A.  Freeman  [q.v.],  who 
wrote  a  long  appreciation  of  it  in  the 
English  Historical  Review  (vol.  ii,  1887). 
The  book  revealed  a  new  historian.  Miss 
Norgate's  mastery  of  the  original  sources 
showed  critical  power  and  foiuid  expres- 
sion in  good,  clear  narrative.  If  she  was 
affected  by  Green's  strong  preference  for 
the  chronicles  and  avoided  unpublished 
material,  she  did  not  share  his  deliberate 
indifference  to  'records'  and  used  them 
assiduously  in  her  later  studies.  In  every 
way,  except  its  neglect  of  manuscript 
evidence ,  her  work  marked  a  great  advance 
upon  that  of  Agnes  Strickland  [q.v.].  The 
appearance  of  this  young  woman  who  had 
trained  herself  made  the  distinction 
between  men  and  women  historians  an 
anachronism. 

England  under  the  Angevin  Kings 
carried  the  story  down  to  1206.    It  was 


continued  in  John  Lackland  (1902)  and 
The  Minority  of  Henry  the  Third  (1912). 
In  Richard  the  Lion  Heart  (1924)  Miss 
Norgate  retraced  her  steps  to  follow  the 
life  of  Richard  I,  as  a  hero  of  the  Christian 
West.  All  three  books  are  careful,  well 
arranged,  clear,  and  spirited  narratives. 
They  give  the  best  available  history  of 
great  movements  and  great  events,  inter- 
esting to  the  general  reader  and  useful  to 
the  scholar.  In  her  younger  days  Miss 
Norgate  was  full  of  generous  enthusiasm. 
She  joined  with  her  friend  Thomas 
Andrew  Archer  in  a  passionate  defence 
of  Freeman  against  the  attacks  of  J.  H. 
Round  [q.v.]  {English  Historical  Review, 
vol.  ix,  1894).  Of  her  critical  studies,  the 
most  important  is  her  defence  of  the 
authenticity  of  Adrian  IV's  bull  Lauda- 
hiliter  {English  Historical  Review,  vol.  viii, 
1893) ;  here,  although  she  exposed  herself 
to  some  thrusts  by  Round,  she  was  im- 
doubtedly  right. 

In  these  early  years  Miss  Norgate  was 
happy,  contributing  to  this  Dictionary, 
working  with  Alice  [Stopford]  Green  [q.v.] 
in  the  preparation  of  the  illustrated 
edition  of  Green's  Short  History  of  the 
English  People  (1892-1894),  and  working 
on  her  next  book  in  the  society  of  learned 
friends  Uke  William  Hunt  [q.v.] ;  but  she 
outlived  them  all,  and  was  hardly  known  to 
the  next  generation.  The  only  recognition 
which  came  to  her  was  given  by  Somerville 
College,  Oxford,  which  in  1929  elected  her 
an  honorary  fellow.  She  died  at  Gorleston- 
on-Sea  17  April  1935. 

[The  Times,  6  May  1935 ;  Walter  Rye,  Nw- 
folk  Families,  vol.  ii,  1913;  Letters  of  John 
Richard  Green,  edited  by  Leslie  Stephen,  1901  i 
private  information.]  F.  M.  Powicke. 

P.  MiLLICAN. 

NOVAR,  Viscount  (1860-1934),  poli- 
tician.   [See  Ferguson,  Ronald  Crau- 

FORD  MUNRO-.] 

NUTTALL,  GEORGE  HENRY 
FALKINER  (1862-1937),  bacteriologist, 
was  bom  at  San  Francisco,  California, 
5  July  1862,  the  second  son  of  Robert 
Kennedy  Nuttall,  M.D.,  formerly  of 
Tittour,  CO.  Wicklow,  by  his  wife,  Magda- 
lena,  daughter  of  John  Parrott,  of  San 
Francisco.  In  1865  the  family  returned  to 
Europe,  the  children  being  educated  in 
England,  France,  Germany,  and  Switzer- 
land. It  was  to  his  cosmopolitan  up- 
bringing that  Nuttall  owed  his  ability  to 
speak  several  languages,  an  accomplish- 
ment which  was  to  help  him  greatly  in  his 


658 


Nuttall 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


work  and  travels.  He  returned  to 
America  in  1878  and  entered  the  univer- 
sity of  California,  obtaining  the  M.D. 
degree  in  1884.  In  1886  he  went  to  Ger- 
many where  he  remained  for  four  years 
studying  mainly  botany  and  zoology, 
subjects  that  led  on  to  an  interest  in 
parasitology,  which  became  the  main 
scientific  interest  of  his  life.  In  1891  he 
returned  to  America  as  assistant  to 
W.  H.  Welch,  professor  of  pathology  at 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore. 
From  1892  to  1899  he  worked  on  hygiene 
at  Gottingen  and  Berlin,  and  in  1899  he 
gave  a  course  of  lectures  on  bacteriology 
at  Cambridge,  being  appointed  a  year  later 
university  lecturer  in  bacteriology  and 
preventive  medicine. 

In  1901  Nuttall  founded  the  Journal  of 
Hygiene  and  in  1908  Parasitology,  the 
former  of  which  he  edited  up  to  the  time 
of  his  death,  the  latter  until  1933.  In  his 
editorial  work  he  displayed  the  same 
thoroughness  as  in  his  research.  He  con- 
sidered that  part  of  the  duty  of  an  editor 
is  educational  and  spent  much  time  in 
correcting  and  improving  papers  and  in 
advising  yoimg  and  inexperienced  workers. 
As  editor  he  exerted  great  influence  on 
workers  scattered  all  over  the  world,  and 
his  journals  became  models  upon  which 
the  publications  of  several  scientific 
societies  were  based. 

In  1906  Nuttall  was  elected  the  first 
Quick  professor  of  biology  at  Cambridge 
and  a  fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  with 
the  duty  of  devoting  himself  to  the  '  study 
of  Protozoa,  especially  such  as  cause 
disease'.  In  1919  he  issued  an  appeal  for 
funds  with  which  to  build  an  institute  for 
parasitological  research.  As  the  result  of 
this  appeal,  a  generous  gift,  made  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  P.  A.  Molteno,  provided  funds 
for  the  erection  of  the  Molteno  Institute 
for  Research  in  Parasitology  (later  known 
as  the  Molteno  Institute  of  Biology  and 
Parasitology),  which  was  formally  opened 
in  1921.  In  1920  the  'study  of  Para- 
sitology' was  substituted  for  the  'Study 
of  Protozoa '  in  the  regulations  concerning 
the  duties  of  the  Quick  professor. 

NuttaU's  scientific  work  covered  a  very 
wide  field;  in  addition  to  several  books, 
he  published  papers  on  bacteriology, 
serology,  hygiene,  tropical  medicine,  and 
parasitology.  Among  his  most  valuable 
contributions  to  science  was  his  discovery 
in  1888  that  defibrinated  blood  possesses 
a  strong  bactericidal  property  against 
anthrax  bacilli,  and  that  this  property 
disappears  on  heating  the  blood  to  56°  C. 


5at_ 


This  work  founded  the  study  of  humoral 
immunity  and  was  the  forerunner  of  great 
discoveries  such  as  that  of  anti-toxic 
immunity.  In  1892  he  studied  in  greai 
detail  in  collaboration  with  Welch  t 
anaerobic  gas-forming  micro-organisi 
now  known  as  Clostridium  Welchii,  the 
great  importance  of  which  as  a  pathogenic 
agent  was  not  fully  appreciated  until  the 
war  of  1914-1918.  In  collaboration  with 
H.  Thierfelder  (1895-1897)  he  carried  out 
the  first  successful  experiments  on  life 
under  aseptic  conditions,  experiments 
which  solved  one  of  the  outstanding 
problems  which  preoccupied  Pasteur. 

In  1897  Nuttall  turned  his  attention  to 
the  part  played  by  arthropods  in  the 
spread  of  disease,  a  subject  to  which  he 
devoted  the  later  period  of  his  life.  In 
1899  he  published  his  well-known  paper 
On  the  role  of  Insects,  Arachnids  and 
Myriapods  as  carriers  in  the  spread  of 
Bacterial  and  Parasitic  Disease  of  Man  and 
Animals,  which  contained  an  exhaustive 
critical  and  historical  review  of  the  whole 
subject.  In  1901  he  showed  that  the  dis- 
appearance of  malaria  from  England  was 
not  due  to  the  extinction  of  Anopheles 
which  in  that  year  were  still  numerous  in 
aU  formerly  malarious  districts. 

In  1901  Nuttall  became  interested  in 
the  precipitin  reaction,  and  in  1904  pub- 
lished his  classical  monograph,  Blood 
Immunity  and  Blood  Relationship,  which 
demonstrated  the  existence  of  a  distinct 
similarity  in  chemical  structure  of  the 
blood  in  animals  which  are  related  phylo- 
genetically.  He  then  began  his  investiga- 
tions on  diseases  transmitted  to  animals 
by  ticks.  By  means  of  infected  ticks 
{Haemophysalis  leachi),  sent  to  him  from 
South  Africa,  he  succeeded  in  infecting 
dogs  with  piroplasmosis,  a  disease  un- 
known in  England.  This  was  the  first  case 
of  investigation  of  a  disease  imported  by 
means  of  an  infected  vector.  An  important 
result  of  this  investigation,  which  had 
great  economic  importance,  was  the  dis- 
covery of  the  curative  property  of  trypan 
blue  for  piroplasmosis  in  dogs,  cattle,  and 
sheep.  This  study  was  followed  by  an 
extensive  investigation  of  the  anatomy, 
biology,  life-history,  and  systematics  of 
ticks,  carried  out  in  collaboration  with 
Cecil  Warburton  and  Louis  Edward 
Robinson,  which  occupied  him  during  the 
remaining  years  of  his  life. 

Nuttall  resigned  the  Quick  professorship 
in  1931  and  became  emeritus  professor  of 
biology.  He  died  suddenly  in  London 
16  December  1937  on  the  eve  of  a  dinner 


654 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


O'Dwyer 


()  be  given  by  sixty  colleagues  in  his 
Kinour  on  his  retirement  from  his  long 
and  successful  editorship  of  the  Journal  of 
Hygiene.  He  married  in  1895  Paula  (died 
1922),  daughter  of  Kammerherr  Hans  von 
( )trtzen-Kittendorf,  of  Mecklenburg,  and 
iiiul  two  sons  and  a  daughter. 

NuttaU  was  of  distinguished  appear- 
ance, had  great  charm  of  manner,  was  an 
excellent  raconteur,  and  was  invariably 
at  ease  in  whatever  company  he  found 
himself.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1904, 
received  honorary  degrees  from  several 
universities,  and  was  elected  correspond- 
ing member  of  many  scientific  societies. 
In  1932  he  was  presented  by  his  colleagues 
and  pupils  with  his  portrait  in  oils  by 
P.  A.  de  Laszlo ;  this  is  in  the  possession 
of  the  family.  A  pencil  portrait  by  the 
same  artist  is  at  Magdalene  College, 
Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  18  December  1937;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  7, 
January  1939  (portrait) ;  Parasitology,  vol. 
XXX,  1938 ;  Journal  of  Hygiene,  vol.  xxxviii, 
1938.]  G.  S.  Graham-Smith. 

O'DWYER,  Sir  MICHAEL  FRANCIS 

(1864-1940),  Indian  administrator,  was 
the  sixth  son  in  a  family  of  fourteen 
children  of  John  O'Dwyer,  of  Barrons- 
town,  CO.  Tipperary,  where  the  family 
sept  had  been  settled  for  centuries  and  he 
himself  was  bom  28  April  1864.  His 
mother  was  Margaret,  daughter  of  Patrick 
Quirk,  of  Toom,  Tipperary.  He  was 
educated  at  St.  Stanislaus  College,  TuUa- 
more,  and  passed  the  open  competition 
for  the  Indian  civil  service  in  1882  and  the 
final  examination  in  1884.  The  interven- 
ing two  years  of  probation  he  spent  at 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where  in  a  third 
year  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  jurispru- 
dence. Joining  the  service  in  India  in 
1885  he  was  first  posted  to  Shahpur  in  the 
Punjab.  His  rise  was  rapid  and  was 
achieved  by  sheer  character  and  ability. 
He  greatly  distinguished  himself  in  land 
revenue  settlement  work,  and  was  made 
director  of  land  records  and  agriculture 
in  the  Punjab  (1896);  next  year  he  was 
placed  in  charge  of  the  settlements  of  the 
Alwar  and  Bharatpur  States.  He  was  a 
fine  rider  and  sportsman,  a  warm  sympa- 
thizer with  the  rural  classes,  and  a  master 
of  the  vernacular.  After  a  long  furlough 
which  he  spent  largely  on  examination 
leave  in  Russia,  passing  for  an  interpreter- 
ship,  O'Dwyer  was  selected  by  Lord 
Curzon  [q.v.]  for  a  prominent  part  in  the 
organization    of    the    new    North-West 


Frontier  Province  and  its  separation  from 
the  Punjab :  he  was  revenue  commissioner 
from  1901  to  1908.  From  1908  to  1909  he 
was  acting  resident  in  Hyderabad,  and 
agent  to  the  governor-general  in  Central 
India  from  1910  to  1912.  In  December 
1912,  while  Lord  Hardinge  of  Penshiu^t 
was  viceroy,  he  was  appointed  to  be 
lieutenant-governor  of  the  Punjab,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  1919.  When  he 
assumed  charge  in  May  1913  he  was 
cautioned  by  the  viceroy  'that  the  Punjab 
was  the  Province  about  which  the  Govern- 
ment were  then  most  concerned;  that 
there  was  much  inflammable  material 
lying  about,  which  required  very  careful 
handling  if  an  explosion  were  to  be 
avoided'.  In  his  vivid  book  India  as  I 
Knew  It,  1885-1925  (1925),  O'Dwyer  ex- 
plains this  warning  and  shows  how  after 
the  return  of  Sikh  emigrants  from 
America,  Canada,  and  the  Far  East  in  the 
first  few  months  of  the  war  of  1914f-1918 
the  Piuijab  narrowly  escaped  becoming  a 
theatre  of  widespread  disturbances.  (Sir) 
Austen  Chamberlain  [q.v.],  shortly  after 
quitting  the  India  Office,  testified  to  the 
'  great  skill,  firmness  and  moderation'  with 
which  O'Dwyer  had  piloted  the  Pimjab 
in  the  first  two  years  of  the  war.  It  was 
generally  acknowledged  that  his  firm, 
fearless,  but  at  the  same  time  sympathetic 
administration  had  been  the  directing 
factor  which  turned  the  Punjab  in  very 
critical  months  from  a  theatre  of  danger 
into  a  great  example  of  loyal  recruiting  for 
the  cause  of  the  British  raj.  At  the  same 
time,  the  very  success  that  had  attended 
his  effort  led  to  accusations  of  undue  pres- 
sure on  the  part  of  subordinate  officers,  and 
was  a  cause,  although  possibly  a  minor 
one,  of  the  unrest  in  the  province  in  1919. 
O'Dwyer's  services  were  recognized  by  his 
appointment  as  G.C.I.E.  in  1917  after  he 
had  been  created  K.C.S.I.  in  1913. 

Soon  after  the  departure  of  Lord 
Hardinge,  however,  in  the  spring  of  1916 
and  the  arrival  of  Lord  Chelmsford  [q.v.] 
the  'home  rule'  agitation,  imder  the 
leadership  of  B.  G.  Tilak  and  Mrs.  Annie 
Besant  [q.v.],  gradually  became  more 
intense.  Revolutionary  crime  having 
begvm  in  Bengal,  a  special  Defence  of 
India  Act  had  already  been  promulgated 
(1915).  But  that  Act  would  come  to  an 
end  with  the  war,  and  after  more  ex- 
perience the  government  of  India  decided 
that  more  legislation  would  probably  be 
needed  to  supply  its  place.  The  matter 
was  inquired  into  by  a  special  committee 
of  five,    presided   over   by   Mr.    Justice 


655 


O'Dwyer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Rowlatt,  which  began  work  in  Calcutta 
in  January  1917,  and  their  report  was 
embodied  in  an  emergency  bill,  which 
passed  into  law  as  the  Anarchical  and 
Revolutionary  Crimes  Act  in  March  1919, 
and  led  to  Gandhi's  'civil  disobedience' 
and  'passive  resistance'  movement.  This 
culminated  in  the  Punjab  and  Guzerat 
riots  and  the  tragedy  of  the  Jalianwala 
Bagh  at  Amritsar  in  April.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  shooting  there  was  ordered 
by  the  military  officer  in  command, 
Brigadier-General  Reginald  E.  H.  Dyer 
[q.v.],  because  he  thought  it  necessary  to 
avert  a  highly  dangerous  impression  that 
the  government's  arm  was  paralysed. 
Dyer  reported  his  action  to  Lieutenant- 
Gteneral  Sir  WiUiam  Beynon,  his  superior 
officer,  and  the  latter  asked  the  lieutenant- 
governor  by  telephone  whether  he  ap- 
proved. O'Dwyer,  vmder  the  impression 
that  what  had  been  done  was  irrevocable, 
replied  at  once  in  the  affirmative.  Dyer 
had  acted  to  the  best  of  his  judgement 
when  in  fact  he  was  faced  with  a  great  and 
imminent  danger.  Strong  measures  had 
been  required  and  had  been  taken;  and 
the  plague  was  stayed,  but  at  a  heavy  cost, 
for  many  apparently  innocent  spectators 
had  mingled  with  the  crowd.  In  October 
the  government  of  India  appointed  a 
committee  of  inquiry,  of  which  Lord 
Hunter  was  chairman,  and  its  report  led 
to  Dyer  being  ordered  by  the  commander- 
in-chief  in  India,  Sir  C.  C.  Munro  [q.v.], 
to  resign  his  appointment  as  brigade- 
commander.  O'Dwyer  explains  in  his  book 
all  that  he  did  to  avert  this  conclusion. 
Attempts  were  made  to  involve  him  in 
Dyer's  downfall,  but  without  success. 
In  1922  Sir  Sankaran  Nair  [q.v.],  formerly 
a  judge  of  the  Madras  High  Court  and 
member  for  education  of  the  viceroy's 
executive  council,  published  a  book 
entitled  Gandhi  and  Anarchy  in  which 
certain  passages  directed  against  O'Dwyer 
were  challenged  by  him  in  London  as 
libels.  In  1924,  after  a  trial  before 
Mr.  Justice  McCardie  [q.v.],  who  in  sum- 
ming up  expressed  his  opinion  that  Dyer 
had  acted  rightly  and  had  been  wrongly 
punished,  the  jury,  by  a  majority  verdict 
of  eleven  to  one,  agreed  to  by  the  parties, 
foxmd  for  the  plaintiff  and  judgement  was 
given  for  the  agreed  damages  of  five 
hundred  pounds. 

O'Dwyer  served  as  a  useful  member  of 
Lord  Esher's  committee  on  the  admini- 
stration and  organization  of  the  army  in 
India  (1919-1920)  and  often  wrote  letters 
to  The  Times  on  Indian  affairs.  After  his 


5 


# 


retirement  he  welcomed  to  his  house  in 
London  Indian  visitors  and  his  many 
friends.  He  believed,  as  he  had  always 
believed,  in  the  necessity  of  British  control 
in  India  for  that  country's  welfare.  His 
aim  was  always  to  benefit  India.  But  he 
did  not  think  that  either  of  the  constitu- 
tions promulgated  in  1919  and  1935  would 
benefit  India,  and  he  opposed  them  both 
on  important  points  with  infinite  pains 
and  labour.  His  convictions  were  strong 
and  he  upheld  them  with  all  the  energy 
and  tenacity  of  his  character.  But  with 
all  his  vigour  and  eloquence  he  was  full 
of  kindly  humour  and  ready  to  see  an 
antagonist's  point  of  view.  After  his 
death  it  was  truly  said  by  the  Observer: 
'No  servant  of  India  formed  his  judge- 
ments more  conscientiously  nor  expressed 
them  with  more  frankness  and  courage, 
nor  had  it  a  more  profound  well-wisher 
than  the  man  whose  long  life  of  devotion 
has  been  foully  ended.' 

O'Dwyer  was  shot  from  behind  by 
Indian  assassin  named  Udhan  Singh 
the  close  of  a  crowded  meeting  of  the 
Royal  Central  Asian  Society  in  London  on 
13  March  1940.  The  miu-derer  was  tried 
and  convicted.  The  tragedy  was  deeply 
mourned  by  his  many  friends  and  ad- 
mirers. A  memorial  fund  committee  was 
formed  and  a  brass  was  placed  in  the 
Church  of  Our  Lady  of  the  Annunciation, 
Warwick  Street,  in  which,  in  1896,  he  had 
married  Una,  daughter  of  Antoine  Bord, 
of  Castres,  France,  who  survived  him  with 
their  son  and  daughter, 

[The  Times,  14  and  15  March  1940 ;  Sir  M.  F. 
O'Dwyer,  India  as  I  Knew  It,  1885-1925, 
1925;  personal  knowledge.]  H.  V.  Lovett. 

OLIVER,       FREDERICK       SCOTT 

(1864-1934),  man  of  business  and  publi- 
cist, was  born  in  Edinburgh  20  February 
1864,  the  elder  son  of  John  Scott  Oliver, 
a  merchant  in  Madeira,  and  later  in  Edin- 
burgh, by  his  wife,  Catherine,  daughter  of 
Duncan  McLaren  [q.v.],  politician,  and 
half-sister  of  John  McLaren,  Lord  McLaren 
[q.v.],  Scottish  judge.  The  mother  died  in 
1869,  and  Frederick  and  his  brother  were 
brought  up  by  their  father  and  their 
father's  sister  Beatrix  Oliver. 

Oliver  was  educated  at  George  Watson's 
College,  Edinburgh,  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where 
from  1883  to  1886  he  read  for  the  moral 
sciences  tripos.  After  taking  his  degree  he 
studied  law  and  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Inner  Temple  in  1889,  but  three  years  later, 
on  the  invitation  of  his  Cambridge  friend 


656 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Oman 


Ernest  Debenham,  he  entered  the  firm  of 
Messrs.  Debenham  &  Freebody.  In  this 
career  he  was  brilliantly  successful.  He 
played  a  leading  part  in  developing  what 
when  he  joined  it  was  a  comparatively 
^mall  wholesale  concern  into  one  of  the 
ending  retail  and  wholesale  businesses  in 
Loudon;  and  when  he  retired  from  the 
active  conduct  of  its  affairs  to  the  estate 
which  he  had  bought  at  Edgerston  at  the 
head  of  the  Jed  valley  in  the  Cheviot  Hills, 
whence  his  paternal  forebears  came,  he  had 
acquired  a  large  fortune. 

Above  all,  however,  Oliver  was  a  man 
of  letters.  He  was  a  close  student  of 
history,  particularly  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  He  wrote  English  prose  with 
the  clear  precision  of  Swift ;  and  being  at 
the  same  time  keenly  interested  in  the 
[)olitics  of  his  country  and  of  his  time,  and 
the  confidant  of  many  men  of  high  posi- 
tion in  public  affairs,  he  employed  his 
learning  and  his  talents  for  the  practical 
furtherance  of  the  causes  which  he  had  at 
heart.  Foremost  among  these  was  that  of 
Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.]  and  tariff 
reform,  and  Oliver's  first  published  work. 
The  Statesman  and  the  Bishop  (1904), 
which  appeared  under  the  pseudonym  of 
•John  Draper',  consisting  of  a  letter  in- 
directly addressed  to  John  Percival, 
bishop  of  Hereford  [q.v.],  is  a  fine  piece  of 
3ontroversial  writing.  Next  came  a 
brilliant  biography  of  Alexander  Hamilton 
(1906).  This  was  written  with  the  same 
cause  in  mind ;  but  the  life-story  of  the 
luthor  of  The  Federalist  had  the  effect, 
probably  unforeseen  by  Oliver  himself,  of 
serving  as  a  source  of  inspiration  to  the 
men  who  were  then  working  for  the  Union 
of  South  Africa  and  who  were  afterwards 
to  be  numbered  among  his  intimate 
friends. 

Another  cause  which  Oliver  espoused 
was  that  of  seeking  a  solution  of  the  Irish 
question  in  the  federalization  of  the  insti- 
tutions of  the  United  Kingdom ;  and  three 
books.  Federalism  and  Home  Rule  (1910), 
consisting  of  letters  written  to  The  Times 
earlier  in  that  year  under  the  pseudonym 
Uf  'Pacificus',  The  Alternatives  to  Civil 
War  (1913),  and  What  Federalism  is  Not 
(1914),  were  devoted  to  this  object. 

But  the  best  known  and  most  popular 
o{  Oliver's  works  was  undoubtedly  Ordeal 
by  Battle  (1915),  a  critical  examination  of 
the  conduct  of  the  first  year  of  the  war  of 
1914-1918.  This  was  followed  by  Ireland 
and  the  Imperial  Conference  (1917).  Then 
came  The  Endless  Adventure,  designed  as 
a  thesis  on  the  art  of  politics,  but  narrowed 


down  to  a  study  of  the  career  of  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  as  a  great  exponent  of  that  art. 
Of  this  work  the  first  two  volumes  were 
published  in  1930  and  1931,  and  the  third, 
which  was  left  unfinished  but  contains 
Oliver's  'Political  Testament',  in  1935 
after  the  author's  death.  Lastly  The  Anvil 
of  War,  consisting  of  letters  exchanged 
between  him  and  his  brother  W.  E.  Oliver 
(who  was  in  Canada)  from  1914  to  1918, 
was  posthumously  published  in  1936,  with 
an  introductory  memoir  by  Mr.  Stephen 
Gwynn. 

Oliver  was  a  master  of  the  art  of  living. 
The  last  years  of  his  life  were  clouded  by 
ill  health,  but  no  illness  could  blunt  his 
pen,  or  dim  the  brilliance  of  his  letters  or 
of  his  talk,  unfailing  sources  of  joy  to  his 
host  of  friends. 

Oliver  married  in  1893  Katharine 
Augusta,  eldest  daughter  of  his  imcle, 
Lord  McLaren,  and  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter.  He  died  at  Edgerston  3  June 
1934.  A  portrait  of  him  with  his  wife 
(1903)  by  Charles  Furse  is  at  Edgerston, 
together  with  a  bust  by  his  sister-in-law, 
Mrs.  Ottilie  Wallace. 

[The  Times,  5  and  6  June  1934 ;  The  Anvil 
of  War,  edited  by  S.  Gwynn,  1936 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Dougal  O.  Malcolm. 

OMAN,  JOHN  WOOD  (1860-1939), 
divine,  was  born  on  the  farm  of  Biggins 
in  the  parish  of  Stenness,  Orkney,  23  July 
1860,  the  second  son  of  Simon  Rust  Oman, 
a  farmer  who  in  earlier  years  had  been 
master  of  a  sailing  vessel,  by  his  wife, 
Isabella  Irvine  Rendall.  He  owed  his 
early  education  mainly  to  a  tutor  en- 
gaged for  a  neighbouring  family  and  shared 
by  a  few  other  boys.  Many  references  in 
Oman's  works  reveal  how  deeply  his  mind 
was  shaped  by  the  freedom  and  simplicity 
of  his  boyhood — its  close  contacts  with 
the  soil  and  the  sea  and  with  the  hardy  and 
vigorous  folk  who  gained  their  living  from 
them.  He  himself  described  his  father,  in 
the  dedication  of  his  Kerr  lectures,  as 
'a  scholar  only  of  life  and  action,  but  my 
best  teacher'.  He  entered  Edinburgh 
University  in  1877,  graduating  in  1882 
with  first  class  honours  in  philosophy  and 
winning  the  Gray  and  Rhind  scholarships. 
Thence  he  proceeded  to  the  theological 
college  of  the  United  Presbyterian  Church 
in  Edinburgh,  and  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
course  there  he  studied  at  the  universities 
of  Erlangen,  Heidelberg,  and  Neuchatel. 
Returning  to  Scotland  he  served  for  a 
brief  period  as  assistant  minister  at 
St.  James's  church,  Paisley.    In  1889  he 


657 


Oman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


accepted  a  call  to  be  minister  of  Clayport 
Street  church,  Alnwick,  thus  passing  into 
the  Presbyterian  Church  of  England,  in 
the  service  of  which  he  remained  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  Whilst  at  Alnwick  he 
married  in  1897  Mary  Hannah,  daughter 
of  Henry  Hunter  Blair,  J.P.,  of  Gosforth, 
a  very  happy  union  broken  only  by  her 
death  in  1936.  They  had  four  daughters. 

It  was  during  his  ministry  at  Alnwick 
that  Oman's  quality  as  an  imusually 
learned,  powerful,  and  original  thinker  in 
the  field  of  theology — already  known  to 
his  intimates — began  to  be  more  widely 
known,  mainly  through  the  publication  in 
1902  of  Vision  and  Authority;  or,  the 
Throne  of  St.  Peter  (new  and  revised  ed. 
1928),  and  in  1906  of  his  Kerr  lectures. 
The  Problem  of  Faith  and  Freedom  in  the 
last  two  Centuries.  The  former  revealed 
a  mind  singularly  able  to  keep  profound 
and  informed  theological  reflection  in 
close  relation  with  the  religious  life  and  its 
problems ;  the  latter  showed  an  easy,  first- 
hand mastery,  issuing  in  penetrating  and 
original  judgements,  of  the  works  of  every 
relevant  writer  of  importance  from  Pascal 
to  Ritschl.  Before  the  publication  of 
these  two  works  he  had  issued  in  1893 
what  is  still  the  only  translation  into 
English  (though  out  of  print)  of  F.  E.  D. 
Schleiermacher's  epoch-making  Reden  iiher 
die  Religion. 

In  1907  Oman  was  appointed  professor 
of  systematic  theology  and  apologetics  in 
Westminster  College,  Cambridge,  the 
theological  college  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  of  England,  where  he  remained 
imtil  his  retirement  in  1935,  having  become 
principal  in  1922.  At  Westminster  College 
he  was  one  of  a  remarkably  distinguished 
teaching  staff,  his  colleagues  being  John 
Skinner,  Charles  Anderson  Scott,  and 
Dr.  Patrick  Carnegie  Simpson.  During 
this  time  Oman  came  to  be  recognized, 
first  in  Cambridge,  and  later  more 
widely,  as  one  of  the  most  learned  and 
original  minds  at  work  in  theology.  He 
was  thrice  (1913-1916,  1919-1922,  1929- 
1931)  appointed  Stanton  lecturer  in  the 
philosophy  of  religion  in  the  university  of 
Cambridge,  and  served  for  many  years  on 
the  board  of  the  faculty  of  divinity  and  on 
its  degree  committee.  In  1909  he  became 
a  member  of  Queens'  College  and  in  1935  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Jesus  College;  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.D.  was  conferred 
upon  him  by  the  universities  of  Edinburgh 
and  Oxford.  In  1938  he  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  the  British  Academy.  His  own 
Church  honoured  him  by  electing  him 


moderator  of  the  General  Assembly  in 
1931.  He  died  at  Cambridge  7  May  1939. 

Oman's  eminent  position  as  a  thinker 
was  achieved  partly  through  his  work  as  a 
teacher,  which  greatly  influenced  all  his 
students,  but  more  through  his  published 
writings,  among  which,  besides  those 
already  named,  should  be  mentioned  The 
Church  and  the  Divine  Order  (1911),  Grace 
and  Personality  (1917),  The  Paradox  of  the 
World  (1921),  The  Natural  and  the  Super- 
natural (1931),  Concerning  the  Ministry 
(1936),  and  Honest  Religion  (published 
posthumously  in  1941  with  a  memoir  of 
the  author  by  George  Alexander  and 
Herbert  Henry  Farmer).  Of  these  Grace 
and  Personality  and  The  Natural  and  the 
Supernatural  are  the  most  important  both 
as  affording  insight  into  Oman's  charac- 
teristic teaching  and  as  permanent  enrich- 
ments of  theological  literature.  Oman's 
theology  was  built  round  a  strongly  per- 
sonalistic  doctrine  of  man  and  of  God's 
dealings  with  man.  Man's  true  end  can 
only  be  achieved  through  a  reverence 
which  never  subordinates  sacred  values  to 
expediency  or  profit,  a  freedom  which 
accepts  all  the  risks  of  freedom,  a  sincerity 
which  walks  steadfastly  by  its  own  insight. 
AU  these  needs  and  prerogatives  of  persona- , 
lity  God  Himself  unwaveringly  respects, 
having  Himself  created  and  bestowed! 
them.  In  Grace  and  Personality  this  theme  i 
is  worked  out  in  relation  to  the  central  j 
Christian  doctrines  of  grace  and  forgive- 
ness with  a  thoroughness,  consistency,  and 
power  which  make  it,  in  the  words  of  a 
critic,  'one  of  the  major  treasures  of 
theological  literature'.  In  The  Natural 
and  the  Supernatural  the  same  basic 
thoughts  are  made  the  clue  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  nature  and  history  of 
religion,  of  the  processes  of  knowledge,  of 
evolution,  of  the  natural  order,  the  whole 
constituting  a  sustained  argument  to 
justify  the  contention  that  there  is  direct  j 
awareness  of  the  supernatural  which  leads  | 
on  to  fuller  knowledge  of  God  only  as  men! 
live  in  loyalty  to  those  sacred  values  through ; 
which  Pie  discloses  Himself  to  their  sou^ 

Oman's  writing  is  not  always  easyjH 
follow,  demanding  close  attention  ancWi 
willingness  to  weigh  every  sentence  with! 
care ;  but  it  rises  at  times  to  real,  if  re-i 
strained,  eloquence,  is  interspersed  withi 
apt  illustration,  and  always  rests  on  a  vast 
knowledge  which  is  masked  from  the 
uninformed  by  a  refusal  to  adorn  his; 
pages  with  references  to  other  authors.! 
His  character,  in  its  massive  and  at  times 
almost  formidable  integrity,  was  an  im- 


658 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Orage 


jressive  embodiment  of  his  own  teaching. 

Physically  also  he  was  impressive,  being 
all  and  with  a  noble  head.  A  fine  portrait 
I  liim  by  H.  G.  Riviere  is  in  the  hall  of 

kVcstminster  College,  Cambridge. 

[F.  R.  Tennant,  John  Wood  Oman,  1860- 
1939  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
;ol.  XXV,  1939  (portrait) ;  Memoir  by  George 
^exander  and  H.  H.  Farmer  prefixed  to 
f.  W.  Oman,  Honest  Religion,  1941 ;  private 
nformation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  H.  Farmer. 

ORAGE,  ALFRED  RICHARD  (1873- 
934),  editor,  and  exponent  of  social  credit, 
vhose  original  name  was  Alfred  James 
)rage,  was  born  at  Dacre,  near  Bradford, 
iforkshire,  22  January  1873,  the  younger 
on  of  William  Steverson  Orage,  farmer, 
md  later  a  teacher  in  his  own  school  at 
)acre,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Anne  McQuire. 
Villiam  Orage  died  during  the  infancy  of 
Ufred,  who  was  brought  up  by  his  mother 
II  poor  circimistances  at  his  father's  native 
'illage,  Fenstanton  in  Huntingdonshire. 
The  benevolence  of  Howard  Coote,  the  son 
if  a  local  squire,  enabled  him  to  continue 
lis  education  at  the  village  school  as  a 
>upil  teacher  and  to  proceed  to  a  teachers' 
raining  college  at  Culham,  Oxfordshire, 
n  1893  he  became  a  teacher  in  an  elemen- 
ary  school  at  Leeds ;  but,  although  he  was 
I'ery  able  and  enthusiastic  in  class,  he  soon 
jleveloped  wider  outside  interests  which 
imbraced  literature  and  guild  socialism. 
IVith  Mr.  Holbrook  Jackson,  whom  he  met 
jti  1900,  Orage  founded  the  Leeds  Arts 
piub,  with  the  main  object  of  fostering 
ew  standards  in  the  arts. 

In  1906  Orage  came  to  London  as  a 
ree-lance  journalist.  In  1907,  with  the 
nancial  backing  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw, 
)rage  and  Mr.  Jackson  bought  a  dying 
y^eekly  review  called  the  New  Age. 
Jthough  both  were  keen  Fabians,  they 
y  no  means  limited  the  paper  to  socialist 
lews.  Among  early  contributors  who 
iter  became  famous  were  G.  K.  Chester- 
[q.v.],  H.  G.  Wells,  and  Arnold 
fennett  [q.v.].  Jackson  relinquished  his 
)int  editorship  in  1909,  and  the  New  Age 
'B.S  essentially  an  expression  of  Orage's 
ersonality.  His  incisive  and  illmninating 
olitical  notes  helped  to  give  the  journal 
igh  prestige,  although  it  never  attained 

large  circulation. 

In  1918  Orage  met  Major  Clifford  Hugh 
•ouglas,  and  soon  became  convinced  that 
)cial  credit  was  a  sound  economic  scheme. 
[e  was  to  become  a  strong  advocate  of  the 
leory,  but  meanwhile,  just  after  the  war  ] 


of  1914-1918,  he  fell  under  the  influence  of 
the  occultist  P.  D.  Ouspensky,  and, 
through  him,  became  a  disciple  of  the 
Russian  mystic  George  Gurdjieff.  In 
October  1922  Orage  gave  up  the  editorship 
of  the  New  Age  and  spent  rather  more  than 
a  year  at  Gurdjieff' s  institute,  Le  Prieur^, 
at  Fontainebleau,  dividing  his  time  be- 
tween manual  labour  and  the  study  of 
Gurdjieff's  philosophy.  From  the  end  of 
1923  imtil  1930  he  was  in  the  United 
States  of  America,  holding  meetings  and 
giving  lectiu^s  to  raise  funds  for  Le 
Prieure,  but  occasionally  visiting  London 
or  Fontainebleau. 

Returning  finally  to  England  in  1980, 
Orage  in  1932  foimded  the  New  English 
Weekly,  which  became  the  organ  of  social 
credit  and  also  a  forum  for  many  good 
writers,  established  or  newly  discovered. 
He  died  suddenly  at  Hampstead  early  in 
the  morning  of  6  November  1934  after 
having  given  a  broadcast  address  on  the 
Douglas  theory  the  previous  evening. 

Himself  a  forcible  and  persuasive  writer, 
with  a  nice  sense  of  word  values,  Orage 
was  quick  to  detect  and  encourage  talent 
in  others,  and  was  rightly  proud  of  the 
great  reputations  later  won  by  many 
contributors  to  the  New  Age.  Optimistic, 
energetic,  and  intellectually  fearless,  he 
constantly  pursued  an  ideal,  the  hnea- 
ments  of  which  he  saw,  at  different  times, 
in  guild  socialism,  the  philosophy  of 
Nietzsche  on  whom  he  did  pioneer  work, 
publishing  two  valuable  monographs,  the 
mysticism  of  Gurdjieff,  and  the  economic 
doctrine  of  social  credit.  An  unconven- 
tional thinker,  a  gifted  lecturer,  and  an 
amusing  and  racy  talker,  he  exercised 
a  considerable  literary  influence  and  dis- 
played high  editorial  virtues  in  the  selec- 
tion, presentation,  and  integration  of 
literary  teams. 

Orage  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1896  to  Jean  Walker  (who  divorced 
him  in  1927) ;  secondly,  in  1927  to  Jessie 
Richards,  daughter  of  Harvey  Lyman 
Dwight,  dealer  in  building  supplies,  of 
Albany,  U.S.A.  There  were  a  son  and  a 
daughter  by  the  second  marriage. 

A  drawing  of  Orage  by  F.  Ernest 
Jackson  (1909),  and  an  oil-painting  by 
T.  C.  Dugdale  (1932),  are  in  the  possession 
of  Orage's  widow. 

[The  Times,  7  and  11  November  1934; 
Manchester  Guardian,  7, 12,  and  13  November 
1934 ;  Philip  Mairet,  A.  R.  Orage :  A  Memoir, 
1936 ;  S.  G.  Hobson,  Pilgrim  to  the  Left,  1938  ; 
private  information.] 

Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 


659 


Oram 


D.N.B.  1931r-1940 


J 


ORAM,  Sir  HENRY  JOHN  (1858- 
1939),  engineer  vice-admiral,  was  born  at 
Plymouth  19  Jmie  1858,  the  eldest  son  of 
John  Joseph  Oram,  of  Plymouth,  by  his 
wife,  Jane  Hall.  He  was  educated  at 
private  schools  and  went  in  1873  to  the 
Royal  Naval  Engineering  College  at 
Keyham,  Devonport,  whence  he  entered 
the  Royal  Navy  in  1879  as  assistant- 
engineer.  Subsequently  during  the  three 
years  higher  engineering  course  at  the 
Royal  Naval  College,  Greenwich,  he 
proved  himself  to  be  a  brilliant  student. 
Leaving  Greenwich  in  1882  he  served  as 
junior  engineer  in  the  troopships  Crocodile 
and  Malabar  and,  becoming  engineer  in 
1884,  he  returned  to  London  on  appoint- 
ment as  assistant-engineer  in  the  depart- 
ment of  the  engineer-in-chief  at  the 
Admiralty.  In  that  department  Oram  was 
destined  to  spend  a  period  of  more  than 
thirty-three  years.  Promotion  came  very 
rapidly ;  in  1889  he  became  chief -engineer, 
in  1893  staff-engineer,  and  in  1897  fleet- 
engineer.  In  that  year  he  was  specially 
promoted  to  the  rank  of  inspector  of 
machinery ;  he  became  chief  inspector  in 
1901  (the  title  being  changed  to  engineer 
rear-admiral  in  1903);  in  1902  he  was 
made  deputy  engineer-in-chief;  and  in 
1907  he  succeeded  Engineer  Vice-Admiral 
Sir  Albert  John  Durston  as  engineer-in- 
chief  of  the  fleet,  with  the  rank  of  engineer 
vice-admiral;  he  held  this  last  post  until 
he  retired  in  June  1917. 

Oram's  period  of  office  as  engineer-in- 
chief  was  one  of  imusual  activity  in  naval 
engineering  as  it  saw  the  introduction  of 
the  water- tube  boiler,  oil  fuel,  and  the 
turbine.  These  important  innovations 
gave  Oram  a  task  exceeding  that  of  his 
predecessors  both  in  range  and  in  en- 
gineering interest,  and  it  was  in  no  small 
measure  due  to  his  tenacity  and  skill  that 
by  1902  the  fleet  was  able  to  report  that 
the  vessels  fitted  with  water-tube  boilers 
had  reached  a  satisfactory  standard  of 
performance.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
technical  committee  formed  in  1903  to 
report  on  the  designs  for  the  machinery 
of  the  subsidized  liners  Mauretania  and 
Lusitania,  and  he  was  responsible  for  the 
detailed  investigations  which  enabled 
Durston  confidently  to  recommend  the 
use  of  steam  tm-bines  in  1905  for  the 
Dreadnought.  He  also  served  on  the 
royal  commission  on  oil  fuel  and  engines 
imder  the  chairmanship  of  Lord  Fisher 
[q.v.].  With  Richard  Sennett  he  was 
author  of  The  Marine  Steam  Engine 
(1898)    which   has  been  the   authorized 


text-book  for  naval  engineers  for  many 
years. 

Oram  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1912,  and 
was  president  of  the  Institute  of  Metals 
(1914),  of  which  he  was  a  founder-member, 
and  of  the  Junior  Institution  of  Engineers 
(1908-1909).  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1906  and  K.C.B.  in  1910.  For  his  colla- 
boration with  the  United  States  navy 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  received 
the  American  D.S.M. 

Oram  married  in  1881  Emily  Kate  (died 
1928),  only  daughter  of  John  Bardens,  of 
Plymouth,  and  had  two  sons  and  two 
daughters.  He  died  at  Cranleigh,  Surrey, 
5  May  1939. 

[The  Times,  6  May  1939 ;  Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8,  January 
1940  (portrait) ;  Nature,  3  June  1939 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  M.  Whayman. 

H.  A.  Brown. 


ORPEN,  Sir  WILLIAM  NEWENHAM 
MONTAGUE  (1878-1931),  painter,  was 
born  at  Stillorgan,  co.  Dublin,  27  Novem- 
ber 1878,  the  fourth  and  yoimgest  son  of 
Arthur  Herbert  Orpen,  a  Dublin  solicitor, 
by  his  wife,  Anne,  eldest  daughter  of 
Charles  Caulfeild,  bishop  of  Nassau.  The 
Orpens  were  a  well-known  Protestant 
family,  claiming  descent  from  the  French; 
William's  grandfather,  Sir  Richard  Orpen, 
was  president  of  the  Incorporated  Law 
Society  of  Ireland.  His  father  and  his 
eldest  brother,  the  architect  Richard 
Francis  Caulfeild  Orpen,  were  both  skilful 
painters  in  water-colour. 

WiUiam  Orpen' s  own  gift  for  drawing 
was  evident  at  an  early  age  and  he  was 
sent  to  the  Metropolitan  School  of  Art, 
Dublin,  when  only  eleven.  He  became  the 
prodigy  of  the  school  and  at  seventeen  { 
went  on  to  study  at  the  Slade  School  of| 
Fine  Art,  London.  Here  the  criticalj 
encouragement  of  Henry  Tonks  [q.v.]  was, 
a  potent  influence  in  revealing  qualities  of j 
style  and  design  in  the  work  of  the  oldj 
masters.  With  such  fellow  students  asj 
Mr.  Augustus  John  and  Arthur  Ambrosej 
McEvoy  [q.v.]  Orpen  expanded  at  once; 
and  was  one  of  the  chief  of  that  brilliant 
band  of  yoxmg  draughtsmen  who  made  the: 
high  reputation  of  the  Slade  School.  His; 
large  composition  'Hamlet',  which  woni 
the  Slade  summer  prize  in  1899,  was  noj 
mere  student's  exercise  but  a  remarkablyj 
mature  piece  of  picture-making:  in  ifcj 
eclecticism— influences  of  Rembrandt;! 
Watteau,  Goya,  and  Hogarth  may  b€ 
traced — and   in  its  passages   of  bravura 


660 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


fexecution  it  already  displayed  two  of 
r)rpen's  essential  qualities. 

Orpen  began  to  exhibit  with  immediate 

iccess  at  the  New  English  Art  Club,  of 
\  hieh  he  was  elected  a  member  in  1900. 

I'he  Mirror',  shown  that  year  and  now  in 
he  Tate  Gallery,  was  the  first  of  a  remark- 
ble  series  of  interiors  with  small  figures, 
)reeisely  drawn  and  painted  with  great 
ustice  of  tone  and  lighting,  often  with  a 
►eautiful  use  of  pigment.  The  detailed 
ealism  of  these  pictures  was  in  no  wise 
,kin  to  that  of  the  pre-Raphaelites  but  in 
tmospheric  envelopment  was  related  to 
he  Dutch  masters  of  the  seventeenth 
entury,  while  a  flavour  of  anecdote  linked 
hem  with  the  English  tradition  of  Wilkie. 
Jacked  by  the  recommendation  of  J.  S. 
iargent  [q.v.]  commissions  for  portraits 
ame  quickly  from  Sir  George  Swinton, 
*ercy  Wyndham,  George  Moore  [q.v.], 
nd  many  others. 

In  1901  Orpen  married  Grace,  youngest 
laughter  of  Walter  John  Knewstub,  of 
lighgate,  the  friend  and  assistant  of 
)ante  Gabriel  Rossetti:  they  had  three 
laughters.  Her  elder  sister,  Alice,  was 
Iready  married  to  (Sir)  WilUam  Rothen- 
tein,  whose  intimate  pictures  of  interiors 
dth  figures  may  have  given  a  lead  to 
)rpen.  He  joined  forces  with  Mr.  John 
n  a  teaching  studio  in  Chelsea,  but  the 
uccess  of  this  became  embarrassing  and 
.  menace  to  work.  His  style  gained  free- 
lom  in  a  number  of  nudes  and  in  half- 
mgth  figures  in  the  open  air,  seen  against 
,  background  of  sky,  finely  spaced  and 
•roadly  painted.  For  painter-like  vision 
le  did  nothing  better  than  these  and  some 
anciful  self-portraits  such  as  'The  Dead 
'tarmigan '  ( 1909)  and '  Myself  and  Venus ' 
1910).  In  its  balance  of  portraiture  and 
lesign,  and  by  reason  of  its  sitters — 
ieorge  Moore,  Wilson  Steer,  Walter 
tickert,  Henry  Tonks,  Dr.  D.  S.  MacColl, 
nd  Sir  Hugh  Lane — 'Hommage  a  Manet' 
1909,  now  in  the  Manchester  Corporation 
^rt  Gallery)  will  probably  prove  to  be  the 
aost  satisfying  and  lasting  in  interest  of 
lis  groups. 

Orpen's  affection  for  his  native  country 
ras  profoimd  and  leapt  out  spontaneously. 
Such  pictiu-es  as  '  Sowing  the  Seed  for  the 
ioard  of  Agriculture  and  Technical 
nstruction  in  Ireland'  (1913)  and  'The 
Vestern  Wedding'  (1914)  gave  play  to  his 
ramin-like  hiunour  and  satirical  fantasy, 
''or  some  years  he  visited  Dublin  to 
lirect  the  life-classes  at  the  Metropolitan 
ichool  of  Art,  and  his  thoroughness  and 
lislike  of  pose  or  humbug  made  him  a 


Orpen 

most  stimulating  teacher.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Royal  Hibernian  Academy, 
but  resigned  in  1915. 

In  1908  Orpen  sent  a  brilliant  portrait 
of  Mr.  C.  J.  Wertheimer  to  the  Royal 
Academy  and  two  years  later  was  elected 
an  associate.  After  this  his  pictures  were 
among  the  chief  features  of  the  exhibitions 
at  Burlington  House,  but  he  abandoned 
private  work  for  two  years  from  April 
1917  when  he  went  to  France  as  an  official 
war  artist,  with  the  rank  of  major  in  the 
Royal  Army  Service  Corps.  He  threw 
himself  wholeheartedly  into  the  recording 
of  men,  from  commanders-in-chief  to  the 
humblest  of  privates,  and  of  characteristic 
and  fantastic  incidents,  and  amassed  an 
immense  number  of  paintings  and  draw- 
ings most  of  which  he  presented  to  the 
nation,  after  an  exhibition  held  at  Messrs. 
Agnews  in  1918.  At  the  Imperial  War 
Museum  they  form  a  remarkable  record, 
detailed,  accurate,  and  occasionally,  as  in 
'Changing  Billets,  Picardy'  and  'Bomb- 
ing; Night',  of  grim  intensity. 

There  followed  nine  months  of  intense 
activity  at  the  Peace  Conferences  in  Paris 
and  at  Versailles.  Two  pictures  of  the 
Quai  d'Orsay  and  the  Hall  of  Mirrors, 
Versailles,  with  small  figures  of  the  great 
leaders  treated  crisply,  wittily,  without 
deference,  against  brilliantly  painted 
backgrounds,  remain  as  evidence  of  the 
signing  of  peace.  But  Orpen's  own  feelings 
were  expressed  in  'To  the  Unknown 
British  Soldier  in  France',  a  draped  coffin 
placed  in  the  empty  Hall  of  Mirrors  and 
guarded  by  two  gaimt  wraiths  from  the 
trenches.  Orpen  had  a  profound  admira- 
tion for  the  British  fighting  man,  for  the 
half-bitter,  half-hvunorous  fortitude  of  the 
troops:  he  was  not  so  much  impressed 
with  the  behaviour  of  national  politicians, 
nor  by  state  occasions. 

Orpen  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  1918 
and  elected  a  Royal  Academician  in  1919. 
Thenceforward  he  was  more  than  ever  in 
demand  as  a  fashionable  portrait  painter. 
He  was  fond  of  painting  women  sitters 
against  a  black  background,  lighting  the 
figure  from  two  sides,  an  arrangement 
which  gave  luminosity  and  a  certain 
ethereal  appearance  to  his  unfaltering  but 
matter  of  fact  statement:  portraits  of 
Miss  Lily  Carstairs  (1914)  and  Mrs.  Melvill 
(1921)  are  examples  of  this  treatment.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  surpass  such  portraits 
of  men  as  those  of  James  Law  of  the 
Scotsman  (1915)  and  Sir  William  McCor- 
mick  (q.v.,  1920)  for  characteristic  likeness 
and  descriptive  rendering  of  detail.    At 


661 


Orpen 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


this  they  stop,  offering  Uttle  to  stir  the 
spectator's  sensibility  or  imagination. 

A  serious  illness  at  Amiens  in  1918 
tmdermined  Orpen's  health.  He  drove 
himself  hard  at  work  and  at  play  and  in 
1931  his  robust  constitution  began  to  fail. 
Three  slight  and  enigmatic  canvases  at  the 
Academy  in  that  year  disquieted  his 
friends ;  the  end  came  quickly  and  he  died 
in  London  29  September  1931. 

Orpen  was  probably  the  most  successful 
British  artist  of  his  time.  With  nearly  600 
portraits  he  assumed  the  position  in  the 
public  eye  which  Sargent,  and  before  him 
Millais,  had  occupied.  From  the  outset  he 
was  the  industrious  apprentice  and  learned 
everything  that  study  from  the  living 
model  and  the  drawings  and  paintings  of 
the  masters  could  teach  him.  He  was 
equipped  to  deal  with  any  subject  which 
demanded  power  in  rendering  the  appear- 
ances of  textures,  colour,  lighting,  and  the 
appurtenances  of  a  scehe,  although  his 
ordering  of  them  in  design  remained  con- 
ventional rather  than  creative  or  signi- 
ficant. For  one  so  keenly  alive  to  the 
present  moment  Orpen  was  curiously 
irresponsive  to  the  art  movements  of  his 
day,  but  his  sanity  and  robustness  were 
refreshing,  and  his  complete  certainty  of 
hand  and  eye  represented  professional 
skill  at  a  very  high  level.  His  two  books. 
An  Onlooker  in  France,  1917-1919  (1921) 
and  Stories  of  old  Ireland  and  Myself 
(1924),  show  shrewd  observation  and  an 
imcommonly  graphic  use  of  words.  He 
was  president  of  the  International  Society 
of  Sculptors,  Painters,  and  Gravers  (from 
1921)  and  of  the  Royal  and  National 
Societies  of  Portrait  Painters ;  a  member  of 
many  clubs,  he  was  an  extremely  enter- 
taining companion,  high  spirited,  droU, 
and  brimful  of  songs  and  stories. 

There  is  a  pencil  and  wash  self-portrait 
of  Orpen  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
Another  self-portrait  is  included  in  'The 
Selecting  Jury,  New  English  Art  Club' 
(1909)  in  the  same  collection. 

[The  Times',  1  October  1931 ;  P.  G.  Konody 
and  Sidney  Dark,  Sir  William  Orpen  (con- 
taining a  chronological  list  of  his  works  and 
lists  of  his  self-portraits  and  of  his  pictures  in 
public  galleries),  1932.] 

H.  L.  Wellington. 

ORR,  WILLIAM  McFADDEN  (1866- 
1934),  mathematician,  was  born  at 
Ballystockart,  Comber,  co.  Down,  2 
May  1866,  the  eldest  son  of  Fletcher 
Blakeley  Orr,  farmer  and  com  and  flax 
mill-owner,  of  Ballystockart,  by  his  wife, 


Elizabeth,  daughter  of  David  Lo 
farmer,  of  Ballymachashan,  Killinch 
CO.  Down.  He  received  his  early  training 
in  mathematics  at  the  local  natio:  ' 
school.  After  spending  two  years  at 
intermediate  school  in  Newtownards, 
entered  the  Methodist  College,  Belfa 
where  he  came  under  the  mathemati 
direction  of  James  Adams  McNeill,  after- 
wards headmaster  of  Campbell  College, 
Belfast.  He  obtained  a  scholarship  in 
mathematics  at  the  Royal  University  of 
Ireland  in  1883,  and  graduated  at  that 
university  in  1885,  from  Queen's  College, 
Belfast,  a  constituent  college  of  the  Royal 
University.  He  proceeded  to  St.  Jolm's 
College,  Cambridge,  being  senior  wrangler 
in  1888  and  obtaining  the  first  place  in 
part  ii  of  the  mathematical  tripos  of 
1889.  In  1891  he  was  both  elected  into  a 
fellowship  at  St.  John's  and  appointed 
professor  of  applied  mathematics  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Science  for  Ireland, 
Dublin,  and  when  in  1926  this  institution 
was  absorbed  by  University  College, 
Dublin,  he  was  offered  and  accepted  an 
equivalent  position  in  that  college  as 
professor  of  pure  and  applied  mathematics, 
from  which  he  retired  in  1933.  In  1909 
he  was  elected  F.R.S.,  and  he  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  DSc.  from  Queen's 
University,  Belfast,  in  1919. 

As  professor  of  applied  mathematics  id 
the  Royal  College  of  Science  Orr's  teaching 
was  characterized  by  accurate  definition, 
logical  rigour,  and  clear  statements  of 
imderlying  assiunptions.  The  scrupulous 
style  of  his  exposition  is  shown  in  his 
Notes  on  Thermodynamics  for  Students 
(1909),  a  model  in  its  precision  in  the 
formulation  of  principles.  He  ever  sought 
to  fiu-nish  his  students  with  the  mathe- 
matical tools  for  dealing  with  the  physical, 
chemical,  and  engineering  problems  which 
they  met  in  the  laboratories,  where  he  was 
frequently  to  be  seen  modestly  deploring 
his  lack  of  experimental  knowledge. 
Mathematics  under  his  inspiring  influence 
became,  for  staff  and  students  alike,  an 
integrating  subject  in  the  small  coUege. 

Orr's  exemplar  was  McNeiU,  of  whom  he 
wrote  an  appreciation  containing  an  un- 
conscious self-portrait.  'Though  McNeill 
was  a  thorough  teacher  of  mathematics, 
still  more  thoroughly  did  he,  like  other  | 
great  teachers  I  have  known,  teach — and 
rather  to  the  man  than  to  the  boy — ^the 
more  valuable  lessons  that  our  life's  work, 
whatever  it  may  be,  should  be  done  as  well 
as  we  can  do  it  and  that  difficulties  are  not 
to  be  evaded,  but  to  be  attacked  and 


662 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Ottley 


:.vercome.  As  may  be  imagined  he  was  a 
itrict  disciplinarian ;  living  the  strenuous 
ifc  himself,  he  had  little  sympathy  with 
he  idle  or  the  purposeless.'  Combined 
vith  this  stoical  austerity,  Orr  had  a  con- 
.idcrate  generosity,  exercised  quietly  and 
effectively,  for  students  and  teachers  in 
iifficulties  of  health  or  fortime. 

Orr's  mathematical  outlook  was 
'ashioned  in  the  Cambridge  tradition  of 
Lord  Rayleigh,  A.  E.  H.  Love  [qq.v.], 
ind  Sir  Joseph  Larmor,  with  whom  he 
carried  on  an  active  correspondence.  He 
,vill  be  best  known  for  his  work  on  the 
itability  of  the  steady  motions  of  a  liquid. 
His  statement  of  this  difficult  problem  was 
iccepted  by  Rayleigh  and  (Sir)  Horace 
Lamb.  His  critical  value  for  the  Reynolds 
lumber,  177,  was  verified  by  Dr.  Richard 
V^ynne  Southwell  using  an  elastic  analogue. 
He  clarified  the  problems  arising  from  the 
jivhirling  of  shafts  in  his  'Note  on  Mr.  Lees' 
|l*aper  on  the  Whirling  of  an  Overhvmg 
Shaft'  (Philosophical  Magazine,  vol.  xlv, 
1923),  which  was  supplemented  by  corre- 
spondence and  discussion  with  his  col- 
leagues. His  highly  developed  critical 
faculty,  directed  with  the  fiercest  intensity 
igainst  his  own  work,  was  never  at  rest, 
[t  was  especially  active  in  dealing  with 
text-books,  as  he  rightly  felt  that  clear 
thinking  in  applied  science  rests  upon  a 
sound  grasp  of  fundamental  principles. 
The  climate  of  the  quantum  and  relativity 
physics  of  the  twentieth  century  was  not 
congenial  to  him,  but  he  never  ceased  to 
take  an  interest  in  these  developments  and 
to  look  forward  to  a  reconciling  synthesis 
with  the  classical  dynamics. 

Orr  married  in  1892  Elizabeth  (died 
1926),  daughter  of  Samuel  Watson  Camp- 
bell, of  Melbourne,  who  originally  came 
from  county  Down,  and  had  three 
daughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  pre- 
deceased her  father.  He  died  at  Douglas, 
Isle  of  Man,  14  August  1934. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait) ;  The 
Campbellian  (journal  of  Campbell  College, 
Belfast),  November  1907;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Felix  E.  Hackett. 

OTTLEY,  Sir  CHARLES  LANG- 
DALE  (1858-1932),  rear-admiral,  was 
bom  at  Richmond,  Yorkshire,  8  February 
1858,  the  seventh  son  of  Lawrence  Ottley, 
rector  of  Richmond  and  canon  of  Ripon, 
by  his  wife,  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  John 
Bickersteth,  rector  of  Sapcote,  Leicester- 
shire, and  sister  of  Robert  Bickersteth, 


bishop  of  Ripon  [q.v.].  Robert  Lawrence 
Ottley,  canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
was  an  elder  brother.  He  entered  the 
Royal  Navy  in  1871,  and  in  1877  was  serv- 
ing as  a  midshipman  in  the  screw  corvette 
Amethyst,  when  in  company  with  the  Shah 
she  engaged  the  rebel  Peruvian  warship 
Huascar  off  the  coast  of  Peru.  He  gained 
accelerated  promotion  to  lieutenant  by 
obtaining  first  class  certificates  in  all  his 
examinations,  and  in  1882,  as  lieutenant 
of  the  Monarch  (Captain  (Sir)  George 
Tryon,  q.v.),  was  present  at  the  bombard- 
ment of  Alexandria,  receiving  the 
Egyptian  medal  with  clasp  and  the 
khedive's  bronze  star.  Later  in  that  year 
he  returned  home  in  order  to  qualify  as  a 
torpedo  officer,  and  while  serving  in  the 
Vernon  he  displayed  marked  technical 
ability  and  inventive  capacity  by  devising 
a  very  successful  automatic  mooring  gear 
for  submarine  mines  which  bears  his  name. 
In  1884  he  became  torpedo  lieutenant  of 
Rear- Admiral  Tryon's  flagship,  the  Nelson, 
on  the  Australia  station  for  two  years; 
he  was  later  appointed  torpedo  lieutenant 
of  the  Camperdown  and  afterwards  of  the 
Victoria,  flagships  of  the  conunander-in- 
chief  Mediterranean,  Admiral  Sir  Anthony 
Hoskins  [q.v.],  who  was  later  relieved  by 
Vice-Admiral  Tryon.  Ottley  was  pro- 
moted conamander  in  1892,  but  remained 
in  the  ship  in  that  rank  as  executive 
officer  until  early  in  1893,  when  he  re- 
tiurned  home  in  order  to  become  com- 
mander of  the  Vernon  for  two  and  a  half 
years.  He  resumed  sea  service  in  1897,  in 
command  of  the  sloop  Nymphe  in  the 
Mediterranean,  employed  chiefly  as  senior 
naval  officer  at  Port  Said  in  1897  and  at 
Constantinople  in  1898. 

Ottley  relinquished  conunand  of  the 
Nymphe  on  his  promotion  to  captain  in 
January  1899,  and  was  then  appointed 
naval  attache  to  various  British  embassies ; 
he  acted  in  that  capacity  diu-ing  the  next 
five  years  in  Washington,  Rome,  Tokyo, 
St.  Petersburg,  and  Paris,  thereby  gaining 
unique  knowledge  and  experience  of 
foreign  navies  and  foreign  policy.  To- 
wards the  end  of  his  service  as  naval 
attache  he  contemplated  adopting  a 
political  career,  and  he  was  chosen  in  1903 
as  prospective  conservative  candidate  for 
Pembroke  Boroughs.  But  his  special 
qualifications  led  to  his  appointment  in 
1904  to  the  staff  of  the  recently  estab- 
lished Committee  of  Imperial  Defence,  and 
in  1905  to  his  selection,  although  a  com- 
paratively junior  captain,  to  succeed 
Rear- Admiral  Prince  Louis  of  Battenberg 


663 


Ottley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


(afterwards  Louis  Mountbatten,  first 
Marquess  of  Milford  Haven,  q.v.)  as 
director  of  Naval  Intelligence,  then  the 
most  important  post,  other  than  member- 
ship of  the  Board,  in  the  Admiralty ;  and 
he  abandoned  his  parliamentary  ambi- 
tions. As  director  of  Naval  Intelligence, 
he  sat  on  a  nimiber  of  important  com- 
missions, notably  that  of  1906  on  war 
risks  to  shipping.  In  1907  he  was  the 
principal  naval  delegate  to  the  second 
Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague,  where  he 
took  a  leading  part  in  drawing  up  the 
convention  limiting  the  use  of  submarine 
mines,  to  the  development  of  which  he 
had  devoted  so  much  ingenuity  many 
years  earUer.  In  that  same  year,  when  the 
original  secretary  of  the  Committee  of 
Imperial  Defence,  Sir  George  Clarke 
(afterwards  Lord  Sydenham,  q.v.),  relin- 
quished that  office,  largely  owing  to 
differences  of  view  which  had  arisen 
between  him  and  the  first  sea  lord.  Sir 
John  (afterwards  Lord)  Fisher  [q.v.], 
Ottley  was  selected  to  reUeve  him.  In 
1908  he  was  a  delegate  to  the  International 
Maritime  Conference  of  London.  He 
reached  the  top  of  the  captains'  list  in  that 
year,  but  not  having  served  at  sea  in  that 
rank,  he  was  automatically  placed  on  the 
retired  list  on  promotion  to  rear-admiral 
(1908) ;  but  he  remained  secretary  to  the 
Connmittee  of  Imp)erial  Defence  until 
1912,  when  he  had  completed  five  years 
in  office.  Those  five  years,  largely  as  a 
result  of  Ottley's  unostentatious  but 
skUful  organization  and  guidance,  were 
the  most  important  period  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  conunittee  into  a  highly 
efficient  instrument  for  the  co-ordination 
of  the  nation's  forces  in  the  preparation 
for,  and  conduct  of  war. 

On  retirement  from  office,  Ottley  made 
his  home  at  Coruanan,  Fort  WilUam, 
Inverness-shire,  and  joined  the  board  of 
Messrs.  Armstrong,  Whitworth  &  com- 
pany, of  Newcastle-upon-Tyne;  he  took 
an  active  part  in  the  superintendence  of 
that  company's  output  of  war  material, 
particularly  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914.  He  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  1903, 
C.B.  in  1911,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1907  for  his 
services  at  The  Hague  Peace  Conference. 
He  retired  from  the  board  of  Armstrongs 
on  the  post-war  reconstruction  of  the 
company.  In  1892  he  marrfed  Kathleen 
Margaret,  daughter  of  Colonel  Alexander 
Stewart,  of  the  Royal  Artillery,  and  had 
a  son,  who  died  of  wounds  in  1914.  A 
few  days  before  his  death  he  moved  from 
Coruanan  to  Creag,  Tarbet,  Argyll,  where 


■ 


he  died  24  September  1932.  He  was  a  man 
of  much   charm   and   no   Uttle   Uter; 
ability,  a  good  linguist,  and  a  fluent,  co: 
vincing,  and  persuasive  speaker. 

[Tlie  Times,  26  September  1932 ;  Admiralt; 
records ;  private  information.] 

H.  G.  Thursfield 


ionfl 
alt^ 

''I 


OULESS,  WALTER  WILLIAM  (1848- 
1933),  painter,  was  born  at  St.  Helier, 
Jersey,  21  September  1848,  the  third  son 
of  Philip  John  Ouless,  marine-painter,  of 
Jersey,  by  his  wife,  Caroline  Marguette 
Savage.  He  was  educated  at  Victoria 
College,  Jersey.  Coming  to  London  in 
1864,  he  entered  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools  the  following  year,  at  the  early  age 
of  sixteen,  and  in  1869,  when  he  was  not 
yet  twenty-one,  he  made  his  first  appear- 
ance at  a  Royal  Academy  exhibition  with 
two  subject  pictures,  'Home  Again'  and 
'A  Tender  Passage'.  He  continued  to 
exhibit  regularly  until  1928,  when  he  was 
represented  by  a  portrait  of  Sir  Arthur 
Keith,  which  is  now  in  the  Royal  College 
of  Surgeons  together  with  Ouless' s  portrait 
of  Lord  Lister,  painted  in  1897.  He  was 
elected  A.R.A.  in  1877  and  R.A.  in  1881, 
and  in  1924  he  became  a  Senior  Academi- 
cian. 

At  the  beghining  of  his  career  Ouless 
painted  subject  pictures,  and  it  was  on  the 
advice  of  Sir  J.  E.  Millais  [q.v.]  that  he 
concentrated  on  portraiture.  This  advice 
was  justified  by  events,  and  Ouless  was 
quickly  recognized  as  one  of  the  most 
trustworthy  portrait-painters  of  the  day, 
sure  of  getting  a  good  and  sympathetic 
likeness  with  a  high  degree  of  technical 
sldll.  At  the  same  time  his  earlier  practice 
in  figure  composition  enabled  him  to  give 
to  his  portraits  a  broadly  pictorial  effect 
that  is  not  very  commonly  combined  with 
veracity  in  detail,  and  his  appreciation  of 
character  gained  by  sobriety  of  statement. 

Ouless  is  represented  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery  by  portraits  of  John 
Bright  (1879),  (Sir)  George  Scharf  (1885), 
Lord  John  Manners  (later  seventh  Duke 
of  Rutland,  1886),  (Viscount)  Morley 
(1891),  and  Thomas  Hardy  (1922).  His 
portrait  of  Thomas  Sidney  Cooper  [q.v.] 
is  in  the  art  gallery  attached  to  the  Royal 
Museum  and  PubUc  Library  at  Canter- 
bury. Ouless  painted  both  King  Edward 
VII  (1900)  and  King  George  V  (1905)  as 
Prince  of  Wales,  the  latter  for  Lincoln's 
Inn,  and  among  the  other  distinguished 
people  who  sat  to  him  were  Charles 
Darwin  (painted  for  the  family  in  1875) ; 
Russell  Gurney  (1875,  Fishmongers'  Com- 


664 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Page,  T.  E. 


pany);  Cardinal  Newman  (1880-1881, 
Oriel  College,  Oxford);  (Earl)  Roberts 
(1882,  for  the  Mess,  Woolwich) ;  Cardinal 
Manning  (1888:  the  painting  was  de- 
stroyed by  enemy  action  in  1940  but  is 
represented  by  a  replica  at  the  Oratory, 
Birmingham) ;  Bishop  Edward  King  (1899, 
Bishop's  House,  Lincoln) ;  and  Sir  (Henry) 
Evelyn  Wood  (1906,  Fishmongers'  Com- 
pany). His  portrait  of  Philip  Westlake 
was  presented  by  his  daughters  to  the 
Tate  Gallery  in  1934.  Towards  the  end 
of  his  life  he  painted  a  few  landscapes, 
mostly  in  the  county  of  Dorset. 

Ouless  was  for  a  long  time  an  active 
member  of  the  council  of  the  Royal 
Academy.  He  was  a  governor  of  Dulwich 
College,  and  he  occupied  himself  a  good 
deal  with  the  affairs  of  the  Dulwich 
Picture  Gallery,  which  he  helped  to  re-hang. 
For  many  years  he  devoted  much  time  to 
the  Artists'  General  Benevolent  Institu- 
tion, both  as  honorary  secretary  and  vice- 
president.  Personally  he  was  much  liked, 
although  during  his  later  years  partial 
deafness  kept  him  from  mixing  much  in 
general  society.  'No  man  could  have  had 
a  more  loyal  and  steadfast  friend,  nor 
wiser  counsellor,  while  he  also  possessed 
the  charming  courtesy  of  a  great  gentle- 
man' (The  Times,  1  January  1934). 

Ouless  was  a  chevaUer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  and  a  member  of  the  Order  of 
Leopold,  and  during  his  long  Ufe  he  re- 
ceived gold  and  silver  medals  for  his  work 
at  Berlin,  Paris,  Munich,  and  Vienna. 
In  1878  he  married  Lucy  Maitland 
(died  1931),  daughter  of  Thomas  King 
Chambers,  M.D.,  honorary  physician  to 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  of  Shrubs  Hill  House, 
Simningdale.  The  eldest  of  his  three 
daughters  is  Miss  Catherine  Ouless,  the 
landscape  and  portrait  painter.  He  died 
after  a  short  illness  at  his  home  in  London 
25  December  1933. 

Ouless's  self-portrait,  exhibited  at  the 
Academy  in  1918,  is  in  the  Uffizi  Gallery, 
Florence ;  there  is  a  replica  in  the  Barreau 
Gallery,  St.  Helier.  There  was  also  a 
portrait  of  Ouless  by  his  eldest  daughter, 
but  this  was  destroyed  by  enemy  action 
in  1940.  A  portrait  of  him  is  included  in 
Grenville  Manton's  'Conversazione  at  the 
Royal  Academy'  (1891),  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

[The  Times,  27  December  1933  and  1 
January  1934 ;  private  information.] 

Chakles  Marriott. 


PAGE,       THOMAS       ETHELBERT 

(1850-1936),    classical    scholar,    teacher. 


editor,  and  political  critic,  was  bom  at 
Lincoln  27  March  1850,  the  second  son  of 
WiUiam  Tomlinson  Page,  of  Stonebow, 
Lincoln,  general  manager  of  the  Lincoln 
and  Lindsey  Banking  Company,  by  his 
wife,  Ann  Watson.  Both  his  father  and 
his  elder  brother  were  prominent  citizens 
of  Lincoln.  He  was  educated  at  Lincoln 
Grammar  School,  Shrewsbury,  and  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  of  which  last 
he  was  a  scholar.  He  was  second  in  the 
classical  tripos  of  1873,  S.  H.  Butcher 
[q.v.]  being  first  and  A.  W.  Verrall  [q.v.] 
third — a  trio  of  famous  scholars  who  were 
declared  equal  for  the  chancellor's  medals 
that  year.  He  was  also  Porson  prizeman 
(1870),  Porson  scholar  (1871),  Browne 
medallist  for  a  Latin  ode  (1870,  1871, 
1872),  Davies  scholar  (1872),  and  chan- 
cellor's medallist  for  an  English  poem 
(1872).  Having  been  at  once  elected  a 
fellow  of  his  college,  he  turned  immedi- 
ately to  school  work,  and  for  thirty-seven 
years  (1873-1910)  was  sixth-form  master 
at  Charterhouse,  where  his  brilliant 
scholarship  and  fine  critical  judgement, 
combined  with  exceptional  gifts  of  voice 
and  personality,  made  a  vital  and  lasting 
impression  upon  his  pupils.  He  was  pre- 
eminent among  the  assistant  masters  of 
his  day. 

While  still  a  schoolmaster  Page  pro- 
duced what  soon  became  the  standard 
school  editions  of  the  Odes  of  Horace  and 
the  Aeneid,  which  made  his  name  familiar 
to  classical  students  everywhere,  and  in 
1912,  after  he  had  retired  from  teach- 
ing, he  was  invited  by  James  Loeb  to 
be  editor-in-chief  of  the  'Loeb  Classical 
Library'.  He  held  this  position  for  the 
last  twenty-five  years  of  his  life,  editing 
the  various  translations  with  laborious 
care  and  fine  critical  judgement,  and  hand- 
ling the  translators,  both  Elnglish  and 
American,  with  tact  and  considerateness. 

Page's  academic  distinction  was  recog- 
nized when  his  college  elected  him  an 
honorary  fellow  in  1931  and  Manchester 
University  conferred  upon  him  the  honor- 
ary degree  of  Litt.D.  in  1913.  But  he  was 
much  more  than  a  scholar.  He  served 
for  thirty  years  on  the  town  council  of 
Godalming,  generously  applying  his  great 
intellectual  powers  to  the  problems  of 
local  administration,  and  was  made  an 
honorary  freeman  of  that  ancient  borough. 
For  many  years  he  was  a  member  of  the 
Surrey  county  council  and  education 
committee,  where  his  utterances  were 
remembered  for  the  shrewdness  of  his 
judgement  and  the  incisive  wit  that  drove 


665 


Page,  T.  E. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


his  point  home.  He  was  a  governor  of 
Charterhouse  and  a  member  of  the  govern- 
ing body  of  that  school,  as  well  as  of 
Shrewsbury  and  Cranleigh.  In  1934  the 
King  appointed  him  C.H.,  and  his  selection 
for  this  distinction  was  warmly  welcomed. 

There  are  portraits  of  Page  in  the  two 
places  most  closely  associated  with  his 
life,  one,  by  John  Collier  (1911),  in  the 
school  at  Charterhouse,  the  other,  a  better 
representation,  by  Clive  Gardner  (1927), 
in  the  Reform  Club.  But  no  portrait  or 
short  biographical  record  can  make  real  to 
those  who  did  not  know  him  the  distinc- 
tion of  his  personality,  which  made  him 
in  any  company,  however  eminent,  the 
most  striking  figure.  His  magnificent 
presence,  tall  stature,  and  noble  head, 
with  the  fine  eyes  and  close-cropped  beard, 
attracted  the  notice  of  strangers.  Those 
who  conversed  with  him  found  a  courteous 
listener  and  a  weighty  and  witty  talker, 
who  touched  no  subject  that  he  did  not 
illuminate.  His  friends  knew  him  for  a 
man  of  high  principle,  loyal,  generous, 
sensitive,  and  fundamentally  kind-hearted. 
At  the  Reform  Club  his  commanding  per- 
sonality, arresting  conversation,  and  on 
special  occasions  his  oratory,  made  him 
throughout  his  later  years  a  leading  figure. 
To  the  general  public  he  was  best  known 
by  his  letters  to  The  Times,  which  com- 
pelled attention  by  their  forceful  criticism 
and  political  insight. 

Page  stood  unsuccessfully  for  parlia- 
ment as  an  independent  at  a  by-election 
for  Cambridge  University  in  February 
1911:  in  his  later  years  he  was  a  recog- 
nized exponent  of  Uberalism,  but  rather 
as  a  political  philosophy  than  a  party 
label.  For  him  it  was  'an  animating  and 
informing  spirit  which  seeks  to  mould  and 
shape  all  political  measures  in  accordance 
with  a  great  ideal';  and  that  ideal  was, 
so  far  as  laws  can  avail,  'to  establish  and 
confirm  two  great  principles,  individual 
freedom  and  individual  responsibility'. 
His  letters  to  The  Times  show  the  discri- 
minating judgement  with  which  he  inter- 
preted this  creed  and  the  keen  interest  with 
which  he  followed  public  affairs  up  to  the 
last  days  of  his  long  life. 

Page  died  at  Godalming  1  April  1936. 
He  married  in  1875  Delamotte  Caroline 
Eugenie,  only  daughter  of  Edward 
Toynbee,  of  Lincoln,  a  half-brother  of 
Joseph  Toynbee  [q.v.].  There  were  two 
daughters  of  the  marriage. 

[The  Times,  2  April  1936 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Fkank  Fletcher. 


lare,  I 
stefl 

laifl 
ealfl 


PAGE,  WILLIAM  (1861-1984),  hist 
ian  and  antiquary,  was  bom  in  Londc 
4  September  1861,  the  third  and  youngest 
son  of  Henry  Page,  of  Norfolk  Square^ 
London,  by  his  wife,  Georgina  Forrest 
After  a  short  time  at  a  private  schc 
he  went  to  Westminster  from  Januaz 
to  May  1875,  but  on  his  father's  deat 
that  year  he  entered  the  office  of  a  civff 
engineer,  and  was  appointed  to  a  post 
under  the  Queensland  government  in  1881. 
In  1885  he  returned  to  England  and  joined 
his  brother-in-law,  William  John  Hardy, 
son  of  Sir  WilUam  Hardy  [q.v.],  as  partner 
in  the  firm  of  Hardy  &  Page,  record  agents 
and  legal  antiquaries.  From  1896  to  1902 
he  made  his  home  at  St.  Albans  where  his 
brother-in-law  lived:  he  then  removed  to 
Battersea  and  in  1906  to  Hampstead, 
where  he  remained  until  1922,  finally 
settling  at  Middleton,  near  Bognor,  where 
he  died  3  February  1934.  He  married  in 
1886  Kate  Marion,  youngest  daughter  of 
Charles  WilUam  Roe,  of  Chiswick,  and  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter. 

Page's  first  archaeological  paper, '  Some 
Remarks  on  the  Northumbrian  Pal^f 
tinates  and  Regalities',  was  printed  ^ 
Archaeologia  in  1888.  His  reputation  as  ft 
learned  and  accurate  scholar  grew  apace, 
and  while  he  was  still  a  young  man  a  turn 
of  events,  for  which  he  was  in  no  way 
responsible,  provided  him  with  a  unique 
opportunity.  The  Victoria  History  of  the 
Counties  of  England,  initiated  at  the  end 
of  Queen  Victoria's  reign,  and  intended 
to  surpass  all  previous  histories  in 
thoroughness  and  accuracy,  began  its 
ambitious  career  under  the  best  auspices 
and  with  ample  funds.  But  not  until  it 
had  been  under  way  for  some  time  did  it 
become  clear  to  its  promoters  that  much 
of  the  material  which  they  counted  on 
their  contributors  to  produce,  such  as 
topographical  details  and  manorial  de- 
scents, existed  only  in  the  national 
archives  and  needed  much  time  and  expert 
training  to  reduce  to  printable  form. 
Fortunately,  they  turned  to  Page,  who 
in  1902  became  joint  editor,  with  Herbert 
Arthur  Doubleday,  of  the  History  and  in 
1904  sole  editor,  a  position  which  he  held 
until  his  death.  By  1902  only  one  volume 
had  appeared:  by  the  end  of  1910  there 
were  forty-six  volumes.  Failure  of  funds 
and  the  war  of  1914-1918  stopped  the 
progress  of  the  work  and  disorganized  it 
almost  entirely,  so  that  in  1922  Page  took 
the  whole  of  the  materials  to  his  home  at 
Middleton,  and  in  1928  became  sole 
proprietor  of  the  History.    In  order  to 


GGG 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Paget,  M.  E.  V. 


ensure  its  continuance  he  made  over  all 
the  materials  in  1931  to  the  university 
of  London,  which  set  up  a  management 
committee  of  which  he  was  chairman  until 
his  death. 

In  1932  Oxford  University  conferred 
upon  Page  the  honorary  degree  of  D.Litt., 
the  sole  recognition  that  his  great  services 
lo  history  received.  He  served  on  the 
royal  commission  on  historical  monuments 
for  England  from  1909  to  1934,  as  an 
inspector  under  the  historical  manuscripts 
( onnnission,  and  on  a  number  of  special 
committees,  while  his  output  of  archaeo- 
logical and  historical  work,  much  of  it 
(Unvoted  to  St.  Albans  and  Hertfordshire,  is 
;i  clear  index  of  the  extent  of  his  knowledge. 

[The  Times,  5  February  1934;  Victoria 
History  of  the  Counties  of  England.  Rutland, 
\  ol.  ii,  pp.  ix-xi,  1935  (portrait) ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Charlks  Peers, 

PAGET,  Lady  MURIEL  EVELYN 
VERNON  (1876-1938),  philanthropist, 
was  born  in  liOndon  19  August  1876,  the 
only  daughter  and  elder  child  of  Murray 
Edward  Gordon  Finch-Hatton,  twelfth 
Earl  of  Winchelsea  and  Nottingham,  by 
his  wife,  Edith,  only  daughter  of  Edward 
\Villiam  Harcourt,  of  Stanton  Harcourt  and 
Nuneham  Park,  Oxfordshire.  In  1897  she 
married  (Sir)  Richard  Arthur  Surtees  Paget, 
second  baronet,  of  Cranmore  Hall,  Shepton 
Mallet,  who  succeeded  his  father  in  1908. 

liady  Muriel's  first  philanthropic  achieve- 
ment was  the  establishment  in  1905  of 
the  Invalid  Kitchens  of  London,  to  which 
she  remained  honorary  secretary  untU 
her  death,  and  this  led  to  her  giving  help 
to  the  Belgian  Refugees  Committee  in 
London  when  the  German  armies  overran 
Belgium  in  1914.  In  the  following  year 
she  organized  and  administered  the  Anglo- 
Russian  Hospital  with  a  base  hospital  in 
the  Dmitri  Palace  at  Petrograd  and  field 
hospitals  at  the  front.  In  1917  she  went 
with  the  Russian  army  to  Rumania,  and 
set  up  a  hospital  at  Durohoy  during  a 
grave  epidemic  of  typhus.  Returning  to 
Russia  she  continued  to  work  there  until 
after  the  revolution  she  and  her  staff  were 
withdrawn  under  Red  Army  escort  by 
way  of  Siberia  and  Japan ;  but  her  return 
to  Europe  only  brought  fresh  work,  and 
in  1919  at  the  head  of  the  mission  that 
bore  her  name.  Lady  Muriel  went  to 
Czechoslovakia  at  the  personal  request  of 
President  Masaryk,  and  in  that  country, 
Latvia,  Estonia,  and  Lithuania,  she  in- 
augurated and  administered  hospital  and 
child  welfare  work.  In  1919  also,  as  chair- 


man of  the  Rumanian  Red  Cross  in 
England,  she  went  to  Rumania,  where  she 
organized  a  child -welfare  centre.  In  every 
case  the  authorities  of  these  countries  took 
over  the  work  in  1922.  In  these  countries 
her  name  came  to  be  held  in  great  honour 
and  the  news  of  her  death  was  received 
with  general  emotion.  The  connexion 
with  Russia  was  resumed  in  1924,  when 
she  organized  and  maintained  relief  for 
the  numerous  distressed  British  subjects 
in  Moscow  and  the  provinces  who  had 
been  ruined  by  the  revolution,  and  in 
1930  the  work  being  extended  to  Lenin- 
grad, the  organization  became  known  as 
the  British  Subjects  in  Russia  Relief 
Association.  Her  visits  to  her  head- 
quarters were  frequent  between  1924  and 

1937,  and  when  in  March  1938  the  British 
consul  was  withdrawn,  her  organization 
was  the  only  official  link  between  British 
subjects  in  Leningrad  and  their  govern- 
ment untU  three  months  later  they  were 
expelled.  An  improbable  charge  of 
espionage  made  against  her  and  her 
organization  at  the  trial  of  Rakovsky 
was  emphatically  repudiated  by  Neville 
Chamberlain  in  March  1938. 

If  Russia  was  the  most  important  scene 
of  Lady  Muriel's  activities  it  was  by  no 
means  her  sole  preoccupation.  From  1926 
to  1938  she  was  a  governor  of  the  People's 
Palace  in  Mile  End  Road.  She  travelled 
often  to  Geneva  for  Red  Cross  conferences, 
and  in  1934  she  went  as  British  delegate 
to  the  fifteenth  International  Red  Cross 
conference  in  Japan,  but  although  dur- 
ing the  last  twelve  years  of  her  life 
she  suffered  from  the  illness  from  which 
she  eventually  died,  she  maintained  her 
enthusiasm  for  the  causes  which  she  had 
at  heart.  It  was  characteristic  of  her  that 
in  the  final  phase  she  refused  any  opiate 
which  might  interfere  with  her  powers  of 
organizing  her  Russian  relief  work. 

Lady  Muriel  died  in  London  16  June 

1938.  She  was  survived  by  her  husband, 
her  younger  son,  the  elder  having  died 
in  infancy,  and  three  daughters.  For  her 
philanthropic  work  Lady  Muriel  was 
appointed  O.B.E.  in  1918  and  C.B.E.  in 
1938.  She  also  received  decorations  and 
medals  from  Belgium,  Japan,  Imperial 
Russia,  Rumania,  Czechoslovakia,  Lithu- 
ania, and  Latvia. 

A  pencil  sketch  of  Lady  Muriel  by 
Brian  Hatton  (1912)  is  in  the  possession 
of  Sir  Richard  Paget. 

[The  Times,  17,  18,  21,  22,  23  June  1938; 
private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
I  Grace  H.  Paget. 


607 


Paget,  V. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


PAGET,  VIOLET  (1856-1935),  author 
under  the  pseudonym  of  Vernon  Lee, 
was  born  at  Chateau  St,  Leonard,  near 
Boulogne,  14  October  1856.  Her  father, 
Henry  Ferguson  Paget,  having  been 
educated  in  Warsaw,  was  involved  in  the 
Polish  insurrection  in  1848.  Forced  to  fly 
the  coimtry,  he  became  tutor  to  Eugene 
Lee-Hamilton  [q.v.],  whose  widowed 
mother  he  married  in  1855.  Matilda  Lee- 
Hamilton  was  the  daughter  of  Edward 
Hamlin  Adams,  of  Carmarthenshire, 
whose  sons  took  the  name  of  Abadam. 
Violet  was  the  only  child  of  her  mother's 
second  marriage,  the  companion  of  her 
youth  and  her  earliest  intellectual  influ- 
ence being  her  poet  half-brother  Eugene. 
Before  she  was  fifteen  she  discovered  the 
deserted  meeting-place  of  the  Arcadian 
Academy  in  Rome  and  began  to  collect 
materials  for  its  history.  These  contri- 
buted to  her  first  book,  Studies  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  in  Italy  (1880),  a 
pioneer  work  which  brought  to  light  the 
significance  of  the  contemporary  efflore- 
scence in  music  and  drama,  and  made 
the  fantastic  world  of  eighteenth-century 
Italy  live  again.  Her  pseudonym  of 
'Vernon  Lee'  was  chosen,  with  reference 
to  her  brother,  in  1875.  During  the 
ensuing  fifty  years  she  published  some 
thirty  volumes.  Euphorion:  being  Studies 
of  the  Antique  and  the  Mediaeval  in  the 
Renaissance  (1884)  and  its  sequel.  Renais- 
sance Fancies  and  Studies  (1895),  won  her 
a  high  place  among  the  interpreters  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance.  Travel  sketches  such 
as  Genius  Loci  (1899)  and  The  Spirit  of 
Rome  (1906)  reveal  a  unique  power  of 
conveying  the  essence  of  the  places  which 
she  describes.  Her  sensitive  delight  in 
every  detail  of  the  ItaUan  landscape 
prompted  Browning's  lines  in  Asolando: 

'"No,  the  book 
Which  noticed  how  the  wall-growths  wave" 

said  she 
"Was  not  by  Ruskin." 

I  said  "Vernon  Lee?'" 

Her  works  of  fiction  are  eminently  read- 
able but  her  later  excursions  into  philo- 
sophy are  over-elaborate  and  obscure. 
Satan  the  Waster  (1920)  expressed  her 
hatred  of  war,  which,  together  with  her 
cosmopolitan  outlook,  led  her  to  write  and 
speak  in  a  way  that  incurred  censure 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

In  1881  Vernon  Lee  paid  the  first  of 
many  visits  to  England.  Her  tailor-made 
clothes,  short  hair,  gleaming  eyes,  and 
briUiant  talk  made  her  a  conspicuous 
figure  in  artistic  circles.  She  received  the 


1 

rhaifl 
V  thfl 


honorary  degree  of  D.Litt.  from  Durhat 
University  in  1924,  and  in  1934  saw 
Italian  version  of  her  play  Ariadne  in 
Mantua  (1903)  performed  in  Florence 
before  an  enthusiastic  audience.  She  died 
at  II  Palmerino,  San  Gervasio,  the  Floren- 
tine villa  which  had  long  been  her  home^ 
13  February  1935.  If  her  early  promisfl 
was  not  wholly  fulfilled,  she  stood  to  her 
many  friends  for  the  quintessence  of 
European  culture,  conversing  with  equal 
ease  and  distinction  in  Italian,  French, 
and  English.  'Vernon  Lee  was  by  far 
the  cleverest  person  I  ever  met ' ;  wrote 
Maurice  Baring ;  her  culture  was '  shot  with 
imagination.' 

Of  the  two  portraits  of  Vernon  Lee  by 
J.  S.  Sargent,  the  sketch  in  oils  done  in 
1881  was  bequeathed  to  the  Tate  Gallery, 
the  drawing  made  in  1889  is  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Ashmolean  Museum. 

{The  Times,  14  February  1935 ;  Vernon 
iee's  Letters  (privately  printed),  1937 ;  Maurice 
Baring,  Lost  Lectures,  1932 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] Cecilia  M.  Ady. 

PAKENHAM,  Sir  WILLIAM 

CHRISTOPHER  (1861-1933),  admiral, 
was  born  in  London  10  July  1861,  the 
second  son  of  Rear-Admiral  Thomas 
Alexander  Pakenham,  third  son  of  the 
second  Earl  of  Longford,  by  his  wife, 
Sophia  Frances,  third  daughter  of  Sir 
Tatton  Sykes,  fourth  baronet,  of  Sledmere 
[q.v.].  He  entered  the  Britannia  training 
ship  as  a  naval  cadet  in  1874,  and,  having 
passed  out  two  years  later,  he  went  to  sea 
in  the  Monarch  in  the  Mediterranean, 
being  promoted  midshipman  in  1876.  He 
was  transferred  to  the  frigate  Raleigh  next 
year.  Together  with  an  able  seaman  he  was 
highly  commended  for  gallantry  in  plung- 
ing into  the  sea  and  rescuing  a  coxswain 
who  had  faUen  overboard  as  the  ship  was 
leaving  Larnaka,  Cyprus,  in  August  1878. 
In  September  1879  he  joined  the  Alexan- 
dra, flagship  of  Sir  Geoffrey  Hornby  [q.v.], 
and  remained  in  her  when  Sir  F.  B.  P. 
Seymour  (afterwards  Lord  Alcester, 
q.v.)  succeeded  to  the  command  until  pro- 
moted to  sub-lieutenant  in  October  1880. 
Having  undergone  the  usual  gunnery 
course  in  the  Excellent  at  Portsmouth  he 
was  in  December  1882  again  appointed 
to  the  Alexandra  (still  flagship  of  Lord 
Alcester) ;  but  soon  after  Lord  John  Hay 
had  assumed  the  command  he  was  trans- 
ferred in  April  1883  to  the  corvette 
Canada,  destined  to  join  the  North 
America  squadron.  In  this  ship  he  was 
a  strict  though  benevolent  autocrat  of  the 


668 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Pakenham 


un-room  mess  in  which  Prince  George  recommendation,  to  confer  on  him  the 


(afterwards  King  George  V)  was  serving 
;is  midshipman.    He  was  promoted  Ueu- 
lenant  in  October  1883,  and  was  soon 
hiought  home  again,  having  been  chosen 
as  flag-lieutenant  by  Rear-Admiral  (Sir) 
(ieorge  Tryon  [q.v.]  (flag  in  the  Nelson) 
during  the  three  years  (1884^1887)  of  his 
command  of  the  new  Australia  station. 
Pakenham's  remaining  nine  years   as 
1  lieutenant  were  spent  mainly  as  gunnery 
i  officer    of    the    small    cruisers    Calypso, 
'  Garnet,  and  Sybille  in  the  Training  squad- 
ron, and  on  the  Pacific  and  Mediterranean 
I  stations.    While  in  the  Calypso  he  again 
]  distinguished  himself  by  a  brave  attempt 
to  save  the  life  of  a  petty  officer  who  had 
lallen   into   the   sea   from   the   foreyard 
(luring  drill  in  Kiel  Harbour. 

Promoted  commander  in  June  1896, 
Pakenham  served  for  nine  months  in  the 
old  Galatea  (coastguard  ship  at  Hull)  and 
for  eighteen  months  in  the  Venus  under 
Sir  (Archibald)  Berkeley  Milne  [q.v.]  in 
the  Mediterranean.  He  had  quahfied  as 
an  interpreter  in  French  while  on  half- 
pay  in  1884,  and  was  selected  for  duty  in 
the  Naval  Intelligence  Department  from 
August  1899  until  March  1901.  Then  he 
commanded  the  sloop  Daphne  on  the 
China  station,  and,  after  being  lent  to 
Rear-Admiral  Harry  Tremenheere  Gren- 
feU's  flagship  Albion  as  acting  captain 
early  in  1902,  returned  home  in  June  of 
that  year.  He  was  promoted  captain  in 
June  1903. 

The  outbreak  of  war  between  Russia 
and  Japan  was  imminent  and  Pakenham's 
experience  in  intelligence  work  and  his 
linguistic  abilities  (although  he  never 
learnt  the  difficult  Japanese  language) 
marked  him  out  as  the  officer  to  succeed 
Captain  (afterwards  Admiral  Sir  Ernest) 
Troubridge  [q.v.],  who  was  due  for  relief 
in  1904  as  naval  attache  in  Japan.  War 
broke  out  on  6  February  1904  and  Paken- 
ham relieved  Troubridge  in  March,  tak- 
ing his  place  on  board  the  battleship 
Asahi  in  which  he  remained  continuously 
imtil  after  the  final  Japanese  victory  at 
Tsushima  on  27  May  1905.  His  reports  to 
the  Admiralty  throughout  the  war  were 
brilliantly  written  and  revealed  a  thorough 
appreciation  of  the  strategic,  tactical,  and 
technical  implications  of  the  events  and 
situations  which  he  described.  His  cool 
daring  in  exposing  himself  to  danger  in 
order  more  completely  to  observe  the 
proceedings  of  the  great  battle  much 
impressed  the  Japanese,  and  led  the 
Emperor  of  Japan,  on  Admiral  Togo's 


second  class  of  the  Order  of  the  Rising 
Sun.  He  was  specially  appointed  C.B. 
(military  division)  soon  after  the  battle. 

After  returning  to  England  in  1900 
Pakenham  commanded  the  cruiser  Antrim 
for  two  years  in  the  Atlantic  Fleet,  and 
then  the  Glory  and  Triumph  (battleship 
bought  from  Cliile  in  1904)  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean until  January  1910,  when  he  came 
home  to  take  command  of  the  new  battle- 
ship Collingwood  in  the  Home  Fleet,  until 
December  1911.  Mr.  Winston  Churchill, 
in  reconstituting  his  Board  soon  after 
taking  office,  selected  Pakenham  to  be 
fourth  sea  lord,  being  impressed  by  his 
reputation  as  an  officer  of  strong  character 
and  his  unique  experience  of  modem  naval 
warfare.  Before  Pakenham  left  the  Board 
two  years  later  he  had  in  Jvme  1913 
reached  flag-rank,  and  in  December  he 
took  command  of  the  third  cruiser 
squadron.  Home  Fleet,  with  his  flag  in  his 
old  ship  Antrim.  In  March  1915,  with  his 
flag  in  the  Australia,  he  took  charge  of 
one  of  the  two  battle-cruiser  squadrons 
which  belonged  to  the  Australian  Common- 
wealth and  had  been  willingly  lent  for 
service  in  the  Grand  Fleet  after  the  victory 
of  the  Falkland  Islands  (8  December  1914) 
had  disposed  of  German  danger  in  the 
Pacific.  He  thus  had  the  titular  appoint- 
ment of  rear-admiral  commanding  the 
Australian  Fleet.  In  the  battle  of  Jutland 
(31  May  1916)  Pakenham's  flag  was  flown 
in  the  New  Zealand,  the  Australia  being 
under  repair  at  Devonport  after  a  collision 
with  the  New  Zealand  in  a  fog  on  22  April. 
His  remaining  ship  the  Indefatigable  was 
blown  up  and  lost  early  in  the  battle. 
Pakenham  distinguished  himself  by  able 
support  of  Vice-Admiral  Sir  David  (later 
Earl)  Beatty  [q.v.]  and  was  rewarded 
by  appointment  as  K.C.B.  (1916),  being 
personaUy  decorated  with  that  order  and 
also  as  K.C.V.O.  by  the  King  on  the 
occasion  of  his  visit  to  the  fleet  at  Rosyth 
in  1917.  In  November  1916  Beatty 
became  commander-in-chief  in  succession 
to  Sir  John  (later  Earl)  Jellicoe  [q.v.],  and 
on  his  insistent  recommendation  Paken- 
ham was  appointed  to  succeed  him  in 
the  command  of  the  battle-cruiser  force 
although  there  were  many  officers  with 
strong  claims  senior  to  him  but  who  had 
seen  less  service  with  battle-cruisers.  He 
transferred  his  flag  from  the  Australia  to 
the  Lion  in  January  1917  and  retained 
the  command  until  April  1919,  having  been 
promoted  acting  vice-admiral  in  June 
1917    and    confirmed    in    that    rank    in 


669 


Pakenham 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


September  1918,  and  having  been  present 
at  the  surrender  of  the  German  Fleet  in 
the  Forth  at  the  end  of  the  war. 

After  a  well-deserved  rest  on  half-pay 
Pakenham  was  appointed  president  of 
the  Royal  Naval  College,  Greenwich,  in 
August  1919,  but  at  his  own  request  was 
given  another  command  afloat  as  com- 
mander-in-chief. North  America  and  West 
Indies  station  in  October  1920.  After  two 
and  a  half  years  he  returned  home.  He 
had  been  promoted  admiral  in  April  1922 
and  retired  at  his  own  request  in  March 
1926.  He  long  maintained  correspondence 
with  his  Japanese  friends  and  made  a 
great  impression  at  Geneva  in  1927  by 
travelling  from  England  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  calling  upon  Admiral  Viscount 
Saito  who  had  been  minister  of  marine  in 
1905.  He  was  appomted  G.C.B.  in  1925 
and  succeeded  Sir  C.  C.  Monro  [q.v.]  as 
Bath  King  of  Arms  in  1930.  He  resigned 
from  this  post  only  a  few  days  before  his 
death,  which  took  place  at  San  Sebastian 
28  July  1933.  He  was  unmarried. 

Pakenham  was  appointed  K.C.M.G 
(1919),  made  commander  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour,  and  given  the  croix  de  guerre 
(bronze  palms),  the  first  class  of  the 
Japanese  Order  of  the  Rising  Sun,  the  grand 
cordon  of  the  Chinese  Order  of  the  Excel- 
lent Crop,  and  the  D.S.M.  of  the  United 
States  of  America  in  the  post-war  award 
of  honours. 

Pakenham  was  a  strong-minded,  some- 
what austere,  able,  and  well-read  officer, 
wholeheartedly  devoted  to  the  service  and 
something  of  a  'character'  with  his  fault- 
less care  of  his  personal  appearance  and 
dress,  his  quiet  sense  of  caustic  humour, 
and  his  studiously  polite,  if  somewhat 
elaborate,  manners.  Mr.  Churchill  paid 
him  a  notable  tribute  in  The  World  Crisis 
(1923). 

Numerous  stories  are  told  of  Pakenham, 
as  that  during  the  battle  of  Tsushima  the 
casemate  on  which  he  was  stationed  was 
struck  by  a  shell  with  resulting  casualties, 
and  his  white  uniform  was  splashed  with 
blood.  He  quietly  left  the  deck  and  re- 
turned in  a  few  minutes  with  spotless 
attire  and  resumed  his  notes  of  the  battle. 
It  is  also  related  that  while  in  the  Grand 
Fleet  he  always  slept  fully  dressed  as  in 
day-time  and  that  he  had  all  the  furniture 
of  the  admiral's  quarters  burnt,  together 
with  all  inflammable  articles  in  the  ship 
including  the  deck  corticine  and  the 
companion-ladder,  in  order  to  prevent  the 
danger  of  fire  during  an  action ;  and  he  kept 
only  a  chair  in  his  bridge  cabin. 

670 


A  portrait  of  Pakenham  in  oils  by  (Si 
WilUam  Nicholson  and  a   charcoal   an^ 
water-colour  drawing   by  Francis  Doc 
are  in  the  Imperial  War  Museum,  and     _ 
is  represented  in  Sir  A.  S.  Cope's  picture 
'Some  Sea  Officers  of  the  Great  War', 
painted  in  1921,  in  the  National  Portrailft 
GaUery.  f 

[Admiralty  records ;  private  information.] 
Vincent  W.  Baddeley. 

PARIS,  Sir  ARCHIBALD  (1861- 
1937),  major-general,  was  born  at  Lans- 
down,  Bath,  9  November  1861,  the  young- 
est son  of  the  Rev.  Archibald  Paris,  of 
Ludgeon,  Cornwall,  by  his  wife,  Caroline, 
second  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Sir  Henry 
Delves  Broughton,  eighth  baronet.  Edu- 
cated at  Eton  and  the  Royal  Naval 
College,  Greenwich,  he  joined  the  Royal 
Marine  Artillery  in  1879. 

Paris  passed  out  of  the  Staff  College, 
Camberley,  in  1888,  and,  after  a  period 
afloat  and  five  years  as  adjutant  of  the  1st 
Antrim  Artillery  Militia  (1894-1899),  was 
selected  for  service  in  South  Africa  in 
1900.  Initially  employed  in  training  field 
batteries  in  Rhodesia,  he  finally  com- 
manded, under  Lord  Methuen  [q.v.],  the 
'Kimberley  column',  a  mixed  force, 
mostly  mounted  irregulars,  which  was 
attacked  and  forced  to  surrender  near 
Tweebosch  in  March  1902  owing  to  the 
flight  of  most  of  the  mounted  troops. 
Paris  was  exonerated  from  blame  and 
later  commended  for  the  gallant  resistance 
organized  by  him.  Thrice  mentioned  in 
dispatches,  he  was  promoted  brevet 
lieutenant-colonel  in  June  1902  for  dis- 
tinguished service  in  the  field.  From  1903 
to  1906  he  was  instructor  at  the  Royal 
Military  Academy. 

In  September  1914  Paris  relieved  Sir 
G.  G.  Aston  [q.v.]  in  command  of  the 
Royal  Marine  brigade,  and  in  October  was 
promoted  temporary  major-general  and 
appointed  to  command  the  Royal  Naval 
division  which  he  led  with  distinction  at 
Antwerp,  throughout  the  GaUipoli  cam- 
paign, and  in  France  until  severely 
wounded  in  October  1916,  with  the 
eventual  loss  of  a  leg.  In  Jvme  1917  he 
was  placed  on  the  retired  list  as  '  unfit  for 
further  service  owing  to  woimds'. 

Paris  was  five  times  mentioned  in 
dispatches,  and  promoted  major-general 
for  services  in  the  field  in  1915.  He  was 
appointed  C.B.  in  1907  and  K.C.B.  in 
1916.  He  also  received  many  foreign 
decorations.  He  was  honorary  colonel 
commandant  of  the  Portsmouth  division, 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Parker 


lioyal    Marines    (1923-1933),    and    was 
awarded  a  good-service  pension  in  1925. 

Tall  and  spare,  with  a  cast  in  one  eye 
caused  by  an  accident,  Paris  had  a 
tliorough  grasp  of  his  profession  and 
proved  himself  a  cool  and  trusted  com- 
mander. In  1885  he  married  Lilian  Jean, 
youngest  daughter  of  General  Henry 
MelvUl,  Bengal  Cavalry,  and  had  a  son, 
Brigadier  Archibald  Charles  Melvill,  who 
was  killed  on  active  service  in  Malaya  in 
1942.  He  died  at  Montreux  30  October 
1937. 

A  portrait  of  Paris  by  Miss    Donald 
Smith  hangs  in  the  Officers'  Mess,  Royal 
i  Marine  Artillery,  at  Eastney  Barracks, 
I  Portsmouth. 

[M.  H.  Grant,  (Official)  History  of  the 
I  War  in  South  Africa  1899-1902,  vol.  iv,  1910 ; 
j  Official  records  at  the  Royal  Marine  Office, 
i  Admiralty ;  Cyril  Field,  Britain^s  Sea  Soldiers, 
I  vols,  i  and  ii  (up  to  1914,  privately  printed), 
j  1924;  Sir  H.  E.  Blumberg,  Britairi's  Sea 
1  Soldiers  1914-1919, 1927 ;  E.  Fraser  and  L.  G. 
Carr-Laughton,  The  Royal  Marine  Artillery, 
I  1804-1923,  2  vols.,  1930 ;  The  Times,  5 
'  November  1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  C.  Templk. 

PARKER,  Sib  (HORATIO)  GILBERT 
(GEORGE),  baronet  (1862-1932),  author 
and  politician,  was  born  at  Camden  East, 
Addington,  Ontario,  23  November  1862, 
i  the  eldest  son  of  Joseph  Frederick  Parker, 
'  of  Belleville,  Canada,  born  in  Ireland  of 
:  English  descent,  by  his  wife,  Samantha 
;  Jane,  daughter  of  George  Simmons,  of 
United  Empire  Loyalist  extraction.  Proud 
j  of  his  ancestry  and  alluding  frequently 
to  its  influence  on  his  writings,  Parker 
recorded  little  about  his  parents  except 
that  his  father  had  emigrated  to  Quebec 
about  1834  and  had  become  a  captain  in 
the  Canadian  militia.  He  was  educated  at 
the  village  school  at  Camden  and  the 
Normal  School  at  Ottawa  and  became  a 
school-teacher  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  He 
attended  Trinity  College,  Toronto,  in 
preparation  for  holy  orders  for  two  years, 
but  he  did  not  proceed  beyond  the  diaconate, 
and  after  being  a  curate  for  a  short  time 
he  retm-ned  to  teaching.  Owing  to  weak- 
ness of  health  he  visited  Austraha  in  1885 
and  became  associate-editor  of  the  Sydney 
Herald,  and  the  income  derived  therefrom 
enabled  him  to  travel  and  to  indvUge  his 
interests  in  oratory  and  drama  and  to 
write  verse.  When  in  London  in  1889,  on 
the  advice  of  a  friend,  he  burnt  all  his 
manuscripts  and  made  a  fresh  start  with 
the  Canadian  'North- West'.  Pierre  and 
his  People  (1892)  was  his  first  book  of 


tales.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  had  had 
more  than  a  glimpse  of  the  prairies,  let 
alone  of  the  remote  north:  certainly  the 
geography,  the  flora,  and  the  fauna,  are 
exceedingly  hazy,  the  characters  uncon- 
vincing, and  the  plots  and  incidents 
sensational.  But  New  York  and  London 
seemed  to  be  hungry  for  this  sort  of 
writing.  A  vast,  imcritical  reading  public 
could  be  played  upon  by  phrases  about 
the  'wide  spaces',  the  'frozen  north',  and 
'tall  yarns'  about  blue-blooded  'remit- 
tance-men'. It  has  been  hinted  that  his 
marriage  (1895)  aided  him  to  literary  and 
social  success,  but  Parker  was  now  no 
novice;  besides  stories  in  periodicals,  he 
had  already  published  half  a  dozen  books. 
He  continued  to  Avrite  and  publish  until 
late  in  life.  His  industry  enabled  him  to 
master  a  subject,  such  as  French-Canadian 
history,  and  then,  with  no  great  attention 
to  verisimilitude  or  style,  he  would  write 
voluminous  melodrama.  The  Trail  of  the 
Sword  (1894)  on  French  Canada  and  the 
American  Colonies  promised  better  things ; 
in  his  later  preface  (imperial  edition  1912- 
1923)  he  recorded  W.  E.  Henley's  com- 
ment: 'It  is  not  just  big,  but  the  next  one 
will  get  home. '  Unfortunately  next  year 
he  published  When  Valmond  came  to 
Pontiac.  This  silliest  of  all  tales  about 
Quebec,  although  it  enhanced  his  reputa- 
tion at  the  time,  was  vmworthy  of  him. 
The  Seats  of  the  Mighty  (1896),  on  the 
Colonies  and  the  capture  of  Quebec,  often 
called  Parker's  best  novel  about  Canada, 
sometimes  his  best  novel,  is  marred  by  the 
same  faults,  yet  it  displays,  like  The  Trail 
of  the  Sword,  one  of  his  best  features,  a 
covert  admiration  for  French  Canadians. 
He  now  very  deliberately  tiu'ned  to  a  new 
field,  Jersey  during  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, in  The  Battle  of  the  Strong  (1898) ;  the 
subject  was  industriously  studied  and  his 
description  of  the  Channel  tides  seems 
truer  to  nature  than  his  Canadian  scenes. 
But  here,  as  in  The  Weavers  (1907),  the 
long  novel  about  England  and  Egypt,  an 
immature  reader  might  suspect  that  the 
villains  are  too  viUainous  to  be  possible, 
and  the  heroines  too  good  to  be  true.  In 
aU  he  wrote  thirty-six  books,  of  which 
several  were  dramatized  and  in  that  form 
enjoyed  popular  success;  but  he  never 
cured  himself  of  turgidity  in  his  style  nor 
of  morbid  interest  in  torture,  mental  and 
physical. 

Parker  entered  the  political  arena  in 
Great  Britain  when  he  was  elected  con- 
servative and  imperialist  member  for 
Gravesend  in  1900,  and  he  continued  to 


671 


Parker 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


represent  the  constituency  until  1918. 
He  took  politics  seriously,  and  was  an 
active  promoter  of  imperial  unity,  especi- 
ally in  South  African  and  Egyptian  affairs. 
He  was  chairman  of  the  Imperial  South 
African  Association  from  1903  to  1911, 
and  was  active  in  the  cause  of  promoting 
small  ownerships,  being  the  founder  of  the 
Small  Ownership  Committee  and  chair- 
man of  the  special  committee  on  small 
ownership.  For  two  and  a  half  years 
during  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was  in 
charge  of  publicity  for  America. 

Parker  married  Amy  Eliza  (died  1925), 
daughter  of  Ashley  Van  Tine,  of  New 
York;  there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  Many  honours  came  to  him; 
he  was  knighted  in  1902,  created  a  baronet 
in  1915,  and  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in 
1916.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Toronto,  McGill,  and 
Laval.  He  died  in  London  6  September 
1932. 

A  cartoon  of  Parker  by  '  Spy '  appeared 
in  Vanity  Fair  23  June  1909. 

[The  Times,  7  September  1932;  Harold 
Williams,  Modern  English  Writers  1890-1914, 
3rd  ed.,  1925.  The  best  clue  to  Parker  and  his 
work  is  to  be  found  in  the  prefaces  to  his 
books,  imperial  edition,  23  vols.  (New  York), 
1912-1923.]  Carleton  Stanley. 

PARSONS,  Sir  CHARLES  AL- 
GERNON (1854r-1931),  engineer  and 
scientist,  was  born  in  London  13  June 
1854,  the  yoxuigest  of  the  six  sons  of 
William  Parsons,  third  Earl  of  Rosse 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Mary,  elder  daughter 
of  John  Wilmer  Field,  of  Heaton  Hall, 
Yorkshire.  His  eldest  brother  was 
Laurence  Parsons,  fourth  Earl  of  Rosse 
[q.v.].  He  was  brought  up  at  the  family 
seat,  Birr  Castle,  Parsonstown,  Ireland; 
he  was  never  sent  to  school  but  had,  along 
with  his  brothers,  the  benefit  of  private 
tuition  by  men  of  such  scientific  calibre  as 
(Sir)  R.  S.  Ball  and  G.  Johnstone  Stoney 
[qq.v.].  At  the  age  of  seventeen  he 
entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he 
spent  two  years  before  proceeding  to 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1873. 
There  was  at  that  time  no  engineering 
school  at  Cambridge,  but  Parsons  attend- 
ed lectures  on  mechanism  and  applied 
mechanics,  and  he  studied  mathematics 
with  such  effect  that  in  1877  he  graduated 
as  eleventh  wrangler. 

Parsons  at  once  began  his  engineering 
training  by  a  four  years'  apprenticeship  at 
the  Elswick  works  of  Sir  William  Arm- 
strong &  company.  This  was  followed  by 


two  years  (1881-1883)  with  Messrs.  Kits 
&  company,  of  Leeds,  where  he  develoj 
a   four-cylinder   high-speed    epicycloid 

steam-engine  that  he  had  patented,     

he  also  occupied  himself  with  experiments 
on  the  propulsion  of  torpedoes  by  mean^ 
of  rockets.  M 

In  1884  Parsons  acquired  a  jim^| 
partnership  in  the  firm  of  Clarke,  Chap- 
man &  company,  of  Gateshead,  and 
assumed  charge  of  their  newly  organized 
electrical  department.  In  those  days 
electric  dynamos  were  small  machines 
driven  usually  at  1,000  to  1,500  revolu- 
tions per  minute  by  a  belt  from  the  fly- 
wheel of  a  reciprocating  engine.  Parsons 
set  himself  the  task  of  producing  a 
machine  which  would  drive  the  dynamos 
direct  and  concentrated  on  the  develop- 
ment of  a  steam  turbine.  It  occun-ed  to 
him  that  by  dividing  the  expansion  of 
steam  into  a  number  of  pressure  drops  it 
should  be  possible  to  run  a  turbine  at  a 
moderate  speed  and  at  the  same  time 
secure  a  proper  relationship  between  the 
steam  speed  and  blade  speed.  His  first 
patents,  taken  out  in  1884,  show  how 
thoroughly  he  considered  all  the  difficulties 
in  the  path  for  the  construction  of  such  a 
high-speed  turbine  and  the  steps  which  he 
proposed  to  take  to  overcome  them.  The 
principle  of  subdividing  the  whole  expan- 
sion of  the  steam  into  a  number  of  stages, 
so  that  only  comparatively  moderate 
velocities  have  to  be  dealt  with,  still  forms 
the  basis  of  all  efficient  turbine  design. 
The  first  Parsons  turbo-dynamo  con- 
structed in  1884  developed  an  output  of 
7^  kw.  when  running  at  a  speed  of  18,000 
revolutions  per  minute,  and  was  an  imme- 
diate success.  Many  such  machines  were 
constructed  almost  exclusively  for  ship- 
lighting  and  by  1888  about  200  were  in 
service. 

Realizing  the  possibilities  of  the  new 
type  of  prime  mover,  and  in  order  to 
develop  it  to  its  fullest  extent.  Parsons 
in  1889  foimded  the  firm  of  C.  A.  Parsons 
&  company  and  established  a  small  works 
at  Heaton  on  a  site  about  two  miles  from 
the  centre  of  Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  The 
first  power-station  in  the  world  to  employ 
turbo-generating  plant  was  the  Forth 
Banks  power-station  at  Newcastle.  This 
station  went  into  commission  in  January 
1890  with  an  initial  equipment  of  two 
75  kw.  Parsons  turbo-alternators.  Other 
public  lighting  companies  quickly  followed 
this  lead,  and  turbo-alternators  were 
installed  at  Cambridge  and  Scarborough. 
The  Cambridge  station  went  into  com- 


672 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Parsons 


lur^sion  in  1892  with  three  100  kw.  turbo- 
alternators.  These  machines  were  the 
iirst  turbine  units  to  be  operated  with 
condensers,  and  tests  showed  their  effi- 
ciency to  be  comparable  with  that  of  the 
best  reciprocating  engines  of  equal  power. 

As  the  size  of  turbo-alternators  for 
[)()\ver-station  w^ork  gradually  increased, 
so  the  efficiency  of  the  sets  was  improved. 
By  1900, 1,000  kw.  turbo-alternators  with 
a  steam  consumption  of  18-22  Ibs./kw. 
hour  were  under  construction;  by  1912, 
25,000  kw.  sets  taking  10-42  Ibs./kw.  hour ; 
and  by  1923,  50,000  kw.  sets  taking 
8-19  Ibs./kw.  hour.  Parsons  lived  to  see  an 
output  of  more  than  200,000  kw.  de- 
livered by  a  single  turbo-generator,  and 
the  reciprocating  steam  engine  completely 
superseded  by  the  turbine  for  central 
station  work. 

The  growth  of  electricity  supply  conse- 
i^uent  upon  the  invention  of  the  turbine 
preated  a  demand,  not  only  for  larger 
iijenerating  units  but  also  for  higher  trans- 
jinission  voltages  in  order  that  niore  exten- 
isive  areas  might  be  economically  served, 
jln  the  early  days  the  practice  had  been  to 
lijenerate  at  about  2,000  volts,  and  to 
increase  the  pressure  when  required  by 
transformers.  By  1905  Parsons  had  con- 
ijtructed  turbo-alternators  generating  at 
11,000  volts,  and  this  voltage  became  the 
isual  generating  pressure  for  many  years, 
[n  1928  he  again  attacked  the  problem  of 
l^enerating  at  higher  voltages  and  pro- 
jluced  a  25,000  kw.  turbo-alternator 
venerating  directly  at  36,000  volts.  The 
juachine  was  entirely  successful  and 
jParsons  had  set  a  new  standard  in  power- 
iitation  practice.  Many  of  the  most  im- 
portant power  stations,  both  in  Great 
Britain  and  abroad,  have  adopted  the 
jractice  of  generating  directly  at  36,000 
/olts,  thereby  eliminating  the  large  and 
iostly  step-up  transformers  necessary 
vith  the  previous  method. 

The  use  of  the  steam  turbine  for  the 
iropulsion  of  ships  was  amongst  the  claims 
nade  by  Parsons  in  his  original  patent  of 
L884,  but  he  confined  his  energies  at  first 
o  the  task  of  establishing  the  position  of 
he  turbine  on  land,  and  it  was  not  vmtil 
894  that  he  decided  to  attack  the  problem 
)f  marine  propulsion.  He  established  a 
eparate  organization  with  works  at 
iVallsend  and  formed  a  separate  company 
vhich  was  later  known  as  the  Parsons 
larine  Steam  Turbine  Company.  A  small 
-essel,  with  a  length  of  100  feet  and  a 
lisplacement  of  44  tons,  was  constructed 
ind  fitted  with  turbine  machinery.   This 


vessel,  the  Turhinia,  after  much  experi- 
mental work,  attained  a  speed  of  thirty- 
four  knots.  At  the  naval  review  held  in 
1897  to  celebrate  the  diamond  jubilee  of 
Queen  Victoria,  the  Turhinia  created  a 
sensation  by  racing  down  the  lines  of 
warships  at  a  speed  greater  than  that  of 
any  other  vessel  afloat,  as  at  that  time  the 
fastest  destroyers  could  hardly  exceed 
twenty-seven  knots.  In  1899  the  Ad- 
miralty entrusted  Parsons  with  the  con- 
struction of  a  thirty-knot  turbine-driven 
destroyer,  the  Viper,  which  attained  a 
speed  of  over  thirty-seven  knots  when 
officially  tested.  A  second  destroyer,  the 
Cobra,  was  also  fitted  with  turbine 
machinery,  but  shortly  afterwards  both 
these  ships  were  lost  at  sea  by  accidents. 

In  1901  the  first  turbine-driven  pas- 
senger vessel,  the  King  Edward,  was  built 
for  service  on  the  river  Clyde.  This  was 
followed  by  the  Queen  Alexandra  for  the 
same  duties,  and  within  the  next  year  or 
two  turbine  propulsion  had  also  been 
adopted  for  the  cross-channel  boats  Queen 
and  Brighton.  The  Parsons  Marine  Steam 
Turbine  Company,  in  order  to  demonstrate 
to  the  Admiralty  once  more  the  advantages 
of  tvu-bines  for  warships,  laid  down  in 
1901  another  turbine-driven  destroyer, 
which  was  acquired  in  1903  by  the  fleet 
under  the  name  of  Velox.  This  was  followed 
in  1902  by  the  first  tiu:bine-driven  cruiser, 
the  Amethyst,  which  was  one  of  four 
cruisers  then  under  construction.  The 
performance  of  the  Amethyst  was  so  re- 
markable that  the  last  prejudices  against 
tiu-bine  machinery  in  the  Royal  Navy 
were  oyereome  and  the  way  was  open  for 
its  general  adoption.  In  1905  a  committee 
on  naval  design  appointed  by  the  Admiralty 
advised  that  in  future  tiu-bine  machinery 
should  be  used  exclusively  in  all  classes  of 
warships ;  the  dreadnoughts  were  the  first 
class  of  battleship  to  be  affected  by  this 
decision  [see  Fisher,  John  Arbuthnot]. 

Similar  striking  progress  was  made  in 
the  Mercantile  Marine,  the  Cimard  Com- 
pany first  adopting  turbines  in  1905  in 
the  30,000-ton  liner  Carmania.  The 
Lusitania  and  Mauretania  followed  in 
1906,  the  latter  vessel  holding  the  'Blue 
Riband  of  the  Atlantic'  for  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  centiuy.  The  success  of  the 
turbine  at  sea  having  been  established,  it 
was  recognized  as  the  prime  mover  for  the 
navies  of  the  world  as  well  as  for  all  the 
fastest  ocean  liners. 

There  remained  yet  to  be  met  the  de- 
mand of  the  immense  fleets  of  low-speed 
tramp  steamers  and  cargo  vessels.  Parsons 


673 


Parsons 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


realized  that  the  only  satisfactory  solution 
was  the  introduction  of  mechanical  reduc- 
tion gearing  between  the  turbine  and  the 
propeller  shaft,  thus  enabling  each  vessel 
to  run  at  its  most  efficient  speed.  In  order 
to  test  this  he  bought  in  1909  an  old 
cargo  vessel,  the  Vespasian,  in  which  he 
replaced  the  750  h.p.  triple  expansion 
engines  by  geared  turbines,  and  after 
exhaustive  tests  the  new  machinery  was 
proved  to  be  entirely  successful.  This  was 
another  great  advance,  for  not  only  did  it 
diminish  the  size  of  the  machinery  and 
increase  its  efficiency,  but  it  enabled  the 
ordinary  cargo  vessel  to  profit  equally  by 
the  employment  of  turbines. 

Lastly,  after  the  war  of  1914-1918,  the 
competition  of  the  marine  oil  engine  had 
to  be  met.  Parsons  felt  very  strongly  that 
marine  engineers  ought  to  take  advantage 
of  the  economies  in  fuel  resulting  from  the 
use  of  higher  pressures  and  temperatures 
as  obtained  in  installations  on  land. 
Knowing  that  a  practical  demonstration 
was  the  surest  and  quickest  way  to  con- 
vince the  sceptics,  he  accordingly  equipped 
a  small  passenger  vessel,  the  lining  George  V, 
with  high-pressure  geared  turbines.  This 
vessel  was  the  pioneer  of  high-pressure 
steam  at  sea,  and  thereby  opened  up  a 
new  field  for  marine  engineers,  which, 
in  both  naval  and  mercantile  practice,  has 
led  to  great  advance. 

The  activities  of  Parsons  were  not  con- 
fined to  the  branch  of  engineering  by 
which  he  earned  his  greatest  fame.  He 
took  a  keen  interest  in  all  matters  con- 
nected with  optics,  and  when  he  established 
the  Heaton  works  in  1889  he  organized  a 
special  department  for  the  production  of 
searchlight  reflectors.  He  bmlt  up  what 
was  probably  the  most  important  business 
devoted  to  the  manufacture  of  such  re- 
flectors. In  January  1921  he  acquired  a 
controlling  interest  in  the  firm  of  Ross 
Ltd.,  of  Clapham,  well  known  as  makers  of 
binoculars  and  other  small  optical  ap- 
paratus. Here  he  introduced  various 
improvements  in  the  methods  of  glass- 
grinding  but  soon  turned  his  attention  to 
the  much  larger  question  of  the  manufac- 
tvu-e  of  optical  glass  itself.  The  following 
July  he  purchased  the  Derby  CroAvn  Glass 
Company  and  under  the  name  of  the 
Parsons  Optical  Glass  Company  produced 
about  a  hundred  different  kinds  of  glass 
for  optical  purposes.  Parsons  made  many 
scientific  and  mechanical  improvements 
in  the  processes  employed  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  glass.  In  1925  he  pur- 
chased the  firm  of  Sir  Howard  Grubb  & 


Sons,  makers  of  large  astronomical  tel 
scopes,  and  under  the  name  of  Sir  Hows 
Grubb,  Parsons,  &  company  built  nc 
works  for  it  at  Walkergate,  adjacent  to '. 
turbine  works  at  Heaton.  Many  notable 
instruments  have  been  constructed  at 
Walkergate,  including  36-inch  reflecting 
telescopes  for  Greenwich  Observatory  and 
for  the  Royal  Observatory,  Edinburgh, 
and  two  74-inch  reflectors,  one  for  Toronto 
and  the  other  for  Pretoria. 

Parsons  also  invented  an '  auxetophone ', 
a  device  for  increasing  the  sound  of 
stringed  instruments,  particularly  of  the 
double-bass.  This  was  used  at  the  Queen's 
Hall  in  1906,  and  was  generously  sup- 
ported by  (Sir)  Henry  Wood,  but  was 
otherwise  not  accepted  by  the  musical 
profession. 

OfParsons'smany  inventions  and  experi- 
ments, an  attempt  to  make  diamonds  was 
the  only  one  in  which  he  failed  to  achieve 
his  aim. 

Parsons  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1904  and 
K.C.B.  in  1911,  and  was  admitted  to  the 
Order  of  Merit  in  1927.  He  was  elected 
F.R.S.  in  1898  and  was  vice-president  in 
1908,  and  Bakerian  lectiirer  in  1918.  He 
received  the  Rumford  medal  in  1902,  and 
the  Copley  medal  in  1928.  From  the 
Royal  Society  of  Arts  he  received  the 
Albert  medal  in  1911,  and  from  the  Insti- 
tution of  Electrical  Engineers,  the  Faraday 
medal  (1923)  and  the  Kelvin  medal  (1926). 
He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his 
college  in  1904,  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Oxford, 
Cambridge,  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Dublin, 
Durham,  Liverpool,  and  Sheffield.  In 
1911  he  delivered  the  Rede  lecture  at 
Cambridge  and  he  was  president  of  the 
British  Association  in  1919.  The  city  of 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne  made  him  a  free- 
man in  1914. 

In  1883  Parsons  married  Katherine ! 
(died  1933),  daughter  of  William  Frogatt  | 
Bethell,  of  Rise  Park,  East  Yorkshire,  and  | 
had  a  son,  who  was  killed  in  action  in  I 
1918,  and  a  daughter,  who  is  one  of  the  | 
three  women  members  of  the  Institution ' 
of  Naval  Architects.  He  died  11  February 
1931  on  board  the  Duchess  of  Richmond, 
at  ffingston,  Jamaica.  j 

Parsons  is  considered  to  be  the  mostj 
original  engineer  whom  this  coimtry  hasi 
produced  since  the  days  of  James  Watt.i 
He  lived  to  see  the  fruit  of  his  labours  in' 
the  complete  transformation  of  the  method  j 
of  producing  power  from  steam,  on  both 
land  and  sea.  He  took  out  over  SOOi 
patents.    Outside  his  work,  he  was  an| 


674 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Paterson 


enthusiastic  fisherman;  in  society,  he  was 
shy  and  retiring. 

A  portrait  of  Parsons  by  Sir  William 
Orpen  (1921)  hangs  in  the  Laing  Art 
(iallery,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  and  a 
medallion  by  Sir  William  Reid  Dick  is  at 
tlie  Heaton  works. 

[The  Times,  13  February  1931;  Rollo 
Appleyard,  Charles  Parsons,  His  Life  and 
Work  (bibliography),  1933 ;  Proceedings  of  the 
I  Royal  Society,  vol.  cxxxi.  A,  1931 ;  Sir  Charles 
A.  Parsons,  Scientific  Papers  and  Addresses, 
1934 ;  R.  H.  Parsons,  The  Steam  Turbine  and 
Other  Inventions  of  Sir  Charles  Parsons 
(British  Council  'Science  in  Britain'  series), 
1942;  Alexander  Richardson,  2'he  Evolution 
of  the  Parsons  Steam  Turbine,  1911 ;  Remini- 
scences and  Letters  of  Sir  Robert  Ball,  edited 
by  W.  V.  Ball,  1915 ;  private  information.] 

C.  D.  GiBB. 

PATEL,   VITHALBAI  JHAVABHAI 

(1870-1933),  first  Indian  president  of  the 
Indian  legislative  assembly,  was  born  in 
1870  in  a  yeoman  family  claiming  descent 
from  the  foimders  of  the  Kunbi  Patidar 
village  of  Karamsad  in  the  Kaira  district 
of  the  Bombay  Presidency,  which  was 
famous  for  scientific  farming.  A  rebel  all 
his  life,  Patel  began  by  breaking  away 
from.the  family  tradition,  studied  English, 
and  became  a  lawyer.  After  a  few  years 
he  went  to  England  and  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1908.  On  his 
retiu:n  to  India  he  practised  in  Bombay 
and  watched  the  growing  political  agita- 
tion imder  Tilak  the  extremist  for  inde- 
pendence, under  Gokhale  the  moderate 
for  dominion  status.  When  Gokhale  died 
in  1914,  'V.  J.'  entered  politics  as  a 
member  of  the  Bombay  legislative  council, 
and  rose  rapidly  to  prominence,  for  his 
vehement  oratory  appealed  to  the  more 
violent.  He  made  vigorous  attempts  to 
secure  for  Indians  a  wider  scope  in  public 
life,  and  refused  to  confine  himself  to 
mere  obstruction  and  criticism  of  govern- 
ment measures.  He  was  undeterred  by  any 
obstacles  or  conventions,  and  during  the 
war  he  went  so  far  as  to  visit  a  member  of 
government  at  midnight  and  ask  to  be 
prosecuted  and  imprisoned  on  the  ground 
that  rest  was  necessary  for  his  health  and 
a  'crown  of  martyrdom'  would  advance 
his  pohtical  career. 

Nominally  a  follower  of  Gandhi,  Patel 
had  a  hearty  contempt  for  the  doctrines 
of  ahimsa  (non-violence)  and  satyagraha 
(the  pursuit  of  truth),  and  when  in  1917 
E.  S.  Montagu  [q.v.]  came  to  India  as 
secretary  of  state  to  prepare  reforms  which 
to  the  official  mind  were  revolutionary, 


Patel  astonished  him  by  his  scorn  for  so 
petty  a  programme.  Yet  he  had  more 
sense  how  to  surmoimt  practical  difficulties 
than  most  of  his  compatriots.  When 
challenged  on  India's  inability  to  defend 
herself  he  would  reply  acidly:  'In  the 
eighteenth  centiuy  we  hired  plenty  of 
European  adventurers  to  train  our  troops. 
Even  now  we  would  be  able  to  hire  some 
Germans  or  some  Irish. ' 

In  1923  Patel  joined  the  Indian  legisla- 
tive assembly  as  member  for  Bombay 
city.  In  defiance  of  the  policy  of  the 
national  congress  to  abstain  from  taking 
office,  he  stood  and  was  elected  president 
by  a  narrow  majority  in  August  1925. 
Two  years  later  he  was  re-elected  unani- 
mously. Of  this  phase  of  his  activities  it 
has  been  said  that  his  venerable  appear- 
ance concealed  a  considerable  fimd  of 
sheer  gaminerie.  His  position  and  his 
comparative  leisure  enabled  him  to  devise 
innumerable  tricks  for  harassing  the 
leading  officials  in  the  assembly  and 
making  the  government  of  India  ridi- 
culous. But  his  health  gave  way  and  he 
resigned  in  1930,  and  in  the  year  after 
resigning  he  was  imprisoned  but  released 
on  grounds  of  ill  health.  In  search  of 
medical  aid  he  went  first  to  London, 
where  he  enjoyed  the  company  of  men 
with  similar  imorthodox  opinions,  and  in 
1932  to  Vienna,  and  later  to  Geneva 
where  he  died  22  October  1933. 

Thus  closed  a  stormy  career  of  agitation 
for  the  independence  of  India.  Despite 
their  mutual  antipathies,  Patel,  with 
Gandhi,  to  whom  alone  he  was  second  in 
influence,  awakened  from  sliunber  one- 
fifth  of  the  people  of  the  world,  and,  for 
good  or  for  ill,  inspired  them  with  the  spirit 
of  national  self-consciousness. 

[The  Times,  23  October  1933 ;  E.  J.  Thomp- 
son and  G.  T.  Garratt,  The  Rise  and  Fulfilment 
of  British  Rule  in  India,  1934 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] H.  S.  Lawkence. 

PATERSON,  WILLIAM  PATERSON 

(1860-1939),  Scottish  divine,  was  born  at 
Skirling  Mains,  Peeblesshire,  25  October 
1860,  the  eldest  son  of  John  Paterson, 
farmer,  of  Skirling  Mains,  by  his  wife, 
Mary,  daughter  of  John  Waugh,  of  St. 
John's  Kirk.  On  his  father's  side  he  was 
descended  from  a  line  of  Lanarkshire 
farmers,  and  through  his  mother  was 
related  to  a  family  distinguished  for  its 
scholarship  and  literary  talent. 

From  Skirling  school  and  the  Royal 
High  School,  Edinburgh,  Paterson  entered 
Edinburgh  University,  where  he  graduated 


675 


Paterson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


M.A.  (with  honours  in  classics)  and  B.D., 
and  as  Pitt  scholar  studied  in  Leipzig, 
Erlangen,  and  Berlin  for  two  years  (1883- 
1885),  forming  a  lifelong  interest  in 
German  theology,  philosophy,  and  litera- 
ture. After  serving  as  assistant  succes- 
sively in  Galashiels  and  at  St.  Columba's 
church,  London,  he  was  ordained  to  the 
ministry  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in 
1887,  with  the  charge  of  St.  Michael's 
chvu-ch,  Crieff,  until  1894.  In  that  year 
he  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  systematic 
theology  in  Aberdeen  University,  and 
speedily  became  known  as  a  thinker, 
speaker,  and  personality  of  exceptional 
gifts.  In  1903  he  succeeded  his  master, 
Robert  Flint  [q.v.],  as  professor  of 
divinity  in  the  imiversity  of  Edinburgh; 
he  resigned  the  chair  in  1934.  He  was 
dean  of  the  faculty  of  divinity  from  1912 
to  1928. 

To  theological  learning  Paterson  contri- 
buted in  1903  The  Apostles'  Teaching,  a 
compact  and  skilful  exposition  of  the 
message  of  St.  Paxil  and  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews.  The  Baird  lecture  for  1905 
grew  into  the  Rule  of  Faith  (1912),  an 
expository  and  critical  survey  of  Christian 
conceptions  of  the  seat  and  of  the  sub- 
stance of  doctrine.  From  the  Gifford 
lectures  given  at  Glasgow  University  in 
1924  emerged  in  1925  The  Nature  of 
Religion,  an  impressive  review  of  the  place 
and  significance  of  religion  in  the  history 
and  experience  of  mankind,  its  immense 
diversity  and  apparent  incoherence,  its 
complex  response  to  the  natiural  varieties 
of  human  temperament  and  of  individual 
and  social  motives.  Marked  by  patient 
insight  and  scholarly  equipment,  it  ex- 
plores with  judgement  and  perspective 
the  historical  background  and  the  con- 
tinuing environment  against  which  the 
Christian  system  stands  out  in  com- 
mingled affinity  and  contrast.  '  The  nature 
of  religion,  when  it  is  understood,  is  its 
best  apology.  One  of  the  weightiest  of  the 
arguments  in  support  of  the  truth  of 
religion  is  that  which  is  foimded  on  the 
consideration  of  its  aims  and  provisions, 
and  especially  of  the  nature  of  the  doctrine 
which  has  been  transmitted  to  the  later 
generations  as  the  harvest  from  the 
spiritual  history  of  mankind.' 

Two  volumes  of  sermons  for  the  times. 
In  the  Day  of  the  Muster  (1914)  and  In  the 
Day  of  the  Ordeal  (1917),  express  the 
vision  of  religious  patriotism  which  ani- 
mated Paterson  in  a  world  at  war.  A 
massive  article  on  'War'  in  Hastings's 
Encyclopaedia    of    Religion    and 


treats  with  learning  and  penetration  of  an 
evil  so  long  established  as  to  have  become 
an  institution.  Three  composite  volumes, 
German  Culture  (1915),  Social  Evils  and 
Problems  (1918),  and  The  Power  of  Prayer 
(1920),  attest  his  initiative  as  editor  and 
his  skill  as  a  contributor.  His  last  work, 
a  lucid  and  judicious  study  of  Conversion 
(1939),  is  marked  by  the  same  powers  of 
intellectual  retrospect  and  critical  analysis. 
Profoundly  interested  in  the  development 
of  doctrine,  he  viewed  it  as  a  clear-eyed 
apologist  with  psychological  insight  as 
well  as  historical  perspective,  sympatheti- 
cally weighing  in  the  balance  of  a  cathohc 
judgement  the  gains  and  losses  to  spiritual 
truth  in  the  successive  phases  of  Christian 
thought.  His  writings  constitute  less  a 
system  than  a  harmonious  illustration  of 
scholarly  method  and  standpoint.  Funda- 
mentally loyal  to  the  substance  of 
authoritative  dogma,  Catholic  and  Re^ 
formed,  he  exercised  a  teacher's  liberty 
re-interpret  in  modern  terms  without  a 
desire  to  deviate  from  the  central  we 
trodden  way  or  break  the  sacred  coi 
tinuity  of  tradition.  If  no  innovation 
opinion  or  theory  and  no  distinctive  sch 
of  doctrine  can  call  him  father,  his  acui 
perception  of  the  significant,  his  sanit[ 
and  comprehensive  tolerance  of  spirit,  his 
sense  of  the  pageant  of  human  history  and 
the  continuity  of  Divine  Providence,  his 
ear  for  the  rhythm  of  vigorous  prose,  and 
his  unfailing  devotion  to  the  good,  the 
beautiful,  and  the  true,  however  mani- 
fested, pervade  with  a  fine  consistency  the 
whole  of  his  written  work. 

Paterson  was  appointed  a  chaplain-in- 
ordinary  to  the  king  in  Scotland  in  191 
and  received  honorary  doctorates  from  t 
tmiversities  of  Edinburgh  (D.D.  189' 
LL.D.,  1937),  Pennsylvania  (1905),  Trini 
CoUege,  Dublin  (1920),  Glasgow  (1926, 
and  St.  Andrews  (1937). 

In  the  chair  of  Robert  Leighto: 
Thomas  Chalmers  [qq.v.],  and  Flin1 
Paterson  exerted  a  far-reaching  influen 
alike  in  theological  education  and  in 
Church  leadership,  attracting  and  attach- 
ing pupils,  British  and  foreign,  promoting 
with  his  colleagues  in  the  faculty  a  series 
of  important  academic  reforms  and  the 
institution  of  a  post-graduate  school  in 
theology,  and  playing  a  notable  part  in 
the  negotiations  which  led  in  1929  to  the 
reimion  of  the  Scottish  Church.  Deeply 
interested  in  social  and  moral  welfare,  he 
was  catholic  and  irenic  in  his  chvu*chman- 
ship,  and  quick  to  appreciate  the  varied 
Ethics  I  attainments  and  capacities  of  other  men. 
676 


I 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Patiala 


Xo  public  figure  in  Scotland  in  his  genera- 
tion  inspired  more  general  admiration, 
pride,  trust,  and  affection.  Conscious  of 
ills  own  powers,  he  was  touchingly  alive 
to  their  limitations,  upon  occasion 
amusingly  envious  of  the  particular  gifts 
of  lesser  men.  With  a  tinge  of  endearing 
absent-mindedness  he  could  be  intensely 
practical  in  the  management  of  affairs. 
Simple,  direct,  and  unaffected  in  all  rela- 
tions, he  ruled  his  life  with  Spartan 
austerity.  Courteous,  indeed  courtly,  in 
bearing,  he  was  unobtrusive  in  personal 
religon.  In  nothing  was  he  more  distin- 
guished than  in  his  conversation,  the 
eloquent  overflow  of  a  full  mind  and  a 
patient  observation  of  men  and  things. 
He  was  never  so  happy  as  when  sharing 
talk  on  equal  terms,  although,  as  if  the 
saturation-point  had  been  reached,  he 
would  break  off  with  whimsical  abrupt- 
ness, no  matter  in  what  company.  But 
no  one  could  withstand  the  appeal  of  the 
dark  eyes  which  flashed  or  reflected  the 
gleam  of  warm  human  interest  and 
sympathy.  In  any  gathering,  domestic  or 
i  public,  his  spare  ascetic  figure,  of  middle 
I  height,  and  his  slightly  stooping  head 
I  with  clear-cut,  rugged  features  and  unruly 
j  silvered  hair,  were  carried  with  an  indi- 
vidual poise,  and  commanded  attention 
and  expectancy.  As  moderator  in  1919 
of  the  first  General  Assembly  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  held  after  the  war  of 
j  1914-1918  he  acquitted  himself  with  a 
I  dignity  and  mastery  equal  to  the  occasion, 
j  and  he  is  commemorated  in  the  picture  of 
the  scene  painted  by  Robert  Hope  and 
preserved  in  the  Offices  of  the  Church  in 
Edinburgh. 

Paterson  married  in  1888  Jane  (died 
1928),  daughter  of  Robert  Sanderson, 
tweed  manufacturer,  of  Galashiels,  and 
had  four  sons,  the  second  and  third  of 
whom  were  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
and  three  daughters.  He  died  in  Edin- 
burgh 10  January  1939  and  was  buried  in 
Skirling  churchyard. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Paterson  by  G.  Fiddes 
Watt  is  in  the  New  College,  Edinburgh, 
and  water-colour  portraits  by  Henry  Kerr 
are  in  the  possession  of  his  family. 

[Hew  Scott,  Fasti  Ecclesiae  Scoticanae,  new 
ed.,  vol.  vii;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  A.  CtTRTIS. 

PATIALA,  Sir  BHUPINDRA  SINGH, 
Maharaja  of  (1891-1938),  born  at 
Patiala  12  October  1891,  was  the  eldest 
son  of  Maharaja  Sir  Rajindra  Singh,  and 
succeeded  his  father  as  ruler  of  Patiala 


State  on  the  latter's  death  in  November 
1900.  He  was  educated  at  the  Aitchison 
Chiefs'  College  at  Lahore  and  was  invested 
with  full  powers  over  the  state  admini- 
stration in  1910.  He  was  appointed 
G.C.I.E.  in  1911.  On  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  1914  he  offered  all  his  military  forces  to 
His  Majesty's  government  and  one  of  his 
cavalry  regiments  was  dispatched  overseas 
on  active  service.  The  Maharaja  was  given 
the  honorary  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel 
and  himself  visited  several  areas  of  active 
operations.  It  is  estimated  that  about 
28,000  men  from  Patiala  State  enlisted  in 
the  Indian  army  during  the  war.  The 
Maharaja  also  used  to  the  full  his  great 
influence  to  help  the  government  in  deal- 
ing with  revolutionary  tendencies  among 
the  Sikhs.  In  1918  he  went  to  England 
as  a  representative  of  the  Indian  states  at 
the  Imperial  War  Conference.  In  the 
same  year  he  was  appointed  G.B.E.  and 
promoted  to  the  rank  of  major-general. 
During  the  Afghan  war  of  1919  his  desire 
to  be  of  active  assistance  to  the  govern- 
ment was  recognized  by  his  being  placed 
on  the  staff  of  the  general  officer  com- 
manding at  Peshawar.  In  1921  he  was 
appointed  G.C.S.I.  and  in  1922,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  visit  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
to  India,  G.C.V.O.  He  attended  the  League 
of  Nations  Assembly  as  the  representative 
of  India  in  1925,  and  in  1926  was  elected 
chancellor  of  the  Chamber  of  Princes, 
an  office  which  he  held  continuously 
until  1930  and  again  from  1933  to  1935 
and  in  1937.  It  was  as  chancellor  of  the 
Chamber  that  he  led  the  delegation  of  the 
princes  of  India  at  the  Round  Table 
Conference  held  in  London  in  1930.  The 
Maharaja  died  at  Patiala  23  March  1938, 
and  was  succeeded  by  his  eldest  son, 
Yadavindra  Singh. 

As  the  foregoing  record  shows,  the 
Maharaja  played  a  distinguished  part  in 
public  life  and  was  always  ready  to  give 
loyal  service  to  the  Empire  and  to  India. 
Unfortunately  his  later  years  were  clouded 
by  scurrilous  attacks  upon  both  his  private 
life  and  his  conduct  as  ruler  of  his  state. 
These  attacks  culminated  in  the  publica- 
tion in  1930  of  a  pamphlet.  The  Indictment 
of  Patiala,  which  purported  to  be  the 
report  of  a  committee  of  investigation 
into  Patiala  affairs  appointed  by  the 
Indian  States  People's  Conference.  This 
attracted  so  much  public  attention  both 
in  England  and  India  that  the  Maharaja 
asked  for  an  official  inquiry  into  the  alle- 
gations made  in  the  pamphlet.  An 
inquiry    was     held,     which     completely 


677 


Patiala 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


exonerated  him  and  found  that  the  pubU- 
cation  was  the  outcome  of  a  dehberate 
conspiracy  between  certain  individuals 
and  pohtical  organizations.  All  who  knew 
the  Maharaja  were  satisfied  that  this 
finding  was  correct,  since  they  had 
personal  knowledge  of  his  simple  and 
generous  nature  and  were  convinced  that 
he  was  incapable  of  the  vicious  and  cruel 
conduct  attributed  to  him  by  his  enemies. 
He  was  a  notable  cricketer  and  captained 
the  Indian  cricket  team  which  visited 
England  in  1911 ;  he  also  played  polo  with 
considerable  skill  in  his  youth  and  did 
much  to  support  and  encourage  both  these 
games  in  India.  The  breeding  and  training 
of  sporting  dogs  became  one  of  his  chief 
hobbies  in  later  years.  As  a  young  man 
he  was  strikingly  handsome,  both  in  face 
and  figure,  and  as  he  grew  older  his  distin- 
guished presence  made  him  remarkable  in 
all  company. 

A  cartoon  of  the  Maharaja  by  'M.  R.' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  4  January  1900. 

[Official  records ;  personal  knowledge.] 

AUBRKY  MeTCAJLFE. 

PATTISON,  ANDREW  SETH 
PRINGLE-  (1856-1931),  philosopher, 
whose  original  name  was  Andrew  Seth, 
was  born  at  Edinburgh  20  December  1856, 
the  second,  but  eldest  surviving,  son  of 
Smith  Kinmont  Seth,  a  clerk  in  the  head 
office  of  the  Commercial  Bank  of  Scotland, 
by  his  wife,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Andrew 
Little,  farmer,  of  Middle  Blainslie,  Ber- 
wickshire. He  came  of  country  stock  on 
both  sides  of  his  family,  for  his  paternal 
grandfather  was  a  farmer  in  Fife.  One  of 
his  brothers,  James,  was  his  colleague  in 
the  university  of  Edinburgh  for  twenty- 
one  years  (1898-1919),  each  brother 
occupying  one  of  the  two  chairs  of  philo- 
sophy. Their  mother  encouraged  her  sons 
in  their  intellectual  aspirations.  She  kept 
house  for  James  for  most  of  the  twenty 
years  of  her  widowhood,  and  was  long 
remembered  by  many  Edinburgh  students 
for  her  exceptional  charm  and  her  lively 
understanding  of  her  sons  and  of  their 
pupils. 

Seth  showed  high  promise  in  classics  at 
the  Royal  High  School,  Edinburgh,  and  in 
classics  and  philosophy  at  Edinburgh 
University.  In  1878,  after  graduation 
with  first  class  honours  in  both  these 
subjects,  he  went  to  Germany  with  a 
travelling  scholarship  awarded  by  the 
Hibbert  trustees.  There  he  spent  two 
years,  first  in  Berlin  (where  he  met  Eva, 
daughter  of  Albrecht  Stropp,   of  Bogi- 


slavitz,  Silesia,  whom  he  married  in  188 
and  afterwards  in  Jena  and  G6tting( 
studying  under  R.  H.  Lotze.  His  first 
book.  The  Development  from  Kant  to  Hegel 
(1882),  was  his  scholarship  dissertation. 
It  was  also  the  source  from  which  his 
subsequent  philosophy  proceeded.  To  the 
end  he  was  a  liberal  traditionalist  in  the 
Kant-Hegel  tradition,  but  inclining  away 
from  Hegel  by  reason  of  his  own  moralistic 
individualism. 

In  1880  Seth  won  the  coveted  but  not 
very  lucrative  Ferguson  scholarship  and 
became  assistant  at  Edinburgh  University 
to  Alexander  Campbell  Eraser  [q.v.]  at 
£40  a  year.  He  was  also  a  leader-\\Titer 
for  the  Scotsman.  After  holding  the  chair 
of  logic  and  philosophy  at  University 
College,  Cardiff  (1883-1887)  and  that  of 
logic,  rhetoric,  and  metaphysics  at  St. 
Andrews  University  (1887-1891),  he 
achieved  his  ambition  of  succeeding 
Campbell  Eraser  as  professor  of  logic  and 
metaphysics.  He  held  the  chair  for 
twenty-eight  years  (1891-1919). 

Seth's  appointment  was  due,  in  large 
measure,  to  the  success  of  his  books 
Scottish  Philosophy  (1885)  and  Ilegelianism 
and  Personality  (1887).  These  were  two 
sets  of  Balfour  lectures,  A.  J.  (afterwards 
first  Earl  of)  Balfour  having  in  1883 
established  an  ad  hoc  lecturership  expressly 
for  Seth  at  Edinburgh.  For  this,  publica- 
tion was  a  condition.  A  third  set  of  these 
lectures,  on  'Realism',  appeared  in  four 
numbers  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Review  (1892-1893).  Forty  years  later 
(1933),  in  belated  piety,  after  the  author's 
death,  they  were  published  in  book  form 
with  a  memoir,  by  George  Freeland 
Barbour.  The  success  of  the  first  two 
Balfour  books  was  thoroughly  deserved. 
Their  style,  helped,  perhaps,  but  never 
cheapened,  by  the  author's  experience  of 
journalism,  was  lively,  lucid,  and  distin- 
guished, their  scholarship  discriminating, 
their  substance  an  attempt  to  show  that 
idealists  with  the  freshest  German  outlook 
might  discover  in  Reid's  answer  to  Hume 
something  which  even  Kant  had  missed  1 
and  might  reasonably  challenge  Hegelian  ' 
efforts  to  predigest  man  and  the  world  in  j 
the  insatiable  maw  of  an  impersonal  logic.  I 

Seth,  who  in  1898  added  to  his  own  j 
name  that  of  Pringle-Pattison  as  a  condi-  j 
tion  of  accepting  the  bequest  of  the  estate  I 
of   The    Haining,    near    Selkirk,    was   a  i 
successful    although     scarcely    a    great 
teacher.   A  shy  man,  unready  of  speech, 
he  hugged  the  shelter  of  his  manuscript, 
reading   it   beautifully   to    large   classes 


678 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Paul 


which  sometimes  were  almost  openly 
restive.  No  debater,  he  read  still  more 
])o]ished  lectures,  almost  entirely  his- 
torical, to  his  smaller  senior  classes.  In 
delicacy,  persistence,  and  practical 
wisdom,  his  kindness  to  his  students  was 
very  notable. 

Except  for  some  volumes  of  admirable 
essays,  Pringle-Pattison  published  nothing 
round  the  turn  of  the  century.  In  1917 
appeared  The  Idea  of  God  in  the  Light  of 
Recent  Philosophy,  his  most  important 
work.  The  book  was  an  elaboration  of  his 
Gifford  lectures  delivered  at  Aberdeen  in 
1912-1913.  It  ripened  the  philosophy  of 
the  Balfour  books,  pursuing,  as  ever,  the 
method  of  'construction  through  criti- 
cism' and  insisting  that  the  construction 
dominated  the  criticism.  He  held  that 
'  God,  or  the  Absolute'  was  the  source  of 
individuation  although  not  Himself  an 
individual  among  others ;  and  human 
selves  were  'the  apex  of  the  principle  of 
individuation  by  which  the  world  exists'. 
A  relative  pluralism  was  secure ;  pan- 
theism could  and  should  be  denied.  Even 
if  certain  extreme  ideas  were  placated 
rather  than  controlled,  the  book  was  a  fine 
achievement.  Pringle-Pattison  supple- 
mented it  in  1922  with  The  Idea  of  Im- 
mortality, the  first  of  the  two  series  of  his 
Edinburgh  Gifford  lectures,  given  after 
his  retirement  from  his  chair  (1921-1923). 
In  the  second  series,  remarking  privately 
that  immortality  was  'an  unpleasant 
subject',  he  turned  to  more  general  topics, 
eventually  publishing  his  Studies  in  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  in  1930. 

Pringle-Pattison  received  honorary  de- 
grees from  the  universities  of  St.  Andrews 
(1892),  Princeton  (1896),  Durham  (1902), 
and  Edinburgh  (1919).  He  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1904  and 
was  Hibbert  lecturer  at  Manchester 
College,  Oxford,  in  1921.  He  was  a  tall 
man,  not  very  lithe,  with  a  slight  stoop, 
a  majestic  beard,  and  eyes  which  con- 
stantly troubled  him.  His  ivory  com- 
plexion harmonized  with  hair,  abundant 
and  very  silky,  which  greyed  early  and 
silvered  equally  before  middle  life.  In  1925 
he  was  presented  by  friends  and  old  pupils 
with  his  portrait  by  A.  E.  Borthwick 
which  is  now  in  the  possession  of  his 
son. 

Pringle-Pattison' s  wife  died  in  1928. 
They  had  four  sons,  of  whom  the  youngest 
was  killed  in  action  in  1916,  and  three 
daughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  died  as  an 
infant.  He  died  at  The  Haining  1  Sep- 
tember 1931, 


[The  Times,  2  September  1931 ;  J.  B.  Capper 
and  J.  B.  Baillie,  Andrew  Seth  Pringle-Patti- 
son, 1856-1931  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  xvii,  1931 ;  G.  F.  Barbour, 
Memoir  prefixed  to  The  Balfour  Lectures  on 
Realism,  1933 ;  A.  S.  Pringle-Pattison,  Memoir 
prefixed  to  James  Seth's  Essays  in  Ethics  and 
Religion,  1926 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Laird. 

PAUL,  HERBERT  WOODFIELD 

(1853-1935),  author  and  politician,  was 
bom  at  Finedon,  Northamptonshire, 
16  January  1853,  the  eldest  son  of  George 
Woodfield  Paul,  vicar  of  Finedon  and 
honorary  canon  of  Peterborough  Cathe- 
dral, by  his  wife,  Jessie  Philippa,  daughter 
of  Lieutenant  Herbert  Mackworth,  R.N. 
From  Eton  he  won  a  scholarship  at  Corpus 
Christi  College,  Oxford,  where  he  was 
president  of  the  Union  (1875),  and  ob- 
tained a  first  class  in  literac  humaniores 
(1875).  Called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn 
in  1878,  he  never  practised,  though  he 
could  be  imagined  as  a  formidable  cross- 
examiner;  but  he  devoted  himself  to 
literary  work,  largely  in  the  political  field, 
soon  becoming  a  skilled  leader-writer  for 
the  Daily  News. 

From  1892  until  1895  Paul  sat  as 
member  for  South  Edinburgh.  A  devoted 
follower  of  Gladstone,  he  was  a  strong 
party  man  and  in  particular  a  convinced 
free-trader,  but  although  a  capable  de- 
bater, did  not  win  in  parliament  the 
reputation  merited  by  his  exceptional 
talents. 

Besides  Men  and  Letters  (1901)  and  a 
valuable  appreciation  of  Gladstone's 
career  (Life  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone, 
1901)  Paul  published  in  1902  Matthew 
Arnold,  with  whom  he  had  many  Uterary 
sympathies,  as  he  had  with  a  very  different 
figure,  Lord  Acton,  whose  letters  to  Mary 
Gladstone  he  edited  in  1904,  and  in  1905 
a  defence  of  Froude  as  an  historian  {Life 
of  Froude).  His  most  solid  and  important 
work  was  the  History  of  Modern  England 
(1904-1906)  which  has  been  described  as 
the  Annual  Register  tempered  by  epigrams. 
Its  five  volumes  should  be  on  the  shelves 
of  every  historical  library.  Stray  Leaves, 
a  collection  of  essays  published  in  1906, 
offers  conclusive  evidence  of  the  breadth 
and  variety  of  his  knowledge.  It  includes 
two  papers  on  Greek  literature  and  reli- 
gion, marked  by  fine  scholarship  and 
literary  acumen ;  an  affectionate  apprecia- 
tion of  Charles  Lamb,  in  the  form  of  a 
review  of  the  biography  by  E.  V.  Lucas 
[q.v.],  of  which  he  admired  the  thorough- 
ness but  deprecated  the  bulk  as  being 


679 


Paul 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


unsuited  to  the  subject;  an  obituary 
notice  of  Bishop  Mandell  Creighton,  for 
whom  both  as  an  historian  and  as  a  man 
his  admiration  was  unbounded ;  a  sarcastic 
picture  of  Arthur  James  Balfour's  atti- 
tude in  the  dilemma  created  by  Joseph 
Chamberlain's  outburst  in  favour  of  pro- 
tection; and  a  review  of  Mr,  Winston 
Churchill's  life  of  his  father,  shoAving  the 
fascination  exercised  by  some  of  Lord 
Randolph's  qualities,  and  boldly  forecast- 
ing in  a  sentence  or  two  the  promise  of  the 
author's  future.  This  book  was  followed 
by  a  study  of  the  age  of  Queen  Anne,  for 
Goupil's  illustrated  monographs  (1906, 
revised  without  illustrations,  1912),  an 
epoch  in  which  he  felt  completely  at  home, 
and  Famous  Speeches  (1910). 

Meanwhile  the  liberal  triumph  of  1906 
had  returned  Paul  for  Northampton ;  but 
in  1907  a  nervous  coUapse  foreshadowed 
his  retirement  in  1909.  By  1910  he  had 
sufficiently  recovered  to  undertake  the 
office  of  second  civil  service  commissioner 
(to  which  he  had  been  appointed  the  pre- 
vious year),  and  for  which  he  was  perfectly 
suited  by  his  gifts  and  attainments,  and 
which  he  held  until  1918.  The  rest  of  his 
life  was  spent  in  retirement  at  Forest  Row 
where  he  died  4  August  1935. 

In  1883  Paul  married  Elinor,  daughter 
of  WiUiam  Ritchie,  legal  member  of  the 
viceroy's  council  in  India,  and  sister  of 
Sir  Richmond  T.  W.  Ritchie  [q.v.].  She 
was  a  lady  of  great  charm.  They  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter. 

Paul  never  sought  or  obtained  popu- 
larity in  the  conventional  sense ;  his  com- 
ments, often  sub-acid,  but  never  captious 
or  unfair,  aroused  the  animosity  of  one  or 
two  feUow  writers ;  but  he  was  less  con- 
temptuous than  he  appeared  to  be,  and 
recognized  all  work  which  was  not  slipshod 
or  marred  by  prejudice.  He  ignored  gossip 
and  scandal,  and  despised  those  who 
found  pleasure  in  discussing  the  weak- 
nesses of  men  whom  he  deemed  to  be 
essentially  great.  He  was  no  lettered 
recluse,  but  a  delightful  companion  in 
leisure  hours.  Nurtured  in  a  county  for 
which  fox-hunting  was  a  religious  exercise, 
he  could  appreciate  the  points  of  a  well- 
bred  horse;  and  he  thoroughly  enjoyed 
good  cheer  and  a  glass  of  choice  wine.  He 
had  some  enemies,  but  was  the  most  loyal 
of  friends,  and  it  is  sad  that  he  left  a 
slighter  mark  on  his  age  than  some  who 
could  not  claim  a  tithe  of  his  ability  or  his 
acquirements. 

[The  Times,  7  August  1935 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Crewe. 


PAYNE,  HUMFRY  GILBE] 
GARTH  (1902-1936),  archaeologist, 
born  at  Wendover  19  February  1902, 
only  son  of  the  historian  Edward  Jol 
Payne  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Emma  Leon( 
Helena  Pertz,  granddaughter  of  Ge< 
Heinrich  Pertz  (editor  of  the  Monumenta 
Germaniae  Historica)  and  of  James  John 
Garth  Wilkinson  the  Swedenborgian 
[q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Westminster 
and  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  of  which  he 
was  an  open  classical  scholar.  At  Oxford 
he  obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1922)  and  in  literae  humaniores 
(1924),  and  showed  himself  to  be  one  of 
the  ablest  all-round  classical  men  of  his 
time.  It  was  in  his  last  year  at  Oxford 
that  he  became  seriously  interested  in 
Greek  art,  partly  under  the  influence  of 
(Sir)  J.  D.  Beazley  and  Alan  Blakeway ,  and 
resolved  to  make  himself  an  archaeologist. 
After  taking  his  degree  he  continued  his 
studies  as  university  research  scholar  in 
Mediterranean  archaeology  (1924-1926), 
as  assistant  at  the  Ashmolean  Museum 
(1926-1928),  and  as  a  senior  scholar  of 
Christ  Church  (1926-1931).  He  was 
awarded  the  Conington  prize  for  classical 
learning  in  1927. 

In  1929  Payne  was  appointed  director 
of  the  British  School  of  Archaeology  at 
Athens.  In  1931  the  publication  of 
Necrocorinthia,  a  study  of  vase-painting 
and  the  other  arts  at  Corinth,  placed  him 
at  once,  as  all  admitted,  in  the  front  rank 
of  classical  archaeologists.  Two  of  his 
chief  pieces  of  work  as  director  were  the 
publication  of  Archaic  Marble  Sculpture 
from  the  Acropolis  (1936:  a  voliune  of 
photographs  by  Mr.  Gerard  Mackworth 
Young  with  text  by  Payne),  and  the 
excavation  of  Perachora,  a  small  but  rich 
archaic  site  opposite  Corinth.  The  first 
volume  ot Perachora,  edited  by  Mr.  Thomas 
James  Dunbabin,  was  pubUshed  in  1940; 
most  of  it  is  by  Payne.  The  second  volume 
is  to  come.  In  1936  a  staphylococcic 
infection,  which  had  been  present  in  a 
minor  form  for  some  years,  suddenly 
became  acute ;  when  he  was  removed  to 
hospital  it  was  too  late,  and  he  died  in 
Athens  9  May.  He  was  buried  at  Mycenae. 

Most  of  Payne's  work  was  done  in  the 
field  of  archaic  art,  which  he  loved  and 
understood.  Necrocorinthia  collected  and 
arranged  a  vast  body  of  important 
material,  and  may  be  said  to  have  fur- 
nished the  study  of  archaic  art  with  a  new 
basis.  It  was  supplemented  in  1933  by 
Protokorinthische  Vasenmalerei.  Archaic 
Marble   Sculpture   not   only   sets   many 


680 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pearson,  K. 


statues  and  fragments  in  a  fresh  light,  but 
pives  a  truer  account  of  the  essential 
(jualities  of  archaic  Greek  sculpture  than 
can  be  foimd  elsewhere.  A  fine  eye,  deep 
respect  for  the  individual  object,  great 
structural  power,  wealth  of  detail  com- 
l)ined  with  breadth  of  vision,  perfect 
clearness  of  thought  and  expression,  these 
(jualities  appear  in  all  Payne's  work. 

Payne  was  six  feet  five  inches  in  height, 
straight,  slender,  square-shouldered,  with 
a  small  head,  and  small  features  (except 
I  lie  mouth),  fair  hair,  a  fresh  complexion, 
eyes  of  a  strong  blue,  and  something 
l)()yish,  yet  resolute,  in  the  face.  He  was  a 
line  draughtsman,  and  took  more  and  more 
pleasure,  as  time  went  on,  in  drawing  and 
painting  landscapes.  He  married  in  1926 
Elizabeth  Dilys,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Powell,  bank  manager,  of  Bridgnorth  and 
Bournemouth ;  she  wrote  a  good  account 
of  him,  especially  of  his  life  in  Greece. 
There  were  no  children. 

[The  Times,  11  May  1936;  Dilys  Powell, 
The  Traveller's  Journey  is  Done,  1943  (por- 
traits) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  D.  Beazley. 

PEARSON,       ALFRED       CHILTON 

(186-1-1935),  classical  scholar,  was  born 
in  London  8  October  1861,  the  only  child 
of  Robert  Henry  Pearson,  merchant,  of 
London,  by  his  wife,  Georgina  Boswood. 
He  was  educated  at  Highgate  and  King's 
College  schools,  and  at  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  which  he  entered  as  a  scholar 
in  1879.  After  obtaining  a  first  class  in 
both  parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1881  and 
1883)  he  read  for  the  bar  and  was  called 
by  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1885,  in  which  year  he 
married  Edith  Maud,  fourth  daughter  of 
Reuben  Green,  solicitor  and  town  clerk 
of  Kensington,  and  settled  in  London.  In 
1890  he  became  a  schoolmaster.  After 
two  years  at  Bxiry  St.  Edmunds  and  one 
at  Ipswich  he  passed  in  1893  to  Dulwich 
College,  which  he  left  in  1900,  in  order  to 
enter  his  late  father's  London  business, 
moving  at  the  same  time  to  Warlingham 
in  Surrey. 

Pearson's  publications  began  in  1887 
with  a  note  in  the  Classical  Review,  to 
which  he  continued  to  contribute  articles 
and  reviews  on  many  Greek  subjects :  his 
first  book  was  The  Fragments  of  Zeno  and 
Cleanthes  (1891),  an  admirable  work  which 
had  won  him  the  Hare  prize  at  Cambridge 
two  years  before.  All  his  later  books  were 
editions  of  works  of  the  Greek  tragedians, 
although  between  1908  and  1921  he  con- 
tributed more  than  twenty   articles  to 


Hastings's  Encyclopaedia  of  Religion  and 
Ethics.  He  began  with  a  series  of  school 
editions  of  Euripides  {Helena,  1903; 
Heraclidae,  1907;  Phoenissae,  1909)  and 
with  an  abridgement  (1907)  of  the  Ajax  of 
Sophocles  edited  by  Sir  R.  C.  Jebb  [q.v.]. 
Next,  at  the  invitation  of  the  syndics  of 
the  Cambridge  University  Press,  he  pre- 
pared for  posthumous  publication  (1910) 
the  verse  translation  and  incomplete 
commentary  on  Aeschylus's  Agamemnon 
left  by  W.  G.  Headlam  [q.v.],  and  also 
undertook  the  completion  of  Jebb's 
Sophocles  by  editing  the  Fragments. 
Pearson  spent  several  years  on  this  diffi- 
cult task,  and  in  1917  produced  a  masterly 
edition  in  three  volumes.  In  1919  he  was 
elected  Gladstone  professor  of  Greek  at 
Liverpool  University,  and  in  1921  suc- 
ceeded Henry  Jackson  as  regius  professor 
of  Greek  at  Cambridge,  becoming  there- 
upon a  fellow  of  Trinity  College.  His  chief 
remaining  work  was  the  Sophocles  which 
he  added  to  the  'Oxford  Classical  Texts' 
series  in  1924.  Soon  after  this  his  health 
failed.  He  resigned  his  chair  in  1928,  and 
lived  from  1932  to  1934  at  Hunstanton 
before  removing  to  London,  where  he  died 
2  January  1935  after  five  years  of  total 
incapacity.  His  wife  had  died  in  1930.  They 
had  a  son  and  two  daughters,  the  elder 
of  whom  predeceased  her  father. 

Pearson  was  a  man  of  active  habits,  an 
oar  and  a  cricketer  in  youth,  and  a  keen 
golfer  and  walker  in  later  life.  Intensely 
loyal  and  generous,  he  combined  deep 
modesty  with  strong  opinions,  carefuUy 
formed  and  not  easily  shaken.  His 
scholarship  was  of  a  very  high  order, 
especially  on  the  linguistic  and  gram- 
matical side.  AU  his  books  are  models  in 
their  kind,  and  his  masterpiece,  The  Frag- 
ments of  Sophocles,  shows  a  vast  range  of 
knowledge  at  the  service  of  an  acute  and 
sober  judgement.  He  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Christ's  College  in 
1922  and  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1924. 

Pearson  was  never  painted,  but  there  is 
a  drawing  by  A.  K.  Laurence,  made  in 
1927,  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  3  January  1935 ;  D.  S.  Robert- 
son in  Cambridge  Review,  18  January  1935; 
G.  C.  Richards,  Alfred  Chilton  Pearson,  1861— 
1935  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  xxi,  1935  (bibliography) ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  S.  Robertson. 


PEARSON,        KARL        (1857-1936), 
mathematician  and  biologist,  was  bom  in 


681 


Pearson,  K. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


London  27  March  1857,  the  younger  son 
and  second  of  the  three  children  of  WiUiam 
Pearson,  Q.C.,  of  the  Inner  Temple,  and  his 
wife,  Fanny  Smith,  both  of  Yorkshire 
descent.  He  was  educated  at  University 
College  School,  King's  College,  Cambridge, 
of  which  latter  he  was  a  scholar  and  where 
he  was  third  wTangler  in  the  mathematical 
tripos  of  1879,  and  at  the  universities  of 
Heidelberg  and  Berlin.  Pearson's  studies 
included  mathematics,  metaphysics, 
engineering,  law,  medieval  languages, 
political  science,  and  history ;  his  first  two 
publications  (both  anonymous).  The  New 
Werther  (1880)  and  The  Trinity:  a  Nine- 
teenth Century  Passion  Play  (1882),  were 
literary  and  his  original  intention  was  to 
practise  at  the  bar  to  which  he  was  called 
by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1882.  Like  many 
other  Templars,  Pearson  combined  read- 
ing in  chambers  with  lecturing  and 
writing,  on  social,  ethical,  and  historical 
subjects.  A  selection  of  lectures  and  essays 
was  published  in  1888  under  the  title  The 
Ethic  of  Free  Thought.  These  papers, 
together  with  another  selection  pubUshed 
in  1897  under  the  title  The  Chances  of 
Death  and  other  Studies  in  Evolution,  and 
some  papers  largely  historical  which 
appeared  in  Biometrika  much  later, 
particularly  his  study  of  'The  Skull  and 
Portraits  of  Henry  Stewart,  Lord  Darnley ' 
(vol.  XX  B,  1928),  give  a  reader  to  whom 
mathematical  or  arithmetical  subjects  are 
repellent,  an  opportunity  of  understanding 
why,  in  his  principal  field  of  work,  Pearson 
inspired  both  enthusiasm  and  opposition. 
There  is  more  than  a  superficial  likeness 
between  his  writings  and  those  of 
Macaulay.  He  had  a  vivid  literary  style 
and  wide  knowledge,  but  also  some  failure 
to  be  just  to  men  and  ideas  of  which  he 
disapproved. 

(Sir)  Alexander  Kennedy  [q.v.]  per- 
suaded Pearson,  who  regarded  him  as  one 
of  the  greatest  science  professors  of  his  day, 
to  abandon  law  for  mathematics,  and  in 
1884  Pearson  succeeded  Olaus  Henrici  as 
Goldsmid  professor  of  appUed  mathe- 
matics and  mechanics  in  University 
College,  London.  The  remainder  of  his 
working  life  was  spent  in  University 
College.  More  than  fifteen  years  before  he 
was  elected  first  Galton  professor  of 
eugenics  (1911),  statistics  and  eugenics 
had  become  Pearson's  main  intellectual 
interest,  but  he  continued  to  be  a  highly 
efficient  teacher  and  investigator  of  the 
subjects  within  the  purview  of  the  Gold- 
smid chair.  Not  content  with  this,  he 
applied  for  and  was   appointed  to  the 


Gresham  professorship  of  geometry 
1891.  His  predecessors  at  GreshaB 
College  had  either  been  sinecurists  (lil 
Sir  William  Petty,  q.v.)  or  had  used  th^ 
endowment  as  an  opportunity  of  giving 
popular  instruction.  Naturally  Pearson 
chose  the  second  alternative  and  out  of 
two  of  his  courses  there  grew  the  most 
widely  read  of  his  books.  The  Grammar  of 
Science  (1892),  which  was  reprinted  in 
'Everyman's  Library'  in  1937.  The 
influence  of  this  book  on  the  generation 
which  was  young  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  great.  Pearson's 
mockery  of  the  current  text-book  defini- 
tion of  mass  as  'quantity  of  matter',  his 
insistence  on  the  relativity  of  motion,  on 
the  nature  of  scientific  '  laws '  as  primarily 
descriptive  of  the  routine  of  perception 
and  conceptually  extended,  his  reiteration 
of  the  view  that  the  man  of  science  tries 
to  answer  the  question  'How?'  not  the 
question  'Why?'  were  stimulating.  To 
young  readers  now,  much  which  was 
startling  fifty  years  ago  is  commonplace 
and  it  is  easy  to  criticize  Pearson's  rather 
light-hearted  acceptance  of  the  rule  of 
succession  based  by  Laplace  on  Bayes's 
postulate  (actually  Pearson  never  lost 
interest  in  attempts  to  make  the  logical 
basis  of  what  is  called  inverse  probability 
more  secure) ;  but  even  now  a  youth  whose 
education  has  been  primarily  literary 
could  learn  a  good  deal  about  the  aim  of 
scientific  method  from  the  first  edition  of 
The  Grammar. 

In  his  courses  at  Gresham  College 
Pearson  taught  the  elements  of  the  mathe- 
matical theory  of  probability  with  that 
wealth  of  illustration,  diagrammatic  and 
arithmetical,  which  characterized  all  his 
popular  lectures,  and  within  a  few  years 
he  was  to  be  absorbed  in  the  application 
to  biological  data  of  the  calculus  of  proba- 
bihties.  The  stimulus  came  from  reading 
Natural  Inheritance  by  (Sir)  Francis 
Galton  [q.v.]  and  from  personal  friendship 
with  W.  F.  R.  Weldon  [q.v.]  and,  later, 
with  Galton  himself.  'It  was  Galton',  he 
said,  'who  first  freed  me  from  the  preju- 
dice that  sound  mathematics  could  only 
be  applied  to  natural  phenomena  under 
the  category  of  causation.  Here  for  the 
first  time  was  a  possibility — I  will  not  say 
a  certainty — of  reaching  knowledge  as 
valid  as  physical  knowledge  was  then 
thought  to  be,  in  the  field  of  living  forms 
and  above  all  in  the  field  of  human  con- 
duct.' Between  Pearson  and  Weldon 
there  grew  up  a  partnership  to  test  the 
Darwinian      theory      by     measurement 


682 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pearson,  K. 


:md  Pearson's  first  mathematical  con- 
tribution to  the  theory  of  evolution 
was  published  in  1894.  Pearson's  enthu- 
siasm for  the  Darwinian  theory  of  evolu- 
tion by  natural  selection  never  flagged  and 
liis  veneration  for  Darwin  and  Galton 
increased,  if  possible,  as  he  grew  older; 
statistical  verifications  of  the  Darwinian 
hypothesis  remained  throughout  his  later 
life  a  principal  interest.  But  the  statistical 
methods  which  he  invented  or  improved 
were  applicable  in  so  many  fields  of 
scientific  research  that  he  attracted 
students  of  widely  different  tastes  from 
all  parts  of  the  world,  and  his  laboratory 
was  for  many  years  almost  the  Mecca  of 
biostatisticians  or  biometricians.  In  1901 
he  founded  the  journal  Biometrika,  which 
became  a  vehicle  of  publication  of  his  own 
and  his  pupils'  researches.  In  addition, 
series  of  separate  memoirs,  mathematical 
tables  for  the  use  of  biometricians  and 
other  computers,  and  brochures  on  con- 
troversial topics  came  from  his  laboratory, 
largely  the  work  of  himself  and  his  pupils, 
but  including  much  contributed  by  other 
Avorkers. 

Pearson    continued    to     control    this 
j  immense  output  down  to  1933,  and  after 
I  resigning   his    chair   remained    an   inde- 
fatigable investigator  and  writer  until  his 
death,  which  took  place  at  Coldharbour 
I  27  April  1936.   In  1890  he  married  Maria, 
daughter   of   William    Sharpe,    solicitor, 
brother   of   Samuel   and   Daniel   Sharpe 
[qq.v.]   and  nephew  of  Samuel  Rogers 
[q.v.].   By  her  he  had  a  son,  Egon,  now 
professor  of  statistics  at  London  Univer- 
sity, and  two  daughters.  She  died  in  1928, 
and  in  1929  he  married  a  fellow  worker 
in    his    laboratory,    Margaret    Victoria, 
daughter  of  John  Child. 

Pearson  was  among  the  most  influential 
university  teachers  of  his  time;  he  took 
great  pains  to  be  intelligible  and  could 
hold  a  large  audience  either  of  students  or 
of  merely  casual  hearers  who  were  without 
special  interest  in  his  topics.  In  the 
smaller  circle  of  his  research  pupils  he 
inspired  enthusiastic  personal  affection; 
no  head  of  a  department  repaid  loyal 
service  more  generously.  It  is,  of  course, 
impossible  to  give  those  who  never  came 
under  the  wand  of  the  magician  at  an 
impressionable  age  an  idea  of  his  personal 
influence.  He  had  some  of  the  defects  of 
his  qualities;  he  was  dominating.  Like 
the  great  headmaster  John  Percival  [q.v.], 
he  had  an  intense  and  genuine  belief  in 
freedom  of  thought  but  was  apt  to  attri- 
bute intellectual  differences  of  opinion  to 


stupidity  or  even  moral  obliquity.  Per- 
sonal relations  between  him  and  his  pupils 
were  sometimes  painfully  interrupted  for 
years;  but  it  is  pleasant  to  record  that 
eventually  most  of  these  broken  friend- 
ships were  happily  resumed.  Only  intel- 
lectual differences  disturbed  harmony; 
in  the  ordinary  social  relations  of  life  he 
was  a  charming  host,  guest,  or  travelling 
companion.  Pearson's  influence  upon 
those  who  only  knew  him  through  his 
writings  was  also  great.  He  was  admired 
and  feared,  rather  than  loved,  by  many ; 
in  some  he  aroused  bitter  hostility.  The 
Macaulay-like  qualities  of  his  mind  explain 
this;  his  triumphantly  clear  exposition 
and  his  bitter  or  contemptuous  contro- 
versial style.  He  treated  many  opponents 
as  Macaulay  treated  Croker,  James  Mill, 
and  Sadler. 

Whatever  may  be  the  final  estimate  of 
his  personal  contributions  to  the  science 
and  art  of  statistics,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  in  Great  Britain,  in  the  United  States 
of  America,  and,  to  a  less  extent,  in 
Europe,  Pearson's  demonic  energy  was  a 
prime  factor  in  the  revolution  which  has 
led  to  the  setting  up  of  statistical  labora- 
tories not  only  in  universities  and  govern- 
ment departments  but  in  industrial 
concerns.  A  number  of  the  leading  statis- 
ticians of  England  and  America  were  his 
pupils  or  pupils  of  his  pupils ;  others  may 
have  been  inspired  by  the  very  intensity 
of  their  opposition  to  Pearson's  methods 
and  conclusions.  At  least  he  convinced 
them  that  statistics  were  important. 

What  may  be  regarded  as  weaknesses 
were  not  caused  by  but  correlated  with 
the  qualities  which  made  Pearson  an 
inspiring  leader.  He  was  impatient  to 
reach  conclusions,  to  measure  the  mani- 
festations of  life,  to  correlate  one  mani- 
festation with  another.  He  sought  an 
organon  which  would  work  and  tended  to 
be  a  little  more  hasty  in  building  the 
logical  foimdation  of  a  process  and  more 
lax  in  marking  its  limitations  than  was  to 
be  expected  in  a  mathematician  of  his 
school.  He  had  also  one  of  the  defects 
that,  perhaps  inevitably,  tend  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  a  man  who  has  developed  a 
consistent  series  of  methods  entirely  of 
his  own  devising.  Any  statistician  or 
mathematician  who  followed  the  same 
lines  as  his,  or  lines  similar  to  those  which 
he  followed,  was  sure  to  arouse  his  interest, 
but  he  was  uninterested  in  or  even  hostile 
to  those  who  had  followed  other  paths.  It 
was  difficult  to  interest  him  in  the  work 
of  continental  mathematical  statisticians ; 


688 


Pearson,  K. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


he  was  contemptuously  hostile  to  Ladislaus 
von  Bortkiewicz  and  although  he  pub- 
lished a  portrait  of  A.  A.  Tschuprow  in 
Biomeirika  the  inscription  suggests  that 
Tschuprow's  chief  title  to  fame  was  a 
small  treatise  on  correlation. 

It  is,  however,  possible  that  had  Pear- 
son's statistical  outlook  been  wider,  his 
effective  influence  would  have  been  less. 
If  his  drive  for  results  sometimes  led  to 
waste  of  energy, .  it  more  often  led  to 
valuable  discoveries.  If  he  insisted  over- 
much on  arithmetical  exactitude  to  the 
wth  place  of  decimals,  at  least  his  rule  that, 
in  a  practical  subject,  algebra  should  never 
be  divorced  from  arithmetic,  has  had  a 
very  good  effect  upon  his  pupils,  even 
upon  his  critics. 

Pearson  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1896  and 
was  awarded  the  society's  Darwin  medal 
in  1898.  He  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  from  the  university  of  St. 
Andrews,  and  of  D.Sc.  from  the  university 
of  London.  He  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge  (1903), 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  and 
of  University  College,  London. 

There  is  a  drawing  of  Pearson  by 
F.  A.  de  Biden  Footner  (1924)  in  the 
possession  of  University  College,  London. 

[Speeches  .  .  .  in  honour  of  Professor  Karl 
Pearson  (containing  valuable  autobiographi- 
cal data,  privately  printed),  1934;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  5, 
December  1936  (portrait);  E.  S.  Pearson, 
Karl  Pearson,  1938 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
M.  Greenwood. 

PEEL,  WILLIAM  ROBERT  WEL- 
LESLEY,  first  Earl  and  second  Viscount 
Peel  (1867-1937),  statesman,  was  born  in 
London  7  January  1867,  the  eldest  of  the 
four  sons  of  Arthur  Wellesley  Peel,  first 
Viscount  Peel  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Adelaide, 
second  daughter  of  William  Stratford 
Dugdale,  of  Merevale  HaU,  Warwickshire, 
and  grandson  of  the  statesman  Sir  Robert 
Peel  [q.v.].  His  early  years  were  spent  in 
London  and  at  Sandy,  Bedfordshire;  he 
was  educated  at  Harrow  and  at  Balliol 
College,  Oxford.  He  played  a  full  part  in 
the  undergraduate  hfe  of  the  university, 
and  his  active  mind,  which  made  him 
delight  in  the  company  of  gay  and  inter- 
esting people,  was  further  nourished  by 
the  circle  which  he  met  under  his  father's 
roof  at  Speaker's  House. 

In  1893  Peel  was  called  to  the  bar  by 
the  Inner  Temple  and  for  the  next  few 
years  went  on  circuit,  sometimes  acting  as 
marshal  to  (Sir)  Roland  Vaughan  Williams 


[q.v.].  In  1897  he  served  as  special  co: 
spondent  of  the  Daily  Telegraph  in  tl 
Greco-Turkish  war;  this  gave  him 
first  experience  of  foreign  affairs,  wh 
remained  a  lifelong  interest.  Th( 
activities  were  cut  short  by  an  attack 
typhoid.  He  gained  his  first  experience 
public  affairs  at  home  as  a  member  of  tl 
royal  commission  on  the  Port  of  London. 
In  1900  he  began  his  long  connexion  with 
the  London  County  Council;  he  was  a 
member  successively  for  Woolwich,  West- 
minster, and  Kennington,  becoming  leader 
of  the  municipal  reform  party  from  1908 
to  1910,  and  chairman  from  1914  to  1916. 
There  he  showed  his  qualities  as  a  debater, 
and  his  zest  for  a  tough  fight.  In  1900  he 
entered  parliament  as  unionist  member  for 
the  Southern  division  of  Manchester  but 
lost  his  seat  at  the  great  liberal  \'ictory  of 
1906.  He  was  member  for  Taunton 
from  1909  until  he  succeeded  his  father  in 
1912.  From  1906  onwards  his  party  was 
in  opposition  and  he  did  not  therefore 
have  the  opportunity  of  winning  his  spurs 
in  office  until  1917,  when  he  became  joint 
parliamentary  secretary  to  the  National 
Ser\ice  Department  in  the  coalition 
government. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  of  191 
1918  Peel  was  in  command  of  the  Bedfo: 
shire  Yeomanry,  but  was  obliged  to 
linquish  this  post  in  1915  owing  to  ill 
health.  In  1919  he  became  under- 
secretary of  state  for  war  under  Mr. 
Churchill,  being  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  The  relationship  of  chief  and 
under- secretary  might  have  been  a  diffi- 
cult one  when  these  posts  were  held  by 
two  men  of  such  strong  personality,  the 
secretaryship  actually  being  held  by  the 
younger  man  who  happened  to  have  had 
far  more  experience  of  office.  But  they 
solved  the  problem  by  dividing  their 
spheres  of  influence. 

In  1921  Peel  became  chancellor  of  the 
Duchy  of  Lancaster,  an  office  usually 
looked  upon  as  a  mere  rung  in  the  ladder, 
but  Peel,  with  his  interest  in  the  country- 
side, was  energetic  in  the  performance 
of  his  duties  there,  which  were  little 
more  than  those  of  the  king's  land 
agent.  With  this  post  was  combined  that 
of  minister  of  transport.  From  1922  to 
1924  he  was  secretary  of  state  for  India; 
with  his  second  term  of  office  from  1928 
to  1929,  his  membership  of  the  India 
Round  Table  Conference  of  1930-1931, 
his  chairmanship  of  the  Burma  Round 
Table  Conference  from  1931  to  1932,  and 
his  membership  of  the  joint  select  com- 


» 


684 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Peet 


luittee  on  Indian  constitutional  reforms 
ill  1933,  his  career  demonstrates  his  con- 
iinuous  preoccupation  with  the  problems 
)!'  the  Indian  Empire.  In  his  handling  of 
1 1  icse  problems  he  showed  his  realistic  grasp 
if  things  as  they  were  and  a  commonsense 
|)oint  of  view,  which  would  not  allow  his 
judgement  to  be  deflected  by  wishful 
thinking  or  too  optimistic  idealism. 
Between  his  two  periods  at  the  India 
Office  he  was  first  commissioner  of 
Works  (1924-1928),  lord  privy  seal 
(1931),  and  chairman  of  the  Wheat  Com- 
mission (1932). 

Although  politics  and  the  affairs  of  the 
nation  were  Peel's  real  interest,  he  played 
some  part  in  the  world  of  business  and 
finance  as  chairman  of  James  Williamson 
&  company,  to  which  he  succeeded  on  the 
death  of  his  father-in-law  in  1929  ;  he  was 
also  a  director  of  Barclays  Bank  and  of  the 
Great  Northern  Railway.  His  record  and 
qualifications  would  have  justified  other 
advancement,  but  the  fact  that  he  held  no 
further  major  office  after  his  second  tenure 
of  the  India  Office  was,  perhaps,  due  to  his 
increasing  want  of  sympathy  with  those  in 
power.  But  in  other  directions  he  carried 
on  his  active  career  until  his  death.  In 
1934  he  was  chairman  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  dispatch  of  business  at 
common  law,  and  in  1936  he  went  to 
Palestine  to  accomplish  the  last  work  of 
his  life  as  chairman  of  the  royal  com- 
mission of  1936-1937.  The  report  of  this 
commission  was  widely  commended. 
Always  an  excellent  speaker,  full  of 
humoiu*  and  lucid  in  explanation,  he  re- 
tained this  power  to  the  end,  and  only 
two  months  before  he  died  he  spoke  in  the 
House  of  Lords  on  the  findings  of  the 
commission  to  the  admiration  of  all  who 
heard  him.  Possibly  it  was  in  the  conduct 
of  these  commissions  and  roiuid  the  con- 
ference table  that  Peel  was  at  his  best. 
He  had  a  mind  which  delighted  in  getting 
to  the  heart  of  any  new  problem,  in 
balancing  conflicting  ideas,  and  in  hand- 
ling the  men  who  held  them.  He  had 
a  quick  grasp  of  essentials,  the  courage 
of  his  convictions,  and,  above  all, 
humour. 

Peel  was  created  Earl  Peel  in  1929.  For 
his  services  in  the  war  of  1914-1918  he 
was  awarded  the  American  D.S.M.  He 
was  appointed  G.B.E.  in  1919  and 
G.C.S.I.  in  1932.  In  1899  he  married 
Eleanor  (Ella),  elder  daughter  of  James 
Williamson,  first  Lord  Ashton,  and  had  a 
son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at  Peters- 
field  28  September  1937,  and  was  suc- 


ceeded as  second  earl  by  his  son,  Arthur 
WiUiam  Ashton  (born  1901). 

Peel  was  a  big  man,  his  most  conspi- 
cuous features  being  his  very  bright  blue 
eyes  and  his  thick  moustache,  which 
became  the  joy  of  the  caricaturist.  There 
is  a  portrait  of  him  by  William  Nicholson 
at  County  HaU,  London. 

{Daily  Telegraph,  30  September  1937 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Doris  Blacker. 

PEET,  THOMAS  ERIC  (1882-1934), 
Egyptologist,  was  bom  at  Liverpool 
12  August  1882,  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas 
Peet,  corn-merchant,  of  that  city,  by  his 
wife,  Salome  Fowler.  He  was  educated  at 
Merchant  Taylors  School,  Crosby,  and 
obtained  a  Jodrell  scholarship  at  Queen's 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  was  awarded  a 
second  class  in  classical  and  mathematical 
moderations  (1903)  and  in  literae  humaniores 
(1905).  During  his  last  year  there  David 
Randall-Maclver  interested  him  in  the 
then  unexploited  Italian  prehistoric  period ; 
on  a  small  grant  from  the  Craven  fimd  he 
made  a  brief  reconnaissance  in  Italy,  and 
in  1906  easily  gained  a  Craven  fellowship. 
During  the  next  three  years  he  explored 
early  Italian  sites  and  wrote  The  Stone  and 
Bronze  Ages  in  Italy  and  Sicily  (1909), 
still  the  best  work  of  general  reference  on 
the  subject.  But  Italian  archaeology 
offering  no  permanent  livelihood,  Peet 
turned  to  Egypt.  In  1909  he  excavated 
at  Abydos,  first  for  the  Liverpool  Insti- 
tute of  Archaeology,  and  afterwards  for 
the  Egypt  Exploration  Fimd  (later 
Society)  from  1909  to  1913 ;  the  results  of 
his  work  for  the  fimd  are  contained  in 
The  Cemeteries  of  Abydos,  parts  i-iii 
(1913-1914).  From  1913  to  1928  he  was 
lecturer  in  Egyptology  at  Manchester 
University.  His  next  literary  task  in  book 
form  was  The  Inscriptions  of  Sinai,  part  i 
(edited  in  collaboration  with  (Sir)  Alan 
Henderson  Gardiner,  1917).  In  1915  he 
obtained  a  commission  in  the  Royal  Army 
Service  Corps,  and  showed  great  ability 
at  Salonika,  where  he  and  one  other  man 
supervised  the  whole  of  the  landing  of 
supplies  in  1916-1917.  By  the  summer  of 
1918  he  was  serving  in  France  as  a  lieu- 
tenant in  the  14th  battalion  of  the  King's 
Liverpool  Regiment. 

Demobilized  early  in  1919,  Peet  was 
elected  in  the  following  year  to  the  Brimner 
chair  of  Egyptology  at  Liverpool  Univer- 
sity. Early  in  1921  he  directed  a  season's 
excavations  at  El-Amama  for  the  Egypt 
Exploration  Society.  In  1923  he  became 
Laycock     student     in     Egyptology     at 


685 


Peet 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Worcester  College,  Oxford.  After  1921  his 
life  was  outwardly  uneventful  (except  for 
a  visit  as  lecturer  to  Cairo  University  in 
1929)  until  1933,  when  he  was  elected 
reader  in  Egyptology  at  Oxford  and  a 
fellow  of  Queen's.  His  teniu'e  of  these 
positions  was  short-Uved,  for  he  died  at 
Oxford  22  February  1934,  shortly  before 
the  readership  had  been  definitely  con- 
verted into  a  chair.  He  married  in  1910 
Mary  Florence,  daughter  of  Richard 
Johnson  Lawton,  civil  engineer,  of  Chis- 
wick,  and  had  a  daughter. 

At  the  outset  of  his  Egyptological 
career  Peet  realized  the  importance  of  a 
good  knowledge  of  the  Egyptian  language 
and  writing;  several  of  his  works  (e.g. 
The  Mayer  Papyri,  1920;  The  Rhind 
Mathematical  Papyrus,  1923;  The  Great 
Tomb-Robberies  of  the  Twentieth  Egyptian 
Dynasty,  1930)  deal  with  important  texts 
in  the  often  very  difficult  'hieratic'  script, 
of  which  he  had  exceptional  mastery.  His 
Egypt  and  the  Old  Testament  (1922)  dis- 
cusses with  rare  critical  skill  the  biblical 
records  of  Egyptian  contacts.  In  1929  the 
delivery  of  his  Schweich  lectures  (pub- 
lished in  1931)  on  A  Comparative  Study 
of  the  Literature  of  Egypt,  Palestine  and 
Mesopotamia  broke  fresh  ground.  Among 
his  many  activities  he  foimd  time  to  edit 
the  university  of  Liverpool  Annals  of  Arch- 
aeology and  Anthropology  from  1921  (from 
1925  jointly),  and  the  Journal  of  Egyptian 
Archaeology  from  1923  imtil  his  death. 

Peet's  services  to  his  science  were  many, 
and  indeed  he  was  the  best  example  that 
England  has  produced  of  an  aU-round 
Egyptologist,  equally  able  in  the  field,  the 
study,  and  the  lecture  theatre,  in  archaeo- 
logy and  philology,  in  the  historic  and  pre- 
historic periods.  Two  aspects  of  his  subject 
in  the  interpretation  of  which  he  excelled 
were  Egyptian  history  (he  contributed 
largely  to  the  Cambridge  Ancient  History) 
and  mathematics. 

As  to  Peet's  character,  the  description 
given  by  a  colleague  who  stood  close  to  him 
may  be  quoted  from : '  Intensely  alive  and 
vital. . . .  His  versatUity  was  extraordinary. 
. . .  His  scientific  work  was  fundamentally 
sohd,  the  expression  of  his  conclusions 
crystal-clear.  Perhaps  he  was  slightly 
lacking  in  imagination,  but  he  saw  reality 
through  and  through.  .  .  .  No  one  ever 
found  him  shirking  a  responsibility,  and  his 
imobtrusive  kindnesses  were  innumerable.' 

[Journal  of  Egyptian  Archaeology,  vol.  xx, 
1934  (portrait);  Oxford  Magazine,  1  March 
1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Battiscombe  Gunn. 


PEMBREY,     MARCUS     SEYMOUl 

(1868-1934),  physiologist,  was  born  ai 
Oxford  28  May  1868,  the  second  son  o| 
John  Cripps  Pembrey,  a  learned  proof 
reader  in  oriental  languages  at  the  Oxford 
University  Press,  by  his  wife,  Annie 
Coster  Tanner.  He  was  educated  at  Oxford 
High  School  and  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
which  he  entered  in  1885,  becoming 
a  FeU  exhibitioner  in  1888  and  obtaining 
a  first  class  in  natural  science  (physio- 
logy) in  1889.  The  award  of  the  RadcUffe 
travelling  fellowship  in  1890  enabled  him 
to  visit  the  physiological  laboratories  at 
Kiel  and  Wiirzburg.  After  qualifying  in 
medicine  in  1892  from  University  College 
Hospital,  he  became  a  demonstrator  in 
physiology  at  Oxford  under  (Sir)  J.  S. 
Biu:don-Sanderson  [q.v.].  In  1895  he  was 
appointed  lecturer  in  physiology  at 
Charing  Cross  Hospital  medical  school, 
and  vacated  this  post  in  1900  for  a  similar 
position,  which  in  1920  became  a  profes- 
sorship, at  Guy's  Hospital  medical  school. 

Pembrey's  first  research  on  the  respira- 
tory exchange  of  mammals  was  soon 
coupled  with  an  investigation  of  the  regu- 
lation of  body  temperature,  and  experi- 
ments on  the  developing  chick  and  newly 
born  mammals  did  much  to  explain  the 
characteristic  difference  between  warm- 
and  cold-blooded  animals.  This  led  him 
to  an  investigation  of  the  respiratory 
process  in  hibernating  mammals,  which 
resemble  cold-blooded  animals  during 
their  winter  sleep.  After  serving  from 
1906  to  1909  on  a  War  Office  committee 
which  inquired  into  the  physiological 
effects  of  food,  training,  and  clothing  on 
the  soldier,  he  devoted  much  attention  to 
the  problem  of  general  physical  fitness  and 
to  the  effects  of  muscular  exercise  on  the 
respiration,  circulation,  body  temperature, 
and  kidneys. 

Working  in  co-operation  with  the 
physicians  at  Guy's  Hospital  Pembrey 
showed  how  the  physiologist  can  help  the 
clinician  and,  with  a  quick  appreciation 
of  the  significance  of  the  discoveries  of 
J.  S.  Haldane  [q.v.],  he  made  important 
observations  on  clinical  cases  of  periodic 
or  Cheyne-Stokes  breathing,  on  the 
respiratory  phenomena  associated  with 
diabetes  and  cardiac  disability,  on  changes 
of  temperature  resulting  from  lesions  of 
the  spinal  cord,  and  on  the  elimination  of 
water  by  the  kidneys  and  skin. 

Pembrey  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1922. 
He  was  a  stimulating  and  original  teacher, 
always  ready  to  debate  scientific  problems, 
forthright  in  argument  but  never  bitter. 


686 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Perks 


Country  life  appealed  to  him — he  farmed 
on  a  small  scale  at  his  home  in  Sussex 
\vhilst  working  at  Guy's — and  on  relin- 
(juishing  his  chair  he  retired  to  a  farm  at 
llamsden  in  Oxfordshire,  but  within  a 
[year  he  died  unexpectedly  at  Oxford 
23  July  1934. 

Pembrey  married  in  1895  Bessie  Cecily, 
daughter  of  Edward  Ebenezer  Crake, 
irector  of  Jevington,  Sussex,  and  had  five 
sons  and  five  daughters. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait); 
Lancet,  1934,  vol.  ii,  pp.  279-280;  Guy's 
Hospital  Reports,  vol.  Ixxxv,  1935;  personal 
knowledge.]  C.  G.  Douglas. 


PERKIN,  ARTHUR  GEORGE  (1861- 
1937),  organic  chemist,  was  born  at  Sud- 
bury, Middlesex,  13  December  1861,  the 
younger  son  of  the  chemist  (Sir)  William 
Henry  Perkin  [q.v.],  by  his  first  wife, 
Jemima  Harriet,  youngest  daughter  of 
John  Lissett,  who  was  of  Huguenot 
descent.  His  elder  brother,  William 
Henry  Perkin  [q.v.],  became  Waynflete 
professor  of  chemistry  in  the  university  of 
Oxford.  His  mother  died  of  consumption 
before  he  was  a  year  old  and  he  was  very 
delicate.  After  his  father's  second  mar- 
riage in  1866  he  was  sent  to  a  boarding- 
school  at  Margate,  and  at  the  age  of  ten 
joined  his  brother  at  the  City  of  London 
School,  chosen  as  being  the  only  school 
available  where  science  was  then  taught. 
During  their  holidays,  the  boys  carried 
out  experiments  in  a  hut  fitted  as  a 
laboratory  in  the  garden  at  Sudbiu*y. 
Chemical  research  became  the  prime 
object  of  the  working  lives  of  both 
brothers  and  music  was  their  principal 
recreation.  Nine  members  of  the  family 
constituted  an  orchestra  in  which  Arthm- 
played  the  flute. 

In  1878  Perkin  entered  the  Royal 
College  of  Chemistry  at  South  Kensington, 
where  he  studied  under  (Sir)  Edward 
Frankland  and  Frederick  Guthrie  [qq.v.] 
and  carried  out  the  investigation  leading 
to  the  publication  of  his  first  paper,  which 
appeared  in  the  Journal  of  the  Chemical 
Society  in  1880.  After  one  year  (1880- 
1881)  at  Anderson's  College,  Glasgow,  he 
was  awarded  a  clothworkers'  scholarship 
tenable  in  the  dyeing  department  of 
Yorkshire  College,  Leeds  (afterwards 
Leeds  University),  and  worked  with 
J.  J.  Hununel  on  derivatives  of  brazilwood 
and  logwood.  In  1882  he  became  chemist, 
and  in  1888  manager,  at  the  alizarin 
factory  of  Messrs.  Hardman  &  Holden  of 


Manchester.  In  1892  he  joined  the  staff 
of  the  dyeing  department,  Yorkshire 
College,  as  lecturer  and  research  chemist. 
This  position  was  an  ideal  one  for  him 
because,  apart  from  delivering  one  course 
of  lectures  and  supervising  the  laboratory 
work  of  senior  students,  he  could  devote 
all  his  time  to  his  own  investigations.  He 
was  primarily  interested  in  isolating 
numerous  natural  colouring  matters  and 
in  investigating  their  constitutions,  largely 
by  degradative  methods  and  by  studying 
their  dyeing  properties.  He  left  to  others 
the  confirmation  of  his  deductions  by 
synthesis.  His  profound  knowledge  of 
natural  colouring  matters  established  his 
international  reputation  in  this  field  and 
brought  many  chemists  from  abroad  to 
work  with  him.  In  1918  he  published,  in  col- 
laboration with  Dr.  Arthur  Ernest  Everest, 
The  Natural  Organic  Colouring  Matters. 
U^;In  1916  Perkin  was  appointed  professor 
of  colour  chemistry  and  dyeing  in  Leeds 
University,  subsequently  turning  his 
attention  again  to  the  chemistry  of 
anthraquinone  derivatives.  He  retired  in 
1926.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1903,  and  was  awarded  its 
Davy  medal  in  1924.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.Sc.  from  Leeds  Uni- 
versity in  1927.  A  great  chemist  in  his 
generation,  his  attitude  to  his  students 
was  so  fatherly  that  he  was  always  re- 
ferred to  by  them  as  'Pa  Perkin',  a  title 
independently  conferred  upon  his  brother 
in  Manchester. 

Perkin  married  in  1887  Annie  Florence, 
daughter  of  James  Bedford,  of  Leeds; 
there  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 
He  died  at  his  home  at  Headingley,  Leeds, 
30  May  1937.  An  excellent  portrait  of  him 
by  Richard  Jack  was  presented  to  the 
university  of  Leeds  on  his  retirement  and 
hangs  in  the  great  hall. 

[Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society,  October 
1938 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (portrait) ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  F.  M.  Howe. 


PERKS,    Sir    ROBERT    WILLIAM, 

first  baronet  (1849-1934),  Methodist, 
industrialist,  and  politician,  was  bom  at 
Brentford  24  April  1849,  the  elder  son  of 
the  Rev.  George  Thomas  Perks,  who  was 
president  of  the  Wesleyan  Conference  in 
1873,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  daughter  of 
James  Alexander  Dodds,  an  Edinburgh 
architect  of  promise  who  died  yoimg. 

Perks  was  educated  at  Kingswood 
School,  Bath,  which  was  then  exclusively 
for   Wesleyan    ministers'    sons,    and    at 


687 


Perks 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


5 


King's  College,  London,  where  he  won 
many  open  prizes  mainly  for  English 
essays.  He  competed  for  four  years  in 
succession  for  the  Indian  civil  service, 
missing  entrance  each  year  by  one  or  two 
places.  This  was  a  great  disappointment 
at  the  time,  but  he  lived  to  regard  it  as 
the  most  fortunate  escape  of  his  life. 
Tm-ning  to  law  he  qualified  as  a  solicitor 
and  in  1876  became  the  partner  in  London 
of  (Sir)  Henry  Fowler  (afterwards  Viscount 
Wolverhampton,  q.v.),  with  whom  he 
remained  for  twenty-five  years.  The  firm 
specialized  in  railway  and  parliamentary 
practice,  and  by  sheer  business  acumen 
Perks  made  a  reputation  as  a  lawyer  who 
could  pilot  company  bills  through  parlia- 
ment. He  studied  intensively  all  railway 
law,  and  had  little  difficulty  in  being 
appointed  solicitor  to  the  London  Metro- 
politan District  Railway  Company,  at  the 
time  of  its  expansion  in  the  late  'seventies, 
and  he  was  associated  with  Messrs.  Walker 
of  Westminster  in  building  Barry  docks 
and  railway,  the  great  harbour  works  that 
created  the  Buenos  Ayres  port,  the  Rio  de 
Janeiro  harbour  works,  and  the  tunnel 
through  the  Andes.  With  the  same  firm, 
with  which  he  worked  until  1912,  he 
helped  to  build  the  Severn  tiuinel  and 
he  was  one  of  the  chief  advocates  of  the 
English  Channel  tunnel  scheme.  After 
leaving  Messrs.  Walker  he  joined  a  firm 
of  dock  and  railway  contractors  in  Ottawa 
and  New  York. 

As  Uberal  member  of  parliament  for  the 
Louth  division  from  1892  to  1910  Perks 
was  originator  and  chairman  (1906-1908) 
of  the  parliamentary  committee  of  200 
nonconformist  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  to  whom  may  be  attributed  the 
recovery  of  nonconformist  influence  in 
politics  at  the  end  of  the  century.  When 
in  February  1902  the  Liberal  League  was 
formed  imder  Rosebery,  Asquith,  Grey, 
Fowler,  and  Haldane,  Perks  was  the 
treasurer,  and  owing  to  his  skill,  they  were 
never  in  financial  difficulties. 

But  Perks's  interest  was  Methodism, 
and  his  endeavours  very  largely  contri- 
buted to  the  success  of  his  Church  during 
his  lifetime.  In  1878  he  was  one  of  the 
first  batch  of  laymen  to  be  admitted  to 
the  Wesleyan  Conference,  which  had  until 
then  been  confined  to  ministers.  He 
agitated  for  years  for  the  organic  union  of 
the  three  larger  Methodist  Chvu-ches  and 
worked  skilfully  for  its  consummation. 
When  it  was  accomplished  in  1932  he  was 
elected  unanimously  as  the  first  vice- 
president  of  the  vmited  body. 


The  imaginative  mind  of  Perks  devised- 
and  carried  to  its  successful  conclusion  the 
scheme  of  raising  the  sum  of  one  million 
guineas  to  celebrate  the  opening  of  the 
twentieth  century,  with  the  cry  of  'One 
miUion  guineas  from  one  million  Metho- 
dists'. Nobody  was  to  contribute  more 
than  one  guinea  in  his  own  name,  and 
when  Lord  Rosebery  offered  one  himdred 
guineas,  the  offer  was  rejected  imtil  he 
had  searched  out  ninety-nine  village 
people  and  children  connected  with 
Methodism  to  whose  names  his  money  was 
attached.  Part  of  the  money  thus  raised 
was  devoted  to  the  founding  of  the  West- 
minster Central  Hall,  on  the  site  of  the 
Aquarimn. 

Perks  was  a  good  Methodist,  charitable 
in  the  extreme,  doing  humble  as  well  as 
prominent  work  for  his  Church.  He  was  a 
skilful  debater  both  politically  and  relifl 
giously.  He  was  contemptuous  of  eccleijj 
siastical  display  or  ornaments  and  a 
characteristic  attitude  was  summed  up  in 
his  remark  that '  a  Geneva  gown  is  a  poor 
equivalent  for  a  feeble  sermon'. 

Perks  was  created  a  baronet  in  1908. 
He  married  in  1878  Edith,  daughter  of 
William  Mewburn,  of  Wykham  Park, 
Banbury,  and  had  one  son  and  four 
daughterSj^of  whom  the  eldest  predeceased 
her  father.  He  died  in  London  30  Novem- 
ber 1934,  and  was  succeeded  as  second 
baronet  by  his  son,  Robert  Malcolm 
Mewbiwn  (born  1892).  , 

A  portrait  of  Perks  by  A.  T.  No  well  is 
in  the  possession  of  Sir  Malcolm  Perks: 
a  copy  hangs  in  Westminster  Central  Hall. 

[Denis  Crane,  The  Life  Story  of  Sir  Robert 
W.  Perks,  1909;  Sir  Robert  Perks,  Baronet 
(autobiographical  notes  printed  for  private 
circulation),  1936;  The  Times,  1  December 
1934.]  O.  A.  Rattenburv. 

PERRY,  Sir  (EDWIN)  COOPER 
(1856-1938),  physician  and  administrator, 
was  born  at  Castle  Bromwich,  Warwick- 
shire, 10  September  1856,  the  only  son  of 
Edwin  Cresswell  Perry,  who  became  vicar 
of  Seighford,  Staffordshire,  in  1861,  by  his 
wife,  Esther  Cooper,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Cockram,  of  Darlaston,  Staffordshire. 
Perry's  father,  an  all-round  scholar  and 
mathematician,  was  responsible  for  his 
entire  education  until  he  was  thirteen.  In 
1870  he  won  a  scholarship  at  Eton,  where 
he  was  awarded  the  Newcastle  scholarship 
in  1876  and  whence  he  became  a  scholar 
of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  gaining  the 
Bell  university  scholarship  (1876),  the 
Browne  scholarship  and  medal  (1878),  and 


688 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Petavel 


tlie  Pitt  scholarship  (1879),  and  was  senior 
classic  in  the  tripos  of  1880.  While  at 
Cambridge  he  was  associated  with 
A.  H.  Mann  [q.v.],  the  organist  of  King's, 
in  the  revision  (1879-1882)  of  the  King's 
College  anthem  book. 

In  1 880,  having  been  elected  into  a  fellow- 
sl lip  at  his  college.  Perry  set  aside  classics, 
became  a  medical  student,  and  in  1883 
was  appointed  assistant  lecturer  in  medical 
subjects  at  King's  and  assistant  demon- 
strator of  anatomy  in  the  Cambridge 
medical  school.  In  1885  he  entered  the 
London  Hospital  and  qualified  M.R.C.S. 
in  October,  and  subsequently  (1886-1887) 
held  the  posts  of  house  surgeon  to  (Sir) 
Frederick  Treves  [q.v.]  and  house  physi- 
cian to  (Sir)  Stephen  Mackenzie  [q.v.]  at 
the  London  Hospital. 

In   1887   his   fellowship   ran   out   and 
Perry  was  appointed  an  assistant  physi- 
cian to  Guy's  Hospital  and,  in  the  foUow- 
I  iug  year,  dean  of  the  medical  school.   In 
!  conjunction  with  Mr.  Frederick  Newland- 
I  Pedley  he  was  responsible  for  the  estab- 
i  lishment  of  a  dental  school  at  Guy's.   In 
:  1892,  on  the  death  of  John  Charles  Steele, 
'Perry  was  appointed  superintendent  of 
Guy's  Hospital,  an  office  which  he  held 
until  1920.   He  was  a  governor  of  Guy's 
I  Hospital  from  1920  to  1937.    He  went 
I  twice  to  Egypt  (1897  and  1926)  in  order 
!  to  assist  in  the  organization  of  the  teaching 
I  of  medicine  in  Cairo. 

Perry,  who  in  1897  was  appointed  one 
of  the  first  visitors  for  the  Prince  of 
Wales's  Hospital  Fund  (later  King 
j  Edward's  Hospital  Fund),  served  for 
many  years  as  a  member  of  its  distribution 
committee  of  which  from  1921  xmtil  his 
death  he  was  chairman.  He  was  appointed 
G.C.V.O.  in  1935  in  recognition  of  his 
services  to  the  fimd. 

Perry  was  elected  in  1900  to  the  senate 
of  the  ULQiversity  of  London  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  faculty  of  medicine.  He 
resigned  in  1905  but  was  re-elected  in 
1915.  From  1917  to  1919  he  was  vice- 
chancellor,  and  in  1920  was  appointed 
principal  of  the  university  and  held  this 
post  until  1926.  In  1929  he  became  a 
member  of  the  committee  which  redrafted 
the  statutes  of  the  university  and  he  was 
a  Crown  member  of  the  court  from  1930 
until  his  death.  In  accordance  with  the 
recommendations  of  the  Athlone  Com- 
mittee on  Postgraduate  Medical  Educa- 
tion in  London  (1921)  he  took  a  leading 
part  in  the  foundation  of  the  London 
School  of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine, 
instituted  by  royal  charter  in  1924,  and 


for  many  years  was  the  chairman  of  the 
coimcil. 

After  the  South  African  war.  Perry 
served  on  a  commission  appointed  to 
reorganize  the  Army  Medical  Service. 
For  his  services  in  founding  the  Royal 
Army  Medical  College  at  Millbank  he  was 
knighted  in  1903 ;  he  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  university  of 
London  and  that  of  M.D.  from  the  univer- 
sity of  Egypt. 

At  the  end  of  1938  Perry  had  a  com- 
plete right-sided  paralysis  and  he  died  at 
his  home  at  Worthing  twelve  days  later, 
17  December.  His  body  was  cremated  and 
his  ashes  were  interred  in  the  church  of  his 
old  home  at  Seighford.  He  married  in 
1890  Caroline  Maud  (died  1935),  second 
daughter  of  James  MacManus,  of  Killeaden 
House,  Kiltimagh,  co.  Mayo,  and  had 
one  daughter. 

Perry's  life  was  full  and  many  sided. 
A  classical  scholar,  a  musician,  a  soimd 
physician  and  morbid  anatomist,  and  an 
administrator  of  unusual  quality,  he 
would  have  made  an  ideal  civil  servant. 
Weighty,  wise,  deliberate  in  judgement, 
knowing  just  when  to  wait  and  watch  and 
when  to  take  decisive  action,  he  could 
draft  a  document  that  could  be  subtle 
without  deceit,  and  uncompromising  yet 
courteous.  He  was  a  master  of  concise  and 
lucid  English  prose.  When  in  doubt  as  to 
the  clarity  of  a  sentence  he  had  a  habit  of 
translating  it  into  the  more  compact  con- 
fines of  Latin  and  then  retranslating  it. 

Perry  was  little  known  to  the  public,  for 
he  was  shy  and  had  few  social  gifts,  and 
did  not  care  who  got  the  credit  for  any- 
thing as  long  as  it  was  done,  usually  by 
himself.  He  pubUshed  practically  nothing ; 
his  life's  work  is  embodied  in  minutes, 
memoranda,  and  charters.  Those  who 
worked  behind  the  scenes  knew  his  value, 
his  massive  intellect  and  constructive 
capacity.  He  lived  his  life  as  he  wished  it. 
Regardless  of  money,  public  applause,  or 
preferment,  he  chose  the  reality  of  power 
and  influence  rather  than  the  trappings  of 
publicity,  and  he  used  his  intellectual 
gifts  entirely  for  the  public  good. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  1938,  vol.  ii, 
p.  1339  (portrait) ;  Lancet,  1938,  vol.  ii,  p.  1493 
(portrait) ;  Guy's  Hospital  Reports,  vol.  Ixxxix, 
1939  (portrait);  The  Times,  19  December 
1938;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Herbert  L.  Eason. 

PETAVEL,    Sir   JOSEPH   ERNEST 

(1873-1936),  engineer  and  physicist,  was 
born   in   London    14   August    1873,   the 


689 


yy 


Petavel 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


younger  son  of  Emmanuel  Petavel,  D.D., 
an  eminent  Hebrew  scholar,  who  was 
minister  of  the  Swiss  church  in  London 
from  1864  to  1867,  by  his  wife,  Susanna, 
only  daughter  of  William  OUiff,  of  Great 
Missenden,  Buckinghamshire.  The  father, 
who  had  come  to  England  in  1863,  sprang 
from  a  Protestant  family  (originally  the 
name  was  Tavel)  belonging  to  the  district 
of  Bole  in  the  canton  of  Neuchatel,  where 
it  is  known  to  have  been  settled  in  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  where 
its  members  became  eminent  as  land- 
owners, administrators,  and  scholars.  In 
1876  Emmanuel  Petavel  left  England 
with  his  family  for  Geneva  and  later  went 
to  Lausanne.  Joseph  was  educated  and 
followed  a  course  in  engineering  at  the 
university;  but  in  1893  he  returned  to 
England,  and  studied  science,  including 
engineering,  at  University  College, 
London. 

In  1896  Petavel  published  his  first 
paper,  written  in  collaboration  with  (Sir) 
John  Ambrose  Fleming,  of  University 
College,  on  the  alternating  current  arc, 
and  he  was  able  by  means  of  an  1851 
Exhibition  grant  to  pass  the  next  three 
years  at  the  Royal  Institution,  where  he 
made,  for  Fleming  and  (Sir)  James  Dewar 
[q.v.],  accurate  measurements  of  the 
physical  properties  of  materials  at  low 
temperatures.  He  also  worked  in  the 
Davy-Faraday  laboratory  of  the  Institu- 
tion towards  obtaining  a  primary  standard 
of  light,  and  designed  an  indicator  for 
measuring  pressures  set  up  in  exploding 
gaseous  mixtures  known  as  the  'Petavel 
gauge'.  As  John  Harling  research  fellow 
at  Manchester  University  (1901-1903), 
working  in  the  newly  erected  physics 
laboratory  of  (Sir)  Arthur  Schuster  [q.v.], 
he  used  this  gauge  for  determining  the 
pressures  set  up  by  the  propellant  cordite 
and  in  erecting  electrical  furnaces  and 
apparatus  for  studying  chemical  action 
and  high  pressures  and  temperatures.  In 
this  work  his  capacity  for  design  was 
illustrated,  for  many  of  its  features  have 
since  been  incorporated  by  other  workers 
using  high  pressure  apparatus. 

After  an  interlude,  during  which  he 
erected  and  demonstrated  at  the  St. 
Louis  International  Exhibition  (1904)  a 
reproduction  of  Dewar' s  plant  at  the 
Royal  Institution  for  the  liquefaction  of 
gases,  Petavel  returned  in  1905  to  Man- 
chester, where  three  years  later  he  was 
appointed  to  the  chair  of  engineering,  held 
from  1868  to  1905  by  Osborne  Reynolds 
[q.v.]    whose    ideals    in    regard    to    the 


importance  of  fundamental  work  Peta^ 
respected  and  followed.  In  this  chai 
which  he  combined  with  the  post 
director  of  the  Whitworth  laboratorie 
he  pursued  such  topics  as  standards 
light,  ventilation,  structural  stresses,  tl 
theory  of  gas  engines  and  aeronautic 
while  proving  himself  an  efficient 
ministrator.  During  the  war  of  1914-191 
not  only  was  his  laboratory  working 
high  pressure  on  the  design  of  instruments 
and  on  testing  of  materials,  but  he  also 
spent  much  of  his  time  in  London  serving 
on  committees  for  aeronautics,  on  which 
he  became  a  recognized  authority,  and  in 
1919  was  appointed  director  of  the 
National  Physical  Laboratory.  To  this 
work  he  gave  all  his  energies  until  his 
death,  planning  buildings  for  the  study 
of  physics,  high-tension  electricity, 
acoustics,  a  compressed-air  tunnel,  and 
many  other  new  developments.  By  thj 
various  advances  in  knowledge  mac 
imder  his  directorship  he  greatly  ej 
tended  the  national  and  internationii 
authority  and  influence  of  his  institutioi 
but  he  will  also  be  remembered  for  tl 
beautifying  of  Bushy  House  and  grounc 
for  which  he  left  the  Royal  Society 
large  sum,  and  for  his  hospitality  to  tl 
staff  and  to  his  friends. 

Petavel,  who  had  been  elected  F.R.; 
in  1907,  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  195 
He  died,  unmarried,  at  Bushy  Hoi 
31  March  1936. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royi 
Society,  No.  5,  December  1936  (portrait) ;  T^ 
Times,  1  April  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
R.  Robertson. 

PETTY-FITZMAURICE,     EDMOK 
GEORGE,  Baron  Fitzmaurice,  of  Leij 
(1846-1935),     better    known    as    Lo 
Edmond    Fitzmaurice,    statesman    a 
historian,  was  born  at  Lansdowne  House, 
London,  19  June  1846,  the  younger  son 
and  second  child  of  Henry  Thomas  Pett; 
Fitzmaurice,   Earl    of   Shelburne,    afte; 
wards    fourth   Marquess    of   Lansdowne 
[q.v.],  by  his  second  wife,  Emily  Jane 
Elphinstone  de  Flahault,  Baroness  Nairne, 
eldest  daughter  of  the  Comte  de  Plahault. 
His  elder  brother  was  Henry  C.  K.  Petty- 
Fitzmaurice,    fifth    Marquess    of    Lans- 
downe [q.v.].   At  Eton  he  won  a  Prince 
Consort's  prize  for  French,  which  he  knew   i 
perfectly,  and  at  Trinity  College,  Camfl 
bridge,  where  he  was  a  scholar,  he  walH 
awarded    the    English    essay    prize    and 
graduated  with  a  first  class  in  the  classical 
tripos  of  1868.  He  took  pride  in  later  life 


5e, 

^ 

ae 

DC     I 


690 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Petty-Fitzmaurice 


ill  having  helped  to  revive  football  at  the 
university.  He  was  president  of  the  Union 
in  1866.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by 
1  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1871,  but  never  practised. 

At  the  general  election  of  1868  Fitz- 
nuuirice  was  returned  unopposed  as 
iiberal  member  for  the  family  seat  of 
Aline  in  Wiltshire,  and  in  1872  was 
appointed  private  secretary  to  Robert 
Lowe  (later  Viscount  Sherbrooke,  q.v.) 
tiis  predecessor  in  the  seat.  In  this  parlia- 
ment he  betrayed  those  vigorous  radical 
sentiments  wliich  distinguished  him 
throughout  his  career,  and  he  was  the 
luthor  of  the  amendment  to  the  bill  for 
;he  abolition  of  university  tests,  which 
ixtended  its  operation  to  heads  of  houses, 
•.hereby  displeasing  Gladstone,  with  whom, 
lowever,  a  common  interest  in  theology 
,vas  a  link  of  continued  friendship.  But 
or  the  fall  of  the  government  in  1874  he 
vould  have  been  parliamentary  under- 
iiecretary  to  the  Home  Office. 

Fitzmaiu-ice's  parentage  opened  many 
:loors  to  him  on  the  continent,  and  during 
[:he  years  of  Beaconsfleld's  administration 
:ie  obtained  a  clear  insight  into  French 
[lolitics,  and  he  formed  a  close  connexion 
vith  the  circle  of  the  elder  and  younger 
Vndrassy  and  of  Apponyi,  whom  he 
ivarned  against  the  danger  of  an  intolerant 
|)olicy  towards  the  non-Magyar  races  of 
lungary;  in  1880  he  was  appointed 
;ommissioner  at  Constantinople  for  the 
[•eorganization  of  the  European  provinces 
l)f  Turkey  and  Crete  under  the  Treaty  of 
!3erhn.  In  this  position,  which  he  held 
ixntil  1881,  he  greatly  distinguished  him- 
self by  drafting  a  scheme  for  organic 
jeform  of  adrninistration,  which  was 
i-ustrated  by  the  play  of  Abdul  Hamid  II 
>n  the  mutual  jealousies  of  Austria  and 
iussia.  A  similar  fate  befell  his  proposal 
or  a  greater  Albania,  but  this  was  re- 
eved in  1913  by  Berchtold  when  it  was 
00  late.  It  is  by  no  means  improbable 
hat  had  these  schemes  been  adopted  in 
880,  the  whole  subsequent  history  of  the 
ialkans  and  of  the  world  might  have  been 
hanged. 

Fitzmaurice,  while  serving  as  second 
lenipotentiary  at  the  Danube  Navigation 
'onference  of  1882-1883  in  London,  was 
ppointed,  at  the  new  year  of  1883,  under- 
ecretary  of  state  for  foreign  affairs  in 
accession  to  Sir  Charles  Dilke  [q.v.],  and 
Ithough  suggestions  were  thrown  out 
hat  he  should  go  to  higher  posts,  he  re- 
tiained  at  the  Foreign  Office  under  Lord 
Iranville  until  the  resignation  of  the 
beral  ministry  in  1885.    His  tenure  of 


office  had  proved  his  ability,  and  in  July 
1885  he  delivered  a  speech  in  Glasgow 
advocating  reform  in  local  government, 
Commons  procedure,  land  law,  licensing 
law,  and  the  House  of  Lords,  which 
attracted  considerable  attention  and  re- 
sulted in  his  being  adopted  as  Uberal 
candidate  for  the  Blackfriars  division  of 
Glasgow,  his  seat  at  Calne  having  been 
extinguished  by  the  Redistribution  Act. 
But  a  breakdown  in  health,  the  sequel  to 
an  accident  in  1875,  compelled  his  retire- 
ment, and  it  was  not  vmtil  November  1887 
that  he  emerged,  proclaiming  at  a  liberal 
meeting  at  Old  Cumnock  in  Scotland  his 
faith  in  home  rule.  Neither  when  he  stood 
for  Deptford  at  the  general  election  of 
1892,  nor  for  the  Cricklade  division  of 
Wiltshire  at  that  of  1895,  was  he  success- 
ful, but  at  a  by-election  in  Eebruary  1898 
he  recovered  for  the  liberals  the  Cricklade 
division  and  held  it  again  at  the  general 
election  of  1900. 

Diuring  these  years  of  opposition,  Fitz- 
maurice had  taken  the  side  of  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman  against  the  liberal 
inaperialists,  but  to  general  siu-prise  and 
no  small  indignation  he  was  passed  over 
for  Cabinet  rank  when  the  new  liberal 
administration  was  formed  at  the  end  of 
1905.  He  was  offered  the  secretaryship  of 
state  for  foreign  affairs  should  Grey  refuse 
it,  and  on  the  latter  accepting  the  post, 
Fitzmaurice  was  appointed  to  his  old 
place  as  under- secretary  of  state  and  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Fitz- 
maurice, of  Leigh,  in  Wiltshire. 

The  situation  thereby  resulting  at  the 
Foreign  Office  might  have  been  one  of 
great  difficulty.  Compared  with  Grey, 
Fitzmaurice  had  far  longer  experience  of 
politics  and  office,  a  greater  command  of 
European  languages,  and  a  wider  acquaint- 
ance with  foreign  statesmen  and  countries, 
but  it  says  much  for  the  character  of  the 
two  men  that  their  association  was  one  of 
perfect  harmony,  even  though  Fitz- 
maurice did  not  share  Grey's  enthusiasm 
for  the  Anglo-Russian  entente,  and  warned 
Grey  against  Russian  imtrustworthiness, 
as  can  especially  be  seen  in  a  remarkable 
memorandimi  of  April  1907  (see  British 
Documents  on  the  Origins  of  the  War, 
vol.  V,  no.  400,  pp.  461-462)  on  the  subject 
of  Isvolsky's  attempts  to  manoeuvre  the 
Foreign  Office  into  most  dangerous  com- 
mitments to  a  revision  of  treaty  stipula- 
tions concerning  the  Straits.  Although  his 
work  was  unknown  to  the  public,  he 
obtained  the  complete  confidence  of  the 
House  of  Lords  and  he  acquired  a  high 


691 


Petty-Fitzmaurice 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


J 


reputation.  In  1908,  on  becoming  prime 
minister,  Asquith  offered  him  the  chancel- 
lorship of  the  duchy  of  Lancaster,  an 
oifice  which  he  accepted,  taking  his  place 
in  the  Cabinet,  and  being  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council,  but  a  recurrence  of  his 
malady  compelled  his  resignation  a  few 
months  later,  and  so  in  1909  his  public 
life  came  to  an  end. 

During  the  years  of  opposition  and 
exclusion  from  the  House  of  Commons, 
Fitzmaurice  had  been  building  up  the 
reputation  as  an  historian  which  earned 
him  election  as  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1914.  He  had  published  in 
1875-1876  a  three-volume  life  of  William, 
Earl  of  Shelburne,  thereby  securing  the 
friendship  of  Disraeli  who  in  Sybil  had 
sought  to  vindicate  the  reputation  of  '  one 
of  the  suppressed  characters  of  English 
history',  and  in  1905  he  brought  out 
another  authoritative  biography,  in  two 
volumes,  that  of  his  old  chief.  Lord  Gran- 
ville, which,  like  the  life  of  Shelburne, 
ran  through  more  than  one  edition.  The 
earlier  work  successfully  vindicated  the 
character  of  his  enigmatic  but  far-seeing 
ancestor;  the  later  may  be  considered  as 
the  authoritative  exposition  of  liberal 
foreign  policy  during  the  Victorian  era, 
and  is  distinguished  by  a  remarkable 
knowledge  and  a  penetrating  judgement 
in  foreign  affairs,  while  the  Queen's 
correspondence  with  Granville  at  the  time 
of  the  Schleswig-Holstein  controversy 
throws  much  light  on  her  policy,  tactics, 
and  influence  with  her  ministers.  Lesser 
works  were  a  life  of  another  of  his 
ancestors.  Sir  William  Petty  (1895),  and  a 
monograph  (1901)  on  Charles  WilUam 
Ferdinand,  Duke  of  Brunswick,  who  led 
the  Prussians  at  Valmy  and  was  killed  at 
Auerstadt,  a  briUiant  piece  of  writing, 
strong  in  characterization  and  showing 
an  uncommon  insight  into  military 
problems. 

As  befitted  the  scion  of  a  noble  county 
family,  Fitzmaurice  took  an  active  part 
in  local  affairs,  being  chairman  of  the 
Wiltshire  county  council  (1896-1906)  and 
of  the  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions  (1899- 
1905),  never  slackening  in  his  zeal  for  the 
promotion  of  education,  and  a  most  de- 
voted champion  of  public  rights  of  way. 
In  1887  he  was  appointed  one  of  the  five 
boundary  commissioners  under  the  Local 
Government  Act.  He  was  a  trustee  of  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  from  1881  to 
1915,  and  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
D.Litt.  from  Bristol  University  in  1912. 
At  Leigh,  until  crippled  with  arthritis,  he  I 


showed  himself  to  American  and  English 
scholars  as  a  brilliant  conversationalist, 
inheriting  the  Scottish  humour  and  French 
wit  of  his  maternal  ancestors.  When  at  his 
best,  he  was  a  graceful  and  accomplished 
orator,  and  he  was  a  master  of  the  art  of 
letter -writing.  He  had  also  the  rare  gift 
of  being  as  much  interested  in  the  younger 
generation  as  in  his  own,  and  many  a 
youth  in  Wiltshire  schools  owed  his 
university  career  to  Fitzmaurice's  un- 
obtrusive munificence. 

Lord  Fitzmaurice  married  in  1889 
Caroline  (died  1911),  daughter  of  William 
John  FitzGerald,  of  Litchfield,  Con- 
necticut, U.S.A. :  there  were  no  children  of 
the  marriage.  Fitzmaurice  died  at  his 
residence,  Leigh  House,  Bradford-on- 
Avon,  21  June  1935.  A  cartoon  of  Fitz- 
maurice by  '  Spy '  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
14  June  1906. 

[British  Documents  on  the  Origins  of  the  War, 
edited  by  G.  P.  Gooch  and  H.  W.  V.  Temper- 
ley,  vol.  V  (1928);  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  J.  H.  Morgan. 

PHELPS,       LANCELOT       RIDLEY 

(1853-1936),  provost  of  Oriel  College, 
Oxford,  and  authority  on  poor  law  ad- 
ministration, the  third  son  of  Thomas 
Prankerd  Phelps,  rector  of  Ridley,  Kent, 
and  honorary  canon  of  Rochester  Cathe- 
dral, by  his  wife,  Laura,  fourth  daughter 
of  Sir  Percival  Hart  Dyke,  fifth  baronet, 
was  born  at  Ridley  3  November  1853.  He 
was  educated  at  Charterhouse  (of  the 
governing  body  of  which  he  was  for  many 
years  a  valuable  member)  and  at  Oriel 
College,  Oxford.  Admitted  a  scholar  in 
1872,  he  was  elected  a  fellow  (just  before 
the  new  statutes  came  into  force)  in  1877, 
and  ordained  deacon  in  1879  and  priest  in 
1896.  He  was  a  lecturer  (1880-1885)  and 
vice-principal  (1885-1893)  of  St.  Mary 
Hall;  and  was  tutor  (1893-1914),  provost 
(1914-1929),  and  honorary  feUow  (1929^ 
1936)  of  Oriel.  As  successively  schols 
fellow,  provost,  and  honorary  fellow, 
was  a  member  of  Oriel  for  sixty-fod 
years.  On  the  occasion  of  the  collel 
sexcentenary  in  1926  the  university  co^ 
ferred  upon  him  the  honorary  degree 
D.C.L.  He  died,  luimarried,  at  Oxfoi| 
16  December  1936. 

As  a  tutor  of  the  college,  Phelps 
responsible  for  the  general  supervision 
one  third  of  its  undergraduates,  and  tl 
friend  of  many  more.  He  talked  with  thai 
late  into  the  night ;  he  took  them  on  read- 
ing parties  to  High  Force,  on  the  Tees, 
where  he  was  the  hfe  and  soul  of  long 


692 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Philip 


expeditions  from  which  he  alone  returned 
iintired ;  he  kept  up  a  hfelong  correspond- 
ence -with  many  of  them.  In  all  these  ways 
]\c  probably  had  as  wide  and  deep  an 
influence  as  any  Oxford  tutor  of  his  time. 
He  never  became  a  specialist  in  any 
academic  subject,  but  he  had  a  very  active 
and  lively  mind,  and  was  an  excellent  and 
popular  lecturer  on  classics  and  on 
political  economy.  In  particular,  his 
lectures  on  economics  to  Indian  civil 
service  probationers  influenced  many  who 
became  distinguished  civil  servants;  and 
in  later  years  he  had  an  equally  great 
influence  on  the  members  of  the  Sudan 
civil  service. 

Two  matters  in  which  Phelps  was  deeply 
interested  were  the  fabric  of  the  college 
and  the  college  estates.  It  is  mainly  to  his 
efforts  that  the  college  owes  the  adorn- 
ment of  the  hall  by  panelling  and  stained 
glass  windows  executed  by  his  friend 
John  Ninian  Comper;  he  was  a  frequent 
visitor  to  the  estates,  where  he  rode  and 
shot  with  the  farmers  and  could  talk  to 
them  in  their  own  language  about  crops 
and  stock.  To  his  colleagues  he  was  per- 
haps most  completely  himself  as  steward 
of  common  room.  An  admirable  talker 
and  raconteur  himself,  he  never  mono- 
polized the  conversation ;  he  insisted  that 
this  must  be  general,  and  his  art  in  its 
management  resembled  nothing  so  much 
as  that  of  a  conductor  who  draws  its  best 
out  of  every  instrument.  Another  side  of 
Phelps's  interests  is  illustrated  by  the 
notable  collection  of  paintings  by  William 
Turner  of  Oxford  which  he  formed  and 
which  he  sold  in  1929  after  his  resignation 
from  the  provostship. 

While  he  was  for  many  years  a  coun- 
cillor and  afterwards  an  alderman,  Phelps's 
main  activity  outside  the  college  was  his 
work  as  chairman  of  the  Oxford  board  of 
guardians  of  the  poor,  and  later  of  the 
public  assistance  committee.  He  com- 
bined a  great  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the 
poor  with  a  truly  Gladstonian  economy 
and  individualism.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  royal  commission  on  the  Poor  Laws 
(1905-1909),  and  his  views  are  writ  large 
in  the  majority  Report.  In  1929-1930  he 
ser\'ed  as  chairman  of  a  departmental 
committee  on  the  relief  of  the  casual  poor. 
The  principles  set  forth  at  length  in  the 
Reports  of  these  two  bodies  had  been 
briefly  and  lucidly  stated  in  a  pamphlet. 
Poor  Law  and  Charity,  published  by 
Phelps  as  early  as  1887. 

Phelps's  vivid  personality,  his  hand- 
some, bearded  face,  his  flow  of  animal 


spirits,  his  wit  and  love  of  paradox,  will 
be  long  remembered  in  the  college,  the 
university,  and  the  city  which  he  served 
so  well  over  a  great  span  of  years. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Phelps  by  Briton 
Riviere,  painted  in  1916,  at  Oriel  College. 

[F.  R.  B[arry]  in  Oriel  Record,  January  1937 
(portrait);  The  Times,  17  December  1936; 
Oxford  Magazine,  21  January  1937 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  D.  Ross. 

PHILIP,    Sir    ROBERT    WILLIAM 

(1857-1939),  physician  and  founder  of 
tuberculosis  dispensaries,  was  bom  at 
Glasgow  29  December  1857,  the  yoimgest 
son  of  George  Philip,  a  minister  of  the 
Free  Church  of  Scotland,  whose  charge 
was  the  Union  church  at  Go  van,  by  his 
wife,  Margaret  Josephine,  daughter  of 
Joseph  Robertson.  Educated  at  the 
Royal  High  School,  Edinburgh,  and  at 
Edinburgh  University,  he  graduated  M.B., 
CM.  in  1882  and  M.D.  (gold  medal)  in 
1887. 

The  life  of  PhUip  covers  the  first  fifty- 
seven  years  of  an  era  in  the  history  of 
tuberculosis  that  began  with  Robert 
Koch's  discovery  of  the  tubercle  baciUus 
in  1882.  In  that  year,  Koch  communi- 
cated his  discovery  to  the  Berlin  Physio- 
logical Society.  At  this  time  Philip  was 
engaged  in  post-graduate  study  in  Vienna, 
where  he  saw  the  tubercle  bacillus  for  the 
first  time.  He  was  so  much  impressed  by 
the  potentialities  of  this  discovery  that 
'Embryology,  gynaecology,  and  all  the 
other  specialities  that  had  drawn  me  to 
Vienna  got  the  go-by',  and,  having  de- 
cided to  devote  special  attention  to 
tuberculosis,  he  returned  to  Edinburgh  in 
1883.  On  confiding  his  intention  to  the 
professor  of  medicine,  he  was  told : '  Don't 
think  of  such  a  thing.  Phthisis  is  worn  to 
a  tliin  thread.  The  subject  is  exhausted. ' 

Undaunted,  Philip  established,  with  the 
assistance  of  his  fiancde  and  of  a  few 
friends,  what  became  in  1894  the  Royal 
Victoria  Hospital  for  Consumption,  at 
Craigleith,  near  Edinburgh.  Its  out- 
patients' department  in  Bank  Street,  in 
the  heart  of  the  city,  opened  in  1887,  was 
the  first  tuberculosis  dispensary  in  the 
world.  It  was  a  centre  for  the  treatment 
of  ambulant  cases,  for  the  examination  of 
contacts,  and  later  a  clearing  house  for 
the  open-air  school,  the  sanatorium,  the 
tuberculosis  colony,  and  the  hospital  for 
advanced  cases,  these  being  the  essential 
components  of  what  became  known 
throughout  the  world  as  the  co-ordinated 
Edinburgh    system.     In    1909   the   first 


Philip 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


tuberculosis  dispensary  in  England  was 
established  at  Paddington  through  the 
work  of  Edith  McGaw  (later  Lady  Philip), 
who  devoted  herself  for  over  thirty  years 
to  the  prevention  of  tuberculosis. 

In  1890  Philip  joined  the  staff  of  the 
Edinburgh  Royal  Infirmary,  becoming 
lecturer  on  chest  diseases.  When  the  new 
chair  of  tuberculosis  was  founded  in 
Edinburgh  in  1917,  Philip  was  elected  to 
fiU  the  post,  which  he  held  until  his  death. 
He  was  an  inspiring  teacher  although  not 
a  great  clinician.  Seldom  are  these  gifts 
combined.  His  conception  of  pulmonary 
tuberculosis  as  a  visceral  lesion  in  a 
systemic  disease  was  a  conspicuous 
contribution  to  medicine.  He  was  author 
of  Pulmonary  Tuberculosis,  Etiological  and 
Therapeutic;  based  on  an  Experimental 
Investigation  (1891),  and  in  1911  A  Selec- 
tion of  Writings  appeared;  he  wrote  The 
Actual  Position  of  Tuberculosis  To-day 
(1923)  and  Collected  Papers  on  Tuberculosis 
(1937).  Twelve  of  his  former  pupils,  and 
many  specialists  in  other  lands,  prepared 
a  festschrift,  The  Control  and  Eradication 
of  Tuberculosis ;  a  series  of  International 
Studies  (1911). 

In  1912  Philip's  conception  of  a  uniform 
tuberculosis  service  was  adopted  by  the 
British  government,  and  in  1918  he  was 
knighted.  He  was  elected  F.R.C.P. 
Edinburgh  in  1887,  was  president  from 
1918  to  1928,  and  for  fourteen  years 
(1923-1937)  he  was  curator  of  the  research 
laboratory  of  the  college ;  he  was  elected 
F.R.C.P.  London  in  1933.  He  was  presi- 
dent of  the  British  Medical  Association  in 
1927.  He  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  Glasgow 
and  Wales  and  that  of  M.D.  from  the 
imiversity  of  Egypt.  He  was  elected 
F.R.S.  Edinburgh  in  1889  and  received 
several  foreign  medals  and  prizes. 

Philip  had  a  clear  business  head  and 
was  unrivalled  as  an  organizer  and  ad- 
ministrator; as  a  chairman  he  was  un- 
surpassed. He  had  leisure  to  cultivate 
culture ;  and  was  an  excellent  companion 
and  an  admirable  host,  not  above  the  art 
of  flattery ;  a  diplomat  in  EngUsh,  French, 
and  German.  His  formal  manner,  often 
mistaken  for  vanity,  was  really  the  ex- 
pression of  a  profoimd  sense  of  occasion. 
He  was  an  egoist,  but  having  an  ego  that 
others  could  admire ;  an  epicurean  of  the 
original  school  and  one  to  whom  millions 
will  be  indebted  who  will  never  hear  his 
name. 

Philip  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1888 
to     Elizabeth     (died     1937),     yoimgest 


daughter  of  John  Fenton  Motherwell,  of 
CO.  Sligo;  secondly,  in  1938  to  Edith 
Josephine  (died  February  1989),  eldest 
daughter  of  Joseph  McGaw,  of  Kooba, 
New  South  Wales.  Both  marriages  were 
Avithout  issue.  He  died  in  Edinburgh 
25  January  1939. 

A  portrait  of  Philip  by  Sir  James 
Guthrie  is  in  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians,  Edinburgh.  A  portrait  of 
Edith  McGaw  by  Hugh  de  T.  Glazebrook 
(1900)  is  in  the  Paddington  Tuberculosis 
Dispensary. 

[The  Times,  27  January  and  24  February 
(Lady  Philip)  1939 ;  British  Medical  Journal, 
1939,  vol.  i,  p.  251  (portrait) ;  Lancet,  1939, 
vol.  i,  p.  299  (portrait) ;  La  Remie  de  la  tuber- 
culose,  April  1939 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Halliday  Sutherland,  j 

PHILIPPS,  Sir  IVOR  (1861-19 
major-general  and  man  of  business, 
born  at  Warminster  9  September  1861,  the 
second  of  the  six  sons  of  (Sir)  James 
Erasmus  Philipps,  twelfth  baronet,  vicar 
of  Warminster  and  later  prebendary  of 
Salisbury  Cathedral,  by  his  wife,  Mary 
Margaret,  eldest  daughter  of  Samuel  Best, 
rector  of  Abbots  Ann,  Hampshire,  and 
sister  of  the  fifth  Baron  Wynford.  At  one 
time  the  family  owned  property  at  Picton 
in  Pembrokeshire,  but  these  lands  had 
passed  out  of  the  possession  of  the  male 
line  early  in  the  nineteenth  century.  He 
was  a  brother  of  John  Philipps,  Viscount 
St.  David'=:,  and  of  Owen  Philipps,  Lord 
Kylsant  [qq.v.] :  these  three  eldest  brothers 
and  the  youngest  brother.  Sir  Laurence 
Philipps,  all  became  prominent  in  the 
City.  Ivor  Philipps  was  educated  at 
Felsted  School.  He  served  in  the  militia 
from  1881  until  1883,  when  he  received 
his  commission  in  the  Indian  army;  four 
years  later  he  first  saw  active  service  in  the 
Burma  campaign  (1887-1889),  for  which 
he  received  the  medal  and  two  clasps.  He 
later  took  part  in  the  Chin  Lushai  (1889) 
the  Miranzai  (1891),  and  the  Isazai  (1892) 
expeditions.  His  promotion  to  captain 
followed  in  1894,  and  two  years  later 
served  on  the  North  West  Frontier 
India  (receiving  the  medal  and  two  claspi 
from  1896  to  1897  in  the  Tirah  campaign 
(being  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches); 
and  in  1900-1901  with  the  China  expedi- 
tion (being  mentioned  in  dispatches  ai 
receiving  the  medal  and  clasp).  In  19 
he  was  awarded  the  D.S.O.  and  promo 
major  in  the  following  year.  He  retired 
from  the  Indian  army  in  1903.  Three 
years  later  he  became  hberal  member  of 


ain 

ign  ! 
:s);j 
2di-  ! 


694 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Philipps,  J.  W. 


parliament  for  Southampton,  retaining 
the  seat  until  1922.  From  1908  to  1912  he 
was  governor  of  Pembroke  Castle  and 
commanded  the  Pembroke  Yeomanry, 
with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel  (1908) 
and  honorary  colonel  (1909). 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Philipps 
was  called  to  the  War  Office  as  G.S.O.  2, 
and  in  November  1914  was  promoted 
brigadier-general  and  given  command  of 
the  115th  brigade.  He  was  promoted 
temporary  major-general  in  January  1915 
and  for  a  short  while  in  that  year  he  was 
parliamentary  secretary  (military)  to  the 
minister  of  munitions.  Later  in  the  same 
year  he  raised  the  38th  Welsh  division, 
went  with  it  to  France  in  December,  and 
saw  active  service  in  the  battle  of  the 
Somme  in  July  1916,  in  which  month  he 
was  made  honorary  major-general.  After 
the  war  he  gave  his  attention  to  work  in 
the  City,  where  he  was  director  of  about 
twenty  companies,  his  varied  interests 
including  chemicals,  rubber,  hotels,  and 
insurance.  He  also  spent  much  time  and 
thought  on  the  restoration  of  Pembroke 
Castle,  for  which  the  freedom  of  the  city  of 
Pembroke  was  conferred  upon  him  in 
1936.  In  1900  he  published  The  Issue  of 
Orders  in  the  Field. 

Philipps  was  a  tall,  striking-looking 
man,  of  transparent  sincerity  and  charm. 
He  was  appointed  K.C.B.  in  1917.  He 
married  in  1891  Marian  Isobel,  youngest 
daughter  of  James  Buchanan  Mirrlees,  of 
Redlands,  Glasgow,  and  had  one  daughter. 
He  died  in  London  15  August  1940. 

[The  Times,  16  August  1940 ;  Wilfred  Mills, 
(Official)  History  of  the  Great  War:  Military 
Operations,  France  and  Belgium,  1916,  vol.  ii.] 

C.  V.  Owen. 

PHILIPPS,  Sir  JOHN  WYNFORD, 

thirteenth  baronet,  and  first  Viscount 
St.  Davids  (1860-1938),  financier,  was 
the  head  of  the  family  of  great  antiquity 
in  South  Wales.  He  was  bom  at  War- 
minster 30  May  1860,  the  eldest  of  the  six 
sons  of  (Sir)  James  Erasmus  Philipps, 
twelfth  baronet,  vicar  of  Warminster  and 
later  prebendary  of  Salisbury  Cathedral. 
He  was  brother  of  Major- General  Sir  Ivor 
Philipps  [q.v.  for  parentage]  and  of  Owen 
Cosby  Philipps,  Lord  Kylsant  [q.v.]: 
John  Philipps  was  educated  at  Felsted 
and  at  Keble  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
graduated  with  honours  in  modern  history 
in  1882.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1886. 

As  a  young  man  Philipps's  tastes  lay  in 
the  direction  of  politics,  sport,  and  society. 


He  sat  as  liberal  member  for  Mid-Lanark- 
shire from  1888  to  1894,  and  for  Pembroke- 
shire from  1898  to  1908.  His  connexion 
with  finance  seems  to  have  been  almost 
accidental.  He  had  become  interested 
in  two  moderate-sized  investment  trust 
companies,  which  at  the  time  of  the  crisis 
in  the  affairs  of  Baring  Brothers  (1890) 
fell  into  difficulties.  Although  he  was  only 
thirty  years  old,  Philipps  was  chosen 
chairman,  and  undertook  the  laborious 
task  of  guiding  them  back  to  prosperity. 
In  the  process  he  learned  much  about  City 
affairs,  and  gradually  became  a  power 
among  trust  companies.  At  the  end  of  his 
life  he  was  chairman  of  no  fewer  than 
twelve  of  them. 

Philipps  then  passed  on  to  more 
ambitious  flights,  and  turned  his  attention 
to  South  American  railways.  The  first 
company  that  he  joined  was  the  Costa 
Rica  Railway  Company,  of  which  he 
became  chairman,  and  the  finances  of 
which  he  greatly  improved  under  very 
difficult  circumstances.  More  important 
than  this  was  his  development  of  the 
Buenos  Ayres  and  Pacific  Railway.  When 
(about  1900)  he  became  its  chairman  this 
was  one  of  the  least  successful  of  the  large 
Argentine  lines.  Its  mileage  was  little 
more  than  400,  and  its  finances  were  in  a 
deplorable  state.  By  amalgamation  and 
extension  Philipps  built  it  up  into  a  net- 
work of  over  2,500  miles,  extending  from 
Buenos  Ayres  to  the  Transandine  line 
connecting  with  Chile.  Owing  to  prevail- 
ing conditions  the  outlay  required  had  to 
be  raised  chiefly  by  debenture  issues,  and 
for  some  years  the  ordinary  stock  was 
unable  to  pay  a  dividend.  There  was  a 
later  period  during  which  ordinary  divi- 
dends were  regularly  paid,  but  exchange 
losses  and  other  financial  difficulties 
affected  the  finances  adversely. 

In  1908  Philipps  was  raised  to  the  peer- 
age as  Baron  St.  Davids,  and  in  1918  was 
promoted  to  a  viscountcy.  In  1912  he 
succeeded  his  father  as  thirteenth  baronet. 
He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1914 
and  appointed  G.B.E.  in  1922.  His 
wealth  enabled  him  to  buy  back  some  of 
the  Welsh  estates  which  had  once  been  the 
property  of  his  ancestors. 

St.  Davids  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1888  to  Leonora  (died  1915),  yoimger 
daughter  of  Isidor  Gerstenberg,  of  London, 
founder  and  chairman  of  the  Council  of 
Foreign  Bondholders ;  their  two  sons  were 
both  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918; 
secondly,  in  1916  to  Elizabeth  Frances, 
second    daughter    of    Paulyn     Francis 


695 


Philipps,  J.  W. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Cuthbert  Rawdon-Hastings,  in  whose  fav- 
our in  1921  three  ancient  EngUsh  baronies 
were  called  out  of  abeyance.  Of  this 
marriage  there  were  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
St.  Davids  died  in  London  28  March  1938, 
and  was  succeeded  as  second  viscount  by 
his  youngest  son,  Jestyn  Reginald  Austen 
Plantagenet  (born  1917). 

A  portrait  and  a  bust  of  St.  Davids  are 
in  the  possession  of  liis  son  at  Roch 
Castle,  Pembrokeshire.  Another  portrait 
used  to  hang  in  the  Board  Room  of  one 
of  his  offices  at  117  Old  Broad  Street, 
London. 

[The  Times,  29  March  1938.] 

Alfked  Cochrane. 

PHILIPPS,  OWEN  COSBY,  Bakon 
Kylsant  (1863-1937),  shipowner  and 
financier,  was  born  at  Warminster  25 
March  1863,  the  third  of  the  six  sons  of 
(Sir)  James  Erasmus  Philipps,  twelfth 
baronet,  vicar  of  Warminster  and  later 
prebendary  of  Salisbury  Cathedral.  He 
was  a  younger  brother  of  Sir  John  Wyn- 
ford  PhiUpps,  first  Viscount  St.  Davids, 
and  of  Major-General  Sir  Ivor  Philipps 
[qq.v.].  After  serving  his  apprenticeship 
with  a  firm  of  shipowners  and  brokers  at 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  he  accepted  a 
position  in  Glasgow  in  1886,  and  in  1888 
founded  a  shipping  company  of  his  own, 
the  King  Line,  on  the  Clyde.  His  early 
activities  marked  him  out  as  a  man  of 
energy  and  enterprise,  and  when,  on  his 
coming  to  London  in  1902,  the  Royal 
Mail  Steam  Packet  Company  was  being 
reorganized,  he  was  appointed  a  director 
and  later  cliairman. 

Philipps  had  already  begun  the  policy 
of  securing  a  controlling  interest  in  other 
important  shipping  hnes.  He  acquired  the 
Pacific  Steam  Navigation  Company,  a 
transaction  involving  an  expenditure  of  one 
and  a  half  million  pounds,  a  sum  which 
seemed  large  at  the  time,  but  was  small  in 
comparison  with  some  of  his  later  deals.  This 
company  then  concluded  an  agreement  with 
the  Royal  Mail  Steam  Packet  Company, 
a  step  justified  by  the  fact  that  both  com- 
panies served  the  South  American  re- 
publics, one  on  the  east,  and  the  other  on 
the  west  coast.  Controlling  interests,  too 
ntunerous  to  mention,  for  some  of  which 
there  was  not  the  same  obvious  explana- 
tion, were  also  obtained  in  other  concerns ; 
it  was  always  a  consideration  with 
Philipps  to  better  the  representation  of 
British  shipping  services  in  the  world's 
trade.  An  important  step  was  the  acquisi- 
tion in  1912  of  the  Union-Castle  Mail 


Steamship  Company,  which  had  be 
developed  by  the  genius  of  Sir  Donal 
Currie  [q.v.]. 

In  1927  a  very  large  transaction  wi 
carried  out.  This  was  the  purchase,  at  t] 
price  of  seven  million  pounds,  of  the  enti 
share  capital  of  the  Oceanic  Steam  Navigi 
tion  Company,  the  fleet  of  which  was  kno 
as  the  White  Star  Line .  This  was  in  American 
hands,  and  it  was  said  that  others  who  had 
contemplated  the  deal  had,  on  examina- 
tion, disapproved  of  it.  But  Lord  Kylsant, 
as  he  had  then  become,  thought  in  very 
large  figures,  and  he  was  so  much  im- 
pressed with  the  idea  of  Great  Britain 
controlling  this  line  that  he  carried  the 
deal  through.    He  financed  the  purchase 
in  rather  a  singular  way  by  inviting  the 
public   to   subscribe   for   the   preference 
shares,  and  the  members  of  the  various 
shipping  companies  of  which  he  was  the 
head  to  take  up  the  ordinary  shares.   I 
was    at   this   time   that,    reviewing   tl 
enormous  responsibilities  shouldered  b 
Kylsant,  his  friends  began  to  fear  that 
was  carrying  a  burden  which  no  singj 
individual  was  capable  of  bearing:  in  192 
on  the  death  of  Lord  Pirrie  [q.v.],  he  h; 
added  greatly   to   his   commitments  bl 
assuming  control  of  the  vast  concern 
Messrs.  Harland  &  Wolff,  of  Belfast.  T 
position,  already  difficult,  was  aggravatei 
by  a  severe  depression  of  trade  instead 
the  revival  upon  which  Kylsant,  optimii 
as  he  was,  relied.   Rumours  were  so  rife 
that  it  became  impossible  to  conceal  the 
true  nature  of  the  position.  He  was  given 
leave  of  absence  by  the  Royal  Mail  Steam 
Packet  Company,  and  on  his  return  was 
arrested.     At   his    trial   at   the    Centrj 
Criminal    Court    in    July    1931    he    wi 
charged  with  publishing  false  accounts 
the  Royal  Mail  Steam  Packet  Compan; 
for  1926-1927,  and  found  not  guilty,  but  oi 
the  charge  of  publishing  and  circulating 
false  prospectus  in  1928  he  was  convicte 
and  sentenced  to  a  year's  imprisonment 
in  the  second  division.    By  his  attitude 
at  the  trial,   when  he    accepted    entire 
responsibility,  and  blamed  none  of  those 
who  had  served  on  his  various  boards,  he 
earned  sympathy.  On  his  return  home  to 
his  house  in  Wales  his  car  was  drawn  by 
forty  men  imder  a  special  arch  of  welcome. 
For  a  brief  period  in  1983  he  returned  to 
public  life. 

Philipps  was  raised  to  the  peerage 
Baron  Kylsant,  of  Carmarthen,  in  1923.' 
He  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in  1909  and 
G.C.M.G.  in  1918.  Before  his  elevation  to 
the  peerage  he  was  liberal  member  of 


4 


696 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Phillimore 


parliament  for  the  Pembroke  and  Haver- 
fordwest district  from  1906  to  December 
1910 ;  he  was  returned  unopposed  as  conser- 
\  ative  member  for  Chester  at  a  by-election 
ill  February  1916  and  represented  the  city 
of  Chester  division  as  a  conservative  from 
1918  to  1922.  He  served  as  president  of 
the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce,  the 
Chamber  of  Shipping  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  the  Federation  of  Chambers 
of  Commerce  of  the  British  Empire. 

In  1902  Kylsant  married  Mai  Alice 
Magdalen,  daughter  and  co-heiress  of 
Thomas  Morris,  of  Coomb,  Llangain,  Car- 
marthenshire, and  had  three  daughters. 
He  died  at  Coomb  5  June  1937. 

[The  Times,  7  June  1937 ;  The  Royal  Mail 
Case,  edited  by  Collin  Brooks,  1937.] 

Alfred  Cochrank. 

PHILLIMORE,  Sir  RICHARD 
FORTESCUE  (1864^1940),  admiral,  was 
born  at  Boconnoc,  Cornwall,  23  December 
1864,  the  eldest  of  the  six  sons  of  Admiral 
Sir  Augustus  Philhmore,  commander-in- 
chief  at  Plymouth  from  1884  to  1887,  by 
his  wife,  Harriet  Eleanor,  second  daughter 
of  George  Matthew  Fortescue,  and  cousin 
of  Hugh,  third  Earl  Fortescue  [q.v.].  He 
was  a  first  cousin  of  Sir  Walter  Phillimore, 
first  Lord  Phillimore  [q.v.].  He  entered 
the  Royal  Navy  in  1878,  became  midship- 
man in  1880,  sub-lieutenant  in  1884,  and 
was  promoted  lieutenant  from  the  royal 
yacht  in  1886.  He  became  a  gunnery 
officer  and  was  gunnery  Ueutenant  of  the 
Invincible  and  successively  of  the  cruisers 
Phaeton  in  the  Mediterranean,  Aeolus  in 
China,  and  Furious  in  the  Channel 
squadron,  whence  he  was  promoted  com- 
mander in  1899.  As  executive  officer  of 
the  battleship  Goliath,  he  took  part  in  the 
operations  against  the  Boxer  rebels  in 
China  in  1900,  receiving  the  China  medal. 
From  January  1904  he  commanded  the 
cruiser  Mohawk  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  and 
during  the  operations  in  Somaliland  of 
that  year  he  landed  in  command  of  the 
machine  guns  of  the  naval  brigade  and 
took  part  in  the  capture  of  lUig.  Pro- 
moted captain  in  June  1904,  he  later 
commanded  the  cruiser  Juno  in  the  Home 
Fleet,  Aboukir  in  the  Mediterranean,  and 
the  battle-cruiser  Inflexible  in  the  Home 
Fleet.  In  1912  he  became  chief  of  staff  to 
Admiral  Sir  A.  Berkeley  Milne  [q.v.],  com- 
mander-in-chief, Mediterranean,  with  the 
rank  of  commodore,  2nd  class,  from  1913, 
and  he  was  holding  that  post  at  the  out- 
break of  war  in  1914. 

After  the  escape  of  the  German  battle- 


cruiser  Goeben,  Milne  was  recalled  from 
the  Mediterranean,  and  Phillimore  took 
over  command  of  the  Inflexible  as  a  private 
ship.  In  November  1914,  with  her  sister 
ship  the  Invincible,  she  was  sent  to  the 
South  Atlantic  under  Vice-Admiral  Sir 
F.  C.  D.  Sturdee  [q.v.],  arriving  at  the 
Falkland  Islands  in  the  nick  of  time  to 
intercept  and  annihilate  the  German 
squadron  under  Admiral  Graf  von  Spec. 
The  Inflexible  then  returned  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  became  the  flagship  of  Vice- 
Admiral  (Sir)  S.  H.  Carden  [q.v.]  at  the 
Dardanelles.  In  the  attack  on  the  Turkish 
forts  in  March  1915  she  came  under  heavy 
fire  which  wrecked  her  bridge  and  foretop, 
and  she  also  struck  a  mine,  so  that  she  was 
in  danger  of  sinking;  but  Phillimore 
managed  to  get  her  to  an  anchorage  off 
Tenedos  and  to  patch  her  up  sufficiently 
for  her  to  return  to  Malta  for  repair, 
making  the  passage  stern  first.  While  she 
was  out  of  action  he  became  principal 
beach  master  at  the  Gallipoli  landing, 
earning  a  mention  in  dispatches ;  later,  he 
was  principal  naval  transport  officer  at 
Mudros,  the  advanced  base  for  the  Galli- 
poli operations. 

Promoted  rear-admiral  in  August  1915, 
Phillimore  was  sent  to  Russia  as  head  of  a 
British  naval  mission ;  in  that  capacity  he 
was  in  constant  close  contact  with  the 
Tsar,  travelled  to  every  part  of  the  Russian 
front,  and  was  on  board  the  Russian  flag- 
ship at  the  bombardment  of  Varna  in 
October  1916.  He  remained  in  Russia 
until  the  following  December,  when  he 
was  given  command  of  the  first  battle- 
cruiser  squadron  of  the  Grand  Fleet,  with 
his  flag  in  the  Repulse.  While  holding  that 
command  he  took  a  leading  part  in  de- 
veloping the  use  of  aircraft  carried  in 
ships  of  the  fleet ;  and  he  was  also  again  in 
action.  In  November  1917,  when  his 
flagship  was  going  to  the  support  of 
British  light  cruisers  chasing  German 
light  cruisers  into  the  Heligoland  Bight, 
he  did  not  allow  himself  to  be  deflected 
from  that  duty  by  a  warning  against  risk- 
ing damage  from  German  minefields,  and 
was  thus  able  to  afford  the  needed  support 
at  the  critical  moment.  In  1918  he  took 
over  command  of  the  aircraft  carriers  of 
the  Grand  Fleet,  with  the  title  of  admiral 
commanding  aircraft,  flying  his  flag  in  the 
cruiser  Furious,  which  had  been  partially 
converted  by  the  addition  of  a  flying-off 
deck  in  place  of  her  fore  turret ;  he  held 
that  command  for  the  remainder  of  the 


That  was  Phillimore's  last  service  at 


697 


Phillimore 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


sea.  He  was  promoted  vice-admiral  in 
1920  and  then  commanded  the  Reserve 
Fleet  mitil  1922.  From  1923  to  1926  he 
was  commander-in-chief  at  Plymouth, 
being  promoted  admiral  in  1924.  He  was 
not  employed  again,  but  was  first  and 
principal  naval  aide-de-camp  to  the  king 
from  1928  until  compulsorily  retired  in 
1929.  He  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  1905, 
C.B.  in  1914,  K.C.M.G.  in  1918,  K.C.B.  in 
1919,  andG.C.B.inl929  ;  he  also  held  both 
Russian  and  Japanese  orders.  In  1905  he 
married  Violet  Gore,  youngest  daughter 
of  Henry  Hobhouse  Turton,  banker,  and 
had  three  sons  and  one  daughter.  After 
his  retirement  he  lived  at  Shedfield  House, 
near  Botley,  Hampshire,  and  devoted  his 
undiminished  energies  to  local  government 
work  and  agricultural  organization. 

Phillimore  was  a  man  of  great  energy, 
initiative,  and  imagination,  with  a  very 
strong  sense  of  duty.  In  action  he  was 
quite  without  fear ;  Sir  Roger  (later  Lord) 
Keyes,  no  bad  judge  of  energy  and  daring, 
wrote  of  him  at  the  Dardanelles  as  'the 
indomitable  Phillimore ' ;  and  this  quality 
he  also  displayed  to  an  advanced  age  in 
the  hunting  field.  He  died  at  Shedfield 
House  8  November  1940. 

[The  Times,  11  November  1940 ;  Admiralty 
records ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] H.  G.  Thursfield. 

PHILLPOTTS,  Dame  Bertha  Surtees 
(1877-1932),  educationist  and  Scandi- 
navian scholar.    [See  Newall,.] 

PHILPOT,  GLYN  WARREN  (1884- 
1937),  painter,  was  born  in  London 
5  October  1884,  the  yoimger  son  in  the 
family  of  five  children  of  John  Philpot, 
surveyor,  who  was  of  Kentish  stock,  by 
his  wife,  Jessie  Carpenter.  His  parents 
were  strict  Lutherans.  From  the  age  of 
seven  he  showed  an  aptitude  for  drawing, 
and  at  thirteen,  without  being  instructed, 
printed  a  little  book,  illustrated  with 
woodcuts  influenced  by  the  pre-Raphael- 
ites.  He  went  to  school  at  Streatham, 
which  at  fifteen  and  a  half  he  left  on 
account  of  ill  health,  and  his  father  in 
consequence  sent  him  to  the  Lambeth  Art 
School,  to  study  with  Philip  Connard, 
thinking  that  the  lessons  might  interest 
without  tiring  him.  Here  his  facility  for 
drawing  and  composition  obtained  him 
a  scholarship  for  two  years;  this  meant 
free  tuition  and  materials,  an  important 
consideration  at  that  time.  At  eighteen 
he  transported  himself  to  Rouen,  where 
he  painted  his  first  picture  to  be  hung  at 


the  Royal  Academy  (a  church  interior) 
and  at  twenty  to  Paris  in  order  to  wor^ 
under  Jean  Paul  Laurens.  He  wa 
singularly  unaffected  by  the  current  tren^ 
of  art  as  displayed  by  his  fellow  students 
which  is  remarkable  because  towards  tl 
end  of  his  life  he  responded  to  the  cor 
temporary  and  tmacademic.  As  much 
the  Louvre  as  in  the  school,  his  taste  was 
moulded  by  hours  spent  in  meditation 
over  the  old  masters,  Goya  and  Titian  in 
particular.  He  became  a  brilliant  ex- 
ponent of  their  method  of  building  up  a 
picture  with  under-painting,  of  working 
the  colour  with  successive  glazes,  and  of 
finally  floating  varnish  mixed  with  ivory 
black  or  sienna  over  the  whole  surface. 
Yet  dexterity  was  never  his  chief  concern. 
In  1906,  the  year  in  which  he  became 
a  Roman  Catholic,  Philpot  took  a  small 
studio  in  Chelsea,  soon  to  move  to  a  larger 
one,  where  he  was  convinced  that  he  could 
do  better  work.  Although  sales  were  few 
and  his  father  could  no  longer  help  him, 
he  was  determined  to  risk  the  expense,  anfll 
much  hard  work  ensued  before  he  hadHi 
earned  enough  to  travel  to  Spain  in  1909. 
On  his  return  he  painted  'Manuelito',  a 
picture  that  brought  him  immediate 
recognition.  From  then  on  he  could  have 
devoted  himself  to  a  stream  of  portraits 
('Lord  Glamis'  and  'The  Japanese  Am- 
bassador' are  of  this  period)  had  not  his 
sense  of  integrity  stopped  him.  He 
was  aware  that  hackwork  leads  to 
sterility,  and  his  own  inclination  was  to 
produce  decorations  that  are  always 
imaginative  and  often  fantastic.  He  con- 
stantly drew  from  male  models,  mostly 
negro — 'to  keep  my  eye  and  hand  in' — 
although  he  preferred  his  memory  when 
painting  a  picture.  Having  barely  saved 
sufficient  money  to  last  for  two  months, 
Philpot  acquired  an  even  larger  studio 
and  again  went  to  Spain.  As  a  result  he 
painted  'Zarzarrosa'  (1910)  which  was 
hailed  as  a  masterpiece  in  the  press.  A 
spate  of  work  followed  broken  by  visits 
to  Italy  and  France .  '  The  Marble  Worker ' 
(1912)  won  him  the  first  prize  of  a  gold 
medal  and  £300  at  the  International 
Exhibition  at  Pittsburg,  while  the  subse- 
quent year  saw  him  painting  portraits  in 
the  United  States  of  America.  When  war 
was  declared  in  1914  he  was  living  in 
Venice.  Rolling  up  his  half  finished 
'Under  the  Sea'  (completed  in  1919)  he 
packed  it  at  the  bottom  of  his  luggage  and 
sailed  for  England  in  a  crowded  refugee 
ship  in  order  to  offer  himself  at  a  recruit- 
ing centre,  only  to  be  rejected  on  medical 


698 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pinero 


grounds.  Eventually  he  was  accepted  by 
the  Public  School  Corps,  but  after  his 
licalth  had  twice  broken  down  he  was 
Creed  from  further  miUtary  service. 

The  war  had  not  altered  Philpot's  style, 
and  with  peace  commissions  for  portraits 
I)oured  in  upon  him.  He  was  elected  R.A. 
in  1923  and  soon  afterwards  was  chosen 
to  paint  King  Fouad  in  Cairo  (for  which 
he  was  paid  £3,000  and  his  fare).  He  was 
enthralled  by  North  Africa.  By  1927 
Philpot  had  become  restive  under  mount- 
ing obligations.  In  an  attempt  to  escape 
he  rented  a  house  at  Baynards,  Surrey, 
and  threw  himself  into  making  a  large 
bronze  'Oedipus  replying  to  the  Sphinx'. 
Three  years  later  he  was  back  in  America 
and  a  collection  of  his  pictures  was  on  view 
at  the  International  Exhibition  in  Venice. 

A  long-standing  dissatisfaction  with  his 
(nvn  work,  a  belief  that  it  must  develop 
into  something  spiritually  more  significant, 
and  a  desire  to  be  rid  of  his  few  possessions 
culminated  in  1931  in  Philpot  hiring  a 
studio  in  Paris,  where  for  a  time  he  de- 
serted painting  altogether  for  sculpture. 
Upon  resuming  it  he  abandoned  glazes,  for 
he  was  now  confident  that  richness  of 
texture  hindered  rather  than  aided  ex- 
pression, and  endeavoured  by  direct 
painting  with  brighter  colours,  by  a  simpli- 
fication of  form,  and  by  a  more  sensitive 
line  to  reveal  the  essence  of  his  vision. 
He  warned  a  relative  that  this  change 
might  bring  complete  failure  financially, 
but  that  he  was  prepared  to  starve  rather 
than  retract.  The  public  was  startled  and 
inquiries  for  portraits  almost  ceased.  He 
sent  his  new  canvases  to  two  'one-man' 
exhibitions  (1932  and  1934)  at  the 
Leicester  Galleries,  London.  He  had  not 
relaxed  in  spite  of  his  heart,  which  had 
begun  to  be  troublesome.  During  1935  he 
settled  afresh  in  London,  but  from  Christ- 
mas 1936  to  the  end  of  the  succeeding 
summer,  save  for  spells  in  England  for 
portraits,  he  lived  at  Cannes,  doing  water- 
colours,  shown  in  November  1937  at  the 
Redfern  Gallery.  The  greater  number 
were  sold  on  the  opening  day,  which  made 
him  feel  that  success  attended  his  venture. 
Just  before  the  end  of  the  exhibition  he 
underwent  a  slight  dental  operation  that 
necessitated  an  anaesthetic,  after  which 
he  left  for  the  coimtry  to  stay  the  night 
with  friends.  Within  an  hour  of  his  return 
to  London  the  next  day,  16  December 
1937,  he  died  suddenly  of  heart  failure. 
Hardly  had  he  been  buried  when  his 
disciple,  Vivian  Forbes,  prostrate  with 
grief,  committed  suicide. 


His  career  proved  Philpot  to  be  brave 
and  unmercenary.  He  was  also  generous, 
gentle,  shy,  enthusiastic,  and  quick,  with 
a  great  charm  of  manner,  and  a  delicious 
sense  of  fun  and  of  the  ridiculous.  He  was 
vmmarried  and  his  life  Avas  governed  by 
his  art  and  by  his  deep  affection  for  his 
sisters  and  close  friends.  Final  recognition 
of  his  achievement  was  given  in  a  memorial 
exhibition  of  his  works  held  in  1938  at  the 
Tate  Gallery,  of  which  he  was  a  trustee  for 
two  periods  beginning  respectively  in 
1927  and  1935. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge. 
Thomas  Lowinsky. 

PINERO,  Sir  ARTHUR  WING  (1855- 
1934),  playwright,  was  born  in  Islington 
24  May  1855,  the  only  son  of  John  Daniel 
Pinero,  a  solicitor  with  a  practice  in 
London,  who  belonged  to  a  family  of 
Portuguese  Jews — the  name  is  said 
originally  to  have  been  Pin-heiro — which 
had,  however,  been  settled  in  England 
for  several  generations.  His  mother  was 
Lucy  Daines.  Of  his  early  life  little  is 
known.  He  left  no  records  and  seems  to 
have  left  no  relations,  other  than  a  step- 
daughter, who  died  before  this  account  of 
him  was  written.  His  education  appears 
to  have  been  scanty  and  spasmodic.  Part 
of  it  was  received  at  private  schools  and 
in  evening  classes  at  the  Birkbeck  Insti- 
tute, but  the  more  important  part  was 
obtained  from  the  age  of  ten  in  his  father's 
office  where,  following  the  example  of  his 
paternal  ancestors  in  England,  he  bound 
himself  to  the  law.  The  law,  however, 
attracted  him  little.  His  bent  was  towards 
the  stage,  but  as  an  actor,  not  as  a  play- 
wright; and  the  fact  that  he  studied 
elocution  at  the  institute  more  assiduously 
than  he  studied  any  other  subject  indi- 
cates what  his  intentions  were  about  his 
career. 

When  he  was  nineteen  Pinero  was  en- 
gaged as  'a  general  utility  man'  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  R.  H.  Wyndham,  of  the  Edin- 
burgh Stock  Company,  and  made  his  first 
appearance  at  the  Theatre  Royal,  Edin- 
burgh, on  22  June  1874.  His  salary  was  a 
guinea  a  week.  His  next  employment,  in 
1875,  was  at  the  Alexandra  Theatre, 
Liverpool,  vmder  the  management  of 
Edward  Saker  [q.v.],  and  here,  while 
acting  in  Miss  Gwilt  by  Wilkie  Collins,  he 
was  confused  by  that  author  with  another 
actor  in  the  cast  whom  Collins  admired. 
This  mistake  caused  Pinero  to  be  engaged 
for  the  London  production  of  Miss  Gwilt 
in  1876,  and  immediately  afterwards  he 


699 


Pinero 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


joined  the  Lyceum  company  on  torn-, 
playing  Claudius  to  Henry  living's 
Hamlet.  He  remained  in  this  company, 
first  imder  Mrs.  S.  F.  Bateman  [q.v.]  and 
then  under  Irving,  for  more  than  five 
years.  In  1881  he  went  to  the  Haymarket 
Theatre  to  join  (Sir)  Squire  Bancroft  and 
his  wife  [qq.v.].  In  1884  he  ceased  to  act. 
Acting,  in  spite  of  his  love  of  it,  was  not 
his  work.  He  was  competent  in  small 
parts,  exact  and  industrious,  but  devoid 
of  the  spirit  and  vivacity  of  mood  which 
actors  require.  A  dramatic  critic  in 
Birmingham  said  of  his  King  in  Hamlet 
that  it  'was  the  worst  Claudius  the  city 
has  ever  seen'.  His  failure  did  not  de- 
press him.  He  knew  that  he  was  the 
thwarted  actor  who  becomes  a  playwright, 
and  could  console  himself  with  the 
heartening  thought  that  if  he  was  a  poor 
Claudius,  the  creator  of  Claudius  had  been 
a  poor  Ghost  in  the  same  play. 

It  was  not  until  1877,  when  he  was 
twenty -two,  that  Pinero  began  to  write 
plays.  A  one-act  play,  entitled  S,200  a 
Year,  was  produced  as  a  'benefit'  per- 
formance in  aid  of  Francis  Henry  Macklin 
at  the  Globe  Theatre  on  6  October  1877. 
This  small  and  forgotten  piece,  which 
brought  him  a  set  of  shirt-studs  from 
Macklin,  was  the  first  of  a  remarkably 
long  and  diversified  series  of  works  which 
established  their  author  as  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  playwrights  of  his  era.  In 
fifty -five  years  he  wrote  fifty-four  plays  of 
every  sort,  beginning  with  'one-acters' 
and  including  a  few  adaptations  from  the 
French,  a  comic  opera.  The  Beauty  Stone 
(written  in  collaboration  with  Arthur 
Strettell  Comyns  Carr  and  with  music  by 
Sir  Arthur  Sullivan,  1898),  and  a  mime, 
Monica's  Blue  Boy  (with  music  by  Sir 
F.  H.  Cowen,  q.v.,  1918).  His  productivity 
was  not  more  remarkable  than  the  variety 
and  quality  of  the  work  thus  rapidly  com- 
posed. All  his  plays  were  written  with 
superb  technical  skill.  Some  critics 
acclaimed  him  as  the  most  accomplished 
craftsman  of  the  English  theatre  since  the 
time  of  Shakespeare,  and  held  that  that 
master  alone  could  match  and  surpass 
him  in  construction,  although  Sheridan 
and  Barrie  were  not  far  behind  them.  In 
sheer  suspense,  the  bedroom  scene  in  The 
Gay  Lord  Quex  may  be  placed  alongside  of 
the  trial  scene  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice, 
and  the  screen  scene  in  The  School  for 
Scandal. 

It  was  with  farces  that  Pinero  first  at- 
tracted attention;  and  these  farces  were 
of  a  far  finer  and  more  intelligent  type 


than  was  commonly  found  in  farce  at  thai 
time.  The  English  theatre,  after  a  greal 
period  in  the  eighteenth  century,  hac 
fallen  to  a  state  so  low  that  in  the  time  oj 
Macaulay  a  dramatist  was  regarded  witli 
contempt  as  a  poor  hack  hired  to  thro\ 
mindless  words  together  for  undemanding 
audiences;  and  it  was  not  imtil  T.  W. 
Robertson  [q.v.]  began  to  write  his 
domestic  comedies,  of  which  Caste  (1867) 
is  the  best  known,  that  it  raised  its  head 
again.  Pinero's  sense  of  Robertson's 
services  to  the  English  theatre  is  shown 
in  his  charming  comedy,  Trelawny  of  the 
''Wells''  (1898),  in  which  Robertson  figures 
as  Tom  Wrench.  The  farces  had  immense 
vitality,  a  fact  amply  demonstrated  in 
1943,  when  The  Magistrate,  which  was., 
performed  for  the  first  time  in  1885,  wa 
revived. 

Pinero's  mind,  however,  now  under  th^ 
influence  of  Ibsen,  was  not  likely  to 
limited  to  skilfully  contrived  farces ;  an^ 
a  play  called  The  Profligate,  with  (Sii 
Johnston  Forbes-Robertson  [q.v.]  in  thi 
principal  part,  which  was  produced  bj 
(Sir)  John  Hare  [q.v.]  at  the  Garrick 
Theatre  on  24  April  1889,  revealed  a 
dramatist  more  gravely  concerned  than 
was  the  author  of  The  Magistrate.  Its  end 
was  sorrowful:  the  repentant  profligate 
committed  suicide;  and  this  was  an  end 
which  the  public  would  not  tolerate. 
Pinero,  much  against  his  will,  made  the 
ending  happy.  The  public  was  not  senti- 
mentally foolish  in  demanding  that  Ren- 
shaw  should  dash  the  cup  of  poison  from 
his  lips :  it  showed  a  true  instinct  in  its 
estimate  of  Renshaw's  character.  But, 
right  or  wrong,  the  fact  that  a  different 
Pinero  had  arrived  in  the  theatre  was  now 
plain ;  and  this  Pinero  steadily  rose  in 
stature  and  esteem.  The  first  performance 
of  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  at  the 
St.  James's  Theatre  on  27  May  1893,  when 
Pinero  was  thirty-eight,  established  his 
renown  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt ;  and 
it  also  established  the  renoAvn  of  an 
actress,  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  [q.v.], 
until  that  night  unknown.  Pinero,  whose 
eye  for  a  player  was  uncommonly  shrewd, 
foimd  her.  This  play,  which  started  the 
vogue  of  'problem  plays',  extended 
Pinero's  reputation  far  beyond  his  own 
coimtry.  It  had  faults  which  were  acidly 
noted  down,  but  it  was  serious  and  adult, 
and  it  was  written  with  high  skill  and 
sincerity.  The  plays  which  followed  it, 
notably  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith 
(1895),  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  (1899),  Iris 
(1901),  Letty  (1903),  His  House  in  Order 


700 


D.N.B.  1031-1040 


Playfair 


(1906),  and  Mid-Channel  (1909),  were 
nearly  all  works  of  gravity;  and  one  of 
them,  His  House  in  Order,  showed  his 
craftsmanship  at  its  highest.  Among  his 
last  plays,  The  Enchanted  Cottage,  pro- 
duced at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre  on 
1  March  1922,  was  a  charming  and  most 
tender  comedy,  in  which  his  kindliness 
and  humanity  were  abundantly  revealed. 
Thirty  of  the  plays  (from  1891  to  1930) 
were  published  in  twenty-nine  volumes, 
of  which  the  first  eleven  contain  intro- 
ductions by  Malcolm  Charles  Salaman. 

Pinero's  dialogue  was  sometimes  stilted, 
and  his  mind  did  not  move  easily  among 
ideas.  He  had  none  of  the  grace  of  Barrie, 
nor  any  of  the  wit  and  audacity  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw.  But  within  the  convention 
which  he  followed  his  dialogue  was  service- 
able, and  his  sense  of  situation  and  his 
skill  in  contrivance  enabled  him  to  use  it 
very  effectively.  He  was  the  first  English 
dramatist  to  cast  plays  to  type:  that  is 
to  say,  to  employ  actors  and  actresses 
because  they  were  physically  and  intel- 
lectually suitable  to  the  parts  which  they 
performed.  He  was  opposed  to  the  fashion 
of  his  time  of  expecting  a  player  to  be 
capable  of  performing  almost  any  part. 
His  experience  as  'a  general  utility  man' 
had  cured  him  of  that  illusion.  His  star 
set  as  that  of  Mr.  Shaw  rose,  but  it  will 
rise  again,  although  not,  perhaps,  as  high 
as  once  it  did. 

A  portrait  of  Pinero  by  Joseph  Mor- 
decai  (1891)  is  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery.  A  sketch  by  Phil  May  is  repro- 
duced in  Mr.  Hamilton  Fyfe's  book,  and 
there  is  a  bust  in  the  Garrick  Club.  A 
cartoon  by  'Bulbo'  appeared  in  Vanity 
Fair  1  February  1906.  His  appearance  was 
extraordinary.  Except  for  very  heavy, 
black  eyebrows,  he  was  almost  hairless ; 
his  features  were  sharp,  but  not  in  the 
least  Hebraic.  All  his  movements  were 
slow  and  deliberate,  not  as  of  a  man 
naturally  lethargic,  but  as  of  one  whose 
mind  has  been  well  made  up  in  advance  of 
action.  He  was  courteous  and  kind  and 
without  long  resentment  or  any  rancour, 
but  he  was  ruthless  in  casting  a  play  and 
would  discard  actors  or  actresses  without 
the  slightest  compunction  if  he  thought 
them  unsuitable  to  their  parts.  He  was 
not  content  to  take  the  second  best  or  to 
manage  with  what  was  at  once  available, 
preferring  to  wait  until  he  could  obtain 
the  best.  Stoical  virtues  seemed  to  be 
highly  developed  in  him,  for  he  bore  his 
prosperity  with  as  much  fortitude  as  his 
adversity.     If  he   felt   his   decline   from 


popularity,  he  did  not  show  his  feeUng, 
nor  did  he  permit  himself  to  become 
envious  of  those  who  displaced  him. 
Shaw  dislodged  him  from  his  pinnacle,  but 
in  spite  of  some  wounding  things  Shaw 
had  said,  Pinero's  friendship  for  Shaw 
deepened  as  the  two  men  grew  older. 

Pinero  was  knighted  in  1909.  He  died 
in  London  23  November  1934.  He  married 
in  1883  Myra  Emily  Wood  (an  actress 
under  the  name  of  Myra  Holme),  daughter 
of  Beaufoy  A.  Moore  and  widow  of  Cap- 
tain John  Angus  Lushington  Hamilton. 
She  died  in  1919,  leaving,  by  her  first 
husband,  a  daughter  to  whom  Pinero  was 
deeply  attached. 

[The  Times,  24  November  1934;  Who''s 
Who  in  the  Theatre;  Clayton  Hamilton,  The 
Social  Plays  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  4  vols., 
1917;  Wilbur  Dwight  Dunkel,  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  (Chicago),  1941 ;  H.  Hamilton  Fyfe,  Sir 
Arthul  Pinero's  Plays  and  Players  (written 
without  Pinero's  knowledge  and  inaccurate  as 
to  certain  facts),  1930;  personal  knowledge.] 
St.  John  Ervine. 

PLAYFAIR,      Sib      NIGEL      ROSS 

(1874-1934),  actor- manager,  was  born  in 
London  1  July  1874,  the  younger  son  of 
the  obstetric  physician  William  Smoult 
Playfair  [q.v.],  and  nephew  of  Lyon  Play- 
fair,  first  Baron  Playfair  of  St.  Andrews, 
and  Sir  Robert  Lambert  Playfair  [qq.v.]. 
He  was  a  second  cousin  of  the  actor 
Arthur  Wyndham  Playfair  (1869-1918). 
His  mother  was  Emily,  daughter  of  James 
Kitson,  of  Elmete  Hall,  Yorkshire,  and 
sister  of  James  Ivitson,  first  Baron  Aire- 
dale [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Harrow 
and  at  University  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  at  once  found  his  feet  in  the  Oxford 
University  Dramatic  Society.  He  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in 
1900,  but  soon  began  to  take  part  in  the 
amateur  productions  of  the  '  Old  Stagers ' 
and  the  'Windsor  Strollers'.  His  first 
appearance  on  the  professional  stage  was 
in  1902  at  the  Garrick  Theatre  in  A  Pair 
of  Knickerbockers.  For  a  short  time  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Benson  Repertory 
Company  with  which  he  toured  in  the 
West  Indies  and  where  he  specialized  in 
farcical  Shakespearian  parts.  In  1904 
at  the  Royalty  Theatre  he  acted  Ralph  in 
The  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  his 
favourite  part.  He  produced  the  play  at 
the  Kingsway  Theatre  in  1920.  In  1907 
he  was  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre,  and  four 
years  later  was  given  a  leading  part  in" 
H.  G.  Granville-Barker's  production  of 
Arthur  Schnitzler's  Anatol.  Thereafter  he 


701 


Playfair 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


was  continuously  engaged,  notably  as  Sir 
Benjamin  Backbite  in  The  School  for 
Scandal  and  as  Cutler  Walpole  in  The 
Doctor's  Dilemma  (1913).  Although  by 
this  time  he  had  achieved  a  sure  position 
by  reason  of  his  very  individual  gift  for 
dry  but  good-humoured  comedy,  dry  as 
the  driest  sherry  and  as  pungent  in  private 
life  as  on  the  stage ;  it  was  not  iintil  after 
the  war  of  1914-1918  that  his  real  lifework 
may  be  said  to  have  begun. 

In  1918,  together  with  Arnold  Bennett 
[q.v.]  and  Alistair  Tayler,  Playfair  formed 
a  syndicate  of  three  which  purchased  a 
long  lease  of  the  Lyric  Theatre,  Hammer- 
smith, a  derelict  playhouse  in  what  was 
then  little  more  than  a  slum.  Although 
situated  within  a  stone's  throw  of  an 
important  traffic  centre,  this  theatre 
seemed  the  last  place  in  the  world  where 
high-class  entertainment  could  possibly 
succeed.  But  in  his  choice  Playfair  proved 
well  justified. 

For  its  opening  performance,  in  Feb- 
ruary 1919,  the  theatre  was  cleverly  let  to 
(Sir)  Barry  Jackson,  who  brought  from 
the  Birmingham  Repertory  Theatre 
Abraham  Lincoln  by  John  Drinkwater 
[q.v.].  Contrary  to  expectation  this  play 
ran  for  over  a  year,  thus  laying  the  trail 
for  that  long  series  of  Playfair's  own  pro- 
ductions which  were  to  make  the  Lyric 
Theatre,  Hammersmith,  a  household 
word.  The  first  of  these  productions  was 
the  famous  revival  in  1920  of  The 
Beggar''s  Opera,  decorated  by  Claud  Lovat 
Fraser  [q.v.],  which  ran  without  a  break 
for  1,463  performances.  There  followed 
The  Way  of  the  World  and  The  Duenna 
(1924),  The  Rivals  (1925),  Riverside  Nights 
(1926),  When  Crummies  Played  (1927), 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer  and  The  Critic 
(1928),  and  other  plays  of  a  similar  type, 
a  blend  of  eighteenth-centm:y  comedy  and 
twentieth-centvu'y  satire  which  was  per- 
fectly adapted  to  the  taste  of  the  time. 
Besides  taking  parts  in  many  of  these 
productions,  Playfair  gathered  round  him 
a  company  of  young  players,  musicians, 
and  stage  designers  who,  imder  the  in- 
spiration of  his  genial  leadership,  made 
their  own  reputations  as  well  as  helping 
to  make  his.  It  was  indeed  a  family  party, 
the  work  of  which  had  much  of  the  im- 
promptu charm  of  a  family  charade — 
but  a  charade  with  a  difference,  for  nothing 
could  exceed  the  neat  finesse  which 
characterized  all  Playfair's  work  as  a 
producer.  He  combined  scholarship  with 
a  native  sense  of  '  style '  which  was  some- 
thing new  in  the  theatre  of  those  days. 


and  his  essentially  personal  contribution 
was  fitly  recognized  by  the  knighthood 
which  was  conferred  upon  him  in  1928. 
Still  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  he  died  in 
London  after  a  short  iUness  19  August 
1934,  and  there  closed  a  unique  if  brief 
episode  in  the  history  of  the  English  stage. 

In  1905  Playfair  married  Annie  Mabel, 
daughter  of  Francis  Thomas  Platts, 
district  superintendent  of  police,  Dacca: 
she  was  an  actress  under  the  name  of  May 
Marty n.  She  made  his  home  a  centre  of 
welcome  to  artistic  people,  yoxuig  and  old. 
They  had  three  sons. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Playfair  in  the 
part  of  Tony  Lumpkin  by  Walter  Sickert 
in  the  Tate  Gallery,  and  a  drawing  by 
George  Belcher  was  at  Singapore  when 
Mr.  Giles  Playfair  left  his  belongings  there 
during  the  war  of  1939-1945. 

[Sir  Nigel  Playfair,  The  Story  of  the  Lyric 
Theatre  Hammersmith,  1925,  and  Hamm^' 
smith  Hoy,  1930 ;  Giles  Playfair,  My  Father's 
Son,  1937 ;  The  Times,  20  August  1934 ;  Who's 
Who  in  the  Theatre,  1933;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Geoffrey  A.  Whitwokth. 

PLUMER,  HERBERT  CHARLES 
ONSLOW,  First  Viscount  Plumer,  of 
Messines  (1857-1932),  field-marshal,  was 
born  at  Torquay  13  March  1857,  the  elder 
son  of  Hall  Plumer,  of  Malpas  Lodge, 
Torquay,  by  his  wife,  Louisa  Alice 
Hudson,  daughter  of  Henry  Turnley,  of 
Kensington.  He  came  from  an  old  York- 
shire family  and  was  a  great-grandson  of 
Sir  Thomas  Plumer  [q.v.],  master  of  the 
Rolls.  He  was  educated  at  Eton,  and  in 
the  autumn  of  1876  he  passed  direct  into 
the  65th  Foot  (1st  York  and  Lancaster 
Regiment)  at  Lucknow.  At  the  unusually 
early  age  of  twenty-two  Plumer  foimd 
himself  adjutant :  he  was  promoted  captain 
in  1882.  The  Afghan  war  passed  the 
65th  by,  and  after  proceeding  to  Aden  the 
battalion  embarked  for  home  in  February 
1884.  Nevertheless,  Plumer  was  to  vmder- 
go  a  sharp  baptism  of  fire  in  the  Sudan 
campaign,  for  en  route  the  65th  were 
summoned  to  Trinkitat  near  Suakin, 
where  a  force  under  Sir  Gerald  Graham 
[q.v.]  had  assembled  to  retrieve  Osman 
Digna's  massacre  of  the  gendarmerie 
commanded  by  General  Valentine  Baker 
[q.v.]  at  El  Teb  on  5  February,  and  to 
rescue  the  Egyptian  garrison  of  Tokar. 
Although  too  late  to  do  this,  the  battalion 
won  the  fierce  fight  with  hosts  of  Arabs  at 
El  Teb  on  29  February,  and  a  fortnight 
later  (13  March)  the  still  fiercer  struggle  at 
Tamai,  where  the  2nd  brigade  square  was 


702 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Plumer 


pcuetrated  by  the  Arabs.  In  both  battles 
|the  65th  were  hotly  engaged  and  suffered 
'considerably.  Pluiner  was  mentioned  in 
dispatches  and  received  the  third  class 
VIedjidie.  Shortly  afterwards  the  bat- 
Italion  resumed  its  voyage  and  went  to 
Dover.  Next  year  Plumer  passed  into  the 
Staff  College  and  in  1890  was  appointed 
deputy-assistant-adjutant-general  at  Jer- 
sey in  the  days  when  that  appointment 
covered  war-training  as  well  as  administra- 
tion. On  its  termination  in  1893  he  joined 
the  84th  Foot  in  Natal,  having  been  pro- 
moted major  in  January  of  that  year. 

Plumer  now  entered  upon  a  period  in 
which  he  was  to  found  his  reputation. 
After  the  defeat  of  the  Jameson  Raid 
(2  January  1896),  he  was  one  of  the  im- 
perial officers  sent  to  disarm  the  troops  of 
the  British  South  Africa  Company  and 
secure  their  ammunition  before  they  could 
attempt  a  rescue  of  the  imprisoned 
raiders.  The  mission  was  successful,  and 
the  best  of  the  company's  troops  were 
withdrawn.  But  the  severe  outbreak  of 
rinderpest,  and  the  company's  preventive 
measures,  unsettled  the  Matabele,  who 
broke  out  into  rebellion  under  Lobengula 
and  within  a  few  days  murdered  over  200 
settlers  and  their  families.  An  irregular 
rehef  force  consisting  eventually  of  750 
men  and  1,100  horses  was  hastily  got 
together  at  Kimberley  and  Mafeking 
under  the  conunand  of  Plumer  with  the 
local  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel,  until  Sir 
Robert  Martin  should  arrive  to  take 
command  in  the  area.  Prompt  action  by 
Plumer,  who  had  to  train  his  irregulars 
and  equip  them  while  marching  up  to  the 
front  in  Rhodesia,  saved  the  settlers,  and 
after  seven  months  of  continual  marching 
and  fighting,  the  Matabele  were  cowed 
and  surrendered  to  Cecil  Rhodes  [q.v.]  as 
a  result  of  the  famous  meeting  where  he 
met  them  almost  single-handed. 

The  Matabele  relief  force  was  now 
broken  up,  and  Plumer,  receiving  many 
encomiums  and  a  brevet  lieutenant- 
colonelcy,  returned  home  at  the  end  of 
1896.  In  a  staff  appointment  at  Aldershot 
he  worked  from  1897  until  the  summer  of 
1899  when,  on  the  approach  of  war  in 
South  Africa,  he  was  hastily  dispatched 
with  a  number  of  officers  to  raise  an 
irregiilar  moimted  infantry  corps,  the 
Rhodesian  Horse,  at  Bulawayo,  while 
other  officers  raised  a  similar  force  in 
Bechuanaland,  both  under  Colonel  (after- 
wards Lord)  Baden-Powell.  These  tv/o 
forces  were  to  protect  British  territory 
until  imperial  troops  could  arrive.    But 


the  Boers,  waiting  for  the  grass  to  grow 
on  the  veld  for  their  horses,  gave  a  breath- 
ing space  to  Plimier,  who  had  received  an 
enthusiastic  welcome  fromj|^his  veterans. 
On  3  October  the  corps  was  sufficiently 
trained  to  go  to  its  war  stations;  on  the 
11th  war  was  declared,  and  the  Boer 
armies  invaded  British  territory,  but  their 
western  strategy  was  disarranged  by  the 
magnets  of  Rhodes  at  Kimberley  and  the 
little  force  vmder  Baden-Powell  at  Mafe- 
king. Plumer  was  now  in  command  of  all 
the  local  forces  in  the  west,  north  of 
Kimberley,  and  many  guerrilla  engage- 
ments followed  until  in  May  1900  he  was 
able  to  join  hands  with  the  southern 
Mafeking  relief  force  under  (Sir)  Bryan 
Mahon  [q.v.],  and,  Mafeking  having  been 
relieved,  Plumer  commanded  the  northern- 
most of  the  three  coliunns  that  advanced 
on  Pretoria  from  the  west  imder  General 
Sir  Archibald  Hunter  [q.v.].  In  the  great 
'De  Wet  himt'  which  followed  it  was 
Plumer's  column  which  hung  on  his  heels 
day  and  night  for  800  miles  until,  after  a 
six  weeks'  ride,  the  guerrilla  chief  was 
compelled  to  bring  his  remnant  back  to 
the  starting  point.  Plumer  was  appointed 
C.B.,  and  in  March  1902,  now  a  brevet- 
colonel  and  brigadier-general,  he  came 
home  on  leave  and  was  posted  to  a  brigade 
at  Aldershot ;  but  being  promoted  major- 
general  at  the  early  age  of  forty-five,  he 
was  transferred  to  the  Colchester  district, 
and  then  after  a  few  months  he  was  ap- 
pointed in  1903,  on  Lord  Roberts's  recom- 
mendation, to  be  quartermaster-general 
in  the  newly  formed  Army  Council.  The 
new  secretary  of  state  for  war,  H.  O. 
Arnold-Forster  [q.v.],  an  enthusiastic  if 
theoretical  army  reformer,  wanted  to 
provide  a  very  short  service  army  and  to 
weld  this  country's  too  numerous  un- 
correlated  military  forces  into  a  military 
organization  that  would  earn  her  a  place 
in  the  military  opinion  of  the  continent. 
Although  his  scheme  was  not  generally 
acceptable  to  military  thought,  Plumer 
believed  that  it  could  be  made  to  work, 
but  when  R.  B.  (afterwards  Viscount) 
Haldane  [q.v.]  superseded  Arnold-Forster, 
a  new,  and,  as  is  now  known,  a  better 
scheme,  was  carried  into  effect.  But  it 
was  a  severe  and  undeserved  blow  when 
Haldane,  conceiving  by  some  odd  mis- 
xmderstanding  that  Plumer  would  not 
support  his  plans,  reconstituted  the  Army 
Council  without  him  in  December  1905. 
Nevertheless,  he  found  fortime  return  to 
him  when  in  1906  he  was  appointed 
K.C.B.    and   placed   in    command    of   a 


703 


Plumer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


fighting  division  (the  5th)  in  Ireland, 
where  he  remained  until  1909.  In  1908  he 
was  promoted  lieutenant-general  and  two 
and  a  half  years  later  was  appointed 
commander-in-chief  at  York. 

At  the  Christmas  following  the  out- 
break of  war  in  1914,  Plumer  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  command  of  the  II  Corps 
in  France,  and  in  May  1915  to  that  of  the 
Second  Army.  For  two  not  very  exciting 
years  he  held  the  fateful  Ypres  salient, 
training  young  troops  and  drafts  and 
perfecting  communications  in  complete 
harmony  with  Sir  Douglas  Haig.  For  long 
the  British  had  sat  in  the  low  land  with 
the  enemy  on  the  high  land,  and  Haig  had 
wished  to  seize  the  higher  ground  as  far 
as  the  Dutch  coast.  The  move  had  begun 
in  1916  with  the  protracted,  costly,  but 
not  unsuccessful  battle  of  the  Somme,  fol- 
lowed early  in  1917  by  the  battle  of  Arras 
and  Lens.  To  the  north  lay  the  Second 
Army  imder  Plumer,  who,  knowing  what 
was  to  come,  was  making  far-sighted  pre- 
parations against  the  Messines  and 
Wytschaete  Plateau.  After  the  collapse 
in  April  1917  of  General  Nivelle's  offen- 
sive, an  Allied  conference  held  in  Paris 
in  May  decided  that  the  offensive  must 
continue.  On  asking  Plumer  when  he 
could  attack,  Haig  promptly  received  the 
reply  'the  7th  of  June',  and  in  effect  at 
3.10  a.m.  on  that  day  Plumer's  offensive 
began  with  immense  cannonades.  By 
evening  Messines  and  Wytschaete  were 
carried  and  by  next  morning  the  Oosta- 
verne  line  as  well.  All  night  the  troops 
worked  at  consolidation  in  readiness  for 
the  counter-attack  of  three  German 
divisions ;  but  the  plateau  was  carried  and 
the  battle  was  over,  with  a  considerable 
number  of  prisoners  and  many  gvms 
captured,  at  a  cost  of  one-fifth  of  the 
expected  casualties.  It  was  a  triumph  of 
wise  preparation,  and  from  all  sides  con- 
gratulations poured  in  upon  the  'little 
man'  whose  hair  had  gone  snow-white 
during  the  tAvo  anxious  years  just  past. 

Plumer  had  now  shown  that  he  and  his 
staff  could  arrange  and  his  troops  carry 
out;  and  he  and  Sir  Hubert  Gough  were 
told  to  continue  as  soon  as  possible  the 
attack  on  the  high  groimd  running  from 
near  Messines  to  the  far  side  of  Passchen- 
daele,  beyond  which  the  Fourth  Army 
vmder  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  [q.v.]  had 
been  collected.  The  great  series  of  opera- 
tions which  began  on  21  July  cannot  be 
described  here,  but  the  two  commanders, 
acting  in  perfect  unison,  fought  eight 
great  battles  with  immense  results  despite 


the  foulest  weather.  On  13  November  t| 
Passchendaele  high  ground  was  at  la 
secured ;  but  in  the  meantime  the  prospe 
of  the  Allies  had  suffered  a  grievo| 
change.  With  the  disappearance 
Russia,  the  eastern  German  army 
coming  west,  and  in  the  late  autumn  the 
Italian  defeat  at  Caporetto  (24  October) 
had  to  be  retrieved  at  all  costs. 

On  7  November  Plumer  and  his  chief  of 
the  general  staff.  General  (Sir)  C.  H. 
Harington  [q.v.],  were  ordered  to  Italy  to 
take  over  an  Allied  force  of  six  French  and 
five  British  divisions,  behind  which  the 
Italian  army  was  to  re-form.  On  3 
December  they  had  taken  over  the  line 
which  it  was  essential  to  make  good,  and 
were  holding  the  Montello  section  which 
ran  from  Lake  Garda  to  the  Piave.  As 
Allied  divisions  struggled  into  position, 
the  situation'  was  saved,  and  by  Plumer's 
regrouping  (with  the  cordial  acquiescence 
of  the  Italians),  by  his  robust  common 
sense,  and  by  the  sturdy  lesser  fighting  of 
the  Allies,  it  was  possible  to  bring  back 
the  Second  Army  to  France  after  four 
months'  absence. 

Plumer  and  his  staff  reached  Cassel  on 
13  March.  On  the  21st  Gough's  attenuated 
line  was  attacked  and  broken  through. 
That  very  afternoon  Haig  sent  for  Plumer, 
showed  him  all  the  facts,  and  asked  what 
he  could  do  to  help.  The  Second  Army  had 
fourteen  fairly  good  divisions  and  at  once 
Plumer  said,  placing  his  hand  on  his 
younger  chief's  shoulder,  without  even 
consulting  Harington  (who  was  present): 
'  I  will  give  you  twelve  divisions  in  return 
for  tired  ones'.  Haig  said:  'That  means 
giving  up  Passchendaele'.  'Not  a  bit  of 
it',  replied  Plumer. 

Haig's  gratitude  was  great.  But  after 
the  British  had  weathered  the  first  storm, 
a  second  fell  on  Plumer  himself.  With  the 
twelve  good  divisions  gone  south  and 
their  places  taken  by  the  tired  ones,  filled 
up  with  new  officers  and  men,  Messines 
and  Wytschaete  went,  and  finally  Pas- 
schendaele itself.  Yet  in  spite  of  almost 
desperate  crises,  Plumer  calmly  held  the 
Ypres  salient  until,  with  the  enemy  ex- 
hausted and  starving,  the  assault  died 
down.  It  was  the  last  German  effort  in  the 
north,  and  it  only  remained  for  the  Allies 
to  make  their  victorious  effort,  when  the 
British  were  restored  and  the  Americans 
ready. 

In  the  pursuit  of  the  German  army  the 
Second  Army  took  its  full  share  in  support- 
ing the  Fourth  Army  and  the  group  under 
the  command  of  the  King  of  the  Belgians. 


704 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Plumer 


Almost  every  day  before  the  armistice 
Plumer's  troops  secured  considerable 
captures  of  the  enemy,  and  a  month  later 
his  corps  had  crossed  the  Rhine,  making 
a  triimiphant  march  through  Cologne. 
Plumer  was  appointed  to  command  the 
occupied  territory  and,  although  Ger- 
many was  in  great  economic  distress, 
Plumer  was  not  the  man  to  allow  non- 
;  sense.  As  the  industrial  trouble  spread, 
jhe  put  down  internal  riot  and  German 
strikes  ruthlessly.  At  the  same  time  by  a 
telegram  to  the  prime  minister  (8  March) 
he  secured  the  immediate  dispatch  of  food 
to  the  starving  Germans.  In  1919  he  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Plumer,  of 
Messines  and  of  Bilton,  Yorkshire.  He 
also  received  the  thanks  of  parliament,  a 
grant  of  £30,000,  and  was  promoted  field- 
marshal. 

Even  before  peace  had  been  signed, 
Plumer  entered  upon  the  third  period  of 
his  life,  the  nine  years  as  proconsul.  It 
opened  with  his  appointment  as  governor 
of  a  disturbed  and,  for  a  while,  unhappy 
Malta,  where  famine  and  the  fourteen 
points  were  breeding  trouble,  the  former 
among  the  people,  the  latter  among 
pohticians.  There  had  been  severe  riots 
and  some  rioters  had  been  killed.  When 
Plumer  landed  in  June  1919  he  foimd  a 
large  crowd  awaiting  him  and  a  guard  of 
300  men  from  the  navy.  He  at  once 
ordered  it  to  be  reduced  to  twenty  men. 
Seeing  laurel  wreaths  on  the  groimd,  he 
asked  the  reason,  and  hearing  that  two 
rioters  had  been  killed  at  that  spot,  he 
ordered  their  immediate  removal,  and 
proceeded  with  the  formalities.  The  people 
were  impressed,  for  it  was  clear  that 
Plumer  was  a  man  who  knew  his  own 
mind;  and  it  was  not  long  before  they 
were  to  have  ample  evidence  that  their 
well-being  and  the  removal  of  just 
grievances  was  the  governor's  first  care. 
Plumer  made  great  efforts  to  understand 
the  people  racially  and  historically,  and 
he  saw  how  little  ground  there  was  for 
Itahan  claims.  The  favourable  impression 
which  he  had  thus  made  was  confirmed  by 
the  address  delivered  by  this  Anglican 
general  to  the  clergy  of  the  island  (1924) 
when,  in  accordance  with  custom,  they 
waited  on  him  with  candles  at  the  palace 
on  Candlemas  Day.  He  showed  sympathy, 
emphasizing  how  religion  must  be  part  of 
the  people's  lives  and  how  the  clergy  were 
essential  to  their  well-being,  but  there  was 
also  some  scolding  for  indifference  and 
neglect. 

It  was  during  Plumer's  governorship 


that  in  1921  the  first  representative 
government  of  Malta  was  introduced,  and 
the  legislative  assembly  was  inaugurated 
by  the  Prince  of  Wales.  When  Plumer 
left  in  1924,  the  manifestations  of  esteem 
and  affection  were  very  great. 

But  civil  affairs  were  not  the  only 
questions  to  which  Plumer  had  to  attend. 
Harington  was  commanding  the  Allied 
garrison  in  the  Dardanelles  and  Constanti- 
nople with  a  small  British  contingent 
when  in  1922  the  Turks  under  Mustapha 
Kemal  fell  upon  the  Greeks  in  Asia  Minor 
and  seriously  threatened  the  British 
garrison  at  Chanak.  Plumer  was  by 
chance  on  his  way  to  Constantinople  in 
the  admiral's  yacht  to  meet  his  old  chief 
of  the  general  staff.  Just  as  in  1918  he 
offered  all  his  men  to  Haig,  so  did  he  come 
to  the  help  of  Harington,  sending  from 
Malta  every  man  on  whom  he  could  lay 
hands. 

In  August  1925  Plumer  accepted  the 
office  of  high  commissioner  in  Palestine, 
to  which  Transjordan  was  added  in  1928, 
and  again  his  personality  helped  con- 
siderably in  making  Jewish  settlers  and 
Arabs  reahze  that,  while  sympathetically 
hearing  their  troubles,  he  would  allow  no 
disorder.  The  work  was  strenuous, 
especially  when  carried  on  with  his 
thoroughness,  and  the  years  of  war  having 
taken  their  toll,  in  July  1928  he  resigned, 
and  was  raised  to  the  degree  of  a  viscount 
m  1929. 

Plumer  died  in  London  16  July  1932, 
and  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
He  married  in  1884  his  second  cousin, 
Annie  Constance  (died  1941),  yoimger 
daughter  of  George  Goss,  of  Park  Crescent, 
London,  and  was  succeeded  as  second 
viscovmt  by  his  only  son,  Thomas  Hall 
Rokeby  Plumer  (1890-1944).  Of  his  three 
daughters,  who  all  survived  him,  the 
eldest  became  principal  of  St.  Anne's 
Society,  Oxford.  His  many  honours  in- 
cluded the  G.C.M.G.  (1916),  G.C.V.O. 
(1917),  G.C.B.  (1918),  and  G.B.E.  (1924). 
Cricket  ever  commanded  his  great  enthu- 
siasm and  he  was  elected  president  of  the 
Marylebone  Cricket  Club  in  1929. 

To  ambition  of  service  Plumer  added 
energy  and  enterprise  in  military  matters, 
and  there  were  inherent  in  him  those 
characteristics  of  good  faith  and  robust 
common  sense  for  which  he  was  noted  and 
which  were  responsible  for  his  marked  gift 
of  endearing  himself  to  all  who  came  into 
contact  with  him,  from  general  to  private 
soldier. 

A   portrait   of    Plumer  by    Rene    de 


70S 


Plumer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I'Hopital  is  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 
He  figures  in  J.  S.  Sargent's  picture, 
'Some  General  Officers  of  the  Great  War', 
painted  in  1922,  which  hangs  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery.  A  cartoon  of 
him  by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
13  November  1902.  He  is  also  included 
in  the  cartoon  'A  General  Group'  by 
'Spy'  which  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
29  November  1900. 

[Sir  Charles  Harington,  Plumer  of  Messines, 
1935 ;  Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  History  of 
the  Great  War.  Military  Operations.  France 
and  Belgium,  1914-1916, 1922-1931,  and  Cyril 
Falls,  1917,  1940;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Georgc  Macmunn. 

PLUNKETT,  SiE  HORACE  CURZON 
(1854-1932),  Irish  statesman,  was  born 
at  Sherborne  House,  Gloucestershire,  24 
October  1854,  the  third  son  in  the  family 
of  four  sons  and  three  daughters  of  Edward 
Plimkett,  sixteenth  Lord  Dunsany,  ad- 
miral, by  his  wife,  Anne  Constance, 
younger  daughter  of  John  Button,  second 
Lord  Sherborne.  She  was  a  lady  of  great 
gentleness  and  courage  who  died  of  con- 
sumption in  1858  at  the  age  of  forty. 
Their  home  was  at  Dunsany,  co.  Meath, 
and  family  ties  and  the  Irish  home  meant 
much  to  Plunkett.  He  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  at  University  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in  modern 
history  in  1877.  Never  robust  and  now 
threatened  by  lung  trouble,  in  1879  he 
sought  health  and  fortune  by  sharing  a 
ranch  in  Wyoming,  on  the  foothills  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  His  diary  reveals  the 
hardships  and  humours  of  those  pioneering 
days.  For  ten  years  he  followed  ranching, 
coming  back  to  Ireland  each  year  for  a 
short  period.  In  September  1888  he  pub- 
lished in  the  Nineteenth  Century  an  article 
on  'Co-operative  Stores  for  Ireland'.  In 
1889,  partly  for  family  reasons,  he  returned 
and  made  his  home  in  Ireland,  but  con- 
tinued every  year  to  visit  the  United 
States  of  America  where  he  still  had  pro- 
perty and  where  he  kept  in  touch  with 
public  men  and  affairs. 

In  1889  the  campaign  for  agricultural 
co-operation  opened.  With  strategic  sense 
Plunkett  saw  that  the  best  demonstration 
of  the  value  of  co-operation  would  be  to 
organize  co-operative  creameries  in  the 
dairy  districts  of  Southern  Ireland.  De- 
spite great  difficulties,  by  June  1891,  at 
the  second  annual  conference  of  dairy  co- 
operative societies,  held  at  Limerick,  he 
reported  that  a  thousand  Irish  farmers 
had  between  them  subscribed  £10,000  and 


formed  eighteen  co-operative  societies. 
1891  the  Congested  Districts  Board 
Ireland  was  constituted,  and  Plunkett  ^ 
appointed  a  member,  a  position  whi4 
he  held  until  1918.  In  1892  he  entered 
parliament  as  unionist  member  for  South 
County  Dublin.  In  1894  there  was 
founded  the  Irish  Agricultural  Organiza- 
tion Society,  the  forerunner  of  similar 
organizations  in  England,  Scotland,  and 
Wales — a  great  landmark  in  Plunkett's 
life.  He  remained  president  until  1899.  In 
1895  on  his  initiation,  the  Recess  Com- 
mittee was  convened,  and  Irishmen  of 
differing  political  and  religious  views  met 
to  consider  the  agricultural  and  industrial 
welfare  of  Ireland.  Within  a  year  they 
issued  a  report  which  led  in  1899  to  the 
establishment  by  act  of  parliament  of  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  and  Technical 
Instruction  for  Ireland.  In  all  this  creative 
work  Plunkett  was  a  leader  who  knew  how 
to  choose  and  win  men.  Just  as  in  the 
field  of  voluntary  agricultural  co-operation 
the  Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society 
was  the  model,  so  in  the  sphere  of  statu- 
tory machinery  of  government  the  new 
department  in  Dublin  deeply  influenced 
subsequent  developments  in  England, 
Scotland,  and  Wales. 

Plunkett  was  appointed  vice-president 
of  the  department  and  for  seven  years 
guided  its  policy  and  administration  in 
this  very  critical  period.  The  office  was 
political,  but  when  in  1900,  shortly  after 
the  establishment  of  the  department,  he 
lost  his  seat  in  South  Covmty  Dublin,  he 
was  retained  as  vice-president  and,  despite 
party  political  agitation,  continued  to  hold 
this  position  vmtil  the  spring  of  1907.      -t 

Important  as  were  these  achievements 
alike  in  volimtary  and  in  statutory  organi- 
zation, Still  more  far-reaching  was  the 
philosophy  of  rural  life  which  Plimkett's 
vision  and  experience  were  bringing  into 
clearer  expression.  From  early  days  in  the 
movement  Plunkett  had  emphasized,  first 
that  farmers  must  rely  upon  themselves, 
secondly  that  they  must  co-operate  in  the 
face  of  modern  competition.  Self-help 
justified  state  aid,  but  state  aid  must 
always  be  directed  to  calling  out  self-help. 
Gradually  the  wider  significance  of  the 
movement  revealed  itself.  Ireland  was  a 
demonstration  centre,  but  the  problem 
was  world-wide.  The  industrial  revolution 
needed  to  be  redressed  by  an  agricultural 
revolution  through  co-operation.  It  was 
more  than  a  matter  of  technical  business 
organization.  Agriculture  was  a  life,  and 
from  Plunkett's  visionary,  practical  mind 


706 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Plunkett 


the  new  creed  emerged,  'Better  farming, 
better  business,  better  living'.  Theodore 
lloosevelt,  president  of  the  United  States, 
in  his  conservation  and  comitry  life  policy, 
took  over  Plunkett's  slogan  and,  as  he 
said,  'megaphoned'  it  over  his  coimtry. 
It  was  but  one  example  of  the  wide  in- 
fluence which  Plunkett  had,  in  peace  and 
in  war,  in  building  up  Anglo-American 
understanding  and  co-operation.  Here 
also  he  was  a  pioneer. 

By  1907,  when  he  resigned  from  the 
Irish  Department  of  Agriculture,  Plun- 
kett's main  constructive  work  was  accona- 
plished.  The  next  twenty-five  years  were 
devoted  to  spreading  the  gospel.  In  De- 
cember he  was  re-elected  president  of  the 
Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society, 
land  in  1908  public  appreciation  of  his 
i  services  was  marked  by  the  purchase  and 
I  gift  to  him  of  84  Merrion  Square,  Dublin, 
ito  be  called  'The  Plunkett  House'  and  to 
i  become  the  headquarters  of  the  agricul- 
jtural  co-operative  movement.  His  main 
interest  continued  to  centre  in  his  work  for 
ico-operation,  and  he  fought  strenuously 
to  maintain  the  independence  of  the  move- 
ment. But  he  was  deeply  concerned  at  the 
growing  acuteness  of  the  Irish  pohtical 
situation  and  by  the  proposals  to  seek  a 
solution  by  partition.  The  progress  of  land 
ipurchase  and  the  experience  of  administer- 
ing the  Irish  Department  of  Agriculture 
helped  his  conversion  to  home  rule.  But 
partition  he  hated,  and  he  never  ceased  in 
his  efforts  to  avert  it.  In  1914,  at  the 
height  of  the  crisis,  he  made  'an  appeal 
to  Ulster  not  to  desert  Ireland'.  In  the 
Irish  Convention  of  1917-1918,  of  which 
he  was  chairman,  his  efforts  were  imtiring 
to  try  to  find  a  solution  which  would  keep 
Ireland  united.  In  1919,  when  he  founded 
the  Irish  Dominion  League,  his  aim  again 
was  to  keep  Ireland  vmited  and  to  keep 
her  within  the  British  Commonwealth. 
His  public-spirited  efforts  seemed  to  fail, 
but,  as  in  the  field  of  co-operation,  they 
show  a  consistency  of  conviction  and  a 
tenacity  of  purpose  which  never  yielded 
in  the  face  of  difficulties.  In  1922  he 
accepted  membership  of  the  Senate  of  the 
Irish  Free  State,  but  he  was  seldom  able 
to  attend,  and  when  he  was  in  the  United 
States  in  1923  his  house,  Kilteragh,  Fox- 
rock,  CO.  Dublin,  was  burned  down  by 
political  extremists.  He  resigned  after  a 
year,  and  with  failing  health,  and  the 
^rowing  influence  overseas  of  his  work,  he 
decided  to  make  his  home  in  England  at 
Weybridge.  As  early  as  1919  he  had 
established  in  London  a  foundation  to 


advance  study  and  research  in  agricultural 
co-operation.  His  work  now  reached  far 
beyond  Ireland  and  Great  Britain.  In 
1924  a  notable  conference  on  agricultural 
co-operation  in  the  British  Empire  was 
held  at  Wembley  under  Plimkett's  presi- 
dency. In  1925  he  visited  South  Africa, 
partly  for  his  health  but  also  in  order  to 
help  the  agricultural  co-operation  move- 
ment in  that  country.  In  1927,  unable  to 
accept  membership  of  the  royal  commis- 
sion on  agriculture  in  India,  he  submitted, 
at  the  special  request  of  the  chairman,  an 
extensive  memorandum  on  'co-operation 
as  a  factor  in  the  economic,  social  and 
political  development  of  rural  India'. 

In  the  early  years  Plunkett  had  had  to 
face  first  apathy,  then  opposition,  and  in 
his  last  years  he  had  to  combat  what  to 
him  was  a  perversion  of  the  pure  gospel — 
'  compulsory  co-operation ' .  Men  could  not 
be  made  true  co-operators  by  act  of  parlia- 
ment. Co-operation  recognized  the  intel- 
Ugent  conviction  and  free  loyalty  of  the 
individual.  With  that  idea  and  with  the 
mission  of  it  he  was  possessed.  It  was  so 
to  the  end,  when,  despite  great  physical 
suffering  and  weakness,  the  flame  of  his 
faith  burned  bright  and  clear.  He  died, 
unmarried,  at  Weybridge  26  March  1932. 

Plunkett  was  sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy 
Council  in  1897  and  appointed  K.C.V.O. 
in  1903.  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1902 ; 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  xmi- 
versities  of  Oxford  (1906)  and  Dublin 
(1908) ;  and  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  University  College,  Oxford,  in  1909. 

Plunkett  published  two  books,  Ireland 
in  the  New  Century  (1904)  and  The  Rural 
Life  Problem  of  the  United  States  (1910), 
as  well  as  a  very  considerable  niunber  of 
pamphlets.  A  collection  of  these  and  of 
memoranda,  speeches,  letters  to  the  press, 
and  private  correspondence  has  been  made 
in  the  Co-operative  Reference  Library, 
housed  in  the  Horace  Plunkett  Founda- 
tion in  Bloomsbury.  Plunkett's  diary  (52 
volumes,  1879-1932)  has  been  preserved 
and  is  under  the  control  of  his  literary 
executor. 

A  portrait  of  Plunkett  by  Dermod 
O'Brien  and  a  bronze  bust  by  Francis 
Derwent  Wood  are  in  the  Plunkett  House, 
Dublin ;  there  are  also  two  portraits  in  the 
Mimicipal  Art  Gallery,  Dublin,  the  one  by 
J.  B.  Yeats  and  the  other  by  Sir  John 
Lavery.  Two  crayon  drawings  by  Yeats 
were  at  Kilteragh,  but  it  is  not  known 
whether  they  have  siu:vived. 

[The  Times,  28  March  1932 ;  Papers  at  the 
Plunkett  House ;  R.  A.  Anderson,  With  Horace 


707 


Plunkett 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Plunkett  in  Ireland,  1935;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  G.  S.  Adams. 

POEL,  WILLIAM  (1852-1934),  actor, 
stage-director,  and  author,  was  born  in 
London  22  July  1852,  the  third  son  of 
William  Pole  [q.v.],  engineer  and  musi- 
cian, a  friend  and  supporter  of  the  pre- 
RaphaeUtes,  by  his  wife,  Matilda,  daughter 
of  Henry  Gauntlett  [q.v.],  vicar  of  Olney, 
and  sister  of  the  organist  and  composer 
H.  J.  Gauntlett  [q.v.].  His  father's  in- 
terest in  the  pre-Raphaelites  strongly 
influenced  the  boy,  who  was  to  bring 
kindred  ideals  to  bear  upon  the  stage.  He 
was  chosen  by  William  Holman  Hvmt 
[q.v.]  to  pose  for  the  well-known  picture 
in  the  Birmingham  Art  Gallery  of  'The 
Finding  of  the  Saviour  in  the  Temple '.  At 
an  early  age  yoimg  Pole  decided  to  become 
an  actor,  changing  his  name  to  Poel  for 
stage  purposes  on  the  suggestion  of  a  mis- 
print in  an  early  programme.  He  joined 
the  company  of  C.  J.  Mathews  [q.v.]  in 
1876,  went  to  Italy  with  Tomaso  Salvini, 
and  in  1881  began  a  lifework  which  was 
to  revolutionize  stage-production  by  pre- 
senting the  first  quarto  Hamlet  without 
scenery  at  the  St.  George's  Hall,  himself 
plajdng  Hamlet  to  the  Ophelia  of  Helen 
Maude,  afterwards  Lady  Tree.  In  the 
same  year  he  became  manager  of  the 
Royal  Victoria  Hall,  Waterloo  Road, 
afterwards  known  as  the  Old  Vic,  and  two 
years  later  joined  (Sir)  F.  R.  Benson  [q.v.] 
as  his  first  stage-manager.  In  1895  Poel 
founded  the  Ehzabethan  Stage  Society,  an 
outgrowth  of  the  Shakespeare  Reading 
Society  to  which  he  had  been  instructor 
for  eight  years.  He  presented  Elizabethan 
and  other  classics  in  the  halls  of  City 
companies,  the  Inns  of  Court,  and  else- 
where, in  conditions  approximating  to 
those  of  their  original  performance,  with- 
out scenery.  The  plays  could  thus  be 
acted  in  accordance  with  the  text,  instead 
of  being  transposed  and  cut  for  scenic  pur- 
poses, as  had  become  the  habit  in  specta- 
cvilar  revivals.  Poel  also  insisted  upon 
rapid  and  clear  speaking  of  blank  verse, 
with  varied  emphasis. 

Altogether  Poel  produced  seventeen  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  under  these  condi- 
tions, notably  Romeo  and  Juliet,  with  a 
Romeo  (Esme  Percy)  of  sixteen  and  a 
Juhet  (Dorothy  Minto)  of  fourteen,  the 
right  ages  according  to  the  text ;  Troiltis 
and  Cressida,  with  (Dame)  Edith  Evans 
as  Cressida;  Twelfth  Night,  presented,  as 
in    Shakespeare's    day,    at    the    Middle 


her 

1 


Temple  hall ;  and  The  Comedy  of  Err\ 
at  Gray's  Inn.  Among  other  memorab] 
revivals  of  his  were  Marlowe's  Dr.  Faust\ 
the  anonymous  Arden  ofFeversham,  For 
The  Broken  Heart,  Milton's  Samson  A, 
nistes,  the  Book  of  Job  in  dramatic  fo: 
and  Jonson's  Sejanus;  His  Fall.  At  t 
Playhouse,  Oxford,  in  1924,  he  gave  t 
first  performance  in  England  of  Fratricide 
Punished,  a  translation  of  what  is  pro- 
bably an  early  German  version  of  Hamlet. 
In  1901,  in  association  with  (Sir)  P.  Ben 
Greet  [q.v.],  he  arranged  the  first  modem 
production  of  the  morality-play,  Every- 
man, in  the  Charterhouse.  He  himself 
gave  a  remarkable  grotesque  study  of  the 
character  of  Death.  This  production 
brought  new  life  to  the  old  morahty,  which 
has  been  constantly  presented  ever  since 
in  all  sorts  of  forms  the  world  over.  In 
1909  Poel  took  over  the  part  of  Father 
Keegan  in  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  John  Bu 
Other  Island,  lending  to  it  a  persoi 
inspiration  and  dignity. 

Apart  from  his  work  as  actor  and  p: 
ducer,  Poel  was  the  author  of  seve: 
plays,  including  Priest  or  Painter,  adapted 
from  William  Dean  Howell's  novel,  A 
Foregone  Conclusion,  and  produced  at  the 
Olympic  Theatre  in  1884,  and  Mehalah,  or 
The  Power  of  Will,  adapted  from  the  novel 
by  Sabine  Baring-Gould  [q.v.]  and  pro- 
duced at  the  Gaiety  Theatre  two  years 
afterwards  (1886).  In  1913  was  published 
his  Shakespeare  in  the  Theatre,  an  invalu- 
able exposition  of  his  views  both  on  the 
plays  themselves  and  on  their  production. 
He  published  from  time  to  time  many 
pamphlets,  notably  Prominent  Points  in 
the  Life  and  Writings  of  Shakespeare  (1919), 
arranged  in  foiu*  tables,  which  originally 
appeared  in  the  Bulletin  of  the  John  By- 
lands  Library,  Manchester. 

Towards  the  close  of  his  life  Poel  pre- 
pared a  privately  printed  record  of  his 
productions,  with  inserted  photographs 
and  notes  by  himself,  and  presented  it  to 
twenty -five  of  his  friends.  Shortly  before 
his  death  at  Putney  13  December  1934  he 
was  twice  offered  a  knighthood,  but  de- 
cUned  it.  His  love  for  the  theatre  was 
entirely  selfless.  His  initiative,  imagina- 
tion, learning,  and  kindly  but  strong  per- 
sonahty  never  won  in  his  lifetime  the 
recognition  which  they  deserved.  He 
married  in  1894  Ella  Constance,  eldest 
daughter  of  the  Rev.  Alfred  Locock,  and 
a  devoted  and  understanding  helpmeet. 
Their  only  child  died  some  years  before 
her  father. 

A  portrait  of  Poel  in  the  character  of 


708 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pollock,  E.  M. 


I 'at her  Keegan,  by  Henry  Tonks,  was  pre- 
.(II  ted  to  him  by  his  friends  on  his 
( iiihtieth  birthday  and  is  now  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

|W.  Poel,  Notes  on  Some  of  William  PoeVs 
;Hage  Productions  (privately  printed),  1983, 
jiind  Shakespeare  in  the  Theatre,  1918;  The 
iTinies,  14  December  1984;  personal  know- 
ledge.] S.  R.  LrrxLEWOOD. 

i'OLLOCK,  ERNEST  MURRAY,  first 
\  iscouNT  Hanworth  (1861-1936),  judge, 
iwas  born  at  Wimbledon  25  November 
11861,  the  fifth,  but  fourth  surviving,  son 
if  George  Frederick  Pollock,  queen's  re- 
iKinbrancer,  by  his  wife,  Frances  Diana, 
llaughter  of  Henry  Herbert,  rector  of 
jEtathdowney,  Queen's  county.  He  was 
l^randson  of  Sir  Jonathan  Frederick  Pol- 
ock,  lord  chief  baron  of  the  Exchequer, 
rreat-nephew  of  Sir  David  Pollock  and 
•iir  George  Pollock,  nephew  of  Sir  William 
Frederick  Pollock  and  Sir  Charles  Edward 
•ollock,  and  first  cousin  of  Sir  Frederick 
'ollock  [qq.v.].  He  was  a  scholar  of 
harterhouse,  and  passed  from  there  to 
IVinity  College,  Cambridge,  being  called 
o  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1885. 
jJe  became  a  bencher  in  1914  and  treasurer 
n  1936.  He  had  a  fairly  good  practice  as 
li  junior,  and  took  silk  in  1905.  At  the 
ijeneral  election  of  January  1910,  after 
jwo  unsuccessful  efforts  (1900  and  1906) 
it  Spalding,  he  was  elected  conservative 
inember  of  parliament  for  Warwick  and 
Ueamington  and  held  the  seat  imtil  1923. 
He  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  1917,  In 
l919  he  was  appointed  solicitor-general, 
md  in  March  1922  attorney -general,  re- 
ligning  that  office  when  the  coalition 
j;overnment  broke  up  in  October.  He  had 
|)een  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in 
February. 

'  As  an  advocate  Pollock  never  attained 
he  front  rank.  Indeed,  he  was  deemed 
ortimate  in  being  nominated  law  officer, 
here  being  a  dearth  of  eminent  advocates 
imong  politicians  of  the  conservative 
>arty  when  he  was  appointed.  Nor  can  it 
)e  said  that  as  law  officer  he  rose  to  the 
iccasion  so  far  as  practice  in  the  courts 
vas  concerned.  Yet  both  his  circum- 
tances  and  his  quaUties  were  calculated 
o  produce  an  advocate  of  the  first  class. 
If  was  born  to  one  of  the  best-knoAvn 

gal  names  of  the  period,  and  inherited 
he  Pollock  face,  which  his  great-grand- 
aother  Sarah  Homeria  Parsons,  the  wife 
f  the  saddler  from  Berwick,  transmitted 
o  so  many  of  her  descendants.  Moreover, 
\c  had  a  fine  presence,  infinite  zest,  an 


excellent  memory,  and  a  quick,  although 
not  a  deep,  intelligence.  He  was  never  at 
a  loss  for  a  word,  had  plenty  of  confidence, 
and  a  resounding  if  somewhat  strident 
voice.  Finally,  he  was  scrupulously  honest, 
a  quality  which  is  more  valuable  to  the 
advocate  of  to-day  than  is  generally  under- 
stood, at  any  rate  outside  the  profession. 
Yet  in  the  conduct  of  difficult  and  com- 
plicated cases  such  as  fall  to  the  lot  of  law 
officers,  he  was  often  obviously  outclassed 
by  the  counsel  who  opposed  him.  Parti- 
cularly in  the  Armstrong  case  (1922),  an 
action  in  which  the  accused  was  charged 
with  poisoning  his  wife,  his  handling  of 
the  prosecution  was  much  criticized.  He 
appeared  to  prefer  intuition  to  close 
reasoning  in  his  arguments,  a  course  which 
did  not  assist  the  court. 

When  the  revolt  of  the  conservative 
party  occurred  in  1922,  and  the  coalition 
was  wrecked  at  the  famous  meeting  of 
that  party  at  the  Carlton  Club  (19  Octo- 
ber), Pollock  stood  by  the  coalition  and 
went  into  exile.  The  new  conservative 
prime  minister,  Bonar  Law,  when  he 
formed  his  government,  offered  through 
Lord  Cave  to  Pollock  and  Sir  Leslie  Scott, 
respectively  attorney-general  and  solicitor- 
general  in  the  coalition  government,  the 
posts  of  home  secretary  and  attorney- 
general,  leaving  it  to  their  choice  which 
post  each  of  them  should  occupy.  Having 
formed  and  expressed  a  definite  opinion 
against  the  break-up  of  the  coaUtion,  both 
preferred  to  stand  aside  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  contrary  to  the  public  interest, 
and  that  it  was  inconsistent  with  constitu- 
tional propriety  for  them  to  accept  office 
in  the  new  government.  Accordingly,  Pol- 
lock returned  to  the  bar,  and  to  many  it 
seemed  that  his  career  was  at  an  end.  He 
was  neither  essential  to  the  government, 
nor  a  danger  to  it  if  left  out.  For  he  was 
too  serious  and  loyal  a  conservative  to  be 
a  nuisance  to  his  party.  He  was  consoled 
with  a  baronetcy  in  November. 

A  year  later  (1923)  Pollock  was  offered 
by  Baldwin  the  post  of  master  of  the 
Rolls,  the  third  highest  post  in  the  legal 
hierarchy.  The  appointment  was  imex- 
pected  and  the  subject  of  considerable 
criticism  both  in  the  press  and  at  the  bar. 
Indeed,  he  was  not  legally  or  intellectually 
of  the  same  calibre  as  the  eminent  holders 
of  that  office  during  the  previous  twenty 
years.  Nevertheless,  in  the  ordinary  run 
of  appellate  work  in  the  Court  of  Appeal 
over  which  he  presided,  he  may  be  said  to 
have  disappointed  his  critics.  He  was  a 
good  president  and  courteous  to  the  bar. 


709 


Pollock,  E.  M. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


His  wide  knowledge  of  the  world  enabled 
him  to  pick  up  the  facts  of  a  case  quickly. 
And  if  his  judgements  were  sometimes 
rather  long,  they  were  decided  and  clear. 

But  Pollock's  greatest  service  to  his 
generation  and  to  posterity  lay  in  the 
industry  and  enthusiasm  which  he  brought 
to  the  execution  of  his  duty  as  custodian 
of  records.  The  Law  of  Property  Amend- 
ment Act  (1924)  by  its  second  schedule 
added  to  section  144  of  the  Law  of  Pro- 
perty Act  (1922)  a  new  section  (144  a) 
conferring  on  him  powers  which  in  other 
hands  might  have  lain  fallow.  Here  was 
a  field  in  which  Pollock's  conservative  outr 
look  and  veneration  for  the  past  foiuid  a 
welcome  and  useful  outlet.  He  used  these 
powers  to  the  full,  and  inspired  others  to 
join  in  a  movement  to  save,  before  it  was 
too  late,  the  contemporary  records  of 
manors  which  lay  rotting  in  the  offices  of 
country  solicitors,  in  manor  houses,  or  on 
the  rubbish  heap.  He  was  always  willing 
to  spend  his  leisure  in  addressing  meetings 
far  and  wide  as  to  the  mine  of  contem- 
porary medieval  documents  which  this 
country  was  so  fortunate  as  to  possess. 
Scholars  and  historians  owe  much  to  his 
unflagging  efforts  in  this  direction.  The 
awakening  of  interest  and  pride  which 
resulted  has  not  been  confined  to  purely 
manorial  records:  and  this  country  is  no 
longer  to  be  reproached  for  being  the  re- 
pository of  medieval  documentary  evi- 
dence unique  in  quaUty  and  quantity,  but 
cared  for  by  none  and  explored  mainly  by 
the  scholars  of  foreign  countries. 

In  1926  Pollock  was  raised  to  the  peer- 
age as  Baron  Hanworth,  taking  his  title 
from  the  village  in  Middlesex  where  his 
grandfather,  the  lord  chief  baron,  had 
bought  an  estate  in  1834.  In  1935  he 
resigned  the  mastership  of  the  Rolls  owing 
to  increasing  ill  health,  and  was  advanced 
to  a  viscountcy  in  January  1936.  He  died 
at  Hythe,  Kent,  22  October  of  that  same 
year. 

In  1929  Hanworth  published  a  Ufa  of 
his  grandfather.  Lord  Chief  Baron  Pollock, 
which  supplies  a  key  to  his  character.  A 
tenacious  memory,  coupled  with  an  excep- 
tional gift  of  mimicry,  made  him  an  ideal 
raconteur  and  endeared  him  to  his  fellow 
benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple.  He  was  a 
keen  sportsman,  fond  of  shooting  and 
fishing,  and  of  the  country  generally.  He 
was  a  good  and  religious  man,  whose 
simple  piety  was  not  obscured  by  a  slight 
tendency  to  pomposity.  Indeed,  Lord 
Hewart,  an  acute  critic  of  his  fellow  men, 
described  him  as  the  model  of  a  Christian 


gentleman.    He  married  in  1887  Lau: 
Helen,  eldest  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Sail 
first  baronet,  a  Staffordshire  banker,  an< 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter.    He  met 
future  wife  at  Stafford  in  1884,  when 
was  marshal  to  Mr.  Justice  Manisty 
other  judge.  Baron  Huddlestone,  insis 
upon  the  lodgings  being  kept  at  a  ve 
high  temperature,  and  the  result  was  a  fir 
Salt  entertained  both  judges  and  marshal 
at  Weeping  Cross,  his  home  nearby.  Han- 
worth's  son  was  killed  in  action  in  France 
in  March  1918,  and  he  was  succeeded  as 
second  viscount  by  his  grandson,  David 
Bertram  Pollock  (born  1916).  His  younger 
brother  Bertram  was  bishop  of  Norwich 
from  1910  to  1942. 

A  portrait  of  Hanworth  by  J.  M.  Crea- 
lock  hangs  in  the  Inner  Temple. 

[The  Times,  23  and  27  October  1936 ;  p; 
vate  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Fredekic  Wrottesley. 


POLLOCK,  Sir  FREDERICK,  thiri 
baronet  (1845-1937),  jm-ist,  was  born  in 
London  10  December  1845,  the  eldest  of 
the  three  sons  of  Sir  William  Frederick 
Pollock,  second  baronet,  queen's  remem- 
brancer [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Juliet,  daughter 
of  Henry  Creed,  vicar  of  Corse,  Gloucester- 
shire. He  was  grandson  of  Sir  Jonathan 
Frederick  Pollock,  first  baronet,  lord  chii 
baron  of  the  Exchequer  [q.v.],  and  fi: 
cousin  of  Ernest  Murray  Pollock,  fi 
viscoimt  Hanworth  [q.v.].  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Eton,  where  he  was  a  king's 
scholar,  and  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
of  which  he  was  elected  a  scholar  in  1865, 
and  where  he  distinguished  himself  as  Pitt 
scholar  (1865)  and  as  second  in  the  classi 
cal  tripos  of  1867  and  sixth  among 
senior  optimes  of  the  mathematical  tripoi 
of  that  same  year.  He  was  awarded 
first  chancellor's  medal  in  1867  and  in  1868 
he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Trinity.  In  1871 
he  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn, 
of  which  he  was  elected  a  bencher  in  1906. 

From  this  time  onward.  Pollock's  main 
preoccupation  was  his  activity  as  a  legal 
writer,  professor,  and  editor.  His  appear- 
ances in  court  were  infrequent  and  soon 
ceased  for  professional  purposes.  His  en- 
thusiasm for  the  study  of  the  principles  of 
law  had  been  kindled  by  the  teaching  of 
two  great  lawyers,  Nathaniel  Lindley, 
Lord  Lindley  [q.v.]  and  Sir  James  Shaw 
Willes  [q.v.].  To  Lindley  he  wrote:  'In 
yom-  chamibers  and  by  your  example  I 
learnt  the  root  of  the  matter  which  too 
many  things  in  conunon  practice  con- 
spired to  obscure,  that  the  law  is  neither 


] 


mil 

rs^^ 


»0d, 
Pitt  , 
bssiay 
thfl 
po^ 
the    I 


710 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Pollock,  F. 


ix  trade  nor  a  solemn  jugorlery  but  a 
science.'  He  soon  set  to  work  to  produce 
ii  scries  of  books  which  marked  a  new  era 
of  thought  in  English  law.  In  1876  he 
jpublished  his  Principles  of  Contract  at  Law 
land  in  Equity.  It  was  not  a  mere  text- 
book for  practitioners,  but  a  work  for 
students  of  principles  and  legal  thinkers. 
In  1887  appeared  a  companion  work  on 
The  Law  of  Torts,  marked  by  the  same 
wealth  of  legal  learning  and  thought,  com- 
bining the  philosophy  of  law  with  its  prac- 
tical aspects.  Both  these  works  have 
exercised  a  great  influence  on  the  theory 
and  practice  of  law  and  have  become 
classics  and  ought  so  to  continue  for  long. 
They  originated  a  new  era  in  that  they 
were  literature,  models  of  classical  style 
Df  large  planning,  and  accurate  thought. 
They  have  been  read  both  in  England 
and  in  the  United  States  of  America  and 
wherever  the  common  law  is  studied  and 
practised.  In  1883  he  published  a  small 
i;lassic  on  The  Land  Laws. 

In  that  same  year  Pollock  became  Cor- 
pus professor  of  jurisprudence  at  Oxford 
(with  a  fellowship  at  Corpus  Christi  Col- 
lege) and  he  held  the  chair  until  1903. 
During  these  years  he  made  important 
contributions  to  the  subject  of  his  chair. 
In  1890  he  published  his  Introduction  to 
the  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics.  His 
First  Book  of  Jurisprudence  for  Students  of 
the  Common  Law  (1896)  has  been  described 
by  a  successor  in  the  chair  as  probably  the 
most  original  book  on  the  subject  pub- 
lished in  England.  In  his  volume  on  Pos- 
session in  the  Common  Law  (1888,  to  which 
(Sir)  R.  S.  Wright,  q.v.,  contributed  part 
iii)  he  sought  to  show  that  English  law 
ihaid  developed,  in  the  cases,  a  theory  of 
possession  as  logical  as  anything  that 
iRoman  or  civil  law  could  produce.  And 
he  did  not  confine  his  lecturing  to  Oxford. 
He  was  professor  of  common  law  in  the 
Inns  of  Court  from  1884  to  1890 ;  he  lec- 
tured at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1884; 
and  in  1894  he  visited  India  where  he 
delivered  the  Tagore  law  lectures,  pub- 
lished in  the  same  year  as  The  Law  of 
Fraud,  Misrepresentation  and  Mistake  in 
British  India. 

After  he  had  resigned  the  chair  at  Ox- 
ford, Pollock  lectured  at  Harvard  in  1903 
and  at  Columbia  University  in  1912.  To 
these  lectures  we  owe  some  of  his  most 
illuminating  work  such  as  The  Genius  of 
the  Common  Law  (1912).  A  valuable 
collection  of  essays  was  published  under 
the  title  Essays  in  Jurisprudence  and 
Ethics  (1882).  Another  collection,  entitled 


Essays  in  the  Law,  of  which  that  on  the 
history  of  the  law  of  nature  is  famous,  was 
published  in  1922.  To  Select  Essays  in 
Anglo- American  Legal  History  {\907-li)09) 
he  contributed  a  valuable  chapter.  He 
also  contributed  to  Essays  in  Legal  History 
published  in  1913  under  the  editorship  of 
(Sir)  Paul  Vinogradoff  [q.v.].  Pollock, 
however,  did  not  fail  to  remark  that  the 
common  law  had  its  shortcomings,  in  that 
it  has  not  fully  satisfied  the  demands  of 
a  modern  social  conscience  which  has  been 
compelled  to  call  in  the  act  of  parliament 
to  supplement  or  override  the  individual- 
ism of  the  common  law :  but  he  more  often 
addressed  his  criticism  to  particular  deci- 
sions than  to  the  wider  issues  of  policy. 

Outside  the  limits  of  the  common  law. 
Pollock's  acti\ities  were  just  as  great.  He 
added  an  introduction  and  notes  to  Maine's 
Ancient  Law  (1906),  and  in  collaboration 
with  Sir  Dinshah  Mulla  he  issued  a  very 
fully  annotated  edition  of  the  Indian 
Contract  Act  and  Specific  Relief  Act  (1905), 
of  which  a  sixth  edition  was  brought  out 
in  1931.  But  as  an  editor,  his  principal 
service  was  his  editorship  from  1885  to 
1919  of  the  Law  Quarterly  Review.  He  was 
chiefly  responsible  for  its  foundation,  and 
he  was  a  constant  contributor,  several  of 
his  most  important  articles  being  first  pub- 
lished in  its  pages,  which  also  contained 
brief  notes  by  him  referring  to  current 
decisions  of  the  courts.  His  essays  were 
not  ephemeral  but  were  weighty  additions 
to  legal  learning  and  thought  and  to  com- 
parative law  and  legal  history.  But  a  chief 
service  of  the  Reiyiew  was  to  set  an  example 
to  all  the  law  journals  and  reviews  which 
have  promoted  the  discussion  and  criti- 
cism of  legal  problems.  And  at  the  same 
time  (from  1895  to  1935)  he  was  also 
editor-in-chief  of  the  Law  Reports,  that 
most  essential  part  of  the  English  legal 
machinery.  In  1936  he  was  co-editor  with 
Mr.  Alfred  Frank  Topham,  who  became 
sole  editor  in  1937. 

In  the  early  years  after  F.  W.  Maitland 
[q.v.]  had  been  called  to  the  bar.  Pollock 
met  him,  and  between  them  a  very  fruitful 
friendship  was  to  arise.  They  were  both 
members  of  the  Sunday  Tramps  Club 
which  had  been  founded  by  (Sir)  Leslie 
Stephen  [q.v.]  and  Pollock,  and  Pollock 
took  up  Maitland's  idea  of  the  History  of 
English  Law  before  the  Time  of  Edward  I 
(2  vols.,  1895,  second  ed.  1898),  a  work 
which,  although  it  bears  Pollock's  name 
on  the  title-pages.  Pollock  himself  fairly 
stated  was  almost  entirely  Maitland's  (as 
the  style  shows).    But  the  chapter  on 


711 


Pollock,  F. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Anglo-Saxon  law  is  Pollock's,  and  to  him 
must  go  the  credit  of  having  encouraged 
Maitland  and  taken  his  full  share  in  the 
planning  and  revision  of  the  book.  An- 
other fruitful  friendship  was  that  with 
OUver  Wendell  Holmes,  afterwards  an 
associate  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  whom  he  first  met  in 
London  in  1874,  and  with  whom  he  corre- 
sponded closely  until  Holmes's  death  in 
1935.  In  1941  appeared  a  memorial  of  this 
friendship,  entitled  The  Holmes-Pollock 
Letters  .  .  .  1874-1932.  The  English  edi- 
tion, with  an  introduction  by  his  son  Sir 
John  Pollock,  appeared  in  1942.  This 
vmique  correspondence  throws  great  light 
on  the  lives  and  ideas  of  these  two  men, 
so  akin  in  their  sympathies,  tastes,  and 
devotion  to  the  common  law,  and  em- 
bodies an  intimate  exchange  of  armchair 
confidences  about  their  reading,  their 
opinions  on  legal  matters,  and  their  general 
interests,  which  will  prove  for  future  his- 
torians an  illuminating  record  how  two 
cultivated  men,  each  in  his  hemisphere, 
thought  and  lived  in  the  decades  covered 
by  the  correspondence. 

Besides  these  specifically  legal  interests. 
Pollock's  help  was  called  upon  by  the 
government  on  various  occasions.  He  pre- 
pared the  draft  of  the  Partnership  Act  of 

1890  (in  1877  he  had  published  a  Digest 
of  the  Law  of  Partnership),  and  he  drafted 
several  Indian  bills.  He  advised  the 
government  on  the  Venezuelan  complica- 
tion of  1895,  and  served  on  several  royal 
commissions,  such  as  that  on  labour  from 

1891  to  1894,  and  he  was  chairman  of  the 
royal  commission  on  the  public  records  in 
1910. 

It  was  natural  that  Pollock  should  re- 
ceive many  honours.  Honorary  degrees 
were  conferred  upon  him  by  the  univer- 
sities of  Edinburgh,  Dublin,  Harvard,  Oslo, 
Columbia,  Paris,  and  Cambridge:  he  be- 
came a  corresponding  member  of  the 
Institut  de  France  and  an  associate  mem- 
ber of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Belgium.  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy in  1902 ;  and  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  in  1906, 
and  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1920. 
In  1911  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 
In  1914  he  was  appointed  the  Admiralty 
judge  of  the  Cinque  Ports,  a  post  which, 
as  he  used  to  lament,  however  ancient  and 
honourable,  did  not  give  him  a  single 
opportunity  of  showing  his  judicial  talents. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  not  until  1920, 
and  then,  it  is  said,  only  at  the  instance 
of  Lord  Birkenhead,  did  he  take  silk.  He 


succeeded  to   his  father's  baronetcy 
1888. 

This  long  catalogue  gives  no  idea  ofl 
Pollock's  vivid,  many-sided,  and  delight^ 
ful  life,  full  of  diversified  interests  and 
accomplishments.  He  was  deeply  in^ 
terested  in  philosophy  which  inspired 
ambition  to  define  the  nature  of  legal  con4 
cepts,  and  he  was  doubtless  helped  in  this 
by  his  study  of  Savigny  and  Thering.  Ii 
1880  he  published  a  life  of  Spinoza  wit! 
a  full  statement  of  his  philosophy  whicl 
Lord  Samuel  described  as  the  best  bool 
written  on  the  subject  in  English,  and 
1935  Pollock  published  a  brief  brochui 
on  Spinoza.  Moreover,  he  was  a  keen,| 
skilled,  and  expert  fencer ;  in  his  youngei 
days  an  enthusiastic  mountaineer  alona 
with  Holmes,  Stephen,  and  many  others! 
He  contributed  to  the  Badminton  Librar 
volume  on  Mountaineering  (1892)  and  was 
honorary  librarian  of  the  Alpine  Club.  He 
travelled  frequently  on  the  continent  oij 
Europe  and  knew  all  the  famous  pictui 
galleries,  and  was  an  ardent  connoisseui 
in  music.  He  was  an  accomplished  Unguis 
and  wrote  verses  in  Latin,  Greek,  FrenchJ 
German,  and  Italian.  He  had  a  keen  sense' 
of  humour  which  used  to  escape  in  his 
serious  legal  writings.  His  Leading  Cases 
done  into  English  (1876)  is  a  brilliant  and  by 
no  means  uninstructive  series  of  parodies  of 
the  decisions.  Of  his  lighter  and  non-legal 
publications  there  may  be  mentioned  The 
Etchingham  Letters  (with  E.  Fuller  Mait- 
land, 1899),  Outside  the  Law  (1927),  and, 
towards  the  end  of  his  life.  For  my  Grand- 
son. Remembrances  of  an  Ancient  Victorian 
(1933),  a  little  book  containing  much 
worldJy  wisdom  and  autobiographical 
material. 

Pollock  was  most  blessed  in  his  marriage, 
which  took  place  in  1873,  to  Georgina 
Harriet  (died  1935),  younger  daughter  of 
John  DeffeU,  of  Calcutta,  an  East  India 
merchant.  She  was  a  very  gracious  hostess 
and  a  woman  of  wide  intellectual  interests. 
They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  The  son, 
(Frederick)  John  Pollock  (born  1878),  the 
historian  and  author,  succeeded  as  fourth 
baronet  on  his  father's  death,  which 
occurred  in  London  in  his  ninety-second 
year  18  January  1937. 

It  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance to  historical  and  philosophical 
study  of  English  law  of  Pollock's  decision, 
made  after  some  hesitation,  not  to  return 
to  Cambridge  but  to  follow  a  vocation  in  a . 
scholar's  life  and  in  the  study  of  law  in! 
particular.  In  that  vocation  he  performed 
a  more  lasting  service  to  his  coimtry  and 


712 


I 

I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pollock,  H.  McD. 


to  the  world  than  would  have  been  his  lot 
in  classical  scholarship.  He  developed  his 
ideal  of  a  broad  culture  while  pioneering, 
at  least  in  England,  new  ideals  of  legal 
thought  and  theoretical  progress  in  the 
region  of  Anglo- American  law  and  of  juris- 
prudence. Thus  he  not  only  found  his 
metier  but  realized  a  happy,  useful,  and 
distinguished  Ufe,  even  more  than  if  he 
had  obtained  the  highest  positions  in  the 
law,  for  he  was  granted  good  health  and 
domestic  felicity,  and  he  lived  surrounded 
by  congenial  friends,  constantly  engrossed 
in  the  interests  and  activities  which  he 
loved,  moving  about  in  the  institutions 
dear  to  his  heart  like  Cambridge,  Oxford, 
and  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  drawing  satisfac- 
tion from  his  diversified  travels.  He  was 
cosmopolitan  in  sympathy  and  experience. 
It  has  indeed  been  said  that  his  reputation 
was  greater  abroad  than  at  home.  In  one 
sense  that  is  true,  because  of  the  admira- 
tion felt  in  other  coimtries  for  English  law 
and  for  the  ideal  of  the  English  gentleman 
and  scholar.  It  may  also  be  that  in  Eng- 
land, law  appeals  less  to  the  ordinary  man 
whether  of  higher  or  lower  station.  Pol- 
lock was  certainly  not  'popular'  in  his 
activities  or  way  of  life,  which  were  choice 
and  cloistered.  It  was  enough  for  him  to 
be  given  a  figure  in  the  selected  circles  of 
his  choosing;  but  he  was  not  a  selfish 
dilettante.  He  worked  hard  and  inces- 
santly at  his  proper  work,  as  a  teacher  of 
law.  His  legal  writings  advanced  the  study 
of  English  law  and  its  prestige  in  the 
world,  and  helped  to  make  it  more  fit  for 
its  high  destiny.  Our  English  law,  which 
looks  so  crude  in  the  Year  Books,  so 
pedantic  in  Coke,  and  so  uninspired  in  the 
eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries, 
has  nevertheless  established  itself  as  one 
of  the  two  great  legal  systems  of  mankind 
iand  has  become  the  law  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  world,  more  humane,  sensible, 
and  freedom-loving  than  any  other  sys- 
tem. This  was  Pollock's  great  inspiration, 
which  he  has  expressed  in  several  glowing 
and  eloquent  passages.  He  looked  beyond 
the  ordinary  lawyer's  insularity  to  the 
whole  sweep  in  time  and  place  of  the  com- 
mon law,  and  he  traced  it  from  its  earliest 
beginnings  to  its  modern  range  and  com- 
plexity. 

This  was  a  great  ideal  and  allied  to  it 
was  Pollock's  ideal  of  the  worth  of  the 
academic  lawyer,  the  legal  scholar  and 
thinker,  whose  work  was,  as  he  thought, 
too  much  disparaged  and  discredited  by 
the  legal  practitioner.  He  was  proud  to 
write  and  to  lecture,  and  to  stimulate 


others  to  do  so.  He  described  the  p>oor 
state  of  legal  research  and  teaching  in 
England  in  his  inaugural  lecture  as  Corpus 
professor.  He  achieved  much  towards 
remedying  those  defects,  and  in  that  way, 
and  by  his  writings.  Pollock  has  earned  a 
most  conspicuous  place  in  the  history  of 
English  law. 

[The  Times,  19  January  1937;  Law  Quar- 
terly Review,  April  1937;  Sir  Frederick  Pol- 
lock, For  My  Grandson,  1938 ;  The  Holmes- 
Pollock  Letters,  1942;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Wright. 

POLLOCK,      HUGH      McDOWELL 

(1852-1937),  Irish  politician,  was  bom  at 
Bangor,  co.  Down,  16  November  1852,  the 
third  and  youngest  son  of  James  Pollock, 
master  mariner,  by  his  wife,  Eliza  Mc- 
Dowell. He  was  educated  at  Bangor 
Endowed  School.  Until  the  year  1917  his 
activities  were  wholly  commercial,  but 
this  develojjed  his  vigorous  mental  gifts 
and  fitted  him  for  his  belated  public  career. 
Long  service  as  member  and  chairman 
(1918-1921)  of  the  Belfast  Harbour  Board 
and  the  Belfast  Ropeworks  and  as  member 
and  president  of  the  coimcil  of  the  Belfast 
Chamber  of  Conunerce  enabled  him  to 
assimilate  swiftly  government  administra- 
tion and  parliamentary  procedvu-e.  Muni- 
cipal administration  did  not  attract  him ; 
this  fact  and  his  abstention  from  politics 
explain  his  late  arrival  on  the  public 
stage.  The  business  of  Shaw,  PoUock,  & 
company,  flour  importers,  and  the  Lord 
shipping  line  involved  journeys  to  North 
America,  which,  with  travel  in  Europe, 
strengthened  his  natural  bent  for  learning 
about  the  political,  social,  and  business 
outlook  of  other  countries.  There  were 
few  subjects  of  discussion  which  he  could 
not  illuminate  from  a  well-stored  memory. 
A  deep  interest  in  education,  wide  reading, 
golf,  and  shooting  also  played  their  part  in 
moulding  an  ideal  minister  of  the  Crown. 
The  turning-point  of  Pollock's  career 
came  in  1917  when  he  was  nominated  to 
represent  the  Belfast  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce, as  a  member  of  the  abortive  Irish 
Convention  which  met  in  DubUn  in  a 
desperate  attempt  to  reconcile  the  diver- 
gent views  of  North  and  South.  He  was 
one  of  the  few  members  of  the  convention 
who  approached  the  home  rule  question 
dispassionately.  Swayed  by  no  political 
prejudices,  he  saw  it  as  an  economic  pro- 
blem and,  having  examined  the  data  of 
Anglo-Irish  finance,  he  concluded  that  the 
preservation  of  fiscal  imity  with  Great 
Britain  was  essential. 


718 


Pollock,  H.  McD. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


On  the  formation  of  the  Northern  Ire- 
land parliament  in  1921,  Pollock  was 
elected  a  member  for  South  Belfast,  which 
he  held  until  1929  when  he  became  mem- 
ber for  Windsor,  a  new  seat  comprising 
part  of  his  former  constituency;  he  was 
appointed  finance  minister  and  deputy- 
prime  minister  in  June  1921,  holding  both 
these  offices  until  his  death.  The  crown 
of  his  career  as  minister  was  his  success  in 
securing  the  acceptance  by  the  imperial 
government  of  the  principle  that  equal 
taxation  entitled  the  people  of  Northern 
Ireland  to  the  same  social  benefits  as  those 
of  Great  Britain,  and  that  only  after  these 
were  provided  should  the  statutory  con- 
tribution towards  imperial  expenditure  be 
assessed.  His  foresight  is  also  recorded  in 
the  Loans  Guarantee  legislation  which 
enabled  ship-building  yards  in  Belfast  to 
secure  orders  over  a  period  when  British 
ship  owners  were  unable  to  finance  new 
construction  from  their  unaided  resources. 
He  thus  retained  in  being  a  nucleus  of 
skilled  craftsmen  and  at  the  same  time 
provided  the  British  merchant  navy  with 
many  modem  fast  vessels  of  high  strategi- 
cal value  in  the  war  of  1939-1945. 

Although  Pollock  had  a  ready  and 
trenchant  style  in  debate,  he  was  no  party 
man.  His  interests  were  of  an  imperial 
cast,  those  of  a  statesman  rather  than  a 
politician.  He  was  appointed  C.H.  in  1936. 

In  1885  Pollock  married  Mrs.  Annie 
Robinson,  daughter  of  Andrew  Marshall, 
of  Brooklyn,  U.S.A.,  and  had  four  sons 
and  a  daughter.  He  died  in  Belfast 
15  April  1937. 

A  portrait  of  Pollock  by  Frank  McKelvey , 
in  the  possession  of  his  daughter,  Mrs. 
Cleaver,  was  destroyed  by  enemy  action. 

[The  Times,  16  April  1937;  Hansard, 
Parliamentary  Debates  (Northern  Ireland) ; 
Belfast  Newsletter,  16  April  1937;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

G.  C.  DUGGAN. 

POOLE,  REGINALD  LANE  (1857- 
1939),  historian,  was  bom  in  London  29 
March  1857,  the  younger  son  of  the  Arabic 
scholar  Edward  Stanley  Poole,  whose 
mother  was  Sophia  Poole  and  whose 
younger  brother  was  Reginald  Stuart 
Poole  [qq.v.].  Reginald's  mother,  Roberta 
Elizabeth  Louisa,  daughter  of  Charles 
Reddelien,  a  naturalized  German,  died  in 
1866  and  his  father  in  1867,  so  that  he 
and  his  brother,  Stanley  Edward  Lane- 
Poole  [q.v.],  were  brought  up  by  their 
grandmother  and  her  brother,  Edward 
William  Lane,  the  orientalist  [q.v.].  They 


never  went  to  school,  but  had  efflcien 
classical  tutors.  The  atmosphere  in  thei: 
home  at  Worthing  was  one  of  evangelic 
religion  and  oriental  learning.  In  187 
Reginald  went  up  to  Balliol  College,  Ox 
ford,  as  a  commoner.  At  this  time 
main  interest  was  in  Hebrew,  which 
those  days  was  studied  in  the  honou; 
school  of  theology.  During  his  first  te; 
he  won  a  theological  prize  at  Balliol,  and 
shortly  afterwards  he  was  elected  to  a 
Hebrew  exhibition  at  Wadham  College, 
whither  he  migrated.  His  Hebrew  brought 
him  into  contact  with  the  aged  Dr.  Pusey, 
for  whom  he  felt  'the  affection  of  a  pupil' 
and  whose  'spiritual  force'  he  acknow- 
ledged. He  spent  the  long  vacation  of 
1876  at  Leyden  over  a  translation  from 
the  Dutch  of  Jan  Pieter  Nicolaas  Land's 
Principles  of  Hebrew  Grammar  which  was 
pubUshed  the  same  year.  In  1877  he  re 
turned  to  Balliol  for  the  purpose  of  read  in, 
modern  history,  fortimately  with  Williai 
Stubbs  as  his  tutor.  His  classes  in  th( 
schools,  a  third  in  classical  moderatio 
and  seconds  in  theology  and  modem 
tory,  by  no  means  represented  his  intel 
lectual  quality,  and  in  1879  he  won  thi 
Lothian  essay  prize  which  was  published 
as  Tlie  History  of  the  Huguenots  of  the  Dis- 
persion (1880).  Perhaps  his  examinatioi 
record  partly  explains  his  not  being  elec 
to  a  college  fellowship  until  long  aftei 
wards,  but  the  chief  reason  for  this  wi 
that  he  married  as  early  as  1881  and  so 
could  not  undertake  to  live  in  college. 

After  a  year  as  an  assistant  in  the  de- 
partment of  manuscripts  at  the  British 
Museum,  Poole  was  appointed  in  1881  to 
a  Hibbert  travelling  scholarship:  he  was 
then  passing  through  a  phase  of  the 
'liberal  Christianity'  which  the  Hibbert 
Trust  represents.  In  1882  he  took  the 
degree  of  Ph.D.  at  Leipzig  and  published 
the  first  of  his  numerous  contributions  to 
the  history  of  music,  Sebastian  Bach. 
After  a  year  in  Ziirich,  he  published  some 
of  the  results  of  his  studies  in  his  Illustra- 
tions of  the  History  of  Medieval  Thought 
(1884,  2nd  ed.  1920).  This  excellent  book 
had  a  marked  influence  in  opening  up  in 
England  the  study  of  medieval  learning 
and  political  thought. 

By  this  time  Poole  had  settled  in  Ox- 
ford, where  he  remained  for  the  rest  of  his 
life.  He  took  a  full  share  in  historical 
teaching  and  examining.  From  1886  to 
1910  he  was  a  lecturer  at  Jesus  College; 
from  1898  to  1933  a  research  fellow,  and 
from  1933  an  honorary  fellow,  of  Magdalen 
College ;  from  1896  to  1927  university  lec- 


te<^H 
terfl 
(va^* 


714 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Poole,  S.  E.  L. 


1  iirer  in  diplomatic ;  and  from  1909  to  1927 
Ivccper  of  the  university  archives.  The 
llieavj'  routine  work  of  the  English  Histori- 
Ical  Review,  of  which  he  carried  the  main 
liurden  from  its  foundation  in  1886,  when 
le  was  assistant  editor,  to  his  resignation 
ol'  the  editorship  in  1920,  although  it 
iiKibled  him  to  render  signal  services  to 
liistorical  scholarship,  necessarily  pre- 
Ncnted  him  from  writing  long  books. 
[Nevertheless,  although  mainly  consisting 
!of  articles,  editions  and  calendars  of  manu- 
scripts, his  literary  output  was  very  large. 
In  1911-1912  he  delivered  the  Ford  lec- 
tures, published  in  1912  as  The  Exchequer 
in  the  Twelfth  Century.  The  Lectures  on 
\the  History  of  the  Papal  Chancery,  which 
he  delivered  as  Birkbeck  lecturer  in  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1912-1913  and 
published  in  1915,  form  his  largest  single 
contribution  to  diplomatic.  A  full  biblio- 
iXraphy  of  his  works  down  to  that  date 
I  compiled  by  his  younger  son,  Mr.  Austin 
Lane  Poole,  later  president  of  St.  John's 
College,  Oxford)  is  printed  in  the  volume 
Essays  in  History  presented  to  him  to 
celebrate  his  seventieth  birthday  in  1927. 
In  the  same  year  he  published  his  admir- 
able edition  of  John  of  Salisbury's  Historia 
Pontificalis.  At  the  age  of  seventy  his 
health  was  already  failing,  and  for  several 
iyears  at  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  unable 
to  leave  his  house.  He  continued,  how- 
ever, to  contribute  to  historical  periodi- 
cals, and  an  important  collection  of  his 
Studies  in  Chronology  and  History  was 
edited  by  his  son  in  1934.  In  his  later 
'years  he  received  the  many  academic 
honours  which  were  his  due,  including 
honorary  doctorates  from  Oxford,  Cam- 
Ibridge,  Louvain,  and  Leipzig,  and  the 
{honorary  membership  of  various  learned 
Isocieties,  British  and  foreign.  He  was 
ielected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in 
1904.  He  died  at  Oxford  28  October  1939. 

Poole  married  Rachael  Emily  (died 
1937),  second  daughter  of  Frank  Rodbard 
Malleson,  a  pioneer  in  the  cause  of  working- 
class  education,  and  son  of  J.  P.  Malleson 
[q.v.].  She  was  a  woman  of  many  accom- 
plishments and  an  authority  on  the  history 
of  art:  her  Catalogue  of  Oxford  Portraits 
(3  vols.,  1912-1925)  is  a  work  of  per- 
manent value.  They  were  survived  by 
their  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 

Poole's  great  learning  would  have  been 
impossible  but  for  exceptional  industry 
and  an  exceptional  memory :  he  knew  the 
names  and  dates  not  only  of  all  the  popes 
but  also  of  many  other  celebrities  includ- 
ing all  the  Derby  winners.  He  had  a  special 


power  of  tracing  the  connexions  of  related 
facts  in  widely  distant  fields.  His  mental 
processes  were  precise,  and  his  knowledge, 
in  spite  of  its  wide  range,  was  an  organized 
whole,  with  nothing  vague  or  loosely 
attached.  Easily  reading  Latin,  Greek, 
Hebrew,  Arabic,  and  at  least  five  modem 
European  languages,  he  knew  not  only 
medieval  Europe,  but  also  the  older  litera- 
tures in  which  medieval  Europeans  read. 
His  earlier  studies  illuminated  the  history 
of  ideas.  As  he  grew  older  his  exact  know- 
ledge of  chronology  and  the  forms  of 
documents  became  more  and  more  the 
framework  of  his  investigations.  With  no 
strong  interest  in  philosophy  or  imagina- 
tive literature,  he  was  musical,  not  only 
versed  in  the  history  and  theory  of 
music,  but  also  playing  the  piano  and 
'cello. 

An  excellent  portrait-drawing  by  Wil- 
liam Strang,  made  in  1905,  is  reproduced 
in  the  volume  of  Essays  in  History.  Poole 
was  slightly  built,  of  middle  height  and 
upright  carriage.  His  finely-cut  features 
were  clean-shaven  until  his  last  invalid 
years,  when  he  grew  a  full  white  beard. 
A  most  entertaining,  and  at  times  piuigent, 
talker,  he  delighted  in  the  amenities  of 
civilized  academic  life,  and  especially  in 
the  historic  traditions  of  Magdalen  and  of 
his  university  offices.  From  his  middle  age 
he  was  strongly  conservative  in  all  his 
views  and  he  had  'settled  down  into  a 
steady  churchmanship  of  the  old-fashioned 
Anglican  type'.  He  never  spared  himself 
in  helping  other  scholars,  from  his  friend 
Lord  Acton,  planning  the  Cambridge 
Modern  History,  down  to  the  clumsiest 
beginner  in  his  class  on  diplomatic. 

[The  Times,  30  October  and  3  November 
1939 ;  G.  N.  Clark  in  English  Historical  Re- 
view, January  1940 ;  C.  C.  J.  Webb,  Reginald 
Lane  Poole,  1857—1939  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  xxv,  1939  (portrait); 
personal  knowledge.]  G.  N.  Clakk. 

POOLE,  STANLEY  EDWARD  LANE- 

(1854-1931),  orientalist  and  historian,  was 
bom  in  London  18  December  1854,  the 
elder  son  of  the  Arabic  scholar  Edward 
Stanley  Poole  [q.v.]  and  brother  of  Regi- 
nald Lane  Poole  [q.v.].  Losing  both 
parents  at  an  early  age,  he  and  his  brother 
were  privately  educated.  Stanley  entered 
Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  as  an 
exhibitioner  in  1874.  He  was  already  pro- 
ficient in  oriental  studies  and  working 
imder  his  uncle,  R.  S.  Poole  [q.v.],  in  the 
coin  department  of  the  British  Museum ; 
indeed,  the  first  of  the  fourteen  volumes 


716 


Poole,  S.  E.  L. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 

sonB 


of  his  Catalogue  of  Oriental  and  Indian 
Coins  in  the  British  Museum  appeared 
under  his  uncle's  editorship  in  1875.  On 
the  death  of  his  great-tincle  E.  W.  Lane 
[q.v.]  in  1876  Lane-Poole  (unlike  his 
brother,  he  preferred  to  use  the  hyphen) 
undertook  to  complete  his  great  Arabic 
lexicon,  and  issued  the  sixth  part,  with 
a  memoir,  in  1877;  this  was  followed  by 
the  fragmentary  seventh  and  eighth  parts 
in  1885  and  1893.  In  1877  he  was  awarded 
(not  surprisingly)  a  third  class  in  modem 
history  and  was  appointed  to  the  coin 
department,  where  he  remained  until  1892. 
During  this  period  he  displayed  a  pheno- 
menal literary  industry.  In  addition  to 
the  Catalogue  (completed  in  1892)  and 
other  numismatic  works,  he  published 
several  books  on  social  life  and  art  in 
Egypt  (which  he  visited  in  1883  on  an 
archaeological  mission),  The  Moors  in 
Spain  (1887),  Turkey  (1888),  The  Barhary 
Corsairs  (1890),  The  History  of  the  Moghul 
Emperors  of  Hindustan  (1892),  a  handbook 
on  The  Mohammedan  Dynasties  (1894), 
editions  of  Swift's  works  (including  his 
letters  and  journals,  1884,  1885),  and  bio- 
graphies of  Stratford  Canning,  Lord  Strat- 
ford de  Redcliffe  (2  vols.,  1888),  and 
Others.  With  his  gift  for  condensing  his 
sources  in  a  simple  and  attractive  style, 
several  of  these  became  standard  works 
and  were  frequently  reprinted.  But  Lane's 
lexicon  remained  unfinished,  although  it 
is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  task  required 
a  scholar  of  Lane's  long  experience  and 
concentration. 

Between  1895  and  1897  Lane-Poole  was 
engaged  in  archaeological  research  for  the 
Egyptian  government,  and  from  1898  luitil 
his  retirement  in  1904  he  was  professor  of 
Arabic  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  from 
which  he  received  the  degree  of  D.Litt.  in 
1900.  Some  of  his  best  works  were  written 
at  this  time,  notably  his  Saladin  and  the 
Fall  of  the  Kingdom  of  Jerusalem  (1898), 
A  History  of  Egypt  in  the  Middle  Ages 
(1901),  and  The  Story  of  Cairo  in  the 
'Mediaeval  Towns'  series  (1902).  In  1879 
he  married  Charlotte  Bell,  second  daughter 
of  David  Wilson,  of  Ballymoney,  co.  An- 
trim, and  great-niece  of  General  Francis 
Rawdon  Chesney  [q.v.],  whose  biography 
he  edited  in  1885.  There  were  three  sons, 
the  eldest  of  whom  predeceased  his  father, 
and  a  daughter  of  the  marriage.  His 
wife  died  in  1905,  and  Lane-Poole  lived 
in  retirement  in  London  until  his  death 
there  29  December  1931. 

[The  Times,  31  December  1931 ;  private 
information.]  H.  A.  R.  Gibb. 


POPE,     Sir    WILLIAM     JACKSO 

(1870-1939),  chemist,  was  bom  in  London' 
31  March  1870,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
Pope,  a  City  merchant,  who  came  from 
Biggleswade,  Bedfordshire,  by  his  wife, 
Alice,  daughter  of  William  Hall,  of  Prud- 
hoe,  Northumberland.  He  was  educated 
at  the  Cowper  Street  endowed  schools  in 
Finsbury,  the  Finsbury  Technical  College, 
and  the  Central  Institution  (afterwards 
the  City  and  Guilds'  College  of  the  Im- 
perial College  of  Science  and  Technology), 
where  he  was  a  pupil  of  H.  E.  Armstrong 
[q.v.].  After  having  been  successively 
assistant  to  Armstrong,  working  with  Pro- 
fessor Frederick  Stanley  Kipping,  head 
of  the  chemistry  department  of  the  Gold- 
smiths' Institute  at  New  Cross  (1897- 
1901),  and  professor  of  chemistry  in  the 
municipal  school  and  faculty  of  technology 
of  the  university  of  Manchester  (1901- 
1908),  he  obtained  the  chair  of  chemistry 
in  the  university  of  Cambridge  and  was  a 
professorial  fellow  of  Sidney  Sussex  Col- 
lege until  his  death  (1908-1939), 

Although  Pope' s  cry  stallographic  studies 
leading  to  the  announcement  of  the 
valency-volume  theory  (with  William 
Barlow,  1906)  and  his  investigations  in 
general  organic  chemistry  deserve  atten- 
tion, it  is  chiefly  the  advances  which  b 
made  in  stereochemistry,  depending  oi 
the  application  of  the  principles  of  sym^ 
metry  to  molecular  structvu-e,  which 
remain  associated  with  his  name. 

When  Pope  began  his  stereochemical 
investigations  the  phenomenon  of  optical 
activity  among  naturally  occurring  organic 
compotmds  had  been  correlated  with  the 
asymmetry  of  their  molecular  structure, 
whereby  enantiomorphism  or  mirror- 
image  isomerism  of  the  molecule  results. 
This  had  come  to  be  interpreted  narrowly 
in  terms  of  the  presence  in  the  molecule 
of  at  least  one  'asymmetric'  carbon  atom, 
i.e.  a  carbon  atom  around  which  four 
different  imivalent  atoms  or  groups  of 
atoms  (radicals)  are  spatially  arranged.  It 
had  also  come  to  be  assumed  that  at  least 
one  carbon  atom,  in  addition  to  the '  asym- 
metric' one,  must  be  present  in  the  mole- 
cule of  the  compound  exhibiting  optical 
activity. 

In  1897  Pope  began  his  stereochemical 
investigations  by  introducing  improve- 
ments in  the  methods  and  new  strong  acids 
(derived  from  camphor)  for  the  resolution 
of  externally  compensated  compounds, 
chiefly  organic  bases,  into  their  optically 
active  isomerides .  By  his  resolution  (1899- 
1902)     of    synthetic    benzylphenylallyl- 


716 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Pope 


methylammonium  iodide,  methylethyl- 
thetine  bromide,  and  methylphenylselene- 
tine  bromide,  Pope  demonstrated  that  a 
compound  can  exhibit  optical  activity 
wliich  contains  not  an  'asymmetric'  car- 
bon  atom  but  another  atom,  nitrogen, 
sulphur,  or  selenium,  which  has  an  asym- 
metric environment.  During  the  same 
{jeriod  he  also  showed  that  the  atom  of 
tin  may  be  an  asymmetric  centre  by  ob- 
taining methylethylpropylstannic  iodide 
in  an  optically  active  form.  The  experi- 
mental proofs  that  nitrogen,  sulphur, 
selenium,  and  tin  could,  like  carbon,  be 
centres  of  asynametry  and  give  rise  to 
optically  active  compounds  constituted 
the  greatest  advance  in  stereochemistry 
,  since  the  work  of  Pasteur  and  the  later 
i  work  of  Jacobus  Hendricus  van't  Hoff  and 
i  Joseph  Achille  Le  Bel. 

Much  later  (1914),  by  his  synthesis  and 
resolution  into  its  optically  active  forms 
of  a  compound  containing  one  'asym- 
metric' carbon  atom  and  no  other  carbon 
atom  in  the  molecule,  namely,  chloroiodo- 
methanesulphonic  acid.  Pope  established 
that  a  carbon  atom  attached  to  four  dif- 
ferent vmivalent  atoms  or  radicals,  none  of 
which  need  contain  a  carbon  atom,  was 
sufficient  to  determine  the  possibihty  of 
a  compoimd  exhibiting  optical  isomerism. 
Pope  was  the  first  to  demonstrate  and 
illustrate  (1908-1935)  the  basic  principles 
on  which  depend  the  enantiomorphism 
i  and  hence  the  optical  activity  of  chemical 
compovmds.  By  his  resolution  into  its 
!  optically  active  isomerides  of  1-methyl- 
i  ct/c/ohexylidene-4-acetic  acid.  Pope  proved 
that  a  compound,  the  molecule  of  which 
does  not  contain  an  asymmetric  atom  but 
the  molecular  structure  of  which,  as  a 
whole,  exhibits  no  element  of  symmetry, 
has  a  non-superposable  mirror  image  and 
therefore  can  give  rise  to  optical  activity. 
No  less  remarkable  was  Pope's  demonstra- 
tion of  the  persistence  of  optical  activity 
through  a  series  of  derivatives  of  the 
optically  active  parent  compounds.  Some 
of  these  optically  active  derivatives  also 
had  asymmetric  molecular  structures. 
Extending  this  work.  Pope  successfully 
investigated  the  synthesis  and  optical 
resolution  of  the  compound,  1 : 1'-diamino- 
qfclohutanespirocyclohutane,  possessing  an 
axis  of  twofold  symmetry,  and  thereby 
established  the  mirror-image  isomerism  of 
molecules  possessing  certain  elements  of 
symmetry.  This  conclusion  was  empha- 
sized by  the  results  of  the  investigation 
of  spiro-5 : 5-dihydantoin,  cis-2 : 5-dialkyl- 
piperazines,  and  related  substances.    By 


these  investigations  Pope  established  the 
broad  principle  concerning  mirror-image 
isomerism,  namely,  that  the  molecular  con- 
figuration may  be  '  dissymmetric '  and  may 
possess  any  elements  of  geometrical  sym- 
metry excepting  a  centre  of  symmetry  and 
a  plane  of  direct  symmetry  and  that  the 
molecular  configxu-ation  of  an  optically 
active,  or  potentially  optically  active, 
compoimd  need  not  be  asymmetric  or 
devoid  of  geometrical  symmetry. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918,  Pope 
devoted  himself  entirely  to  the  solution 
of  problems  of  national  importance.  He 
studied  the  first  organic  compounds  of 
gold  and  platinum  and  also  co-ordination 
compounds  of  the  metals  of  groups  I  and 
VIII  of  the  periodic  classification.  He  also 
made  substantial  contributions  to  know- 
ledge of  the  photographic  process  and  to 
colour  photography. 

Among  Pope's  collaborators  were  Pro- 
fessor Kipping,  W.  H.  Perkin  [q.v.], 
Stanley  J.  Peachey,  Professor  A.  H.  D. 
Neville,  Professor  Charles  Stanley  Gibson, 
Professor  John  Read,  and  Dr.  Frederick 
George  Mann.  The  results  of  Pope's  in- 
vestigations were  published  chiefly  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society,  the  Pro- 
ceedings (A)  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  in 
various  French  and  German  chemistry 
journals. 

Pope  occupied  a  leading  position  in 
chemistry  and  he  received  numerous 
honours,  including  several  medals.  He 
was  president  of  the  Chemical  Society 
(1917-1919),  of  the  Society  of  Chemical 
Industry  (1920-1921),  of  the  Union  Inter- 
nationale de  Chimie  (1922-1925),  and  of 
the  Solvay  chemical  conferences  in  Brus- 
sels (1922-1936).  In  1902  he  was  elected 
F.R.S.,  and  was  awarded  the  Davy  medal 
in  1914.  For  his  war  services  he  was  ap- 
pointed K.B.E.  in  1919  and  grand  officer 
of  the  Belgian  Order  of  Leopold  in  1937. 

Pope  died,  unmarried,  at  Cambridge 
17  October  1939.  With  his  death  the 
professorship  of  chemistry  in  the  vmi- 
versity  of  Cambridge  came  to  an  end.  In 
its  place  the  chair  of  organic  chemistry 
was  estabUshed.  Dm-ing  Pope's  tenure  of 
his  chair  and  through  his  influence  the 
chairs  of  physical  chemistry,  theoretical 
chemistry,  colloid  science,  and  metallurgy 
within  the  department  of  chemistry  in  the 
university  of  Cambridge  were  established. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  9,  January  1941  (portrait) ;  Jour- 
nal of  the  Chemical  Society,  1941,  part  ii 
(portrait) ;  The  Times,  18  October  1939 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  C.  S.  Gibson. 


717 


Postan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


POSTAN,  EILEEN  EDNA  le  POER 
(1889-1940),  better  known  as  Eileen 
Power,  historian  and  teacher,  was  born 
at  Altrincham,  Cheshire,  9  January  1889, 
the  eldest  of  the  three  daughters  of  Phihp 
Ernest  le  Poer  Power,  a  London  stock- 
broker, by  his  wife,  Mabel  Grindley  Clegg. 
She  was  educated  at  the  Bournemouth 
and  Oxford  High  Schools,  and  at  Girton 
College,  Cambridge.  After  obtaining  a  first 
class  in  both  parts  of  the  historical  tripos 
(1909,  1910),  she  was  awarded  the  Gil- 
christ research  fellowship  at  Girton,  and 
studied  at  the  university  of  Paris  and  the 
ficole  des  Chartes  from  1910  to  1911, 
afterwards  working  at  the  London  School 
of  Economics  and  PoUtical  Science  as 
Shaw  research  student  from  1911  to  1913. 
She  was  director  of  studies  in  history  at 
Girton  from  1913  to  1921.  Durmg  her 
tenure  of  the  last-named  post  she  was 
Pfeiffer  fellow  of  the  college  (1915-1918) 
and  visited  the  Far  East  as  Albert  Kahn 
travelling  fellow  (1920-1921),  producing 
on  her  return  an  account  of  her  travels 
(Report  to  the  Trustees  of  the  Albert  Kahn 
Travelling  Fellowship,  September  1920- 
September  1921,  University  of  London 
Press).  On  resigning  her  position  at  Gir- 
ton, of  which  she  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  in  1938,  she  was  appointed  succes- 
sively lecturer  (1921),  reader  (1924),  and 
professor  of  economic  history  (1931)  at  the 
London  School  of  Economics  in  the  uni- 
versity of  London.  She  became  in  1931 
a  corresponding  member  of  the  Mediaeval 
Academy  of  America,  and  was  Ford's  lec- 
turer in  English  history  at  Oxford  in  1938- 
1^39,  being  the  only  woman  so  far  to  hold 
that  position.  She  married  in  1937  Michael 
Moissey  Postan,  son  of  Efim  Postan,  of 
Tigliina,  Bessarabia,  and  later  professor  of 
economic  history  at  Cambridge,  with 
whom  she  had  long  worked  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics.  She  died  very  sud- 
denly in  London  8  August  1940. 

At  the  time  when  Miss  Power  began  her 
career,  the  department  of  history  which 
she  was  to  make  her  own  stiU  remained 
in  England  something  of  a  parvenu.  She 
had  given  her  heart  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
not,  as  she  later  wrote,  to  'those  dear 
Middle  Ages  which  the  noodles  praise', 
but  to  the  everyday  Ufe  of  village  and 
borough,  market,  coimting-house,  and 
farm.  Much  groping  was  needed,  however, 
before  she  found  her  road.  Her  years  as 
a  student  at  the  London  School  of  Econo- 
mics did  something  to  help  her  to  discover 
her  true  bent.  The  subject  of  her  choice — 
the  economic  position  of  women  in  the  1 


thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries — ^boi 
fruit  in  a  chapter  on  'The  Position 
Women'  later  contributed  by  her  to  TJj 
Legacy  of  the  Middle  Ages  (edited  by  C. 
Crump,  q.v.,  and  Dr.  Ernest  Fraser  Jacolj 
1926) ;  but  that  topic,  although  a  magne 
to  research,  was  too  vast  and  hetero- 
geneous to  be  compressed  into  a  book. 
The  result,  therefore,  as  her  thought 
matured,  was  not  a  single  volume,  but 
work  on  several  fronts  at  once.  It  was  a 
combination  of  books,  articles,  and  edi- 
torial activities  devoted  to  economic  and 
social  history,  but  striking  into  that  field 
by  a  variety  of  converging  paths. 

The  first  of  Miss  Power's  larger  publica- 
tions aroused  some  controversy.  It  is  not, 
perhaps,  surprising  that  Medieval  Engli 
Nunneries,   c.    1275-1535   (1922)   shoi 
have  disappointed  those  readers  who  e? 
pected  a  (hscourse  on  the  religious  life,  bi 
complaints  of  lack  of  sympathy  missed  tl 
mark.  The  object  of  the  authoress,  as  si 
explained  in  her  preface,  was  not  to  ac 
another  to  the  excellent  books  on 
monastic  ideal  already  in  existence,  'bi 
to  give  a  general  picture  of  EngUsh  ni 
nery  Ufe  during  .  .  .  the  three  centuri* 
before  the  Dissolution'.    That  task, 
important  one,  she  performed  to  admii 
tion.  '  Incomparably  better  than  anythin 
of  the  kind  that  has  been  done  before 
since  in  any  European  language'  was  tl 
verdict  of  a  leading  medievalist ;  nor,  pe^ 
haps,  would  the  ladies  whose  portraits  st 
painted  have  been  as  shocked  as  the 
champions  by  the  flashes  of  wit  whic 
enlivened  her  learning.  Neither  her  lectv 
on  Pierre  du  Bois  (Fossey  John  Cot 
Hearnshaw,  The  Social  and  Political  Idee 
of  Some  Great  Mediaeval  Thinkers,  1923| 
nor  the  three  volumes  of  Tudor  Economi 
Documents  (edited  with  Professor  Richar 
Henry  Tawney,  1924)  which  include  soi 
discoveries  of  her  own,  err  by  excess 
levity;   but  the  union  in  her  work  of 
scholarship  and  high  spirits  is  part  of  its 
charm,  and  Some  Medieval  People  (1924), 
as  later  her  translation,  with  an  introduc- 
tion, of  Le  Mdnagier  de  Paris  (1928),  is 
conspicuous  for  both.  Her  interest  during 
these  years  was  increasingly  focused  on 
two  central  topics.  A  miniature  of  a  family 
of  Essex  clothiers  (The  Paycockes  ofCogges- 
hall,  1920)  had  been  the  earliest  of  her 
works.  In  '  The  English  Wool  Trade  in  the 
Reign  of  Edward  IV'  (Cambridge  Histori- 
cal Journal,  vol.  ii,  no.  i,  1926)  and  later 
in  a  more  elaborate  essay  on  'The  Wool 
Trade  in  the  Fifteenth  Centiuy'  (Studies 
in  English  Trade  in  the  Fifteenth  Century, 


718 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Poynder 


edited  with  her  future  husband,  1933), 
she  returned  to  her  first  love.  She  did  not 
live  to  complete  her  history  of  the  medieval 
wool  trade;  but  her  posthumously  pub- 
lished Ford  lectures.  The  Wool  Trade  in 
English  Medieval  History  (1941),  are  an 
original  and  important  contribution  to  the 
subject. 

The  second  group  of  problems  which 
especially  appealed  to  Miss  Power  were 
those  of  medieval  peasant  life.  She  had 
long  been  in  revolt  against  the  static  uni- 
formities of  the  conventional  legend.  An 
invitation  to  contribute  to  the  Cambridge 
Medieval  History  gave  her  the  oppor- 
tunity to  demolish  them.  Her  chapter  on 
'Peasant  Life  and  Rural  Conditions  (c. 
1100  to  c.  1500)'  (vol.  vii,  1932)  has  as  its 
note  a  realism  which  takes  full  accovmt  of 
natural  diversities  of  climate  and  soil, 
heavily  stresses  varieties  of  economic  type, 
and  differs  from  most  previous  English 
writing  in  doing  as  ample  justice  to  the 
relatively  free  pastoralists  of  the  hill  re- 
gions, from  the  Pennines  to  the  Pyrenees, 
as  to  the  manorialized  cultivators  of  the 
cereal-growing  lowlands.  As  a  contribu- 
tion to  economic  history,  the  part  played 
by  her  in  planning  the  great  enterprise  of 
the  Cambridge  Economic  History  oj  Europe 
was  not  less  important.  The  design  of  the 
first  volume.  The  Agrarian  Life  of  the 
Middle  Ages  (1941),  and  the  selection  of 
contributors  to  it,  were  predominantly 
hers.  Her  death  removed,  in  the  words  of 
her  colleague,  (Sir)  John  Clapham,  'the 
editor  upon  whom,  as  a  medievalist,  the 
main  responsibility  for  the  first  three 
volumes  rested'. 

Miss  Power's  interests  were  not  confined 
to  her  own  special  field.  She  had  been 
captured,  when  Kahn  fellow,  by  the  charm 
of  China,  and  a  love  for  it,  which  was 
returned,  remained  with  her  throughout 
life.  She  lectured  on  the  modern  history 
of  the  Far  East,  which  she  revisited  in 
1929,  as  well  as  of  Europe,  was  co-editor 
with  the  eminent  orientalist  Sir  (Edward) 
Denison  Ross  [q.v.],  of  the  'Broadway 
Travellers'  series,  and  produced  an  illu- 
minating essay  on  'The  Opening  of  the 
Land  Routes  to  Cathay '  (Arthur  Percival 
Newton,  Travel  and  Travellers  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  1926).  She  bore  her  fair  share  of  the 
burdens  which  fall  to  a  woman  with  a  head 
for  business,  helping,  in  addition  to  the 
routine  duties  of  academic  fife,  to  found 
the  Economic  History  Review  (the  first 
volume  of  which  appeared  in  1927),  and 
acting  as  secretary  of  the  Economic  His- 
tory Society  from  its  foundation  in  1926 


to  her  death.  Her  p>ersonal  influence  both 
on  her  colleagues  and  on  a  large  circle  of 
acquaintances  was  profound  and  lasting; 
but  her  students  and  their  needs  held  the 
first  place  in  her  thoughts.  In  the  art  of 
exposition,  from  academic  lectures  to 
broadcasting  for  schools,  she  was  generally 
recognized,  not  only  in  England  but  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  where  she 
taught  in  1930  at  Barnard  College,  as  well 
as  in  China,  to  have  few  rivals;  but,  for 
all  her  brilliance  as  a  lecturer,  it  was  per- 
sonal contacts  which  best  revealed  her 
magic.  She  possessed  to  an  extraordinary 
degree  the  gift  of  not  merely  drawing  out 
different  personalities,  but  of  fusing  them 
into  an  organic  group.  'Whenever  she 
came  in',  remarked  one  of  her  pupils,  'the 
thing  became  a  party',  and  to  talk  in  later 
years  to  her  former  students  was  to  realize 
that  to  not  a  few  of  those  who  looked  back 
with  happiness  on  their  university  days, 
the  university  meant  above  all  Eileen 
Power.  The  honorary  degree  of  D.Litt. 
conferred  upon  her  in  1933  by  the  univer- 
sity of  Manchester  was  a  tribute  to  the 
teacher  not  less  than  to  the  scholar. 

[The  Times,  9,  13,  and  19  August  1940; 
Economic  Journal,  December  1940;  Girton 
Review,  Michaelmas  Term  1940;  private  in- 
formation ;  p>ersonal  knowledge.] 

R.  H.  Tawney. 

POWER,  EILEEN  EDNA  le  POER 

(1889-1940),  historian  and  teacher.    [See 

POSTAN.] 

POYNDER,  Sir  JOHN  POYNDER 
DICKSON-,  sixth  baronet,  and  Baron 
Islington  (1866-1936),  politician  and 
administrator,  was  bom  at  Ryde,  Isle  of 
Wight,  31  October  1866,  the  only  son  of 
Rear- Admiral  John  Bourmaster  Dickson, 
by  his  first  wife,  Sarah  Matilda,  third 
daughter  of  Thomas  Poynder,  of  Hilmar- 
ton  Manor,  Calne,  Wiltshire.  On  his 
father's  side  John  Dickson  came  of  a 
family  which  had  distinguished  itself  in 
the  two  fighting  services,  the  most  notable 
member  being  his  great-uncle  Major- 
General  Sir  Alexander  Dickson  [q.v.].  He 
succeeded  to  his  uncle's  baronetcy  in  1884. 
His  mother's  family  had  made  its  mark  in 
commerce  and  had  attained  considerable 
wealth  in  the  East  India  trade.  From  his 
uncle,  Thomas  Poynder,  of  Hilmarton, 
whom  he  succeeded  in  1887,  he  inherited 
a  large  fortune,  and  in  1888  he  assumed 
by  royal  licence  the  additional  surname 
of  Poynder.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow 
and  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  settling 
down  thereafter  at  Hartliam  Park,  near 


710 


Poynder 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


1 


Chippenham,  Wiltshire,  where  the  Poynder 
lands  were  extensive.  It  was  character- 
istic of  him  that,  when  he  came  of  age,  he 
remitted  a  year's  rent  to  all  his  tenant- 
farmers. 

After  leaving  Oxford  Dickson-Poynder 
was  commissioned  in  the  3rd  Royal  Scots 
Regiment  and  afterwards  joined  the  Wilt- 
shire Yeomanry,  serving  from  1900  to  1901 
as  aide-de-camp  to  P.  S.  Methuen,  third 
Lord  Methuen  [q.v.],  in  the  South  African 
war.  His  services  during  the  campaign, 
which  involved  a  good  deal  of  dispatch- 
riding  in  enemy  country,  won  him  the 
D.S.O.  But  he  had  not  inherited  from  his 
Dickson  ancestors  their  over-riding  mili- 
tary proclivities,  nor  was  he  devoted  to 
business  like  the  Poynders.  Apart  from 
country  Ufe,  in  which  he  played  the  part 
of  an  active  sportsman  and  a  very  con- 
scientious landowner,  his  instincts  drew 
him  towards  public  service  in  parliament 
and  in  administration.  He  entered  parlia- 
ment very  young,  being  elected  conserva- 
tive member  for  the  Chippenham  division 
of  Wiltshire  in  1892,  and  retaining  the  seat 
until  his  resignation  in  1910,  although  he 
had  in  1905  crossed  the  floor  of  the  House 
on  the  tariff  reform  issue  and  joined  the 
liberal  party.  Not  content,  moreover,  with 
parliamentary  work,  and  wishing  to  fami- 
liarize himself  with  the  conditions  of  the 
working  population  in  an  urban  area,  he 
also  served  on  the  London  County  Council 
from  1898  to  1904  as  member  for  St. 
George's,  Hanover  Square. 

Dickson-Poynder  had  proved  himself  an 
effective  public  speaker  with  a  natural 
appeal  to  many  types  of  elector  in  his  first 
parliamentary  contest  when,  all  vmtried, 
he  had  defeated  a  local  opponent  of  ex- 
perience and  influence;  and  he  won  him- 
self a  position  of  considerable  weight  as 
a  private  member  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  the  early  years  of  the  century. 
But  he  never  obtained  office  as  a  member 
of  that  House  and  in  1910  he  left  it  for 
other  fields,  when  he  accepted  the  appoint- 
ment of  governor  of  New  Zealand  and  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Islington, 
of  Islington. 

From  this  point  onwards  Islington  held 
successively  a  number  of  important  posts 
and  distinguished  himself  in  all  of  them. 
In  1911  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
and  appointed  K.C.M.G.  In  1912  he  re- 
signed his  governorship  in  order  to  become 
chairman  of  the  royal  commission  on  the 
public  services  in  India.  These  duties 
occupied  him  for  two  years,  in  the  course 
of   which   he    was    appointed    G.C.M.G. 


(1913),  and  were  followed  by  four  years* 
office,  from  1914  to  1915  as  under-secretary 
of  state  for  the  Colonies  and  from  1915  to 
1918  as  under-secretary  of  state  for  India. 
From  November  1917  to  May  1918  the 
secretary  of  state,  E.  S.  Montagu  [q.v 
was  absent  in  India,  during  which  ti 
Islington  had  sole  charge  of  the  offii 
Finally,  in  1920  he  undertook  the  chi 
manship  of  the  National  Savings  Co: 
mittee,  speaking  on  its  behalf  with  mark 
success  in  aU  parts  of  the  country  untU 
resignation  in  1926,  when  he  was  appoint 
G.B.E. 

Ishngton  had  by  then  acquired  a  poi 
tion  of  considerable  authority  in  the  Hou 
of  Lords.  The  most  signal  example  of  tl 
House's  respect  for  his  knowledge  am 
judgement    was    perhaps    the    majori' 
which  he  obtained  on  21  June  1922  f< 
a  motion  against  acceptance  of  the  man- ' 
date  for  Palestine  'until  such  modifica- 
tions had  been  effected  as  would  compljH 
with  British  pledges  to  the  Arabs'.   Th^l 
achievement  was  the  more  remarkable  in 
that  it  was  opposed  by  Lord  Balfom^ 
speaking  for  the  first  time  in  the  Hous^fj 
of  Lords,  with  the  high  authority  of  a^al 
ex-prime  minister  and  a  famous  House  of 
Commons  debater,  and  with  all  the  elo- 
quence of  a  convinced  and  devoted  Zionist, 
who  had  given  his  name  to  the  so-called 
Balfour  Declaration  of  November  1917. 
Islington  also  made  many  speeches  on 
India  distinguished  by  great  breadth  of 
view  and  knowledge  of  the  subject. 

It  was,  however,  earlier  in  his  career,  as    j 
a  member  of  the  London  County  Council,    I 
that  Islington  did  his  most  effective  work 
for  liberal  causes.  Like  Lord  Rosebery,  he    , 
was  much  in  advance  of  his  time  in  his 
advocacy  of  better  housing  and  improved 
facilities    for    education,    reforms    more 
popular  to-day  than  they  were  when  he 
espoused  them.    Another  example  of  his 
public  spirit  was  his  service  for  twenty-one 
years  (1891-1912)  as  chairman  of  the  board 
of  management  of  the  Royal  Northern 
Hospital  at  Islington. 

Islington  married  in  1896  Ann  Beau- 
clerk,  third  daughter  of  Henry  Robert 
Dtincan  Dundas,  of  Glenesk,  Midlothian, 
and  granddaughter  of  Robert  Cornells 
Napier,  first  Baron  Napier  of  Magdala 
[q.v.].  The  issue  of  the  marriage  was  an 
only  daughter,  so  that  on  his  death  in 
London  6  December  1936  his  honours 
became  extinct.  'Unassuming  without 
shyness,  and  able  without  a  touch  of 
intellectual  aloofness'  {The  Times,  8  De- 
cember 1936),  he  was  in  every  way 


720 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Prothero 


noteworthy  example  of  the  public  spirit 
and  capacity  brought  by  many  members 
of  the  old  landowning  class  to  the  service 
of  the  nation  and  the  Empire. 

[The  Times,  8,  11,  12  December  1986 ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Altkincham. 

PRINGLE-PATTISON,  ANDREW 
SETH  (1856-1931),  philosopher.  [See 
Pattison.] 

PROTHERO,  ROWLAND  EDMUND, 

Baron  Ernle  (1851-1937),  administrator, 
author,  and  minister  of  agriculture,  was 
born  at  Clifton -upon-Teme,  Worcester- 
shire, 6  September  1851,  the  third  of  the 
four  sons  of  George  Prothero,  vicar  of 
Clifton-upon-Teme,  afterwards  rector  of 
Whippingham,  Isle  of  Wight,  by  his  wife, 
Emma,  only  daughter  of  the  Rev.  William 
Money  Kyrle,  of  Homme  House,  Here- 
fordshire, and  Whetham  House,  Wiltshire. 
He  was  a  younger  brother  of  Sir  George 
Prothero  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Marl- 
borough, where  he  distinguished  himself 
as  a  cricketer  rather  than  as  a  scholar,  and 
at  BalUol  College,  Oxford.  After  being 
awarded  a  second  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions in  1873,  and  a  first  class  in  modern 
history  in  1875,  he  was  elected  in  the 
latter  year  to  a  fellowship  at  All  Souls, 
which  he  held  until  1891.  Called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Middle  Temple  in  1878,  he 
joined  the  Oxford  circuit.  In  1880  serious 
eye  trouble  brought  his  legal  career  to  an 
end,  and,  advised  to  give  up  reading,  he 
spent  three  years  'in  the  wilderness',  in 
France,  acquiring  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  French  peasant  and  a  love  of  that 
country  which  never  left  him.  His  sight 
recovered,  and  he  turned  to  literature  as 
a  career,  contributing  anonymously  to  the 
Quarterly  and  Edinburgh  Reviews.  His  first 
book.  The  Pioneers  and  Progress  of  English 
Farming,  appeared  in  1888.  It  showed  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  economic  history 
land  of  rural  life,  and  having  been  largely 
rewritten,  it  was  republished  in  1912 
lUnder  the  title  English  Farming,  Past  and 
\Present,  the  classic  work  on  agricultural 
Ihistory,  which  has  gone  through  many  edi- 
jtions.  In  1893  he  established  his  hterary 
reputation  as  the  author  of  The  Life  and 
Correspondence  of  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley. 
He  had  known  Dean  Stanley  personally 
and  the  book,  which  was  a  great  success, 
was  supplemented  two  years  later  by 
Letters  and  Verses  of  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stan- 
ley. In  1889  he  became  associated  with 
(Sir)  James  Knowles  [q.v.]  in  editing  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  and  from  1893  to  1899 


he  was  editor  of  the  Quarterly.  Continuing 
his  own  work  at  the  same  time,  he  edited 
The  Private  Letters  of  Edward  Gibbon 
(2  vols.,  1896)  and  The  Letters  and  Journals 
of  Lord  Byron  (6  vols.,  1898-1901). 

The  circumstances  of  Prothero's  life 
underwent  a  complete  change  when,  late 
in  1898,  he  accepted  an  offer  from  the 
eleventh  Duke  of  Bedford  to  become 
agent-in-chief  of  his  great  estates  in  town 
and  country,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
1918.  His  literary  work  continued,  how- 
ever, as  a  recreation  for  his  spare  time, 
and  in  due  course  he  produced  The  Psalms 
in  Human  Life  (1903),  edited  The  Letters 
of  Richard  Ford  (1905),  and  wrote  The 
Pleasant  Land  of  France  (1908),  the  out- 
come of  his  early  rambles  in  that  country. 
The  care  of  a  great  estate  in  its  widest 
implications  appealed  to  him  as  the  oppor- 
tunity for  constructive  work  in  admini- 
strative and  social  fields,  and  he  played 
an  active  part  in  local  government  in  the 
county  of  Bedford,  and  particularly  in 
secondary  education,  being  the  first  chair- 
man of  the  higher  education  committee  of 
the  county  council.  As  time  went  by  he 
found  himself  more  and  more  involved  in 
public  affairs.  In  January  1910  he  unsuc- 
cessfully contested  the  Biggleswade  divi- 
sion of  Bedfordshire  in  the  conservative 
interest.  In  June  1914,  however,  a  few 
weeks  before  the  outbreak  of  war,  he  was 
returned  unopposed  as  a  burgess  of  Oxford 
University  at  a  by-election  consequent  on 
the  death  of  Sir  William  Anson.  He  was 
again  returned  at  the  general  election  of 
1918.  No  one,  probably,  was  ever  better 
fitted  than  Prothero,  intellectually  or 
socially,  to  represent  his  university,  but 
he  had  entered  parliament  too  late  in  life 
to  make  much  mark  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Soon,  however,  the  food  situation 
of  the  nation  became  a  major  problem. 
He  served  on  a  committee  set  up  in  1915 
luider  the  chairmanship  of  Lord  Milner 
[q.v.]  to  advise  upon  measures  for  the  in- 
crease of  production,  which  recommended 
the  guarantee  to  farmers  of  profitable 
prices  for  wheat.  Asquith's  coalition 
government  was  reluctant  to  go  so  far,  but 
a  year  later,  when  Lloyd  George's  coali- 
tion ministry  was  formed,  the  principle 
was  accepted.  Prothero  was  appointed 
president  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture  and 
Fisheries  in  December  1916,  and  in  1917 
he  introduced  and  carried  a  com  produc- 
tion bill,  the  purpose  of  which  was  to  make 
wheat-growing  profitable  and  to  improve 
the  economic  status  of  the  farm  worker 
by  setting  up  an  Agricultural  Wages  Board 


721 


3a 


Prothero 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


to  regulate  wages  and  conditions  of  em- 
ployment. Powers  to  enforce  proper  cul- 
tivation of  the  land  were  also  included. 
Prothero's  sound  knowledge  of  agriculture 
and  rural  life,  and  the  advisers  whose  help 
he  sought,  particularly  (Sir)  Daniel  Hall, 
then  secretary  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture, 
and  E.  G.  Strutt  [q.v.],  a  well-known  land 
agent  and  farmer,  ensured  the  success  of 
his  war-time  food  production  campaign, 
but  he  aimed  at  more  than  this.  He  saw 
in  the  submarine  menace  and  the  fear  of 
short  commons  an  opportunity  to  re- 
establish agriculture  under  a  system  of 
state  aid  combined  with  safeguards  which 
would  secure  good  farming  by  the  farmer 
and  good  estate  management  by  the  land- 
lord. At  Lloyd  George's  request  he  con- 
tinued in  office  for  a  short  time  after  the 
end  of  the  war,  relinquishing  his  place  in 
September  1919.  The  government,  how- 
ever, had  accepted  the  war-time  payment 
of  subsidies  for  wheat  and  oats  as  the 
peace-time  policy  of  the  nation,  and  it  was 
embodied  in  the  Agriculture  Act  of  1920. 
The  heavy  fall  in  cereal  prices  which  fol- 
lowed within  the  next  few  months  led  to 
its  repeal,  and  Prothero's  constructive 
work  for  farming  passed  into  history 
merely  as  a  war-time  expedient. 

Prothero's  later  years  were  affected  by 
increasing  blindness.  In  two  charming 
homes,  the  one  in  Chelsea  and  the  other 
at  Ginge  Manor,  near  Wantage,  he  con- 
tinued his  literary  work,  with  the  help  of 
a  reader,  and  saw  his  friends.  These  in- 
cluded men  and  women  distinguished  in 
the  highest  social  and  literary  circles.  The 
circumstances  of  his  early  days  in  the 
rectory  at  Whippingham  had  brought  him 
into  close  contact  with  the  Royal  Family, 
and  this  had  enabled  him  to  render  many 
services  to  the  Princess  Royal  when,  as 
Crown  Princess  and  for  a  few  brief  weeks 
as  German  Empress,  she  was  suffering 
greatly  from  public  misunderstanding 
during  her  husband's  last  illness.  Pro- 
thero's last  days  were  occupied  in  the 
preparation  of  his  autobiography,  which 
was  published  posthumously  (1938)  under 
the  title  of  Whippingham  to  Westminster. 
He  died  at  Ginge  Manor  1  July  1937. 

In  1919  Prothero  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Ernie,  of  Chelsea;  he 
took  his  title  from  the  name  of  a  Wiltshire 
family  from  which  he  was  descended  on 
his  mother's  side.  He  was  appointed 
M.V.O.  in  1901  and  was  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council  on  entering  the  Cabinet  in 
1916.  He  was  a  member  of  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  imiversities  of  Oxford  and 


Cambridge  from  1919  to  1922.  Honorai 
degrees  were  conferred  upon  him  by  tl 
universities  of  Athens  (1924),  Oxfo; 
(1926),  and  Wales  (1929),  and  he  wi  _ 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Balliol  Col- 
lege in  1922.  In  1935  the  Royal  Agricul- 
tural  Society  of  England  awarded  him  its 
gold  medal  'for  distinguished  service  to 
the  farming  industry'.  He  was  president 
of  the  English  Association  in  1921-1922 
and  of  the  Marylebone  Cricket  Club  in 
1924-1925.  He  was  twice  married:  first, 
in  1891  to  Mary  Beatrice  (died  1899), 
daughter  of  John  Bailward,  of  Horsington 
Manor,  Somerset;  secondly,  in  1902  to 
Barbara  Jane  (died  1930),  only  daughter 
of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Charles  Ogilvy 
Hamley,  of  the  Royal  Marine  Light  In- 
fantry, and  niece  of  General  Sir  E.  B. 
Hamley  [q.v.].  By  his  first  marriage  he 
had  a  son,  who  died  of  wounds  receiv 
in  action  in  Mesopotamia  in  1918,  and 
daughter. 

[Lord  Ernie,  Whippingham  to  Westmi 
1938;    The    Times,    3   July    1937;    personal 
knowledge.]  C.  S.  Obwin 


je  he 

sive^H 

^ndfl 

nstef^ 


PURCELL,  ALBERT  ARTHUR 
WILLIAM  (1872-1935),  agitator,  whose 
name  was  registered  at  birth  as  Albert,  was 
born  at  29  Britannia  Street,  Hoxton  New 
Town,  3  November  1872,  the  son  of  Albert 
Duncan  Purcell,  french-polisher,  by  his 
wife,  Charlotte  Alleway,  and  throughout 
his  life  carried  the  hard,  rough  charac- 
teristics of  his  early  struggles.  With  little 
elementary  education,  he  was  put  to 
french-polishing  (a  trade  in  which  he 
remained  a  worker  all  his  life),  became 
active  in  trade  union  work,  and  was  secre- 
tary of  the  Amalgamated  Society  of 
French  Polishers  in  1898.  When  that 
body  merged  in  the  National  Amalga- 
mated Furnishing  Trades  Association  he 
found  wider  experience  as  an  organizer  in 
Lancashire.  From  1907  to  1922  he  was  a 
delegate  to  the  Salford  trades  council  and 
in  1910-1911  and  1917-1919  president  of 
the  Manchester  and  Salford  trades  and 
labour  council,  of  which  he  was  for  some- 
time secretary.  He  was  elected  to  the 
general  council  of  the  Trades  Union  Con- 
gress in  1919  and  served  until  1928,  presid- 
ing at  the  Hull  congress  in  1924,  and  was 
fraternal  delegate  to  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labour  at  Atlantic  City  in  1925. 
As  president  of  the  International  Federa- 
tion of  Trade  Unions  from  1924  to  1927 
he  had  many  contacts  with  the  leaders  of 
industrial  movements  in  other  coimtries 
and  learned  much  of  the  conditions 


722 


>ns  o|H 

J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Purser 


1  foreign  workers.  Elected  to  parliament  as 
j  labour  member  for  Coventry  in  1923,  he 
was  greatly  concerned  with  the  promotion 
of  better  relations  with  the  Soviet  Union, 
which  he  had  visited  as  a  member  of  a 
l^ritish  labour  delegation  in  1919,  and 
i  which  he  toured  as  chairman  of  a  Trade 
i  Union  Congress  delegation  in  1924.  He 
j  was  active  in  forwarding  the  negotiations 
upon  the  Anglo-Russian  treaty  which  was 
the  subject  of  much  contention  before  the 
defeat  of  the  labour  government  at  the 
'Red  letter'  election  in  that  year.  In- 
dustrial and  social  conditions  of  Indian 
workers  were  also  subjects  of  his  keen 
interest  and  study  as  the  result  of  a  visit 
to  India  on  behalf  of  the  Trades  Union 
Congress  in  1927.  He  stood  unsuccessfully 
for  Coventry  at  the  general  election  of 
1924,  but  was  returned  for  the  Forest  of 
Dean  division  at  a  by-election  in  July  192.5. 
He  retired  from  parliament  in  1929. 

In  1926,  as  a  member  of  the  general 
council  of  the  Trades  Union  Congress,  Pur- 
cell  was  one  of  the  chief  advocates  of  the 
miners'  demands  and  vigorously  supported 
the  General  Strike  proclaimed  by  other 
trade  unions  on  May  Day  of  that  year.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  main  strike  commit- 
tee and  had  much  to  do  with  its  direction 
and  strategy.  Whilst  never  associating 
with  the  communist  party  in  Great  Britain, 
he  possessed  the  revolutionary  tempera- 
ment and  was  one  of  the  more  prominent 
labour  leaders  of  his  time  who  had  con- 
fidence in  well-organized  industrial  action 
outside  parliament  being  utilized  in  com- 
Ibination  with  political  pressure  to  achieve 
drastic  changes  in  the  structure  and  pur- 
Iposes  of  industry.  Forceful  in  speech  and 
[will,  Purcell  was  an  agitator  in  the  accepted 
sense.  He  had  come  up  from  the  prole- 
tarian depths  and  declared  the  class  war 
as  the  most  effective  means  of  abolishing 
the  poverty  and  hard  conditions  which  he 
himself  had  suffered  and  which  had  shaped 
the  destinies  of  so  many  of  his  fellows.  He 
iwas  fired  by  the  achievements  of  the 
Russian  revolution  in  the  elimination  of 
the  capitalist  and  profit  motive  from  in- 
iustry  and,  while  recognizing  the  different 
circumstances  prevailing  in  Great  Britain, 
le  never  slackened  in  pronouncing  upon 
the  solidarity  of  the  workers  of  the  two 
lations. 

Purcell  married  in  1895  Sarah  Eliza- 
)eth,  daughter  of  George  Thomas  Fidler, 
;ngine-driver,  of  Edmonton,  and  had  a 
ion,  who  died  in  infancy,  and  three 
laughters.  He  died  suddenly  at  his  home 
n  Manchester  24  December  1935. 


[The    Times,    27    December    1935;    Trade 
Union  Congress  Annual  Report,  1924.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 


PURSER,  LOUIS  CLAUDE  (1854- 
1932),  classical  scholar,  was  bom  at  Dun- 
garvan,  co.  Waterford,  28  September  1854, 
the  youngest  son  of  Benjamin  Purser, 
grain  merchant,  of  Dungarvan,  by  his 
wife,  Anne,  daughter  of  John  Mallet,  iron, 
brass,  and  copper  founder,  of  Dublin,  who 
came  from  Devonshire,  and  sister  of 
Robert  Mallet  [q.v.].  Louis  Purser's 
grandfather  was  a  partner  in  A.  Guinness, 
Sons,  &  company,  and  he  himself  showed 
something  of  the  scrupulousness  of  his 
uncle,  John  Purser,  who,  as  a  protest 
against  'gambling  on  the  stock  exchange', 
resigned  when  the  firm  was  made  into  a 
joint-stock  company.  He  was  educated  at 
Midleton  College,  co.  Cork,  at  Portora 
Royal  School,  Enniskillen,  and  in  1871  he 
entered  Trinity  College,  Dubhn,  where  he 
was  influenced  by  that  brilliant  group  of 
fellows,  (Sir)  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  Arthur  Pal- 
mer, and  R.  Y.  Tyrell  [qq.v.],  then  win- 
ning high  repute  for  Dublin  scholarship. 
A  reverse  in  the  family  fortunes  drove  him 
into  teaching  before  he  graduated  as  senior 
moderator  in  classics  in  1875,  and  between 
then  and  his  election  as  a  fellow  in  1881 
habits  of  industry  and  self-denial  became 
a  second  nature  to  him.  By  this  time  he 
had  been  attracted  to  the  main  interest  of 
his  life.  In  1882  he  was  collaborating  with 
Tyrell  in  the  second  volume  of  The  Corre- 
spondence of  Cicero  (1886)  and  during  the 
preparation  of  the  subsequent  volumes 
(1890,  1894,  1897,  1899)  his  contribution 
became  predominant.  In  1898  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  Latin  at  Trinity 
College  but,  amid  protests  from  his  col- 
leagues, his  modesty  led  him  to  resign  in 
1904,  and  he  thenceforth  confined  himself 
to  administrative  duties  in  the  college, 
where  his  influence,  based  on  his  execu- 
tive ability,  shrewd  judgement,  and  in- 
exhaustible kindness,  made  him  valued 
by  highest  and  lowest  as  a  counsellor  and 
friend,  and  not  least  as  a  constant  helper 
and  encourager  of  young  scholars.  When, 
after  being  appointed  vice-provost  in  1924, 
the  ill  health  of  the  provost,  J.  H.  Bernard 
[q.v.],  put  upon  Purser  at  the  age  of 
seventy  quasi-pubUc  duties,  his  anxious 
temper  drove  him,  in  three  years,  to  resign 
once  more  a  post  the  burdens  of  which  he 
perhaps  unduly  felt.  In  1927  he  also  re- 
signed his  fellowship,  but  he  lived  long 
enough  to  complete  the  revision  of  The 
Correspondence  of  Cicero  for  its   second 


723 


Purser 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


edition,  and  he  left  his  house  for  the  last 
time  when  he  took  to  the  University  Press 
the  corrected  proofs  of  the  sixth  volume, 
which  appeared  in  1933.  Five  days  later 
he  died,  immarried,  in  Dublin  20  March 
1932. 

Purser  was  a  man  much  beloved  and 
trusted,  genial,  full  of  good  stories,  excel- 
lent company,  Uking  feminine  society,  and 
popular  with  both  women  and  children. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  needed  some  sort 
of  central  privacy  and  this  induced  him 
to  cUng  to  his  rather  cheerless  rooms  in 
the  college  and  make  his  study  his  hearth- 
stone. 

Purser's  scholarship  was  marked  by 
literary  gift  and  historical  grasp  as  well 
as  by  minute  and  exhaustive  criticism  of 
text  and  language,  and  he  will  be  remem- 
bered by  The  Correspondence  ('the  very 
marrow  of  Roman  cultural  history ').  The 
precise  total  of  his  labours  cannot  be 
established,  for  besides  a  critical  text  of 
Cicero's  Letters  in  the  'Oxford  Classical 
Texts'  series  {Adfamiliares,  1901,  and  Ad 
Atticum,  1903),  an  edition  of  Apuleius' 
Story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche  (1910),  work  on 
Sidonius  ApoUinaris  and  Pi^dentius  in 
later  years,  and  contributions  to  Herma- 
thena  and  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy,  much  of  his  work  is  inex- 
tricably involved  with  that  of  other 
scholars,  whose  books,  when  they  were 
stricken  by  illness,  he  completed  and  re- 
vised. He  often  spent  himself  without 
thought  of  self  on  persons  who  had  no 
claim  upon  him,  and  his  purse  was  notori- 
ously open  to  calls  of  friendship  and 
distress. 

Purser  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1923,  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Glasgow 
(1914),  Oxford  (1923),  and  Dvu-ham(1931). 
He  refused  the  presidency  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy,  of  which  he  was  secretary 
from  1902  to  1914  and  vice-president  in 
1916,  1922,  and  1927-1928. 

A  fine  portrait  of  Purser  by  Leo  Whelan 
(1926)  hangs  in  the  common  room  of 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  his  name 
is  perpetuated  in  two  entrance  prizes  and 
a  lecturership  in  classical  archaeology. 

[A.  C.  Clark,  Louis  Claude  Purser,  1854- 
1932  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  xviii,  1932 ;  Tenney  Frank,  Cicero,  ibid., 
p.  115 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

OuvE  Purser. 

QUICK,  Sir  JOHN  (1852-1932),  lawyer, 
poUtician,  and  judge  of  the  Common- 
wealth Arbitration  Court,  was  bom  at 


B. 

I 


Trevega,  Towednack,  near  St.  Ives,  Coi 
wall,  22  April  1852,  the  only  child  of  Jol 
Quick,  who  went  to  Victoria  in  Octol 
1854  in  order  to  seek  for  gold,  by  his 
Mary,  daughter  of  James  Quick,  of 
vega.  The  father  died  at  Bendigo,  ho 
ever,  a  few  months  after  his  arrival, 
leaving  his  wife  and  child  in  poor  circum- 
stances. Quick  attended  private  schools 
until  the  age  of  ten,  and  then  helped  to 
support  his  mother.  He  worked  in  a 
foundry,  then  with  various  gold-mining 
companies,  and  in  a  printing  press; 
eventually,  about  the  age  of  seventeen,  he 
became  a  reporter  on  the  Bendigo  Inde- 
pendent and,  later,  on  the  Bendigo  Adver- 
tiser. He  decided  to  study  law,  and  in 
1873  matriculated  and  entered  the  univer- 
sity of  Melbomrne.  He  graduated  LL.B 
in  April  1877,  and  was  admitted  to  tl 
Victorian  bar  in  June  1878.  While  stud; 
ing  law  he  had  worked  as  a  reporter  wi1 
The  Age;  he  now  became  leader  of  tl 
parliamentary  staff  of  the  paper,  and 
entered  political  circles.  He  became  a 
strong  supporter  of  the  'Uberal'  party  of 
(Sir)  Graham  Berry  [q.v.],  advocating  pro- 
tection and  land  reform.  Encouraged  by 
Berry,  he  stood  for  the  Victorian  parlia- 
ment in  July  1880,  and  was  returned  as 
one  of  the  three  members  for  Sandhurst 
(Bendigo).  He  then  began  practice  as  a 
barrister  at  Bendigo,  and  in  April  1882 
was  admitted  to  the  degree  of  LL.D.  by 
the  university  of  Melbourne.  As  an  in- 
dependent member  he  played  an  active 
part  in  Victorian  politics  until  he  lost  his 
seat  in  1889,  when  Bendigo's  representa- 
tion was  reduced  to  two  members.  He 
had,  however,  estabUshed  liis  reputation, 
and  became  senior  partner  in  the  firm  of 
Quick,  Hyett,  &  Rymer  in  Bendigo. 

After  1889  Quick  became  keenly  in- 
terested in  Austrahan  federation.  Sir 
Henry  Parkes  [q.v.],  the  premier  of  New 
South  Wales,  called  a  federal  convention 
in  Sydney  in  1891,  which  drew  up  a  draft 
constitution.  But  nothing  was  done  to  get 
this  constitution  adopted  and  the  federal 
movement  languished  until,  in  July  1898, 
a  conference  was  held  at  Corowa  of  dele- 
gates from  many  voluntary  organizations. 
Of  these  none  was  more  active  for  federa- 
tion than  the  Australian  Natives'  Asso- 
ciation, which  Quick  represented.  At 
Corowa  Quick  was  chiefly  responsible  for 
the  adoption  of  the  idea  that  each  colony 
should  pass  an  act  for  the  election  of 
representatives  to  a  federal  convention; 
the  draft  constitution  was  then  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  a  referendum  of  the  people. 


724 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Rackham 


Quick  drafted  a  model  bill  for  submission 
to  the  six  colonial  parliaments,  and  for  the 
1 1(  xt  few  years  was  tireless  in  getting  these 
ideas  adopted.  He  also  proposed  at  a 
convention  held  at  Bathurst  in  1896  that 
ihc  senate  in  the  proposed  federal  con- 
titution  should  be  elected  by  the  people, 
instead  of  by  state  legislatures.  In  1897 
he  was  one  of  the  ten  Victorian  delegates 
jelected  to  the  Federal  Convention  which 
Idrafted  the  Commonwealth  constitution, 
land  his  work  for  federation  was  recognized 
by  his  being  knighted  m  January  1901. 

In  1901  Quick  was  returned  unopposed 
jto  the  Commonwealth  parliament  for  Ben- 
digo,  and  held  the  seat  until  he  was 
jlefeated  in  1913.  From  December  1904 
jto  July  1907  he  was  chairman  of  a  royal 
i^ommission  which  made  a  thorough  in- 
vestigation of  Commonwealth  tariffs;  its 
iReports  were  followed  by  higher  duties, 
Itvith  preferential  rates  to  Great  Britain,  in 
11908.  Quick  was  largely  instrumental  in 
bringing  about  the  Deakin-Cook  'fusion' 
^^overnment  of  1909,  in  which  he  held  the 
position  of  postmaster-general  from  June 
1909  to  April  1910.  In  1911  he  was  one 
of  eighteen  representatives  elected  by  the 
Commonwealth  parliament  to  attend  the 
coronation  of  King  George  V.  Upon  his 
iefeat  in  1913  he  retired  from  politics,  and 
ie voted  himself  to  his  practice  and  busi- 
less  interests  until  Jtme  1922,  when  he 
oecame  deputy  president  of  the  Common- 
|»realth  Arbitration  Court.  He  retired  from 
:his  position  in  1930,  and  died  in  Mel- 
bourne 17  June  1932.  Quick  married  in 
il883  Catherine,  daughter  of  Joseph  Harris, 
jnine-manager,  of  Eaglehawk,  Victoria, 
brmerly  of  Liskeard,  Cornwall ;  they  had 
ID  children. 

Quick's  chief  publications  are:  The  His- 
ory  of  Land  Tenure  in  the  Colony  of 
Victoria  (1883),  The  Annotated  Constitu- 
ion  of  the  Australian  Commonwealth  (with 
iir  Robert  Randolph  Garran,  1901),  The 
Judicial  Power  of  the  Commonwealth  (with 
>ir  Littleton  Ernest  Groom,  1904),  and 
Legislative  Powers  of  the  Commonwealth 
ind  the  States  of  Australia  (1919). 

The  prominent  characteristics  of  Quick's 
vork  were  his  capacity  for  taking  pains, 
lis  mastery  of  detail,  and  his  tenacity 
)f  purpose.  These  qualities  probably 
nabled  the  federal  movement  to  achieve 
luccess  earlier  than  it  would  have  done 
vithout  his  leadership.  They  were  demon- 
strated also  by  his  work  on  the  royal 
ommission  on  tariffs,  and  in  the  Common- 
vealth  Arbitration  Court.  His  work  in  the 
atter  sphere  won  him  respect  and  recogni- 


tion from  all  parties  for  his  judicial  fair- 
mindedness. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Quick  by  W.  B. 
Mclnnes  in  the  Bendigo  Art  Gallery. 

[Bendigo  Advertiser,  Argus  (Melbourne), 
Age,  18  June  1932,  and  Herald  (Melbourne), 
January  1926;  The  Times,  18  June  1932; 
J.  Quick  and  R.  R.  Garran,  The  Annotated 
Constitution  of  the  Australian  Commonwealth 
(especially  pp.  153-163),  1901 ;  Commonwealth 
Parliamentary  Handbook,  1901-1930,  1930; 
Charles  Daley,  'Sir  John  Quick'  in  the  Vic- 
torian Historical  Magazine,  December  1984 
(portrait) ;  private  information.] 

Herbert  Burton. 

RACKHAM,  ARTHUR  (1867-1939), 
illustrator,  was  bom  in  London  19  Sep- 
tember 1867,  the  eldest  of  the  five  svw- 
viving  sons  of  Alfred  Thomas  Rackham, 
admiralty  marshal,  of  South  Lambeth,  by 
his  wife,  Anne,  daughter  of  William 
Stevenson,  draper,  of  Leicester  and  Not- 
tingham. Leaving  the  City  of  London 
School  at  the  age  of  sixteen  owing  to 
delicate  health,  he  took  a  voyage  to  Syd- 
ney, Australia.  Finding  both  physical  and 
imaginative  stimulus  in  this  journey,  he 
returned  to  London  and  embarked  upon 
an  evening  art  course  at  the  Lambeth 
School  of  Art.  His  days  were  occupied  in 
business,  but  he  gradually  sold  work  to 
periodicals,  first  appearing  in  Scraps  (1884) 
and  later  contributing  to  the  Pall  Mall 
Budget,  the  Westminster  Budget,  and  Cas- 
selVs  Magazine.  His  first  work  in  book 
form  consisted  of  drawings  from  photo- 
graphs for  a  travel  brochure  called  To  the 
Other  Side  (1893).  These  were  conven- 
tional and  gave  no  hint  of  the  highly 
individual  style  which  he  was  later  to 
develop. 

Rackham's  powers  expanded  and 
flowered  during  the  'nineties,  when  photo- 
process  engraving  was  revolutionizing  the 
art  of  book-illustration.  He  adapted  him- 
self well  to  the  half-tone  technique,  but 
over  and  above  this  technical  dexterity 
he  soon  displayed  an  imaginative  resource 
that  was  in  tune  with  the  adventurous 
strivings  of  the  age  and  before  long  placed 
him  ahead  of  such  established  favourites 
as  Randolph  Caldecott,  Kate  Greenaway, 
and  Walter  Crane  [qq.v.].  His  edition  of 
the  Grimm  brothers'  Fairy  Tales,  pub- 
lished in  1900,  was  the  beginning  of  his 
real  renown.  He  was  elected  an  associate 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Painters  in  Water- 
Colo  urs  in  1902  (reaching  full  membership 
in  1908)  and  in  1905  issued  a  limited 
signed  edition  of  Washington  Irving's  Rip 
van  Winkle  which  carried  his  name  across 


726 


Rackham 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


1 


the  Atlantic.  Later  in  the  same  year  he 
sold  all  the  drawings  for  this  book  when 
they  were  shown  at  an  exhibition  held  at 
the  Leicester  Galleries,  London. 

The  Christmas  gift-book  proved  an 
excellent  market  for  Rackham.  His  sen- 
sitive and  agile  line  earned  him  the  appre- 
ciation of  the  connoisseurs,  while  his  care 
for  the  spirit  of  each  text  commended  him 
aUke  to  children  and  adults.  He  received 
gold  medals  at  Milan  (1906),  Barcelona 
(1911),  and  from  the  Societe  Nationale  des 
Beaux  Arts  (1912),  which  made  him  an 
associate.  He  was  master  of  the  Art 
Workers'  Guild  in  1919,  and  was  honoured 
by  purchases  of  his  drawings  for  the  Tate 
Gallery,  the  Musee  du  Luxembourg,  Paris, 
and  the  galleries  of  Vienna,  Barcelona, 
Melbourne,  Preston,  and  Bradford. 

Rackham's  style  had,  in  its  angularity, 
high  imagination,  and  plethoric  detail,  a 
certain  Gothic  flavour ;  and  indeed  it  was 
to  old  German  artists  like  Albrecht  Diirer 
and  Albrecht  Altdorfer  that  he  turned, 
rather  than  to  the  more  fashionable 
Frenchmen.  He  habitually  took  his  holi- 
days in  South  Germany  and  the  Alps ;  he 
was  interested  in  opera  and  attended  the 
Wagner  festivals  at  Bayreuth.  Although 
not  unappreciative  of  his  material  success 
he  was  modest,  cheerful,  and  generous, 
and  was  a  methodical  and  businesslike 
man. 

Rackham  married  in  1903  Edji;h, 
youngest  daughter  of  William  Robert 
Starkie,  J.P.,  R.M.,  of  Cregane  Manor, 
Rosscarbery,  co.  Cork,  and  had  a  daugh- 
ter. Mrs.  Rackham  was  herself  an  artist. 
He  died  at  Limpsfield,  Surrey,  6  Septem- 
ber 1939. 

A  self-portrait  of  Rackham  (1892)  is  in 
the  possession  of  his  sister-in-law,  Mrs. 
Harris  Rackham,  at  Cambridge.  Another 
(1919)  hangs  in  the  hall  of  the  Art 
Workers'  Guild,  Queen  Square,  London. 

[S.  B.  Latimore  and  G.  C.  Haskell,  Arthur 
Rackham:  a  Bibliography,  1936;  A.  S.  Hart- 
rick,  'Arthur  Rackham',  in  the  Old  Water- 
Colour  Society's  Club,  Eighteenth  Annual 
Volrnne,  1940;  private  information.] 

Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

RAIT,  Sir  ROBERT  SANGSTER 
(1874-1936),  historian  and  principal  of 
Glasgow  University,  was  bom  at  Nar- 
borough,  Leicestershire,  10  February  1874, 
the  fourth  child  and  elder  son  of  David 
Rait,  of  the  Inland  Revenue  Department, 
by  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Sangster.  Soon 
afterwards  departmental  duties  took  his 
father  back  to  Scotland  and  ultimately  to 


Aberdeen,  to  which  city  both  parents  had 
originally  belonged.  Rait  was  educated  at 
Oldmeldxum  village  school,  at  the  gram- 
mar  school   (familiarly   known   as    'The 
Barn'),  and  at  King's  College,  Old  Aber- 
deen, where  he  matriculated  in  1890  and 
graduated  M.A.  in  1894.  For  two  sessions 
thereafter  he  acted  as  assistant  to  the  pro- 
fessor of  logic,  whilst  attending  classes  in 
the  Free  Church  Divinity  Hall.  There  w: 
then  no  provision  at  Aberdeen  for  tb 
teaching  of  history,  a  subject  for  whicl 
Rait  showed  unusual  aptitude,  but  strenu- 
ous private  preparation  enabled  liim,  being 
then  too  old  to  compete  for  a  scholarship, 
to  win  an  exhibition  in  history  at  New 
College,  Oxford,  in  December  1896.  There, 
in  1899,  he  won  the  Stanhope  essay  prize 
for  an  essay  on  'The  Scottish  Parliament' 
which  was  pubhshed  in  1901  as  The  Scoi 
tish  Parliament  before  the   Union  of  tl 
Crowns  and   gained  praise  from  F 
Maitland  [q.v.].    He  was  awarded  a  fi: 
class  in  modern  history  in  1899,  and  in  t 
following  October  was  elected  to  a  fello 
ship  at  his  college  by  examination 
threw  himself  with  great  vigour  into  th( 
social  and  academic  life  of  a  young  tutoi^ 
and  his  gifts  of  friendship  and  ready  re- 
partee found  full  scope  during  the  yea 
in  which  he  was  dean.   He  was  also  ve 
popular  among  the  senior  members  of  th( 
university. 

The  success  of  the  Scottish  Exhibition 
of  National  History,  Art,  and  Industry, 
held  at  Glasgow  in  1911,  having  provided 
fimds  for  the  establishment  of  a  chair  of 
Scottish  history  and  literature  in  the  uni- 
versity. Rait  was  appointed  the  first  holder 
in  1913;  his  work  was  interrupted  from 
1915  to  1918  by  his  membership  of  the 
War  Trade  Intelligence  Department  in 
London,  but  from  1918  imtil  1929  he  de- 
veloped the  work  of  his  chair.  He  ■\vro 
accounts  of  Scotland  for  various  series 
and  although  his  interests  lay  mainly 
poUtical  history  and  biography,  his  chief 
contribution  to  historical  learning  was  his 
constitutional  work  The  Parliaments  of 
Scotland  (1924)  in  which  he  dealt  clearly 
with  the  perplexing  subject  of  Scottish 
parliamentary  origins.  His  Life  and  Cam- 
paigns of  Hugh,  first  Viscount  Gough, 
Field-Marshal  (2  vols.,  1903)  should  not, 
however,  be  overlooked,  for  the  book  was 
a  long-delayed  and  effective  answer  to  the 
criticisms  levelled  at  Gough  as  a  general. 
Writing  easily  and  forcefully,  he  contri- 
buted many  reviews  and  leaders  anony- 
mously to  the  Glasgow  Herald;  and  byj 
these  and  by  public  addresses  and  broad 


1 


^ 


726 


road^H 

J 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ramsay 


iust  talks  on  literary  and  historical  sub- 
jects, he  exercised  a  profound  influence 
iijjon  the  intellectual  life  of  Scotland.  In 
1 929  he  was  appointed  principal  and  vice- 
•hancellor  of  the  university  of  Glasgow  in 
uccession  to  Sir  Donald  MacAlister  [q.v.] 
md  resigned  the  post  of  historiographer- 
oN'al  for  Scotland  which  he  had  held  since 
1919.  The  great  period  of  university  ex- 
)ansion,  which  had  set  in  after  1918,  had 
'iided,  and  Rait's  task  was  to  conserve 
md  consolidate.  He  made  a  dignified  and 
jojiular  head  of  the  university.  Always 
'oiirteous  and  approachable,  he  intro- 
iuced  a  new  warmth  and  ftiendliness  into 
iiiiversity  life  in  Glasgow.  This  was  the 
;Tt'at  contribution  of  his  brief  tenure  of 
)llice. 

Appointed  C.B.E.  for  his  war  services 
n  1918,  Rait  was  knighted  in  1933.  He 
eceived  honorary  doctorates  from  the 
iniversities  of  Aberdeen  (1921),  Glasgow 
1930),  Edinburgh  (1933),  and  Lyons 
1933),  and  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
>f  New  College  in  1933.  Having  been  a 
ncmber  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the 
s^ational  Library  of  Scotland  since  its 
bvmdation  in  1925,  he  became  the  second 
thairman  of  the  Board  in  1932. 

Rait  was  struck  down  by  serious  illness 
n  September  1935,  and  died  at  the  Prin- 
ipal's  Lodging,  Glasgow,  25  May  1936. 
n  1908  he  married  Ruth  Edith  Mary, 
Ider  daughter  of  John  Charles  Edward 
iridge,  of  Peverel  Court,  Aylesbury,  and 
lad  two  daughters.  The  university  of 
ilasgow  possesses  a  posthumous  portrait, 
tainted  by  James  Giuin. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
W.  R.  Cunningham. 

RAMSAY,  Sir  WILLIAM  MITCHELL 
1851-1939),  classical  scholar  and  archaeo- 
3jjist  and  the  foremost  authority  of  his 
lay  on  the  topography,  antiquities,  and 
listory  of  Asia  Minor  in  ancient  times,  was 
lorn  in  Glasgow  15  March  1851,  the 
oungest  son  of  Thomas  Ramsay,  by  his 
»ife,  Jane,  daughter  of  William  Mitchell, 
'oth  of  Alloa.  Ramsay's  family  had  been 
irt'd  to  the  law  for  three  generations,  his 
either,  grandfather,  and  great-grandfather 
ia\'ing  all  been  advocates,  his  grandfather 
Iso  procurator-fiscal  of  Clackmannan- 
lure.  His  father  died  in  1857,  and  the 
ainily  returned  to  its  native  shire  to  settle 
1  a  rural  home  near  Alloa.  In  his  educa- 
ion  his  eldest  brother  and  his  maternal 
ncle,  Andrew  Mitchell,  of  Alloa,  took  an 
ctive  interest.  From  the  Gymnasium, 
)ld  Aberdeen,  he  went  on  to  the  univer- 


sity of  Aberdeen  and  then  won  a  scholar- 
ship at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford :  there  he 
obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1874)  and  in  literae  humaniores 
(1876).  In  his  second  year  at  Oxford 
(1874),  he  was  enabled  by  the  generosity 
of  his  maternal  uncle  to  spend  the  long 
vacation  at  Gottingen,  studying  Sanskrit 
under  a  great  scholar,  Theodor  Benfey. 
This  was  a  critical  period  of  his  life :  then 
for  the  first  time,  in  his  own  words,  he 
'gained  some  insight  into  modem  methods 
of  literary  investigation ' ,  and  his '  thoughts 
ever  since  turned  towards  the  border  lands 
between  European  and  Asiatic  civiUza- 
tion'.  A  further  stimulus  was  received 
from  Henry  Jardine  Bidder,  of  St.  John's, 
a  man  of  incisive  mind  and  speech,  who 
first  opened  his  eyes  to  the  true  spirit  of 
Hellenism  and  so  helped  to  fit  him  for  the 
work  which  he  had  in  view. 

The  opportunity  of  embarking  on  what 
Ramsay  desired  to  make  his  life  work — 
exploration  in  Asia  Minor  for  the  study  of 
its  antiquities  and  history,  with  special 
reference  to  the  influence  of  Asia  on  Greek 
civiUzation  and  the  Greco-Roman  admini- 
stration— ^was  afforded  by  his  election  in 
1880  to  an  Oxford  studentship  for  travel 
and  research  in  Greek  lands.  At  Smyrna 
he  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  (Sir) 
C.  W.  Wilson  [q.v.],  then  British  consul- 
general  in  Anatolia,  who  advised  him  to 
explore  the  unknown  inland  regions  of  the 
country  and  in  whose  company  he  made 
two  long  journeys  in  1881-1882.  So  started 
an  exploration  that  was  to  be  continued, 
save  for  one  break  (1891-1899),  imtil  1914. 
Fiurther  funds  were  provided  by  his  elec- 
tion to  a  research  fellowship  at  Exeter 
College,  Oxford,  in  1882,  and  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  an  Asia  Minor  Exploration 
Fumd  supported  by  individuals  and 
societies.  From  1885  to  1886  he  held  the 
newly  created  Lincoln  and  Merton  pro- 
fessorship of  classical  archaeology  and  art 
at  Oxford  and  became  a  fellow  of  Lincoln 
College ;  he  was  then  appointed  regius  pro- 
fessor of  humanity  at  Aberdeen,  where  he 
remained  until  1911.  After  his  retirement 
he  continued  to  devote  himself  to  Anato- 
lian studies  up  to  the  very  end  of  his  long 
Ufe. 

Ramsay  was  knighted  in  1906  and  re- 
ceived many  academic  distinctions:  three 
honorary  fellowships  of  Oxford  colleges 
(Exeter,  1898,  Lincoln,  1899,  and  St. 
John^s,  1912)  and  honorary  degrees  from 
six  British  universities  and  from  New 
York,  Bordeaux,  and  Marburg.  He  was 
an  original  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 


727 


Ramsay 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


but  resigned  in  1924.  In  1893  he  was 
awarded  the  gold  medal  of  Pope  Leo  XIII, 
and  in  1906  the  Victoria  medal  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society.  He  paid 
several  visits  to  the  United  States  of 
America  to  deUver  courses  of  lectures, 
most  of  which  were  afterwards  published. 

Ramsay  married  first,  in  1878,  Agnes 
Dick  (died  1927),  second  daughter  of  the 
Rev.  William  Marshall,  of  Leith,  and 
granddaughter  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Andrew 
Marshall,  of  Kirkintilloch,  Dumbari;on- 
shire,  one  of  the  Original  Seceders  from 
the  Church  of  Scotland.  She  shared  with 
her  husband  the  discomforts  of  travel  in 
Turkey  and  aided  him  in  his  work.  By 
her  he  had  two  sons,  the  younger  of  whom 
was  killed  in  action  in  1915,  and  four 
daughters.  He  married  secondly,  in  1928, 
Phyllis  Eileen,  daughter  of  Alfred  Ernest 
Thorowgood,  of  Old  Boshatti,  Sussex,  who 
survived  him.  He  died  at  Bournemouth 
20  April  1939. 

Ramsay's  title  to  distinction  is  the  im- 
mense advance,  based  upon  a  rich  harvest 
of  new  evidence,  which  he  achieved  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  geography  and  topo- 
graphy of  Asia  Minor  and  of  its  political, 
social,  and  cultural  (including  rehgious) 
history.  In  his  Historical  Geography  of 
Asia  Minor  (1890)  and  in  subsequent 
articles  he  worked  out  a  topographical 
scheme  which,  while  leaving  much  to  be 
settled  by  discovery,  laid  a  sure  founda- 
tion for  historical  study.  Topography  and 
history  are  combined  in  his  local  history 
of  Phrygia  (The  Cities  and  Bishoprics  of 
Phrygia,  1895, 1897),  uncompleted  for  lack 
of  adequate  evidence.  The  value  of  his 
historical  work  as  a  whole,  largely  scat- 
tered in  journals  and  elsewhere  (Usted 
down  to  1923  in  Anatolian  Studies  pre- 
sented to  him),  cannot  be  set  forth  here. 
Most  widely  known  are  his  contributions 
to  early  Christian  history,  beginning  with 
The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire  before 
A.D.  170  (1893)  and  continuing  in  a  series 
of  books  devoted  mainly  to  St.  Paul  and 
St.  Luke.  His  basic  contention,  supported 
by  a  wealth  of  argument,  that  St.  Luke  is 
a  first-class  historian  of  the  first  century 
A.D.,  has  won  wide  acceptance,  although 
the  statements  in  the  passage  dating  the 
birth  of  Christ  (ii.  1-2)  present  problems 
which  still  elude  a  favourable  solution. 
Another  thesis  which  Ramsay  firmly  estab- 
lished is  that  the  Galatians  to  whom  St. 
Paul  addressed  his  Epistle  were  those,  not 
of  Galatia  proper,  but  of  the  southern  part 
of  the  Roman  province.  The  value  of  his 
New  Testament  studies  is  enhanced  by  the 

728 


fact  that  he  approached  the  subject,  no1 
as  a  theologian,  but  as  a  Roman  historian' 
versed  in  the  working  of  Roman  institu- 
tions in  the  provinces  and  possessing 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  country  whicl 
figured  so  prominently  in  the  early  histoi 
of  the  Church. 


[Autobiographical   data   contained   in  Si 
W.  M.  Ramsay's  own  publications ;  The  Tit 
22  April  1939 ;  private  information ;  persons 
knowledge.]  J.  G.  C.  Anderson. 

RAMSAY-STEEL-MAITLAND,      Si 
ARTHUR    HERBERT    DRUMMOND^ 

first  baronet  (1876-1935),  poUtician  and 
economist.   [See  Steel-Maitland.] 


;ar 

OI^Bj 

st^l 
ofl 
hS 
srs^l 


:h^d 


RAMSDEN,  OMAR  (1873-1939),  gold- 
smith, was  born  at  Nether  Hallam,  near 
Sheffield,  21  August  1873,  the  eldest  soi 
of  Benjamin  Woolhouse  Ramsden,  artist^ 
craftsman,  by  his  wife,  Nora,  daughter  oj| 
John  Driver  Ibbotson,  a  member  of  th« 
firm  of  S.  D.  &  R.  Ibbotson,  ivory-cuttei 
and  dealers,  of  Sheffield.  Omar  Ramsden 
was  educated  in  Illinois  and  at  Sheffield 
and  completed  his  training  at  the  Royal 
College  of  Art,  South  Kensington,  where 
he  won  several  distinctions.  He  then 
travelled  for  more  than  a  year  on  the  con- 
tinent, his  itinerary  including  France, 
Spain,  Italy,  and  Germany,  and  he  made 
good  use  of  the  opportvmity  of  studying 
fine  examples  of  appUed  art  work  in  th<^ 
churches  and  pubUc  buildings  of  thos 
countries.  For  he  had  decided  to  follow 
his  father's  calling,  and  his  next  step  was 
a  period  of  apprenticeship  in  the  eld« 
Ramsden's  studio. 

About  1904  Omar  Ramsden  set  up 
independent  practice  in  London.  He 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  craftsmanship 
in  the  precious  metals  had  simk  to  a  medi- 
ocre level,  and  he  determined  to  do  wha^^ 
he  could  towards  raising  its  standards.  AjiIH 
time  went  on  the  admirable  quality  of  his 
work  brought  him  many  commissions,  and 
by  the  'twenties  of  this  century  he  was 
esteemed  one  of  the  very  best  goldsmiths 
in  England. 

Ramsden  worked  on  modest  tasks 
well  as  on  ceremonial  plate  for  churches" 
and  public  bodies,  and  to  every  project, 
great  and  small,  he  brought  the  same 
feeUng  for  material,  the  same  finish  in 
detail  and  opulence  in  design.  Ecclesiasti- 
cal crafts  naturally  figured  largely  in  his 
output.  He  was  working  on  silverware  for 
three  cathedrals — ^those  of  Coventry,  Ber- 
muda, and  Colombo — at  the  same  period; 
and  he  carried  out  the  reconstruction 


vaa     I 

"4 


[on  0^1 


D^.B.  1081-1040 


Rapson 


ne  entire  end  of  Whitstable  parish  church, 
^mong  his  chief  works  are  the  great  mace 
)resented  to  the  city  of  Sheffield  by  the 
ifteenth  Duke  of  Norfolk,  the  monstrance 
if  Westminster  Cathedral,  the  entire  plate 
A\d  ornaments  for  the  sanctuary  of  St. 
liartholomew  the  Great,  London,  and  the 
)adge  and  chain  of  office  of  the  master  of  the 
Honourable  Company  of  Master  Mariners. 

Ramsden's  life  was  dominated  by  the 
lesire  to  show  that  even  in  a  utilitarian 
md  mechanical  age  there  was  stiU  a  place 
'or  craftsmanship  in  the  precious  metals. 
tiis  joy  in  his  material  was  evident,  as  was 
he  humility  of  his  approach ;  and  some  of 
lis  works,  like  the  mazer  bowl  made  in 
1937  to  mark  the  fact  that  Great  Britain 
lad  had  three  kings  in  one  year,  earned 
ntemational  appreciation.  In  1937  also 
le  printed  privately  a  brochure  on  Mazers, 
n  which  several  examples  of  his  work  are 
-eproduced.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
lloyal  Society  of  Miniature  Painters,  on 
he  council  of  which  he  served,  as  well  as  of 
he  Art  Workers'  Guild,  a  hveryman  of  the 
Worshipful  Company  of  Goldsmiths,  and 
;hairman  of  the  Church  Crafts  League,  and 
lis  work  is  represented  in  the  Victoria  and 
\lbert  Museum  and  various  other  museums 
m  England  and  abroad.  A  number  of 
objects,  ecclesiastical  and  secular,  designed 
by  him  were  shown  at  the  Exhibition  of 
Modern  Silverwork  held  at  Goldsmiths' 
Hall  in  July  1938  and  will  be  foiuid  listed 
in  the  catalogue.  He  married  in  1927 
Annie  Emily,  daughter  of  Charles  James 
Berriffe,  coach-builder,  of  Brightlingsea, 
Essex,  and  widow  of  Charles  Downs- 
Butcher,  of  London  and  W^tstable.  They 
had  no  children.  He  died  in  London  9 
August  1939. 

A  drawing  of  Ramsden  by  van  Duinds- 
5on  is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times,  15  and  17  August  1939 ;  private 
information.]        Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

RANJITSINHJI,  Maharaja  Jam 
Saheb  of  Nawanagar  (1872-1933),  In- 
jdian  ruler  and  cricketer.  [See  Nawa- 
nagar.] 

RAPSON,  EDWARD  JAMES  (1861- 
1937),  Sanskrit  scholar,  was  born  at 
Leicester  12  May  1861,  the  son  of  Edward 
Rapson,  who  later  opened  a  school  at  Led- 
bury and  afterwards  became  vicar  of  West 
Bradley,  Somerset.  His  mother  was  Elea- 
nor McArdle  from  county  DubUn.  He  was 
educated  at  Hereford  Cathedral  School, 
where  he  formed  a  lifelong  interest  in 


music,  and  from  there  went  up  to  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1879,  being 
elected  to  a  foundation  scholarship  in 
1883.  He  was  awarded  a  first  class  in  the 
classical  tripos  of  1883  and  in  the  Indian 
languages  tripos  (Sanskrit  and  compara- 
tive philology)  of  1885.  He  studied  San- 
skrit under  E.  B.  Cowell  [q.v.].  His  first 
published  work,  The  Struggle  between  Eng- 
land and  France  for  Supremacy  in  India 
(1887),  had  gained  for  him  the  Le  Bas 
prize  in  1886,  and  in  1887  he  was  elected 
into  a  fellowship  at  his  college,  which  he 
held  vmtil  1893.  In  1887  also,  after  a  short; 
period  as  assistant  to  Sir  Monier  Monier- 
Williams  [q.v.]  at  the  newly  foimded 
Indian  Institute  at  Oxford,  he  was  ap- 
pointed assistant  keeper  in  the  depart- 
ment of  coins  and  medals  at  the  British 
Museum.  The  rich  collections  of  the 
museum  provided  ample  scope  for  Rap- 
son's  talents  and  industry,  and  he  soon 
established  himself  as  a  leading  authority 
on  Indian  numismatics.  His  two  major 
publications  in  this  field  are  Indian  Coins 
(1898),  which  appeared  as  one  of  the 
volumes  of  J.  G.  Biihler's  '  Grundriss  der 
Indo-arischen  Philologie  und  Altertums- 
kunde',  and  the  Catalogue  of  the  Coins  of 
the  Andhra  Dynasty,  the  Western  Ksatrapas, 
the  Traikutaka  Dynasty  and  the  ''BodhV 
Dynasty  (1908).  The  latter  work  is  a 
masterpiece  of  reconstruction,  and  estab- 
lished for  the  first  time  some  degree  of 
clarity  in  a  very  obscure  period  of  Indian 
history. 

From  1903  to  1906  Rapson  occupied, 
concurrently  with  his  post  in  the  British 
Museum,  the  chair  of  Sanskrit  in  Univer- 
sity College,  London.  He  left  the  museum 
in  1906  on  his  election  to  the  professorship 
of  Sanskrit  at  Cambridge  in  succession  to 
Cecil  Bendall.  A  bom  teacher  and  never 
sparing  of  his  own  time  and  efforts,  Rap- 
son appUed  himself  to  his  new  duties  with 
conspicuous  energy  and  success.  His 
duties  as  a  teacher  were  by  no  means  light, 
but  they  did  not  prevent  him  from  con- 
tinuing his  literary  and  scholarly  work.  In 
1914  appeared  his  Ancient  India  from  the 
Earliest  Times  to  the  First  Century  a.D. 
which  provided  for  the  general  reader  an 
excellent  stunmary  of  all  that  was  then 
known  about  the  early  history  and  culture 
of  India.  Two  major  works  occupied  his 
attention  during  his  tenure  of  the  pro- 
fessorship at  Cambridge.  In  1901  (Sir) 
Aurel  Stein  had  discovered  in  Chinese 
Turkestan  a  collection  of  ancient  docu- 
ments written  in  a  variety  of  the  Indian 
Kharo§tbi  script.    Rapson's  preliminary 


729 


Rapson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


decipherment  appeared  in  1905,  and  for 
many  years,  in  conjunction  with  two 
French  scholars,  Auguste  M.  Boyer  and 
fimile  Senart,  he  worked  on  the  task  of 
editing  the  texts.  The  publication  ap- 
peared in  three  parts  between  1920  and 
1929.  His  second  important  imdertaking 
was  editing  the  first  two  volumes  of  the 
Cambridge  History  of  India.  The  first 
volume  was  published  in  1922.  Prepara- 
tion of  the  second  volume  occupied  him 
for  the  rest  of  his  fife,  but  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  a  subject  where  so  few  col- 
laborators can  be  foimd  prevented  him 
from  realizing  the  project. 

As  a  scholar  Rapson  was  distinguished 
by  great  thoroughness  and  strict  adherence 
to  scientific  method.  The  same  virtues 
characterized  his  teaching.  He  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1931. 
After  holding  his  chair  for  thirty  years  he 
resigned  it  in  1936.  A  little  over  a  year 
later  he  died  suddenly  at  Cambridge  3 
October  1937.  He  married  in  1902  Ellen 
Daisy  (died  1921),  daughter  of  William 
B.  Allen,  of  West  Bradley ;  there  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage. 

[L.  D.  Bamett,  Edward  James  Rapson, 
1861-1937  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca- 
demy, vol.  xxiii,  1937 ;  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Asiatic  Society,  October  1938 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] T.  Burrow. 

READING,  first  Marquess  of  (1860- 
1935),  lord  chief  justice  of  England,  etc. 
[See  Isaacs,  Rufus  Daniel.] 

REED,  EDWARD  TENNYSON 
(1860-1933),  caricaturist,  was  born  at 
Greenwich  27  March  1860,  the  only  son 
of  the  naval  architect  (Sir)  Edward  James 
Reed  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Rosetta,  eldest 
daughter  of  Nathaniel  Barnaby,  of  Sheer- 
ness,  and  sister  of  (Sir)  Nathaniel  Barnaby 
[q.v.].  He  was  educated  at  Harrow,  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty  had  visited  Egypt, 
China,  and  Japan.  He  had  very  little 
early  training  as  a  draughtsman,  but  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  applying  a  burlesque  of 
prehistoric  life  to  contemporary  events 
and  persons.  Thus  'A  Quiet  Game  of 
Whist  in  Early  Times'  demonstrates  the 
inconvenience  caused  to  card-playing 
cave-dweUers  by  the  presence  of  the  stego- 
saurus  ungulatus,  the  triceratops,  and  the 
pterodactyl,  and  'Prehistoric  Coaching  for 
the  Boat  Race'  shows  the  same  kind  of 
intrusion  on  woad-stained  raft-paddlers  of 
the  Thames.  The  drawings,  which  were 
executed  in  a  spirit  of  broad  and  riotous 
comedy,  had  a  considerable  vogue,  and  no 


doubt  the  fact  that  the  Natural  History] 
Museum  at  South  Kensington  had  not 
been  open  long  enough  for  the  skeletons] 
of  ancient  monsters  to  lose  the  charm  of] 
novelty,  greatly  added  to  their  appeal.  It  j 
is  certain  that  scientific  lecturers  bore  wit- 
ness at  the  time  to  their  probable  veri-i 
similitude,  and  that  schools  applied  for 
the  use  of  the  pictures  as  instructional! 
magic  lantern  slides. 

Nearly  all  Reed's  work  was  done  for 
Punch.  He  joined  the  staff  in  1890,  under 
the  editorship  of  (Sir)  Francis  Burnand 
[q.v.],  and  for  many  years  used  palaeonto- 
logy, archaeology,  and  heraldry  as  the 
basis  of  his  humour.  He  combined  the 
ability  to  seize  the  likeness  of  living  per- 
sons with  that  of  reanimating  the  bones 
of  extinct  beasts,  and  for  this  reason  was 
asked  in  1894  to  succeed  Harry  Furniss 
[q.v.]  as  the  illustrator  of  Punch's  parlia- 
mentary pages,  a  post  which  he  held  for 
eighteen  years. 

Many  of  Reed's  drawings  were  pub- 
lished in  collections,  notably  Mr.  Punch's 
Prehistoric  Peeps  (1896),  Mr.  Punch s 
Animal  Land  (1898),  Mr.  Punch's  Book 
of  Arms  (1899),  and  The  Tablets  of  Azit- 
Tigleth-Miphansi  the  Scribe  (1900),  the 
last-named  (as  the  portentous  paronomasia 
implies)  being  a  mock  historical  record  of 
cm-rent  politics  illustrated  in  the  Assyrian 
monumental  manner. 

Reed  left  the  staff  of  Punch  in  1912,  and 
subsequently  drew  for  the  Bystander.  His 
style  of  caricature  was  far  too  insistently 
facetious  for  the  taste  of  a  later  period, 
but  he  was  probably  the  originator  of 
antediluvian  pictorial  fim.  He  married  in 
1891  Beatrice,  daughter  of  William  BuUen, 
of  Earlsfield,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
He  died  in  London  12  July  1933. 

[Punch,  19  July  1933 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
E.  V.  Knox. 

RENDLE,  ALFRED  BARTON  (1865- 
1938),  botanist,  was  born  at  Lewisham 
19  January  1865,  the  only  son  of  John 
Samuel  Rendle,  secretary  to  a  London 
building  society,  by  his  wife,  Jane  Wilson, 
daughter  of  John  Barton,  of  Rotherfield, 
Sussex ;  both  were  of  Cornish  stock.  From 
his  local  school  he  gained  a  scholarship  to 
St.  Olave's  Grammar  School,  Southwark, 
and  from  thence  in  1884  a  sizarship  at 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.  At  that 
time  the  direction  of  botanical  teaching 
was  practically  in  the  hands  of  S.  H.  Vines 
[q.v.]  who  had  recently  been  appointed 
reader. 

Rendle,  inspired  by  Vines' s  teaching, 


730 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Rendle 


.lifter  obtaining  a  first  class  in  botany  in 
khc  natural  sciences  tripos  of  1887,  wished 
I  ( )  continue  as  a  research  worker,  but  the 
removal  of  Vines  to  Oxford  in  1888  upset 
1  tendle's  plans,  and  he  successfully  applied 
lor  an  assistantship  in  the  department  of 
I  )otany,  British  Museum  (Natural  History). 
Although  he  had  entered  fully  into  the 
>i)irit  of  the  new  academic  botany,  he  had 
nvvn  attracted  by  taxonomy  from  his 
-(•I)ooldays,  and  had  continued  this  study 
ri  the  Botanic  Garden  at  Cambridge. 

At  the  Museum  Rendle  was  given  charge 
)(■  gymnosperms,  monocotyledons,  and 
ipctalae.  Ever  careful  and  conscientious, 
ic  did  not  hurry  into  print,  and  his  first 
iiiportant  work  was  the  section  on  mono- 
•otyledons  and  gymnosperms  in  the  Cata- 
'ogu£  of  the  African  Plants  collected  by  Dr. 
Friedrich  Welwitsch  in  1853-61  (1899). 
That  same  year  his  monograph  on  Naias 
!^ained  him  his  D.Sc.  (London),  and  led  to 
lis  being  invited  to  write  the  account  of 
he  Naiadaceae  for  the  Pflanzenreich  (1901) 
(lited  by  Adolf  Engler.  Throughout  his 
■aieer  he  was  engaged  on  the  description 
)i  plants  from  collections  received  at  the 
Museum. 

Rendle  was  always  interested  in  botani- 
cal education,  and  in  1894  was  appointed 
lead  of  the  botany  department  at  the 
Birkbeck  Institute,  where  he  lectured  two 
)r  three  evenings  a  week  imtil  his  appoint- 
ment as  keeper  of  botany  at  the  British 
Museum  in  1906.  He  had  a  style  of  lec- 
viring  which  was  both  attractive  and  suc- 
cessful with  beginners,  but  somewhat 
uiinspiring  both  in  manner  and  method 
hr  more  advanced  audiences.  His  work 
it  Birkbeck  led  to  his  writing  his  best- 
cnown  work.  Classification  of  Flowering 
Plants,  the  first  volume  of  which,  dealing 
.\  ith  gymnosperms  and  monocotyledons, 
vas  published  in  1904  (2nd  ed.  1930) ;  the 
^e(•()nd  volume  did  not  appear  until  1925. 

Rendle  gave  great  service  to  systematic 
)()tany  by  his  interest  in  the  thorny  topic 
)i'  nomenclature.  At  the  international 
K)tanical  congress  held  at  Vienna  in  1905 
le  was  appointed  one  of  the  four  editors 
)l  the  rules  agreed  on  to  unravel  the  tangle 
•reated  by  O.  Kunze  on  this  subject,  and 
ic  continued  to  act  until  1935.  In  1931 
le  published  a  revised  edition  of  James 
Britten  and  George  Simonds  Boulger's 
Bibliographical  Index  of  Deceased  British 
Did  Irish  Botanists;  he  was  the  botanical 
'(iitor  of  the  eleventh  edition  of  the  En- 
\:yclopaedia  Britannica  (1911),  and  from 
1924  to  1937  he  was  editor  of  the  Journal 
)f  Botany.    But,  because  of  its  accuracy 


and  scholarship,  his  most  lasting  memorial 
is  the  Flora  of  Jamaica  (with  William 
Fawcett),  planned  in  seven  volumes,  of 
which  five  have  appeared. 

Rendle,  who  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1909, 
was  a  regular  attendant  at  meetings  of  the 
British  Association,  visiting  Australia 
(1914),  Canada  (1925),  and  South  Africa 
(1929).  In  1916  he  was  president  of  the 
botanical  section,  and  in  1936  president 
of  the  conferences  of  the  delegates  of 
corresponding  societies.  He  was  botanical 
secretary  of  the  Linnean  Society  from  1916 
to  1923,  and  president  from  1923  to  1927. 
Moreover,  he  was  ever  ready  to  help 
amateur  botanists  and  natural  history 
societies,  and  was  president  of  the  Quekett 
Microscopical  Society  (1919-1921),  of  the 
South  Eastern  Union  of  Scientific  Societies 
(1927),  and  of  the  South  Western  Union 
of  Naturahsts  (1931-1932).  He  also 
helped  A.  O.  Hume  [q.v.]  with  his  scheme 
for  the  endowment  of  the  South  London 
Botanical  Institute ;  he  was  its  first  presi- 
dent in  1911  and  continued  in  office  vmtil 
his  death.  Much  of  his  systematic  work 
touched  on  horticulture  and  arboriculture 
and  in  1919  he  became  honorary  professor 
of  botany  of  the  Royal  Horticultiu-al 
Society,  which  awarded  him  the  Victoria 
medal  of  honour  in  1917  and  the  Veitch 
memorial  medal  in  1929. 

After  his  retirement  from  the  keeper- 
ship  in  1930,  Rendle  continued  to  work 
regularly  in  the  department,  and  now  that 
he  was  relieved  of  official  duties,  he  could 
apply  himself  more  assiduously  to  his  own 
special  interests.  Although  his  health  had 
given  rise  to  anxiety,  he  accompanied  a 
delegation  from  the  British  Association  to 
the  silver  jubilee  of  the  Indian  Science 
Association.  But  a  chill  which  he  con- 
tracted on  the  voyage  compelled  his  return 
from  Bombay ;  three  days  after  his  return 
he  died  at  Leatherhead  11  January  1938. 

Rendle  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1892 
to  Alice  Maud  (died  1896),  daughter  of 
James  Armstrong,  and  had  two  sons  and 
one  daughter;  secondly,  in  1898  to 
Florence  (died  1929),  daughter  of  George 
Brown,  and  had  five  sons  and  one  daugh- 
ter. One  son  of  each  marriage  died  in 
infancy. 

{Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (portrait) ;  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Linnean  Society,  150th  session 
1937-1938  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  Botany,  \o\. 
Ixxvi,  1938  (portrait) ;  Gardeners'  Chronicle, 
19  November  1921 ;  The  Times,  13  January 
1938 ;  Nature,  5  March  1938 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 


J.  Ramsbottom. 


731 


Ricketts 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


RICKETTS,  CHARLES  DE  SOUSY 

(1866-1931),     painter,     printer,     stage- 
designer,  writer,  and  collector,  was  born 
at  Geneva  2  October  1866,  the  son  of 
Charles  Robert  Ricketts,  a  naval  officer, 
by  his  wife,  Helene  de  Sousy,  a  French- 
woman.  His  mother  and  her  father  were 
amateur  musicians  of  distinction.  Having 
spent  his  infancy  in  London  he  left  Eng- 
land at  an  early  age  to  wander  through 
France  and  Italy  with  his  mother,  who 
was  in  search  of  health.   Upon  her  death 
at  Genoa  in  1879  he  retiu-ned  to  London 
hardly  knowing  English.    Being  himself 
too  delicate  for  school  he  spent  the  next 
three  years  eagerly  reading  any  chance 
book,  and  'basking'  in  the  museums.  At 
sixteen  he  was  apprenticed  to  Roberts, 
the  wood-engraver  at  the  City  and  Guilds 
Technical  Art  School.  There  he  met  C.  H. 
Shannon    [q.v.]    with    whom,    for    the 
remainder  of  his  life,  he  was  to  share 
everything.     Inheriting    £500    from    his 
grandfather,  Ricketts  embarked  upon  the 
eighty-three  volmnes  of  the  Vale  Press 
(1896-1904)  for  which  he  designed  founts 
(three  in  all),  paper,  and  bindings,  besides 
initials,  borders,  and  illustrations,  cut  by 
himself.  Of  these  De  Cupidinis  et  Psyches 
amoribus  and  The  Parables  from  the  Gospels 
were  masterpieces  of  their  decade.  In  his 
approach  Ricketts  owed  much  to  his  older 
contemporary,  William  Morris  [q.v.].  His 
work  was  less  robust,  less  archaic,  yet  in 
beauty  more  calculated,  more  delicate. 
Besides   the   Vale   books,    of   which   he 
printed  a  Bibliography  in  1904,  he  issued 
with  Shannon  Daphnis  and  Chloe  (1893), 
a  fine  enterprise  influenced  by  the  Hyp- 
nerotomachia,  and  Hero  andLeander{1894i). 
For  this  each  artist  designed  illustrations, 
which,  for  imity ,  were  redrawn  by  Ricketts 
upon  the  blocks,  and  then  cut  by  both.  In 
1894  Ricketts  made  exquisite  pen-draw- 
ings, this  time  reproduced  by  a  mechanical 
process,  for  The  Sphinx  by  Oscar  Wilde. 
In  addition  to  his  finely  printed  books 
Ricketts  owned  and  edited  with  Shannon 
a  periodical  devoted  to  painting  and  litera- 
ture. The  Dial  (1889-1897),  which  at  the 
time  was  considered  revolutionary.  After 
1904  he   abandoned  printing  and  gave 
himself  up   to   painting   and   occasional 
modelling.   It  would  seem  that  his  books 
expressed  in  their  pre-Raphaelitism  the 
English  side  of  his  character,  whilst  his 
pictures,  with  their  debt  to  Delacroix  and 
Gustave  Moreau,  the  French.   In  general 
his   mood   was   tragic,   melancholy,   and 
romantic.   On  canvases  such  as  'The  Be- 
trayal', when  he  displayed  poetic  emotion. 


he  was  deeply  moving.  But  on  others, 
despite  his  remarkable  knowledge  of  the 
medium  of  oil  paint,  his  respect  for  it,  and 
his  command  of  composition,  he  fell  short 
of  his  high  intention  because  he  leaned 
too  heavily  upon  the  artists  of  the  past  for 
inspiration.  He  was  elected  R.A.  in  1928. 

It  was  as  a  designer  for  the  stage  (from 
1906)  that  Ricketts  was  pre-eminent.  He 
anticipated  by  some  years  the  work  of 
Leon  Bakst  whose  first  imdertaking  was 
a  collaboration  for  Judith  in  1909.  Both 
men  revolutionized  decor  in  the  theatre, 
and  made  possible  much  that  was  later 
taken  for  granted.  They  realized  that  it 
was  essential  that  one  colotu*  should  pre- 
vail in  each  'set'  and  that  large  pattern, 
when  rightly  placed  on  scenery  and 
dresses,  was  effective  upon  the  stage. 
Bakst  obtained  an  international  reputa- 
tion, largely  owing  to  Russian  enthusiasm, 
whilst  Ricketts  suffered  from  British  in- 
difference. But  W.  B.  Yeats  [q.v.]  called 
him  'the  magician'  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
employed  him  for  the  first  presentation  of 
The  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets  (1910)  and 
for  Saint  Joan  (1924)  which,  with  his 
sumptuous,  scholarly,  and  imaginative 
Henry  VIII  (1925),  was  Ricketts's  most 
powerful  achievement.  Amongst  many 
other  productions  were  Wilde's  Salome 
(boycotted  by  the  press,  1906),  Laiu-ence 
Binyon's  AUila  (1907),  King  Lear  (1909), 
Yeats' s  The  King^s  Threshold  and  John 
Masefield's  Philip  the  King  (1914.).  Ricketts 
always  felt  happy  when  working  for  the 
theatre.  He  invented  with  speed,  often 
finishing  whole  'sets'  with  their  accom- 
panying dresses  in  a  few  hours.  He  did 
not  enjoy  this  freedom  when  painting. 
Indeed,  notwithstanding  his  skill,  he  often 
sat  in  front  of  a  pictiu'c  for  two  or  three 
days  before  daring  to  add  another  touch. 

It  can  be  said  of  Ricketts  that  he  always 
aimed  at  the  highest  and  that  both  he  and 
Shannon  hved  for  art.  When  students 
they  were  poor,  Ricketts  receiving  £25 
quarterly  and  Shannon  having  no  private 
means.  Ignoring  this  they  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  their  collection,  then  mostly  photo- 
graphs. Diu-ing  1898  they  began  in  earnest 
with  the  acquisition  of  Hokusai  drawings 
for  £60.  Although  even  when  most  pros- 
perous they  together  never  had  more  than 
£1,000  a  year,  upon  Ricketts's  death  they 
possessed  a  collection  of  old-master  draw- 
ings, pictures,  Egyptian  and  Greek  objects, 
gems,  Japanese  drawings  and  prints,  etc., 
that  was  valued  for  probate  at  £36,203. 
This  includes  neither  the  medallion  by 
Masaccio,    bought    by    Ricketts    in   the 


782 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


RiddeU 


Queen's  Road,  Bayswater,  for  35*.  in 
1908,  and  presented  by  him  to  the 
\ational  Gallery,  nor  the  Persian  minia- 
tures which  he  was  forced  to  sell  for 
£4,000  when  in  1929  Shannon  met  with  an 
accident.  They  bequeathed  all  their 
treasures  to  museums  and  galleries. 

Ricketts  wrote  three  profound  books, 
The  Prado  and  its  Masterpieces  (1903), 
Titian  (1910),  and  Pages  on  Art  (1913). 
Other  publications  were  Beyond  the 
Threshold  (1929),  for  which  he  invented 
an  author.  Recollections  of  Oscar  Wilde 
(1932),  Unrecorded  Histories  (1933),  and 
Self -Portrait  (1939),  a  selection  from  his 
letters  and  journals.  The  last  three  ap- 
peared posthumously.  He  was  art  expert 
and  adviser  to  the  National  Gallery  of 
Canada  from  1924  until  his  death. 
Ricketts,  himself  a  generous  and  faithful 
friend,  was  a  man  of  masterful  personality, 
dominating  a  circle  of  fervent  admirers. 
A  brilliant  conversationalist,  he  was  witty 
and  ready  to  laugh  at  other  people's  jokes ; 
he  was  coxu-ageous  and  intolerant  of  in- 
justice, often  championing  liberty  in  the 
press.  Undoubtedly  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  painters  of  his  time  (this  was 
largely  due  to  his  abhorrence  of  opaque 
paint)  he  was  excited  by  the  work  of  the 
poets,  playwrights,  and  musicians,  many 
of  whom  he  claimed  as  his  closest  friends. 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  described  him  as  'the 
noble  and  generous  Ricketts,  who  always 
dealt  en  grand  seigneur,  a  natiu-al  aristo- 
crat as  well  as  a  loyal  and  devoted  artist'. 
Throughout  his  life  music  was  his  solace, 
and  flowers  his  only  extravagance.  He 
was  found  dead  in  his  bed,  from  angina 
pectoris,  at  his  home  in  London  on  7 
October  1931.  He  was  unmarried. 

There  are  portraits  of  Ricketts  by 
Shannon  (1898  and  1899)  in  the  National 
I'ortrait  Gallery,  which  also  has,  on  loan 
1  rom  the  National  Gallery,  a  pencil  draw- 
ing by  Laura  Anning  Bell. 

[Self-Portrait,  Letters  and  Journals  of 
Charles  Ricketts,  collected  and  compiled  by 
T.  Sturge  Moore,  edited  by  Cecil  Lewis,  1939 ; 
personal  knowledge.]     Thomas  Lowinsky. 

RIDDELL,  GEORGE  ALLARDICE, 
Baron  Riddell,  of  Walton  Heath  (1865- 
1934),  newspaper  proprietor,  was  bom  at 
Brixton,  London,  25  May  1865,  the  only 
son  of  James  Riddell,  photographer,  of 
IJrixton,  by  his  wife,  Isabel  Yoimg.  He 
was  educated  privately  in  London,  and 
began  work  as  a  boy  clerk  in  the  office  of  a 
Bloomsbvu-y  solicitor,  who,  impressed  by 
his   abiUty  and  promise,   gave   him  his 


articles.  He  passed  his  final  examination 
first  in  all  England,  and  was  admitted  a 
solicitor  in  1888.  He  then  joined  the  firm 
which  was  later  known  as  Riddell,  Vairey, 
&  Smith,  the  chents  of  which  included  the 
corporations  of  Cardiff  and  Huddersfield 
and  the  Western  Mail,  Cardiff.  When 
LasceUes  Carr,  proprietor  of  that  news- 
paper, purchased  the  News  of  the  World,  a 
London  Sunday  journal,  Riddell,  already 
attracted  to  Fleet  Street,  became  its  legal 
adviser  and  later  (1903),  rehnquishing 
law  for  jotu-nalism,  was  elected  its  chair- 
man. It  had  not  at  one  time  a  very 
savoiuy  reputation;  he  was  sensitive 
about  this  and  improved  it  in  many 
directions,  and  by  skilful  management  put 
it  in  a  position  to  reach  some  years  after 
his  death  a  circulation  of  seven  millions, 
the  highest  of  any  newspaper  in  the 
world.  He  was  also  virtual  head  of  the  firm 
founded  by  Sir  George  Newnes  [q.v.]  and 
added  to  its  publications  Country  Life  and 
John  O'  London's  Weekly. 

Knighted  in  1909,  Riddell,  who  had 
played  a  large  part  in  the  settlement  of  the 
coal  strike  of  1912,  became  a  prominent 
figiu-e  during  the  war  of  1914-1918.  Being 
very  friendly  with  Lloyd  George  and  useful 
to  him,  especially  in  connexion  with  the 
press,  he  was  in  1919  appointed  liaison 
officer  between  the  British  delegation  and 
the  press  at  the  Paris  Peace  Conference: 
his  success  in  carrying  out  his  task  was 
acknowledged  by  the  press  at  a  dinner  of 
thanks  and  congratulation  held  in  London 
in  the  autumn  of  that  year.  He  performed 
the  same  duties  at  the  later  peace  con- 
ferences, at  the  Naval  Conference  held  at 
Washington  in  1921,  and  at  the  Inter- 
national Press  Conference  held  in  Geneva 
in  1927.  He  was  created  a  baronet  in 
1918,  and  in  1920  was  raised  to  the  peer- 
age as  Baron  Riddell,  of  Walton  Heath,  in 
Surrey. 

For  a  nvunber  of  years  Riddell  was 
occupied  chiefly  with  his  business  con- 
cerns, which  included  shrewd  deals  in  real 
estate,  although  he  made  occasional 
appearances  as  a  speaker,  often  on  medi- 
cal jurisprudence,  which  he  had  studied 
deeply ;  and  he  wrote  articles  of  a  reflec- 
tive or  reminiscent  character.  In  1933  he 
came  prominently  into  view  with  Lord 
RiddelVs  War  Diary  1914-1918.  This  was 
instantly  welcomed  as  a  useful  contribu- 
tion to  history,  throwing  light  on  many 
events  not  before  fully  elucidated,  as 
well  as  being  an  entertaining  collection 
of  portraits  drawn  from  first-hand 
knowledge.    It  was  followed,  in  the  same 


788 


Riddell 


D,N.B,  1931-1940 


year,  by  Lord  RiddelVs  Intimate  Diary  of 
the  Peace  Conference  and  After  1918-1923, 
which  has  the  same  merits;  and  just 
before  he  died  at  Tadworth,  Surrey, 
5  December  1934,  there  appeared  More 
Pages  from  My  Diary  1908-1914.  All 
these  volumes  reveal  in  their  author 
insight,  sound  judgement,  and  humour. 
He  was  also  very  generous.  He  gave 
£100,000  and  much  of  his  time  to  the 
Royal  Free  Hospital,  of  which  he  was 
elected  president  in  1925,  and  a  like  sum 
to  the  Eastman  Dental  Clinic.  He  helped, 
too,  to  bring  golf,  which  he  played  a  great 
deal  himself,  within  the  reach  of  artisans. 
He  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1888  to 
Grace  Edith,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Williams;  secondly,  in  1900  to  a  cousin, 
Annie  Molison  (died  1946),  daughter  of 
David  William  Allardice,  of  Valparaiso, 
Chile,  and  Rockferry,  Cheshire.  There 
were  no  children  of  either  marriage.  By 
his  will,  apart  from  making  ample  provi- 
sion for  his  widow  and  bequests  to  ftiends 
and  employees,  he  left  the  entirety  of  his 
very  large  estate  to  newspaper  and  other 
charities. 

A  portrait  of  Riddell  by  Sir  WiUiam 
Orpen  is  in  the  National  Galleries  of  Scot- 
land :  a  bust  by  Sir  W.  Reid  Dick  is  at  the 
Royal  Free  Hospital,  London. 

[The  Times,  6  December  1934 ;  Lord  Rid- 
delVs War  Diary  1914-1918  and  Lord  RiddelVs 
Intimate  Diary  of  the  Peace  Conference  and 
After  1918-1923,  1933;  Lord  Riddell,  More 
Pages  from  My  Diary  1908-1914,  1934;  pri- 
vate information.]  Hamilton  Fyfe. 

ROBERTSON,  ARCHIBALD  (1853- 
1931),  bishop  of  Exeter,  was  the  eldest  son 
of  George  Samuel  Robertson,  by  his  wife, 
Helen,  daughter  of  William  Charles  Kerr 
jimior,  physician,  of  Northampton,  and 
grandson  of  Archibald  Robertson  [q.v.], 
physician,  of  Northampton.  He  was  born 
29  June  1853  at  Sywell,  Northampton- 
shire, where  his  father  served  the  curacy. 
He  was  educated  at  Bradfield  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was 
in  turn  scholar  (first  class,  literae  human- 
iores,  1876),  fellow  (1876-1886),  and  after 
ordination  (1878,  1882)  dean  (1879-1883), 
imtil  his  appointment  as  principal  of 
Bishop  Hatfield's  Hall,  Durham  (1883- 
1897).  In  1897  he  became  principal  of 
King's  College,  London,  and  filled  the 
office  of  vice-chancellor  of  London  Univer- 
sity in  1902-1903.  From  1900  to  1902  he 
was  Boyle  lecturer.  In  1903  he  became 
bishop  of  Exeter,  but  was  compelled  to 
resign  owing  to  ill  health  in  1916  when  he 


retired  to  Oxford  where  he  died  29  Janua 
1931. 

In  academic  life  Robertson  had  gained 
some  reputation  as  a  careful,  fair-minded, 
and  patient  teacher  and  administrator 
whose  austerity  of  manner  was  underlaid 
by  real  kindliness,  and  if  rather  a  hard 
taskmaster  of  others  one  who  was  not  less 
unsparing  of  himself.  Nor  was  it  other- 
wise in  a  difficult  diocese  where  he  fol- 
lowed another  head  of  a  college  (H.  E. 
Ryle,  q.v.),  also  without  parochial  ex- 
perience apart  from  early  home  associa- 
tions, but  where  he  had  the  aid  of  a 
much  beloved  suffragan,  Robert  Edward 
Trefusis,  bishop  of  Crediton  (1897-1930). 
His  own  attitude  in  ecclesiastical  matters 
appears  in  his  charges  English  Church- 
manship,  an  Invitation  to  Brotherly  Union 
on  the  BaMs  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
(1905),  and  The  Church  of  England  (1910) 
no  less  than  in  his  handUng  of  difficulties 
at  Plymouth,  and  he  exerted  himself  with- 
out stint  in  the  effort  to  raise  fimds  for 
church-extension  in  the  Three  Towns.  At 
the  Lambeth  Conference  of  1908  he  served 
on  the  committees  on  Christian  faith  and 
modern  thought,  on  marriage  problems, 
and  on  reunion,  and  was  chairman  of  the 
committee  on  reorganization  within  the 
Anglican  communion  which  recommended 
reforms  in  the  consultative  committee  on 
representative  lines  and  affirmed  that  'the 
authority  of  the  Diocesan  Bishop  as  the 
Minister  of  the  Chiurch  is  not  absolute  but 
constitutional,  being  limited  on  the  one 
hand  by  the  canons  applicable  to  Province 
and  Diocese,  and  on  the  other  by  the 
analogy  of  the  ancient  principle  that  he 
should  act  after  taking  counsel  with  his 
clergy  and  people',  a  highly  characteristic 
utterance.  , 

It  is,  however,  as  a  contributor  to 
patristic  and  historical  studies  that  Robert- ' 
son  is  most  frequently  remembered.  The 
needs  of  Oxford  teaching  prompted  the 
issue  of  a  Greek  text  of  St.  Athanasius 
on  the  Incarnation  (1882,  2nd  ed.  based 
on  Codex  Seguerianus  1893,  4th  ed.  1910) 
and  a  translation  (1885  [1884],  2nd  ed. 
revised  and  enlarged  1891).  The  fascina 
tion  of  Athanasian  studies  led  to  the  pro 
duction  while  he  was  at  Dm-ham  of  the 
large  book  entitled  Select  Writings  and 
Letters  of  Athanasius,  with  prolegomena 
in  Henry  Wace  and  Philip  SchafTs 
'Library  of  Nicene  and  Post-Nicene 
Fathers'  (1892).  If  the  modest  preface 
suggests  great  indebtedness  to  the  work  of 
J.  H.  Newman,  W.  Bright,  and  H.  M 
Gwatkin  [qq.v.]  it  does  not  conceal  marked 


734 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Robertson,  G.  M. 


independence  of  judgement,  and  the  prole- 
gomena together  with  the  introductions 
to  the  several  books  are  masterly  sum- 
iiKiries  of  permanent  value.  The  same 
leatures  of  conciseness  combined  with 
ilarity  of  exposition  are  seen  in  his  articles 
)n  New  Testament  subjects  in  Smith's  and 
Hastings's  Dictionaries  of  the  Bible  and 
II  a  notable  study  of  St.  Augustine  of 
[lippo  written  in  1901  and  published  in 
Henry  Wace  and  William  Coleman  Piercy's 
Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography  (1911). 
To  the  Durham  period  belongs  also  his 
Human  Claims  to  Supremacy  (1896).  His 
ippointment  as  Bampton  lecturer  (1901) 
ivlforded  him  an  opportunity  of  subtle 
nterweaving  of  history,  political  theory, 
iiul  theology  in  a  volume  entitled  Regnum 
Dei  (published  in  the  same  year).  In  1911 
le  published  in  conjimction  with  Alfred 
;*lummer  a  commentary  on  the  First 
5pistle  to  the  Corinthians  in  the  'Inter- 
lational  Critical  Commentary'  series. 

Robinson  received  the  honorary  degree 
>f  D.D.  from  Durham  University  (1893) 
ind  of  LL.D.  from  Glasgow  University 
1901).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  King's 
lollege,  London,  in  1899  and  an  honorary 
allow  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  in  1903. 
n  1885  he  married  Julia  Eleanor  Louisa 
died  1925),  daughter  of  Charles  Noel 
>Iann,  rector  of  St.  Mawgan  in  Meneage 
ind  vicar  of  St.  Issey,  Cornwall,  by  whom 
le  had  three  sons. 

[The  Times,  31  January  1931 ;  personal 
:nowledge.]  Claud  Jenkins. 

ROBERTSON,  GEORGE  MATTHEW 
1864-1932),  alienist,  was  born  at  Simla 
5  May  1864,  the  son  of  Colonel  John 
lobertson,  C.I.E.,  Indian  Army,  of 
jiddington  Hall,  Guildford,  by  his  wife, 
'larie  Frederique  Gumbert,  of  Colmar, 
Vlsace,  a  descendant  of  General  Jean 
lapp,  one  of  Napoleon's  generals  and  a 
)rominent  figure  during  the  closing  years 
if  the  First  Empire.  His  school  days  were 
pent  at  Madras  College  and  at  St. 
Andrews,    and    he    entered    Edinburgh 

diversity,  graduating  M.B.,  Ch.B.  in 
885.  Towards  the  end  of  his  clinical 
tudies  he  came  xmder  the  influence  of 
Sir)  Thomas  Smith  Clouston,  physician- 
uperintendent  of  the  Royal  Edinburgh 
Asylum  for  the  Insane,  at  Morningside, 
vho  offered  him  a  place  on  his  staff  on 
ondition  that  he  prepared  himself  by 
lost-graduate  study  and  research.   After 

short  period  spent  as  resident  physician 
t  the  Edinburgh  Royal  Infirmary  and  in 
he  pathological  laboratories  of  the  uni- 


versity, he  went  to  London,  where  he 
studied  at  Bethlem  Royal  Hospital  and 
at  the  National  Hospital,  Queen  Square. 
The  teaching  of  J.  Hughlings  Jackson 
[q.v.]  left  a  lasting  impression  upon  him. 

After  acting  for  a  few  years  as  assistant 
physician  at  Morningside,  Robertson  held 
in  succession  the  posts  of  physician- 
superintendent  of  Perth  District  Asylum 
at  Murthly  (1892-1899),  and  of  the  Stirling 
District  Asylum  at  Larbert  (1899-1910). 
He  became  M.R.C.P.  Edinburgh  in  1891 
and  was  elected  a  fellow  in  1893.  He  did 
not  take  the  M.D.  degree  until  1913,  when, 
however,  he  received  a  gold  medal  for  his 
thesis,  which  dealt  with  general  paralysis 
of  the  insane.  In  1908  he  succeeded 
Clouston  as  physician-superintendent  of 
the  Morningside  asylum,  or,  as  it  came  to 
be  called  later,  the  Royal  Edinburgh 
Hospital  for  Mental  and  Nervous  Dis- 
orders. At  the  same  time  he  became 
lecturer  on  mental  diseases  in  the  univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh.  In  1 91 9  the  lecturership 
was  raised  to  the  status  of  a  chair,  and 
Robertson  became  the  first  professor  of 
psychiatry  in  1920.  He  died  in  Edinburgh 
28  March  1932,  after  a  somewhat  pro- 
longed illness.  He  married  in  1898  Lilias 
Catherine  (died  1914),  daughter  of  Daniel 
Ritchie,  of  Blackwood,  Victoria,  and 
widow  of  George  Buchanan  of  Arden, 
and  had  a  son. 

Robertson  continued  the  work  of 
Clouston  in  transforming  asylums,  which 
were  largely  places  of  detention,  into 
hospitals  where  mental  disease  was  to  be 
treated  on  much  the  same  lines  as  in 
hospitals  for  physical  disease.  He  was 
responsible  for  the  adoption  at  Murthly 
of  the  separate  or  'villa'  system  of  housing 
patients;  the  introduction  of  hospital- 
trained  nurses  into  asylum  service;  the 
care  of  certain  classes  of  male  patients  by 
female  nurses;  and  the  reorganization  of 
the  night  supervision  of  i>atients.  A 
further  reform  which  he  originated,  and 
which  was  carried  through  in  the  face  of 
considerable  criticism,  was  the  institution 
in  Edinburgh  of  nursing  homes  for  the 
treatment  of  doubtful  or  early  mental 
cases  which  could  not  be  treated  satisfac- 
torily at  home,  but  which  hardly  required 
actual  certification.  The  Jordanburn 
Nerve  Hospital  was  opened  in  1929  at  his 
instigation  in  order  to  provide  similar 
facilities  for  the  poorer  cla^s  of  patients. 
Robertson  was  deeply  interested  in  the 
psychology  of  childhood  and  opened  a 
special  residential  clinic  for  the  investiga- 
tion and  treatment  of  'problem'  children. 


I 


735 


Robertson,  G.  M. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


1 

tes  o^H 


He  gave  evidence  before  the  royal  com- 
mission  on  lunacy  (1924),  and  took  a 
prominent  part  in  the  discussions  which 
preceded  the  passing  of  the  Mental  Treat- 
ment Act  for  England  in  1930. 

In  addition  to  his  annual  reports, 
Robertson  wrote  numerous  articles  in  the 
Journal  of  Mental  Science  and  the  Edin- 
burgh Medical  Journal.  He  was  president 
of  the  Royal  CoUege  of  Physicians  of 
Edinbiu-gh  (1925-1927),  Morison  lecttirer 
(1911,  1913,  1927),  and  Ciillen  prizeman 
(1930).  He  was  president  of  the  Royal 
Medico-Psychological  Association  in  1922, 
Maudsley  lectiu-er  in  1926,  and  in  1927 
was  elected  as  honorary  member  of  the 
association.  An  active  member  of  the 
British  Medical  Association,  he  was 
president  of  the  Edinbm-gh  branch  in  1926 
and  of  the  section  for  mental  diseases  at 
the  annual  meetings  in  1922  and  1927, 
He  was  a  corresponding  member  of  the 
Societe  Medico-Psychologique  and  vice- 
president  of  the  Centenaire  de  Bayle  at 
Paris  in  1922.  In  1931  the  vmiversity 
of  St.  Andrews  conferred  upon  him  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.,  and  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  of  Edinburgh  elected 
him  an  honorary  fellow  in  1927. 

{Journal  of  Mental  Science,  vol.  Ixxviii, 
1932  (portrait);  Edinburgh  Medical  Journal, 
vol.  xxxix,  1932  (portrait) ;  Annates  Midico- 
Psychologiques,  vol.  xc,  1932 ;  British  Medical 
Journal,  1932,  vol.  i,  p.  688  (portrait) ;  Lancet, 
1932,  vol.  i,  p.  805  (portrait);  The  Times, 
80  March  1932.]  W.  J.  Bishop. 

ROBERTSON,  JOHN  MACKINNON 

(1856-1933),  writer  and  pohtician,  was 
born  at  Brodick  in  the  Isle  of  Arran 
14  November  1856,  the  second  son  of  John 
Robertson,  by  his  wife,  Susan,  daughter 
of  John  Mackinnon,  of  Brodick.  He  went 
to  school  at  Stirling  and  left  at  the  age  of 
thirteen,  and  may  therefore  be  said  to 
have  been  almost  entirely  self-educated. 
His  first  important  work  was  on  the  staff 
of  the  Edinburgh  Evening  News,  which  he 
joined  as  a  leader  writer  in  1878,  having 
the  critic  William  Archer  [q.v.]  as  a 
colleague.  His  articles  created  enough 
interest  for  him  to  be  invited  to  London 
by  Charles  Bradlaugh  [q.v.]  with  whom, 
from  1884,  he  worked  on  the  National 
Reformer,  the  leading  organ  of  the  radical 
free  thinkers.  On  Bradlaugh's  death  in 
1891  he  became  sole  editor  until  the  demise 
of  the  journal  in  1893,  when  he  started  the 
Free  Review  which  he  edited  until  1895. 
After  1895  he  earned  his  living  by  writing 
and  lecturing,  making  a  notably  successful 


iidJH 


toxu"  over  most  of  the  United  States  oi 
America  in  1897-1898.     In  1900  he  wi 
sent  by  the  Morning  Leader  to   South 
Africa  to  report  upon  the  operation  there 
of  martial  law.    In  1906  (having  stood 
vmsuccessfully   for   Northampton   as 
independent  in  1895)  he  was  returned 
parliament  as  a  liberal  for  the  Tynesid( 
division,  retaining  his  seat  without  diffi- 
culty until  the  'coupon'  election  of  1918, 
when  he  was  defeated.   Robertson  was  a 
success  in  the  House  of  Conunons,  and^ 
was  made  parliamentary  secretary  to  thd^ft 
Board  of  Trade  by  Asquith  in  1911,  hold^B 
ing  that  office  until  1915,  when  he  retired 
and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Coiuicil.  After 
his  defeat  in  1918,  he  devoted  himself  to 
writing  luitil  his  death,  which  occurred 
in  London  5  January  1933.    He  married 
in    1893    Maude,    daughter    of    Charlei 
Mosher,  of  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  U.S.A.,  ani 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 

Few   people    since   the   great    Frencl 
Encyclopaedist  Bayle  can  have  had  si 
wide  a  range  of  significant  knowledge 
Robertson.  He  wrote  the  two  classic  hi 
tories  of  free  thought  (1899  and  1929).  H( 
was  recognized   as   one   of  the   leadinj 
Shakespearian  scholars  of  his  time.    He 
was  a  literary  critic  of  distinction,  and  his 
Modern  Humanists  (1891)  contains  some 
of  the  best  work  done  in  Great  Britain 
since  Matthew  Arnold.  His  contributions 
to  the  history  of  Christianity,  although 
they   aroused   great   antagonism  among 
orthodox  scholars,  were  admitted  every- 
where to  be  based  upon  profound  know- 
ledge.  He  did  work  of  great  importance 
in  social  science;  his  studies  of  H.  T. 
Buckle  [q.v.],  of  the  evolution  of  states, 
of  German  racial  theories,  of  free  trade, 
and  thrift,  are  all  remarkable  alike  for 
their  insight  and  learning.    It  is,  indeed, 
difficult  to  know  what  field  of  humanistii 
studies  was  outside  his  competence 

As  a  man,  Robertson  made  so; 
enemies  both  by  his  militant  unorthodoxy 
in  religious  views,  and  by  a  certain  irri- 
tated blimtness  of  manner.  But  he  was 
the  centre  of  a  devoted  circle  of  friends 
mostly,  like  himself,  militant  free  thinkers, 
but  also  including  John  (Viscount)  Morley, 
Augustine  Birrell,  and  the  historian  J.  B. 
Bury  [qq.v.].  He  was  a  man  conspicuous 
for  intellectual  courage,  direct,  candid, 
and  of  complete  integrity.  He  spoke 
admirably,  and  was  a  conversationalist  of 
charm  and  power.  Being  both  by  training 
and  by  outlook  aloof  from  the  acadenaic 
circles  which  he  would  have  adorned,  ' 
received  less  recognition  in  his  lifeti 


sti^J 


736 


l,hfi^ 

1 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Robertson,  J.  F.- 


:ii;ia  was  his  due.  But  almost  all  who  knew 
lini  had  an  affectionate  reverence  alike  for 
lis  character  and  for  his  scholarship.  It 
-i  not  improbable  that  his  intellectual 
)<)sition  will  be  much  higher  in  the  next 
.fiieration  than  it  was  during  his  lifetime. 

[The  Times,  7  January  1933;  Manchester 
iuardian,  6  January  1933;  Literary  Guide, 
''ebruary  1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Harold  J.  Laski. 

ROBERTSON,  Sm  JOHNSTON 
^ORBES-  (1853-1937),  actor,  was  born 
a  Crutched  Friars,  London,  16  January 
853,  the  eldest  child  and  eldest  of  the  six 
ons  of  John  Forbes-Robertson,  by  his 
i^ife,  Frances,  daughter  of  John  Ck)tt,  of 
^ondon.  The  father  was  a  Scot  who  came 
rom  Aberdeen  and  won  some  success  in 
^ondon  as  an  art  critic  and  journalist: 
nvironment  gave  the  son  a  single-minded 
nibition  to  become  a  famous  painter.  He 
ras  educated  at  Charterhouse,  then  still 
London  school,  and  was  sent  for  a  great 
art  of  his  holidays  for  over  six  years  to 
iouen.  On  leaving  school  he  qualified  in 
870,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  for  a  student- 
liip  at  the  Royal  Academy  Schools,  and 
t  the  end  of  three  years'  hard  work  had 
aown  so  much  promise  that  his  future  as 

painter  seemed  assured.  Instead,  he 
arned  for  his  profession  to  the  stage, 
'here  he  was  later  joined  by  two  of  his 
rothers  and  one  of  his  sisters. 

By  his  own  accoimt  Forbes-Robertson 
ever  liked  acting,  and  considered  himself 
iinperamentally  unfitted  for  it;  but  a 
esire  to  relieve  his  not  very  prosperous 
imily  of  the  expense  of  his  upkeep  made 
im  take  an  unexpected  opportvmity.  He 
ad  appeared  in  an  amateur  production, 
id  the  ascetic  beauty  of  his  face — he  had 
it  to  D.  G.  Rossetti,  Ford  Madox  Brown, 
id  other  artists — and  the  resonance  of 
is  deep  voice  led  to  an  offer  from  W.  G. 
Ills  [q.v.]  in  March  1874  of  a  part  in 
s  play  Mary  Stuart,  then  running  at 
le  Princess's  Theatre,  at  a  salary  of  £4 
)  week.  The  characteristic  quality  of 
^  orbes-Robertson's  playing  was  always 
^'  be  beauty  rather  than  intellectual  or 
Jljnotional  strength,  and  this  may  fairly 

ascribed  to  his  idea  of  himself  as  essen- 
ijally  a  painter. 

In   April   1874   Forbes-Robertson  ap- 

;ared  with  Ellen  Terry  [q.v.]  in  Charles 

eade's  The  Wandering  Heir,  and  after  a 

i  ur  with  her  he  played  a  roiuid  of  parts 

i  Manchester  under  C.  A.  Calvert  [q.v.]. 

^  i  the  end  of  the  year,  no  longer  quite  a 

vice,  he  was  back  in  London,  playing 


I 


with  Samuel  Phelps  [q.v.]  at  the  Gaiety 
Theatre.  Forbes-Robertson  afterwards 
paid  affectionate  tribute  to  Phelps  as  his 
master,  and  painted  the  portrait  of  Phelps 
as  Wolsey  in  the  Garrick  Club  collection. 
Perhaps  he  owed  it  as  much  to  Phelps's 
teaching  as  to  his  own  natural  graces  that 
he  surely  and  speedily  made  a  name. 
Engagement  followed  engagement  until 
in  September  1876  he  made  his  first 
notable  personal  success  as  Geoffrey  Wjoi- 
yard  in  (Sir)  W.  S.  Gilbert's  Dan'l  Druce, 
Blacksmith.  From  that  time  onwards  his 
name  appears  constantly  in  stage  records, 
now  with  the  Bancrofts,  now  with  Wil- 
son Barrett  and  Madame  Modjeska, 
now  with  (Sir)  Henry  Irving,  and  now 
with  (Sir)  John  Hare;  and  the  list  of  his 
parts  is  as  remarkable  for  its  variety  as  for 
its  growing  importance. 

Forbes-Robertson  made  the  first  of 
many  appearances  in  the  United  States  of 
America  in  October  1885  as  Orlando  with 
Mary  Anderson  in  New  York ;  and  after  a 
long  tour  there  he  appeared  with  her  in 
London  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre  in  Sep- 
tember 1887  as  Leontes  in  a  famous  pro- 
duction of  The  Winter's  Tale,  for  which 
he  designed  the  dresses.  He  was  by  now 
recognized  as  one  of  the  leading  London 
actors,  and  for  eight  more  years  he  con- 
tinued in  constant  demand  until  in  1895 
he  decided  to  go  into  management  for 
himself.  Here  again,  as  at  the  beginning 
of  his  stage  career,  he  was  taking  an 
opportunity  rather  than  realizing  an 
ambition. 

Forbes-Robertson's  first  season,  at  the 
Lyceum  with  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  [q.v.] 
as  his  leading  lady,  was  only  a  moderate 
success;  it  reflected  a  high-minded  devo- 
tion to  the  cause  of  art  rather  than  an 
ability  to  gauge  the  taste  of  playgoers. 
Indeed,  his  ventuj"e  did  not  begin  to  ride 
on  an  even  keel  until,  at  the  same  theatre 
and  with  much  misgiving,  he  presented 
himself  as  Hamlet  in  September  1897. 
This  was  not  only  the  greatest  artistic 
success  of  his  career;  it  also  established 
his  fortunes.  His  Hamlet  was  acclaimed 
as  the  greatest  of  his  time — some  boldly 
said  of  any  time.  Thenceforward  play- 
goers would  always  be  eager  to  see  him  in 
the  part,  and  even  in  his  farewell  season, 
when  he  was  sixty  years  of  age  and  the 
fire  of  youth  had  burnt  itself  out,  the 
dignity  and  the  poetic  beauty  of  his  inter- 
pretation were  not  to  be  forgotten. 

During  the  next  decade  Forbes-Robert- 
son continued  to  enjoy  high  artistic  pres- 
tige and  a  modest  prosperity.   His  choice 


787 


SB 


Robertson,  J.  F.- 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


of  plays  reflected  his  ovm  taste,  which 
sometimes  ran  far  ahead  of  that  of  the 
pubhc.  For  instance,  he  gave  an  early 
hearing,  in  days  when  the  name  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  was  still  unpopular,  to  The 
DeviVs  Disciple  (1900)  and  Caesar  and 
Cleopatra  (U.S.A.,  1906).  Success,  when 
it  came  his  way,  was  won  with  productions 
of  the  calibre  of  The  Light  That  Failed 
(1903),  a  dramatization  of  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling's sombre  novel.  He  seemed  not  to  be 
in  search  of  easy  success  in  less  distin- 
guished plays,  although  once,  in  Mice  and 
Men  (1902),  which  ran  for  nearly  a  year, 
he  achieved  it.  The  most  important  event 
in  his  life  diu-ing  this  time  was  the  engage- 
ment for  a  tour  in  the  autvunn  of  1900  of 
a  yoiuig  American  actress,  May  Gertrude, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Dermot,  of  Rockland, 
Maine;  her  stage  name  was  Gertrude 
Elliot,  and  she  was  sister  of  a  more  famous 
actress,  Maxine  Elliott.  In  December  of 
the  same  year  he  married  her,  and  she 
remained  his  leading  lady  imtil  his  retire- 
ment, and  his  devoted  companion  until 
his  death.  They  had  four  daughters,  the 
second  of  whom,  Jean,  followed  her  parents 
on  to  the  stage  and  achieved  distinction. 

Then  in  1908  there  came  to  Forbes- 
Robertson  that  stroke  of  material  good 
fortune  for  which  every  great  actor  must 
hope  but  which  might  easily  have  been 
denied  to  one  of  his  fastidious  spirit ;  he 
found  a  play  which  combined  strong 
popular  appeal  with  a  chief  part  exactly 
suited  to  his  personality.  Jerome  K. 
Jerome's  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back  has  little  artistic  merit,  but  the  part 
of  the  Christ-like  'Stranger'  who  puts  to 
shame  the  petty  human  failings  of  his 
fellow  guests  in  a  boarding-house  brought 
out  the  sweetness  and  goodness  that  formed 
the  basis  of  Forbes-Robertson's  character. 
The  appeal  of  play  and  actor  to  religious 
sentiment  was  irresistible.  People  for 
whom  the  theatre  had  normally  no  mes- 
sage flocked  to  see  the  piece  in  both 
England  and  America. 

When  at  last  this  tide  of  fortune  had 
spent  itself,  Forbes-Robertson  found  him- 
self able  and  ready  to  retire  from  the 
stage.  During  his  farewell  London  season, 
in  June  1913,  he  was  knighted  by  King 
George  V.  His  last  professional  appear- 
ance was  given  at  Harvard  University  in 
April  1916  as  Hamlet.  After  more  than 
twenty  years  of  contented  retirement  he 
died  at  his  home  at  St.  Margaret's  Bay, 
near  Dover,  6  November  1937.  In  1925 
he  published  his  autobiography  A  Player 
Under  Three  Reigns.  He  received  honorary 


degrees  from  the  universities  of  Columbi| 
(1915)   and  Aberdeen   (1931),   being  tt 
first  actor  of  any  nationality  upon  whoi 
an  American  degree  was  conferred. 

A  portrait  of  Forbes-Robertson  bj 
Alfred  Collins  (1885)  is  in  the  possessioj 
of  Lady  Forbes-Robertson ;  another  poi 
trait  by  Meredith  Frampton  is  at  tli 
Shakespeare  Memorial  Theatre,  Stratfoi 
on-Avon ;  and  a  drawing  of  him  as  Hamle 
was  made  by  J.  P.  Guhch  (1897).  A  cartoon 
by  '  Spy '  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  2  May 
1895. 

[The  Times,  8  November  1937;  Sir  J. 
Forbes-Robertson,  A  Player  under  Three 
Reigns,  1925 ;  Who's  Who  in  the  Theatre,  1936; 
personal  knowledge.]    W.  A.  Darlington. 

ROBERTSON,  Sir  WILLIAM 
ROBERT,  first  baronet  (1860-1933), 
field-marshal,  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas 
Charles  Robertson,  a  villager  of  W( 
bourn,  Lincolnshire,  by  his  wife 
Rosamund  Johnson,  was  bom  at  Wi 
bourn  29  January  1860.  He  was  educai 
at  a  private  school.  In  November  18' 
giving  his  birthday  as  16  January,  he  en- 
listed in  the  16th  Lancers,  and  being  a 
strong,  weU-grown  lad  he  quickly  became 
adept  in  the  many  exercises  then  required 
of  a  lancer.  He  set  earnestly  to  work  to 
educate  himself,  paying  a  comrade  a  few 
pence  an  hour  to  read  to  him  while  he  was 
cleaning  his  kit,  and  so  he  gained  promo- 
tion quickly.  He  says  in  his  autobiography 
that,  while  in  the  ranks,  he  was  'crimed' 
three  times,  once  because  a  deserter  whom 
he  was  Escorting  escaped,  once  because 
horse  which  he  was  leading  broke  looi 
and  the  third  time  because  one  of  a  pai 
in  his  charge  got  drimk  and  was  unhorsed, 
Despite  these  setbacks  he  was  promoted 
troop-sergeant-major  in  1885,  when  he 
had  over  seven  years'  service.  Then,  en- 
couraged by  his  officers  and  by  the  rector 
of  Welbourn,  he  set  to  work  on  the  exa: 
nation  for  a  commission,  which  he  pas 
in  1887,  and  in  1888  he  was  gazeti 
second-lieutenant  in  the  3rd  Dragoi 
Guards,  then  serving  in  India. 

Despite  every  economy  a  subaltern's 
in  those  days  could  not  be  made  to  co 
the  expenses  of  an  officer  in  a  caval: 
regiment,  and  in  order  to  eke  it  out  Robe 
son  took  up  the  study  of  native  languages 
awards  being  offered  to  those  who  pass 
the  examinations.   He  discovered  that 
had  a  gift  for  languages  and  in  a  few  yeai 
he    qualified    in    Urdu,    Hindi,    Persian, 
Pushtu,  Pimjabi,  and  Gurkhali.    He 
most  of  his  work  in  the  hot  weather,  wh( 


.UlJl 

le^^ 

■rt^ 
ied.    I 


738 


es, 


1 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Robertson,  W.  R. 


there  were  few  military  duties  and  most 
people  slept  in  the  middle  of  the  day. 
His  achievements  as  a  linguist  brought 
him  to  the  notice  of  army  headquarters 
and  in  1892  lie  was  appointed  a  junior 
ollicer  of  the  Intelligence  department  at 
Simla.  There  he  was  chiefly  concerned 
with  the  problems  of  the  North- West 
I'lontier.  The  advance  of  Russia  towards 
India  was  a  dominating  factor  in  the 
miUtary  situation  and  Robertson  was  sent 
to  explore  the  routes  leading  into  India 
lit  >m  the  Pamirs.  His  reports  were  of  such 
value  that  when  in  1894  Umra  Khan 
raised  the  tribes  of  Chitral  and  besieged 
tlu>  British  garrison  in  the  capital  of  that 
state,  forcing  us  to  send  a  relief  expedi- 
tion, he  was  appointed  to  the  Intelligence 
staff  of  the  force. 

In  this  little  campaign  Robertson  was 
ie\erely  wounded,  was  mentioned  in 
lis{)atches,  and  awarded  the  D.S.O. 
While  in  hospital  he  was  promoted  cap- 
lain  and  when  he  recovered  from  his 
ivound  he  began  to  work  for  the  Staff 
i'ollege.  He  qualified  for  admission — 
xing  the  first  ranker  to  do  so — in  1896 
uid  was  nominated  by  the  commander- 
n-chief  in  India  for  one  of  the  vacancies 
it  his  disposal.  At  the  Staff  College  he  was 
nuch  influenced  by  Lieutenant-Colonel 
J.  F.  R.  Henderson  [q.v.],  the  professor 
)f  strategy  and  tactics.  When  he  passed 
)ut  of  the  college  there  was  need  in  the 
ntelligence  department  of  the  War  Office 
or  an  officer  who  knew  the  North- West 
'lontier  of  India  and  Robertson,  after  a 
iiort  period  of  probation,  was  appointed 
taft'  captain  in  the  colonial  section  of  that 
iejjartment.  He  was  serving  in  it  when 
'resident  Kruger  precipitated  war  in 
n)uth  Africa  by  invading  the  Cape  Colony 
md  Natal.  On  his  appointment  as  com- 
nander-in-chief  in  South  Africa,  after  the 
bhick  week'  of  December  1899,  Lord 
Roberts  chose  Henderson  to  be  director  of 
ns  Intelligence  department  and  Hender- 
on  chose  Robertson  to  serve  under  him. 
'here  was  under  the  staff  system  which 
heu  prevailed,  and  of  which  Robertson 
vas  critical,  little  scope  for  an  Intelligence 
iejjartment  at  headquarters,  and  in 
)(tober  1900,  after  the  occupation  of 
'i-etoria,  he  was  sent  back  to  the  War 
)nice,  having  in  the  meantime  been  pro- 
i(  ited  major.  In  the  Gazette  of  November 
!)()1  he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches  and 
\\  arded  the  brevet  of  lieutenant-colonel. 

iJack  in  the  Intelligence  department, 
tobertson  was  appointed  head  of  the 
>ieign  section,  which  he  fovmd  to  be  ill 


equipped  and  badly  organized,  and  with 
the  full  support  of  his  chief.  Sir  William 
Nicholson  [q.v.],  he  set  about  remedying 
these  defects.  As  part  of  this  process  he 
spent  some  months  in  each  year  in  visiting 
the  principal  foreign  countries  which  were 
the  charge  of  his  section.  He  was  pro- 
moted colonel  in  1903  and  thus  caught  up 
with  and  even  passed  most  of  his  contem- 
poraries, who  had  entered  the  army  in  the 
normal  way,  through  the  military  colleges. 
He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1905  and,  in 
order  that  he  might  complete  the  re- 
organization of  the  foreign  section,  his 
appointment  was  extended  for  two  years, 
to  January  1907,  when  he  was  placed  for 
a  short  time  on  half  pay,  using  his  leisure 
to  translate  German  and  Austrian  military 
hand-books  for  his  old  section. 

In  May  1907  Robertson  was  appointed 
assistant  quartermaster-general  of  the 
Aldershot  Command  and  at  the  end  of  the 
year  he  became  brigadier-general,  general 
staff  of  the  same  command,  under  General 
Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  [q.v.].  R.  B. 
Haldane's  reform  of  the  army  was  then  in 
full  development,  the  general  staff  was  in 
being,  an  expeditionary  force  had  been 
formed,  and  the  creation  of  the  Territorial 
army  was  in  progress.  This  clearly  indi- 
cated that  the  main  task  of  the  army  was 
to  prepare  for  the  possibility  of  war  on  the 
continent  of  Europe.  Robertson  and  his 
chief  devoted  themselves  to  making  the 
training  at  Aldershot  as  realistic  as  possible , 
and  in  this  Robertson's  practical  mind  and 
his  prolonged  study  of  the  army  of  Great 
Britain's  most  probable  enemy  proved  to 
be  of  real  value.  His  reputation  in  the 
army  grew  rapidly.  None  the  less  it  came 
as  a  surprise  to  him  and  to  the  army  in 
general  when  in  June  1910  Nicholson, 
then  chief  of  the  imperial  general  staff, 
selected  him  for  promotion  to  major- 
general  and  appointed  him  commandant 
of  the  Staff  College ;  a  ranker  officer  in  that 
position  was  indeed  a  novelty.  Shortly 
before  this  the  King,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
visit  to  the  Aldershot  Command,  appointed 
Robertson  a  C.V.O. 

At  the  Staff  College  Robertson  applied 
to  his  students  the  same  methods  which 
he  had  used  at  Aldershot  and  set  himself 
to  make  the  study  of  war  there  less 
theoretical  and  more  practical.  He  en- 
deavoured to  reproduce  in  his  exercises 
the  strain  which  falls  upon  a  staff  in  times 
of  crisis  in  war,  then  an  entirely  new 
development  in  training.  He  told  the 
students  'direct  your  studies  to  a  special 
and   definite   end — that  of  fighting  the 


789 


Robertson,  W.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


most  probable  and  most  formidable  ad- 
versary for  the  time  being'.  His  somid 
judgement  and  critical  mind — he  had  an 
uncanny  knack  of  spotting  at  once  the 
weak  points  in  a  plan — deeply  impressed 
his  students  and  when  he  left  the  Staff 
College  in  October  1913  in  order  to  become 
director  of  military  training  at  the  War 
Office,  he  was  given  a  great  ovation. 
Twice  dvuring  his  time  as  commandant  he 
was  in  attendance  on  the  King  at  army 
manoeuvres  and  on  the  second  occasion, 
in  June  1913,  he  was  appointed  K.C.V.O. 
His  long  study  of  the  problems  which  war 
with  Germany  would  involve  had  led  him 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  enemy  would 
invade  Belgium  in  force  with  the  object 
of  turning  the  left  of  the  Allied  line  and 
that  the  natural  place  of  the  British  would 
be  where  this  blow  would  fall.  'Hope  for 
the  best,  prepare  for  the  worst'  was  one 
of  his  favourite  maxims,  and  while  at  the 
Staff  College  he  made  his  students  study 
how  to  conduct  a  retreat  from  an  enemy 
in  superior  force.  The  last  army  man- 
oeuvres which  as  director  of  military 
training  he  planned  in  1914,  were  ar- 
ranged to  deal  with  the  same  problem,  and 
this  study  bore  fruit  when  in  August  1914 
British  troops  were  retreating  from  Mons. 
On  mobilization  he  was  appointed  quarter- 
master-general at  general  headquarters  in 
France.  He  did  not  share  the  optimism  of 
the  general  staffs  at  French  and  British 
headquarters  and  agreed  with  Kitchener 
that  the  British  area  of  concentration  in 
France  was  dangerously  advanced.  When 
the  German  invasion  of  Belgium  de- 
veloped he  had  plans  ready  for  the  transfer 
of  British  bases  from  the  Channel  to  the 
Atlantic  coast,  before  the  troops  had  fired 
a  shot,  and  it  was  thanks  to  this  foresight 
that  he  succeeded  in  keeping  the  army 
supplied  during  the  long  retreat.  His 
handling  of  this  difficult  task  inspired 
confidence  in  his  ability  and  energy  and 
when  in  January  1915  the  health  of  Sir 
Archibald  Murray,  chief  of  the  general 
staff  at  general  headquarters,  broke  down, 
he  was  welcomed  as  his  successor.  He  was 
appointed  K.C.B.  later  that  year. 

The  Allies  in  the  West,  having  defeated 
the  German  attempts  to  reach  Paris  and 
the  Channel  ports,  had  to  determine  their 
strategy  for  1915.  French  military  and 
public  opinion  was  eager  to  drive  the 
enemy  out  of  France  and  was  convinced 
that  this  was  possible.  No  French  com- 
mander-in-chief who  proposed  a  defensive 
strategy  could  have  held  his  position. 
The  Germans  had  transferred  large  forces 


from  the  northern  to  the  eastern  front 
and  were  driving  back  the  Russians,  who 
had  come  gallantly  to  the  aid  of  France 
and  Britain  in  the  crisis  of  1914.  Robert- 
son held  that  the  first  essential  was  to 
make  the  co-operation  of  the  Allied  forces 
effective  and  that  therefore  the  British 
had  no  alternative  but  to  aid  the  offensive 
campaign  of  the  French  to  the  utmost  of 
their  power,  in  accordance  with  the  in- 
structions of  the  British  government  to 
the  commander-in-chief  in  France.  Fur- 
ther he  regarded  it  as  very  important 
that  the  British  should  drive  the  Germans 
farther  away  from  the  Channel  ports  and 
from  Paris,  before  they  brought  back 
troops  from  the  East.  Realizing  that 
Britain  had  not  the  power  to  conduct 
more  than  one  offensive  campaign  at  a 
time,  he  was  opposed  to  the  plans  fo 
attacking  the  Gallipoli  peninsula.  He  ha 
studied  this  operation  when  in  charge 
the  foreign  section,  and  had  come  to  tl: 
conclusion  that  success  was  doubtfii 
because  it  was  not  easy  to  provide  artillei 
support  for  landings  and  he  was  sceptic 
of  the  opinion  of  the  Admiralty  that 
provements  in  naval  ordnance  had  over' 
come  this  difficulty.  So  began  the  pro- 
longed controversy  between  'W^esterners^™ 
and  'Easterners',  in  which  RobertsoiH 
was  a  convinced  'Westerner'.  ^^ 

As  the  summer  of  1915  wore  on  and 
British  commitments  grew,  Robertson 
became  anxious  about  the  conduct  of  the 
war  and  sent  to  the  War  Office  a  memoran- 
dum in  which  he  urged  the  setting  up  of  an 
organization  for  the  control  and  directioi 
of  AUied  strategy.  As  a  result  of  t 
General  Joffre  called  in  November  191 
the  first  conference  of  Allied  commanders 
and  chiefs  of  staff  to  consider  the  AUi 
campaign  for  1916.  This  Robertson  wel 
comed  as  a  useful  beginning.  He  was  n( 
less  anxious  to  improve  British  arran; 
ments  for  the  control  of  military  operatic: 
and  when  in  the  autumn  Kitchener  toll 
him  that  he  wanted  him  to  come  to  t 
War  Office  as  chief  of  the  imperial  gene: 
staff  he  prepared  for  him  a  memoranda 
setting  out  the  conditions  upon  which  ' 
was  prepared  to  accept  this  appointmen' 

Robertson  pointed  out  that  the  Wi 
Office  was  responsible  for  campaigns 
France  and  the  Dardanelles,  India  conj 
ducted    the    campaign    in    Mesopotamii 
without  the  resources  to  do  this  effective! 
the   Foreign   Office   was   responsible  foi 
operations  against  the  Senussi  in  West© 
Egypt,  and  the  Colonial  Office  for  tl 
campaign  in  West  Africa,  a  division 


an 
io^J 


740 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Robertson,  W.  R. 


responsibility  fatal  to  efficiency.  He  urged 
the  setting  up  of  a  small  war  council 
charged  with  the  co-ordination  of  policy 
;m(l  strategy  in  every  theatre  of  war  in 
which  Great  Britain  was  concerned ;  that 
the  chief  of  the  imperial  general  staff 
should  be  the  responsible  military  adviser 
)f  this  council  and  should  issue  its  in- 
structions to  commanders-in-chief,  and  be 
in  direct  touch  with  these  commanders 
without  the  intervention  of  the  army 
council.  He  also  asked  for  a  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  general  staff  at  the  War  Office 
in  order  to  enable  it  to  operate  as  the 
(general  headquarters  of  the  Empire. 
Kitchener  was  at  first  disposed  to  con- 
sider these  proposals  to  be  an  undue 
curtailment  of  the  authority  of  the 
secretary  of  state  for  war,  but  after  a 
personal  interview  he  accepted  them  and 
Robertson  became  chief  of  the  imperial 
i^eneral  staff  in  succession  to  Murray  in 
December  1915. 

Before  he  re-entered  the  War  Office 
llobertson  had  been  asked  by  the  govern- 
ment for  his  views  on  the  situation  in  the 
Gallipoli  peninsula  and  had  strongly  sup- 
ported the  proposal  to  evacuate  Suvla 
Bay.  This  operation  was  completed  before 
he  assumed  office  and  his  first  act  as  chief 
of  the  imperial  general  staff  was  to  urge 
that  Helles  should  also  be  evacuated. 
When  this  was  done  he  created  in  Egjrpt 
i  general  reserve  composed  of  the  troops 
released  from  the  Dardanelles.  This  he 
used  to  provide  reinforcements  for  the 
campaign  of  1916  in  France,  a  very  neces- 
sary step  in  view  of  the  German  attack  on 
Verdiui.  Murray,  who  had  become  com- 
mander-in-chief in  Egypt,  materially 
II  creased  the  available  reserve  by  occupy- 
ng  the  wells  in  the  Sinai  peninsula,  a 
iiore  economical  defence  against  attack 
rom  the  East  than  was  provided  by 
ining  the  Suez  Canal.  This  released 
urther  reinforcements  for  Mesopotamia, 
.vhere  Robertson  selected  General  Sir 
1 ".  S.  Maude  [q.v.]  for  the  chief  command. 
The  new  arrangement  began  smoothly. 
Kitchener  and  Robertson,  who  was  pro- 
noted  general  in  June  1916,  worked  well 
oij^ether  and  when,  on  Kitchener's  death 
liat  same  month,  Lloyd  George  became 
secretary  of  state  for  war,  he  expressed  his 
itxreement  with  the  reorganization  of  the 
n'gher  command.  The  successful  e vacua- 
ion  of  the  Gallipoli  peninsula,  the  ending 
>f'  the  campaigns  in  West  Africa  and 
Western  Egypt,  the  occupation  of  the 
Mnai  peninsula  and,  early  in  1917,  when 
iobertson    was    appointed    G.C.B.,    the 


defeat  of  the  Turks  at  Kut-el-Amara, 
followed  by  the  occupation  of  Bagdad, 
materially  improved  the  British  military 
situation.  But  against  this  had  to  be  set 
the  disastrous  defeats  of  the  Russians,  the 
heavy  cost  of  the  battles  of  the  Somme, 
the  exhaustion  of  the  French  army,  the 
over-running  of  Serbia  and  Rumania,  and 
growing  doubts  as  to  the  possibility  of 
breaking  through  the  German  lines  in  the 
West.  These  led  in  December  1916  to  the 
fall  of  Asquith  and  the  accession  of  Lloyd 
iGeorge  as  prime  minister. 

Lloyd  George,  horrified  by  the  long 
casualty  lists  of  the  Somme  battles,  was 
determined  to  secure  greater  political 
control  of  Allied  strategy  and  to  find  an 
easier  road  to  victory  than  was  provided 
by  assaults  on  German  trenches.  He  was 
essentially  an  opportunist,  and  Robertson 
a  firm  believer  in  principles;  the  prime 
minister  liked  to  form  his  conclusions 
after  personal  discussions ;  Robertson  dis- 
trusted his  powers  of  argimient  with 
statesmen  and  preferred  to  present  his 
views  in  reasoned  memoranda,  so  that 
from  the  first  there  were  incompata- 
bilities  of  temperament  between  the  two. 
Friction  increased  when,  at  a  conference 
of  the  Allies  held  in  Rome  in  January 
1917,  Lloyd  George,  without  consulting 
Robertson,  put  forward  a  plan  for  an 
Allied  attack  on  Austria.  This  plan  over- 
looked the  limitations  of  communication 
between  France  and  Italy  and  the 
superiority  in  this  respect  of  the  centrally 
placed  enemy.  The  Allied  ministers 
naturally  referred  it  to  the  chiefs  of  staff 
for  examination  and  report. 

The  French  government,  like  Lloyd 
George,  was  alarmed  by  the  losses  of  the 
campaigns  of  1916  and  it  too  sought 
greater  political  control.  Joffre  was  re- 
moved and  Nivelle  took  his  place.  Lloyd 
Gteorge  met  Nivelle  on  his  return  from 
Italy  and,  before  the  report  on  the 
Austrian  plan  was  received,  approved 
Nivelle's  proposal  for  a  quick  break 
through  the  German  lines  in  the  West,  on 
the  understanding  that,  if  this  failed, 
operations  would  be  broken  off.  To  further 
this  plan,  the  prime  minister,  again  with- 
out consulting  the  chief  of  the  imperial 
general  staff,  encouraged  the  French 
government  to  propose  that  Nivelle 
should  have  operational  and  administra- 
tive control  of  the  British  army  in  France. 
When,  to  the  surprise  of  Robertson  and 
Haig,  this  proposal  was  produced  at  an 
Allied  conference  held  at  Calais  in  Feb- 
ruary 1917,  they  held  it  to  be  dangerous 


741 


Robertson,  W.  R. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


^ 

ap.H 

IH      a  ^M 


in  view  of  the  many  British  commitments, 
and  a  compromise  was  reached  by  which 
Nivelle  was  given  operational  control  in 
France  for  the  campaign  of  1917. 

The  failure  of  Nivelle's  campaign,  fol- 
lowed by  serious  mutinies  in  parts  of  the 
French  army,  produced  a  crisis  which,  it 
was  agreed,  could  only  be  met  by  British 
attacks  on  a  scale  sufficient  to  keep  the 
Germans  occupied.  The  situation  was 
further  complicated  by  the  probability  of 
the  coUapse  of  Russian  resistance,  against 
which  could  be  set  the  entry  into  the  war 
of  the  United  States  of  America.  A  con- 
ference of  AUied  commanders-in-chief  and 
chiefs  of  staff  held  in  June  computed  the 
rate  at  which  German  troops  could  be 
transferred  from  the  eastern  to  the 
western  front  and  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  between  February  and  July  1918  the 
enemy  might  be  in  a  dangerous  superiority 
on  the  western  front.  In  order  to  meet 
this  it  was  agreed  that  a  defensive  atti- 
tude should  be  adopted  in  all  secondary 
theatres  of  war  and  that  as  many  men  as 
possible  should  be  transferred  to  the 
western  front. 

Robertson  agreed  with  this  recom- 
mendation and  in  order  to  implement  it  he 
prepared  plans  for  the  transfer  of  troops 
from  Egypt  and  Salonika  to  the  western 
front  and  urged  the  army  coimcil  to  press 
for  a  greater  allocation  of  manpower  to 
the  army.  This  brought  him  again  into 
conflict  with  the  prime  minister,  who 
feared  that  these  reinforcements  would  be 
used  for  another  costly  attack  in  France. 
Delay  occurred  in  meeting  the  army 
council's  request  for  more  men,  and  Lloyd 
George  returned  to  his  advocacy  of  an 
attack  on  Austria  as  preferable  to  Haig's 
proposal  for  an  offensive  campaign  on  the 
Ypres  front.  When  the  Austrian  plan 
proved  to  be  impracticable  the  prime 
minister  urged  an  invasion  of  Palestine  as 
likely  to  provide  a  stimulus  to  public 
morale  during  the  difficult  period  which 
was  foreseen  for  the  spring  of  1918. 

The  heavy  defeat  of  the  Italian  army  at 
Caporetto  in  October  1917  and  the  dis- 
appointing results  of  the  Passchendaele 
campaign  brought  about  a  fresh  crisis. 
Lloyd  George,  who  had  been  for  some  time 
in  touch  with  the  French  prime  minister, 
M.  Painleve,  and  had  secured  his  agree- 
ment, proposed  at  a  conference  held  at 
RapaUo  the  creation  of  a  supreme  war 
council  composed  of  the  prime  ministers 
and  one  other  minister  from  each  AUy, 
provided  with  a  permanent  staff  and  with 
military  representatives  to  furnish  tech- 


nical advice.  Robertson  cordially  ap- 
proved of  the  supreme  council  as  a 
means  of  receiving  better  co-ordination  of 
Allied  policy,  but  he  strongly  disapproved 
of  the  military  representatives  having 
power  to  give  technical  advice  indepen- 
dently of  their  chiefs  of  staff,  who,  he  held, 
having  behind  them  their  general  staffs 
organization,  and  particularly  their  intel- 
ligence services,  were  alone  competent  to 
give  their  governments  responsible  advice. 
Nivelle's  failure  had  shaken  confidence  in 
an  Allied  supreme  command  and  Lloyd 
George  had  expressly  stated  that  this  was, 
at  the  time,  impracticable,  but  Robertson 
regarded  the  multiplication  of  military 
advice  as  a  sorry  alternative. 

The  differences  between  the  two  men 
came  to  a  head  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Supreme  War  Council  held  at  Versailles 
from  30  January  to  2  February  1918. 
There  Lloyd  George  obtained  approval, 
despite  Robertson's  objections,  for  aui 
offensive  campaign  in  Palestine  in  the 
spring.  In  the  event  this  had  to  be  post 
poned  when  the  Germans  attacked  the 
western  front  in  March.  It  was  also  de- 
cided to  create  an  Allied  general  reserve 
on  the  western  front  controlled  by  the 
military  representatives  with  Foch  as 
chairman.  Robertson  had  no  faith  in 
command  by  committee  and  said  so,  and 
in  fact  this  committee  was  never  able  to 
get  to  work.  It  had  become  clear  that  he 
and  the  prime  minister  could  not  work 
together  and  Lloyd  George  proposed  to 
bring  in  Sir  Henry  Wilson  [q.v,]  as  chief 
of  the  imperial  general  staff,  offering 
Robertson  the  post  of  military  repre- 
sentative at  Versailles.  This  Robertson 
refused  on  the  ground  that  the  appoint- 
ment was  wrong  in  principle.  In  February 
he  left  the  War  Office  for  the  Eastern 
Command  at  home. 

In   the  Eastern  Command   Robertsonj 
undertook  a  reorganization  designed  t 
release  men  for  the  fighting  fronts  an* 
after  the  armistice  he  was  concerned  witi 
the  disturbances  which  arose  from  the' 
dissatisfaction    of  the   troops    with   the 
arrangements  for  demobilization.   In  this 
his    firmness    and    tact    avoided    serious 
trouble.    In  June  1918  he  became  com- 
mander-in-chief.  Home   Forces,    and   i 
April  1919  of  the  British  army  of  occupa-; 
tion  on  the  Rhine.    In  this  year  he  was] 
appointed  G.C.M.G.,  and  for  his  eminenf 
services  during  the  war  received  the  thanks 
of  parliament  and  a  grant  of  £10,000  and 
was  created  a  baronet.   In  March  1920  he 
was  promoted  field-marshal  and  retired; 


i 


742 


I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Robinson 


from  active  employment  in  the  follow- 
inix  year.  He  was  appointed  G.C.V.O.  in 
]!).'}  1  and  died  in  London  12  February 

Robertson  wrote  two  books;  the  first, 
an  autobiography  From  Private  to  Field- 
Marshal,  was  published  in  1921 ;  the 
secMmd,  Soldiers  and  Statesmen  1914-1918, 
published  in  two  volumes  in  1926,  was  a 
reasoned  account  of  the  advice  which 
he  gave  to  the  government.  He  was  ap- 
pointed in  1916  colonel  of  the  Scots  Greys, 
in  1925  of  the  3rd  Dragoon  Guards,  and  in 
1928  of  the  Royal  Horse  Guards.  He  re- 
ceived many  foreign  decorations,  includ- 
ing that  of  grand  officer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour. 

Robertson  married  in  1894  Mildred 
Adelaide,  second  daughter  of  Lieutenant- 
General  Charles  Thomas  Palin,  of  the 
Indian  Army,  and  had  two  sons,  the 
younger  of  whom  died  at  the  age  of 
eighteen,  and  two  daughters.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded as  second  baronet  by  his  elder 
son,  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Brian  Hubert 
Robertson  (bom  1896). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Robertson  in  the 
Cavalry  Club  by  R.  C.  Petre,  and  in  the 
Imperial  War  Museum  by  Sir  William 
Orpen ;  a  portrait  of  him  as  colonel  of  the 
Royal  Horse  Guards  by  Mediria  is  in  the 
possession  of  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Locket- 
Agnew ;  a  portrait  of  him  is  also  included 
in  J.  S.  Sargent's  picture,  'Some  General 
Officers  of  the  Great  War',  painted  in 
1922,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Sir  William  Robertson,  From  Private  to 
Field-Marshal,  1921,  and  Soldiers  and  States- 
■nen  1914-J918,  2  vols.,  1926  ;  personal  know- 
edge.]  F.  Maurice. 

ROBINSON,    JOSEPH    ARMITAGE 

1858-1933),  dean  of  Westminster  Abbey 
ind  of  Wells  Cathedral,  was  the  third  son 
iniong  thirteen  children  of  George  Robin- 
son, of  Monaghan,  Ireland,  vicar  in  turn 
)f  the  poor  parishes  of  Keynsham,  near 
Bath,  and  St.  Augustine's,  Everton,  near 
Liverpool,  by  his  wife,  Henrietta  Cecilia, 
laughter  of  Arthur  Forbes,  of  Craig-a-vad, 
!o.  Down.  He  was  bom  at  Keynsham 
)  January  1858  and  educated  under 
><orge  Butler  [q.v.]  at  Liverpool  College 
lud,  hke  three  of  his  brothers,  at  Christ's 
[College,  Cambridge,  of  which  he  was 
jcholar  (1877,  fourth  classic  and  second 
;!iancellor's  medallist,  1881),  fellow  (1881- 
899),  and  honorary  fellow  (1905).  After 
)rdination  (1881,  1882)  he  became  for  a 
ime  (1883-1884)  domestic  chaplain  to 
r.  B.  Lightfoot  [q.v.],  whose  custom  of 


gathering  young  men  to  live  under  his  roof 
at  Auckland  Castle  Robinson  adopted 
later  at  Westminster.  On  returning  to 
Cambridge  he  engaged  in  teaching  and 
research  varied  by  a  curacy  at  St.  Mary 
the  Great  (1885-1888)  and  the  vicarage  of 
All  Saints  (1888-1892).  On  the  way  to 
Patmos  in  1887  he  met  at  Athens  Dr.  S.  P. 
Lambros,  who,  in  discussing  the  problem 
of  a  famous  forgery  by  Constantine 
Simonides,  showed  him  an  essay  that  he 
had  written  and  a  new  collation  which  he 
had  had  made  of  the  Athos  manuscript  of 
the  Shepherd  of  Hermas.  For  these 
Robinson  secured  publication  by  the 
Cambridge  University  Press  (1888)  with 
an  English  translation  and  valuable  pre- 
face and  appendices  of  his  own.  In  1890 
he  discovered  in  MS.  Brit.  Mus.  11884  the 
original  Latin  of  the  Acts  of  the  Scillitan 
martyrs  and  shortly  after,  while  in  Vienna 
in  search  of  a  lost  manuscript  of  the  Pas- 
sion of  St.  Perpetua,  he  detected  in  the 
Buddhistic  romance  of  Barlaam  and 
Joasaph  (or  Josaphat)  the  original  Greek 
of  the  Apology  of  Aristides,  of  which  a  text 
and  translation  from  a  Syriac  version 
found  by  James  Rendel  Harris  at  Mount 
Sinai  were  passing  through  the  press.  The 
result  appeared  in  1891  as  the  first  of  a 
new  series  of  Cambridge  'Texts  and 
Studies '  under  Robinson's  editorship  with 
an  elaborate  appendix  by  himself,  which 
helped  'to  open  a  new  field  before  the 
student  of  Christian  Apologetics '.  In  1891 
as  vol.  i,  no.  2  in  the  series  were  issued  the 
new  texts  of  St.  Perpetua,  'the  most 
beautiful  of  all  the  records  of  Christian 
martyrdom'  and  of  the  SciUitan  martyrs, 
and  in  1893,  separately,  the  revised  text  of 
Origen's  Philocalia.  The  interest  aroused 
by  such  work  was  marked  abroad  by  the 
bestowal  of  the  honorary  degree  of  Ph.D. 
by  Gottingen  University  (1893)  and  of  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.  Theol.  by  Halle 
University  (1894)  and  at  home  by  his 
election  to  the  Norrisian  professorship  of 
divinity  at  Cambridge  (1893),  which  he 
held  until  1899.  From  1894  to  1899  he 
held  the  prebend  of  Compton  Bishop  in 
Wells  Cathedral.  In  1895  he  published 
Euthaliana  (Cambridge  'Texts  and 
Studies',  vol.  iii,  no.  3),  a  work  of  some 
importance  for  New  Testament  criticism, 
which  shows  that  he  had  already  begun 
those  Armenian  studies  which  led  to  his 
translation  of  St.  Irenaeus:  The  Demon- 
stration of  the  Apostolic  Preaching  (1920), 
'a  handbook  of  Christian  evidence  ...  as 
it  presented  itself  to  a  master-mind  at  the 
end  of  the  second  century'. 


743 


Robinson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Meantime  Robinson's  reputation  had 
been  growing  as  a  scholar  who  was  also  a 
preacher,  and  his  appointment  to  the 
rectory  of  St.  Margaret's  with  the  annexed 
canonry  of  Westminster  Abbey  was  wel- 
comed in  1899,  the  stall  being  exchanged 
for  another  in  1900.  The  approach  of  the 
coronation  of  Edward  VII  gave  the  new 
canon,  with  the  approval  of  Archbishop 
Temple,  on  whom  the  responsibiUty  for 
the  service  lay,  an  opportunity  of  suggest- 
ing modifications  of  the  disastrous  changes 
in  the  coronation  rite  introduced  by  Wil- 
liam Sancroft  with  his  ill  advised  altera- 
tions for  James  II,  followed  by  those  of 
Henry  Compton  for  WilUam  and  Mary, 
until  the  ceremony  reached  its  lowest 
liturgical  level  in  the  form  adopted  for 
William  IV.  This  process  of  restoration 
and  repair  was  carried  still  further  in  the 
service  for  George  V  prepared  by  the 
Lambeth  librarian  imder  Robinson's 
supervision  in  1911.  After  King  Edward's 
coronation  (9  August  1902),  the  octo- 
genarian Dean  Bradley  resigned  and 
Robinson  was  appointed  to  succeed  him 
at  the  age  of  forty-four.  He  came  to 
office  at  a  difficult  time  when  energetic 
action  and  even  drastic  decisions  might 
seem  to  be  called  for.  If  allowed  for  the 
most  part  to  go  his  own  way  he  was  by  no 
means  a  difficult  man  to  work  with,  even 
if  he  appeared  at  times  freakish  and  pro- 
voking. The  powers  of  a  dean  of  West- 
minster are  very  extensive  and  in  the 
hands  of  a  masterful  man  the  exercise  of 
them  might  only  too  easily  wear  the 
appearance  of  despotism.  Examples  were 
seen  in  his  treatment  of  the  Athanasian 
Creed  and  his  rejection  of  a  strongly  urged 
proposal  that  George  Meredith  should  be 
buried  in  the  Abbey  in  1909,  as  to  which 
he  always  contended  that  later  ages  would 
approve  his  literary  estimate.  He  was  an 
unflinching  upholder  of  the  rights  of  the 
Abbey  which  he  loved,  and  of  which, 
although  he  has  been  described  as  'tall, 
gaunt,  long-haired  and  prematurely  bent', 
he  was  the  most  stately  and,  as  the  years 
passed,  probably  the  most  picturesque,  as 
he  was  certainly  the  most  learned,  head 
that  it  had  known  for  centuries.  But 
undeniably  his  tenure  (1902-1911)  was 
marked  at  times  by  serious  tension  with 
a  chapter  not  less  desirous  of  handing  on 
vmimpaired  to  their  successors  their  right 
to  an  adequate  share  in  government. 
How  much  was  gained  by  appeal  to  the 
visitor  has  not  been  disclosed,  but  some  of 
the  most  important  decanal  prerogatives 
seem  to  have  been  affirmed.    The  dean. 


however,  partly  on  the  ground  of  eye- 
trouble,  decided  not  to  undergo  the  strain 
of  the  approaching  coronation,  and  ac- 
cepted nomination  to  the  deanery  of 
Wells,  retaining  the  office  of  lord  high 
almoner  to  which  he  had  been  appointe(|i 
in  1906.  H 

Robinson's  writings  while  at  West^F 
minster  followed  two  distinct  lines,  theo- 
logical and  historical.  In  the  one  class 
were  vivid  and  stimulating  essays  and 
addresses  such  as  Unity  in  Christ  (1901) 
and  The  Vision  of  Unity  (published  ii 
1908,  the  year  of  the  Lambeth  Confer 
ence).  The  Study  of  the  Gospels  (1902) 
Some  Thoughts  on  the  Incarnation  (1903) 
On  Inspiration  (1905),  On  the  Athanasia^ 
Creed  (1905),  and  The  Advent  Hope  in  Sf, 
PauVs  Epistles  (1911),  together  with 
elaborate  commentary  on  the  Epistle 
the  Ephesians  (1903)  in  the  Cambridg 
tradition  and  a  conservative  study 
The  Historical  Character  of  St.  JoAn'jj 
Gospel  (1908,  enlarged  ed.  1929).  To  tl 
other  category  belong  four  works,  whic 
lay  students  of  Abbey  history  under  last- 
ing obUgation  to  him:  An  Unrecognized 
Westminster  Chronicler,  1381-1394  (1907), 
The  History  of  Westminster  Abbey  by  John 
Flete  (1909),  Gilbert  Crispin,  Abbot  of^ 
Westminster,  and  The  AbboVs  House 
Westminster,  both  published  in  1911.  T<1 
these  should  be  added  his  share  in  Th 
Manuscripts  of  Westminster  Abbey  M 
Montague  Rhodes  James  [q.v.]  (1909). 

At  Wells  the  new  dean  was  in  familia* 
surroxmdings  and  able  to  renew  contact 
with  friends,  especially  at  Downside.  The 
medieval  deanery  pleased  him  after  the 
removal  of  evidence  of  modem  '  taste 'j 
and  he  found  additional  happiness  in 
marriage  (1914)  to  an  old  friend  at  Lam-^ 
beth.  Amy  Edith,  daughter  of  Francis 
Grantham  Faithfull,  of  Broxbourne,  Hei 
fordshire,  clerk  to  the  Merchant  Taylor 
Company.  The  care  of  another  greal 
church  of  peculiar  architectural  featuresj 
to  which  he  added  a  rood  in  the  nave 
stimulated  and  re-invigorated  his  antij 
quarian  interests  to  the  great  advantage  o| 
his  native  county.  His  work  on  T?ie  Saxo 
Bishops  of  Wells  (1918),  his  Somerse 
Historical  Essays  (1922)  and  contributions 
to  the  Somerset  Record  Society's  collec* 
tanea,  his  Ford  lectures  delivered 
Oxford  in  1922  on  The  Times  of  St, 
Dunstan  (published  in  1923),  the  studie 
of  Two  Glastonbury  Legends  (1926),  and* 
St.  Oswald  and  the  Church  of  Worcester 
(1919)  are  not  always  easy  to  read  since 
he   disclaimed  the  intention   of  writing 


JUS 

S^\ 
ieSI 


744 


D.N.B.  1981-1940  Rogcrs,  A.  M.  A.  H. 


history,  being  content  with  the  modest 
niin  of  'collecting  materials  out  of  which 
ntliers  more  competent  will  some  day 
write  it',  but  they  are  invaluable  for  their 
purpose.  In  other  fields  he  pubhshed  the 
ANork  on  Irenaeus  already  mentioned,  a 
very  long  and  notable  article  on  the  early 
111  story  of  Canterbury  convocation 
(Church  Quarterly  Review,  October  1915), 
ail  essay  equally  suggestive  and  deliber- 
ately provoking  on  Barnabas,  Hermas  and 
the  Didache  (1920),  and  sermons  entitled 
diving  and  Receiving  (1928).  His  deep 
interest  in  liturgical  questions,  strongly 
influenced  by  long  friendship  with  Ed- 
mund Bishop  [q.v.],  lent  urgency  to  his 
\iews  on  Prayer  Book  revision  which 
failed  to  secure  favour  in  convocation,  and 
his  last  days  were  clouded  by  recurrent 
ill  health.  Resigning  in  March  1933  he 
died,  childless,  at  the  Manor  House,  Upton 
Noble,  Somerset,  7  May,  and  was  buried 
at  Wells. 

Robinson  was  one  of  the  early  elected 
fellows  of  the  British  Academy  (1903)  and 
was  appointed  K.C.V.O.  in  1932.  He 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.D. 
from  the  universities  of  Dublin  (1908)  and 
Glasgow  (1910). 

[TKe  Times,  9  May  1933;  J.  M.  Creed, 
Joseph  Armitage  Robinson,  1858—1933  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xx, 
1934;  John  PeUe,  Biographical  Register  of 
ChrisCs  College,  vol.  ii,  1913 ;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.] 

Claud  Jenkins. 

ROGERS,  ANNIE  MARY  ANNE 
HENLEY  (1856-1937),  educationist,  was 
the  eldest  child  and  only  daughter  of  the 
political  economist  James  Edwin  Thorold 
Rogers  [q.v.],  of  Oxford,  by  his  second 
wife,  Anne  Susanna  Charlotte,  second 
daughter  of  Henry  ReveU  Reynolds, 
solicitor  to  the  Treasury,  and  great- 
p:randdaughter  of  the  physician  Henry 
Uevell  Reynolds  [q.v.].  Joseph  Rogers 
[q.v.]  was  her  father's  brother.  She  was 
born  15  February  1856  at  Oxford,  where 
she  died  at  the  age  of  eighty-one,  as  the 
result  of  having  been  struck  by  a  lorry, 
28  October  1937.  Her  life,  which  was 
spent  in  Oxford,  coincided  with  important 
developments  in  the  position  of  women, 
in  which  she  herself  played  a  leading  part. 
Slie  was  first  brought  into  prominence  by 
heading  the  Ust  of  successful  candidates  in 
the  Oxford  senior  local  examinations  of 
1873,  thus  becoming  eUgible,  but  for  her 
sex,  for  exhibitions  at  Balliol  and  Wor- 
cester Colleges.    In  1879  she  joined  the 


Committee  of  the  Association  for  the 
Higher  Education  of  Women  in  Oxford 
(familiarly  known  for  many  years  as  the 
A.E.W.),  organized  privately  in  the 
previous  year  to  promote  facilities  for 
teaching  and  examination  by  university 
standards,  and  was  honorary  secretary 
from  1894  until  its  dissolution  in  1920. 
The  success  of  this  iinofhcial  body  led, 
through  partial  recognition  by  the  univer- 
sity, to  the  institution  in  1910  of  the  Dele- 
gacy for  Women  Students,  and  in  1920 
women  were  admitted  to  all  the  privileges 
and  obligations  of  actual  membership  of 
the  university.  Miss  Rogers  had  been 
throughout  the  moving  spirit;  and  al- 
though she  never  hesitated  to  attribute  a 
due  share  of  the  result  to  the  general 
advance  in  the  position  of  women  during 
the  war  of  1914-1918  and  to  the  Hberal 
attitude  of  the  then  chancellor,  Lord 
Curzon,  it  is  certain  that  the  conservatism 
of  the  university  would  not  have  been 
overcome  so  steadily  and  so  smoothly 
without  the  attention  to  detail,  sound 
judgement,  and  intellectual  grasp  which 
characterized  her  own  leadership. 

Miss  Rogers's  energies  were  not  ex- 
hausted by  this  absorbing  Ufework  but 
found  congenial  scope  from  1893  to  1930 
in  the  administration,  as  honorary  secre- 
tary to  its  successive  governing  bodies,  of 
the  Society  of  Oxford  Home-Students 
(afterwards  St.  Anne's  Society),  as  tutor 
in  classics  in  the  early  days  to  all  the 
women  students,  and  as  a  member  for 
forty -two  years  after  1894  of  the  council 
of  St.  Hugh's  College,  Oxford,  which  was 
granted  its  charter  in  1927  and  owes  much 
to  her  talent  for  constitution-making. 
Her  latter  years,  after  she  had  retired 
from  her  last  tutorial  position — at  St. 
Hugh's — in  1921,  were  devoted  to  the 
care  of  the  college  garden,  and  revealed  a 
genius  for  horticulture  not  inferior  to  her 
skill  in  draftsmanship.  She  was  elected 
an  honorary  fellow  on  the  occasion  of  the 
college  jubilee  in  1936.  In  1938,  after  her 
death,  a  memorial  garden  was  laid  out  and 
endowed  in  her  memory  in  the  churchyard 
of  the  university  church  of  St.  Mary,  where 
a  Latin  inscription  on  a  garden  seat  recalls 
her  services  to  education,  administration, 
and  horticulture. 

Degrees  by  Degrees  (published  post- 
humously in  1938),  her  own  narrative  of 
forty-two  years'  labour  (in  forty-one  of 
which  she  herself  had  participated)  in  a 
society  which,  perhaps  above  all  others, 
displays  England  in  her  favourite  illogi- 
calities,    shows     Miss     Rogers's    strong 


745 


Rogers,  A.  M.  A.  H.  d.n.b.  1931-1940 


intelligence,  lively  humour,  and  firm  grasp 
of  a  most  intricate  subject. 

A  portrait  drawing  of  Miss  Rogers  by 
Leslie  Brooke  is  in  the  possession  of  St. 
Hugh's  College. 

[The  Times,  29  October  1937 ;  Introductory 
Memoir  by  B.  E,  Gwyer  prefixed  to  A.  M.  A.  H. 
Rogers,  Degrees  by  Degrees,  1938 ;  Oxford 
Magazine,  18  November  1937 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] B.  E.  Gwyer. 

ROGERS,  LEONARD  JAMES  (1862- 
1933),  mathematician,  was  born  at  Oxford 
30  March  1862,  the  second  of  the  five  sons 
of  James  Edwin  Thorold  Rogers  [q.v.],  by 
his  second  wife.  He  was  brother  of  Annie 
Rogers  [q.v.].  Because  of  illness  he  was 
educated  privately,  but  in  1880  he  went 
up  as  a  mathematical  scholar  to  Balliol 
College,  Oxford.  Besides  gaining  a  first 
class  in  mathematical  moderations  (1881) 
and  in  the  final  school  of  mathematics 
(1884)  together  with  both  the  junior  and 
senior  university  mathematical  scholar- 
ships (1881,  1885),  he  also  obtained  a 
second  class  in  classical  moderations  in 
1882  and  two  years  later  graduated 
B.Mus.  In  1888  he  became  professor  of 
mathematics  at  the  Yorkshire  College, 
afterwards  the  university  of  Leeds,  retir- 
ing, because  of  severe  illness,  in  1919.  He 
returned  to  Oxford,  where  he  remained 
free  of  official  appointments,  and  died 
12  September  1933.  He  served  on  the 
council  of  the  London  Mathematical 
Society  in  1901  and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in 
1924.  He  was  unmarried.  His  abilities 
were  many  and  his  interests  diverse.  He 
was  a  musician  of  uncommon  skill  with  a 
faultless  ear  and  a  tenacious  memory. 
These  gifts  made  him  also  a  ready  linguist 
and  an  engaging  mimic,  especially  of 
broad  Yorkshire.  He  was  a  first-class 
skater,  an  excellent  knitter,  and  an 
amateur  of  rock-gardens. 

Among  these  competing  aptitudes 
music  easily  held  first  place,  perhaps  even 
as  against  mathematics.  Rogers  was  a 
very  good  pianist  and  he  sang  well,  taking 
an  active  part  in  choral  music  at  both 
Leeds  and  Oxford.  He  combined  a 
scholar's  knowledge  and  a  performer's  love 
of  the  works  of  J.  S.  Bach  and  he  carried 
in  his  memory  a  wide  repertory  of  Chopin's 
pianoforte  music.  For  composers  of  a 
more  recent  tradition  he  had  no  apprecia- 
tion and  little  patience.  So  necessary  was 
music  to  him  that  in  1917,  bed-ridden  and 
paralysed,  he  taught  himself  to  play  the 
concertina,  the  only  instrument  then 
possible     to     him.      His     mathematical 


1 


writings  appeared  mostly  in  the  Proceed' 
ings  of  the  London  Mathematical  Society 
(some  twenty -two  papers),  but  he  also 
contributed  to  the  Messenger  of  Mathe-. 
matics  and  the  Proceedings  of  the  Cam^ 
bridge  Philosophical  Society.  He  did  noli 
write  a  book.  His  first  work  was 
the  theory  of  reciprocants,  that  is  ol 
differential  expressions  unaltered  by  speci>| 
fled  transformations  of  the  variables, 
subject  that  J.  J.  Sylvester  [q.v.]  hac 
made  popular  at  Oxford.  But  subse-^ 
quently  Rogers's  chief  work  and  interest 
lay  in  the  associated  fields  of  elliptic  func-^ 
tions,  theta  fimctions,  and  basic  hyperJ 
geometric  series,  called  shortly  g-seriesj 
Here  his  work  crossed  that  of  the  remark-l 
able  Indian  mathematician  Srinivass 
Ramanujan,  and  it  was  to  the  circum^ 
stances  of  this  interconnexion  that  Rogera 
owed  a  good  deal  of  his  fame  and  recogni4 
tion  as  a  mathematician.  Ramanujan 
1913  had  conjectured  a  pair  of  identities 
important  in  partition-theory: 

1  +q/(l  -q)+q'/{l  -q){l  -q')+qV{l  -q) 
(l-g2)(l_g3)+  ... 

=  1/(1  -g)(i  -9*)(i  -s«)(i  -g»)(i  -g") 

(1-gl*)... 

and 

l+gV(l-3)+?V(l-9)(l-9')+9'V(l-9)1 

(l-g2)(l_g3)+   .  .  . 

=    1/(1  -g2)(l  _g3)(l  _57)(1  _g8)(l  _gl2) 

(l-gi3)  .  .  . 

and  they  had  been  published  withoul 
proof.  It  was  only  later  and  by  accideni 
that  Ramanujan  himself  discovered  thai 
Rogers  had  already  proved  and  published 
these  identities  nineteen  years  before, 
particular  cases  of  more  general  theorems| 
It  was  typical  of  Rogers  that  his  worl 
should  go  unrecognized:  a  conteraporar 
wrote  of  him  'no  one  paid  much  attentioi 
to  anything  he  did'.  He  seemed  strikinglj 
unprofessional  even  among  English  mathe- 
maticians, whom  their  continental  col- 
leagues often  find  stubbornly  amateur. 
He  cared  much  for  particular  problems  in 
mathematics  and  their  solution,  just  as  he 
cared  for  individual  species  in  his  rock- 
garden:  that  is,  if  they  were  sufficiently 
beautiful.  But  a  full  corpus  of  mathe- 
matical theory  interested  him  as  little  as 
botany  after  Linnaeus.  He  was  probably 
better  read  as  a  musician  than  as  a 
mathematician.  The  president  of  the 
Royal  Society  described  him  after  his 
death  as  '  remarkable  among  our  Fellows„ 
in  that,  according  to  a  well-informec 
biographer,  science  was  to  him  almost  dis-i 
tasteful '.  This  is  doubtful,  but  it  is  certau 


746 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ronald 


tliat  he  would  have  reckoned  mathe- 
matics among  the  fine  arts  rather  than 
with  the  sciences.  It  was  the  compulsion 
ol'  beauty  that  informed  his  work  here  as 
ill  his  other  devotions  and  formed  the 
common  link  between  them.  Of  his  per- 
sonal charm,  his  grace  of  manner,  the  wit 
and  sparkle  of  his  conversation  his  friends 
were  gratefully  aware,  and  it  is  perhaps 
his  greatest  distinction  to  have  spent 
(Veely  on  them  what  a  harsher  economy 
would  have  wished  to  conserve  for  pos- 
krity. 

[The  Times,  14, 16,  and  26  September  1933 ; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
Xo.  3,  December  1934  (portrait);  Nature, 
4  November  1933 ;  private  information ;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  T.  CHAtrNDY. 

RONALD,  Sir  LANDON  (1873-1938), 
musician,  was  born  in  London  7  Jime 
1S73,  the  younger  son  of  Henry  RusseU 
[q.v.],  well  known  in  contemporary  circles 
as  a  writer  of  ballads.  From  early  boy- 
hood Ronald,  who  was  educated  at  St. 
Marylebone  Grammar  School  and  Margate 
High  School  (afterwards  Margate  College), 
was  clearly  marked  out  for  a  musical 
career;  his  mother  directed  his  first 
lessons,  which  were  followed  by  private 
instruction  from  Franklin  Taylor  (piano) 
and  Henry  Holmes  (violin).  At  the  age  of 
fourteen  he  entered  the  Royal  College  of 
Music,  and  studied  composition  with  (Sir) 
Charles  Hubert  Parry  [q.v.],  for  whom  he 
retained  the  utmost  veneration. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen  Ronald  was 
chosen  to  play  piano  solo  in  Andre 
Alphonse  Toussaint  Wormser's  wordless 
3)lay  L' Enfant  Prodigue  at  the  Prince  of 
^Vales's  Theatre  (31  March  1891)  and  on 
tour.  Appointed  subsequently  as  coach 
and  r^pdtiteur  at  Covent  Garden  Theatre, 
he  met  Madame  Melba  [q.v.],  and  became 
lier  accompanist  for  a  number  of  years, 
besides  conducting  the  orchestra  for  her 
American  tour  in  1895.  There  followed  a 
spell  of  some  discouragement,  during 
Avhich  Ronald  conducted  a  succession  of 
theatre  bands  and  many  of  the  smaller 
orchestras  in  the  provinces.  An  engage- 
ment to  direct  a  series  of  concerts  in 
Birmingham  led  to  his  meeting  Max 
Mossel,  an  association  that  proved  to  be 
ol  immense  mutual  value.  Mossel  per- 
suaded him  to  conduct  abroad,  and  this 
\  enture  became  the  turning-point  in  his 
career.  He  toured  the  capitals  of  Europe 
in  1908-1909,  meeting  with  success 
\vherever  he  went,  the  critics  comparing 
his   work   favourably   with  that   of  the 


great  German  conductors.  Ronald  has 
been  acclaimed  a  fine  exponent  of  the 
music  of  Sir  Edward  Elgar  [q.v.],  and  it 
was  on  this  tour  that  he  introduced  the 
A  flat  symphony  to  Rome  (1909).  News 
of  these  concerts  having  reached  London, 
he  was  invited  to  conduct  the  Royal  Phil- 
harmonic Orchestra  in  place  of  Hans 
Richter  who  was  ill.  From  that  time  his 
reputation  was  established.  In  1909  he 
was  appointed  permanent  conductor  of 
the  Royal  Albert  Hall  Orchestra  (foimded 
in  1905  as  the  New  Symphony  Orchestra), 
and  there  followed  '  Harrison '  concerts  in 
the  North,  symphony  concerts  at  the 
Queen's  Hall  (March  1909  until  1914),  and 
Sunday  afternoon  concerts  at  the  Royal 
Albert  Hall  (begun  in  October  1909). 

In  1910  Ronald  was  appointed  principal 
of  the  Guildhall  School  of  Music,  a  post 
which  he  retained  almost  up  to  the  time 
of  his  death.  There  he  established  the 
curriculum  system,  and  brought  the 
standard  of  teaching  into  line  with  that 
of  the  leading  schools.  He  also  formed  a 
professors'  club  in  order  to  bring  a  more 
corporate  spirit  into  the  building.  The 
combination  of  this  work  with  such 
musical  commitments  as  conducting, 
journalism,  and  gramophone  recording 
told  on  his  health,  and  the  Albert  Hall 
concerts  came  to  an  end  after  the  season 
of  1918-1919.  The  conductorship  of  the 
Scottish  Orchestra  was  offered  to  him, 
and  the  committee  of  the  Guildhall  School 
of  Music  granted  him  leave  of  absence  to 
undertake  it.  Ill  health  constantly  handi- 
capped his  career,  however,  and  although 
he  conducted  at  the  Albert  Hall  and  the 
Palladium  down  to  1927,  he  had  to  give 
up  much  of  his  orchestral  work  from  that 
time  onwards. 

Ronald's  compositions,  generally,  were 
of  the  baUad  type,  and  many  of  his  songs 
achieved  much  popularity ;  but  it  was  by 
conducting  and  as  principal  of  the  Guild- 
hall School  that  he  made  his  greatest  con- 
tribution to  music. 

Ronald  took  no  academic  degrees,  but 
the  diplomas  of  F.R.A.M.  (1921),  F.G.S.M. 
(1922),  and  F.R.C.M.  (1924)  were  con- 
ferred upon  him,  and  in  1922  he  was 
knighted  in  recognition  of  his  services  to 
music.  He  died  in  London  after  a  long 
illness  14  August  1938.  He  was  twice 
married:  first,  in  1897  to  Mimi  (died  1932), 
daughter  of  Josef  Ettlinger,  wholesale 
cloth  merchant,  and  had  a  son;  second- 
ly, in  1932  to  Mary  (Mollie),  daughter  of 
Richard  Dobson  Calhson. 

A  portrait  of  Ronald  by  John  Collier 


747 


Ronald 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


I 


was  presented  to  the  Guildhall  School  of 
Music  by  members  of  the  Corporation  of 
the  City  of  London. 

[Musical  Times,  September  1938 ;  Sir  L. 
Ronald,  Variations  on  the  Personal  Theme, 
1922,  and  Myself  and  Others,  1931 ;  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  iv,  edited  by  H.  C.  Colles.] 

Edkic  Cundell. 

ROPES,  ARTHUR  REED  (1859-^ 
1933),  lyric  writer  and  hbrettist  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Adrian  Ross,  was  born  at 
Lewisham  23  December  1859.  He  was  the 
youngest  son  of  Wilham  Hooper  Ropes, 
a  Russia  merchant,  by  liis  wife,  Ellen 
Harriet,  daughter  of  J.  Drinkrow  Hall,  of 
Scarborough,  and  was  a  nephew  of  John 
Codman  Ropes,  the  well-known  military 
historian.  He  was  educated  at  Priory 
House  School,  Clapton,  Mill  Hill  School, 
and  the  City  of  London  School,  and  won 
an  exhibition  at  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  in  1881  he  was  awarded 
the  chancellor's  medal  for  English  verse 
(for  a  poem  on  'Temple  Bar')  and  the 
members'  prize  for  English  essay.  In  1882 
he  was  bracketed  eleventh  wrangler,  and 
he  obtained  a  first  class  in  the  historical 
tripos  and  was  awarded  the  Lightfoot 
scholarship  for  history  and  a  Whewell 
scholarship  for  international  law,  all  in  the 
year  1883.  In  1884,  as  the  natural  result 
of  this  distinguished  academic  career,  he 
was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at  King's, 
which  he  held  until  1890,  teaching  history 
and  applying  himself  to  the  affairs  of  his 
college. 

Ropes  began  writing  verse,  serious  and 
comic,  while  still  at  school.  The  first  of 
his  works  for  the  stage  was  the  libretto  of 
a  vaudeville  entertainment,  A  Double 
Event,  written  under  the  name  of  'Arthur 
Reed'  in  collaboration  ■svith  Arthur  Law, 
and  produced  at  the  St.  George's  Hall  in 
February  1884.  This  was  followed  by  a 
comic  opera,  with  music  by  F.  O.  Carr, 
which,  under  the  title  of  Faddimir,  was 
produced  at  the  Opera  Comique  Theatre 
in  April  1889.  It  was  announced  as  'by 
Arthur  Reed,  music  composed  by  Oscar 
Neville'.  This  effort  led  to  a  commission 
to  Ropes  and  Carr  from  George  Edwardes, 
then  manager  of  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  to 
write  a  burlesque  on  the  subject  of  Joan 
of  Arc,  which  they  did,  in  collaboration 
with  John  Lloyd  Shine,  the  actor.  Pro- 
duced at  the  Opera  Comique  in  January 
1891,  with  the  author  using  for  the  first 
time  his  pseudonym  of  'Adrian  Ross', 
Joan  of  Arc  proved  an  immediate  success 


and  ran  for  nearly  a  year.  In  1892  Ropes 
collaborated  with  James  T.  Tanner  in  the 
authorship  of  In  Town,  which  was,  in 
many  respects,  the  first  of  the  modei 
musical  comedies.   In  1893  he  wrote  the 
lyrics  for  Morocco  Bound,  and  it  is  esti^ 
mated  that  from  that  date  he  wrote  ove* 
2,000  lyrics  and  had  a  hand  in  the  product 
tion  of  sixty-odd  musical  plays.   Gracefu 
lyrics  and  humorous  ditties  flowed  fror 
his  facile  pen  in  a  continuous  stream,  anc 
his  work  contributed,  in  a  great  measure^ 
to  the   success  of  most  of  the  famoi 
musical    comedies    of   more   than   three 
decades,  notably  The  Circus  Girl  (1896); 
A  Greek  Slave  (1898);  San  Toy  (1899); 
Kitty  Grey  (1900);  The  Toreador  (1901); 
A  Country  Girl  and  The  Girl  from  Kay's 
(1902);  The  Orchid  (1903);  The  Cingalei 
(1904) ;    The    Merveilleuses    (1906) ;    Th 
Merry  Widow  (1907) ;  The  Dollar  Princes^ 
and  Our  Miss  Gibbs  (1909);  T?ie  Quake 
Girl  (1910);    The   Count  of  Luxembourg 
(1911);    Gipsy   Love   and    The    Dancit 
Mistress    (1912);    The   Marriage   Marke 
(1913);   Betty   (1915);    The   Happy  Dai 
(1916) ;  Airs  and  Graces,  Arlette,  and  Th 
Boy  (1917);  Monsieur  Beaucaire  (1919)  | 
A    Southern    Maid   (1920);    Lilac    Tir 
(1922) ;  The  Beloved  Vagabond  (1927) ;  and 
The  Toymaker  of  Nuremberg  (1930). 

Ropes  had  studied  German  specially  ii 
order  to  lecture  on  the  life  of  Frederick  th^ 
Great,  and  his  knowledge  of  the  language 
was  of  immense  help  to  him  in  adapting 
the  lyrics  of  The  Merry  Widow,  Th 
Dollar  Princess,  TJie  Count  of  Luxembourg! 
Lilac  Time,  and  other  German  ano 
Viennese  operettas.  His  association  witl 
the  numerous  musical  productions  ol 
George  Edwardes  extended  over  twentj 
years,  until  the  death  of  the  latter  in" 
1915. 

In  addition  Ropes  engaged  in  journal- 
ism, was  on  the  staff  of  Ariel  (1891-1892) 
and  contributed  to  Punch,  the  Sketch,  thej 
Sphere,  and  the  World.  For  some  time  he 
contributed  'Bran  Pie'  to  the  Taller.    He 
was  also  an  author  of  repute  under  his  rea 
name.    His  Short  History  of  Europe  wa 
published  in  1889 ;  he  edited  a  selection  o\ 
Lady    Mary    Worthy    Montagu's    Letters 
(1893);   collaborated   with   Mary   Emil^ 
Ropes  in  On  Peter's  Island  (1901) ;  wrot 
The  Hole  of  the  Pit  (1914);  compiled  ai 
historical  manual  on  Napoleon  I;   and 
edited  many  French  texts  for  the  Pitt 
Press  series.   In  1914  he  was  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  Performing  Right  Societj 
and  was  a  vice-president  from  1924. 

Ropes  married  in  1901  an  actress,  EthelJ 


748 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Rosenhain 


3'oungest  daughter  of  Charles  John  Wood, 
a  civil  engineer,  and  had  a  son  and  two 
(laughters.  He  died  from  heart  failure, 
after  a  somewhat  lengthy  illness,  at  his 
home  in  Kensington  10  September  1933. 
In  appearance  he  was  a  burly,  good- 
tempered-looking  man,  bearded  and 
bespectacled.  He  was  a  brilliant  conversa- 
tionalist with  a  fund  of  good  stories,  and 
an  excellent  companion. 

[The  Times,  12  September  1933;  Who's 
Who  in  the  Theatre,  1933;  personal  know- 
ledge,] John  Pakkeb. 

ROSENHAIN,  WALTER  (1875-1934), 
metallurgist,  was  born  in  Berlin  24  August 
1875,  the  only  son  of  Moritz  Rosenhain, 
business  man,  of  Rosenberg,  West  Prussia, 
by  his  wife,  Friederike,  daughter  of  Rabbi 
lienjamin  Yosman  Fink,  of  Posen,  whose 
Hebrew  library  was  made  over  to  the 
Staatsbibliothek  in  Berlin .  Ernst  Lissauer , 
poet  and  author  of  the  'Hymn  of  Hate', 
was  a  second  cousin.  In  order  that  the  boy 
should  not  be  liable  for  military  service, 
the  family  emigrated  to  Australia  when 
he  was  five  years  old.  He  was  educated  at 
Wesley  College,  Melbourne,  and  passed 
into  Queen's  College  in  the  vmiversity  of 
Melbourne,  where  he  graduated  with  first 
class  honours  in  physics  and  engineering 
in  1897.  He  had  been  naturalized  in 
Australia  at  the  age  of  eighteen. 

Rosenhain  came  to  England  in  1897  as 
the  holder  of  an  1851  Exhibition  scholar- 
ship and  entered  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, working  with  (Sir)  Alfred  Ewing 
[q.v.].  In  order  to  study  the  deformation 
of  metals  he  learned  the  technique  of  pre- 
paring metallic  specimens  for  the  micro- 
scope under  Sir  William  Roberts-Austen 
[q.v.]  at  the  Royal  Mint.  Observing  that 
a  strip  of  metal  being  strained  while  under 
the  microscope  showed  dark  lines  chang- 
ing in  direction  from  one  crystal  grain  to 
another,  Ewing  and  Rosenhain  correctly 
interpreted  these  as  due  to  successive 
slips,  as  of  cards  in  a  pack,  each  line  repre- 
senting a  step  on  the  surface.  By  simple 
and  ingenious  experiments  Rosenhain 
showed  that  the  slip  was  a  simple  motion 
of  translation.  The  term  'slip  bands'  has 
been  generally  adopted. 

On  leaving  Cambridge  in  1900  Rosen- 
hain was  appointed  a  scientific  adviser  to 
the  glass-works  of  Messrs.  Chance  Brothers 
at  Smethwick,  near  Birmingham,  where  he 
produced  several  papers  on  optical  glass, 
and  in  1908  a  text-book  on  Glass  Manu- 
facture, which  was  revised  in  1920.  He 
also  continued  to  work  on  the  deformation 


of  metals,  making  use  of  the  conception 
of  the  hardening  of  deformed  metals  as 
due  to  the  formation  of  a  vitreous  phstse, 
put  forward  by  Sir  G.  T.  Beilby  [q.v.]. 

In  1906  Rosenhain  was  invited  to 
succeed  (Sir)  Harold  Carpenter  [q.v.]  as 
superintendent  of  the  .Metallurgy  and 
Metallurgical  Chemistry  Department 
(later  the  Metallurgical  Division)  of  the 
National  Physical  Laboratory.  In  the 
twenty-five  years  during  which  he  held 
this  post  he  greatly  enhanced  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  department  as  a  centre  of 
metallurgical  research.  A  new  building 
was  provided,  and  the  staff  and  equipment 
were  considerably  increased. 

The  systematic  investigation  of  the 
constitution  of  metallic  alloys,  begim 
under  Carpenter,  was  continued  by  Rosen- 
hain, sp>ecial  attention  being  given  to  the 
alloys  of  iron,  which,  on  account  of  their 
high  melting-point  and  great  reactivity, 
present  special  difficulties.  This  also  in- 
volved the  preparation  of  several  alloying 
metals  in  a  state  of  purity  not  before 
attained.  He  showed  much  ingenuity  in 
devising  new  instruments  of  research, 
including  a  plotting  chronograph  for 
registering  thermal  changes,  and  labora- 
tory furnaces  for  very  high  temperatures. 
In  studies  of  dental  amalgams  he  devised 
methods  of  polishing,  etching,  and  photo- 
graphing specimens  at  very  low  tempera- 
tures. In  his  theoretical  work  he  adopted 
an  earlier  suggestion  that  at  the  bound- 
aries between  adjacent  crystal  grains 
there  was  a  disordered  region,  usually 
called  the  'amorphous  phase',  and  this 
hypothesis  was  ingeniously  developed  to 
explain  many  features  of  metallic  be- 
haviour. After  having  rendered  useful 
service  in  furnishing  provisional  explana- 
tions and  in  suggesting  new  lines  of 
research  the  hypothesis  has  been  aban- 
doned in  the  light  of  the  new  information 
derived  from  the  use  of  X-rays. 

Rosenhain  was  an  inspiring  leader  of  a 
team  of  investigators.  He  had  a  great  gift 
of  clear  exposition  and  showed  remarkable 
skill  in  controversy.  His  many  papers, 
and  his  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Physical 
Metallurgy,  published  in  1914  (3rd  ed. 
1935),  influenced  metallurgical  research 
in  all  coimtries.  He  retired  in  1931  and 
went  into  private  practice.  A  good  lin- 
guist, he  was  well  known  on  the  continent 
and  in  the  United  States  of  America.  He 
was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1913,  and  was 
awarded  the  Carnegie  silver  medal  in  1906 
and  the  Bessemer  medal  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute  in  1980.  He  was  president 


740 


Rosenhain 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


of  the  Institute  of  Metals  (1928-1930)  and 
delivered  the  May  lecture  in  1923. 

Rosenhain  was  naturalized  in  England 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  in  1914,  and 
although  not  a  professing  Jew  he  resigned 
his  honorary  membership  of  several  Ger- 
man scientific  societies  as  a  protest  against 
the  treatment  of  Jews  in  the  early  years  of 
Hitler's  regime. 

Rosenhain  married  in  1901  Louisa, 
daughter  of  Louis  Monash  and  sister  of 
Sir  John  Monash  [q.v.].  They  had  three 
daughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  predeceased 
her  father.  He  died  at  Kingston  Hill, 
Surrey,  after  a  long  illness  17  March  1934. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  3,  December  1934  (portrait); 
Journal  of  the  Institute  of  Metals,  vol.  liv, 
1939  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  the  Iron  and  Steel 
Institutes,  vol.  cxxx,  1934;  The  Times,  22 
March  1934;  Nature,  5  May  1934;  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

C.  H.  Desch. 

ROSS,  ADRIAN  (pseudonym),  lyric 
writer  and  librettist.  [See  Ropes,  Arthur 
Rekd.] 

ROSS,    Sir    (EDWARD)    DENISON 

(1871-1940),  orientalist,  was  born  in 
Stepney  6  June  1871,  the  yoimger  son  of 
Alexander  Johnstone  Ross,  formerly  a 
minister  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  who 
in  1869  succeeded  J.  R.  Green,  the  his- 
torian, as  vicar  of  St.  Philip's  church. 
Stepney,  by  his  second  wife,  Adelaide, 
daughter  of  William  CoUett  Sandars,  of 
Hemel  Hempsted,  and  sister  of  T.  C. 
Sandars  [q.v.],  editor  of  Justinian. 

In  1887  the  father,  who  was  then  vicar 
of  Snelston,  Derbyshire,  died  from  the 
effects  of  a  fall  while  Ross  was  still  at 
Marlborough.  Ross  was  so  backward  as 
to  owe  his  promotion  from  the  bottom 
class  to  its  abolition,  but  he  sang  in  the 
choir  and  picked  up  some  skill  in  playing 
both  the  flute  and  the  organ.  A  crammer 
pronounced  him  incapable  of  passing  the 
previous  examination  at  Cambridge,  so  he 
attended  lectures  at  University  College, 
London,  on  French  and  English  literature 
and  studied  under  Arturo  Farinelli,  soon 
to  find  his  Italian  more  fluent  than  his 
preceptor's  English.  While  studying 
oriental  languages  vmder  Ernest  Renan, 
Charles  Henri  Anguste  Schefer,  Theodor 
Noldeke,  and  Victor  Rosen  he  quickly 
learnt  French,  German,  and  Russian,  and 
at  Strasburg  he  graduated  Ph.D.,  his 
thesis  being  an  accovmt  of  the  early  years 
of  Shah  Isma'il. 


Ross  travelled  extensively  even  before 
he  went  to  India,  but  the  visit  of  which  he 
has  left  the  fullest  record  is  that  in  1897 
to  Bokhara  and  Samarkand,  which  had 
seldom  been  entered  by  an  Englishman, 

In  1896  Ross  was  appointed  professor 
of  Persian  at  University  College,  London, 
the  receipts  from  which,  like  his  father^ 
before  him,  he  supplemented  by  review- 
ing. In  1901  Lord  Curzon  secured  his 
appointment  as  principal  of  the  Calcutta 
Madrasah,  a  post  which  he  held  until  1911; 
in  1906  he  became  officer  in  charge  of  the 
records  of  the  government  of  India  and 
assistant  secretary  in  the  department  of 
education ;  but  on  a  visit  to  Berlin  in  1907 
he  became  deeply  interested  in  the  work 
being  done  there  on  the  old  Turkish  manu- 
scripts that  Alexander  von  Le  Coq  had 
excavated  in  Turfan,  and,  when  there 
were  added  the  texts  foimd  by  (Sir) 
Aurel  Stein  in  Tun-huang  and  elsewhere, 
Ross  decided  to  devote  himself  to  Chinese 
and  Uighur.  This  brought  him  to  the 
British  Museum  in  1914  as  a  first  assistant 
with  special  charge  of  the  Stein  collections, 
but  the  outbreak  of  war  put  an  end  to  his 
Central  Asian  studies,  for  he  was  called 
into  the  postal  censorship  where  he  worked 
imtil  in  1916  he  was  appointed  director 
of  the  School  of  Oriental  Studies  and  pro- 
fessor of  Persian  in  the  university  of 
London;  he  resigned  both  posts  in  1937.] 
His  influence  was  shown  in  the  number  of 
distinguished  scholars  whom  he  en- 
couraged and  started  on  their  studies. 

Save  for  one  visit  to  Peking  in  a  fur- 
lough year  (he  would  gladly  have  ex- 
changed his  years  in  India  for  as  many  in 
China)  the  travels  of  Ross  between  the 
wars  were  undertaken  as  an  orientalist 
giving  lectures  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  Persia,  Egypt,  and  Scandinavia. 
But  he  also  visited  Persia  in  1934  for  the 
millenary  of  the  birth  of  Firdawsi,  and  he 
was  on  another  occasion  the  guest  of  the 
Turkish  government  which  desired  to 
purge  Turkish  of  its  accretion  of  Arabic 
and  Persian  words,  a  notion  which  Ross 
regarded  as  somewhat  childish.  In  1938 
he  delivered  the  Lowell  lectures  at  Boston, 
Massachusetts,  with  Mahmud,  Tamerlane, 
Bayazid,  and  Babur  as  some  of  the  sub- 
jects. He  took  a  leading  part  in  the  organi- 
zation of  the  International  Exhibition  of 
Persian  Art  held  at  Burlington  House  in 
1931.  In  1939  he  was  sent  to  Istanbul  as 
counsellor  to  the  British  Embassy  to  assist 
in  the  development  of  Anglo-Turkish 
commercial  relations,  and  there,  after  a 
short  iUness,  he  died  20  September  1940. 


750 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ross,  J. 


When  principal  of  the  Madrasah,  Ross 
Cound  in  the  hbrary  an  Arabic  manuscript 
which  had  escaped  the  notice  of  all  his 
predecessors  during  the  sixty  years  or  so 
during  which  it  had  Iain  there.  It  proved 
In  be  'Zafar  ul  Walih  bi  Muzaffar  wa 
Alih'  by  'Abdallah  Mohammed  bin  'Omar 
il-Makki  al-A^afi,  known  as  Al-Makki,  the 
scribe.  The  work  is  a  draft  of  an  im- 
finished  history  of  Gujarat,  recording  also 
contemporary  events  elsewhere  in  India, 
wiitten  in  honour  of  Zafar  Khan,  ap- 
]  )ninted  to  be  nawab  of  Gujarat  in  a.h.  793, 
and  founder  of  the  Muzaffari  dynasty 
there.  On  this  text  Ross  laboured  for 
tA\enty-five  years  and  afterwards  com- 
[)ilcd  an  extensive  analytical  index  (the 
wl'ole  being  published  in  three  volumes, 
11)10-1928,  in  the  Indian  Text  series).  In 
comparison  with  this  labour  Ross's  other 
publications  are  slight,  even  occasional, 
but  they  cover  a  very  wide  field.  He  him- 
self spoke  of  the  Bankipur  catalogue  of 
Arabic  and  Persian  manuscripts  as  his 
iiKjnument  in  India,  but,  except  for  his 
part  in  training  the  cataloguers,  his  share 
in  the  work  was  comparatively  slight.  His 
works  include  a  translation  of  the  Tarikh- 
i-Rashidi:  A  History  of  the  Moghuls  of 
Central  Asia  (1895),  The  Heart  of  Asia 
(with  Francis  Henry  Bennet  Skrine, 
1 899),  a  Polyglot  List  of  Birds  in  Turki, 
Manchu  and  Chinese  (1909),  editions  of 
tlie  diwans  of  Babur  and  Baram  Khan 
[Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  of 
Bengal,  1910),  Sir  Anthony  Sherley  and 
'lis  Persian  Adventure  (1933),  and  This 
English  Language  (1939),  a  study-book  for 
teachers  of  the  language  abroad.  His 
lutobiography  Both  Ends  of  the  Candle 
was  posthumously  published  in  1943,  after 
he  had  worked  at  it  reluctantly  and  fitfully 
since  1930  at  the  instigation  of  E.  V.  Lucas 

q.V.]. 

In  1904  Ross  married,  at  Venice,  Dora, 
laughter  of  William  Thomas  Rolbinson, 
)f  Hull.  She  was  a  brilliant  pianist,  and, 
ie(;ording  to  a  leading  London  critic,  knew 
II  ore  about  music  than  anyone  whom  he 
lad  ever  known.  The  marriage  was  a  very 
lappy  one,  as  she  continually  added  to 
;he  number  of  her  own  and  her  husband's 
'riendships  while  preserving  not  a  few  that 
le  might  have  lost  had  he  been  left  to 
limself.  She  died,  childless,  in  Istanbul, 
ive  months  before  Ross. 

Many  honours  came  to  Ross:  he  was 
i})pointed  CLE.  in  1912,  and  was  knighted 
n  1918;  he  was  honorary  lecturer  in  the 
1(  partment  of  Portuguese  studies  at 
King's  College,  London,  a  fellow  of  Cal- 


cutta University  and  of  London  Univer- 
sity, foreign  corresponding  member  of  the 
Hungarian  and  Portuguese  Academies  and 
of  the  Royal  Batavia  Society  of  Arts  and 
Letters ;  and  he  received  the  gold  medal 
of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  in  1935. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Ross  by  Frank 
Beresford,  presented  in  1937,  at  the  School 
of  Oriental  and  African  Studies.  A  cartoon 
by  'Spy'  belongs  to  Mr.  A.  Denison  Ross. 

[Sir  Denison  Ross,  Both  Ends  of  the  Candle, 
1943 ;  private  InfoTmation ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] J.  A.  Chapman. 

ROSS,  Sir  JOHN,  first  baronet,  of 
Dunmoyle  (1853-1935),  last  lord  chan- 
cellor of  Ireland,  was  born  at  Londonderry 
11  December  1853,  the  eldest  son  of 
Robert  Ross,  minister  of  the  Fourth 
Presbyterian  church,  Londonderry,  by  his 
wife,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Stuart 
Christie,  of  Londonderry,  Early  in  the 
'sixties  he  was  sent  to  Foyle  College, 
Londonderry.  In  1873  he  entered  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  where  in  1874  he  gained 
a  sizarship  and  in  1876  won  the  first 
classical  scholarship.  He  graduated  B.A. 
in  1877  and  LL.B.  in  1879  when  he  was 
called  to  the  Irish  bar  (King's  Inns, 
Dublin).  He  took  silk  in  1891  and  became 
a  bencher  of  the  King's  Inns  in  1893.  He 
was  conservative  member  of  parliament 
for  Londonderry  City  from  1892  until  his 
defeat  in  1895,  and  was  appointed  land 
judge  in  the  Chancery  division  of  the  High 
Court  of  Justice  in  Ireland  in  1896,  and  in 
1921  lord  chancellor  of  Ireland  for  life. 
But  the  office  of  lord  chancellor  of  Ireland 
was  abolished  by  statute  in  December 
1922.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Irish  Privy 
Council  in  1902  and  created  a  baronet  in 
1919.  In  1882  he  married  Katherine  Mary 
Jeffcock  (died  1932),  only  daughter  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Deane  Mann,  of  Dun- 
moyle and  Corvey  Lodge,  co.  Tyrone,  and 
had  one  son  and  two  daughters,  the 
yoimger  of  whom  predeceased  her  father. 
He  died  at  Dunmoyle  17  August  1935,  and 
was  succeeded  as  second  baronet  by  his 
son,  Ronald  Deane  (born  1888). 

Ross  has  been  fitly  described  as  a  lawyer 
of  great  ability  and  learning,  whose  judge- 
ments were  marked  by  much  independence 
of  thought.  In  his  time  Irish  students 
were  obliged  to  join  an  English  Inn.  So  it 
was  that,  as  a  member  of  Gray's  Inn,  Ross 
became  acquainted  with  the  methods  of 
the  great  English  judges  whose  decisions 
it  might  become  his  duty  to  cite.  Fiui;her- 
more,  in  the  course  of  his  immense  practice 
he   acquired   a  great  knowledge   of  the 


761 


Ross,  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


series  of  complex  statutes  passed  to  redress 
the  agrarian  grievances  of  Ireland;  and 
thus  it  came  about  that  when  he  was  pro- 
moted to  the  bench  as  land  judge  he  soon 
attained  the  eminence  attested  by  the  fact 
that  during  the  twenty-six  years  of  his 
judicial  career  the  House  of  Lords  never 
differed  from  his  views,  although  after  he 
ceased  to  be  lord  chancellor  it  did  twice 
reverse  his  decisions. 

Ross's  versatility  was  astonishing. 
When  an  undergraduate  he  was  no  mean 
athlete;  always  a  witty  and  forceful 
speaker,  in  1877  he  was  elected  president 
of  the  university  philosophical  society 
and  in  1878  auditor  of  the  college  his- 
torical society,  of  which  latter  he  was 
elected  president  in  1913;  in  1914  his 
many  services  to  his  country  and  to  his 
alma  mater  brought  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  of  Dublin  University, 
while  his  interest  in  the  classics  received 
recognition  by  his  election  to  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Classical  Society  of  Ireland 
in  the  same  year. 

Ross  was  the  embodiment  of  courage, 
fairness,  and  good  sense;  his  affectionate 
loyalty  to  his  friends  earned  him  their 
sincere  devotion,  and  even  his  political 
opponents  readily  admitted  that  in  tem- 
perament he  was  never  other  than  Irish 
in  the  best  acceptation  of  the  term. 

[The  Times  and  Irish  Times,  19  August 
1935 ;  Sir  John  Ross,  The  Years  of  my  Pil- 
grimage: Random  Reminiscences,  1924,  and 
Pilgrim  Scrip:  More  Random  Reminiscences, 
1927 ;  personal  knowledge.]        R.  W.  Tate. 

ROSS,  Sir  RONALD  (1857-1932),  dis- 
coverer of  the  mosquito  cycle  in  malaria, 
was  born  at  Almora,  a  hill  station  in  the 
North-Western  provinces,  13  May  1857, 
the  eldest  child  in  the  family  of  ten  of 
(General  Sir)  Campbell  Claye  Grant  Ross, 
of  the  Indian  Army,  by  his  wife,  Matilda 
Charlotte,  eldest  daughter  of  Edward 
Merrick  Elderton,  a  London  lawyer.  On 
both  sides  his  family  seems  to  have  been 
weU  to  do,  gifted,  and  successful,  with 
more  than  usual  intellectual  endowments. 
His  father's  family,  which  had  had  a  long 
connexion  with  India,  was  according  to 
his  Memoirs  descended  by  junior  branches 
from  the  Rosses  of  Balnagowan  and 
Shandwick,  Ross-shire. 

At  the  age  of  eight  (1865)  Ross  was  sent 
to  England  for  his  education.  His  first 
four  years  in  this  covmtry  were  spent  at 
two  small  schools  at  Ryde,  but  on  the 
return  of  his  mother  to  India  after  a  two 
years'  visit  home,  he  was  sent  in  1869  to 


a    boarding-school    at    Springhill,    nea 
Southampton,  where  he  remained  unt 
the  age  of  sixteen.    His  schooldays  seer 
to  have  been  very  happy  and  it  is  charac 
teristic  of  Ross's  keen  intellectual  interest 
throughout  life,  as  he  records,  that  at  th^ 
time  he  was  deeply  interested  in  zoolo^ 
and  in  working  out  the  elementary  la\ 
of  harmony  and  experimenting  in  metre 
lyrics,  and  epics.    On  leaving  school 
desired  to  be  an  artist,  but  deferred  to 
father's   wishes   and   in    1874   became 
medical    student   at    St.    Bartholomewl 
Hospital.    He  obtained  the  M.R.C.S. 
1879  but  failed  to  pass  the  L.S.A.  and 
was  unable  to  practise.  As  a  single  qual 
flcation  sufficed  for  surgeoncies  on  boar 
ship,  he  went  for  four  or  five  voyages 
a  ship's  surgeon  (during  which  he  wrote 
Spanish  drama  'Isabella'  in  blank  vers 
and  a  novel  'The  Major').    In  1881  he 
passed  the  L.S.A.  and  entered  the  Indit 
Medical  Service.    He  arrived  at  Bombaj 
in  October  of  that  year,  and  for  severa 
years  held  temporary  appointments  eithe 
attached  to  various  Madras  regiments 
doing  duty  at  station  hospitals.  Some  si 
months  were  spent  at  Vizianagram,  a  shoi 
time  at  Pallaveram,  both  in  the  Madra 
Presidency.     From    September    1882    t^ 
August   1884  he  was  at   Madras  itself. 
In  September  1884  he  brought  a  detach; 
ment  of  Madras  Pioneers  from  Quetta 
Madras,  and  in  January  1885  spent  a  wee| 
in  Burma  taking  a  regiment  to  Thyet 
myoo.     On  two   occasions   he   was  wit 
detachments   of  Indian   troops   at  Por 
Blair  in  the  Andamans.   From  May  18i 
to  May  1 886  he  was  at  Motdmein  in  Burma 
Mainly,   however,  he  speaks  of  Madra 
during  this  time  and  records  that  the  si 
light  and  the  air  of  India  filled  him  witi 
an  extraordinary  vigour.   Having  for  the 
most  part  plenty  of  leisure  to  foUow  his 
own  pursuits,  he  studied  with  characterj 
istic  intensity  the  world's  poets  and  thi 
classics,   took   up   Italian,   French,    anc 
German,  wrote  poems,  dramas,  and  novelsj 
and  became  deeply  interested  in  mathe 
matics,  a  subject  which  in  later  life  entered 
into  many  of  his  writings  on  malaria.   In 
1888  he  left  Madras  for  his  first  leave  ii 
England,  and  in  1889  he  married  Rosa 
Bessie,     daughter     of     Alfred     Bradlej 
Bloxam.   So  far  Ross  appears  as  a  youn| 
officer  leading  an  intensely  intellectus 
and  it  might  almost  be  said  emotional,  life 
adopting  pursuits  as  the  fancy  took 
with  violent  enthusiasm,  studying,  an<3 
writing — above    all   writing — filled    witl 
imagination  and  imagery  and  the  dramatic 


762 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Ross,  R. 


,eiise.  Beyond  his  taking  the  diploma  in 
lublic  health  and  studying  bacteriology 
aider  Edward  Emanuel  Klein,  there  is  no 
tidieation  that  he  had  at  this  time  any 
^peeial  feeling  for  medicine  and  it  was  not 
iiitil  five  years  later  that  his  name  figured 
or  the  first  time  in  the  literature  on 
iiakiria. 

In  1894  Ross  again  came  to  England  on 
eave.  It  was  on  this  second  leave  to 
Midland  that  he  was  introduced  to  (Sir) 
'atrick  Manson  [q.v.].  Thenceforth  the 
issociation  of  these  two  famous  men  was 
o  be  one  of  the  great  romances  of  tropical 
nodicine.  Ross  next  year  returned  to 
nciia  fired  with  the  ambition  to  solve  the 
)roblem  of  the  aetiology  of  malaria.  Two 
ears  and  four  months  later,  on  20  August 
897,  he  saw  the  first  significant  sign  of 
uccess  that  he  had  so  far  obtained, 
laniely,  the  now  familiar  characteristic 
>iginented  oocysts  of  the  malaria  parasite 
n  an  unusual  kind  of  mosquito,  Ross's 
dapple- winged  mosquito',  now  well 
mown  as  the  anopheles  mosquito.  It  was, 
lowever,  not  until  the  following  year 
1898),  after  he  had  taken  up  the  study 
if  Proteosoma,  a  parasite  in  the  blood  of 
lirds  closely  resembling  the  parasite  of 
111  man  malaria,  and  had  foimd  these  same 
ligmented  cysts  and,  later,  further  stages 
n  the  development,  that  the  discovery 
hat  malaria  is  an  infectious  disease  trans- 
nitted  from  man  to  man  by  the  mosquito 
tas  fully  and  for  all  time  established.  On 
;8  July  1898,  when  Manson  announced 
toss's  results  at  the  Edinburgh  meeting 
f  the  British  Medical  Association,  the 
i'hole  astounding  cycle  of  development 
lad  been  demonstrated  for  bird  malaria 
nd  hence  by  very  obvious  probability  for 
aalaria  of  man. 

In  February  1899  Ross  left  India  on 
leing  invited  by  the  Liverpool  School  of 
>opical  Medicine  to  take  up  the  position 
f  lecturer  (later,  1902-1912,  professor)  in 
ropical  medicine  at  that  school:  in  July 
e  retired  from  the  Indian  Medical  Ser- 
ite.  His  inind  was  now  turned  almost 
-wholly  to  the  application  of  his  discovery 
o  the  eradication  of  malaria  by  destruc- 
ioiv  of  the  anopheles  mosquito.  Success 
-as  not  at  first  so  great  as  had  been  anti- 
ipated,  for  although  the  method  was 
karly  logical  enough,  difficulties  in  carry- 
ig  it  out  were  at  first  underestimated. 
loss,  nevertheless,  lived  to  see  his  methods 
pplied  with  increasing  success  aU  over  the 
.  orld  and,  as  organization  and  experience 
icreased,  universally  recognized  as  the 
■  ay  in  which  man  might  eventually  rid 


himself  of  this  most  deadly  of  all  diseases 
of  the  tropics. 

Ross  died  at  the  Ross  Institute,  Putney, 
after  a  long  illness  16  September  1932. 
He  was  buried  beside  his  wife  (died  1931) 
at  Putney  Vale  cemetery.  He  had  two 
sons  and  two  daughters.  The  elder  son 
was  reported  missing  in  1914  and  the 
younger  daughter  also  predeceased  her 
father. 

It  has  always  been  difficult  to  assess  the 
relative  part  in  Ross's  great  discovery  that 
should  be  ascribed  to  Manson,  upon  whose 
original  ideas  regarding  the  transmission 
of  malaria  by  the  mosquito  the  work  of 
Ross  was  fovmded  and  whose  constant 
stimulus  and  help  Ross  always  fully 
acknowledged.  Undoubtedly,  however,  it 
was  Ross  who,  unaided  by  any  previous 
researches  in  this  untrodden  field,  was  the 
actual  discoverer  of  the  quite  luisuspected 
mechanism  of  transmission  which  once 
and  for  all  exploded  the  view,  so  far  uni- 
versally held,  that  malaria  was  contracted 
from  air  or  water.  The  cycle  in  human 
malaria  was  not  worked  out  by  Ross  but 
by  Battista  Grassi  and  his  ItaUan  col- 
leagues, a  fact  that  led  to  a  very  bitter 
controversy  between  Ross  and  Grassi  on 
the  question  of  priority. 

Although  in  relation  to  his  earlier  work 
in  India  Ross's  later  contributions  to 
medical  science  were  less  spectacular, 
further  evidence  of  his  originaUty  and 
genius  abound  in  his  later  work.  He  was 
the  first  to  employ  the  counting  of  parasites 
in  the  assessment  of  the  intensity  of 
malarial  infections,  the  first  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  the  study  of  malarial  com- 
munities, the  first  to  draw  attention  to 
the  importance  of  the  'average  enlarged 
spleen'  in  malaria  studies,  the  first  to 
employ  the  'thick  film'  technique  now 
universally  adopted.  Moreover,  in  the 
time  between  his  retirement  from  India 
and  his  death  he  not  only  carried  out 
many  investigations  in  expeditions  (most 
of  which  he  organized  and  led)  to  various 
malarious  coiintries  but  added  materially 
to  what  was  known  of  malarial  epidemio- 
logy. It  was  during  this  latter  period  of 
his  Ufe  that  Ross  wrote  many  of  his  more 
mature  works.  These  include  not  only  his 
Prevention  of  Malaria  (1910),  now  a 
classic,  and  many  other  contributions 
dealing  with  malaria,  but  also  his  Memoirs 
(1923),  various  mathematical  studies 
(1901-1931),  papers  on  pathometry  (1911- 
1929),  plays,  dramas,  novels,  and  poems. 
The  Memoirs  give  a  very  complete  and 
fascinating  account  of  his  life,  ^thoughts, 


753 


8c 


Ross,  R. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


1 


and  feelings,  and  the  facts  relating  to  his 
great  discovery.  That  Ross  was  not  a 
trained  observer,  indeed  very  far  from 
this,  makes  it  all  the  more  remarkable  that 
he  should,  in  a  subject  for  which  he  was 
seemingly  so  little  equipped,  have  made 
one  of  the  greatest  discoveries  in  medicine. 
Ross's  poems  (pubUshed  in  a  collected 
edition  in  1928)  have  been  highly  spoken 
of,  as  also  his  novel  The  Child  of  Ocean 
(1889),  and,  although  to  some  readers  it 
seems  rather  confused,  the  sense  of  stress 
and  storm  and  the  imagery  and  descrip- 
tions of  scenery  remain  even  after  many 
years.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Ross 
had  all  the  quaUties  of  genius  and  some 
of  its  faults,  for  in  many  of  his  writings 
he  shows  a  degree  of  self-centredness  in 
complaints  of  obstruction  in  his  work, 
which  cannot  be  taken  altogether  at  their 
face  value  by  those  who  know  the  circum- 
stances. 

Within  a  few  years  of  his  discovery 
honours  of  every  kind  were  conferred  upon 
Ross  by  scientific  institutions  of  many 
countries.  In  1901  he  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society,  which  awarded  him 
a  Royal  medal  in  1909:  in  1902  he  was 
awarded  the  Nobel  prize  for  medicine :  he 
was  appointed  C.B.  in  1902  and  K.C.M.G. 
in  1 9 1 1 .  He  also  received  honorary  degrees 
from  several  universities.  During  1912  he 
moved  to  London  and  became  physician 
for  tropical  diseases  at  King's  College 
Hospital,  an  appointment  which  he  com- 
bined (1912-1917)  with  the  chair  of 
tropical  sanitation  at  Liverpool.  From 
1913  until  his  death  he  was  editor  of 
Science  Progress.  During  the  war  of  1914- 
1918  he  was  appointed  (1917)  consultant 
in  malaria  to  the  War  Office  and  later 
(1925)  to  the  Ministry  of  Pensions.  When 
in  1926  the  Ross  Institute  and  Hospital  for 
Tropical  Diseases  at  Putney  Heath  was 
founded  in  his  honour  he  became  its  first 
director-in-chief.  In  December  1933  the 
institute  was  united  with  the  London 
School  of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine. 

There  is  a  bronze  bust  of  Ross  by 
Lady  Welby  at  the  London  School  of 
Hygiene. 

[The  Times,  17  September  1932;  Trans- 
actions of  the  Royal  Society  of  Tropical 
Medicine  and  Hygiene,  vol.  xxvl,  1932-1933 
(portraits) ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  No.  2,  December  1933  (por- 
trait) ;  Science  Progress,  vol.  xxvii,  1932-1933 
(portraits);  Sir  Ronald  Ross,  Memoirs,  1923; 
R.  L.  Megroz,  Sir  Ronald  Ross:  Discoverer  and 
Creator  (with  bibliography),  1931 ;  J.  O.  Dob- 
son,  Ronald  Ross,  Dragon  Slayer,  1934.] 

S.  R.  Christophebs. 


EL 
>n(^^ 

ar^H 


ost 

to^l 
icl^l 


ROTHERMERE,       first       Viscount 
(1868-1940),  newspaper  proprietor.    [Se%^ 
Hakmsworth,  Harold  Sidney.]  ^H 

ROTHSCHILD,  Sir  LIONEL 

WALTER,    third    baronet,   and    secom 
Baron    Rothschild,    of    Tring    (186i 
1937),  was  born  in  London  8  Februa: 
1868,   the   elder   son   of  Nathan   Mey 
Rothschild,  first  Baron  Rothschild  [q.v.],^ 
by  his  wife,  Emma  Louisa,  daughter  of 
Baron  Karl  von  Rothschild,  of  Frankfort- 
on-Main.    Educated  at  home,  owing  to 
delicate  health,  he  studied  for  a  year  at 
Bonn  University  and  then  entered  Magda- 
lene College,  Cambridge,  until  Jime  1889. 

Following  family  precedent  Rothschild 
joined  the  bank  of  N.  M.  Rothschild  & 
Sons  in  order  to  study  finance,  under  the 
tutelage  of  his  father.  His  interests,  how- 
ever, were  elsewhere.  In  early  boyhood  he 
had  begun  to  collect  and  purchase  insects, 
which  fascinated  him,  and  unlike  most 
boys  had  persevered  in  his  hobby.    Al 
Cambridge  he  came  tmder  the  influence 
the  renowned  ornithologist  Alfred  Newtoi 
[q.v.] ;  his  zoological  horizon  became  mu 
widened  and  his  ambition  stimulated,  th( 
amateur    collector    developing    into    a 
naturalist  who  aimed  at  achieving  some- 
thing noteworthy  in  zoology.   Collections 
of  birds  and  mammals  were  acquired,  on 
a  corner  of  his  father's  estate  at  Tring  a 
small  house  was  built  (1889)  for  the  insec 
and  books,  and  sheds  were  requisition 
on  the  estate  for  the  provisional  stora] 
of  the  other  zoological  material.    A  larg 
building  was  added,  with  a  display 
specimens  of  all  orders  of  the  animal  king- 
dom, and  opened  as  a  public  museum  in 
1892.    Gradually  the  museum  grew  to  a 
considerable  size,  the  aggregate  floor-space, 
inclusive  of  the  basements  for  storage, 
covering  in  1913  nearly  an  acre  and  a  half 
As  his  duties  in  the  City  left  him  wi  " 
too  little  time   for  his   museum,   Emi 
Johann  O.  Hartert,  an  ornithologist,  wi 
put  in  charge  of  it  in  1892  and  in  the  sprin] 
of  1898  Dr.  Karl  Jordan  was  engaged 
curator  of  the  insect  collections.   In  1901 
Rothschild  gave  up  his  work  in  the  City. 
From  1894  the  museum  has  issued  its  own 
periodical,  Novitates  Zoologicae,  of  which 
forty-one  volumes  have  appeared,  which 
are  largely  based  on  zoological  collections 
received  from  explorers  who  had  gone  oui' 
for  Rothschild  to  regions  of  which  th( 
fauna  was  not,  or  but  little,  known;  h( 
himself  travelled  in  Europe  and  No 
Africa. 

In  1898  the  university  of  Giessen  coni 


754 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Royce 


lerred  upon  Rothschild  the  honorary 
Ictrree  of  D.Phil.  In  1899  he  became  a 
rustce  of  the  British  Museum  and  in  1911 
le  was  elected  F.R.S.  He  was  president  of 
Section  D  (zoology)  at  the  York  meeting 
li».'}2)  of  the  British  Association ;  and  was 
Itcted  an  honorary  member  by  most  of 
lie  more  important  societies  of  entomology 
md  ornithology.  His  interest  in  natural 
listory  embraced  botany  as  well ;  he  was 
iwarded  the  Victoria  medal  of  honour  in 
u)rticulture  and  was  an  honorary  member 
)(■  the  American  Orchid  Society.  Outside 
lis  scientific  activities  his  services  and 
)bligations  were  numerous.  From  1899  to 
910  he  represented  the  Aylesbury  divi- 
ioii  of  Buckinghamshire  in  parUament  as 

I  cf)nservative ;  he  succeeded  to  the  titles 
»n  the  death  of  his  father  in  1915.  He 
vas  chairman  of  the  Tring  urban  district 
ouncil  for  many  years  and  president  of 
arious  societies  and  institutes.  In  a 
■odicil  to  his  will  he  left  the  museum  and 

II  its  contents  to  the  British  Museum,  the 
;reatest  accession  which  that  institution 
las  ever  received.  He  died,  vmmarried,  at 
''ring  27  August  1937,  internationally 
anious  for  his  numerous  contributions  to 
lur  knowledge  of  manunals,  birds,  and 
risects  and  as  the  founder  and  owner  of  a 
arge  zoological  museum.  He  was  suc- 
eeded  as  fourth  baronet  and  third  baron 
>y  his  nephew,  Nathaniel  Mayer  Victor 
iothschild  (born  1910). 

A  portrait  of  Rothschild  by  Rene  de 
Ilopital  hangs  in  the  board  room  of  the 
lanchester  Great  Synagogue. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
'ociety,  No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait) ;  Noxxi- 
iles  Zoologicae,  vol.  xli,  1938  (bibliography 
nd  portrait);  Nature,  2  October  1937;  The 
Hmes,  28  August  1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Kakl  Jordan. 

ROYCE,  Sir  (FREDERICK)  HENRY, 
aronet  (1863-1933),  engineer,  was  born 
t  Alwalton,  near  Peterborough,  27  March 
863,  the  younger  son  of  James  Royce, 
our  miller,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  third 
aughter  of  Benjamin  King,  farmer,  of 
Idwin's  Hall,  Essex.  His  father's  death 
impelled  him  to  earn  his  own  living  at  the 
m  often,  and  he  was  in  turn  selling  news- 
a])ers,  a  post  office  messenger  boy,  and  at 
ic  age  of  fourteen  an  apprentice  in  the 
vciit  Northern  Railway  Company's  loco- 
idtive  works  at  Peterborough.  Being 
nable  to  complete  his  apprenticeship  for 
ick  of  funds,  he  found  employment  in 
S81  at  Leeds  in  a  tool  factory,  often 
orking  for  sixteen  hours  a  day.  In  1882 


he  became  a  tester  with  the  London 
Electric  Light  and  Power  Company,  and 
advanced  his  wider  education  by  going  to 
the  night  classes  of  the  City  and  Guilds 
Technical  College  and  at  the  Polytechnic. 
So  full  of  promise  did  he  show  himself  that 
in  the  same  year  the  London  company 
appointed  him  chief  electrical  engineer 
for  its  pioneer  scheme  for  the  electric 
lighting  of  the  streets  of  Liverpool. 

In  1884,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
Royce,  together  with  E.  A.  Claremont, 
founded  the  firm  of  F.  H.  Royce  & 
company  (entitled  Royce  Limited  from 
1894  imtil  1933),  manufacturers  of  arc 
lamps,  dynamos,  and  electric  cranes  at 
Cooke  Street,  Manchester,  and  later  at 
Trafford  Park;  their  original  capital  was 
only  £70.  In  1903  he  bought  his  first 
motor-car,  a  10  h.p.  Decauville,  the  noise 
and  imtrustworthiness  of  which  (as  with 
other  cars  of  the  period)  determined  him 
to  design  and  make  motor-vehicles  him- 
self, and  at  the  end  of  the  year  he  had  his 
first  two-cylinder  engines  running  for 
many  hundreds  of  hoiu"s,  coupled  to 
dynamos.  Every  detail  of  the  car,  no 
matter  how  small,  was  designed  with  the 
same  minute  care,  with  ruthless  testing, 
and  even  in  those  early  days  the  slender 
resources  of  the  company  were  spent  on 
mviltif arious  experiments,  metallurgical 
research,  and  heat  treatment.  So  when, 
on  31  March  1904,  the  first  10  h.p.  two- 
cylinder  Royce  car  was  driven  out  of  the 
factory  at  Cooke  Street,  it  at  once  gave  an 
impression  of  silence,  smoothness,  and 
flexibility  and  so  fired  the  enthusiasm  of 
C.  S.  Rolls  [q.v.]  who  had  a  selling  agency 
(C.  S.  Rolls  &  company)  in  London  for 
continental  cars  of  high  repute,  that  late 
in  1904  he,  with  his  able  partner  Claude 
Johnson,  contracted  to  buy  the  entire 
output  of  cars  produced  by  Royce 
Limited  and  to  sell  them  under  the  name 
of  Rolls-Royce.  These  two  firms  were 
combined  in  1906. 

Royce  had  soon  perceived  that  it  was  a 
mistake  to  manufacture  a  wide  range  of 
models.  He  took  as  his  motto  'Organise 
and  specialise'  and  concentrated  entirely 
on  one  car,  the  40-50  h.p.  'Silver  Ghost', 
the  first  of  which  was  completed  by  the 
end  of  1906.  This  type  remained  in  pro- 
duction, with  numerous  improvements  of 
detail,  until  1925,  when  it  gave  place  to 
'Phantoms'  and  'Wraiths'.  The  qualities 
of  the  'Silver  Ghost'  so  much  increased 
the  demand  for  it  that  in  1908  the  motor 
section  of  the  firm  was  separated  from 
Cooke  Street  and  transferred  to  Derby. 


766 


Royce 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Royce  was  now  at  the  height  of  his 
powers,  but  habitual  overwork  and  lack 
of  interest  in  his  meals  led  to  a  breakdown 
in  1911  from  which  he  was  not  expected 
to  recover.  Recovery  was  indeed  only 
partial,  but  although  he  was  never  able 
to  return  to  the  factory,  he  continued 
to  control  the  main  designs,  keeping  in 
close  contact  with  experiments  and  other 
activities  for  another  twenty  years.  In 
motor-car  design  the  original  features  of 
his  work  are  the  silent  cam  form  of  the 
valve-gear,  the  friction-damped  slipper 
flywheel  and  spring  drive  for  the  timing 
gears,  his  battery  ignition,  the  Royce 
expanding  carburettor,  and  the  wear- 
proof steering. 

Royce,  however,  did  not  confine  himself 
to  designing  motor-cars.  Although  Rolls 
had  often  pressed  him  to  design  an  aero 
engine,  he  took  no  practical  interest  in  the 
matter  until  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914, 
when,  after  investigating  various  types  of 
air-cooled  engines  at  the  request  of  the 
government,  he  at  length  characteristically 
made  up  his  mind  not  to  deviate  from 
liquid  cooling;  so,  starting  from  a  12- 
cylinder  V,  he  produced  the  '  Eagle '  early 
in  1915,  which  played  an  important  part 
in  the  war,  and  was  followed  by  the 
'Falcon',  the  'Hawk',  and  the  'Condor'. 
It  was  mainly  his  determination  that  led 
the  Rolls-Royce  Company  to  enter  for  the 
Schneider  cup  competitions,  in  which  they 
won  the  trophy  in  1929  and  in  1931,  set- 
ting up  the  world  speed  record  at  408 
m.p.h.  Shortly-  before  his  death,  Royce 
laid  down  the  prototype  designs  of  the 
'Merlin'  engine,  making  use  of  the  ex- 
perience gained  in  the  Atlantic  flight  of 
1919  and  the  Schneider  cup  competitions. 
True  to  his  principles  he  here  again  stood 
firm  to  his  decision  to  adhere  to  a  12- 
cylinder  V  engine,  and  that  this  type  of 
engine  persisted  all  through  the  war  of 
1939-1945  with  extensive  use  on  all  types 
of  aircraft  is  a  standing  witness  to  the 
correctness  of  Royce's  policy. 

For  his  services  to  engineering  and  the 
country,  Royce  was  appointed  O.B.E.  in 
1918  and  created  a  baronet  in  1930.  There 
was  no  issue  of  his  marriage,  which  took 
place  in  1893,  with  Minnie  Grace  (died 
1936),  third  daughter  of  Alfred  Punt,  of 
London.  He  died  at  West  Wittering,  near 
Chichester,  22  April  1933. 

At  the  time  of  the  Schneider  cup  com- 
petition it  was  said  of  him  that '  Mr.  Royce 
is  not  a  man  who  prides  himself  upon  in- 
venting things.  He  likes  to  perfect  things 
already   in   existence.'     Apart  from   his 


genius  as  an  engineer,  Royce's  most 
marked  characteristic  was  an  extraordi- 
nary modesty.  In  appearance  he  resembled 
a  farmer,  and  his  chief  recreation  was  the 
cultivation  of  roses  and  fruit-trees.  His 
remarkable  memory  he  attributed  to  his 
night-school  education,  which  'made  it 
imperative  that  I  should  never  forget 
anything  worth  remembering,  and  I  have 
never  outgrown  that  habit'. 

A  life-size  bronze  statue  of  Royce  by 

F.  Derwent  Wood  was  erected  in  the 
Arboretum  at  Derby  in  1923.  A  bust  by 
William  McMillan  is  in  the  main  offices 
of  Rolls-Royce  Limited  at  Derby.  A 
cartoon  by  'Spy'  appeared  in  May  fair, 
January  1919. 

[The  Times,  24  April  1933 ;  Sir  Max  Pem- 
berton,  The  Life  of  Sir  Henry  Royce,  1935 ; 

G.  Geoffrey  Smith,  Frederick  Henry  Royce 
(British  Council  'Science  in  Britain'  series), 
1945 ;  Harold  Nockolds,  The  Magic  of  a  Name, 
1938 ;  H.  Massac  Buist,  Rolls-Royce  Memories 
(privately  printed),  1926;  Engineering  and 
Engineer,  28  April  1933  (portraits);  private 
information ;  personal  knowledge.] 

N.  R.  Chandler.  ^ 


RUDOLF,  EDWARD  DE  MONTJOIE 

(1852-1933),  philanthropist,  was  born  in 
Lambeth  11  April  1852,  the  second  son  of 
Major  William  Edward  Rudolf,  by  his 
second  wife,  Susan  Amy  Goodin.  He  was 
educated  mainly  at  home,  as  the  failing 
sight  of  his  father  obliged  him  from  a  vei! 
early  age  to  act  as  his  amanuensis 
translation  work.  Owing  to  the  strail 
ened  circumstances  of  the  family  Rude 
began  work  as  an  office-boy  in  his  thirteent 
year.  He  managed  to  continue  his  educ^ 
tion,  denying  himself  even  meals  to  bi 
books,  and  in  1871  gained  entrance  to  tl 
Office  of  Works  at  the  first  open  examii 
tion.  He  became  official  private  secretai 
to  the  first  commissioner,  G.  J.  Shaii 
Lefevre  (afterwards  Lord  Eversley,  q. 
and  to  his  successor.  Lord  Rosebery. 

Rudolf  devoted  all  his  spare  time 
work    among    young    people    in    Sout 
London,    and   in    1872   became   superil 
tendent  of  the  Sunday  school  at  St.  Anne| 
church.   South  Lambeth.     Here   his   e^ 
perience  convinced  him  of  the  pressii 
need  within  the  organization  of  the  Churc 
of  England  for  a  central  home  to  whic 
homeless  children  could  be  sent  with 
conditions  save  that  of  destitution,  ai 
then  to  be  boarded  out  with  families  ai 
thus  kept  from  institutionalism.  Rudolf 
enthusiasm  was  infectious,  and  in  Marc 
1881  a  meeting  was  held  in  the  library  of  j 


766 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Ruggles-Brise 


Mark  Hanbury  Beaufoy,  afterwards 
member  of  parliament  for  Kennington. 
Rudolf  was  resolute  that  the  society 
should  be  regarded  as  an  integral  part  of 
the  Church's  organization,  and  accordingly 
a  deputation  waited  upon  the  archbishop 
of  Canterbury  (A.  C.  Tait,  q.v.),  who,  after 
inquiry,  showed  his  approval  by  becom- 
ing president  in  August.  His  chaplain, 
Randall  Davidson  [q.v.],  remembered 
Tait  saying, '  If  the  thing  is  to  be  done  this 
man  Rudolf  is  the  man  to  do  it.  I  have 
never  heard  a  plan  more  admirably  urged. ' 
So  came  into  being  the  Church  of  England 
Waifs  and  Strays  Society  (now  the  Church 
of  England  Children's  Society),  which  by 
the  time  of  the  founder's  death  had  pro- 
vided homes  for  37,000  children. 

By  the  end  of  the  first  year  there 
were  two  homes,  containing  thirty-four 
children.  From  the  first  Rudolf  insisted 
on  the  children  having  as  normal  a  life  as 
possible.  When  they  were  not  boarded 
out  they  were  to  be  housed  in  small 
homes,  not  segregated  or  distinguished  by 
any  uniform.  He  was  heartily  in  favour 
of  emigration  under  proper  supervision, 
and  the  first  little  party  left  for  Canada  in 
1883.  Later  on  the  society  opened  two 
homes  in  Canada,  and  Rudolf  made  a 
number  of  visits,  and  spoke  of  himself  as 
'an  Englishman  who  loves  Canada'. 

Rudolf  acted  as  honorary  secretary,  but 
the  work  grew  so  rapidly  that  in  1890  the 
executive  committee  asked  him  to  give  his 
full  time  to  it.  He  showed  himself  a  re- 
markably able  administrator,  but,  busy 
as  he  was,  Rudolf  never  allowed  organiza- 
tion to  obscure  his  personal  contact  with 
the  children.  Whenever  he  visited  a  home, 
he  always  tried  to  get  an  hour  with  the 
children,  and  entered  naturally  into  their 
games.  Moreover,  he  did  his  best  to  keep 
in  touch  with  the  old  boys  and  girls,  and 
to  make  them  feel  that  in  him  they  still 
had  a  friend  long  after  they  had  left  the 
homes.  He  was  strongly  in  favour  of 
registration  and  inspection  of  all  volim- 
tary  institutions  for  children.  At  the 
International  Conference  for  the  Welfare 
and  Protection  of  Children  held  in  London 
in  1902  he  spoke  in  favour  of  this,  adding 
that '  it  might  become  a  stepping-stone  to 
the  greatest  advantage  of  all — the  estab- 
lishment of  a  State  Children's  Depart- 
ment'. Considerations  of  health  led  to  his 
resignation  of  the  secretaryship  in  1919, 
but  as  foimder  he  remained  a  keen 
member  of  all  committees. 

Rudolf's  activities  were  not  confined  to 
the  Waifs  and  Straps  Society.    He  took 


part  with  Benjamin  Waugh  [q.v.]  in  the 
founding  in  1884  of  the  National  Society 
ibr  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children, 
and  gave  evidence  in  support  of  the  day- 
light saving  bill.  But  his  main  interest, 
apart  from  children,  was  the  League  of 
Nations  Union,  and  he  was  a  member  of 
both  the  executive  and  finance  com- 
mittees. He  had  himself  in  1915  started  a 
movement  in  favour  of  the  establishment 
after  the  war  of  an  international  tribunal 
with  power  to  enforce  its  decisions. 

Since  his  early  youth  Rudolf  had  hoped 
to  be  ordained,  and  he  was  ordained 
deacon  in  1898,  but  it  was  not  until  1907 
that  he  was  ordained  priest;  in  1911  he 
became  a  prebendary  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral.  He  was  appointed  C.B.E.  in 
1931  and  in  the  same  year  the  honorary 
degree  of  M.A,  was  conferred  upon  him 
by  Oxford  University. 

Rudolf  married  in  1881  Emma  Bulmer 
(died  1929),  and  had  four  sons,  two  of 
whom  predeceased  their  father,  and  three 
daughters.  He  died  at  Eastbourne  29  May 
1933,  and  by  his  own  wish  his  body  was 
cremated  and  the  ashes  buried  in  his  wife's 
grave  in  Ocklynge  cemetery. 

Of  his  work.  Archbishop  Lord  Lang  of 
Lambeth  wrote  that  it  'was  the  more 
remarkable  because  he  had  no  conspicuous 
gifts  of  intellect  and  speech  and  not  much 
of  that  strange  magnetic  quaUty  that 
sometimes  draws  people  into  allegiance  to 
some  particular  individuaUty.  He  had 
great  and  remarkable  organizing  abiUty, 
but  his  work  was  done  mainly  through  the 
great  quaUties  of  a  single-hearted  and 
disinterested  devotion  to  the  children  and 
to  the  Church  of  which  he  was  a  devoted 


[The  Times,  30  May  1933;  [E.  de  M. 
Rudolf],  The  First  Forty  Years,  A  Chronicle 
of  the  Church  of  England  Waifs  and  Strays 
Society  1881-1920,  1922  (portraits);  C.  H. 
Dant,  Distinguished  Churchmen,  1902;  Our 
Waifs  and  Strays,  June  1936 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

C.  DE  M.  Rudolf. 

RUGGLES-BRISE,  Sir  EVELYN 
JOHN  (1857-1935),  prison  reformer,  was 
born  at  Spains  Hall,  Finchingfield,  Essex, 
6  December  1857,  the  second  son  in  a 
family  of  five  sons  and  seven  daughters 
of  Sir  Samuel  Brise  Ruggles-Brise,  of 
Spains  Hall,  who  was  member  of  parha- 
ment  for  East  Essex  from  1868  to  1884, 
by  his  wife,  Marianne  Weyland,  fourth 
daughter  of  Sir  Edward  Bowyer-Smijth, 
tenth  baronet,  of  Hill  Hall,  Essex.   After 


757 


Ruggles-Brise 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


I 


being  educated  at  Eton  and  at  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  was  awarded  a 
first  class  in  literae  humaniores  in  1880,  he 
gained  the  sixth  place  in  the  competitive 
examination  for  entrance  to  the  admini- 
strative grade  of  the  home  civil  service,  and 
was  appointed  to  the  Home  Office  in  1881. 
From  1884  to  1892  he  served  as  private 
secretary  to  four  successive  home  secre- 
taries, and  was  then  appointed  a  prison 
commissioner.  In  1895  he  was  promoted 
to  be  chairman  of  the  Prison  Commission, 
the  administrative  body  which  assists  the 
home  secretary  to  manage  the  prisons  of 
England  and  Wales,  and  he  held  this 
position  until  he  retired  in  1921. 

Just  before  Ruggles-Brise's  appoint- 
ment in  1895  a  committee,  of  which  Her- 
bert (later  Viscovmt)  Gladstone  [q.v.]  was 
chairman,  had  issued  a  report  recom- 
mending a  number  of  changes  in  the  prison 
system.  To  the  task  of  bringing  these 
changes  into  operation  Ruggles-Brise  de- 
voted himself  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a 
reformer  and  the  wisdom  of  a  practical 
administrator. 

Power  to  make  changes  in  the  prison 
system  was  obtained  by  a  provision  in  the 
Prison  Act  of  1898  that  the  mode  in  which 
sentences  of  penal  servitude  or  imprison- 
ment are  to  be  carried  out  may  be  regu- 
lated by  rules  which  are  made  by  the 
secretary  of  state  and  become  statutory 
unless  they  are  disapproved  by  parlia- 
ment. Use  was  made  of  this  new  power  to 
abolish  the  old  forms  of  'hard  labour' 
prescribed  by  the  Prison  Act  of  1865,  such 
as  the  tread-wheel  and  crank,  and  to 
modify  the  requirement  in  that  Act  that 
every  criminal  prisoner  should  either  be 
kept  in  a  separate  cell  by  day  as  well  as  by 
night  or  'subjected  to  such  superinten- 
dence during  the  day  as  will . . .  prevent  his 
communicating  with  any  other  prisoner'. 
The  rules  of  1899  provided  that  'the 
labour  of  all  prisoners  shall,  if  possible,  be 
productive,  and  the  trades  and  industries 
taught  and  carried  on  shall,  if  practicable, 
be  such  as  will  fit  the  prisoner  to  earn  his 
livelihood  on  release'.  Workshops  were 
constructed  and  prisoners  were  not  em- 
ployed singly  except  during  the  early 
weeks  of  a  hard-labour  sentence.  Thus  the 
rigoiu-s  of  separate  confinement  were 
mitigated,  and  labour  was  treated  not  as 
an  instrument  of  punishment  but  as  a 
stimulus  to  effort,  interest,  and  applica- 
tion. Reforms  were  also  made  in  the 
classification  of  prisoners,  in  the  treatment 
of  the  mentally  defective  and  unstable,  in 
the  medical  care  of  prisoners,  in  the  de- 


velopment of  prisoners'  aid  societies,  and 
in  the  training  of  the  prison  staffs.    One 
of  the  rules  of  1899  laid  down:  'It  is  th( 
duty  of  all  officers  to  treat  prisoners  wit] 
kindness  and  humanity.  .  .  .    The  greai 
object  of  reclaiming  the  criminal  shouL 
always  be  kept  in  view  by  all  officers,  an 
they  should   strive  to  acquire  a  mon 
influence  over  the  prisoners  by  performin, 
their  duties  conscientiously,  but  withou 
harshness.' 

A  recommendation  of  the  Gladstoni 
committee  that  'a  new  form  of  senteno 
should  be  placed  at  the  disposal  of  th 
judges,  by  which  habitual  criminals  migh 
be  segregated  for  long  periods  of  detentioi 
during  which  they  would  not  be  treatei 
with  the  severity  of  first-class  hard  labo 
or  penal  servitude,  but  would  be  forced  t 
work  vmder  less  onerous  conditions'  wj 
implemented  by  a  provision  in  the  Pre 
vention  of  Crime  Act  (1908),  authorizing 
sentences  of '  preventive  detention ' .  Com^ 
paratively  little  use  has  been  made  by  th 
courts  of  this  type  of  sentence,  but  th 
arrangements  made  by  Ruggles-Brise  fo; 
the  treatment  of  prisoners  so  'sentence( 
had  beneficial  effects  on  the  prison  system, 
The  construction  at  Camp  HiU  in  the  Isl 
of  Wight  of  an  establishment  intended  fo 
this  class  of  prisoner  set  a  new  standard  o; 
prison  accommodation,  and  experience  o\ 
the  rules  framed  for  the  purpose  of  sub 
jecting  these  prisoners  to  'less  onero 
conditions'  showed  that  to  confer  privi 
leges  which  are  liable  to  be  lost  by  mis 
conduct  is  a  more  effective  method  ol 
maintaining  discipline  than  a  harshl; 
pimitive  regime. 

Ruggles-Brise   felt   strongly   that   th( 
prison  system  ought  not  to  be  applied  to 
yoimg    offenders    between    the    ages    oi 
sixteen  and  twenty-one.  In  1897  he  weni 
to  the  United  States  of  America  in  ord 
to  study  the  working  of  the  state  reforma- 
tories, and  on  his  return  began  to  devi» 
special  treatment  for  the  young  prisoner! 
in  the  London  prisons.  A  small  society  oi 
voluntary  workers  (which  later  develope 
into  the  Borstal  Association)  was  formed' 
to  visit  these  lads,  to  make  arrangements 
for  their  employment  on  discharge,  and  to 
help  and  befriend  them.    In  1901  these 
young  prisoners  were  collected  together  in 
the  old  convict  prison  at  Borstal,  neai 
Rochester,  and  their  treatment  was  regU' 
lated   by   new   rules   designed   to   effec 
rehabilitation      by      good      disciphnary 
methods,  hard  work,  and  inducements  to 
good  conduct  by  a  system  of  grades  and 
rewards.    Experience,   however,   showed 


] 


758 


)wed     I 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Runciman 


that  the  sentences  passed  on  these  young 
offenders  were  generally  too  short  to  give 
sufficient  time  for  their  training,  and  in 
1906  Ruggles-Brise  made  a  strong  repre- 
sentation to  the  secretary  of  state  about 
the  need  for  an  alteration  of  the  law.  In 
1908  the  Prevention  of  Crime  Act,  which 
authorized  sentences  of  Borstal  detention 
for  not  more  than  three  years,  gave 
statutory  effect  to  the  principles  that  the 
object  should  be  to  subject  the  young 
offender  to  '  such  instruction  and  discipline 
as  appears  most  conducive  to  his  reforma- 
tion', that  the  length  of  his  sentence 
should  be  related  not  merely  to  the  facts 
of  the  particular  crime  of  which  he  hap- 
pened to  be  convicted  but  to  his  need  of 
training,  that  the  actual  period  of  deten- 
tion should,  subject  to  the  limits  of  the 
Borstal  sentence,  depend  on  his  response 
to  the  training  and  instruction  given  to 
him,  and  that  on  his  release  on  licence  he 
should  be  subject  to  supervision  and 
liable  to  recall  should  he  misbehave.  On 
the  gateway  of  Borstal  is  an  inscription  in 
honour  of  Ruggles-Brise  which  says :  '  He 
determined  to  save  the  young  and  careless 
from  a  wasted  life  of  crime.  Through  his 
vision  and  persistence  a  system  of  repres- 
sion has  been  gradually  replaced  by  one  of 
leading  and  training.  We  shall  remember 
him  as  one  who  believed  in  his  fellow  men. ' 

Ruggles-Brise's  influence  extended  to 
other  countries.  He  was  an  active  member 
of  the  International  Prison  Commission, 
of  which  he  became  chairman  in  1910.  In 
1924  he  published  Prison  Reform  at  Home 
and  Abroad. 

Ruggles-Brise  was  appointed  C.B.  in 
1899  and  K.C.B.  in  1902.  He  was  twice 
married:  first,  in  1914  to  Jessie  Philippa 
(died  1928),  daughter  of  Robert  Russell 
Carew,  of  Carpenders  Park,  Watford,  and 
widow  of  Francis  Robert  Stonor,  fourth 
Lord  Camoys ;  secondly,  in  1933  to  Sheelah 
Maud  Emily,  daughter  of  Captain  Francis 
Algernon  James  Chichester,  and  widow  of 
Essex  Edgeworth  Reade.  He  died  at 
Peaslake,  Surrey,  18  August  1935. 

A  portrait  of  Ruggles-Brise  by  John 
Collier,  which  was  presented  to  him  in 
1921,  is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow  at 
Ramsbury,  Wiltshire.  A  cartoon  of  him 
by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
10  February  1910. 

[Shane  Leslie,  Sir  Evelyn  Ruggles-Brise.  A 
Memoir  of  the  Founder  of  Borstal,  1938 ;  Sir 
E.  Ruggles-Brise,  The  English  Prison  System, 
1921 ;  Annual  Reports  of  the  prison  commis- 
sioners; Annual  Volumes  of  Statutory  Rules 
mid  Orders,  1899.]  A.  Maxwell. 


RUNCIMAN,  WALTER,  first  Baron 
Runciman,  of  Shoreston  (1847-1937), 
shipowner,  was  born  at  Dunbar  6  July 
1847,  the  fourth  son  of  Walter  Runciman, 
master  of  a  schooner,  and  later  of  the 
coastguard  service,  by  his  wife,  Jean, 
eldest  daughter  of  John  Finlay,  ship- 
owner, of  Dunbar.  He  was  elder  brother 
of  James  Rimciman  [q.v.].  In  1853  the 
family  moved  to  the  coastguard  station 
at  Cress  well,  Northumberland,  to  which 
the  father  had  been  appointed.  In  1859 
young  Walter  ran  away  from  home  to  seek 
a  career  at  sea. 

Runciman  was  bound  apprentice  for  six 
years  in  the  brig  Harperley,  450  tons, 
which  sailed  with  coal  from  the  Tyne  to 
Mozambique.  After  a  few  voyages  he 
broke  his  indentures  and  tramped  from 
Troon  to  the  Tyne  and  there  joined  the 
brig  Maid  of  Athens.  He  later  served  in 
four  sailing  ships,  attended  a  nautical 
school  in  1867,  and  obtained  a  mate's 
certificate.  After  further  sea  service  he 
gained  a  master  mariner's  certificate  in 
1871.  In  1873  he  was  appointed  master  of 
the  barque  F.  E.  Althatisse,  a  conunand 
which  he  held  for  four  years.  In  1877  he 
transferred  from  sail  to  steam  in  order  to 
become  master  of  the  steamer  Coanwood, 
1,650  tons,  which  he  commanded  for  eight 
and  a  half  years. 

In  1884,  having  then  sailed  the  seas  for 
twenty-five  years,  Runciman  was  urged 
by  his  medical  adviser  to  live  ashore,  and 
he  began  business  as  a  shipowner  at  South 
Shields  in  1885,  when  shipping  was  in  a 
very  depressed  state.  His  first  purchase 
was  the  steamer  Dudley,  1,200  tons,  which 
had  been  laid  up  in  the  Tyne  for  three  and 
a  half  years.  His  training  in  both  sail  and 
steam  proved  of  great  value  to  him  when 
he  entered  the  shipowning  business.  The 
Dudley  did  well  for  him  and  with  the 
flowing  tide  of  better  trade  he  bought  at 
various  times  eleven  other  second-hand 
steamers.  In  1889  he  had  built  at  South 
Shields  his  first  new  steamer,  the  Blake- 
moor,  which  was  the  foundation  of  the 
Moor  Line,  Ltd.,  the  head  office  of  which 
was  in  due  course  removed  from  South 
Shields  to  Newcastle.  By  1895  the  Moor 
Line  owned  twenty-five  steamers  and  by 
1914  the  number  had  risen  to  about  forty. 
After  the  war  of  1914-1918  the  Moor  Line 
was  wound  up,  and  reserves  and  invested 
assets  were  distributed  among  the  share- 
holders. From  1919  to  1921  the  Runciman 
Company  had  no  vessels,  but  a  new  Moor 
Line  was  started  and  by  1924  a  fleet  of 
twenty -three  steamers  was  in  service. 


759 


Runciman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Runciman  was  senior  partner  in  the 
firm  of  Walter  Runciman  &  company; 
chairman  and  managing  director  of  the 
Moor  Line,  and  chairman  of  the  Anchor 
Line,  in  which  he  acquired  a  controlling 
interest  in  1935.  He  was  president  of  the 
Chamber  of  Shipping  of  the  United  King- 
dom in  1910-1911,  and  in  1932,  on  the 
death  of  James  Lyle  Mackay,  Earl  of 
Inchcape  [q.v,],  he  succeeded  to  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Shipping  Federation  until  his 
death.  This  body  had  been  formed  in  1890 
to  combat  the  activities  of  the  Seamen's 
and  Firemen's  Union  under  their  secretary 
Joseph  Havelock  Wilson  [q.v.],  whose 
courage  Runciman  admired  and  towards 
whom  he  was  sympathetically  disposed. 

In  middle  life  Runciman  was  a  strong 
liberal  of  independent  attitude.  For 
twenty- two  years  he  was  chairman  of  the 
Northern  Liberal  Federation  Executive, 
and  was  sometime  president  of  the 
Northern  Liberal  Federation.  He  repre- 
sented the  Hartlepools  division  in  parlia- 
ment from  1914  to  1918 ;  but  in  1931  he 
declared  that  'free  trade  had  outlived  its 
usefulness'  and  favoured  tariff  reform. 

Runciman  was  a  keen  yachtsman.  His 
first  yacht  of  note  was  the  Sunbeam, 
bought  in  1922,  famous  throughout  the 
world  for  the  voyages  of  her  former  owner, 
Thomas,  Lord  Brassey  [q.v.].  She  was 
succeeded  by  Sunbeam  II,  an  auxiliary 
three-masted  schooner  built  for  Rvmciman 
and  launched  in  1929.  He  was  a  member  of 
several  yacht  clubs  and  commodore  of  the 
Royal  Northumbrian  Yacht  Club.  When 
in  his  ninetieth  year  he  intimated  to  the 
Admiralty  that  he  would  Uke  to  join  the 
Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Supplementary 
Reserve,  and  was  appointed  honorary 
commodore  to  date  from  1  February  1937. 

Early  in  the  twentieth  century  Runci- 
man bought  Doxford,  a  beautiful  estate  in 
Northumberland.  A  subsequent  purchase 
was  Shoreston,  also  in  Northumberland. 
He  married  in  1869  Ann  Margaret  (died 
1933),  daughter  of  John  Lawson,  of  Cress- 
well,  Northumberland.  He  was  created 
a  baronet  in  1906  and  was  raised  in  1933 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Runciman,  of 
Shoreston.  He  died  at  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne  13  August  1937.  His  only  child, 
Walter,  having  been  raised  to  the  peerage 
as  Viscount  Runciman,  of  Doxford,  in  the 
previous  June,  the  barony  of  Shoreston 
became  merged  in  the  viscotuitcy. 

Runciman  was  respected  throughout 
the  shipping  industry  for  his  independence 
of  thought,  his  geniality,  and  his  kindli- 
ness.   In  addition  to  his  autobiography 


Before  the  Mast  and  After  (1924),  he  wrote 
several  books  on  the  sea.  An  ardent 
Methodist,  of  old  Methodist  stock,  he 
spoke  in  many  Methodist  pulpits  in 
Northumberland. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1937;  Sir  Walter] 
Runciman,  Before  the  Mast  and  After,  1924 ;  i 
personal  knowledge.]        A.  E.  Johnstone. 

RUNDLE,  Sir  (HENRY  MACLEOD) 
LESLIE  (1856-1934),  general,  was  born 
at  Newton  Abbot,  Devon,  6  January  1856, 
the  second  son  of  Captain  Joseph  Sparke- 
hall  Rundle,  R.N.,  by  his  wife,  Reniraj 
Catherine,  daughterof  Commander  Walter ' 
Wemyss   Leslie,    R.N.     On   leaving  the 
Royal  Military  Academy,  Woolwich,  he 
was  gazetted  to  the  Royal  Artillery  in| 
1876.   He  first  saw  active  service  in  1879,  j 
taking  part  in  the  Zulu  war  at  the  battle] 
of  Ulundi  (4  July),  and  being  mentioned! 
in  dispatches.    Two   years   later  (1881),  | 
he  took  part  in  the  Boer  war  and  was] 
wounded  at  Potchesfstroom. 

Bundle's  high  military  reputation  rests! 
mainly  upon  his  services  in  Egypt  andl 
the  Sudan.  In  1882  he  was  present  at  the! 
battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir,  and  received  the! 
medal  with  clasp  and  the  bronze  star.  In] 
1883  he  joined  the  Egyptian  army,  serving] 
in  it  for  fifteen  years.    He  then  sei^edj 
under   (Lord)   Kitchener  with  the   Nile] 
expedition    (1884-1885),    where    he    was! 
engaged  in  guarding  the  Nubian  Desei 
with  a  force  of  Ababdeh  Arabs.   For  hisi 
services  he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches] 
and  received  promotion  to  captain  and! 
brevet -major  in  1885.   It  was  during  this! 
time  that  he  formed  a  lasting  friendship! 
with  Kitchener.  In  the  same  year  he  wasi 
posted  to  the  Sudan  Frontier  Field  Force] 
(1885-1887),  and  while  with  that  forma-] 
tion  he  was  awarded  the  D.S.O.  (1887)  and 
the  Osmanieh  medal  (3rd  class).   In  1889,] 
on  the  Sudan  frontier,  he  commanded  the] 
artillery  at  the  decisive  engagement  at] 
Toski,  was  mentioned  in  dispatches,  pro- 
moted to  brevet -lieutenant-colonel,  andj 
awarded  the  Medjidie  medal  (2nd  class).! 
In  1891,  as  assistant  adjutant-general,  he] 
was  engaged  in  the  operations  which  re- 
sulted in  the  re-captvu-e  of  Tokar,  and  the  j 
next  year  became  adjutant-general  in  the  I 
Egyptian   army,   and   spent  nearly  fivej 
years    at    Cairo,    receiving    his    brevet- 
colonelcy   in    1894.     With   the    Dongola  i 
Expeditionary  Force,  as  Kitchener's  chief , 
of  staff,  in  1896  he  was  present  at  the 
engagements  of  Firket  and  Hafir  and  was 
promoted  major-general  (supernumerary) 
in  November  1896  and  the  same  year  was 


760 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Russell,  A.  O.  V. 


appointed  C.M.G.  After  the  battle  of 
Omdurman  (2  September  1898)  he  took 
Kitchener's  place  during  his  absence  at 
Fashoda  and  led  a  column  up  the  Blue 
Nile  to  relieve  Gedaref,  and  for  these 
services  was  appointed  K.C.B.  and  re- 
feived  two  medals  and  the  special  thanks 
of  parliament  in  1898.  In  this  year  he 
returned  home  to  command  the  South- 
I  Eastern  District  (1898-1899)  and  the 
Ibllowing  year  (1899-1900)  became  deputy 
adjutant-general  to  the  forces,  at  the  War 
Office.  In  1900  he  was  given  command  of 
a  division  at  Aldershot,  but  in  March  of 
that  year  was  ordered  to  South  Africa, 
where  he  served  imder  Lord  Roberts,  in 
command  of  the  8th  division  of  the  South 
African  Field  Force  (1900-1902).  During 
this  campaign  he  conducted  the  Dewets- 
dorp  operations  and  commanded  at  the 
battles  of  Biddulphsberg  and  Wittebergen, 
and  later  fought  with  Lieutenant-General 
Sir  Archibald  Himter  [q.v.]  in  the  Brand- 
water  Basin,  where  he  was  slightly 
wounded.  In  1900  he  was  appointed 
K. C.M.G.  and  for  his  services  in  the  cam- 
paign gained  the  Queen's  medal  with 
three  clasps  and  the  King's  medal  with 
two  clasps. 

In  1902  Bundle  returned  again  to 
I:'^ngland  and  assumed  command  of  the 
5th  division,  II  Army  Corps.  In  November 
1903  he  was  appointed  major-general  in 
command  of  the  North-Eastern  District 
and  acting  general  officer  commanding- 
in-chief  Northern  Command  until  April 
1905,  when  he  was  promoted  lieutenant- 
general  and  general  officer  commanding- 
in-chief  (2nd  class).  On  relinquishing  the 
Northern  Conunand  in  November  1907, 
he  remained  vmemployed  until  in  July 
1909  he  was  made  governor  and  com- 
mander-in-chief of  Malta,  being  promoted 
general  in  September  of  the  same  year. 
In  1911  he  was  appointed  G.C.B.,  in  1912 
G.C.V.O.,  and  in  1914  G.C.M.G.  He  re- 
mained at  Malta  until  February  1915, 
when  he  returned  to  England  and  suc- 
ceeded Sir  Ian  Hamilton  as  commander- 
in-chief.  Central  Force,  which  comprised 
ten  divisions  and  mounted  territorials 
organized  for  home  defence.  He  relin- 
(luished  this  post  in  May  1916  and  became 
once  more  unemployed  tmtil  his  retire- 
ment from  the  army  in  May  1919.  He 
was  honorary  colonel,  3rd  battalion,  the 
l^uffs,  from  1899  to  1907,  and  colonel 
commandant.  Royal  Artillery,  in  1907. 

Bundle  married  in  1887  Eleanor 
Georgina,  eldest  daughter  of  Captain 
Henry    Jermyn    Montgomery    Campbell, 


R.A.,  of  Thurmaston  Hall,  Leicestershire. 
There  was  no  issue  of  the  marriage. 

Rundle  was  an  active  man  of  smart 
appearance,  possessed  of  remarkable  keen- 
ness and  efficiency,  and  during  his  long 
military  career  earned  a  reputation  for 
thoroughness  and  caution.  He  never  took 
a  risk,  and  was  rewarded  by  never  meeting 
with  a  reverse.  He  was  outwardly  some- 
what frigid  and  unapproachable,  except 
to  children,  but  known  for  his  scrupulous 
fairness  and  justice,  qualities  essential 
in  a  good  soldier.  He  died  in  London 
19  November  1934. 

[The  Times,  20  November  1934 ;  Sir  J.  F. 
Maurice  and  M.  H.  Grant,  (Official)  History 
of  the  War  in  South  Africa  1899-1902,  1906- 
1910 ;  private  information.]      C.  V.  Owen. 

RUSSELL,  ARTHUR  OLIVER  VIL- 
LIERS,  second  Baron  Ampthili,  (1869- 
1935),  was  born  at  the  Palazzo  Chigi  in 
Rome  19  February  1869,  the  second  son  of 
Lord  Odo  William  Leopold  Russell,  after- 
wards first  Baron  AmpthiU  [q.v.],  by  his 
wife.  Lady  Emily  Theresa,  third  daughter 
of  George  William  Frederick  Villiers, 
fourth  Earl  of  Clarendon  [q.v.].  He  suc- 
ceeded his  father  in  1884.  He  was 
educated  at  Eton  and  New  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  continued  the  distin- 
guished rowing  career  which  he  had  had  at 
Eton  by  rowing  in  the  winning  university 
eights  of  1890  and  1891,  in  the  winning 
Leander  eight  for  the  Grand  Challenge  Cup 
at  Henley  in  1891,  and,  with  Guy  Nickalls 
[q.v.],  winning  the  Silver  Goblets  at 
Henley  in  1890  and  1891.  In  1891,  the 
year  in  which  he  was  awarded  honours  in 
modern  history,  he  was  president  both  of 
the  Oxford  University  Boat  Club  and  of 
the  Oxford  Union  Society. 

In  1895  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.] 
selected  AmpthiU  as  his  assistant -secretary 
at  the  Colonial  Office,  and  in  1897  as  his 
private  secretary.  In  1900  AmpthiU  suc- 
ceeded Sir  A.  E.  Havelock  [q.v.]  as 
governor  of  Madras,  being  appointed 
G.C.I.E.  Lord  Curzon,  then  viceroy,  said 
that  in  matters  of  administration  AmpthiU 
had  an  old  head  on  young  shoulders,  and 
when  Curzon  was  absent  in  England  in 
1904  AmpthiU  was  appointed  acting 
viceroy  and  G. C.S.I.  After  retiu-ning  to 
Madras  for  a  few  weeks  in  1906  he  came  to 
England  to  represent  the  interests  of  the 
Indian  settlers  in  East  and  South  Africa, 
and  afterwards  did  good  service  for  Indian 
students  in  Great  Britain  as  chairman  of 
the  advisory  conunittee  set  up  by  (Lord) 
Morley  on  their  behalf.  Lack  of  sympathy 


761 


Russell,  A.  O.  V. 


jyjUJS.  1981-1»40 


with  the  reform  proposals  put  forward  by 
the  liberal  government  prevented  his 
retm-n  to  India  as  viceroy,  but  he  did 
valuable  service  at  home  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Territorial  army.  During  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  went  on  active  service 
in  France,  commanding  a  battalion  of  the 
Leicestershire  Regiment  and  later  two 
battalions  of  the  Bedfordshire  Regiment. 
For  a  year  (1917-1918)  he  was  Indian 
labour  corps  adviser  at  general  head- 
quarters on  the  western  front.  For  these 
services  he  was  thrice  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches, and  was  promoted  brevet-colonel 
in  1919. 

When  in  1919  the  government  intro- 
duced the  India  bill  giving  authority  to 
the  Montagu-Chelmsford  reforms,  Ampt- 
hill  was  one  of  the  few  members  of  either 
House  of  Parliament  who  spoke  and  voted 
against  the  bill.  On  the  second  reading  he 
reproached  the  Lords  for  the  scant  support 
which  he  had  received  in  pressing  the 
claims  of  Indians  to  be  treated  as  British 
subjects  throughout  the  Empire,  and 
claimed  that  in  India  his  views  on  reform 
were  much  in  advance  of  those  underlying 
the  Morley-Minto  proposals.  He  also 
strenuously  opposed  the  government  of 
India  bill  of  1935. 

Ampthill  was  a  prominent  freemason 
from  his  undergraduate  days,  and  in  1908 
he  was  appointed  by  the  Duke  of  Con- 
naught  to  be  pro-grand  master  of  Enghsh 
freemasonry.  This  office  he  held  until 
his  death,  which  took  place  in  London 
from  pneumonia  7  July  1935.  He  married 
in  1894  Lady  Margaret,  third  daughter  of 
Frederick  Lygon,  sixth  Earl  Beauchamp 
[q.v.].  He  had  four  sons  and  a  daughter, 
and  he  was  succeeded  as  third  baron  by  his 
eldest  son,  John  Hugo  (born  1896). 

A  portrait  of  Ampthill  by  Sir  A.  S. 
Cope  was  presented,  to  him  by  the  Grand 
Lodge  in  1933,  and  hangs  in  Freemasons' 
Hall.  There  is  a  copy  by  Dorofield  Hardy 
in  private  possession. 

[The  Times,  8  July  1935.] 

£.  I.  Carlyle. 

RUSSELL,       GEORGE      WILLIAM 

(1867-1935),  better  known  by  his  pseudo- 
nym 'AE'  (AEon),  Irish  poet,  painter, 
economist,  and  joiirnalist,  was  born  at 
Lurgan,  co.  Armagh,  10  April  1867,  the 
youngest  of  the  three  children,  two  sons 
and  a  daughter,  of  Thomas  Elias  Russell, 
by  his  wife,  Mary  Anne  Armstrong.  The 
father  was  book-keeper  in  a  firm  of  cambric 
manufacturers  at  Lurgan,  and  attended 
both  the  parish  church  and  the  Primitive 


Methodist    chapel.     When    George    was 
about  ten  years  old  the  family  moved  to 
Dublin,  where,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he 
became  a  pupil  at  Rathmines  School,  of 
which  he  used  to  say  that  it  had  '  at  least 
produced  two  heretics',   George  Tjnrrellj 
[q.v.],  an  earlier  pupil,  and  himself, 
rather  incongruous  episode  in  his  early  lift 
some  time  after  he  left  school  in  1884  wai 
his  employment  in  the  Phoenix  brewe: 
in  Dublin.   He  had  begun  attendance  as  a, 
student  at  the  Metropolitan  School  of 
before  he  was  turned  thirteen,  and  there, 
about  1886,  began  his  memorable  friend 
ship   with   W.   B.  Yeats  [q.v.],  throug] 
whom  he  became  acquainted  with  theo' 
sophy.  Theosophy  supplied  him,  a  naturi 
mystic,  with  a  framework  for  his  instinc 
tive  beUefs,  and  joining  its  inner  circle, 
he   renounced   his   ambition   to   becomi 
a  painter:  a  very  important  event  in 
Ufe,  for  his  distinctive  gift  was  painting, 
A  good  judge  has  asserted  that  'had  h 
painted  day  in  and  day  out  there  can  bi 
no  doubt  that  he  would  have  taken  rai 
as  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  painters  o: 
his  age '.  His  natural  vocation  was  thence 
forth  his  main  relaxation. 

Having  given  up  the  brewery,  'as  m; 
ethical    sense     was     outraged',    Russe 
gained  his  living  for  some  six  years  froi 
1890  as  a  clerk  in  Pim's  drapery  business 
in    Dublin.     His    verses    had   interest 
Yeats  and  others,  and  in  1894  his  frien 
Charles  Weekes  persuaded  him  to  alio 
the  publication  (under  the  pseudonym  o: 
'  AE ')  of  a  httle  volume.  Homeward:  Songi 
by  the  Way.   It  attracted  wide  attention, 
and  AE  was  thenceforth  a  leading  figure; 
in  the  new  Irish  literary  movement.    In 
1897  came  a  great  change  in  his  life, 
when,  with  Yeats   as   intermediary,  he: 
joined  the  Irish  Agricultural  Organization 
Society,  which  had  been  founded  some 
three   years   earlier.    Normal    life    now 
claimed  him  more  and  more,  and  in  1898 
he  married  a  fellow  theosophist  of  English 
parentage,  Violet,  daughter  of  Archibald 
North,  and  had  two  sons.  His  powers  as  a 
writer   soon   became   invaluable   to   the 
Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society, 
and  he  made  of  its  organ,  the  Irish  Home- 
stead— of  which  he  remained  editor  from 
1906   until   its   amalgamation   with  the 
Irish  Statesman  in  1923 — a  unique  journal, 
read  at  least  as  much  by  British  and 
American  intellectuals  as  by  Irish  farmers. 
His  interest  in  economics  overflowed  in 
various  writings,  of  which  the  most  notable 
are  Co-operation  and  Nationality  (1912) 
and  The  National  Being  (1916).  His  great 


I 


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D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Russell,  H.  A. 


conversational  gifts  and  radiant  presence 
attracted  many  visitors,  and  few  of  the 
distinguished  people  who  came  to  study 
Ireland's  problems  thought  their  errand 
accomplished  until  they  had  had  a  talk 
with  AE. 

He  came  into  much  prominence  during 
tlie  labour  disputes  in  Dublin  in  1913, 
and,  'doing  violence  unto  himself,  was 
one  of  the  principal  speakers  at  a  great 
meeting  held  in  London  at  the  Albert  Hall 
on  1  November  to  protest  against  the 
obstinacy  of  the  employers  and  the  arrest 
of  James  Larkin  for  sedition.  His  belief 
in  the  economic  interdependence  of 
I'^ngland  and  Ireland  kept  him  aloof  from 
the  Siim  Fein  rising  of  Easter  1916,  but  of 
those  who  served  in  the  convention  which 
was  set  up  in  1917  he  was  by  aU  accounts 
one  of  the  most  practical  in  his  recom- 
mendations, although  he  greatly  dis- 
appointed Pltuikett,  who  was  chairman, 
by  his  sudden  withdrawal.  He  claimed  in 
later  Ufe  to  have  had  some  share  in  ex- 
pediting the  settlement  of  December  1921 
by  suggesting,  in  an  interview  with  Lord 
Northcliffe,  that  the  latter  should  give 
'dominion  home  rule'  the  support  of  his 
newspapers.  From  1923  to  1930  he  edited 
the  -  Irish  Statesman  which  he  strove  to 
make  the  organ  of  reasonable  opinion  in 
the  Irish  Free  State.  In  order  to  raise 
funds  for  its  continuance  he  paid  in  1928 
the  first  of  several  visits  to  the  United 
States,  where  he  responded  buoyantly  to 
American  hospitality,  talked  with  the 
President  and  most  of  those  prominent  in 
politics,  literature,  and  science,  and  dis- 
covered a  faculty  for  addressing  large 
audiences  which  pleased  and  siuprised 
himself.  In  that  year  Yale  conferred  upon 
him  the  honorary  degree  of  Litt.D.,  an 
example  followed  by  Dublin  University 
in  1929.  Life  in  a  self-governing  and  of 
course  mainly  Catholic  Ireland  brought 
some  disillusionment;  the  censorship  in 
particular  drew  his  vigorous  protests ;  and 
after  his  wife's  death  in  1932  he  lived 
mostly  in  London.  During  a  last  lectm*- 
ing  tour  in  the  United  States  his  health 
broke  down,  and  he  died  at  Boiu*nemouth 
17  July  1935. 

AE  looked  consistently  to  the  antiquity 
of  all  races  for  the  oracles  of  a  universal 
wisdom-religion,  and  in  Irish  mythology 
lie  sought  for  hints  of  an  ancestral  lore 
identical  with  that  of  the  sages  of  the 
East.  These  beliefs  were  called  in  Ireland, 
somewhat  irreverently,  'AEtheism',  but 
were  not  without  influence  on  the  idealism 
of  Sinn  Fein.   His  religious  philosophy  is 


expounded  most  fully  in  The  Candle  of 
Vision  (1918),  and  his  political  idealism  in 
two  fictional  fantasies.  The  Interpreters 
(1922)  and  The  Avatars  (1933).  Song  and 
its  Fountains  (1932),  a  prose  commentary 
on  his  poems,  is  written  in  a  tone  of 
wondering  confidence  in  his  gift;  for  it 
was  as  a  poet  that  AE  wished  to  be  re- 
membered. His  poems  are  not  for  every- 
one, and  it  has  been  truly  said  that  there 
is  nothing  quite  like  them  in  English 
poetry ;  in  them  the  reader  listens  to  one 
who  remembers  past  lives,  exults  rather 
eerily  in  cosmic  happenings,  and,  more 
consolingly,  in  the  divinity  of  man.  To 
many  they  have  brought  comfort  and 
encoiu-agement.  Perhaps  his  best-known 
poem,  'On  behalf  of  some  Irishmen  not 
followers  of  tradition',  is  also,  objectively, 
his  best.  The  House  of  the  Titans  and  other 
poems  (1934)  includes  a  curious  poem, 
'The  Dark  Lady'.  His  Collected  Poems 
were  published  in  1913  (2nd  ed.  1926). 

In  person  Russell  was  a  large,  bearded 
man,  and  was  the  subject  of  many  por- 
traits. These  include  paintings  in  oils  by 
Sarah  Purser  (c.  1902)  formerly  in  the 
artist's  possession;  John  Butler  Yeats 
(1903)  formerly  in  the  John  Quinn  collec- 
tion. New  York;  and  Dermod  O'Brien 
(c.  1914)  at  the  Abbey  Theatre,  Dublin. 
There  are  two  drawings  by  Sir  William 
Rothenstein,  of  which  the  first  (1914)  is 
published  in  Twenty-four  Portraits,  first 
series  (1920),  and  the  second  (1921)  was 
formerly  in  the  artist's  possession;  also 
busts,  by  John  Hughes  (1885-1886)  in  the 
Mimicipal  Gallery  of  Modem  Art,  Dublin ; 
Oliver  Sheppard  (1916)  in  the  National 
Gallery  of  Ireland;  Jerome  Connor 
(c.  1930),  and  others. 

[John  Eglinton  (W.  K.  Magee),  A  Memoir 
of  AE  George  William  Russell  (containing  lists 
of  his  writings  and  of  his  portraits),  1987; 
Monk  Gibbon,  The  Living  Torch  (containing 
selections  from  AE's  journalistic  work),  1937 ; 
George  Moore,  Hail  and  Farewell,  1911—1914; 
E.  A.  Boyd,  Ireland's  Literary  Renaissance, 
1916 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  K.  Magee. 

RUSSELL,  HERBRAND  ARTHUR, 
eleventh  Duke  of  Bedford  (1858-1940), 
was  bom  in  London  19  February  1858,  the 
younger  son  of  Francis  Charles  Hastings 
Russell,  ninth  Duke  of  Bedford  [q.v.],  by 
his  wife.  Lady  Elizabeth,  eldest  daughter 
of  George  John  SackviUe-West,  fifth  Earl 
De  La  Warr.  He  was  educated  at  home 
and  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  In  1879  he 
joined  the  Grenadier  Guards  and  served 


768 


Russell,  H.  A. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


l^n^l 


in  the  Egyptian  campaign  of  1882.  He 
was,  at  Tel-el-Kebir,  the  last  officer  to 
carry  the  colours  of  his  regiment  into 
battle.  From  1884  to  1888  he  was  aide- 
de-camp  to  the  viceroy  of  India,  Frederick 
Temple  Hamilton-Temple  Blackwood, 
first  Marquess  of  Dufferin  and  Ava  [q.v.]. 
In  1893  he  succeeded  his  elder  brother  as 
Duke  of  Bedford.  Seven  years  later  he 
was  called  upon  to  make  a  decision  which 
set  the  key-note  for  his  subsequent  career. 
In  October  1900  Lord  Salisbury,  recon- 
structing his  Cabinet  after  the  general 
election,  submitted  to  the  Queen  the  name 
of  the  duke  for  the  office  of  vmder- 
secretary  of  state  for  war.  In  his  memo- 
randum Lord  Salisbury  spoke  highly  of 
the  duke's  practical  and  military  abilities, 
but  in  refusing  this,  and  at  least  one 
subsequent  offer  of  office  (a  colonial 
appointment)  the  duke  was  acting  upon 
a  conviction  already  reached,  and  one 
which  grew  stronger  with  years,  that 
personal  management  of  his  estates  and 
a  political  career  could  not  be  combined. 
The  Duke  of  Bedford  was  undoubtedly 
influenced  by  his  almost  passionate  feel- 
ing for  the  lands  which  he  held,  and  for 
the  countryside  in  general.  He  was,  as  he 
himself  recognized,  no  townsman,  despite 
his  important  London  properties;  and 
although  he  was  proud  of  his  office  of  lord 
lieutenant  of  Middlesex  (1898-1926),  and 
of  being  chosen  in  1900  as  first  mayor  of 
Holborn,  neither  appointment  gave  him 
the  same  degree  of  pleasure  and  the  same 
opportunities  as  did  his  chairmanship 
(1895-1928)  of  the  Bedfordshire  county 
council.  All  this  was  typical  enough  of  a 
well-known  English  type,  but  the  duke 
was  a  countryman  who  was  also  pro- 
foundly interested  in  science.  This  early 
interest  had  been  much  stimulated  by  the 
kindness  shown  him  as  a  boy  by  F.  T. 
Buckland  [q.v.]  and  even  more  by  his 
visits  to  T.  H.  Huxley  [q.v.],  with  whom 
he  studied  physiology.  After  his  succes- 
sion to  the  dukedom  the  vast  inheritance 
afforded  opportunity  for  the  practical 
application  of  science  to  the  estates, 
particularly  to  the  principal  property  of 
Woburn  Abbey  in  Bedfordshire.  There, 
in  addition  to  the  care  given  to  the  estate 
itself  with  utilization  of  every  modern 
method,  research  stations  were  established 
in  forestry  and  arboriculture.  But  expert 
as  the  diike  proved  himself  in  these,  his 
chief  scientific  interest  had  been  from  the 
earliest  days  and  remained  in  zoology. 
Here  all  that  was  done  at  Woburn  was 
closely    associated    with    work    for    the 


Zoological  Society  of  which,  after  having 
been  elected  a  fellow  in  1872,  he  became 
president  in  1899,  holding  that  office  for  a 
period  of  thirty-seven  years.  During  tha 
time  the  development  and  care  of  thi 
private  collection  of  living  creatures  in  thi 
park  at  Woburn  went  along  with  the  dC' 
velopment  and  care  of  the  collection  i: 
Regent's  Park,  where  by  his  share  in 
guarantee  of  a  sinking  fund  the  construe 
tion  of  the  aquarium  in  the  gardens  of  th 
society  was  made  possible.  To  the  duki 
was  due  the  introduction  into  the  garden 
of  Prjevalsky's  horse,  the  only  genuin 
wild  horse  in  existence.  He  also  securei 
for  Woburn  park,  in  the  years  foUowin] 
the  Boxer  riots,  the  only  surviving  speci 
mens  of  Fere  David's  deer,  a  species  o: 
unknown  origin,  which  had  formerlj'  be© 
the  property  of  the  Emperors  of  China 
In  1908  his  work  was  recognized  by  eleo 
tion  as  F.R.S.,  for  his  patronage  oi 
research  and  his  contribution  to  th( 
increase  of  zoological  knowledge. 

The  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  caused  a; 
inevitable  interruption  to  the  work  nearei 
the  duke's  heart;  and  he  returned,  as 
matter  of  duty,  to  his  earlier  miUta 
interests.    For  many  years  he  had  com' 
manded  the  3rd  (militia)  battaUon  of  th( 
Bedfordshire  Regiment.    On  war  bei 
declared,  he  estabhshed  a  Bedfords^ 
training  depot  in  Ampthill  park,  whie 
became,  after  the  MUitary  Service  Act  oi 
1916,  a  command  depot  with  the  duke 
colonel-commandant.    At  the  same  timi 
part  of  the  Abbey  and  adjacent  buildin, 
were   turned   into    a   base   hospital   foi 
wounded  men  direct  from  the  firing-line 
Provision  made,  at  the  sole  expense  of  th 
duke,  in  both  camp   and  hospital,   foi 
special  and  new  methods   of  treatment 
testified  to  the  importance  which  he,  am 
no  less  the  Duchess  of  Bedford,  attache 
to  medical  and  surgical,  as  to  other  re 
search.     In   this   connexion   it   may 
added  that  the  duke  held  for  twenty-si 
years  (1910-1936)  the  presidency  of  th 
Imperial  Cancer  Research  Fund.  For 
war  services  the  duke,  who  had  receive 
the  Garter  in  1902,  was  in  1919  appointe 
K.B.E. 

The  period  after  1918  saw  the  duke  mo: 
than  ever  quietly  absorbed  by  his  country 
interests.  The  pre-eminent  achievement 
of  the  latter  years  of  his  presidency  of  the^j 
Zoological  Society  was  the  creation,  con-^j 
ceived  in  1926,  of  a  zoological  park  at 
Whipsnade  in  Bedfordshire.  To  this  work, 
in  conjunction  with  the  council  and  with 
the  secretary,  Sir  Peter  Chalmers  Mitchell, 


764 


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D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Rutherford 


the  duke  brought  his  whole  heart ;  and  his 
personal  delight  in  the  new  project,  as  he 
watched  it  come  to  completion,  was,  as 
those  around  him  noted,  something  akin  to 
love.  A  lesser  but  still  notable  work  during 
these  years  was  his  share  in  saving  from 
extinction  the  survivors  of  the  European 
bison  herds  which  the  war  had  nearly 
exterminated  in  their  native  hatuits  in 
Lithuania  and  the  Caucasus. 

As  Lord  Herbrand  Russell  the  duke 
married  in  1888  at  Barrackpore  Mary  du 
Caurroy,  younger  daughter  of  Walter 
1  larry  Tribe,  archdeacon  of  Lahore,  by  his 
w'iie,  Sophie,  daughter  of  Admiral  Sir 
Henry  Ducie  Chads  [q.v.],  and  sister  of 
Sir  Henry  Chads  [q.v.].  The  marriage 
t^ave  the  duke  a  companion  whose 
interest  in  science  equalled  his  own." 

MARY  DU  CAURROY  RUSSELL, 
Duchess  of  Bedford  (1865-1937),  was 
born  at  Stockbridge,  Hampshire,  of  which 
her  father  was  then  rector,  26  September 
1865,  and  educated  at  Cheltenham  Ladies' 
College  and  in  Ziirich.  The  duchess  had 
as  a  young  girl  greatly  desired  to  take  up 
the  profession  of  nursing.  From  the 
possibility  of  that  career  she  was  deflected 
by  her  marriage.  But  that  marriage  and 
the  sympathies  of  the  duke  enabled  her  to 
accomplish  work  which  might  otherwise 
have  been  impossible  for  her ;  more  parti- 
cularly since  in  the  early  years  of  her 
married  life  she  became  the  victim  of  a 
severe  and  distressing  form  of  deafness. 
This  affliction,  however,  strengthened  her 
will  to  tiurn  her  interest  in  hospital  work 
to  account.  In  1898  a  small  cottage- 
hospital  was  opened  in  Woburn;  and  in 
1903  this  was  replaced  by  a  model  hospital, 
medical  and  surgical.  The  latter,  like  the 
former,  was  under  the  personal  direction 
of  the  duchess,  to  fit  her  for  which  she  had 
taken  a  course  at  the  London  Hospital. 
Gradually,  however,  both  she  and  the 
professional  men  with  whom  she  came 
into  contact  saw  that  her  true  bent  was 
surgical  rather  than  medical.  The  war  of 
1914-1918  offered  her,  in  middle  age,  the 
opportunity  for  which  she  herself  said 
that  she  had  long  waited.  Her  model 
hospital  became  the  miUtary  hospital 
working  in  conjunction  with  the  base 
hospital  at  the  Abbey.  The  duchess  super- 
vised both  and  at  the  same  time  trained 
in  theatre  work,  so  that  in  1917  she  was 
able  to  undertake  the  post  of  surgeon's 
assistant.  From  this  she  proceeded  to 
train  in  radiography  and  radiology,  in 
both  of  which,  already  a  photographer, 
she  attained  a  remarkable  degree  of  pro- 


ficiency. After  the  closing  of  the  Abbey 
hospital  in  1920,  the  duchess  devoted  all 
her  attention  to  her  own  model  hospital, 
determined  that  it  should  profit  by  all  that 
she  had  learned  in  her  war  service.  It  was 
accordingly  reorganized  as  a  civilian 
hospital  for  surgical  cases;  the  duchess, 
whose  attendance  has  been  described  as 
like  clockwork,  acting  as  chief  theatre 
sister  and  as  radiologist.  Throughout  in 
this  work  the  duchess  had  the  encourage- 
ment and  support  of  the  duke,  as  she  had 
in  her  particular  hobby  of  bird-watching, 
which  she  followed  with  zeal  and  great 
competence.  In  the  latest  of  her  achieve- 
ments, the  art  of  flying,  she  had  indeed  the 
support  of  the  duke,  but  hardly,  how- 
ever, his  sympathy,  for  he  definitely  dis- 
liked aeroplanes.  The  duchess,  on  the 
contrary,  had  long  cherished  a  secret 
desire  to  fly  when,  at  the  age  of  sixty,  in 
June  1926  she  took  her  first  flight  and 
began  to  receive  instruction  as  a  pilot. 
Flights  with  a  co-pilot  to  India  in  1928 
and  1929  and  to  South  Africa  in  1930,  the 
last  two  being  record  flights,  were  rightly 
regarded  as  pioneer  ventures  in  travel 
by  air.  But  the  principal  service  of  the 
duchess  was  undoubtedly  her  hospital 
work,  particularly  on  the  surgical  side, 
to  which,  labouring  vmder  a  severe  physical 
disabiUty,  she  brought  alike  skill  and  de- 
votion. 

The  duchess  was  lost  at  sea,  in  her 
aeroplane,  off  the  East  coast,  22  March 
1937.  The  duke  died  at  Woburn  Abbey 
27  August  1940.  He  was  succeeded  as 
twelfth  duke  by  his  only  child,  Hastings 
WiUiam  Sackville  (born  1888). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  the  duke,  in  parUa- 
ment  robes,  by  John  ColUer  (1913)  in  the 
Middlesex  Guildhall ;  another  portrait  by 
the  same  artist  is  in  the  Shire  Hall,  Bed- 
ford ;  and  portraits  of  the  duke  and  of  the 
duchess,  and  a  bust  of  the  duke,  are  at 
Woburn  Abbey. 

[Sir  P.  C.  Mitchell,  Centenary  History  of  the 
Zoological  Society  of  London,  1929 ;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  9, 
January  1941  (portrait);  John  Gore,  Mary, 
Duchess  of  Bedford  (printed  for  private  cir- 
culation), 1941 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Gladys  Scott  Thomson. 

RUTHERFORD,  ERNEST,  Baron 
Rutherford  of  Nelson,  of  Cambridge 
(1871-1937),  physicist,  was  born  at  Spring 
Grove  (later  called  Brightwater),  near 
Nelson,  New  Zealand,  30  August  1871. 
His  father,  James  Rutherford,  was  a  son 
of  George  Rutherford,  a  wheelwright  of 


765 


Rutherford 


D.N.B,  1981-1940 


Perth,  Scotland,  who  emigrated  to  New 
2^aland  in  1842,  when  James  was  three 
years  old.  New  Zealand  then  had  only 
about  2,000  white  settlers.  James  married 
Martha,  daughter  of  Charles  Edwin 
Thompson,  who  died  at  Hornehin*ch, 
Essex,  in  1853.  His  widow  decided  to 
settle  in  New  Zealand  with  her  young 
daughter,  then  ten  years  old.  James  and 
Martha  Rutherford  had  twelve  children, 
of  whom  Ernest  was  the  fourth  child  and 
second  son.  The  family  moved  to  Foxhill 
in  1875,  to  Havelock  in  1882,  and  finally 
to  Pungarehu  in  the  North  Island  in  1886. 
There  James,  who  had  previously  worked 
as  a  wheelwright,  farmer,  timber  con- 
tractor, and  engineer,  concentrated  on  the 
large-scale  production  of  flax.  He  de- 
veloped his  own  flax-miUing  operations, 
and  planted  specially  selected  native 
varieties.  He  died  in  1928,  in  his  ninetieth 
year,  and  his  widow  in  1935,  at  the  age  of 
ninety-two.  Ernest  Rutherford  owed  his 
strong  constitution  not  only  to  the  good 
stock  of  which  he  came,  but  also  to  the 
vigorous  life  on  the  farms  where  he  spent 
his  boyhood.  He  was  a  normal,  healthy 
boy,  clever  but  not  precocious,  a  voracious 
reader,  physically  active  and  vivacious, 
skilled  in  many  kinds  of  handiwork,  and 
noted,  even  in  early  days,  for  the  loud 
laugh  which  was  one  of  his  chief  charac- 
teristics through  life. 

Rutherford  attended  the  primary  state 
schools  at  Foxhill  and  Havelock  until  he 
was  fifteen  years  old,  when  he  won  a 
Board  of  Education  scholarship  and  went 
to  Nelson  College  in  January  1887.  There 
he  soon  displayed  his  aU-round  ability, 
carrying  off  in  succession  the  chief  prizes 
in  all  the  main  subjects  of  classics,  history, 
English  literature,  French,  and  mathe- 
matics. Physics  and  chemistry  were  also 
taught,  but  not  to  any  great  extent. 
Much  of  the  science  that  Rutherford 
learned  at  Nelson  College  came  through 
informal  instruction  by  one  of  the  masters, 
W.  S.  Littlejohn,  later  principal  of  the 
Scotch  College  at  Melboiu-ne.  In  1889, 
when  he  was  head  of  the  school,  Ruther- 
ford gained  a  junior  university  entrance 
scholarship,  which  took  him  to  Canterbury 
College,  Christchurch,  early  in  1890. 

There  were  only  about  150  students  at 
Canterbury  College  then,  but  Rutherford 
was  fortunate  in  having  several  very  able 
contemporaries.  The  luiiversity  regula- 
tions compelled  every  student  to  take  a 
pass  degree  before  reading  for  honoiu-s  in 
a  special  subject.  Latin  and  pure  mathe- 
matics were  compulsory,  and  four  other 


subjects  had  to  be  offered,  only  two  of 
which  might  be  scientific.  As  a  result, 
Rutherford  did  not  begin  to  study  ad- 
vanced physics  seriously  until  1892,  when 
he  was  over  twenty  years  of  age.  In  the 
autumn  of  that  year  he  took  the  B.A.  pass 
degree,  and  won  the  university  senior 
scholarship  in  mathematics.  At  the  end 
of  1893  he  graduated  M.A.  with  first  class 
honours  in  mathematics  and  in  physics. 
Within  a  month  he  had  begim  his  first 
serious  investigation,  in  a  cold,  draughty 
cellar  which  was  used  as  a  cloakroom  by  the 
students .  The  results  of  this  research  were 
published  in  the  Transactions  of  the  New 
Zealand  Institute  (now  the  Royal  Society 
of  New  Zealand)  for  1894,  imder  the  title 
'Magnetization  of  Iron  by  High-frequency 
Discharges'.  A  second  paper,  on  'Mag- 
netic Viscosity',  followed  in  the  same 
journal  in  1896.  The  intrinsic  scientific 
interest  of  these  papers  was  considerable 
at  the  time ;  but  what  is  more  important 
to  record  is  that  they  revealed  unmistak- 
ably Rutherford's  remarkable  ability  to 
make  accurate  observations  and  measure- 
ments with  primitive  equipment. 

In  1894,  the  year  in  which  he  graduated 
B.Sc,  Rutherford  had  been  a  candidate 
for  an  1851  Exhibition  scholarship.  The 
examiners  placed  him  second  on  the  list, 
but  the  first  choice  decided  not  to  take  up 
his  scholarship,  which  was  then  awarded 
to  Rutherford.  He  arrived  in  Cambridge 
in  October  1895  to  work  under  (Sir)  J.  J. 
Thomson  [q.v.],  and  was  admitted  a 
member  of  Trinity  College.  He  was  the 
first  post-graduate  student  to  be  accepted 
under  a  new  statute  which  provided  that 
graduates  of  other  universities  could 
qualify  for  a  M.A.  degree  of  Cambridge 
after  two  years'  residence  on  the  sub- 
mission of  a  record  of  original  work  of 
sufficient  merit.  One  month  after  his 
arrival  W.  K.  Rontgen  announced  his 
discovery  of  X-rays,  the  first  strong 
breeze  of  discovery  which  blew  the  science 
of  physics  out  of  the  doldrums  in  which 
it  had  lingered  for  many  years.  Other 
exciting  events  quickly  followed ;  in  1896 
Antoine  Henri  Becquerel  showed  that 
lu-anium  compoimds  emit  radiations 
similar  in  some  respects  to  X-rays,  and  in 
1897  Thomson  provided  experimental 
proof  of  the  existence  of  the  electron,  and 
thus  the  first  definite  indication  that  all 
the  different  kinds  of  matter  might  have 
a  common  origin. 

In  the  exhilarating  atmosphere  of  the 
Cavendish  laboratory  at  this  time  Ruther- 
ford's genius  blossomed.    He  began  by 


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Rutherford 


itontinuing  some  of  his  own  experiments 
on  the  detection  of  'wireless'  waves. 
When  he  was  investigating  the  magnetic 
properties  of  iron  in  New  Zealand,  he  had 
studied  the  original  work  of  Heinrich 
Hertz  on  the  transmission  and  detection 
of  electromagnetic  waves.  Using  a  magne- 
tized steel  needle  as  a  detector  of  oscilla- 
tory discharges,  he  had  succeeded,  before 
he  left  New  Zealand,  in  sending  and  re- 
ceiving signals  through  obstacles  over  the 
length  of  the  physics  laboratory.  In 
Cambridge  he  developed  this  method,  and 
was  soon  able  to  detect  in  his  lodgings 
signals  transmitted  from  the  laboratory 
over  half  a  mile  away.  This  was  the  record 
at  the  time.  He  did  even  better  later  on, 
and  demonstrated  his  methods  at  the 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  held  at 
Liverpool  in  September  1896.  An  accoimt 
of  the  work  was  published  in  the  Philo- 
sophical Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society 
(vol.  clxxxix,  1897);  this,  his  first  com- 
munication to  the  society,  was  made  in 
June  1896.  But  then  he  deserted  the 
subject,  although  he  never  lost  interest  in 
it;  there  were  more  fundamental  things 
to  do,  and  at  the  suggestion  and  with  the 
warm  encouragement  of  his  professor, 
who  was  the  first  fully  to  recognize  his 
genius,  he  turned  his  whole  attention  to 
the  conduction  of  electricity  through 
gases.  He  began  by  using  X-rays  as  the 
ionizing  agent,  and  devised  methods  of 
great  ingenuity  and  simplicity  for  deter- 
mining the  velocity  and  rate  of  recom- 
bination of  gaseous  ions.  He  then 
examined  by  similar  methods  the  nature 
of  the  ionization  caused  by  exposure  of 
gases  to  the  radiation  from  uranium,  and 
quickly  proved  that  uranium  radiation  is 
different  in  nature  from  X-rays,  and  con- 
sists of  at  least  two  distinct  types  of 
radiation,  one  which  he  called  the  a.  radia- 
tion, which  is  highly  effective  in  causing 
ionization  but  easily  absorbed;  and  the 
other,  the  j8  radiation,  which  is  less  effec- 
tive but  far  more  penetrating.  Before  he 
left  Cambridge  in  1898  he  had  published 
four  papers,  and  sent  a  fifth  to  the  press, 
all  of  which  contained  results  of  the  high- 
est scientific  importance. 

At  the  end  of  1897  Rutherford  was 
elected  to  the  Coutts  Trotter  studentship 
at  Trinity  College,  his  1851  Exhibition 
scholarship  having  been  exceptionally 
renewed  for  a  third  year.  But  in  the  early 
summer  of  1898  the  Macdonald  research 
professorship  of  physics  at  McGill  Univer- 
sity, Montreal,  fell  vacant,  and  Rutherford 
was  advised  to  apply  for  it.    He  was 


elected,  although  not  yet  turned  twenty- 
seven,  and  sailed  from  England  in  Sep- 
tember. By  the  end  of  the  month  he  was 
already  busy  in  his  new  laboratory,  and  the 
firstfruits  of  his  famous  work  in  Montreal 
appeared  in  May  1899  in  a  paper  entitled 
"Thorium  and  Uranium  Radiation',  com- 
municated to  the  Royal  Society  of  Canada. 

Rutherford  first  lived  in  rooms  in  a 
boarding-house  close  to  the  imiversity, 
and  then  moved  to  Union  Avenue  where 
he  lived  with  his  friends  E.  W.  MacBride 
[q.v.],  professor  of  zoology,  and  J.  W. 
Walker,  professor  of  chemistry.  In  the 
early  summer  of  1900  he  paid  a  visit  to 
New  Zealand  to  be  married.  He  had  long 
been  engaged  to  Mary  Georgina,  only 
daughter  of  Arthur  Charles  Newton,  of 
Christchurch,  New  Zealand,  and  a  friend 
of  his  undergraduate  days.  They  were 
married  in  September,  returned  to  Mont- 
real by  way  of  Honoliilu  and  Vancouver, 
and  settled  in  a  house  in  Ste.  Famille 
Street.  There  was  a  daughter  of  the 
marriage,  who  became  the  wife  of  (Sir) 
R.  H.  Fowler,  and  predeceased  her  father. 

The  laboratory  at  Montreal  was  new 
and  good;  'the  best  of  its  kind  in  the 
world',  \^ote  Rutherford  to  his  mother. 
Its  cost  had  been  largely  defrayed  by  Sir 
WiUiam  Macdonald,  who  had  also  en- 
dowed the  professorship.  Rutherford  was 
not  overburdened  with  teaching,  or  other 
routine  duties,  and  was  able  to  spend  most 
of  his  time  in  the  laboratory.  Neverthe- 
less, he  soon  began  to  feel  isolated  and  out 
of  touch  with  scientific  colleagues.  He 
found  it  difficult  to  get  suitable  material 
for  his  work,  and  impossible  to  get  enough, 
soon  enough,  to  satisfy  him.  He  felt  that 
he  might  stagnate  if  he  did  not  get  away, 
and  in  1901  seriously  considered  applying 
for  the  vacant  chair  of  natural  philosophy 
at  Edinburgh  University.  Fortunately  for 
McGill  University,  and  perhaps  fortu- 
nately for  himself,  no  application  was  made. 
Later  in  the  same  year  he  rejected  a  sug- 
gestion that  he  should  become  a  candidate 
for  the  chair  of  physics  at  University 
College,  London,  and  during  the  next  six 
years  he  refused  many  tempting  offers 
from  the  United  States  of  America.  His 
temporary  feeling  of  isolation  and  frustra- 
tion had  gone ;  younger  men  journeyed  to 
Montreal  to  work  vmder  him;  and  he 
foimd  himself  the  leader  of  a  team,  gaining 
as  well  as  giving  intellectual  stimulus  from 
the  companionship  and  enthusiasm  of  its 
members.  Rutherford  differed  from  his 
great  predecessors  Newton  and  Faraday 
in  that  respect.   He  was  not  by  nature  a 


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D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I 


lone  worker;  he  needed  companionship, 
and  enjoyed  the  responsibilities  and 
triumphs  of  leadership. 

One  of  the  first  of  Rutherford's  younger 
colleagues  was  Mr.  (later  Professor) 
Frederick  Soddy,  who  was  appointed  to  a 
jimior  post  in  the  chemistry  department 
in  1900.  Early  in  1901  Mr.  Soddy  joined 
Rutherford  to  help  in  the  chemical  in- 
vestigation of  radioactive  material.  By 
then  Rutherford  had  proved  that  thorium 
compounds  continually  emit  minute 
amounts  of  a  gas  or  emanation  which 
itself  remains  radioactive  for  some  minutes 
after  separation  from  the  parent  com- 
pound. He  showed  too  that  all  solid  sub- 
stances in  the  neighboiu-hood  of  a  thorium 
compound  become  themselves  tempor- 
arily radioactive  under  certain  conditions, 
and  thought  this  to  be  due  in  some  way  to 
the  action  of  the  emanation,  although  he 
provided  no  proof  at  that  time.  He  made 
a  fine  platinum  wire  strongly  active  by 
leaving  it,  when  negatively  charged,  near 
a  thorium  compound.  Heating  the  wire 
to  a  red  heat,  or  dipping  it  in  water  or  a 
solution  of  caustic  soda,  had  no  appreci- 
able effect  on  its  temporary  radioactivity, 
which  was,  however,  largely  destroyed  if 
the  wire  was  dipped  into  a  dilute  solution 
of  hydrochloric  acid.  Rutherford  then 
evaporated  the  solution  to  dryness,  and 
showed  that  the  invisible  residue  on  the 
glass  surface  was  strongly  radioactive.  It 
was  this  brilliant  investigation,  typical  of 
Rutherford's  genius,  that  was  the  clue 
which  led,  with  Mr.  Soddy's  invaluable 
help,  to  the  final  explanation  of  the  cause 
of  radioactivity  after  three  more  years  of 
arduous  experiment. 

The  revolutionary  theory  that  radio- 
activity is  a  phenomenon  accompanying 
the  spontaneous  transformation  of  the 
atoms  of  radioactive  elements  into  differ- 
ent kinds  of  matter  was  first  put  forward 
by  Rutherford  and  Mr.  Soddy  in  a  paper 
published  by  the  London  Chemical 
Society  {Transactions,  vol.  Ixxxi,  1902), 
and  was  supported  by  further  evidence 
published  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine 
for  September  and  November  1902.  In 
his  first  book  {Radio-activity,  1904)  Ruther- 
ford gave  a  brilliant  exposition  of  the 
methods  and  results  of  investigation  on 
radioactivity  up  to  that  date.  He  based 
the  disintegration  theory  mainly  on  the 
following  experimental  evidence.  (1) 
Radioactivity  is  unaffected  by  any  change 
in  external  conditions,  whether  by  ex- 
treme heat  or  cold,  or  by  the  action  of  any 
chemical  reagent.    In  these   respects  it 


differs  from  any  known  chemical  reac 
tion.  It  must  be  an  atomic  phenomenon., 
(2)  The  radioactivity  of  uranium,  thorium, 
and  radium  is  maintained  by  the  produ 
tion  at  a  constant  rate  of  new  kinds  ol 
matter   which   themselves   possess   tem; 
porary  radioactivity.    The  constant  acti- 
vity of  the  radio  elements  is  due  to  a  stai 
of  equilibrium  where  the  rate  of  produo 
tion  of  new  matter  is  equal  to  the  rate  o; 
decay  of  that  already  produced.    (3)  I 
many  cases  the  active  products  possesi 
well  defined  chemical  properties  differeni 
from  those  of  the  parent  elements.   (4) 
some    cases   the   new   products,    e.g.   o: 
thorium  and  radium,  have  the  properti 
of  inert  gases  of  high  molecular  weight 
(5)  Radioactive  change  is  accompanied  b 
an  emission  of  heat  of  quite  a  differeni 
order  of  magnitude  from  that  observed 
ordinary  chemical  reactions. 

Rutherford  was  confident  of  the  essen- 
tial truth  of  the  new  theory,  but  cautio 
in   his   advocacy.     In   Radio-actimty   hi 
wrote:   'In  this  book  the  experiment: 
facts  of  radio-activity  and  the  connectio] 
between  them  are  interpreted  on  the  dis- 
integration theory  .  .  .  the  agreement  ol 
any    theory    with    the    facts,    which    i 
attempts    to    explain,    must    ultimate! 
depend    upon    the    results    of    accurat 
measurement.   The  value  of  any  workiuj 
theory    depends    upon    the    number 
experimental  facts  it  seems  to  correlat 
and  upon  its  power  of  suggesting  ne 
lines  of  work.    In  these  respects  the  dii 
integration  theory,  whether  or  not  it  ma; 
ultimately  be  proved  to  be  correct,  h 
already  been  justified  by  its  results.' 

The  new  theory  was  so  completely  a1 
variance  with  the  long  accepted  views 
the  indestructibility  of  matter  that  it  w: 
received   with   extreme   scepticism,   an( 
even  with  contempt,  by  many  promine: 
scientific  men.    Nevertheless,  the  distini 
tion  of  Rutherford's  work  was  recognize 
by  his  election  as  a  fellow  of  the  Roy 
Society  in  1903,  and  by  the  award  of  t 
Rumford  medal  of  the  society  in  1904J 
and  opposition  to  his  theories  soon  ga 
way  under  the  mass  of  accurate  eviden 
which    accumulated    in    his    laborato 
Before  he  left  Montreal  in  1907  the  dii 
integration  theory  was  generally  acceptei 
and  only  a  few  of  the  older  sceptics  r( 
mained  unconvinced.  Popular  interest 
the  work  was  of  a   natiu-e   and   extend 
rarely  excited  by  any  scientific  discove: 
The  most  fantastic  stories  appeared  in  tl 
newspapers,  and  journahsts  besieged  t 
physics  laboratory  until  their  present 


768 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Rutherford 


became  so  embarrassing  that,  to  dis- 
courage them,  authoritative  statements 
had  to  be  issued  to  the  press. 

A  second  edition  of  Rutherford's  Radio- 
activity appeared  in  1905,  half  as  large 
auain  as  the  original 'edition,  and  in  the 
same  year  he  gave  the  SiUiman  lectures  at 
Vale  University,  which  were  pubhshed  in 
l!)06  under  the  title  Radioactive  Trans- 
formations. He  was  strongly  pressed  to 
accept  a  professorship  at  Yale,  but  de- 
cided to  remain  at  Montreal,  where  he  felt 
so  settled  and  happy  that  he  bought  some 
land  on  the  north-west  heights  of  the 
West  Mountain,  intending  to  build  a 
house.  Before  the  house  was  begun  his 
future  plans  were  changed.  (Sir)  Arthur 
Schuster  [q.v.],  Langworthy  professor  of 
physics  at  Manchester  University,  re- 
signed his  professorship,  and  Rutherford 
was  invited  to  succeed  him.  He  accepted 
and  sailed  for  England  in  May  1907.  At 
McGill  University  there  is  preserved  with 
pride  much  of  the  simple,  primitive 
apparatus  and  equipment  which  Ruther- 
ford used  in  effecting  the  greatest  revolu- 
tion in  scientific  thought  since  the  days  of 
Darwin  and  Faraday. 

After  a  short  summer  holiday  Ruther- 
ford settled  in  Withington,  nearly  two 
miles  from  the  laboratory,  where  he  em- 
Ijarked  in  October  on  the  final  stages  of 
his  researches  on  the  nature  of  the  '  alpha 
Iiarticle'.  There  is  nothing  more  illustra- 
tive of  his  genius,  experimental  skill,  and 
extreme  caution  in  arriving  at  conclu- 
sions than  the  story  of  these  researches, 
ft  was  the  so-called  a-rays,  discovered  by 
him  in  1899,  which  notably  distinguished 
uranium  radiation  from  other  forms  of 
ionizing  radiation,  such  as  X-rays.  He 
soon  formed  the  opinion  that  the  rays 
consisted  of  minute  particles  of  matter 
projected  with  great  velocity.  He  sus- 
pected that  the  particles  were  positively 
charged,  but  it  was  not  until  1903  that  he 
obtained  impure  samples  of  radium  active 
enough  to  demonstrate  the  deviation  of 
t  lie  rays  in  a  strong  magnetic  field.  From 
his  observations  he  deduced  that  if  the 
« -particle  consisted  of  any  known  kind  of 
matter  it  must  be  either  helium  or  hydro- 
'^en.  The  proof  by  Sir  William  Ramsay 
[fj.v.]  and  Mr.  Soddy,  in  the  same  year, 
that  heUum  is  a  product  of  the  decay  of 
radium  emanation,  and  the  invariable 
l)resence  of  helium  in  all  radioactive 
ininerals,  led  him  to  express  the  view  that 
the  a-particle  is  in  fact  a  positively 
ciiarged  atom  of  helium.  But  the  evidence 
at  that  time  did  not  satisfy  him,  and  even 


in  1907,  after  much  further  work,  he  wrote 
'it  may  still  turn  out  that  the  alpha 
particle  is  hydrogen.  .  .  .  The  whole 
question  is  still  sub  judice.'  Within  a  year 
of  his  arrival  at  Manchester  he  had  suc- 
ceeded, by  the  use  of  a  device  invented  by 
(Professor)  Hans  Gleiger,  in  counting  the 
number  of  a-particles  produced  in  the 
disintegration  of  radium,  and  thus,  by 
comparison  with  the  measured  total 
charge,  deducing  the  electric  charge  on 
each  particle.  This  masterly  investigation 
provided  at  the  same  time  an  accurate 
determination  of  the  number  of  molecules 
in  a  unit  volume  of  gas  (Avogadros 
number)  and  of  the  elementary  charge  of 
the  electron.  This  turned  out  to  be  much 
higher  than  the  accepted  figure,  based  on 
previous  experiments  by  Thomson  and 
others,  but  agreed  closely  with  the  figure 
deduced  by  Max  Planck  in  the  develop- 
ment of  his  quantum  theory  eight  years 
before.  Finally,  Rutherford  provided  a 
convincing  direct  proof  by  showing,  with 
the  help  of  Mr.  Thomas  Royds,  that,  if 
radium  emanation  is  contained  in  a  tube 
with  glass  walls  thin  enough  to  permit  the 
passage  of  a-particles,  but  strong  enough 
to  be  gas  tight,  hehum  gradually  appears 
in  an  evacuated  space  round  the  tube.  He 
gave  a  full  description  of  this  work  in  a 
lecture  delivered  at  Stockholm  in  Decem- 
ber 1908,  when  he  received  the  Nobel 
prize  for  chemistry. 

The  happiest  time  of  Rutherford's 
happy  life  was  spent  at  Manchester.  Still 
young — he  was  only  thirty-six  when  he 
went  there — with  position  secvu"e  and 
reputation  imassailable,  he  showed  not 
the  slightest  sign  of  relaxation;  on  the 
contrary,  he  doubled  his  efforts.  His  energy 
was  prodigious.  He  gathered  roimd  him 
a  band  of  able  young  workers,  many  of 
whom  distinguished  themselves  in  after 
life  and  gratefully  acknowledged  how 
much  they  owed  to  Rutherford's  inspiring 
force.  He  dominated  his  laboratory  like 
a  benevolent  despot,  and  drove,  or  rather 
led,  his  team  to  the  point  of  exhaustion, 
so  much  so  that  its  members  were  glad  to 
sit  back  a  little  when  he  was  absent  for  a 
day.  And  yet,  in  the  surge  of  new  dis- 
covery, he  found  time  to  do  many  other 
things.  A  third,  greatly  enlarged  and 
modified,  edition  of  Radioactivity  ap- 
peared in  1913,  under  the  title  Radioactive 
Substances  and  their  Radiations.  He  went 
to  Winnipeg  in  1909  as  president  of 
Section  A  of  the  British  Association,  and 
after  the  meeting  lectured  in  the  United 
States.    He  spent  nearly  a  fortnight  in 


769 


3d 


Rutherford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


3 


Munich  in  1910,  seeing  many  of  his  old 
students,  and  then  went  to  Brussels  for 
the  Radiology  Congress,  where  he  was  the 
centre  of  attraction  and  took  the  most 
active  part  in  the  discussions.  He  went 
again  to  Brussels  for  the  Solvay  Confer- 
ences in  the  autumns  of  1911  and  1913. 
He  frequently  attended  the  meetings  of 
the  Royal  Society  in  London,  and  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  council  in  1910. 
His  public  lectures  and  addresses  during 
the  Manchester  period,  as  well  as  dxu-ing 
the  later  part  of  his  life,  are  too  numerous 
to  mention.  His  fame  spread  far  and  wide ; 
everyone  wanted  to  see  and  hear  him,  and 
he  did  his  best  to  comply  with  the  demand 
by  keeping  in  a  state  of  readiness  dia- 
grams, lantern  slides,  and  experimental 
equipment  to  illustrate  his  latest  dis- 
coveries. The  many  public  recognitions 
of  his  work  during  this  period  included  a 
knighthood  bestowed  in  1914. 

The  great  scientific  event  of  the  Man- 
chester period  was  the  development  of  the 
nuclear  theory  of  the  atom.  In  1906,  when 
Rutherford  was  investigating  the  deflec- 
tion of  a-rays  in  a  strong  magnetic  field, 
he  noticed  that  whereas  the  photographic 
records  had  sharply  defined  edges  when 
the  containing  vessel  was  highly  evacu- 
ated, they  became  broader,  and  the  edges 
more  diffuse,  in  the  presence  of  air,  or 
when  a  thin  sheet  of  matter  was  interposed 
between  the  radioactive  material  and  the 
photographic  plate.  A  sheet  of  mica  three- 
thousandths  of  a  centimetre  in  thickness 
caused  a  'scattering'  of  two  degrees  or 
more.  Rutherford  seized  upon  the  great 
importance  of  this  small  effect,  writing  in 
1906  that  'such  a  result  brings  out  clearly 
the  fact  that  the  atoms  of  matter  must  be 
the  seat  of  very  intense  electrical  forces'. 
In  his  early  days  at  Manchester,  when, 
through  the  generosity  of  the  Vienna 
Academy,  he  at  last  had  sufficient  radium 
for  his  work,  (Professor)  Geiger,  under  his 
direction,  made  a  more  careful  examina- 
tion of  the  scattering  effect  through  small 
angles.  Rutherford  then  asked  (Professor) 
Geiger  and  (Dr.)  Ernest  Marsden  in  1909 
to  see  if  any  a-particles  were  scattered 
through  very  large  angles.  He  said  after- 
wards that  he  never  expected  that  they 
would  be ;  if  so,  this  is  the  most  remark- 
able example  of  Rutherford's  instinct  in 
choosing  the  right  experiment  to  do.  The 
imexpected  happened,  and  within  a  few 
months  it  had  been  proved  that  about  one 
particle  in  ten  thousand  had  its  path 
deflected  through  more  than  a  right  angle 
in  passing  through  a  thin  sheet  of  matter. 


For  a  full  year  Rutherford  pondered, 
testing  and  rejecting  various  hypotheses. 
Then,    just    before    Christmas    1910,    hfl 
came  into  his  laboratory  in  high  spirits 
saying  that  he  knew  exactly  what  th^ 
atom  looked  like.    The  only  hypothesi 
that  would  satisfactorily  account  for  all 
the  facts  was  that  nearly  all  the  mass  o^ 
an  atom  was  concentrated  on  a  positively 
charged  central  nucleus,  the  diameter  o^ 
which  was  very  small  compared  with  the 
apparent  radius  of  the  atom,  and  that  the 
positive  charge  must  be  balanced  by  outei 
electrons,  a  relatively  long  distance  away^ 
On    this    hypothesis    he    calculated    the 
general  laws  of  scattering,  which  wei 
confirmed  in  detail  by  further  observaT 
tions  within  a  few  months.    The  theoi 
was  published  in  a  classic  paper  in  the 
Philosophical  Magazine  for  May  1911. 

The  nuclear  theory,  rapidly  developec 
during  the  next  few  years,  was  quicklj 
accepted,  and  long  before  Rutherford's 
death  had  influenced  the  progress  ot 
nearly  every  branch  of  science.  It  w£ 
true  that  it  did  not  fit  in  with  the  curren^ 
electromagnetic  theories,  but  that  showed  j 
said  Rutherford  confidently,  'that  there 
must  be  something  wrong  with  the  theorj 
of  electromagnetic  radiation,  not  of  the 
atom'.  The  famous  Danish  physicist 
Niels  Bohr,  who  visited  Rutherford  firs< 
in  1912,  and  became  reader  in  mathen 
matical  physics  at  Manchester  in  1914] 
devoted  himself,  soon  after  his  first  visitj 
to  the  application  of  Planck's  quantui 
theory  to  Rutherford's  atom,  and  showec 
how,  with  certain  bold  assumptions,  the 
spectrum  of  hydrogen  could  be  calculatedJ 
Bohr's  theories,  and  the  investigations  ol 
the  X-ray  spectra  of  the  elements  carriec' 
out  by  H.  G.  J.  Moseley  [q.v.],  addec 
strength  to  Rutherford's  views,  and  by| 
1914  it  was  established  that  the  chemical 
properties  of  the  elements  are  determinec 
not  by  their  atomic  weight,  but  by  the 
charge  on  the  central  nucleus,  and  hence 
by  the  number  and  arrangement  of  the 
surrounding  electrons.  The  total  numbei 
of  possible  elements,  distinct  in  theii 
chemical  properties,  up  to  the  heaviest  J 
uranium,  was  known ;  and  the  idea  ws 
gaining  ground  that  the  different  elements 
might  exist  in  stable  forms,  differing  ii 
atomic  mass,  but  with  the  same  chemics 
properties  and  nuclear  charge.  The  con-^ 
stitution  of  the  nucleus  itself  remained  th^ 
great  fvmdamental  problem  of  physics, 
problem  which  Rutherford  thought  at  the 
time  must  be  left  to  the  next  generatioi 
to  solve. 


770 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Rutherford 


In  April  1914  Rutherford  went  to 
America  to  deliver  the  first  course  of 
William  Ellery  Hale  lectures  at  Washing- 
ton on  'The  Constitution  of  Matter  and 
the  Evolution  of  the  Elements'.  In  July 
he  travelled  to  Australia,  with  his  wife  and 
daughter,  for  the  meeting  of  the  British 
Association.  War  with  Germany  was 
declared  before  they  arrived,  but  he 
decided  to  go  through  with  his  programme 
and,  after  leading  a  discussion  at  Mel- 
bourne on  'The  Constitution  of  the  Atom', 
and  giving  a  public  lecture  at  Sydney  on 
'Atoms  and  Electrons',  he  went  on  to 
New  Zealand,  visited  his  parents  and 
friends  in  the  North  Island,  and  lectured 
at  Canterbury  College  on  the  'Evolution 
of  the  Elements',  which  was  the  title  of 
his  first  address  to  an  unofficial  scientific 
society  of  the  college  when  he  was  an  under- 
graduate in  1891.  He  returned  to  England 
in  January  1915  to  find  a  laboratory 
rapidly  emptying  of  his  research  staff  and 
students.  In  the  following  July  he  became 
a  member  of  a  committee  of  the  Admiralty 
Board  of  Invention  and  Research  which 
had  been  appointed  to  develop  new 
methods  of  dealing  with  the  menace  of 
submarine  warfare.  Within  a  short  time 
his  laboratory  at  Manchester  was  devoted 
to  a  study  of  under-water  acoustics,  and 
a  large  tank  was  installed  on  the  ground 
floor.  The  Admiralty  established  a  full- 
scale  research  station  at  Aberdour,  near 
Rosyth,  and  Rutherford  spent  much  of 
his  time  travelling  to  Aberdour  to  take 
part  in  trials,  and  to  London  for  meetings 
of  the  committee.  When  (Sir)  William 
Henry  Bragg  was  put  in  charge  of  the 
work  at  Aberdour,  Rutherford  concen- 
trated his  attention  more  on  the  small- 
scale  work.  In  the  early  summer  of  1917 
he  went  to  America  as  one  of  the  two 
British  representatives  on  a  Franco- 
British  scientific  commission,  in  order  to 
give  the  United  States  scientists  full 
information  on  the  detection  and  location 
of  submarines,  and  to  discuss  joint  plans 
for  improvement  of  methods.  He  took 
the  opportunity  to  visit  Yale  University 
again,  where  he  received  an  honorary 
degree,  and  to  go  to  Montreal  to  renew 
triendships.  When  he  retm-ned  to  Man- 
chester in  July  he  felt  that  his  main  contri- 
l)utions  to  the  war  effort  were  coming  to 
an  end,  and  that  he  was  justified  in  turn- 
ing his  attention  again  to  fundamental 
problems  of  physics.  With  no  one  now  to 
lielp  him  but  his  laboratory  steward  he 
started  in  September  to  investigate  more 
closely  than  before  what  happens  when 


a-particles  collide  with  atoms  of  the 
lighter  gases.  He  found  some  unexpected 
effects  with  air,  which  were  soon  shown 
to  be  caused  by  collisions  of  a-particles 
with  nitrogen  atoms.  A  long  series  of 
carefully  controlled  experiments,  which 
involved  the  laborious  and  tiring  counting 
of  scintillations  on  a  fluorescent  screen, 
convinced  him  that  the  nucleus  of  the 
nitrogen  atom  is  disintegrated  under  the 
intense  forces  developed  in  a  close  collision 
with  an  a-particle,  and  that  the  nucleus  of 
a  hydrogen  atom  is  liberated,  which  must 
therefore  be  a  constituent  part  of  the 
nitrogen  nucleus.  In  June  1919  his 
evidence  for  the  first  artificial  transmuta- 
tion of  matter  was  published  in  the  Philo- 
sophical Magazine.  This  was  the  cul- 
minating triumph  of  the  Manchester 
period. 

In  April  1919  Rutherford  was  elected 
to  the  Cavendish  professorship  of  experi- 
mental physics  in  the  university  of  Cam- 
bridge in  succession  to  Thomson,  and  into 
a  fellowship  at  Trinity  College,  and  the 
last  great  period  of  his  life  and  work  began. 
He  settled  in  the  autumn  at  Newnham 
Cottage,  Queen's  Road,  where  he  lived 
until  his  death.  He  found  a  department 
crowded  with  graduate  and  undergraduate 
students,  but  deficient,  in  his  view,  in 
staff,  space,  and  equipment.  He  spent 
some  time  in  developing  a  plan  for  re- 
organization and  extension,  for  which, 
unfortunately,  money  was  not  available 
until  1936.  But  he  soon  began  to  follow 
up  vigorously  his  experiments  on  the 
disintegration  of  the  light  elements,  and 
by  the  time  that  he  gave  his  second 
Bakerian  lecture  to  the  Royal  Society  in 
Jime  1920  (he  had  given  his  first  in  May 
1904)  had  provided  conclusive  proof,  by 
measuring  their  deflection  in  a  magnetic 
field,  that  the  long  range  particles  from 
nitrogen  are  indeed  hydrogen  nuclei.  This 
was  the  lecture  that  contained  his  famous 
speculation  on  the  existence  of  the  neutron, 
and  of  an  isotope  of  hydrogen  of  mass  2. 

The  next  few  years  were  years  of  con- 
solidation and  general  progress,  rather 
than  of  any  major  discoveries.  Rutherford 
spent  some  time  vainly  searching  for 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  the  neutron, 
and,  with  the  help  of  (Sir)  James  Chad- 
wick,  then  one  of  his  research  students, 
continued  to  explore,  by  the  laborious 
scintillation  method,  the  transmutation 
of  atoms  of  the  lighter  elements  by  colli- 
sion with  a-particles.  The  Wilson  Cloud 
chamber,  that  'most  original  and  wonder- 
ful' instrument,  as  Rutherford  called  it, 


771 


Rutherford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


was  extensively  used  in  the  Cavendish 
laboratory  to  study  the  tracks  of  single 
a-particles,  protons,  and  electrons.  But 
it  became  clear  to  Rutherford  that  the 
days  when  so  much  could  be  discovered 
by  the  simplest  means  were  passing,  and 
that  rapid  progress  in  knowledge  of  the 
constitution  of  the  nucleus  could  only  be 
expected  if  he  had  more  powerful  means 
of  experiment  at  his  command.  The  years 
1925  to  1930  were  largely  spent  in  en- 
couraging the  study  of  methods  of  pro- 
ducing fast  charged  particles  by  the 
appUcation  of  high  voltages  to  vacuum 
tubes,  and  the  Cavendish  laboratory 
gradually  became  equipped  with  elabo- 
rate electrical  machinery.  This  period  of 
preparation  for  the  next  major  advance 
coincided  with  Rutherford's  presidency 
of  the  Royal  Society,  to  which  he  was 
elected  in  1925.  Earlier  in  the  same  year 
he  had  been  appointed  to  the  Order  of 
Merit;  and  soon  after  his  term  of  office 
was  over  he  was  in  1931  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Rutherford  of  Nelson, 
of  Cambridge,  the  title  being  taken  from 
the  town  near  to  which  he  was  born,  and 
at  which  he  went  to  school. 

In  1930  there  appeared,  imder  the  title 
Radiations  from  Radioactive  Substances, 
and  with  the  collaboration  of  (Sir)  James 
Chadwick  and  of  (Dr.)  Charles  Drummond 
EUis,  another  of  his  research  students,  a 
book  in  which  the  authors,  after  sum- 
marizing early  work  on  radioactivity, 
dealt  exhaustively  and  critically  with  the 
investigations  of  the  last  twelve  years.  It 
marked  the  end  of  an  epoch;  two  years 
later,  in  1932,  Rutherford's  forward  pohcy 
was  amply  justified,  and  his  predictions 
triumphantly  fulfilled.  In  that  year 
(Dr.)  John  Douglas  Cockcroft  and  (Dr.) 
Ernest  Thomas  Sinton  Walton  succeeded 
in  transforming  hthium  atoms  into  helium 
by  bombarding  them  with  protons  accele- 
rated through  600,000  volts;  (Professor) 
Carl  David  Anderson  in  America  dis- 
covered the  positive  electron,  or  positron ; 
and  (Sir)  James  Chadwick  proved  that  the 
penetrating  radiation  which  had  been 
observed  by  Professor  Walther  Bothe  to 
result  from  the  bombardment  of  beryl- 
lium by  a-particles  consists  of  a  stream 
of  the  long-expected  and  sought-for 
neutrons.  In  the  next  year  Professor 
Harold  Clayton  Urey,  of  Coliunbia  Uni- 
versity, discovered  heavy  hydrogen,  later 
named  deuterium,  and  the  Cvu*ie-Joliots 
in  France  produced  the  first  artificially 
radioactive  element.  The  way  was  set  for 
another  great  advance,  on  a  broad  front. 


Rutherford,  then  over  sixty  years  of  age 
seemed  to  recover  all  the  fire  and  eni 
thusiasm   of  his   youth.     Many   of  tl 
spectacular  discoveries  of  the  next  fe\ 
years  were  due  to  his  direct  inspiration] 
many  others  were  made  by  workers 
other   countries.     In    1936   he   gave 
account  of  all  the  recent  work  on  tl 
transmutation  of  elements  in  his  Hei 
Sidgwick  memorial  lecture  at  Newnhai 
CoUege,  Cambridge,  which  was  publishe 
in  expanded  form  in  1937  under  the  titl 
The  Newer  Alchemy.  In  this  little  book  hi 
referred  to  the  most  recent  discovery  thai 
even  the  heaviest  elements,  luanivun  anc 
thoriiun,  are  transformed  by  slow  nen\ 
trons;  but,  he  added,  'the  exact  interpre 
tation  of  these  transformations  is  still  sul 
judice'.     The    true    interpretation    wa 
found  only  after  his  death.    He  did  no| 
live  to  see  the  failure  of  his  hope,  e3 
pressed  in  1916,  that  man  would  not  leai 
how  to  use  atomic  energy  for  practic 
purposes  until  the  world  was  at  peace, 
died  at  Cambridge  19  October  1937,  afte 
a  few  days'  illness,  and  was  buried 
Westminster  Abbey  on  25  October.  Wit 
his  death  his  peerage  became  extinct. 

Rutherford  received  innumerabl 
honours  in  addition  to  those  already  mei 
tioned.  In  all,  he  was  awarded  honorai 
degrees  from  thirteen  British,  foi 
Dominion,  and  eight  foreign  universitie 
His  other  distinctions  included  the  CopleJ 
medal  of  the  Royal  Society  (1922),  and  tl 
honorary  fellowship  of  the  Royal  CoUej 
of  Physicians.  He  was  also  honorary 
foreign  associate  of  most  of  the  wel 
known  foreign  scientific  societies 
academies. 

In  the  whole  coiu:se  of  the  history 
science  no  one  has  siurpassed  Rutherfoi 
in  his  influence  on  his  contemporaries ;  fet 
have  equalled  the  volume  and  acciu-ac 
of  his  experimental  work.   In  upwards 
150  original  papers  and  addresses  pul 
fished  by  him  in  scientific  journals,  alor 
or  with  collaborators,  the  careful  reade 
can  detect  some  mistakes  in  facts  as  we| 
as  in  judgement ;  but  they  are  so  few  as 
be  neghgible.  Nor  do  the  papers  publishe 
imder  his  name  represent  the  siun  of  ' 
contributions  to  science ;  many  others, 
which  his  name  does  not  appear  in  tt 
title,  owe  their  existence  to  his  ferti 
mind,  and  much  of  their  value  to  his  si 
in    experiment.     He    himself   attribut 
much  of  his  success  to  his  continuoi 
efforts  to  improve  acciuracy  of  observatic 
in  every  possible  direction.  There  is  muc 
truth  in  this,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  trut' 


772 


DJ^.B.  1981-1040 


Rutherford 


It  was  not  only  experience,  based  on  hard, 
honest  work,  that  taught  him  to  concen- 
trate on  things  that  really  mattered,  and 
I  ( )  avoid  irrelevant  side  issues ;  this  was  a 
c|iiality  that  he  had  from  the  very  begin- 
ning. He  was  highly  imaginative,  rather 
than  speculative.  He  was  apt  to  underrate 
the  more  metaphysical  inquiries  of  mathe- 
matical physicists ;  'they  play  games  with 
their  symbols,'  he  said,  'but  we  in  the 
Cavendish  turn  out  the  real  solid  facts  of 
Nature'.  But  when  abstruse  theory  led  to 
conclusions  which  could  be  tested  and 
conftrmed  in  the  laboratory,  his  scepti- 
cism turned  quickly  into  enthusiasm.  He 
Avas  the  severest  critic  of  his  own  work, 
testing  and  re-testing  his  theories,  and 
exhaustively  examining  alternatives,  until 
he  was  satisfied  that  what  he  said  or  wrote 
could  not  easily  be  shaken.  Neither  in 
youth,  nor  as  he  grew  old,  did  he  ever 
try  to  save  his  face  by  complicated  hypo- 
theses: indeed  he  had  no  need  to  try. 
With  all  his  abundant  vitality,  he  knew 
how  to  curb  his  imagination,  and  how  also 
to  restrain  his  natural  impatience  with 
those  whose  work  fell  short  of  his  own 
high  standard.  In  the  early  days  of 
radioactivity  there  were  men,  of  more 
established  reputations  than  his,  who 
were  inclined  to  be  rash  in  speculation, 
and  careless  in  experiment.  Whatever 
Rutherford  might  say  in  private — and 
he  was  outspoken  with  his  friends — he 
combined  politeness  with  firmness  in 
public  discussion,  though  sometimes  with 
a  sly  sarcasm  that  delighted  his  younger 
supporters. 

Rutherford  took  great  pains  over  his 
MTitings,  holding  that  no  scientific  dis- 
covery is  complete  until  it  has  been 
expressed  in  clear  and  concise  language. 
As  a  speaker  he  was  unpolished  and 
hesitant.  Words  did  not  come  easily  to 
tnm  before  an  audience.  Long  practice 
never  made  him  perfect ;  but  the  power  of 
Ills  personality,  his  wide  knowledge,  and 
liis  robust  common  sense  always  made  a 
!j:reat  impression  on  those  who  heard  his 
public  utterances  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
or  in  his  capacity  as  chairman  of  the 
Advisory  Council  of  the  Department  of 
Scientific  and  Industrial  Research,  an 
office  which  he  held  from  1930  imtLl  his 
death.  When  he  lectured  to  scientific 
audiences  on  his  own  work  he  was  unique 
and  irresistible.  The  minor  faults  of 
(iiction  were  completely  swamped  by 
interest  in  what  he  had  to  say  and  by  the 
infection  of  his  enthusiasm  and  joy  in  his 
subject.  A  sound  record  exists  of  a  lecture 


that  he  gave  at  Gottingen  in  December 
1931,  when  he  received  an  honorary  degree 
from  the  university.  It  reveals  him  in  a 
most  characteristic  and  happy  mood. 

Rutherford's  influence  on  his  students 
was  well  described  after  his  death  by 
his  son-in-law,  (Sir)  R.  H,  Fowler.  '  Ideally 
equipped  for  directing  a  physical  labora- 
tory, he  was  capable  at  once  of  intense 
sustained  individual  research,  of  suggest- 
ing and  inspiring  with  his  own  fire  cognate 
researches  of  others  over  a  very  wide  field, 
and,  particularly  in  later  years,  of  organ- 
ising the  team  work  for  elaborate  attack 
on  many  modern  problems.  His  genial  but 
dominant  personality,  his  exacting  de- 
mands for  the  best,  the  inspiration  of  his 
personal  research,  and  the  generosity  Avith 
which  he  suggested  and  directed  the  work 
of  his  staff  and  students,  created  an 
atmosphere  in  any  laboratory  he  directed 
which  no  one  who  experienced  it  will 
forget,  or,  alas,  ever  hope  to  meet  again.' 
But  it  was  not  only  his  students  whom 
Rutherford  influenced.  No  man,  old  or 
young,  great  or  small,  who  was  striving 
in  whatever  way  to  enlarge  the  boundaries 
of  science,  ever  came  away  from  a  talk 
with  Rutherford  without  an  added  zest  in 
his  own  work,  and  a  feeling  that  he  was  a 
partner  in  a  great  adventure. 

In  person  Rutherford  was  a  big, 
heavily  built,  but  loosely  limbed  man. 
His  light  blue  eyes  were  shrewd  and 
penetrating,  his  voice  loud  and  resonant, 
his  conversation  animated  and  vivid. 
Supremely  confident  in  his  own  powers, 
there  was  yet  no  trace  of  vanity  in  him: 
he  was  simple  in  all  his  ways,  and  tm- 
assuming  and  even  boyish  in  behaviour. 
Athletic  in  his  youth,  a  rheumatic  condi- 
tion of  one  knee  caused  him  to  be  physic- 
ally rather  lethargic  in  middle  age, 
when,  in  his  own  words,  he  'took  no  more 
exercise  than  was  consistent  with  self 
respect'.  He  enjoyed  games  of  all  kinds, 
so  long  as  they  were  not  taken  too  seriously 
and  did  not  interfere  with  conversation. 
He  had  the  characteristic  of  going  to  sleep 
for  short  periods  during  the  daytime, 
waking  up  suddenly,  and  going  on  with  a 
conversation  where  he  had  left  off.  He 
was  seldom  ill,  although  chronic,  but  not 
serious,  throat  trouble  persisted  through 
life.  He  was  nearly  always  in  high  spirits, 
but  he  had  occasional  fits  of  anger  when 
it  was  'as  if  the  sky  was  darkened  by  a 
thunder  cloud.  ...  In  such  moments 
everyone  is  of  course  afraid  of  him,  but  not 
more  so  than  we  dare  to  confess'  (Niels 
Bohr). 


778 


Rutherford 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


An  excellent  portrait  in  oils  of  Ruther- 
ford by  Oswald  Birley  (1932)  hangs  in 
the  rooms  of  the  Royal  Society :  there  are 
copies  in  the  Cavendish  laboratory,  Cam- 
bridge, and  at  Canterbury  College,  Christ- 
church,  New  Zealand.  Another  oil  por- 
trait, by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo,  is  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge;  a  third,  by  F.  L. 
Emanuel  (1936),  belongs  to  Nelson  College, 
New  Zealand;  and  a  fourth,  by  Jozef 
Jannsens  (1917),  is  in  the  possession  of 
Lady  Rutherford.  Other  portraits  include 
an  oil  sketch  by  James  Gunn  (1932)  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  and  pencil 
sketches  by  Francis  Dodd  in  the  Fitz- 
william  Museum,  and  by  Randolph 
Schwabe  (1928)  at  Trinity  College. 

[The  Times,  20,  22,  and  25  October  1937 ; 
Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait);  A.  S.  Eve, 
Rutherford,  1939;  Norman  Feather,  Lord 
Rutherford,  1940;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  H.  T.  Tizard. 

RYRIE,  Sir  GRANVILLE  DE 
LAUNE  (1865-1937),  major-general  and 
high  commissioner  for  Australia,  was  born 
on  the  sheep-station  of  Micalago,  Miche- 
lago.  New  South  Wales,  1  July  1865,  the 
second  of  the  six  sons  of  Alexander  Ryrie, 
a  well-known  grazier  and  member  of  the 
legislative  Council,  by  his  wife,  Charlotte, 
elder  daughter  of  Captain  Alured  Tasker 
Faunce,  of  the  4th  King's  Ovm  Regiment. 

Educated  at  a  preparatory  school  at 
Mittagong  and  at  King's  School,  Parra- 
matta,  Ryrie,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  went 
as  jackeroo  to  Goonal  station  in  north- 
west New  South  Wales.  He  became  an 
excellent  bushman  and  judge  of  horses, 
and  gained  considerable  skill  at  carving 
and  throwing  a  boomerang.  Returning  to 
Micalago  as  manager,  Ryrie  entered  fully 
into  the  local  life.  His  interests  were 
sporting  and  social  rather  than  intellectual 
and  bookish,  for  his  formal  education  had 
been  meagre.  He  bred  good  horses  and 
raced  them,  played  football,  and  contested 
the  finals  of  the  New  South  Wales 
amateur  heavyweight  boxing  champion- 
ship, being  narrowly  defeated.  His  excel- 
lent physique,  his  fine  tenor  voice,  and  his 
clever  mimicry  of  the  lyre-bird  were  gifts 
that  won  him  wide  popularity. 

Ryrie  also  worked  hard,  and  was  a 
member  of  the  local  Light  Horse.  In  1900 
he  embarked  for  South  Africa  as  a  captain 
in  the  6th  (N.S.W.)  Imperial  Bushmen, 
and  was  wounded  at  Wonderfontein 
(September),  promoted  major  (November), 
and  awarded  the  Queen's  medal  with  four 


clasps.    In  June  1901  he  retturned  hor 
with  his  regiment. 

From   1906   to   1910   Ryrie   held   the 
Queanbeyan  seat  in  the  New  South  Wales 
legislative  assembly,  but  failed  to  gai 
the  Cootamundra  seat  in  1910.   In  191] 
he   was   elected   to   the   Commonwealtl 
parliament  for  North  Sydney,  holding  the 
seat  until  1922.   He  remained,  however^ 
a  citizen   soldier,   commanding  the   3r(] 
Light  Horse  regiment  from  1907  to  191^ 
as  lieutenant-colonel.    He  embarked  foi 
Egypt  in  December  1914   as  brigadier^ 
general    commanding    the     2nd     Light 
Horse  brigade.  Serving  through  the  Galli- 
poll  campaign  from  May  until  the  evacuan 
tion  in  December  1915,  he  was  severelj 
wounded  on  29  September.    With  little 
love  for  military  forms  or  text-books  he 
nevertheless   gained   a   reputation   as 
skilful  soldier,  with  a  sure  sense  of  th^ 
possibilities  of  a  situation  and  a  marked 
tmwillingness  to  waste  the  lives  of 
troops.     These    same    qualities    marked 
Ryrie's  leadership  of  his  brigade  in  Sina 
and  Palestine  from  1916  to  1918,  and 
the  latter  year  he  took  command  of  th^ 
Australian  division  of  the  Light  Horse 
Syria.    Throughout  he  achieved  steadj 
consistent  success  for  which  he  was  fiv^ 
times  mentioned  in  dispatches,  and  aj 
pointed  C.M.G.  in  1916,  C.B.  in  1918,  anc 
K.C.M.G.  in  1919.  He  was  again  woundec' 
and    in    1919    promoted    major-genei 
commanding   the    Australian    troops 
Egypt.  His  success  rested  not  only  on  hi 
military  gifts,  but  perhaps  equally  on  th^ 
devotion  which  this  brusque,  hvunoroua 
sixteen-stone  giant  inspired  in  his  mer 
for  he  shared  their  rough  life,  their  rations 
and  their  dangers. 

Back  in  Australia,  Ryrie  held  the  posij 
tion  of  assistant  minister  for  defence  froi 
1920  to  1923.    In  1922  he  was  returne 
unopposed  to  the  Commonwealth  parlis 
ment  for  Warringah,  a  seat  which  he  hel«| 
until  he   became   high  commissioner 
London.   He  occupied  this  latter  positio^ 
from  July  1927  until  July  1932.   In  thea 
years  his  health  was  not  good,  and  on 
return  to  Australia  he  retired  from  publijj 
life. 

Ryrie  married  in  1896  Mary  Franc 
Gwendolyn,   second   daughter  of  Al 
McFarland,  judge  of  the  District  Court 
New  South  Wales;  they  had  a  son  and 
twin    daughters.     He    died    in    Sydnej 
2  October  1937. 

Ryrie's  greatest  contribution  to  Aust 
lian  public  life  was  probably  as  a  militai 
leader.  Honest  and  fearless  in  politics. 


774 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


outspokenness  did  not  help  his  advance- 
ment. As  high  commissioner  he  worked 
hard ;  he  was  bent  on  making  a  success  of 
the  great  scheme  of  British  migration 
\\  hich  came  to  nothing  in  the  depression 
of  1929.  His  behef  in  1927  that  Austraha 
((!uld  take  100,000  British  immigrants  a 
Near  proved  mifounded.  But  Ryrie  is 
remembered  as  a  fine  type  of  Austrahan 
countryman  and  as  a  mihtary  leader  of 
the  kind  most  fitted  to  get  the  best  out  of 
the  Commonwealth's  citizen  forces.  The 
\  alue  of  his  work  in  this  field  has  been 
(iilly  recognized  in  the  official  records  of 
Australia's  part  in  the  war  of  1914  to  1918. 
There  is  a  portrait  of  Ryrie  by  Charles 
W  heeler  in  the  Australian  War  Memorial, 
Canberra,  as  well  as  one  in  a  group  of 
'Sir  Harry  Chauvel  and  his  Brigade  Com- 
manders in  Palestine  in  1918'  by  H.  Septi- 
nuis  Power;  the  best  portrait  is  probably 
a  pencil  drawing  by  George  Lambert  in 
possession  of  the  family. 

[Sydney  Morning  Herald,  4  October  1937 ; 
Argus  (Melbourne),  4  October  1937;  The 
Times,  4  October  1937 ;  Official  Records  of  the 
Australian  Military  Contingents  to  the  War  in 
South  Africa,  compiled  by  P.  L.  Murray,  1911 ; 
Official  History  of  Australia  in  the  War  of 
1014-J918,  C.  E.  W.  Bean,  vol.  1,  1933,  vol.  11, 
1924,  and  H.  S.  Gullett,  vol.  vii,  1923  (por- 
trait); Commonwealth  Parliamentary  Hand- 
book, 1901-1930,  1930 ;  private  information.] 
Herbert  Burton. 

ST.  DAVIDS,  first  Viscount  (1860- 
1938),  financier.   [See  Philipps,  Sir  John 

^VYNFORD.] 

SAINTSBURY,  GEORGE  EDWARD 
BATEMAN  (1845-1933),  literary  critic 
and  historian,  was  born  at  Southampton 
23  October  1845,  the  second  son  of  George 
Saintsbury,  secretary  and  superintendent 
of  the  docks,  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Wright. 
1  educated  at  King's  College  School,  Lon- 
don, he  entered  Merton  College,  Oxford, 
as  a  classical  postmaster  in  1863,  was 
awarded  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1865)  and  a  second  class  in  liter ae 
liumaniores  (1866),  and,  having  failed  to 
obtain  a  fellowship,  left  Oxford  in  1868, 
and  became  a  schoolmaster.  His  chief 
college  friend  was  Mandell  Creighton 
I  ([.v.].  After  a  few  months  at  Manchester 
(irammar  School  he  was  for  six  years 
senior  classical  master  at  Elizabeth  Col- 
lege, Guernsey,  where  he  read  widely  in 
I'rench  literature,  and  sent  his  first  re- 
\  iews  to  the  Academy.  In  1874  he  moved 
to  Elgin  as  headmaster  of  the  newly 
founded  Elgin  Educational  Institute.    It 


Saintsbury 

did  not  prosper,  and  he  returned  to  Lon- 
don in  1876  to  live  by  his  pen. 

Saintsbury's  first  essay  of  note,  on 
Baudelaire,  was  printed  by  John  (after- 
wards Viscount)  Morley  [q.v.]  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review  for  October  1875,  and  on 
Morley's  invitation  was  followed  in  1878 
by  eight  essays  on  contemporary  French 
novelists.  It  was  as  a  critic  of  French 
literature  that  he  began  to  make  his  name. 
He  contributed  over  thirty  articles  on  it 
to  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  (9th  ed. 
1875-1889),  and  wrote  both  a  Primer  of 
French  Literature  (1880)  and  a  Short  His- 
tory of  French  Literature  (1882),  besides 
editing  selected  French  Lyrics  (1882)  and 
Specim£ns  of  French  Literature  from  Villon 
to  Hugo  (1883).  His  views,  always  his  own, 
often  ran  counter  to  the  accepted  verdicts 
of  the  French  critics.  But  he  was  also  at 
work  on  English  literature.  His  Dry  den 
('English  Men  of  Letters'  series,  1881) 
was  a  much  needed  study  of  a  favourite 
of  whom  he  always  wrote,  and  spoke,  with 
fervour.  It  brought  the  invitation  to  re- 
edit  Scott's  Dryden,  but  the  edition  suf- 
fered by  delays  in  publication  (18  vols., 
1882-1893).  He  was  more  fortunate  in  his 
Specimens  of  English  Prose  Style  from 
Malory  to  Macaulay  (1885),  and  when  he 
wrote  his  History  of  Elizabethan  Literature 
(1887)  his  main  interests  had  turned  from 
French  to  English,  although  he  was  still 
to  collect  his  Essays  on  French  Novelists 
(1891),  and  to  superintend,  with  his  own 
critical  matter  superadded,  the  translation 
of  Balzac  (40  vols.,  1895-1898).  From 
1886  onwards  he  contributed  a  series  of 
articles  on  English  authors  to  Macmillan's 
Magazine,  and  these,  and  some  others,  he 
collected  in  Essays  in  English  Literature, 
1780-1860  (1890)  and  Miscellaneous  Essays 
(1892),  two  of  his  best  books.  Then  for  a 
few  years  his  criticism  mostly  took  the 
form  of  introductions  to  editions — Swift's 
Polite  Conversation  and  Florio's  Montaigne 
(1892),  Fielding  and  Herrick  (1893),  The 
Heptameron  and  Sterne  (1894),  Smollett 
(1895) — and  to  the  selections  from  over 
thirty  authors  in  Craik's  English  Prose 
(1893-1896).  His  History  of  Nineteenth- 
Century  Literature,  1780-1895  (1896)  was 
published  a  few  months  after  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  English  chair  at  Edinburgh. 
About  the  same  time  he  brought  out  his 
Corrected  Impressions:  Essays  on  Victorian 
Writers  (1895)  and  a  second  series  of 
Essays  in  English  Literature  (1895),  and 
two  other  editions  remained  to  be  com- 
pleted with  his  introductions.  Peacock 
(1896-1897)  and  Donne  (1896).    During 


776 


Saintsbury 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


this  period  he  had  also  •written  Marl- 
borough ('EngUsh  Worthies'  series,  1885), 
Manchester  (1887),  and  The  Earl  of  Derby 
(1892). 

This  great  body  of  critical  work  had 
been  exceeded  in  sheer  bulk  by  his  work 
as  a  journalist.  For  some  months  in  1877 
Saintsbury  was  on  the  staff  of  the  Man- 
chester Guardian,  for  which,  as  for  the 
Daily  News,  his  work  was  non-political. 
With  Andrew  Lang  and  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  [qq.v.]  he  was  a  main  contribu- 
tor to  London  (1877-1879,  edited  by 
W.  E.  Henley,  q.v.).  He  wrote  for  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette  while  Morley  remained 
its  editor,  and  for  the  St.  Jameses  Gazette. 
But  his  main  work  as  a  journalist  was  on 
the  Saturday  Review,  of  which  he  was 
assistant  editor  from  1883  to  1894,  when 
he  left  on  a  change  of  its  ownership.  The 
independent  toryism  of  the  Saturday  was 
never  more  vigorous  than  in  those  years. 
He  entered  with  zest  into  the  fight  against 
Gladstone's  Irish  policy,  and  saved  the 
paper  from  the  'Parnell  Letters'  before 
they  duped  The  Times  (Scrap  Book,  iii, 
p.  274).  'In  my  twenty  years  of  journal- 
ism', he  says,  'I  must  have  written  the 
equivalent  of  at  least  a  hundred  volumes 
of  the  "Every  Gentleman's  Library"  type 
— and  probably  more '  (Scrap  Book,  i,  p.  x). 

In  September  1895  Saintsbury  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  regius  chair  of  rhetoric  and 
EngUsh  literature  in  the  university  of 
Edinburgh  in  succession  to  David  Masson 
[q.v.].  This  was  a  turning-point  in  his 
career,  as  he  had  to  exchange  the  excite- 
ment and  uncertainty  which  he  had  found 
in  'the  charm  of  journalism'  for  the  more 
staid  duties  of  a  Scottish  professor.  He 
may  not  at  first  have  been  weU  adapted 
to  the  ways  of  the  Scottish  student,  but 
his  influence  grew  steadily  until  he  became 
a  power  in  the  university,  and  the  twenty 
years  of  his  professorship  form  one  of  the 
most  notable  periods  in  the  history  of  a 
famous  chair.  The  big  books  which  he 
had  long  wanted  to  write  now  followed 
one  another  with  surprising  rapidity.  His 
Short  History  of  English  Literature  (1898), 
a  whoUy  new  book  alike  in  design  and 
substance,  was  written  in  less  than  a  year. 
With  its  completion  he  was  free  to  begin 
what  he  had  long  hoped  would  be  his  chief 
work,  his  History  of  Criticism  and  Literary 
Taste  in  Europe  from  the  Earliest  Texts  to 
the  Present  Day  (3  vols.,  1900-1904),  the 
first  and  still  the  only  survey  of  critical 
theory  and  practice  from  ancient  Greek 
to  modem  times.  He  supplemented  it 
with  Loci  Critici  (1903),  a  collection  of 


illustrative  passages.  Then  came  his  His- 
tory of  English  Prosody  from  the  Twelfth 
Century  to  the  Present  Day  (3  vols.,  1906- 
1910),    supplemented   by    his    Historical 
Manual  of  English  Prosody  (1910);  and 
then  its  natural  but  novel  sequel  A  History 
of  English  Prose  Rhythm  (1912),  a  treatise 
on  the  structure  and  modulation  of  our 
best  prose.  These  four  big  books,  or  their 
volumes,  had  appeared  regularly  at  inter- 
vals of  two  years,  and  he  had  made  time 
for  much  else  even  while  a  busy  professor. 
Before  he  was  appointed  he  had  planned 
the  'Periods  of  European  Literature'  in 
twelve  volumes,  and  of  these  he  wrote 
three.   The  Flourishing  of  Romance  and 
the  Rise  of  Allegory  (1897),  The  Earlier^ 
Renaissance  (1901),  and  The  Later  Nir 
teenth  Century  (1907).    He  wrote  a  bool 
on  Sir  Walter  Scott  (1897),  and  another  oi 
Matthew  Arnold  (1899).  He  edited  selectee 
plays  of  Dry  den  (2  vols.,  1904)  and  Shad 
well  (1912),  both  in  the  'Mermaid'  series| 
a  collection  of  Minor  Poets  of  the  Carolir 
Period    (3    vols.,    1905-1921);    and    tl 
Oxford  Thackeray  (17  vols.,   1908). 
took  a  main  part  in  the  discussion  on  'tl 
grand  style'  in  his  address  to  the  Dant 
Society   on   Dante    (1905,   published 
Essays  and  Studies  of  the  English  Associa 
tion,  1912),  in  his  lecture  (delivered 
1908)  to  the  Royal  Society  of  Literatur 
on  Milton  (1909),  and  in  his  presidentia 
address  to   the   English  Association  ot 
Shakespeare  (1910).   He  delivered  befor 
the  British  Academy  the  Warton  lectt 
on   The  Historical   Character  of  Englis\ 
Lyric  (1912).    He  wrote  a  book  on  Th 
English  Novel  (1913).    He  was  the  chie 
contributor  to  the  Cambridge  History 
English   Literature    (21    chapters,    1907H 
1916).  When  he  retired  from  his  chair  i^ 
1915,  at  the  age  of  seventy,  his  unremittii 
energy  had  enabled  him  to  accomplish 
much  more  than  the  tasks  which  he  ha 
foreseen  on  his  appointment.   He  signa 
ized  his  retirement  by  writing  The  Pec 
of  the  Augustans;  a  Survey  of  Eighteenth 
Century  Literature  as  a  Place  of  Rest  an^ 
Refreshment  (1916). 

On  leaving  Edinburgh,  where  he  ha 
resided  at  Murrayfield  House  (1896-19001 
and  2  Eton  Terrace  (1900-1915),  Saints} 
bury  lived  for  some  months  at  Southamf 
ton,  and  then  settled  in  rooms  at  1  Roya 
Crescent,  Bath.  Once  he  had,  complete(J 
his  last  big  book,  A  History  of  the  FrencJi 
Novel  (2  vols.,  1917-1919),  he  was  free  td 
relax,  and  to  write  his  Notes  on  a  Cellar^ 
Book  (1920).  It  gave  him  many  nen 
readers  and  led  to  the  foundation  of  tW 


776 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Saklatvala 


Saintsbury  Club.  In  1922,  on  his  seventy- 
seventh  birthday,  he  was  presented  with 
an  address  by  over  300  friends  and  ad- 
mirers, among  them  PVederic  Harrison 
and  Robert  Bridges  [qq.v.].  In  acknow- 
ledging it  he  said  that  he  had  learned 
early  that  he  was  not  destined  to  create 
great  Uterature  but  that  he  had  perhaps 
some  faculty  of  appreciating  it,  and  as  he 
took  the  address  to  tell  him  that  he  had 
not  merely  flattered  himself,  he  declared 
tliat  he  desired  no  higher  praise.  He  for- 
liade  a  biography,  but  supplied  what  he 
thought  worth  recording  in  his  three  Scrap 
Books  (1922-1924),  collections  of  remini- 
scences and  observations.  A  high  church- 
man, he  never  spoke  or  wrote  about  his 
religion;  but  a  tory  who  gloried  in  the 
name  and  admitted  that  he  would  have 
opposed  every  great  reform  since  the  Re- 
form bill,  he  did  not  conceal  his  distrust 
of  what  is  called  progress.  To  the  end  he 
remained  a  voracious  reader,  and  writing 
he  could  not  abandon.  'The  professor 
ceasing,  the  reviewer  revives',  he  said  in 
print  in  1923.  Apart  from  his  Scrap  Books 
tlie  main  publications  of  his  later  years 
were  A  Letter  Book  (1922),  with  an  intro- 
(hiction  on  the  history  and  art  of  letter- 
Avriting,  and  A  Consideration  of  Thackeray 
(1931),  a  collection  of  earlier  writings  on 
the  novelist  for  whom  his  admiration  was 
constant.  In  1923-1924  he  brought  out, 
in  four  volumes,  his  Collected  Essays  and 
Papers,  which  was  only  a  selection.  Other 
Prefaces  and  Essays  were  collected  by 
Oliver  Elton  in  1933;  still  more  are  col- 
lected in  George  Saintsbury.  The  Memorial 
Volume  which  appeared  in  1945,  and  in 
French  Literature  and  its  Masters,  edited 
l)y  Huntington  Cairns  (New  York,  1946). 
As  a  critic  Saintsbury  was  pre-eminently 
a  'taster'  who  said  what  it  was  he  liked, 
and  why  he  liked  it.  He  looked  for  the 
characteristic  quality  and  found  it  in  style 
rather  than  in  form  or  substance.  The 
true  and  only  test  of  literary  greatness,  he 
said,  was  the  transport,  the  absorption  of 
the  reader.  He  never  ceased,  in  his  own 
words,  'to  accentuate  the  importance  of 
treatment  over  that  of  mere  subject'. 
Interested  as  he  was  in  the  lives  of  authors, 
as  his  many  introductory  memoirs  show, 
his  attention  never  strays  from  the  works 
by  which  they  deserve  to  be  remembered, 
liis  historical  backgrounds  are  kept  in 
t  heir  place  as  backgroimds ;  and  we  do  not 
lio  to  him  for  a  philosophy  of  literature. 
As  an  historian  of  literature  he  had  to  deal 
with  movements  and  tendencies,  and  here 
his  remarkable  knowledge  made  the  task 


easy  for  him,  and  congenial.  While  never 
subordinating  style  to  substance,  he  en- 
joyed tracing  the  fortunes  of  a  literary 
form  and  showing  the  changes  in  its  appeal 
to  the  reader.  Yet  there  are  many  who 
hold  that  even  in  his  histories  he  is  never 
better  than  when  dealing  with  individual 
works  or  authors.  He  has  a  wider  range 
than  any  other  EngUsh  critic,  and  when 
he  is  at  his  best  no  critic  since  Hazlitt  has 
written  with  greater  gusto. 

In  1868  Saintsbury  married  Emily  Fenn 
(died  1924),  daughter  of  Henry  William 
King,  surgeon.  They  had  two  sons,  the 
elder  of  whom  predeceased  his  father.  He 
died  at  Bath  28  January  1933  and  was 
buried  at  the  Old  Cemetery  of  his  native 
Southampton. 

Saintsbury  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Aberdeen  (1898), 
Durham  (1906),  Oxford  (1912),  and  Edin- 
burgh (1919),  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy  in  1911.  In  1909  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Merton 
College,  where  his  portrait  by  William 
Nicholson  (1925)  hangs  in  the  common 
room.  The  college  has  a  collection  of  his 
letters. 

[George  Saintsbury,  A  Scrap  Book,  1922, 
A  Second  Scrap  Book,  1923,  and  A  Last  Scrap 
Book,  1924 ;  The  Times,  Scotsman,  and  Morn- 
ing Post,  30  January  1933 ;  London  Mercury, 
March  1933;  Oliver  Elton,  George  Edward 
Bateman  Saintsbury,  1845-1933  in  Proceedings 
of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xix,  1933 ;  Life 
and  Letters,  June  1933 ;  Adam  BIyth  Webster, 
George  Saintsbury,  1933;  Helen  Waddell, 
Preface  to  reprint  of  the  chapters  on  Shake- 
speare in  the  Cambridge  History  of  English 
Literature,  1934;  George  Saintsbury.  The 
Memorial  Volume,  1945  (a  second  volume, 
A  Saintsbury  Miscellany,  with  a  full  biblio- 
graphy, is  in  preparation) ;  Louise  Creighton, 
Life  of  Mandell  Creighton,  1904;  personal 
knowledge.]  D.  Nichol  Smith. 

SAKLATVALA,  SHAPHURJI  (1874- 
1936),  politician,  was  born  in  Bombay 
28  March  1874,  the  son  of  Dorabji  Shapurji 
Saklatvala,  a  Parsee  merchant,  of  Bombay 
and  later  of  Manchester,  and  Jerbai  Tata, 
a  sister  of  J.  N.  Tata  [q.v.],  who,  with  his 
brother,  founded  the  Tata  Iron  and  Steel 
Works  in  India.  Receiving  his  early 
education  at  St.  Xavier's  School  and 
CoUege  in  Bombay,  Saklatvala  studied 
law  and  was  a  member  of  Lincoln's  Inn. 
For  three  years  he  prospected  for  coal, 
iron,  and  limestone  in  the  Indian  jungle, 
and  considerably  aided  the  production  of 
the  Tata  firm.  Welfare  work  in  the  plague 
hospitals  and  the  slums  of  Bombay  led  to 


777 


Saklatvala 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


interest  in  Indian  labour  problems  and 
association  with  the  Indian  Trade  Union 
Congress.  On  accepting  a  position  on 
behalf  of  the  firm  in  London  in  1905  (he 
did  not  resign  his  position  of  departmental 
manager  until  1925),  Saklatvala  joined 
the  National  Liberal  Club,  but  subse- 
quently turned  socialist,  and  in  1910  be- 
came active  in  the  independent  labour 
party,  then  affiliated  to  the  labour  party. 
He  also  joined  the  British  socialist  party 
and,  for  trade  union  association,  the 
General  Workers'  Union  and  the  National 
Union  of  Clerks.  After  the  Russian  revolu- 
tion he  assisted  in  the  formation  of  a 
People's  Russian  Information  Bureau  and 
the  communist  party  of  Great  Britain.  In 
1922  he  first  entered  parliament  as  labour 
member  for  North  Battersea,  being  the 
third  member  from  India  to  be  elected  to 
the  House  of  Commons,  after  Dabadhai 
Naoroji,  a  liberal,  in  1892,  and  Sir  M.  M. 
Bhownagree  [q.v.],  a  conservative,  in  1895. 
After  the  formation  of  the  Third  (Com- 
munist) International  in  1919,  Saklatvala 
sought  to  secure  the  adhesion  of  the  inde- 
pendent labour  party,  and  upon  his  failure 
concentrated  upon  communist  activity. 
He  was  a  founder  member  of  the  Workers' 
Welfare  League  of  India,  which  aimed  at 
the  equalization  of  European  and  Asiatic 
labour  standards.  In  1923  he  lost  his  seat, 
but  regained  it  as  a  communist  in  1924. 
Appointed  in  1925  a  member  of  an  inter- 
parliamentary delegation  to  the  United 
States  of  America,  his  visa  was  revoked 
by  the  United  States  secretary  of  state, 
Kellogg,  on  the  ground  that  the  United 
States  did  not  admit  revolutionaries. 

Active  in  agitation  during  the  General 
Strike  in  1926,  Saklatvala  was  imprisoned 
for  two  months  on  a  charge  arising  out  of 
a  May  Day  speech  in  Hyde  Park.  In  1927 
he  visited  India,  but  was  refused  per- 
mission to  stay  in  Egypt  en  route.  He  was 
a  strong  critic  of  the  Indian  National 
Congress  and  of  Gandhi's  methods,  in 
particular  of  the  re-introduction  of  the 
spinning-wheel  and  the  weaving  of  khaddar 
cloth.  Upon  his  return  to  England  his 
permit  to  re-enter  India  was  cancelled  at 
the  request  of  the  Indian  government.  At 
the  general  election  of  1929  he  again  con- 
tested North  Battersea,  but  was  defeated. 
In  1934  he  visited  Russia,  travelling 
widely  through  the  territory  bordering  on 
India,  and  was  greatly  impressed  by  the 
developments  in  industry,  agriculture, 
education,  and  general  culture  among  its 
backward  peoples. 

Saklatvala    married    in     1907     Sehri, 


daughter  of  Henry  Marsh,  of  Tansley, 
Derbyshire ;  their  three  sons  and  two 
daughters  were  initiated  into  the  Parsee 
religion  in  1927,  a  ceremony  for  which  the 
father  was  censured  by  the  communist; 
party.  He  died  in  London  16  January] 
1936. 

Although  a  cultivated  man  and  per- ' 
sonally  popular  among  a  wide  circle  ofi 
friends,  Saklatvala  figured  as  'a  stormy 
petrel'  throughout  the  later  years  of  his 
life  in  London.  He  viewed  social  condi- 
tions in  Great  Britain  with  abhorrence 
and  was  extreme  in  his  utterances  about 
the  continuance  of  British  rule  in  India. 

[The  Times,  17  January  1936;  Review  o/l 
Reviews,  December  1922.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

SALMOND,  Sir  (WILLIAM)  GEOF- 
FREY (HANSON)  (1878-1933),  air  chief] 
marshal,  was  born  at  Hougham,  Dover, 
19  August  1878,  the  elder  son  of  Major- 1 
General  Sir  William  Salmond,  R.E.,  of 
Whaddon  House,  Bruton,  Somerset,  by 
his  wife,  Emma  Mary,  youngest  daughter  i 
of  William   Fretwell   Hoyle,   of  Hooton] 
Levet  Hall,  Yorkshire.   He  was  educated 
at  Wellington  College  and  the  Royal  Mili- 
tary Academy.  He  received  his  first  com- 
mission in  the  Royal  Artillery  in  1898,  and  j 
served  in  the  Royal  Regiment  until  1913,  ] 
seeing  during  these  years  active  service  in  j 
South   Africa   and   in   China   (1900);   he; 
graduated  at  the  Staff  College  in  1914. 

Salmond  was  among  the  first  of  the| 
army  officers  to  give  his  attention  to  fly-  i 
ing,  and  while  a  captain  received  his  Royal  | 
Aero  Club  certificate  in  1912.   In  1913  he 
was  appointed  G.S.O.  3  at  the  Directorate 
of  Military  Aeronautics  in  the  War  Office ; 
in  August  1914  he  was  promoted  major] 
and  went  to  France  a  few  days  after  the  \ 
outbreak  of  war,  on  the  staff  of  Major- j 
General    (Sir)    David    Henderson    [q.v.],| 
later  commanding  the  Royal  Flying  Corps. 
During  the  early  months  of  the  war  he] 
devised  the  method  of  'pin-pointing'  the! 
enemy's  guns.    In  January  1915  he  re- 
turned to  England  to  raise  a  new  No.  1 
Squadron  and  was  back  in  time  to  take] 
part  with  it  in  the  battle  of  Neuve  Chapelle. 
He  commanded  it  at  the  capture  of  Hill  60 1 
and  in  the  battle  of  Aubers  Ridge.    In 
August  1915  he  was  promoted  lieutenant- 
colonel  and  recalled  to  England. 

The  following  November  Salmond  was ; 
given  command  of  the  5th  Wing,  Royal  I 
Flying  Corps,  in  Egypt.  In  July  1916  he! 
was  promoted  temporary  brigadier-general 
with  command  of  the  Middle  East  Brigade, 


778 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Sampson,  J. 


Royal  Flying  Corps,  which  had  developed 
out  of  his  original  force  of  one  wing,  an 
f'xtra  squadron,  and  an  aircraft  park.  He 
■svas  rapidly  gaining  a  reputation  for  ac- 
f  omplishing  difficult  tasks  and  for  inspiring 
t  he  most  unlikely  material  to  do  first-class 
work.  The  conditions  in  which  the  brigade 
worked  were  arduous  and  unpleasant. 
Operations  had  to  be  organized  over  the 
deserts  of  Mesopotamia  and  among  the 
mountains  of  Greece.  Salmond  set  him- 
self to  deal  with  every  variety  of  obstacle 
and  made  sure,  by  means  of  personal 
%isits,  that  he  understood  the  peculiar 
troubles  of  every  unit  in  his  brigade. 
These  visits  invariably  contributed  some- 
thing to  efficiency,  partly  because  they  led 
to  useful  improvements  in  equipment  or 
methods,  and  not  least  because  they  were 
essentially  friendly  and  stimulating  in 
character.  His  knack  of  maintaining  good 
human  relationships,  added  to  the  zest 
and  devotion  with  which  he  sought  practi- 
cal solutions  for  the  many  problems, 
created  in  the  Middle  East  Brigade  an 
intense  esprit  de  corps.  The  help  given  by 
the  Royal  Flying  Corps  in  the  campaigns 
was  warmly  acknowledged  by  the  army 
commanders  in  Salonika,  East  Africa, 
l^gypt,  and  Palestine.  It  had  consisted  of 
all  kinds  of  tactical  support  from  artillery 
spotting  and  reconnaissance  to  the  pursuit 
of  retreating  columns  and  the  heavy  bomb- 
ing of  Turkish  transport  behind  the  front. 
Salmond  applied  the  principles  afterwards 
developed  in  the  tactical  air  forces  of  the 
war  of  1939-1945,  in  circumstances  and 
with  air  equipment  which  demanded  the 
highest  spirit  and  a  genius  for  improvisa- 
tion and  adaptation.  He  recognized  clearly 
the  strategical  implications  and  arranged 
his  principal  air  bases  with  so  sure  an  eye 
that  many  of  them  remained  in  use  right 
up  to  the  rearrangement  of  1946  when 
British  forces  were  removed  from  Egypt. 
By  the  middle  of  1917  his  brigade  was 
fully  organized,  well  sited,  and  well  served. 
In  August  of  that  year  he  returned  to 
P^ngland  in  order  to  take  command  of  a 
training  brigade,  but  this  respite  lasted 
f)nly  until  the  following  January.  Then 
he  went  back  to  the  Middle  East,  as  major- 
<];eneral,  to  take  over  the  Middle  East 
(Command,  Royal  Flying  Corps,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  1921.  This  command 
was  preserved  during  the  interval  between 
the  wars;  it  served  the  Allied  cause  well 
in  the  war  of  1939-1945 ;  and  it  was  the 
creation  of  Salmond  who,  with  a  pre- 
science and  breadth  of  outlook  uncommon 
among  air  officers  of  his  day,  understood 


its  full  significance  and  possibilities.  As 
a  command,  it  embraced  all  the  territory 
covered  by  the  earlier  brigade,  but  it  also 
spread  itself  beyond  to  the  Persian  Gulf 
and  India. 

While  the  war  was  still  in  progress 
Salmond  laid  out  a  line  of  air  communica- 
tions between  Cairo  and  South  Africa, 
making  a  chain  of  aerodromes  which  were 
used  later  by  the  flying  pioneers  and 
finally  adopted  by  Imperial  Airways. 
After  the  armistice  he  remained  for  three 
years  in  the  Middle  East  consolidating  the 
plan  of  which  he  was  the  author  and  chief 
engineer. 

Salmond  returned  to  England  in  1922 
as  air  member  for  supply  and  research, 
Air  Council.  He  was  given  a  permanent 
commission  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  as  air 
vice-marshal  in  1919.  In  1927  he  took 
over  the  command  in  India ;  at  the  end  of 
1928,  when  there  was  a  revolution  in 
Afghanistan,  he  arranged  for  the  evacua- 
tion of  Europeans  from  Kabul  by  air.  He 
was  promoted  air  marshal  in  1929.  In 
September  1931  he  returned  to  England 
in  order  to  become  air  officer  commanding- 
in-chief  Air  Defence  of  Great  Britain.  He 
was  promoted  air  chief  marshal  in  January 
1933,  and  became  chief  of  Air  Staff  on 
1  April  of  the  same  year. 

Salmond  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1918, 
C.M.G.  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1919,  and  K.C.B. 
in  1926;  he  was  awarded  the  D.S.O. 
in  1917.  The  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
was  conferred  upon  him  by  Cambridge 
University  in  1919.  He  married  in  1910 
Margaret  Mary,  eldest  daughter  of  William 
Carr,  of  Ditchingham  Hall,  Norfolk,  and 
had  a  son  and  three  daughters.  He  died 
in  London  27  April  1933. 

[The  Times,  28  April  1933 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] E.  Colston  Shepherd. 

SAMPSON,  JOHN  (1862-1931),  Ro- 
mani  scholar,  was  bom  at  Skull,  co.  Cork, 
25  February  1862,  the  eldest  son  and  third 
child  of  James  Sampson,  a  chemist  and 
mining  engineer,  who  came  of  old  Cornish 
stock,  by  his  wife,  Sarah  Anne  Macdermott, 
an  Irishwoman,  who  was  of  Huguenot 
descent.  His  father  died  in  1871,  leaving 
the  family  in  straitened  circumstances, 
and  Sampson  was  apprenticed  at  the  age 
of  fourteen  to  Alexander  Macgregor,  a 
Uthographer  and  engraver  in  Liverpool. 
His  schooling  had  been  brief,  but  he  was 
all  the  more  on  his  mettle  to  acquire 
scholarly  accuracy,  and  resolutely  taught 
himself,  reading  widely.  In  1888  he  tried. 


779 


Sampson,  J. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


without  financial  success,  to  start  a  print- 
ing business.  Four  years  later,  in  1892,  he 
was  appointed  the  first  Ubrarian  of  Uni- 
versity College,  Liverpool,  which  after- 
wards became  Liverpool  University.  For 
thirty-six  years  Sampson  developed  and 
enriched  the  library;  and,  while  firm  in 
maintaining  discipline,  spared  no  pains 
for,  or  encouragement  to,  genuine  students, 
even  the  youngest.  On  his  arrival  he 
found  gifted  and  inspiring  friends,  among 
them  (Sir)  Walter  Alexander  Raleigh 
[q.v.]  and  Kuno  Meyer.  As  librarian,  he 
sat  ex  officio  on  the  senate,  and  in  academic 
affairs  always  sided  with  the  progressive 
party. 

'Influenced',  he  says,  'by  Sorrow's  in- 
spiring romances',  Sampson  had  long  for- 
gathered with  gipsies  and  had  begun  to 
coUect  'their  language,  folk-lore,  and 
superstitions'  {The  Welsh  Gypsies,  a  lec- 
ture dehvered  to  the  Liverpool  Welsh 
National  Society  in  1901).  In  1894  he 
encoimtered  Edward  Wood,  a  Welsh 
gipsy  harpist  and  fiddler,  from  whom  he 
heard  the  pure  Welsh  Romani  dialect,  'an 
Indian  language  spoken  in  the  heart  of 
Wales' ;  'a  veritable  mother- tongue  mira- 
culously preserved  from  corruption',  and 
rapidly  dying  out.  Sampson  devoted  the 
better  part  of  his  life  to  the  study  and 
interpretation  of  this  language  and  of  its 
speakers.  He  roamed  amongst  them, 
noting  their  sayings,  tales,  and  customs, 
drew  them  out  with  instinctive  sympathy, 
and  became  par  excellence  'the  Romano 
Rai'  (gentleman-scholar,  scholar-gipsy). 
Slowly,  he  amassed  material ;  trained  him- 
self in  phonetics,  Sanskrit,  and  compara- 
tive philology;  and  poured  out  articles, 
chiefly  in  the  Journal  of  the  Gypsy  Lore 
Society,  of  which  he  was  long  a  pillar  (see, 
for  example,  'On  the  Origin  and  Early 
Migrations  of  the  Gypsies',  3rd  series,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  156-169, 1923).  A  notable  series  is  that 
on  'Forty-Two  Welsh  Gypsy  Folk-Tales' 
(Romani  texts  and  translations;  new 
series,  vols,  i-xu,  1907-1932).  The  final  fruit 
of  these  labours  was  Tlie  Dialect  of  the 
Gypsies  of  Wales  (1926),  which  was  hailed 
by  the  experts  as  a  masterpiece.  '  He  has 
already  given  to  posterity  what  has  aptly 
been  described  as  the  "canon"  of  their 
[the  Welsh  gipsies']  Uterature  in  the  long 
series  of  his  Welsh  Gypsy  Tales ;  and  in  his 
massive  and  scholarly  Dialect  of  the  Gypsies 
of  Wales  furnished  us  with  a  sure  philo- 
logical foundation  for  the  intensive  study 
of  their  idiom  and  its  wide  historical  and 
ethnical  relations '  (Sir  Donald  MacAlister 
in  Journal  of  the  Gypsy  Lore  Society,  3rd 


series,  vol.  xi,  p.  38,  1932).    'A  splendid' 
volume,  epoch-making  in  Gypsy  and  in ! 
Indo- Aryan  studies',  according  to  Jules' 
Bloch  in  the  Bulletin  de  la  Soci4ti  de  Lin- 
guistiques  (1926).  In  the  lexicon  itself  the 
examples,  taken  straight  from  the  un-j 
lettered   speakers   and   accompanied   by 
translations,   are   rich   in   entertainment' 
even  for  the  layman  and  reveal  the  gipsy  j 
temper  and  way  of  life.  Sampson's  Romane 
Gilia  ('Romani  Poems',  1931)  are  charged  I 
with  his  intense  temperament  and  with ' 
the  wild  humour  and  fancy  which  are  also 
rampant  in  the  posthumous  volume  In 
Lighter  Moments  (1934).  The  Wind  on  the 
Heath  (1930)  is  an  attractive '  Gypsy  antho- 
logy '  in  prose  and  verse  from  authors  in  | 
many  tongues.   Omar  Khayyam  (1902)  is 
a  Romani  version  of  twenty-two  of  Fitz- 
gerald's   quatrains,    in    the    well-known 
metre.    For  Shelta,  the  hybrid  tinkers' 
jargon,   Sampson  coUected  texts  and  a] 
vocabulary  (printed  in  Robert  Alexander] 
Stewart  MacaUster,  The  Secret  Languages\ 
of  Ireland,  1937,  pp.  134  ff.). 

Sampson's  other  great  service  to  letters] 
was  the  restoration  of  the  text,  long  over- 
laid and  'improved'  by  editors,  of  William] 
Blake's  lyrics.  In  the  Poetical  Works] 
(1905)  he  provided  this  definitive  text] 
with  much  critical  and  bibliographical] 
apparatus.  The  edition  of  1913  included] 
'The  French  Revolution',  never  before] 
pubUshed,  and  long  selections  from  the] 
'  prophetic  books ' . 

Sampson  retired  from  office  in  1928.  He] 
received  many  honours,  which  included] 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of  | 
Oxford  and  Liverpool.  He  died  9  Novem- 
ber 1931  at  West  Kirby,  Cheshire,  and  by  I 
his  own  wish  his  ashes  were  scattered  on  I 
Foel  Goch,  a  height  above  the  viUage  of] 
Llangwm,  Denbighshire,  to  the  sound  of  j 
gipsy  music.  A  Romani  elegy,  which! 
Sampson  had  long  before  written  on  an- 
other 'Romano  Rai',  Francis  HindesI 
Groome  [q.v.],  was  recited. 

Sampson  was  strongly  built ;  his  speech  j 
and  tread  were  slow  and  deUberate. 
Very  shy,  he  seemed  at  first,  and  despite] 
his  courtesy,  somewhat  formidable;  butf 
among  his  friends,  to  whom  he  showed  al 
rare  devotion,  he  was  a  great  companion 
and  free-minded  humorist.  Equally  at) 
home  in  a  college  and  in  the  nomad  camp, .; 
he  brought  a  waft  of  the  'wind  on  the] 
heath'  into  every  atmosphere. 

Sampson  married  in  1894  Jessie  Mar-j 
garet,  daughter  of  David  Sprunt,  whO| 
lived  successively  near  Runcorn  and  at 
Port  Sunlight,  Cheshire.  He  had  two  sons 


780 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Samson 


and  a  daughter;   his  younger  son   was 
killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918. 

[The  Times,  10  and  14  November  1931; 
Manchester  Guardian,  23  November  1931 ; 
U.  A.  Scott  Macfie  ('Andreas')  in  Journal  of 
the  Gypsy  Lore  Society,  3rd  series,  vol.  xi, 
1 932 ;  private  information  from  Miss  D.  E. 
Yates,  especially  for  Romani  matter ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Oliver  Elton. 

SAMPSON,  RALPH  ALLEN  (1866- 
1939),  astronomer,  was  bom  25  June  1866 
at  Skull,  CO.  Cork,  the  third  son  in  the 
family  of  five  children  of  James  Sampson, 
metallurgical  chemist,  by  his  wife  Sarah 
.Vnne  Macdermott.  He  was  the  younger 
brother  of  John  Sampson  [q.v.]  When 
llalph  was  five  years  old  the  family  re- 
moved to  Liverpool,  where  James  Samp- 
son, who  was  a  Cornishman,  lay  ill  for 
two  years.  At  his  death  the  income  had 
fallen  to  £50  a  year.  Sampson  had  but 
little  education  untU  he  was  fourteen, 
when  it  became  possible  to  send  him  to 
the  Liverpool  Institute:  there  he  soon 
came  to  the  front,  and  in  June  1884  he 
was  admitted  as  a  sizar  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  going  into  residence  at 
the  following  Easter,  and  being  elected 
scholar  of  the  college  at  the  end  of  his  first 
terni.  In  1888  he  graduated  as  third 
wrangler.  In  the  spring  of  1890  he  was 
awarded  the  first  Smith's  prize,  and  in 
November  was  elected  into  a  fellowship 
at  St.  John's. 

From  1889  to  1891  Sampson  held  a 
lecturership  in  mathematics  at  King's 
College,  London,  and  during  this  period 
he  published  a  hydrodynamical  investiga- 
tion 'On  Stokes'  Cvurent-Function'  in  the 
Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal 
Society  (vol.  clxxxii,  1891).  In  1891  he  re- 
turned to  Cambridge  as  the  first  holder  of 
the  newly  founded  Isaac  Newton  student- 
ship in  astronomy  and  physical  optics: 
here  for  two  years  he  worked  on  astro- 
nomical spectroscopy  with  H.  F.  Newall, 
and  in  1893  he  pubUshed  a  memoir  'On 
the  Rotation  and  Mechanical  State  of  the 
Sun'  {Memoirs  of  the  Royal  Astronomical 
Society,  vol.  li),  which  is  notable  as  being 
the  first  treatment  of  the  subject  in  which 
prominence  was  given  to  the  effects  of 
radiation  and  absorption  (as  compared 
with  convection)  on  the  sun's  internal 
temperature. 

In  the  autumn  of  1893  Sampson  left 
Cambridge  on  his  election  to  the  chair  of 
mathematics  in  the  Durham  College  of 
Science  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  In  1896 
he  removed  to  Durham  itself,  as  professor 


of  mathematics  in  the  tmiversity,  where 
he  concurrently  held  the  revived  chair  of 
astronomy  from  1908  to  1910.  In  the 
latter  year  he  was  appointed  professor  of 
astronomy  in  Edinburgh  University  and 
astronomer  royal  for  Scotland.  Failing 
health  led  to  his  resignation  from  these 
posts  in  1937.  He  died  suddenly  at  Bath 
7  November  1939. 

Sampson's  most  important  contribu- 
tions to  science,  which  occupied  most  of 
his  time  and  energy  from  1900  to  1920, 
are  his  Tables  of  the  Four  Great  Satellites 
of  Jupiter  (1910)  and  his  'Theory'  of  these 
satelUtes  {Memoirs  of  the  Royal  Astro- 
nomical Society,  vol.  Ixiii,  1920).  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1903,  was  awarded  the 
gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Astronomical 
Society  for  his  work  on  the  sateUites  of 
Jupiter  in  1928,  and  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  xuiiversities  of  Durham 
and  Glasgow. 

Sampson  married  in  1893  Ida,  daughter 
of  Hudson  Atkinson  Binney ,  of  St.  Helens, 
Lancashire,  and  had  a  son  and  four 
daughters. 

[The  Times,  11  November  1939;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 
E.  T.  Whittaker. 

SAMSON,       CHARLES       RUMNEY 

(1883-1931),  air  commodore,  was  born  at 
Manchester  8  July  1883,  the  second  son 
of  Charles  Leopold  Samson,  soUcitor,  by 
his  wife,  Margaret  Alice  Rumney.  He 
passed  into  the  Britannia,  joined  his  first 
ship  as  a  midshipman  in  1898,  and  served 
in  the  Pomone  dvuring  the  Somaliland 
operations  of  1903-1904.  As  first  lieu- 
tenant in  the  cruiser  Philomel  he  took 
part  in  the  suppression  of  gun-nuuiing  in 
the  Persian  Gulf  m  1909-1910. 

In  1911  Samson  was  selected  by  the 
Admiralty  as  one  of  the  first  four  naval 
officers  to  be  trained  to  fly;  he  qualified 
for  his  pilot's  certificate  in  six  weeks  of 
bad  weather.  From  then  onwards  his  Ufe 
was  devoted  to  flying.  By  December  1911 
he  had  persuaded  the  Admiralty  to  equip 
the  Africa  with  a  laiuiching  platform  which 
projected  over  the  bows,  and  in  the  foUow- 
ing  year  with  similar  apparatus  he  took 
off  in  a  Short  biplane  from  the  Hibemia 
while  the  ship  steamed  at  full  speed.  This 
was  the  first  flight  from  a  ship's  deck  to  be 
made  in  Europe  and  marked  the  beginning 
of  the  idea  of  the  aircraft-carrier :  Samson 
contributed  largely  by  experiment  and 
demonstration  to  the  growth  of  this  pro- 
ject.  He  collaborated  with  Horace  Short 


781 


Samson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


■ 


in  designing  a  seaplane,  and  was  a  pioneer 
in  aerial  wireless  communication  and  in 
bomb-dropping.  On  the  formation  of  the 
Royal  Flying  Corps  he  was  given  com- 
mand of  the  naval  wing,  and  as  com- 
mandant of  the  new  naval  air  station  at 
Eastchurch  from  1912  to  1914  he  practised 
cross-country  flying  and  night-flying  as 
exercises  in  air  navigation,  and  had  so 
much  advanced  naval  flying  during  the 
early  months  of  1912  that  he  and  four  of 
his  officers  were  allowed  to  fly  over  the 
naval  review  at  Portland  in  May. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  Samson 
and  his  squadron  were  sent  to  Dunkirk 
with  a  brigade  of  marines.  When  the 
brigade  was  withdrawn  to  England  a  week 
later,  he  contrived  to  remain  behind,  linked 
up  with  the  French  forces  in  northern 
France,  fitted  out  some  of  the  squadron's 
motor-cars  and  lorries  with  machine-guns, 
and  subsequently  with  a  3-pounder  gun, 
and  proceeded  to  help  the  French  with  a 
mixture  of  cavalry  operations,  infantry 
attack,  and  air  reconnaissance.  Self- 
reliance,  dash,  and  ingenuity  gave  an  air 
of  buccaneering  to  these  operations  which 
delighted  the  French  and  produced  results 
which,  although  on  a  small  scale,  could  not 
be  ignored  by  the  British  authorities.  His 
mixed  collection  of  aircraft  also  engaged 
in  bombing  the  ZeppeUn  sheds  at  Diissel- 
dorf  and  Cologne ;  and  by  the  end  of  the 
year,  when  mobile  warfare  ended  and 
trench  warfare  took  its  place,  his  squadron 
had  won  four  D.S.O.'s,  among  them  his 
own,  and  he  was  given  special  promotion 
and  the  rank  of  commander.  He  spent  the 
next  few  months  bombing  gim  positions, 
submarine  depots,  and  seaplane  sheds  on 
the  Belgian  coast. 

In  March  1915  Samson's  unit  was 
moved  to  the  Dardanelles.  He  was  allotted 
a  base  made  out  of  vineyards  on  the  island 
of  Tenedos.  He  was  later  moved  to  Imbros 
where  he  rejected  the  existing  aerodrome 
and  made  a  new  one,  using  seventy  Turkish 
prisoners  as  labourers.  His  squadron 
patrolled  the  Straits,  spotted  for  the 
battleships,  attacked  the  Turkish  com- 
munications, including  railway  bridges, 
and  ultimately  covered  the  Allied  evacua- 
tion. He  even  made  his  own  brand  of 
large  bomb  out  of  a  twenty-six-gallon 
petrol  tank,  when  he  considered  the  regula- 
tion 20-lb.  bombs  inadequate. 

At  the  end  of  this  campaign  Samson's 
unit  was  disbanded  and  he  was  given 
command  of  the  Ben  My  Chree,  a  former 
Isle  of  Man  passenger  steamer  fitted  out 
as  a  seaplane  carrier,  and  attended  by  two 


slower  ships  as  escorts.    Based  on  Port 
Said,  he  ranged  the  coasts  of  Palestine, 
Syria,  and  Arabia,  sometimes  bombarding 
Turkish  positions,  sometimes  sending  his 
seaplanes  on  reconnaissance  and  offensive] 
tasks,  and  always  demanding  more  work) 
from  the  naval  and  military  commanders. 
In  January  1917  he  sailed  to  Kastelorizoj 
to  carry  out  some  operations  with  the] 
French,  and  in  the  harbour  there  the  Ben] 
My  Chree  was  sunk  by  Turkish  gunfire. 
His  two  escort  ships,  already  equipped  to] 
carry  a  few  seaplanes,  were  now  fitted  out 
for  independent  air  operations,  and  from] 
Aden   and    later    Colombo    he   searched 
among  the  islands  and  over  the  expanses  j 
of  the  Indian  Ocean  for  enemy  raiders. 

Early  in  1917  Samson  was  given  com- 1 
mand  of  the  aircraft  group  at  Great] 
Yarmouth  which  was  responsible  for  anti- 
submarine and  anti-Zeppelin  operations] 
over  the  North  Sea.  He  remained  in  this] 
position  until  the  end  of  the  war  and  dur-j 
ing  that  time  his  group  shot  down  five] 
Zeppelins.  In  order  to  bring  fighter  air-j 
craft  into  action  near  the  enemy  coasts,! 
he  devised  lighters  to  be  towed  behind] 
naval  ships  and  used  as  take-off  platforms! 
by  fighter  aircraft.  He  made  the  first  trial] 
take-off  himself,  but  his  Camel  tumbled! 
over  the  bows  and  the  lighter  passed  over! 
both  aeroplane  and  pilot ;  he  saved  his  life] 
with  some  difficulty,  and  afterwards  modi- 
fied the  design  of  the  platform  so  that  it  j 
served  satisfactorily.  In  October  1918  the] 
group  at  Great  Yarmouth  became  a  wing] 
and  was  made  part  of  a  new  group  at] 
Felixstowe  under  the  control  of  the  Royal! 
Air  Force;  Samson  became  commanding] 
officer  of  this  group,  and  in  August  1919] 
he  gave  up  his  naval  commission  and  re- 
ceived a  permanent  commission  in  the] 
Royal  Air  Force  with  the  rank  of  group] 
captain. 

During  1920  Samson  served  in  the] 
Coastal  Area  as  chief  staff  officer,  and  in] 
the  following  year  he  became  air  officer] 
commanding  Royal  Air  Force  units  in  I 
the  Mediterranean,  with  headquarters  at] 
Malta.  In  1922  he  was  promoted  air  com- 
modore and  given  command  of  a  fighter] 
group  at  Kenley.  At  this  period  hisl 
domestic  affairs  caused  him  much  grief] 
and  anxiety  and  seemed  to  shake  thef 
buoyant  self-assurance  which  was  part  of] 
the  secret  of  his  success.  He  had  married  | 
in  1917  Honor  Oakden  Patrickson,  daugh- . 
ter  of  Herbert  Storey,  of  Lancaster ;  he 
divorced  her  in  1923.  He  did  excellent, 
work  a  few  years  later,  but  the  incident  j 
left  its  mark  and  probably  had  some  influ- 


782 


D.N.B.  1031-1940 


Sankaran  Nair 


ence  on  his  early  retirement  from  the 
service.  In  June  1926  he  became  chief 
staff  officer,  Middle  East  Command,  and 
ill  that  position  he  did  the  last  of  his 
])ioneering  work.  He  organized  and  led 
t  lie  first  flight  of  a  Royal  Air  Force  bomber 
lormation  over  Africa  from  Cairo  to  the 
Cape.  This  involved  making  and  supply- 
ing the  necessary  bases  and  surveying  an 
undeveloped  route.  The  flight  succeeded. 
Where  Samson  had  led,  other  formations 
tbllowed  in  succeeding  years,  and,  later, 
rommercial  air  transport  for  the  most  part 
used  the  trail  which  Samson  had  blazed  in 
1926.  He  remained  with  the  Middle  East 
Command  until  August  1927,  but  the  great 
1  light  through  Africa  was  his  last  big  task. 
Samson's  chief  qualities  were  his  energy, 
liis  skill  in  improvisation,  his  personal 
courage,  and  his  ability  to  pick  the  right 
men  and  to  inspire  them  to  intense  and 
efficient  effort.  He  was  short,  thick-set, 
and  continued  to  wear  a  pointed  beard 
after  his  transfer  to  the  otherwise  beardless 

i  Royal  Air  Force.  His  'Captain  Kettle' 
I  temperament  accorded  with  his  appear- 
'  ance,  and  his  superiors,  continually  bom- 
barded with  well  thought  out  if  advanced 
{iroposals,  were  never  allowed  to  forget  his 
existence  for  long.  He  married  secondly 
in  1924  Winifred,  daughter  of  Herbert 
Kempson  Reeves,  solicitor,  of  Leather- 
head.  By  his  first  marriage  he  had  a 
(laughter,  and  by  his  second  marriage  a 
son  and  a  daughter  (who  was  born  posthu- 
mously). He  resigned  his  commission  in 
1929  and  died  at  Cholderton,  Wiltshire, 
5  February  1931.  He  was  awarded  the 
D.S.O.  (1914)  and  bar  (1917),  the  A.F.C. 
(1919),  and  the  French  Croix  de  Guerre 
with  palm  (1914);  he  was  appointed 
C'.M.G.  (1919)  and  chevalier  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour  (1915). 

Portraits  of  Samson  are  included  in  two 
jjaintings,  one  by  Fleming  Williams,  the 
other  by  Donald  Maxwell,  at  the  Imperial 
\Var  Museum. 

[The  Times,  6  February  1931 ;  C.  R.  Samson, 
lights  and  Flights,  1930,  and  A  Flight  from 
C  Viiro  to  Cape  Town  and  Back,  1931 ;  The  Aero- 
plane, 11  February  1931 ;  C.  F.  S.  Gamble, 
The  Story  of  a  North  Sea  Air  Station,  1928.] 
E.  Colston  Shephkrd. 

SANDERSON,  Baron  (1868-1939), 
educationist.  [See  Furniss,  Henry 
Sanderson.] 

SANDS,  Lord  (1857-1934),  Scottish 
judge.  [See  Johnston,  Sir  Christopher 
Nicholson.] 


SANKARAN  NAIR,  Sir  CHETTUR 

(1857-1934),  Indian  jurist,  administrator, 
and  politician,  was  born  11  July  1857  into 
the  matriarchal  Nair  community  of  the 
west  coast  of  India,  and  was  educated  at 
the  Madras  Presidency  College. 

After  a  successful  career  at  the  Madras 
High  Court  bar,  which  he  finally  led  as 
advocate-general,  Nair  was  promoted  to 
the  High  Court  bench  in  1907,  a  post 
which  he  relinquished  in  1915  in  order  to 
serve  as  member  for  education  on  the 
viceroy's  executive  council.  Four  years' 
rather  uneasy  tenure  of  this  appointment 
ended  in  his  resignation  in  1919,  and  later 
in  the  same  year  he  accepted  the  invita- 
tion of  E.  S.  Montagu  [q.v.]  to  serve  upon 
the  secretary  of  state's  council.  He  re- 
mained in  Whitehall  until  1921,  when  he 
left  the  service  of  the  government  and 
returned  to  India  as  adviser  to  the  Indore 
State. 

While  at  the  bar,  Nair  founded  and 
edited  the  Madras  Review  and  helped  to 
conduct  the  Madras  Law  Jourrial,  perhaps 
the  best  of  the  unofficial  reports.  His 
interest  in  social  and  political  reform  in 
those  days  culminated  in  his  presidency 
of  the  Congress  held  at  Amraoti  in  1897. 
Years  later,  after  severing  his  connexion 
with  the  British  government,  he  issued  a 
manifesto  denouncing  Gandhi's  first  non- 
co-operation  movement,  and  published  a 
book  entitled  Gandhi  and  Anarchy  (1922). 
Dealing  in  this  with  the  Punjab  'atroci- 
ties' of  1919  he  bitterly  attacked  the  then 
Ueutenant-govemor,  Sir  Michael  O'Dwyer 
[q.v.].  The  libel  action  which  ensued  was 
tried  in  1924  by  Mr.  Justice  McCardie  [q.v.] 
and  resulted  in  a  verdict  for  O'Dwyer, 
with  agreed  damages. 

In  1928  Nair  accepted  the  chairmanship 
of  the  Indian  central  committee  appointed 
to  co-operate  with  the  Simon  statutory 
commission.  The  committee,  however, 
failed  to  reach  even  a  moderate  degree  of 
agreement,  so  that  its  work  was  largely 
unfruitful. 

Nair  was  an  Indian  patriot  of  an  un- 
usual type.  Strong  and  fearless  in  charac- 
ter and  always  ready  to  face  unpleasant 
facts,  he  cared  little  whether  his  rugged 
bluntness  of  speech  caused  offence;  and 
the  defects  of  his  quaUties  were  apt  to 
offend  his  official  colleagues,  who  found 
him  combative  and  lacking  in  reticence. 
Montagu,  who  toured  India  in  1917-1918 
as  a  step  in  the  preparation  of  his  re- 
forms, has  left  a  very  unflattering  portrait, 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  his  subsequent 
selection  of  Nair  for  a  seat  on  his  council. 


788 


Sankaran  Nair 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


As  a  High  Court  judge,  Nair's  exceptional 
independence  of  outlook  and  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  systems  of  law  prevailing 
on  the  west  coast  enabled  him  to  contribute 
some  valuable  judgements.  His  chairman- 
ship of  the  Indian  central  committee  has 
been  severely  criticized,  but  the  task  of 
reconciling  its  discordant  elements  was 
indeed  no  easy  one. 

Nair  was  appointed  CLE.  in  1904  and 
knighted  in  1912.  He  died  at  Madras 
24  April  1934. 

[The  Times,  25  April  1934 ;  E.  S.  Montagu, 
An  Indian  Diary,  edited  by  Venetia  Montagu, 
1930 ;  private  information.] 

A.  J.  CURGENVEN. 

SASSOON,  Sir  PHILIP  ALBERT 
GUSTAVE  DAVID,  third  baronet,  of 
Kensington  Gore  (1888-1939),  pohtician 
and  connoisseur,  was  born  in  Paris  4  De- 
cember 1888,  the  only  son  of  (Sir)  Edward 
Albert  Sassoon,  second  baronet,  by  his 
wife.  Aline  Caroline,  daughter  of  Baron 
.  Gustave  de  Rothschild,  of  the  French 
branch.  He  was  grandson  of  Sir  Albert 
Abdullah  David  Sassoon,  first  baronet 
[q.v.],  who  had  been  born  at  Bagdad  in 
1818  and  had  accompanied  his  father, 
David  Sassoon,  when  he  moved  to  Bombay 
and  there  founded  the  great  merchant 
house  of  David  Sassoon  &  company.  The 
Sassoons  had  been  settled  in  Mesopotamia 
for  many  centuries,  and  local  tradition 
claimed  that  they  had  been  driven  out  of 
Spain  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

Philip  Sassoon  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  At  nineteen 
years  of  age  he  chose  British  nationality, 
having,  on  account  of  his  birth  in  France, 
the  right  to  elect  for  one  country  or  the 
other.  In  1912  his  father,  who  had  been 
unionist  member  for  Hythe  since  1899, 
died,  and  he  was  retxmied  to  parUament 
in  the  same  interest  for  the  same  consti- 
tuency. He  represented  it  without  a  break 
for  twenty-seven  years,  untU  his  death. 
In  1933  he  received  the  freedom  of  the 
borough.  When  war  broke  out  in  1914  he 
held  a  commission  in  the  Royal  East  Kent 
Yeomanry,  and  in  December  1915  he  was 
appointed  private  secretary  to  (Field 
Marshal)  Sir  Douglas  (later  Earl)  Haig 
[q.v.],  commander-in-chief  of  the  British 
armies.  In  this  important  position,  which 
he  held  imtil  after  the  armistice,  his  cosmo- 
politan social  gifts  were  fully  called  into 
play,  and  he  obtained  a  unique  view  of  the 
war,  and  of  the  statesmen  and  generals 
who  were  conducting  it.  It  was  to  Sassoon 
that  Haig  handed  the  piece  of  paper  on 


which  he  had  written  the  famous  'Backs 
to  the  Wall'  order  of  the  day,  and  the 
field-marshal  subsequently  gave  it  to  him. 
He  retained  it  until  his  death,  when  he 
bequeathed  it  to  the  British  Museum. 

In  the  years  immediately  following  1918 
Sassoon  busied  himself  with  poUtics,  with 
travelling,  and  with  entertaining.  He  com- 
pleted Port  Lympne,  near  Hythe,  the 
country  residence  which  he  had  begun 
before  the  war,  and  on  which  he  spent 
freely  his  great  fortune.  This  house  soon 
became  famous  for  its  meetings  between 
the  various  statesmen  and  soldiers  who 
were  conducting  the  lengthy  Peace  Con- 
ference in  Paris,  and  their  host  showed  his 
own  particular  quaUties  of  tact  and  con- 
siderateness.  In  1924  Sassoon  was  ap- 
pointed under-secretary  of  state  for  air, 
a  post  which  he  held  until  1929,  and  again 
from  1931  until  1937.  During  the  second 
period  the  secretary  of  state  for  air  sat  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  and  in  consequence 
Sassoon  represented  his  ministry  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  His  annual  speed 
on  the  introduction  of  the  air  estimatesJ 
invariably  dehvered  without  a  singl^ 
written  note,  was  followed  with  attentioi 
by  members  of  all  parties,  because  of  it^ 
careful  reasoning  and  mass  of  skilfullj 
presented  detail.  Sassoon's  quick  compre-] 
hension  of  the  meaning  of  air  power  die 
much  to  rouse  the  public:  while  the  per^ 
sonal  interest  which  he  took  in  the  Roya 
Air  Force  and  the  enthusiasm  with  whicl 
he  always  sought  to  promote  its  welfare 
were  of  great  service  to  the  country.  Ii 
1929  appeared  his  only  book.  The  Thirc 
Route,  notable  for  its  descriptive  sMl 
and  for  its  power  of  humorous  exaggera-i 
tion,  both  of  which  distinguished  equallj 
his  conversation.  In  1937  he  was  ap-^ 
pointed  first  commissioner  of  Works,  a  post 
which  synthetized  many  of  his  energies^ 
and  wherein  he  was  most  happy.  Althougl 
death  cut  short  his  tenure  of  this  oificej 
several  memorials  remain  to  his  taste; 
notably  his  restoration  of  Sir  James  Thom^ 
hUl's  Painted  Hall  at  Greenwich  Hospital] 

Honours,  like  great  wealth,  came  tc 
Sassoon  early.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Pri^ 
Council  in  1929,  held  numerous  orders  and 
decorations,  British  and  foreign  (including 
the  G.B.E.,  1922),  and  was  for  many  year 
a  trustee  of  the  National  Gallery  (chair-j 
man  of  the  board  from  December  1932 
1936),  the  Tate  Gallery,  the  WaUace  Col'l 
lection,  and  the  British  School  at  Rome] 
But,  despite  his  successful  career,  his  gif 
were  perhaps  more  those  of  an  artist  tha 
of  a  pohtician.   His  kindnesses  were,  like 


784 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Savage 


lis  wit,  creative,  and  in  Port  Lympne  and 
ricnt  Park,  NeAV  Bamet,  he  made  works 
I  art.  The  first  preserved  the  qualities  of 
lis  fire  and  brilliance  as  a  young  man, 
\  iiile  the  second  reflected  his  more  mature 
tidtfement.  Besides  being  a  judge  of  pic- 
uies,  he  was  a  connoisseur  of  furniture, 
iiiua,  and  old  silver — in  fact  of  all  beauti- 
iil  ur  decorative  objects.  The  exhibitions, 
iic'h  as  'Conversation  Pieces'  and  'The 
\iie  of  Walnut',  which  were  held,  in  aid 
>r  tharity,  each  spring  for  many  years  in 
lis  I..ondon  house  were  famous  among  art- 
:)\t'rs.  These  exhibitions  were  organized 
)\  Sassoon  and  by  his  cousin  Mrs.  David 
Juhbay,  who  acted  as  hostess  for  him  at 
rent  and  Port  Lympne.  No  picture  of 
ile  between  the  wars  is  complete  without 
onie  account  of  one  of  these  houses,  filled 
I  ways  with  politicians,  painters,  writers, 
>rofessional  golfers,  and  airmen.  His  great 
ntertainments  were  imbued  with  his  per- 
ouality  and  with  imagination,  as  if  with 

kind  of  magic,  and  he  seemed  to  be  sur- 
ounded  by  a  constant  activity  in  house 
ad  garden. 

Sassoon  died,  after  a  month's  illness,  at 
lis  London  house,  45  Park  Lane,  3  June 
93V).  He  was  unmarried,  and  the  baronet- 
y  became  extinct.  His  only  sister  married 
he  fifth  Marquess  of  Cholmondeley. 

There  are  several  portraits  of  Sassoon, 
lot  ably  a  painting  and  a  charcoal-drawing 
)>'  J.  S.  Sargent,  and  a  painting  by  Glyn 
^hilpot,  all  three  of  which  are  in  Lady 

liolmondeley's  possession. 

[Sir  P.  Sassoon,  The  Third  Route,  1929; 
nivate  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

OSBEBT  SlTWELL. 

SAVAGE,  ETHEL  MARY  (1881-1939), 
)etter  known  as  Miss  Ethel  M.  Dell, 
lovelist,  was  born  at  Streatham  2  August 
S81,  the  younger  daughter  of  Jolin  Vin- 
int  Dell,  who  was  on  the  staff  of  the 
\(iuitable  Life  Assurance  Company,  by 
lis  wife,  Irene  Parrott.  She  was  educated 
d  a  private  school  in  Streatham  and  spent 
nost  of  her  early  life  at  Knockholt,  near 
ievenoaks.  The  family  moved  to  Ashford, 
Middlesex,  where  the  father  and  mother 
lied,  and  subsequently  the  two  Misses  Dell 
( t  tied  in  Guildford.  In  1922  the  younger 
iiarried  Lieutenant- Colonel  Gerald  Ta- 
lourdin  Savage,  Royal  Army  Service 
orps,  who  survived  her.  She  died  in  a 
uirsing  home  at  Hereford  17  September 
939. 

Ethel  Dell  showed  a  facility  for  writing 
IS  a  child,  and  throughout  her  youth  she 
•ontributed  to  various  fiction  magazines 


of  the  more  elementary  sort.  She  had  a 
huge  success  with  her  first  novel.  The  Way 
of  an  Eagle  (1912),  and  there  was  hardly 
one  of  her  subsequent  thirty-four  works 
of  fiction  (of  which  the  last  is  dated  1939) 
which  was  not  enormously  popular.  Her 
naturally  retiring  disposition  was  rendered 
doubly  so  by  her  nation-wide  reputation ; 
and  she  insisted  on  living  a  withdrawn, 
unpublicized  life,  motoring  in  the  country 
and  enjoying  her  garden  and  her  dogs. 
Physically  she  was  a  handsome  woman, 
rather  above  the  average  in  height.  Casual 
acquaintances  have  spoken  of  her  unusual 
charm  and  simplicity  of  manner.  She  was 
generous  to  a  fault  with  the  large  income 
brought  in  by  her  books. 

As  a  popular  novelist,  Ethel  Dell  belongs 
to  the  class  of  Charles  Garvice,  Mrs.  Flor- 
ence Barclay,  and  Miss  Edith  Maude  Hull : 
that  is  to  say,  her  public  was  an  ingenuous 
and  uncritical  one,  which  asked  only  for 
a  well-sustained,  romantic  narrative,  with 
dangers  averted,  innocence  unsmirched, 
and  characters  recognizable  from  the  first 
for  what  they  proved  to  be.  All  of  these 
she  provided.  She  could  tell  with  speed 
and  deftness  a  story  which  was  always 
wholesome,  frequently  dramatic,  and  cer- 
tain of  a  happy  ending.  Her  heroes  (often 
short  of  stature  and  rather  plain)  are  whip- 
cord or  tempered  steel.  Her  heroines  are 
proud,  unhappy,  and  inclined  to  be  fierce 
before  marriage,  although  when  at  last 
they  yield  to  their  faithful  lovers'  pleas 
they  become  utterly  submissive.  Her  vil- 
lains are  unmistakable  'Sir  Jaspers',  in 
whatsoever  guise  they  appear.  There  is 
a  curious  strain  of  almost  sadism  in  a 
number  of  the  books :  possibly  her  writing- 
self  sought  to  redress  the  balance  of  her 
other  self's  timidity  and  gentleness.  The 
children  are  rough  and  ill  mannered; 
young  women  are  subjected  to  tyrannies 
and  insolence ;  male  characters,  otherwise 
commendable,  take  pleasure  in  being  rude 
to  ladies. 

Miss  Dell's  work  is  free  from  the  mawk- 
ishness  of  Garvice  and  Mrs.  Barclay.  Also 
it  is  noticeable  that  her  characters  are  all 
more  or  less  of  the  same  social  class.  She 
rises  above  the  Peg's  Paper  formula  of 
duke  and  dairymaid,  and  also  above  the 
pure  and  lovely  woman  whose  radiant  in- 
fluence transforms  an  unconvincing  sinner 
into  an  intolerable  saint.  Indeed  her  plots 
have  the  liveliness,  and  promise  something 
of  the  fevered  tension,  of  a  Cynthia  Stock- 
ley  novel.  But  the  promise  is  unfulfilled. 
Passion  is  under  ultimate  control,  and, 
however  black  things  may  look,  deviation 


786 


3e 


Savage 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


from  the  path  of  propriety  is  checked  in 
time.  This  insistence  on  virtue  in  circum- 
stances only  expUcable  in  terms  of  frailty 
makes  her  stories  unreal.  The  Hundredth 
Chance  (1917)  is  a  good  specimen  of  her 
qualities  and  her  defects. 

[The  Times,  19  September  1939;  private 
information.]  Michael  Sadleir. 

SAYCE,  ARCHIBALD  HENRY  (1845- 
1933),  orientalist  and  comparative  philo- 
logist, was  born  at  Shirehampton,  near 
Bristol,  25  September  1845,  the  eldest  son 
of  Henry  Samuel  Sayce,  perpetual  curate 
of  Shirehampton,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Anne 
Cartwright.  The  father  came  of  a  Glamor- 
ganshire family.  Prom  birth  Archibald 
Sayce  was  very  delicate,  and  until  over 
the  age  of  seven  suffered  from  pulmonary 
tuberculosis ;  during  this  time  he  did  not 
even  learn  the  alphabet.  But  at  ten  he 
was  reading  Virgil  and  Xenophon  and 
attacking  Homeric  Greek  and  English 
literature  with  a  tutor.  In  1858,  when  his 
father  migrated  to  Batheaston,  Archibald 
became  a  day  boy  at  Grosvenor  College, 
Bath.  There  oriental  studies  (especially 
Hebrew)  and  comparative  philology  awak- 
ened his  keen  interest ;  when  he  was  four- 
teen he  learned  the  hieroglyphic  alphabet 
and  the  names  of  the  Pharaohs,  and  drew 
oriental  inscriptions  and  works  of  art. 
During  an  attack  of  typhoid  fever  he 
studied  cuneiform,  laying  the  foundations 
of  his  career  as  an  Assyriologist.  At  six- 
teen he  developed  an  interest  in  theology ; 
and  while  still  at  school  he  worked  enthusi- 
astically at  Assyrian,  as  well  as  at  Persian, 
Arabic,  and  Sanskrit,  hoping  for  an  Indian 
civil  service  appointment. 

In  1865  Sayce  went  to  Oxford ;  although 
entered  for  Brasenose  he  won  a  scholar- 
ship at  Queen's  College  at  the  time  of  his 
matriculation.  His  first  year  saw  the 
beginning  of  lifelong  friendships  with 
Friedrich  Max  Miiller  (with  whom  he  read 
the  Vedic  hymns)  and  (Sir)  John  Rhys 
[qq.v.].  Just  after  he  had  gained  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1866)  his  eyesight 
broke  down  (not  to  be  really  cured  untU 
1874)  and  his  old  limg  trouble  returned; 
for  this  he  was  sent  to  Pau  and  Biarritz, 
where  he  learned  Basque.  In  1868,  while 
suffering  from  pneumonia,  he  obtained 
a  first  class  in  literae  humaniores;  but  a 
second  attack  prevented  his  sitting  for  the 
honour  school  of  law  and  modern  history 
the  following  year.  In  1869,  shortly  after 
taking  his  degree,  he  was  elected  a  fellow 
and  classical  lecturer  of  Queen's ;  ia  1870 
he  became  a  college  tutor,  and  was  also 


ordained.  In  the  early  'seventies  he  was 
a  regular  weekly  contributor  to  The  Times 
and  the  New  York  Independent.  In  1874 
he  gave  the  first  translations  of  the  very 
difficult  astronomical  and  astrological 
tablets  from  Nineveh,  in  a  lecture  to  the 
Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,  of  which 
he  was  president  from  1898  until  it  ceasec 
to  be  an  independent  body  in  1919.  He 
was  one  of  the  Oxford  representatives  inl 
the  Old  Testament  revision  company  froraj 
1874  to  1884 ;  in  1876,  after  taking  up  Indo- 
Germanic  philology,  he  became  deputy] 
professor  of  comparative  pliilology. 

From  1872  onwards  Sayce  spent  most] 
of  his  vacations  travelling  in  Europ>e.   Inl 
1877-1878  he  was  in  Greece  as  special] 
correspondent  of  The  Times,  and  in  1878} 
was  nominated  by  the  Italian  government 
as  delegate  from  Oxford  to  the  Fourth] 
Oriental  Congress  at  Florence.    He  re- 
signed his  tutorship  in  the  following  year,! 
and  was  then  free  to  devote  all  his  time  tai 
his  special  interests,  including  exploration] 
of  the  East.   Thereafter,  almost  until  hisj 
death,  he  spent  much  of  each  year  ial 
travel,  partly  for  his  health's  sake;  he! 
visited  most  of  the  countries  of  Europe 
and  Asia  (Major  and  Minor)  including  the 
Far  East,  also  North  Africa  and  the  United 
States  of  America.   In  1879  he  helped  to 
found  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of 
Hellenic    Studies.     Two   years    later   he 
copied    and    published    as    The    Ancient 
Hebrew  Inscription  Discovered  at  the  Pool 
of  Siloam  in  Jerusalem  the  important  in- 
scription cut  perhaps  during  the  reign 
of  Hezekiah  in  a  timnel  which  brought 
water  into  Jerusalem.  One  of  his  greatest 
triumphs  was  the  decipherment  (without 
any  bilingual  text)  of  the  ancient  Armenian 
('  Vannic ')  inscriptions,  which  he  published 
in  two  articles  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Asiatic  Society  (vol.  xiv,  1882)  under  the 
title  of  'The  Cuneiform  Inscriptions  of 
Van,  deciphered  and  translated'. 

In  1890,  after  his  father's  death,  Sayce 
resigned  his  professorship  and  other  uni- 
versity offices,  retaining  only  his  college 
fellowship,  and  planned  to  spend  the  rest 
of  his  days  in  Egypt.  On  arriving  there  he 
helped  to  found  the  Alexandria  Museum, 
and  was  also  instrumental  in  securing  for 
the  British  Museum  two  important  Greek , 
works  previously  beUeved  to  be  lost :  Aris- 
totle's Constitution  of  Athens  and  the 
Mimes  of  Herondas.  In  1891,  however, 
Oxford  offered  Sayce  an  extraordinary! 
professorship  of  Assyriology ;  he  accepted 
it  gladly,  and  this  led  to  his  still  living  part 
of  each  year  in  Oxford.  But  from  then  on  | 


786 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Sayce 


he  spent  much  of  his  time  in  a  large  Nile- 
boat  which  he  fitted  up  with  his  consider- 
able library.  In  the  following  year  he  gave 
up  his  London  flat  and  took  a  house  in 
Edinburgh,  which  he  occupied  at  intervals 
until  his  death.  The  years  1908-1910  were 
devoted  to  the  exploration  of  the  Sudan ; 
during  this  period  be  brought  about  the 
excavation  of  Meroe,  the  ancient  capital 
of  Ethiopia,  by  Professor  John  Garstang 
for  Liverpool  University.  The  winter  of 
1911-1912  saw  him  in  the  Far  East.  In 
1915  he  resigned  his  professorship.  There- 
after he  lived  quietly,  dividing  his  time 
among  Edinburgh,  Oxford,  and  Egypt, 
and  writing  many  articles  and  reviews. 
He  died,  unmarried,  at  Bath  4  February 
1933,  having  bequeathed  his  oriental  books 
to  his  college,  his  notes  and  copies  to  the 
Bodleian  Library,  and  his  collections, 
Near  and  Far  Eastern,  of  antiquities, 
ceramics,  etc.,  to  the  Ashmolean  Museum. 
Sayce's  many  publications  showed  forth 
an  original  mind,  and  a  very  active 
imagination.  As  early  as  1870  a  paper  on 
'An  Accadian  Seal',  published  in  the 
Journal  of  Philology,  laid  the  foundations 
of  Sumerian  grammar.  With  his  Assyrian 
Grammar  (1872),  Elementary  Grammar  with 
Reading-Book  of  the  Assyrian  Language 
(1875),  and  Lectures  upon  the  Assyrian 
Language  and  Syllabary  (1877)  he  was  the 
first  to  give  in  EngUshthe  means  of  master- 
ing the  Assyrian  language  and  writing, 
and  he  directed  the  serious  attention  of 
many  Semitic  scholars  to  the  'new'  lan- 
guage. From  1874  onwards  he  contributed 
a  number  of  Assyrian  translations  to 
Records  of  the  Past,  the  second  series  of 
which  (1888-1893)  was  also  edited  by  him. 
General  linguistics  were  represented  by  his 
Principles  of  Comparative  Philology  (1874- 
1875)  and  Introduction  to  the  Science  of 
Language  (2  vols.,  1880 ;  2nd  ed.  1883 ;  3rd 
ed.  1890) ;  in  the  former  he  insisted  on  the 
principle  of  analogy,  which  was  to  become 
a  comer-stone  of  linguistic  science.  Several 
books  were  devoted  to  the  Hebrew  race 
and  literature ;  such  were  The  Early  His- 
tory of  the  Hebrews  (1897),  Early  Israel  and 
the  Surrounding  Nations  (1898),  and  intro- 
ductions to,  and  commentaries  on,  certain 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  In  The 
'Higher  Criticism'  and  the  Verdict  of  the 
Monuments  (1894)  he  appealed  from  cur- 
rent theories,  especially  German  ones,  con- 
cerning the  Old  Testament  to  the  evidence 
of  archaeological  remains  and  discoveries. 
Here  may  be  mentioned  his  edition,  with 
(Sir)  A.  E.  Cowley  [q.v.],  of  the  Aramaic 
Papyri  Discovered  at  Assuan  (1906). 


In  1882  Sayce  devoted  a  long  article  to 
'The  Bilingual  Hittite  and  Cuneiform  In- 
scriptions of  Tarkondemos '  {Transactions 
of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology, 
vol.  vii),  and  from  then  to  the  end  of  his 
life  published  many  studies  of  the  Hittites 
and  their  language,  and  was  the  first  to 
introduce  the  forgotten  empire  of  that 
people  to  the  modem  world  in  the  face  of 
almost  universal  ridicule;  his  repeated 
attempts  at  decipherment  of  the  Hittite 
hieroglyphs,  however,  were  not  fruitful. 
In  1885  he  published  a  decipherment, 
which  has  stood  the  test  of  time,  of  the 
texts  of  Mai-Amir,  and  so  helped  to  place 
Elamitc  studies  on  a  sound  basis.  Over  a 
period  of  many  years  he  published  books 
and  articles  on  the  coimtries,  peoples,  his- 
tory, religion,  and  literature  of  the  Baby- 
lonians and  Assyrians,  and  it  was  as  an 
Assyriologist  that  he  was  chiefly  known. 
In  the  ninth  edition  (1896)  of  Murray's 
Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Egypt  his  de- 
tailed knowledge  of  that  country  was 
utilized  to  good  pmpose ;  and  he  published 
many  useful  copies  of  Egyptian  inscrip- 
tions. He  wrote  several  books  on  the 
general  archaeology  of  the  Near  East.  A 
translation  of  Herodotus,  Books  I-III 
(1883)  contained  a  number  of  philological 
errors,  and  was  severely  criticized.  His 
last  book  was  a  stout  volume  of  Remini- 
scences (1923),  in  which  the  doings  of 
seventy -eight  years  are  chronicled. 

Sayce  was  an  excellent  and  active  lec- 
turer, and  gave  addresses  in  many  parts 
of  the  world.  He  often  chose  this  form 
for  the  commimication  of  important  dis- 
coveries made  by  him.  He  published  in 
1887  his  Hibbert  lectures  on  Babylonian 
religion;  in  1902  his  Gifford  lectures  on 
Egyptian  and  Babylonian  religion ;  and  in 
1907  his  Rhind  lectvu-es  on  The  Archaeology 
of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Oxford,  Edinburgh,  Aberdeen,  Dublin, 
and  Oslo,  and  the  triennial  gold  medal  of 
the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  (1925).  In  1919 
he  was  elected  a  corresponding  member 
of  the  Institut  de  France ;  with  this,  he 
tells  us,  the  chief  ambition  of  his  life  was 
realized. 

Sayce  was  a  great  vulgarisateur,  espe- 
cially in  opening  people's  eyes  to  the 
importance  of  oriental  archaeology  for  the 
understanding  of  the  Bible.  He  both  read 
and  wrote  enormously,  and  his  great  acti- 
vity (including  a  number  of  excavations) 
was  one  of  his  most  striking  features.  It 
was  said  that  no  man  of  his  time  (Jules 
Oppert  perhaps   excepted)   had  such  a 


787 


Sayce 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


linguistic  equipment,  and  that  he  could 
write  good  prose  in  at  least  twenty  ancient 
and  modem  languages.  His  memory  was 
extraordinary.  He  was  a  veritable  cleariag- 
house  of  archaeological  learning  and  news, 
conversing  and  corresponding  freely  with 
the  orientalists  of  three  generations.  In 
Assyriology  he  was  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable figures  of  what  has  been  called 
the  heroic  age  of  that  subject.  He  was  a 
great  decipherer,  and  on  his  attainments 
in  that  direction  liis  reputation  will  no 
doubt  chiefly  rest.  He  was  a  pioneer  in 
other  ways:  he  was  among  the  first  to 
appreciate  the  significance  of  Heinrich 
SchUemann's  discoveries,  and  he  demon- 
strated the  existence  of  pre-Hellenic  civi- 
lization in  Greek  lands  long  before  the 
Mycenean  age  was  accepted  by  scholars. 
But  his  widespread  interests  (embracing 
many  Pacific  cultures  and  cults)  and  vivid 
imagination  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
specialize,  and  his  conclusions  were  often 
vitiated  by  hasty  judgements ;  indeed  his 
critical  faculty  was  inferior  to  his  others. 
His  repeated  attacks  on  the  'higher  criti- 
cism' were  deprecated  by  many  of  his  well 
informed  colleagues.  Nevertheless,  he 
made  important  and  lasting  contributions 
to  oriental  philology  and  archaeology. 

Few  men  so  active  and  long-lived  can 
have  been  so  continually  dogged  by  ill 
health  as  was  Sayce.  Weak  limgs  (his  first 
utterance  was  a  cough)  and  weak  eyes 
were  Ufelong  banes;  the  first,  with  their 
tuberculous  tendency,  forced  him  to  five 
out  of  England  most  of  his  time,  and  gave 
him  four  attacks  of  pnevunonia ;  the  second 
hampered  his  work  by  making  the  reading 
of  cimeiform  tablets  difficult.  Typhoid, 
blood-poisoning,  a  fractvured  knee-cap, 
haemorrhage,  sciatica,  a  snake-bite  which 
he  cauterized  himself  with  his  cook's  red- 
hot  tongs,  thus  saving  his  life,  and  a  colli- 
sion with  a  motor-car  were  among  his 
set-backs,  to  which  he  opposed  a  wiry 
physique  and  great  powers  of  recupera- 
tion. 

Sayce  had  a  very  lovable  character,  and 
never  spoke  harshly  of  those  who  de- 
noxmced  his  work.  His  charm  was  deeply 
felt  by  his  colleagues  and  a  large  circle  of 
other  friends  and  acquaintances,  by  his 
pupils,  to  whom  he  devoted  much  time 
and  attention,  and  by  the  natives  of  Egypt 
and  Mesopotamia. 

A  portrait  of  Sayce  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt 
(1919)  hangs  in  Queen's  College,  Oxford. 

[A.  H.  Sayce,  Reminiscences,  1923;  Sir 
E.  A.  W.  Budge,  The  Rise  and  Progress  of 
Assyriology,   1925;   The  Times,  6  February 


1933 ;  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society, 
April  1933;  Oxford  Magazine,  16  February 
1933.]  Battiscombk  Gunn. 

SCHAFER,  Sir  EDWARD  ALBERT 
SHARPEY-  (1850-1935),  physiologist, 
was  born  at  Hornsey  2  June  1850.  He 
was  the  third  son  and  fifth  child  of  James 
WiUiam  Henry  Schafer  whose  father  was 
a  noted  musician  at  Hamburg,  and  who 
came  to  England  as  a  young  man  and  was 
shortly  afterwards  naturalized,  settling  in 
Highgate  as  a  City  merchant :  he  married 
Jessie,  daughter  of  W.  H.  Brown,  of 
London. 

Schafer,  after  attending  small  schools 
in  early  childhood,  was  educated  at  Clewer 
House  School,  Windsor,  and  later  at  Uni- 
versity College  School,  Gower  Street,  and 
University  College.  His  elder  brothers, 
like  the  other  members  of  his  family,  had 
gone  into  business,  but  Schafer  astonished 
his  parents  by  saying  that  he  wished  to 
continue  his  education  and  study  medi- 
cine. This  was  a  break  with  the  family 
tradition,  but  his  parents  agreed,  and  when  .  m 
he  showed  his  capacity  and  won  prizes  and  ■ 
medals  they  were  proud  of  him.  In  due 
time  he  became  qualified  as  a  medical 
practitioner.  He  was  elected  the  first 
Sharpey  scholar  at  University  College  in 
1871.  This  award  carried  with  it  teaching 
duties,  William  Sharpey  [q.v.],  who  was 
professor  of  general  anatomy  and  physio- 
logy* being  the  first  to  institute  classes 
in  the  practical  side  of  these  subjects. 
Schafer  owed  much  to  Sharpey,  who  has 
been  described  as  the  founder  of  EngUsh 
physiology,  and  when  in  1918  he  prefixed 
Sharpey's  surname  to  his  own  he  did  so 
in  order  to  emphasize  this  indebtedness. 
He  became  assistant  professor  of  physio- 
logy in  1874  on  (Sir)  J.  S.  Burdon- 
Sanderson  [q.v.]  succeeding  Sharpey,  and 
was  appointed  Jodrell  professor  in  1883 
when  Burdon-Sanderson  went  to  Oxford. 
Schafer  was  also  Fvdlerian  professor  at  the 
Royal  Institution  from  1878  to  1881.  He 
resigned  his  professorship  at  University 
College  in  1899  on  being  elected  to  the 
chair  of  physiology  in  the  university  of 
Edinburgh.  He  held  this  post  until  1933 
when  he  became  emeritus  professor,  having 
completed  more  than  sixty  years  as  a 
teacher. 

Schafer's  early  research  work  was  in 
histology,  and  he  maintained  his  interest 
in  this  subject  throughout  his  life,  holding 
that  it  is  essentially  a  part  of  physiology, 
being  necessary  for  a  proper  imderstand- 
ing  of  functional  activity.  His  investiga- 


788 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Schafer 


tions  on  the  wing  structure  of  insects  and 
on  the  absorption  of  fat  by  the  villi  of  the 
small  intestine  of  mammals  attracted  con- 
siderable notice.  He  was  fond  of  recalling 
the  fact  that  his  first  paper,  which  was  on 
the  nerves  of  the  jellyfish  and  their  mode 
of  working,  was  rejected  by  the  Royal 
Society  (Ray  Lankester  said  that  it  was 
nonsense),  but  when  Oscar  and  Richard 
Hertwig  made  identical  discoveries  which 
were  printed  in  a  foreign  joimial,  Schafer's 
paper  was  hurriedly  published,  and  (as  if 
to  make  amends)  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  in 
1878  a  few  days  after  his  twenty -eighth 
birthday. 

In  1883  Schafer  published  the  results  of 
his  first  researches  on  cerebral  localization 
and  in  the  following  year  he  showed  how 
photography  could  be  successfully  applied 
to  record  the  beat  of  the  frog's  heart,  and 
he  also  made  use  of  a  piston  recorder.  In 
1886  in  conjunction  with  (Sir)  Victor  Hors- 
ley  [q.v.]  he  studied  muscular  contraction 
produced  by  stimulation  of  different  parts 
of  the  motor  tract,  and  he  recorded  the 
muscular  rhythm  that  resulted  from  voU- 
tional  impulses  in  man.  Furthermore, 
with  Sanger  Brown,  he  investigated  the 
effect  of  ablation  of  portions  of  the  cortex 
of  the  brain  and  the  effect  of  stimulating 
the  visual  area  in  monkeys  and  the  work- 
ing of  the  ciliary  muscle.  These  investiga- 
tions occupied  him  until  about  1893. 

The  remarkable  effect  of  an  extract  of 
the  suprarenal  gland  when  injected  into 
the  circulation  in  causing  a  constriction 
of  the  arterioles  and  a  marked  rise  of  the 
blood-pressure  was  discovered  by  George 
Oliver  and  Schafer  in  1894.  It  led  to  the 
opening  up  of  a  field  of  research  which  has 
proved  of  the  greatest  importance  to 
practical  medicine.  Schafer  subsequently 
published  further  papers  on  the  internal 
secretions  (with  Oliver,  Benjamin  Moore, 
Swale  Vincent,  and  P.  T.  Herring).  The 
study  of  these  secretions,  by  E.  H.  Starling 
[q.v.],  subsequently  called  'hormones',  is 
now  known  as  endocrinology  and  Schafer 
did  much  to  develop  it.  Before  leaving 
University  College  he  also  did  work  (with 
Moore)  on  the  innervation  and  contraction 
of  the  spleen  and  on  the  alleged  sensory 
function  of  the  motor  cortex. 

After  going  to  Edinburgh  Schafer  con- 
tinued his  researches  and  published  papers 
on  the  effects  of  partial  transection  of  the 
spinal  cord  and  circumsection  of  the  motor 
cortex.  In  1902  he  demonstrated  a  direct 
communication  of  canaliculi  with  blood 
capillaries  in  the  liver.  Later  he  did  work 
(with  H.  J.  Scharlieb)  on  the  action  of 


chloroform  on  the  heart  and  vessels,  (with 
A.  N.  Bruce)  on  the  cerebellar  tracts  of 
the  spinal  cord,  and  (with  Walker  May) 
on  the  effects  of  section  of  the  vagus  and 
cervical  sympathetic  nerves.  He  also  in- 
vestigated the  pulmonary  circulation,  and 
the  influence  of  the  vagus  nerve  on  respira- 
tion and  the  action  of  the  intercostal 
muscles.  Among  his  latest  researches  on 
nerve  function  was  one  which  involved 
the  cutting  of  a  nerve  in  his  own  arm. 

Mention  must  also  be  made  of  Schafer's 
prone-pressure  method  of  employing  arti- 
ficial respiration  on  persons  apparently 
drowned.  In  a  paper  communicated  to  the 
Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh  in  1908,  he 
showed  that  by  this  method  the  respiratory 
exchange  was  much  greater  than  that  oc- 
curring under  the  Marshall  Hall,  Howard, 
and  Sylvester  methods;  it  was  subse- 
quently adopted  by  the  Royal  Life  Saving 
Society,  which  awarded  him  its  Distin- 
guished Service  medal  in  1909. 

Schafer  was  the  author  of  the  following 
books,  some  of  which  have  been  widely 
used  by  students:  A  Course  of  Practical 
Histology  (1877),  The  Essentials  of  Histo- 
logy (1885),  vol.  ii,  part  i  of  the  eleventh 
edition  of  Quairi's  Elements  of  Anatomy 
(1912),  Experimental  Physiology  (1912),  an 
Advanced  Text-hook  of  Physiology  (of  which 
he  was  editor  and  part-author,  2  vols., 
1898-1900),  The  Endocrine  Organs  (1916), 
and  a  History  of  the  Physiological  Society 
(1927).  Of  this  society  Schafer  was  one  of 
the  foimders  in  1876,  and  at  its  jubilee  the 
sole  survivor  of  its  original  members.  He 
also  founded  in  1908  the  Quarterly  Journal 
of  Experimental  Physiology.  He  was  editor 
vmtil  his  retirement  in  1933,  when  a  boimd 
volume  was  presented  to  him,  containing 
a  vellum  interleaf  on  which  twenty-nine 
of  his  past  and  present  assistants  who  con- 
tributed articles  to  it  signed  their  names. 
It  constitutes  vol.  xxiii  of  the  Journal. 

Schafer  received  many  distinctions  and 
held  many  posts.  He  was  general  secretary 
to  the  British  Association  from  1895  to 
1900  and  was  president  in  1912.  He  was 
president  of  the  International  Congress  of 
Physiologists  in  1923,  and  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Edinburgh  in  1933.  He  received 
honorary  degrees  from  several  British  and 
various  other  universities,  including  Berne, 
Groningen,  and  Louvain.  He  obtained  the 
highest  award  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
London,  the  Copley  medal,  in  1924,  and 
numerous  other  medals.  In  1913  he  was 
knighted. 

Schafer  had  a  strictly  evangelical  up- 
bringing and  although  he  relinquished  his 


789 


Schafer 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


poslS 


religion  he  maintained  throughout  his  life 
the  high  ethical  standards  of  conduct  and 
outlook  which  his  parents  had  taught  him, 
and  he  never  forgot  his  Bible,  which  he 
could  quote  in  such  a  way  as  to  astonish 
even  students  of  religion.  He  had  a  sincere 
regard  for  the  truth  and  a  hatred  of  intel- 
lectual dishonesty.  At  the  same  time  he 
was  liberal  and  tolerant  as  is  shown,  for 
example,  by  his  championship  of  the  rights 
of  women,  especially  in  the  matter  of  their 
admission  to  the  medical  profession.  He 
earned  the  appreciation  of  all  members  of 
his  staff,  many  of  whom  themselves  be- 
came distinguished  workers.  Moreover, 
he  was  a  fine  lecturer  and  won  the  admira- 
tion of  his  students.  With  a  somewhat 
stern  exterior  he  was  one  of  the  kindliest 
of  men,  and  ■with  those  who  came  to  know 
him  well  initial  respect  grew  to  permanent 
affection.  He  took  a  delight  in  hospitality 
and  he  invited  every  member  of  his  class 
to  large  student  parties  which  gave  him 
unfeigned  pleasure.  At  North  Berwick, 
where  he  lived  during  his  Edinburgh  days, 
he  was  a  regular  player  on  the  golf  links. 
He  married  twice:  first,  in  1878  Maud 
(died  1896),  daughterofAdolphus  William 
Dixey,  head  of  the  firm  of  opticians  of  that 
name  in  Bond  Street,  and  sister  of  Frederick 
Augustus  Dixey,  F.R.S.,  the  entomologist ; 
secondly,  in  1900  Ethel  Maude,  youngest 
daughter  of  John  Henry  Roberts,  F.R.C.S, 
By  his  first  wife  he  had  two  sons,  both  of 
whom  were  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918, 
and  two  daughters,  the  elder  of  whom  died 
young.  He  died  at  North  Berwick  29 
March  1935. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait) ;  The 
Times,  30  March  1935 ;  private  information  ; 
personal  knowledge.]    F.  H.  A.  Marshall. 

SCHH^LER,  FERDINAND  CANNING 
SCOTT  (1864-1937),  philosopher,  was 
born  at  Ottensen,  near  Altona,  16  August 
1864,  the  second  son  of  Ferdinand  Schiller, 
a  German  merchant,  of  London  and  Cal- 
cutta, by  his  wife,  Rosa  De  Castro.  He 
was  educated  at  Rugby  (scholar)  and  at 
BalUol  College,  Oxford  (exhibitioner), 
where  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  classical 
moderations  (1883)  and  in  literae  humanio- 
res  (1886)  and  was  Taylorian  scholar  in 
German  (1887).  He  became  instructor  in 
philosophy  at  Cornell  University  in  1893, 
and  formed  a  friendship  with  William 
James  which  had  a  great  influence  upon 
his  intellectual  development.  In  1897  he 
was  appointed  to  a  tutorial  fellowship  at 


Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  1926  when  he  resigned 
after  a  severe  illness,  remaining  a  fellow 
until  his  death.  He  became  professor  of 
philosophy  in  the  miiversity  of  Southern 
California  in  1929,  and  emeritus  professor 
in  1936.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1926.  In  1935  he 
married  Mrs.  Louise  Luqueer  Griswold, 
eldest  daughter  of  S.  Bartow  Strang,  of 
Denver,  U.S.A.,  and  settled  in  California, 
There  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 
He  died  at  Los  Angeles  6  August  1937. 

Schiller's  chief  publications  are  Riddles 
of  the  Sphinx  (1891,  revised  edition  1910), 
Studies  in  Humanism  (1907, 2nd  ed.  1912), 
Formal  Logic  (1912,  2nd  ed.  1931),  and 
Logic  for    Use   (1929).     His   first   book,M 
Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  was  a  brilliant  effortS 
to  combine  the  ideas  of  Darwinian  evolu- 
tion with  those  of  philosophic  ideaUsm.    > 
Herbert    Spencer    had    already    treate<^B 
philosophic  problems  from  an  evolutionary^j 
standpoint,  but  he  was  far  from  being  an    ' 
idealist. 

Soon  after  Schiller  settled  at  Oxford  in 
1897  he  became  conspicuous  as  the  advo- 
cate of  what  was  called  by  himself  and 
William  James  'pragmatism' ;  this  meant 
an  insistence  upon  the  importance  of 
action  in  human  affairs  and  upon  the 
formation  of  human  opinions.  The  main 
feature  in  Schiller's  'pragmatism'  was  the 
doctrine  that  truth  was  a  kind  of  valuation 
which  meant  that  truth  can  be  equated 
with  usefulness  and  that  an  opinion  can 
be  regarded  as  true  so  far  as  it  is  practi- 
cally useful.  The  majority  of  Schiller's 
contemporaries  refused  to  accept  this 
definition  of  truth ;  it  seemed  to  neglect  J 
the  fact  that  real  things  have  a  nature  and  ■ 
quahties  of  their  own.  If  an  opinion  is  to 
be  regarded  as  true,  it  must  correspond  to 
objective  reality,  whether  it  is  useful  or 
not.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  Schiller's 
definition  of  truth  his  general  position  that 
action  is  one  of  the  main  features  of  human 
experience  cannot  reasonably  be  disputed. 
No  one  can  refute  his  arguments  that  men 
are  creatures  of  action ;  that  they  take  an 
interest  in  things  and  learn  about  things 
mainly  for  the  sake  of  action;  and  that 
action  is  the  supreme  test  of  truth,  be- 
cause if  a  man  fails  in  action,  he  car;  feel 
assured  that  the  scheme  of  thought  which 
guided  him  was  false. 

If  Schiller's  work  is  looked  at  broadly  it 
can  be  said  that  his  main  service  was  to 
promote  the  humanization  of  philosophy. 
He  saw  clearly  that  the  business  of  philO' 
sophy  is  to  explain  hiunan  experience 


790 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Schuster,  A. 


it  is  exemplified  in  ordinary  persons,  and 
that  no  important  element  of  human 
experience  should  be  omitted  in  the  philo- 
sopher's survey.  In  defending  this  stand- 
point he  attacked  vigorously  thinkers  who, 
like  Plato  and  Hegel,  regarded  imaginary 
beings,  such  as  Ideas  or  the  Absolute, 
as  more  real  and  more  important  than 
ordinary  human  experience  and  therefore 
produced  systems  which  are  useless  and 
inhuman.  Another  object  of  Schiller's 
attack  was  formal  logic,  which  he  regarded 
as  useless  and  false,  and  as  having  no 
value  as  a  guide  to  action  or  as  an  explana- 
tion of  human  thinking. 

Schiller  had  many  of  the  gifts  of  a  first- 
rate  thinker :  intellectual  enthusiasm,  vivid 
imagination,  keen  critical  acumen,  great 
originality  and  fertihty  of  ideas ;  but  his 
powers  of  analysis  and  synthesis  were  less 
remarkable.  Although  he  did  not  produce 
a  satisfactory  comprehensive  synthesis  in 
any  department  of  philosophy,  he  did  good 
service  in  impelling  British  thought  power- 
fully in  the  direction  of  a  revival  of  the 
empiricist  tradition. 

Schiller  had  many  interests  outside 
philosophy.  He  was  an  ardent  moun- 
taineer, a  persevering  though  unskilful 
golfer,  and  an  inveterate  punster.  He  was 
an  excellent  linguist,  knew  a  great  deal 
about  physical  science,  wrote  on  eugenics, 
and  took  a  deep  and  lifelong  interest  in 
that  region  of  the  supernormal  and  super- 
natural which  is  investigated  by  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research,  of  which 
he  was  president  in  1914.  He  was  for 
thirty -five  years  the  able  treasurer  of  the 
Mind  Association. 

[The  Times,  9  August  1937 ;  R.  R.  Marett, 
Ferdinand  Canning  Schiller,  1864-1937  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxiii, 
1937 ;  personal  knowledge.]  H.  Stukt. 

SCHUSTER,  Sir  ARTHUR  (1851- 
1934),  mathematical  physicist,  was  born 
at  Frankfort-on-Main  12  September  1851, 
the  second  son  of  Francis  Joseph  Schuster, 
merchant  and  banker,  of  Frankfort,  by  his 
wife,  Marie,  daughter  of  Hofrath  Max 
Pfeififer,  of  Stuttgart.  He  was  an  elder 
brother  of  Sir  Felix  Otto  Schuster  [q.v.]. 
Both  parents  were  of  pure  Jewish  race  and 
were  converted  to  Christianity  when  their 
children  were  quite  young.  Arthur  re- 
ceived his  early  education  at  the  Gymna- 
sium at  Frankfort  and  in  1868  was  sent  to 
Geneva,  where  he  studied  at  the  academy 
and  obtained  a  thorough  mastery  of 
French. 

The  annexation  of  Frankfort  by  Prussia 


in  1866  made  life  there  so  uncomfortable 
that  in  1869  Arthur's  father  decided  to 
transfer  his  family  to  Manchester,  where 
he  had  a  partnership  in  the  family  firm  of 
Schuster  Brothers,  merchants.  Thus,  on 
leaving  Geneva  in  1870  Arthur  returned 
to  a  home  in  England  instead  of  Germany, 
and  in  1875  he  became  a  naturalized 
British  subject. 

For  some  months  in  1870  and  1871 
Schuster  served  in  his  father's  firm;  but 
the  work  was  entirely  uncongenial  to  one 
whose  interests  were  scientific.  His  parents 
consulted  (Sir)  H.  E.  Roscoe  [q.v.],  and  on 
his  advice  Schuster  entered  the  Owens 
CoUege,  Manchester,  where  he  studied 
physics  luider  Balfour  Stewart  [q.v.]  and 
mathematics  under  Thomas  Barker  [q.v.]. 
After  spending  a  year  at  the  Owens  College 
he  went,  again  on  the  advice  of  Roscoe,  to 
Heidelberg  to  study  under  Gustav  Robert 
Kirchoff,  and  took  his  Ph.D.  degree  there 
in  1873  at  the  end  of  a  year's  work.  He 
spent  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1874 
working  vmder  WUhelm  Weber  and  Eduard 
Riecke  at  Gottingen  and  under  Hermann 
von  Helmholtz  at  Berlin,  and  in  1875  he 
led  an  expedition  sent  by  the  Royal 
Society  to  Siam  to  observe  the  total  solar 
eclipse.  This  was  the  first  of  four  eclipse 
expeditions  in  which  he  took  part,  the 
others  being  to  Colorado  in  1878,  to  Egypt 
in  1882,  and  to  the  West  Indies  in  1886. 

Schuster  spent  the  greater  part  of  the 
years  1876  to  1881  at  the  newly  estab- 
lished Cavendish  laboratory,  Cambridge, 
working  first  with  James  Clerk  Maxwell 
[q.v.]  and  later  collaborating  with  J.  W. 
Strutt,  third  Lord  Rayleigh  [q.v.],  in  a 
determination  of  the  ohm  in  absolute 
measure,  an  investigation  on  the  results  of 
which  the  Board  of  Trade  fixed  the  value 
of  the  legal  ohm. 

From  1881  to  1907  Schuster  was  on  the 
staff  of  the  Owens  College:  first  as  pro- 
fessor of  applied  mathematics ;  then,  from 
1888,  in  succession  to  Balfour  Stewart,  as 
Langworthy  professor  of  physics.  Scienti- 
fically, this  was  Schuster's  most  produc- 
tive period,  and  it  will  be  convenient  to 
summarize  here  the  whole  of  his  scientific 
work. 

This  work  lay  mainly  in  the  field  of 
spectroscopy,  electricity  in  gases,  terrestrial 
magnetism,  optics,  and  the  mathematical 
theory  of  periodicity.  In  spectroscopy 
he  was  very  successful  on  eclipse  expedi- 
tions and  in  1882  he  obtained  the  first 
photograph  of  the  spectrum  of  the  solar 
corona.  While  investigating  the  passage 
of  electricity  through  gases  he  was  the 


791 


Schuster,  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


first  to  show  that  an  electric  current  passes 
through  a  gas  by  means  of  gaseous  ions 
and  concluded  that  cathode  rays  are 
gaseous  ions  accelerated  in  the  strong  field 
near  the  cathode.  He  was  also  the  first  to 
show  that  the  ratio  e/m  can  be  obtained 
by  deflecting  cathode  rays  in  a  magnetic 
field.  Schuster  became  interested  in  terres- 
trial magnetism  through  his  association 
with  Balfour  Stewart,  who  had  suggested 
that  the  periodic  variations  of  terrestrial 
magnetism  were  due  to  electric  currents 
in  a  conducting  layer  of  the  upper  atmo- 
sphere, the  first  suggestion  of  wTiat  is 
now  known  as  the  'Heaviside  layer'  [see 
Heaviside,  Oliver].  Schuster  developed 
this  idea  mathematically  and  showed  that 
the  currents  of  air  in  the  upper  atmosphere 
caused  by  tidal  motion  are  such  as  would 
produce  the  suggested  effect.  He  wrote 
An  Introduction  to  the  Theory  of  Optics 
(1904)  in  which  he  introduced  the  idea 
that  a  beam  of  white  light  does  not  consist 
of  a  bundle  of  monochromatic  rays  which 
are  spread  out  by  a  prism ;  but  that  white 
Ught  consists  of  an  irregular  disturbance 
which  is  'analysed'  by  the  prism  in  a  way 
analogous  to  that  by  which  a  mathemati- 
cian uses  Fourier's  analysis  to  spUt  up  an 
irregular  function  into  harmonic  series. 
This  led  on  to  his  work  on  the  'periodo- 
gram'  which  is  a  mathematical  device  for 
determining  whether  a  series  of  data  (for 
example,  the  annual  stmspot  numbers)  con- 
tains any  periodical  recurrences  of  real 
significance.  Although  Schuster  made  no 
contributions  to  meteorology  he  was  ex- 
tremely interested  in  that  science  and  for 
thirty-two  years  represented  the  Royal 
Society  on  the  Meteorological  Council 
which  is  the  advisory  body  of  the  London 
Meteorological  Office. 

While  professor  at  Manchester  Schuster 
took  an  active  part  in  the  administration 
of  the  college  and  university  and  served 
on  the  committee  of  the  Municipal  School 
of  Technology.  He  was  a  leader  in  the 
movement  to  replace  the  old  Victoria  Uni- 
versity by  three  separate  universities  in 
Manchester,  Liverpool,  and  Leeds,  a  move- 
ment which  achieved  success  in  1903.  In 
1897  it  was  decided  that  the  accommoda- 
tion for  physics  in  the  Owens  College  was 
too  small  and  that  a  new  physical  labora- 
tory should  be  built.  After  visiting  most  of 
the  physical  laboratories  on  the  continent 
he  designed,  in  co-operation  with  Mr. 
Beaumont  the  architect,  the  new  physical 
laboratories  in  Coupland  Street  which 
were  opened  by  Lord  Rayleigh  in  1900. 

Schuster  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1879; 


he  served  three  periods  on  the  coimcil 
(1885-1887,  1898-1899,  and  1912-1924); 
during  the  last  period  he  was  secretary 
(1912-1919),     foreign     secretary     (1920-« 
1924),  and  vice-president  (1919-1924).  He« 
was  awarded  by  the  society  a  Royal  medal 
in  1893,  the  Rumford  medal  in  1926,  and 
the  Copley  medal  (its  highest  award)  ina 
1931.  As  secretary  he  not  only  proved  an  I 
exceptionally   able   administrator,    espe- 
cially during  the  difficult  war  years,  but 
he  made  possible  several  desirable  projects 
by  personally  providing  large   sums   of  J 
money,  amongst  which  were  £1,000  to  the] 
fee  reduction  fund,  £3,000  to  form  the! 
nucleus  of  a  fund  to  provide  pensions  fori 
the  staff,  and  £3,500  as  a  fund  to  facilitate] 
the  international  work  of  the  society.    Asl 
he  found  difficulty  in   carrying  on   the] 
duties  of  secretary  whilst  living  in  Man-j 
Chester  he  purchased  in  1913  an  estate] 
at  Twyford,  near  Wargrave-on-Thames,j 
which  became  his  home  for  the  rest  of  his 
life.  He  was  knighted  in  1920,  mainly  for' 
his  work  as  secretary  of  the  Royal  Society. 

By  birth,  training,  and  incUnation 
Schuster  was  well  qualified  to  take  a  lead- 
ing part  in  the  organization  of  inter- 
national science.  He  represented  the 
Royal  Society  in  the  preliminary  negotia- 
tions leading  to  the  formation  in  1900 
of  the  International  Association  of  Aca- 
demies, of  which  in  1905  he  became  a 
member  of  council.  The  association  was 
disrupted  on  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 ; 
but  before  the  end  of  the  war  he  had  taken 
steps  to  re-create  international  co-opera- 
tion in  science;  and  mainly  as  the  result 
of  his  energy  and  influence  the  Inter- 
national Research  Council  was  formed  in 
1919,  with  Schuster  as  secretary,  a  posi- 
tion which  he  held  until  1928.  During 
these  years  of  strained  international  rela- 
tions Schuster's  organizing  ability,  his 
command  of  European  languages,  and  his 
personal  acceptabihty  to  men  of  science 
of  both  the  AUied  and  central  powers  were 
important  factors  in  ensuring  the  success 
of  the  new  international  organization. 

Schuster  took  an  active  part  in  the  work 
of  the  British  Association :  he  was  presi- 
dent of  Section  A  in  1892,  presided  over 
the  subsection  of  astronomy  and  cosmical 
physics  in  1902,  and  was  president  of  the 
whole  association  at  its  meeting  at  Man- 
chester in  1915.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  several  universities  and  was 
a  corresponding  and  honorary  member 
of  various  British  and  foreign  learned 
societies  and  academies. 

Schuster  was  of  a  reserved  nature  and 


792 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Schuster,  F.  O. 


it  was  not  easy  to  know  him  intimately ; 
but  he  took  a  personal  interest  in  his  stu- 
dents and  went  to  much  trouble  to  find 
suitable  posts  for  those  in  whom  he  had 
confidence.  His  mind  was  very  open  to 
new  ideas  and  he  was  amongst  the  first 
to  make  use  of  the  '  safety  bicycle '  and  to 
take  up  motoring.  Although  he  was  never 
a  robust  man  and  had  bad  health  for  the 
last  part  of  his  Ufe,  he  enjoyed  walking  and 
cychng  and  was  a  keen  momitaineer  in  his 
youth.  He  was  fond  of  travel  and  made 
several  journeys  off  the  beaten  track.  He 
was  a  generous  man  and  gave  large  sums, 
in  addition  to  those  mentioned  above,  to 
further  scientific  work.  His  principal  re- 
creation throughout  life  was  sketching  and 
painting.  In  1887  he  married  Caroline, 
eldest  daughter  of  George  Loveday,  of 
Wardington,  Oxfordshire,  and  niece  of 
(Sir)  A.  W.  Ward  [q.v.].  They  had  a  son 
and  four  daughters.  He  died  at  Twyford, 
Berkshire,  14  October  1934. 

[Sir  A.  Schuster,  Biographical  Fragments 
(portraits),  1932 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  4,  December  1935 
(portrait);  Monthly  Notices  of  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society,  vol.  xcv,  1935;  The 
Times,  15  and  17  October  1934;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

George  C.  Simpson. 

SCHUSTER,  Sir  FELIX  OTTO,  first 
baronet  (1854-1936),  banker,  was  born 
at  Frankfort-on-Main  21  April  1854,  the 
third  son  of  Francis  Joseph  Schuster,  mer- 
chant and  banker,  of  Frankfort,  by  his 
wife,  Marie,  daughter  of  Hofrath  Max 
Pfeiffer,  of  Stuttgart.  He  was  a  younger 
brother  of  Sir  Arthur  Schuster  [q.v.].  The 
connexion  of  the  family  business  with 
English  commerce  had  begun  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  and  a  branch  of  it  had 
been  established  in  England  since  1811. 
Accordingly,  after  the  annexation  in  1866 
of  Frankfort  to  Prussia,  Francis  Joseph 
Schuster  migrated  in  1869  with  his  family 
to  Manchester,  where  he  had  a  partnership 
in  the  firm  of  Schuster  Brothers,  and  be- 
came naturaUzed.  Felix  received  his  early 
education  at  the  Gymnasium  of  his  native 
town  and  at  the  university  of  Geneva,  and 
pursued  it  at  the  Owens  College,  Man- 
chester. He  was  naturalized  in  1875.  En- 
tering the  family  business  he  became  a 
partner  in  1879,  and  soon  afterwards  a 
director  of  the  Imperial  Bank.  When  in 
1887  the  connexions  of  Schuster,  Son 
&  company  were  taken  over  by  the  Union 
Bank  of  London,  he  became  a  director,  in 
1894  deputy  governor,  and  in  the  follow- 


ing year  governor  in  succession  to  C.  T. 
Ritchie  [q.v.],  a  position  which  he  held 
until  1918. 

As  governor  of  the  Union  Bank,  Schuster 
considered  it  to  be  his  duty,  in  addition  to 
the  general  supervision  of  policy,  to  keep 
himself  informed  about  every  detail  in  the 
daily  administration  of  the  bank.  He  had 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  every  account  of 
any  size,  and  kept  a  close  watch  week  by 
week  on  every  branch.  This,  coupled  with 
his  most  scrupulous  care  for  the  interests 
of  the  bank's  shareholders  and  depositors, 
involved  him  in  exceptionally  heavy  work, 
to  which  he  brought  a  rare  knowledge  of 
the  technical  side  of  banking  and  bill- 
broking,  both  English  and  foreign.  But  he 
cherished  certain  worthy  ambitions:  to 
achieve  distinction  in  his  own  field,  and  to 
help  in  the  direction  of  the  coimtry's  finan- 
cial policy.  By  nature  and  training  a 
Victorian  liberal,  he  was  by  theory  and 
experience  a  free  trader.  In  the  tariff  re- 
form controversy  he  stood  for  parliament 
at  the  general  election  of  1906  as  free  trade 
candidate  for  the  City  of  London,  but  was 
unsuccessful.  In  recognition  of  his  efforts 
he  received  in  July  1906  a  baronetcy  from 
the  Uberal  government. 

Schuster  was  prominent  among  those 
bankers  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury who  beUeved  that  concentration  of 
the  resources  of  banking  concerns  was 
necessary  in  the  national  interest,  and 
with  this  aim  he  carried  through  in  1902 
the  amalgamation  of  the  bank  of  Smith, 
Payne,  and  Smiths  with  the  Union  Bank. 
The  measure  was  a  great  success  and 
greatly  increased  Schuster's  reputation. 
Similar  operations  with  the  London  and 
Yorkshire  Bank,  Prescott's,  and  some 
smaller  private  banks  followed,  until  in 
1919  Schuster  and  Lord  Inchcape  [q.v.] 
imited  the  National  Provincial  Bank  of 
England  and  the  Union  of  London  and 
Smith's  Bank  in  one  institution.  But 
thenceforth,  although  he  continued  his 
daily  attendance  in  Princes  Street,  he 
ceased  to  be  the  all-dominating  figure. 
Not  only  had  ideas  on  sound  banking 
policy  greatly  changed,  but  the  war  years 
had  left  their  mark  upon  him.  He  was  a 
devoted  citizen  of  this  country,  but  the 
break  with  friends  and  associates  in  Ger- 
many was  naturally  a  grief  to  him.  Yet  he 
had  no  doubt  where  the  right  lay,  and  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  'the  present 
war  was  brought  about  by  the  deliberate 
action  of  the  German  government'.  Also, 
during  these  years  he  lost  not  only  his  two 
yovmger  daughters  and  two  sons-in-law, 


798 


Schuster,  F.  O. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


but  also,  in  1918,  his  wife,  Meta,  daughter 
of  (Sir)  Hermann  Weber,  F.R.C.P.,  whom 
he  had  married  in  1879. 

Schuster  served  as  finance  member  of 
the  Council  of  India  from  1906  to  1916: 
he  was  chairman  of  numerous  banking 
associations  and  committees,  and  during 
the  war  of  1914-1918  he  worked  with  Lord 
Cunliffe  on  the  Foreign  Exchange  Com- 
mittee. Although  the  association  of  two 
such  strong  personalities  was  at  first  diffi- 
cult, their  relationship  soon  became  and 
remained  harmonious. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life  Schuster's 
views  on  fiscal  policy  were  modified.  In  a 
speech  at  Lincoln  in  October  1930  he 
said :  '  I  am  still  of  the  opinion  that  free 
trade  would  be  best  for  us — best  for  the 
world',  but,  if  foreign  nations  obstinately 
maintained  their  tariff  walls,  'we,  their 
best  customers,  may  be  compelled  to  use 
defensive  measures.  .  .  .  Our  present  sys- 
tem is  not  free  trade  as  Cobden  conceived 
it.'  He  hoped,  however,  that  the  problem 
of  British  trade  policy  would  be  solved 
on  non-party  lines  by  a  'truly  national 
government  consisting  of  the  leading  men 
of  all  parties'. 

Schuster's  true  bent  in  life  was  towards 
music  as  a  main  interest  and  to  moun- 
taineering as  a  relaxation.  He  might  have 
attained  great  proficiency  as  a  pianist,  his 
taste  being  cultivated  and  severe  and  his 
technical  skill  great.  His  mountaineering 
began  when  he  was  a  student  at  Geneva, 
and  he  became  successively  honorary 
secretary  and  vice-president  of  the  Alpine 
Club,  and,  if  he  had  not  thought  it  his  duty 
to  avoid  controversy,  he  might  well  have 
been  its  president.  In  person  he  was  stur- 
dily built  and  until  late  in  life  he  enjoyed 
an  excellent  constitution.  His  appearance 
was  striking.  His  face,  which  was  most 
unusually  pale,  was  framed  by  a  square, 
black  beard,  grizzled  as  age  advanced,  and 
from  it  there  looked  out  very  deep  brown 
eyes.  He  held  strong  views  on  right  and 
wrong  both  in  business  and  the  affairs  of 
ordinary  life;  and  this,  coupled  with  an 
extreme  shyness  of  disposition,  made  him 
formidable  in  intercourse  and  conversa- 
tion. He  habitually  overworked  himself 
and  he  had  very  Uttle  tolerance  of  slack- 
ness, either  in  his  colleagues  or  his  sub- 
ordinates, but  inwardly  his  spirit  was 
gentle  and  his  mind  tolerant,  and  he  was 
a  good  and  kindly  friend. 

Schuster  died  at  Ruthin  Castle,  Den- 
bighshire, after  a  long  and  painful  illness, 
13  May  1936.  He  was  succeeded  as  second 
baronet  by  his  son,  Felix  Victor  (born 


sur-M 
iberVp 


1885):  his  two  elder  daughters  also 
vived  him. 

A  portrait  of  Schuster  by  (Sir)  Hube; 
von  Herkomer,  presented  to  him  by  the 
shareholders  of  the  Union  of  London  and  ' 
Smith's  Bank  in  1903,  is  in  the  possessioi^j 
of  his  son.    Another  portrait,  by  an  un-^l 
known  artist,  presented  to  him  by  the 
directors  of  the  bank  in  1915,  belongs  to 
his  daughter  Miss  Evelyn  Schuster.    A 
cartoon   by    'Spy'    appeared   in   Vanity 
Fair  28  June  1906. 

[The  Times,  15  May  1936 ;  Alpine  Journal, 
November  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Schuster. 


SCOTT,      CHARLES      PRESTWICH 

(1846-1932),  journalist,  was  born  at  Bath 
26  October  1846,  the  eighth  child  and 
fourth  son  of  RusseU  Scott,  a  partner  in 
Cory's  coal  company,  by  his  wife,  Isabella 
Civil,  daughter  of  Joseph  Prestwich,  wine 
merchant,  of  Lambeth,  and  sister  of  the 
geologist  Sir  Joseph  Prestwich  [q.v.].  His 
paternal  grandmother  was  a  daughter  of 
William  Hawes  [q.v.],  the  founder  of  the 
Royal  Humane  Society.  He  was  educated 
successively  at  Hove  House,  Sussex,  a 
school  kept  by  a  Unitarian  minister,  and 
at  Clapham  Grammar  School,  then  in  the 
hands  of  Charles  Pritchard  [q.v.],  whence 
he  was  removed  for  reasons  of  health  to  a 
private  tutor  in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  When 
he  was  of  university  age,  Christ  Church  and 
Queen's  College,  Oxford,  refused  to  admit 
him,  requiring  certificates  of  baptism,  but 
he  was  accepted  at  Corpus  Christi  College, 
where  he  lived  a  full  life,  rowing,  debating, 
and  being  awarded  a  second  class  in  classi- 
cal moderations  (1867)  and  a  first  class  in 
liter ae  humaniores  (1869).  Among  the 
friends  whom  he  made  at  Corpus  were 
two  with  whom  he  kept  in  touch  in  later 
life,  Robert  Bridges  and  (Sir)  Samuel  DiU 
[qq.v.].  He  tried  unsuccessfully  for  a 
fellowship  at  Merton  College. 

Scott  left  Oxford  not  only  with  his  intel- 
lectual and  moral  outlook  determined  by 
influences  exerted  upon  him  as  an  under- 
graduate (the  chief  was  J.  R.  Seeley's  Ecce 
Homo),  but  with  his  career  determined  as 
well.  His  cousin  John  Edward  Taylor 
[q.v.],  the  proprietor  of  the  Manchester 
Gruardian  and  the  son  of  its  founder  John 
Edward  Taylor  [q.v.],  after  seeing  some 
of  Scott's  essays,  offered  him  a  post  which 
he  accepted. 

Scott  arrived  in  Manchester  in  February 
1871  and  eleven  months  later  Taylor  made 
him  editor.  He  was  then  twenty -five. 
Under  him  were  men  who  were  serving  on 


I 


794 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Scott,  C.  P. 


the  paper  before  he  was  bom.  He  grew  a 
beard  to  disguise  his  youth  and  showed 
himself  a  strict  disciplinarian,  gaining  a 
reputation  for  severi^  which  those  who 
only  knew  him  outside  the  office  found  it 
hard  to  imderstand.    He  soon  made  his 
mark  by  giving  the  paper  for  the  first  time 
a  serious  standing  as  a  critic  of  arts  and 
letters,  but  he  did  not  change  its  whig  tone 
in  politics  until  the  liberal  crisis  of  1886. 
Scott  was  converted  to  Gladstone's  home 
rule  policy  by  a  series  of  articles  that  E.  A. 
Freeman  [q.v.]  contributed  to  the  paper. 
Scott's  chief  leader  writer,  W.  T.  Arnold 
[q.v.],  was  a  convinced  home  ruler  from 
the  first  and  the  power  and  quality  of  his 
articles  created  a  great  impression.    En- 
gaged now  in  a  struggle  that  excited  the 
deepest  emotions  on  both  sides,  Scott  was 
shaken  out  of  his  constitutional  conservat- 
ism and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  was  ready 
to  consider  new  ideas  without  the  inhibi- 
tions that  had  cramped  his  earlier  Hberal- 
ism.  Like  Gladstone  he  moved  steadily  to 
the  left  in  his  middle  years.   By  its  bold 
handling  of  the  questions  raised  in  the 
struggles  of  the  dockers  in  1889,  the  miners 
in  1893,  and  the  engineers  in  1897,  the 
Manchester  Guardian  prepared  opinion  for 
the  great  constructive  reforms  of  the  two 
Uberal  administrations  of  the  twentieth 
century.    When  the  South  African  war 
broke  out  Scott  found  himself  for  the 
second  time  engaged  in  a  struggle  that 
excited  the  deeper  passions  of  politics.  At 
great  cost  to  its  material  fortunes  the 
paper  defended  an  unpopular  cause  with 
the  courage  and  dignity  that  marked  its 
treatment  of  bitterly  controversial  issues. 
Scott  was  at  this  time  a  great  deal  in 
London.    After  unsuccessful  contests  in 
North-East  Manchester  in  1886, 1891,  and 
1892,  he  had  been  elected  for  the  Leigh 
division  of  Lancashire  in  1895.   He  kept 
his  seat  in  the  'khaki'  election  of  1900. 
Taylor  had  encouraged  him  to  enter  the 
House  of  Commons,  but  at  this  time  he 
became  very  anxious  about  the  fortunes 
of  the  paper  and  began  to  think  that  the 
editor  was  not  giving  it  enough  attention. 
Relations  between  the  two  men  lost  their 
former  cordiality.  Taylor  died  in  October 
1905  and  it  was  found  that  he  had  made 
a  will  in  uncertain  terms.  Scott,  who  had 
always  understood  that  the  paper  would 
be  left  to  him,  had  to  purchase  it,  with  the 
help  of  relatives  and  friends,  for  £242,000, 
after  long  and  anxious  negotiations.  Hard 
upon  this  blow  came  a  calamity  in  the 
death  of  his  wife  (November  1905).    She 
had  given  him  not  only  the  happiness  of 

795 


a  perfect  marriage  but  also  valuable  help 
in  the  expansion  of  the  paf)er's  interests. 
Scott  left  parliament  in  1005.  but  he  was 
in  close  touch  with  several  of  the  new 
ministers,  notably  Loreburn  and  Lloyd 
George.  His  intimacy  with  Loreburn  was 
especially  important  because  Loreburn 
was  the  strongest  critic  in  the  government 
of  Grey's  foreign  policy.  Loreburn, "  like 
Scott,  had  differed  sharply  from  Grey  over 
the  South  African  war,  Scott,  who  had 
the  traditional  British  mistrust  of  foreign 
commitments,  paid  great  respect  to  the 
opinions  and  suspicions  of  his  friend.  He 
was  thus  confirmed  in  his  view  that  it  was 
his  duty  to  present  in  the  paper  a  reasoned 
criticism  of  a  foreign  policy  that  seemed 
to  him  provocative  and  adventurous.  On 
women's  suffrage,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
foxmd  a  warm  ally  in  Grey,  with  whom  he 
discussed  plans  for  overcoming  obstacles 
that  proved  insuperable  until  they  were 
removed  by  war. 

In  1914  Scott  was,  to  the  very  last, 
against  British  participation  in  the  war, 
but  when  war  came  he  held  that  all  criti- 
cism of  pre-war  diplomacy  should  be  sus- 
pended and  the  whole  energy  of  the  nation 
thrown  into  the  struggle.  Early  in  the  war 
he  decided  that  the  two  most  effective  men 
of  action  in  the  government  were  Mr. 
Churchill  and  Lloyd  George,  and  he  used 
all  his  influence  to  strengthen  their  hands. 
He  helped  Lloyd  George  publicly  and 
privately  to  bring  about  the  change  of 
government  in  December  1916.  But  he 
was  never  an  uncritical  supporter  of  Lloyd 
George.  He  attacked  him  for  extending 
conscription  to  Ireland  and  for  holding  the 
election  in  December  1918,  and  during 
the  campaign  of  the  'Black  and  Tans'  in 
Ireland  he  broke  off  all  personal  relations. 
They  were  reconciled  when  negotiations 
for  an  Irish  peace  began  and  Scott  was 
able  to  use  his  influence  in  the  discussions 
that  produced  the  Irish '  treaty '  of  Decem- 
ber 1921. 

During  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life  Scott 
watched  with  sorrow  the  declining  fortimes 
of  his  party,  but  his  natural  optimism 
never  broke  down  and  he  was  hopeful 
about  the  labour  movement.  In  1923  and 
1929  he  urged  the  liberal  leaders  to  sup- 
port the  labour  government,  while  doing 
what  he  could  to  promote  liberal  reunion. 
By  this  time  his  position  was  that  of  an 
elder  statesman,  discussing  politics  with 
the  leaders  of  all  parties  and  enjoying  the 
respect  of  men  who  disagreed  with  his 
politics. 

Scott's    conduct    of    the    Manchester 


Scott,  C.  P. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Guardian  was  governed  by  his  view  that  a 
newspaper  should  be  a  public  organ  serving 
the  community  as  consciously  and  directly 
as  a  department  of  the  civil  service.  He 
allowed  himself  a  modest  fixed  salary  and 
used  the  profits  of  its  prosperous  days  to 
develop  the  paper  and  to  build  up  a  reserve 
fund  in  order  to  maintain  its  independence. 
During  and  after  the  war  he  himself  wrote 
a  great  many  leading  articles.  As  an  editor 
he  could  use  and  guide  the  force  and  fire 
of  others,  but  as  a  writer  he  excelled  in 
dispassionate  and  considered  argument. 
He  never  lost  his  power  of  analysing  and 
mastering  the  most  complicated  docu- 
ments. His  personal  tastes  were  simple 
and  almost  austere;  he  bicycled  to  and 
from  the  office  nearly  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
His  later  years  brought  him  honours  that 
he  valued:  Manchester  University  be- 
stowed upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  in  1921 ;  his  college  elected  him  an 
honorary  fellow  in  1923,  and  the  city  of 
Manchester  admitted  him  a  freeman  in 
1930.  He  declined  more  than  once  the 
offer  of  a  knighthood.  On  his  eightieth 
birthday  his  bust  by  Jacob  Epstein  was 
presented  to  the  city  of  Manchester  by  a 
large  body  of  subscribers  which  included 
three  ex-premiers  and  notable  names  from 
foreign  covmtries.  He  had  raised  a  re- 
spectable but  undistinguished  Manchester 
paper  to  a  leading  place  as  a  moral  force 
in  world  politics. 

Scott  married  in  1874  Rachel,  youngest 
daughter  of  John  Cook  [q.v.],  professor  of 
ecclesiastical  history  in  St.  Andrews  Uni- 
versity. She  was  one  of  the  original  stu- 
dents of  Girton  College,  Cambridge.  They 
had  three  sons  and  a  daughter.  The 
eldest  son  died  as  a  young  man  in  1908 ; 
the  second  (d.  1949)  became  manager  of 
the  Manchester  Guardian  after  Taylor's 
death ;  the  youngest  succeeded  his  father 
as  editor  in  July  1929,  but  was  drowned 
accidentally  less  than  four  months  after 
his  father's  death,  which  took  place  at 
Manchester  1  January  1932.  The  daughter 
became  the  wife  of  C.  E.  Montague  [q.v.].  [ 

A  portrait  of  Scott  by  T.  C.  Dugdale 
was  presented  to  the  Manchester  Press 
Club. 

[Manchester  Guardian,  2  January  1932; 
W.  Haslam  MUls,  Tfie  Manchester  Guardian: 
A  Century  of  History,  1921 ;  J.  L.  Hammond, 
C.  P.  Scott,  1934 ;  Sir  WilUam  Haley  (ed.),  C.  P. 
Scott,  1846-1932.  The  Making  of  the  'Man- 
chester Guardian',  1946 ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.]  J.  L.  Hammond. 

SCOTT,  DUKINFIELD  HENRY  (1854- 
1934),  parlaeobotanist,  was  born  in  London 


cls| 


28  November  1854,  the  youngest  of  the 
five  sons  of  (Sir)  George  Gilbert  Scott 
[q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Caroline  Oldrid.  Scott 
was  educated  by  tutors  at  home,  and  undei 
the  influence  of  his  mother  took  to  field 
botany  before  he  was  fourteen  years  old^ 
He  soon  passed  to  the  more  scientific  aspect 
of  the  subject  through  the  Micrographic 
Dictionary  (1854)  of  John  William  Griffith 
and  Arthur  Henfrey  [q.v.],  whereby  his 
attention  was  directed  to  plant  structure, 
the  study  of  which  eventually  became  his 
main  occupation.  Thence  he  proceeded 
to  a  number  of  technical  German  works, 
which  at  that  period  were  becoming  avail- 
able in  translation,  such  as  that  of  Wfihelm 
Friedrich  Benedict  Hof  meister  on  the  higher 
cryptogamia.  All  this  study,  and  certain 
efforts  at  microscopy,  took  place  before 
Scott  was  sixteen,  but  there  was  then  a 
period  of  some  nine  years  during  which 
his  interest  in  botany  remained  dormantij" 
At  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  he  read  classic 
(1872-1876);  after  this  he  spent  three 
years  training  as  an  engineer. 

In  the  autumn  of  1879  botanical  fervov 
stirred  again,  and,  at  the  suggestion  ol 
(Sir)  W.  T.  Thiselton-Dyer  [q.v.],  Scot 
decided  to  study  the  subject  in  Germany,^ 
then  the  centre  of  the  botanical  world.  He 
worked,  intermittently,  over  a  period  of 
two  and  a  half  years  (1880-1882)  in  the 
university  of  Wiirzburg  mider  Julius  von 
Sachs,  to  whom  Karl  Goebel  was  then 
assistant.  Scott,  on  his  return  to  England, 
was  instrumental  in  creating  in  this  coun- 
try an  atmosphere  of  research,  such  as  he 
had  enjoyed  in  Sachs's  laboratory.  In 
1882  Scott  succeeded  Frederick  Orpen 
Bower  as  assistant  to  Daniel  OHver  at 
University  College,  London,  but  in  1885 
he  was  transferred  to  the  Normal  School 
(later  Imperial  College)  of  Science,  taking 
charge,  xmder  T.  H.  Huxley  [q.v.],  of  all 
the  botanical  work.  Scott  was  not  com- 
pelled  to  work  for  his  living  and  his  career  i 
of  regular  teaching  lasted  for  a  decade  ' 
only,  being  given  up  in  favour  of  unim- 
peded research  when  in  1892  he  became 
honorary  director  of  the  Jodrell  laboratory  , 
at  Kew.  When  he  left  this  post,  fourteen 
years  later,  he  retired  to  East  Oakley 
House,  near  Basingstoke. 

The  moment  of  Scott's  scientific  life 
which  determined  its  main  course  came 
in  1889,  when  he  first  met  W.  C.  William- 
son [q.v.],  who,  as  professor  of  natural 
history  at  Manchester,  had  interested  him-  J 
self  for  forty  years  in  the  fossil  plants  of  H 
the  carboniferous  rocks.  A  visit  with 
Bower  to  Manchester,  where  they  spent 


796 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Scott,  J.  G. 


many  hours  in  the  room  known  as  William- 
son's 'coal-hole',  examining  his  slides  of 
fossil  plant  structure,  oi)ened  Scott's  eyes 
to  the  field  that  he  was  to  make  his  own. 
In  his  words:  'my  work,  since  I  knew 
Williamson,  owes  its  inspiration  to  him.' 
At  about  the  time  that  Scott  was  appointed 
to  the  Jodrell  laboratory,  Williamson  re- 
moved to  London;  thenceforth  the  two 
men  worked  in  concert.  Williamson  had 
come  to  recognize  that  he  needed  the  help 
of  a  colleague  with  a  more  modem  outlook, 
and  in  Scott  he  found  the  ideal  collabora- 
tor. After  Williamson's  death  in  1895 
Scott  continued  these  investigations  alone, 
recording  the  results  in  a  succession  of 
memoirs  dealing  with  the  structure  and 
affinities  of  the  fossil  plants  of  the  palaeo- 
zoic rocks.  The  sections  used  by  William- 
son and  Scott  are  in  the  British  Museum 
(Natural  History) ;  the  Scott  collection  in- 
cludes more  than  3,000  slides  of  carboni- 
ferous plants. 

In  addition  to  research  papers,  Scott 
published  books  on  broader  Unes,  such  as 
Studies  in  Fossil  Botany  (1900,  3rd  ed. 
vol.  i,  1920,  vol.  ii,  1923)  and  Extinct  Plants 
and  Problems  of  Evolution  (1924).  He  also 
wrote  an  elementary  text-book,  An  Intro- 
duction to  Structural  Botany  (1894),  of 
which  from  the  eleventh  edition  (1927) 
on  Wards,  Professor  Frederick  Tom  Brooks 
became  joint  editor.  All  Scott's  books  are 
of  a  type  wholly  distinct  from  that  of  the 
average  work  intended  for  students ;  there 
is  a  complete  avoidance  of  dogmatic  state- 
ment, and  as  much  stress  is  laid  upon  what 
we  do  not  know,  as  upon  what  we  know. 
In  everything  which  he  wrote,  Scott's 
attitude  towards  his  problems  was  orien- 
tated to  the  Darwinian  and  phylogenetic 
outlook  of  his  period ;  he  stated  explicitly 
in  1900  that  'the  ultimate  object  of  mor- 
phological inquiry  is  to  build  up  the 
genealogical  tree  of  the  organic  world'. 
Nevertheless,  after  a  quarter  of  a  century's 
further  work,  his  modest  conclusion  in  his 
latest  book  was  that  'we  know  a  good  deal 
about  extinct  plants,  but  not  enough,  as 
yet,  to  throw  much  light  on  the  problems 
of  their  evolution'.  Modern  research  has 
imderlined  this  deduction.  The  genea- 
logical tree,  which  Scott  hoped  might  be 
revealed,  veils  itself  ever  more  and  more 
inscrutably;  but  the  partial  disappoint- 
ment of  early  expectations  in  no  way 
impairs  his  standing  as  a  structural  palaeo- 
botanist.  His  flair  for  divining  the  'build' 
of  a  plant,  a  variant  of  the  architectural 
trend  in  the  Scott  family,  fostered  by  his 
engineering  training;  his  just  and  simple 


mode  of  presentation,  disciplined  by  the 
Latin  and  Greek  of  his  Oxford  days ;  his 
balanced  judgement,  and  his  readiness  to 
sacrifice  cherished  ideas,  as  soon  as  the 
evidence  was  shown  to  weigh  against 
them :  these  factors  combine  to  endow  his 
work  with  lasting  life. 

Scott  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1894  and 
received  a  Royal  medal  in  1906  and  the 
Darwin  medal  in  1926.  He  was  president 
of  the  Linnean  Society  (1908-1912)  and  re- 
ceived the  society's  gold  medal  in  1921 .  He 
was  president  of  the  Royal  Microscopical 
Society  (1904r-1906),  of  the  South-Eastem 
Union  of  Scientific  Societies  (1909),  of  Sec- 
tion K  (botany)  of  the  British  Association 
(1896  and  1921),  and  of  the  palaeolxjtanical 
section  of  the  International  Botanical  Con- 
gress (1930).  He  received  the  Wollaston 
medal  of  the  Geological  Society  in  1928. 
Honorary  degrees  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  imiversities  of  Manchester  and 
Aberdeen.  He  married  in  1887  one  of  his 
earliest  students,  Henderina  Victoria  (died 
1929),  daughter  of  Hendericus  Martinus 
lOaassen,  'F.G.S.,  whose  family  was  of 
Dutch  extraction.  There  were  three  sons, 
the  eldest  of  whom  was  killed  in  the  war 
of  1914r-1918,  the  second  died  at  school, 
and  the  third  died  in  infancy ;  there  were 
also  four  daughters.  He  died  at  Blast  Oak- 
ley House  29  January  1934. 

A  portrait  of  Scott  by  J.  Kerr-Lawson 
hangs  in  the  Jodrell  laboratory,  Kew 
Gardens. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  3,  December  1934  (portrait) ; 
Annals  of  Botany,  vol.  xlix,  1935  (bibliography 
and  portrait);  Journal  of  Botany,  vol.  Ixxii, 
1934;  Nature,  3  March  1934;  Proceedings  of 
the  Linnean  Society,  session  cxlvi,  1933-1934 ; 
New  Phytologist,  vol.  xxiv,  1925,  and  vol. 
xxxiii,  1934;  Current  Science,  vol.  ii,  1934 
(portrait);  private  information;  |>ersonal 
knowledge.]  Agnes  Arbeb. 

SCOTT,  Sir  (JAMES)  GEORGE  (1851- 
1935),  administrator  in  Burma  and  author, 
was  born  at  Dairsie,  Fife,  25  December 
1851,  the  younger  son  of  George  Scott, 
minister  of  Dairsie  from  1850  until  his 
death  in  1861,  by  his  wife,  Mary,  daughter 
of  Robert ,  Forsyth,  miscellaneous  writer 
and  advocate  [q.v.].  In  1864  George  and 
his  elder  brother  (Sir)  Robert  Forsyth 
Scott,  later  master  of  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  were  taken  by  their  widowed 
mother  to  school  at  Stuttgart  for  three 
years,  returning  only  when  they  were 
bilingual.  George  showed  promise  at  King's 
College  School,  London,  and  at  Edinburgh 
University,  but,  missing  a  scholarship  by 


797 


Scott,  J.  G. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


one  place,  left  Lincoln  College,  Oxford, 
without  taking  a  degree,  owing  to  lack  of 
means. 

In  1875-1876  Scott  accompanied  a 
punitive  expedition  to  Perak,  Malaya,  as 
special  correspondent  of  the  Standard. 
Thence  he  went  in  1879  to  Burma  as 
headmaster  of  St.  John's  College,  Ran- 
goon, an  AngUcan  mission  school,  and  in  a 
tropical  climate  succeeded  in  introducing 
association  football,  hitherto  regarded 
as  impossible  among  so  hot-tempered  a 
people :  it  is  now  an  estabUshed  game.  In 
1881  he  returned  home  and  read  for  the 
bar,  but  missed,  again  by  one  place,  the 
law  scholarship  at  the  Inner  Temple  which 
might  have  enabled  him  to  practise.  The 
publication  (under  the  name  of  Shway 
Yoe)  of  his  first  book,  The  Burman:  His 
Life  and  Notions  (2  vols,,  1882),  revealed 
a  closer  knowledge  of  the  people  than  was 
usual  at  the  time,  and  gave  him  an  imme- 
diate reputation,  not  only  among  those 
concerned  with  Burma,  but  among  em- 
ployers in  England.  Hence,  in  1884,  he 
went  out  again  as  a  war  correspondent  of 
the  Standard,  this  time  with  the  French 
armies  engaged  in  the  conquest  of  Tong- 
king,  and  he  wrote  his  second  book,  France 
and  Tongking:  a  Narrative  of  the  Campaign 
of  1884,  and  the  Occupation  of  Further 
India  (1885). 

Invalided  home,  Scott  was  at  the  Inner 
Temple  (by  which  he  was  eventually  called 
to  the  bar  in  1896)  when  the  annexation 
of  Upper  Burma  towards  the  end  of  1885 
gave  him  his  supreme  chance.  The  senior 
cadre  in  Bvu-ma,  hitherto  drawn  from  the 
Indian  civil  service,  had  to  be  expanded 
at  short  notice,  and  he  was  appointed  to 
it,  spending  his  time  not  in  the  swelter- 
ing plains  but  in  the  cool  hills,  the  lovely 
Shan  States  plateau.  These  three  dozen 
states  had  only  a  million  people,  but  they 
covered  an  area  larger  than  that  of  Eng- 
land and  Wales;  they  were  subdivided 
into  even  more  numerous  tribes,  each 
speaking  its  own  language ;  and  they  were 
unexplored.  Some  of  the  chiefs  were  en- 
gaged in  civil  war,  others  resented  the 
overthrow  by  the  British  of  their  suzerain, 
the  King  of  Burma.  Half  a  dozen  civil 
officers,  escorted  by  small  parties  of  British 
or  Indian  troops,  had  to  spend  the  years 
1886-1890  marching  hard  in  all  weathers 
to  estabUsh  British  rule.  If  there  was  little 
bloodshed  it  was  largely  due  to  Scott:  he 
had  an  iron  physique  and  a  quick,  master- 
ful temper,  but  he  also  had  a  warm  heart 
and  he  seldom  failed  to  win  men  over. 
Thus,  on  one  occasion,  he  and  his  troops, 


emerging  suddenly  from  the  jimgle,  found 
their  way  barred :  they  had  emerged  under— 
the  walls  of  a  fortified  village  in  the  coun-jf 
try  of  the  head-hunting  Wa  tribes,  and 
the  walls  were  already  manned.  Other 
officers  would  have  either  retreated,  aban- 
doning the  expedition,  or  fought  their  way 
through,  leaving  a  legacy  of  hatred.  Scott 
made  his  men  halt  while  he  went  forward, 
unarmed,  almost  within  bowshot,  anc 
although  he  could  only  speak  through  foi 
successive  interpreters,  as  the  language 
was  at  five  removes,  in  a  few  minutes  he 
had  those  angry  savages  on  the  wall  laugh^ 
ing  at  his  jokes. 

Scott  was  appointed  resident  for  th^ 
Northern  Shan  States  at  Lashio  in  1891 
and  for  the  Southern  at  Taunggyi  in  1902^ 
He  was  charge  d'affaires  at  Bangkok  ii 
1893  and  1894,  and  a  member  of  the  three 
boundary  commissions  which,  betweenl 
1889  and  1900,  dehmited  the  Burma  fron- 
tier along  Siamese,  French,  and  Chinese! 
territory.  He  was  appointed  CLE.  in  18921 
and  K.C.I.E.  in  1901.  He  retired  in  1910.1 

Throughout  his  Ufe  Scott  wrote  in^ 
cessantly,  newspaper  columns,  articles,| 
stories,  a  score  of  books.  His  Gazetteer  oj 
Upper  Burma  and  the  Shan  States  (5  vols.,^ 
1900-1901)  is  still  of  value.  His  oriental 
manuscripts  were  given  to  Cambridge 
University. 

An  all-round  athlete,  Scott  was  proudest 
of  having  kicked  300  goals  in  first  class 
football,  mostly  for  the  Harlequins  and 
the  London  Scottish.  He  was  a  disobedient 
subordinate  and  an  ideal  chief,  a  living 
disproof  of  the  dictum  that  before  a  man 
can  command,  he  must  learn  to  obey.  He 
settled  in  London  and  haunted  the  Savage 
Club,  but  did  not  relish  his  retirement 
until  in  1920  his  marriage  to  the  authoress 
G.  E.  Mitton  gave  him  a  collaborator  and 
brought  him  much  happiness.  He  then 
moved  to  Graff  ham,  near  Petworth,  Sussex, 
where  he  died  4  April  1935. 

Scott  was  married  three  times:  first, 
in  1890  to  EUzabeth  Dora  (died  1896), 
daughter  of  James  Campbell  ConnoUy, 
chaplain  of  Woolwich  Dockyard ;  secondly, 
in  1905  to  Eleanor  Sarah,  only  child  of 
John  William  M'Carthy,  county  court 
judge,  by  whom  he  had  a  daughter  (the 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1918);  thirdly, 
in  1920  to  Geraldine  Edith,  third  daughter 
of  the  Rev.  Henry  Arthur  Mitton,  master 
of  Sherbm-n  House,  Diu-ham. 

A  portrait  of  Scott  by  a  German  artist, 
Lomer,  is  in  the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Times  Literary  Supplement,  14  Novem- 
ber 1936 ;  G.  E.  Mitton  (Lady  Scott),  Scott  of 


798 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Scrutton 


the  Shan  Hills.  Orders  and  Impressions  (hihho- 
graphy  and  portraits),  1936 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] G.  E.  Harvey. 

JSCRUTTOX,  Sir  THOMAS  EDWARD 

(1856-1934),  judge,  v/as  bom  28  August 
1856  in  the  East  India  Dock  Road,  Poplar, 
the  elder  son  of  Thomas  Urquhart  Scrut- 
ton, a  prosperous  shipowner,  later  of  Buck- 
hurst  Hill,  Essex,  by  his  wife,  Mary, 
daughter  of  the  Rev.  Edward  Hickman. 
His  father's  family  had  for  several  genera- 
tions run  a  Une  of  vessels,  originally  under 
sail,  between  the  United  Kingdom  and  the 
West  Indies.  The  father  was  a  stalwart 
adherent  of  Congregationalism,  in  the  days 
when  that  persuasion  and  the  Liberation 
Society  were  a  political  force.  Scrutton 
was  accordingly  educated  at  Mill  Hill 
School. 

On  leaving  school  the  relentless  industry 
that  he  displayed  throughout  life  spurred 
Scrutton  to  a  pursuit  of  academic  honoiu-s 
that  can  rarely  have  been  equalled.  At 
London  University  he  took  the  degrees 
of  B.A.,  M.A.,  and  LL.B.  (1882),  with 
honours.  He  also  won  a  scholarship  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  obtained  a 
first  class  in  the  moral  sciences  tripos  and 
was  awarded  the  senior  Whewell  scholar- 
ship for  international  law  in  1879,  and  was 
placed  first  in  the  first  class  of  the  law 
tripos  of  1880.  He  won  the  Barstow 
scholarship  of  the  Inns  of  Court  in  1882. 
Finally,  he  won  at  Cambridge  the  Yorke 
prize  for  a  legal  essay  in  1882,  1884,  1885, 
and  1886:  to  win  it  four  times  is  a  feat 
which  no  one  else  has  hitherto  achieved. 
With  such  a  record  he  may  have  hoped  for 
a  fellowship  at  Trinity.  A  remark  made 
by  Sir  J.  J.  Thomson  [q.v.]  shortly  after 
Scinitton's  death  may  explain  why  he  did 
not  get  one.  'I  remember  Scrutton.  A 
very  clever  man,  and  of  immense  industry, 
but — no  originality.' 

As  an  undergraduate  Scrutton  was  lanky 
and  rather  vmcouth.  He  was  possibly  the 
only  Englishman  of  his  time  who  never 
shaved  in  his  life.  Somewhere  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Union,  of  which  he  was  president 
in  1880,  there  is,  or  was,  a  photograph  of 
him  with  a  downy  beard.  One  of  the  few 
diversions  from  his  books  that  he  allowed 
himself  was  riding  the  old  high  bicycle, 
and  he  represented  Cambridge  in  a  contest 
with  Oxford  men  of  a  Uke  reckless  courage. 

Scrutton  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1882,  and  formally 
joined  the  South-Eastem  circuit:  but  he 
never  went  on  it  again.  He  became  a  K.C. 
in  1901,  and  a  bencher  of  his  Inn  in  1908. 


He  never  took  much  part  in  the  social  life, 
or  in  the  business,  of  the  Inn,  and  did  not 
hold  office. 

Scrutton  read  in  chambers  with  Sir  A.  L. 
Smith  [q.v.]  and  was  at  the  same  time 
discharging  the  duties  of  professor  of  con- 
stitutional law  and  legal  history  at  Uni- 
versity College,  London.  After  leaving 
Smith  he  had  chambers  for  a  time  in  Essex 
Court,  and  when  his  practice  began  to 
grow,  as  it  soon  did,  moved  to  a  large  set 
of  chambers  at  3  Temple  Gardens.  The 
growth  of  his  practice  in  commercial  mat- 
ters was  hastened  by  the  publication  in 
1886  of  his  book  The  Contract  of  Affreight- 
ment as  expressed  in  Charlerparties  and  Bills 
of  Lading.  This  having  been  repeatedly, 
and  carefully,  revised  by  him  and  by 
others  has  remained  the  leading  text-book 
on  the  subject:  the  fourteenth  edition  ap- 
peared in  1939.  The  subject  for  the  Yorke 
prize  which  he  won  in  1882  was  the  laws 
of  copyright.  He  turned  his  prize  essay 
into  a  text-book.  The  Laws  of  Copyright 
(1883),  and  this  was  the  source  of  another 
side  of  his  practice.  That  was  always 
mainly  in  commercial  law,  but  his  copy- 
right business  was  considerable  and  lucra- 
tive. 

In  1892  a  case  of  extreme  technicality 
about  general  average  came  before  Mr. 
Justice  J.  C.  Lawrence  in  the  non-jury  list. 
That  unlearned  judge  (one  of  the  political 
promotions  of  Lord  Halsbury)  was  so 
palpably  imfltted  for  such  a  task  that  it 
led  to  a  movement  for  the  establishment 
of  a  Commercial  Court.  This  was  achieved 
in  1895,  and  under  Sir  J.  C.  Mathew  [q.v.] 
and  his  successors,  who  had  a  like  qualifica- 
tion, the  court  for  many  years  enjoyed  its 
greatest  prosperity.  For  some  fifteen  years 
Scrutton  and  his  great  rival,  J.  A.  Hamil- 
ton (afterwards  Viscount  Sumner,  q.v.), 
were  the  busiest  practitioners  in  it. 

In  those  years  Scrutton  got  through  an 
immense  amount  of  work  in  the  courts,  or 
in  the  hideous  room  which  he  occupied  in 
the  hideous  block  called  Temple  Gardens, 
and  in  which  it  was  characteristic  of  the 
man  that  a  Spartan  rigour  reigned.  He 
used  to  sit  on  a  Windsor  chair,  without 
a  cushion,  at  a  battered  writing-table,  to 
the  side  of  which  was  a  table,  loaded  with 
papers,  that  had  come  out  of  one  of  his 
father's  ships,  with  a  rough  piece  of  wood 
filling  the  hole  that  had  enclosed  the  mast. 
When  darkness  set  in  the  only  source  of 
Ught  was  a  Victorian  chandelier  with  fish- 
tail gas-burners.  The  other  two  rooms 
were  filled  with '  devils '  and  pupils :  among 
them  from  time  to  time  were  the  futiue 


799 


Scrutton 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


•^ 


Lord  Atkin,  Lord  Wright,  Lord  Justice 
MacKinnon,  Mr.  Justice  Fraser,  and  Mr. 
Justice  Henn  Collins.  At  4.15  all  the  party 
met  in  one  of  the  rooms  for  tea.  The  liquid 
was  repulsive :  and  the  only  form  of  food 
was  Bath  Oliver  biscuits.  Scrutton,  silently 
absorbed  in  thinking  about  his  work, 
would  stride  about  the  room  until,  almost 
daily,  the  top  of  his  head  crashed  into  the 
knob  of  the  chandelier  that  hung  from 
the  ceiling. 

In  February  1909  Scrutton's  rival, 
Hamilton,  was  promoted  to  the  bench. 
Soon  afterwards  Scrutton  was  sent  as 
special  commissionei'  on  the  North-Eastern 
circuit,  and  discharged  the  duty  to  the 
general  approval.  In  April  1910,  on  the 
recommendation  of  Lord  Lorebum,  he 
was  appointed  a  judge  of  the  King's  Bench 
division,  upon  the  resignation  of  Mr.  Jus- 
tice Sutton. 

Scrutton  soon  proved  himself  a  very 
efficient  judge,  but  not  a  popular  one.  He 
never  had  good  manners  (partly  because 
he  was  really  a  very  shy  man),  and  he  in- 
dulged in  petulant  rudeness  to  counsel, 
and  to  solicitors'  clerks  on  summonses. 
Eventually  all  the  chief  City  solicitors,  his 
former  clients,  gave  a  joint  retainer  to 
Alfred  Chaytor,  then  a  leading  junior  who 
took  silk  in  1914,  to  make  a  protest  to  the 
judge  in  court.  Chaytor  discharged  this 
novel  task  with  much  tact,  but  with  equal 
firmness.  Scrutton  listened  without  com- 
ment, but  showed  proof  of  his  penitence 
in  his  subsequent  conduct. 

For  six  years  Scrutton  discharged  with 
success  the  work  of  a  judge  of  first  instance 
in  London  (often  in  the  Commercial  Court), 
and  upon  circuit.  He  was  very  efficient  in 
trying  prisoners,  although  he  had  had  no 
experience  of  such  work  at  the  bar.  In 
1915,  at  the  Old  Bailey,  he  had  to  try  a 
notorious  murderer,  George  Joseph  Smith, 
in  the  sensational  'Brides  in  the  Bath' 
case,  and  the  man  in  the  street  came  to 
agree  with  professional  opinion  that  he 
was  a  great  judge. 

In  October  1916,  on  the  resignation  of 
Lord  Justice  Phillimore,  Scrutton  was  pro- 
moted to  the  Court  of  Appeal,  and  sworn 
of  the  Privy  Council.  During  eighteen 
years  in  that  court  he  displayed  ever  in- 
creasing judicial  powers,  and  when  for  the 
last  seven  years  he  presided  over  one  of  its 
divisions,  he  had  had  few,  if  any,  superiors 
in  that  position.  When  at  the  bar  he  was, 
if  anything,  hampered  by  an  immense 
knowledge  of  case  law.  Towards  the  end 
of  his  career  he  came  to  see  the  wood 
rather  than  the  trees,  and  developed  a 


mastery  of  legal  principles.  Indeed  he 
achieved  no  little  of  that  originality  which 
Thomson  failed  to  discover  in  his  younger 
days.  In  1936  an  American  professor  pub- 
lished an  article  about  him,  in  which  he 
uses  the  phrases  'a  matchless  commercial 
lawyer ', '  among  the  noblest  of  the  judicial 
bench',  'a  greater  commercial  judge  than 
Mansfield',  'the  greatest  English-speaking 
judge  of  a  century'. 

With  age  Scrutton  became  much  more 
mellow.  There  was  in  1932  an  unhappy 
incident  when  he  was  very  rude  to  H.  A. 
McCardie  [q.v.]  (whom  he  probably  de- 
spised intellectually)  upon  an  appeal  from 
him.  McCardie  was  even  more  injudicious, 
and  unjudicial,  in  his  protest  in  court  by 
way  of  rejoinder.  But  the  younger  barris- 
ters, who  only  knew  Scrutton  as  presiding 
in  the  Court  of  Appeal,  would  regard  him 
as  a  dignified,  imposing,  and  kindly  person. 

Scrutton's  intellectual  interests  besides 
the  law  were  chiefly  poetry,  travel  (before 
he  was  forty  he  had  visited  Palestine, 
Greece,  Spain,  and  Italy),  music,  and 
church  architecture.  His  only  incursion 
into  politics  was  in  1886,  when,  following 
the  family  tradition,  he  stood  (but  without 
success)  as  Uberal  candidate  for  the  Lime- 
house  division.  When  an  undergraduate 
he  became  engaged  to  Mary,  daughter  of 
Samuel  Crickmer  Burton,  solicitor,  of 
Great  Yarmouth,  and  they  were  married 
in  1884.  They  lived,  a  very  devoted  couple, 
at  Westcombe  Park,  a  suburb  near  Black- 
heath,  and  only  moved  to  a  flat  in  Picca- 
dilly when  Scrutton  was  on  the  bench. 
They  had  four  sons,  of  whom  the  youngest 
was  killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918,  and 
a  daughter.  He  and  his  wife  were  de- 
voted to  music  and  the  opera.  Keen  atten- 
dants at  orchestral  concerts  in  London, 
they  were  never  prevented  by  claims  of 
work  from  attending  throughout  the  season 
at  Covent  Garden,  and  in  his  travels  in 
Germany  his  lodestar  was  the  music  at 
Bayreuth  and  Munich.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  Reform  Club  and,  when  a  judge,  of 
the  Athenaeum :  but  he  was  rarely  seen  in 
either  club ;  if  he  had  any  spare  time  he 
spent  it  at  home. 

Early  in  life  Scrutton  took  to  bicycling 
and  was  a  keen  watcher  of  Rugby  football, 
cricket,  and  athletic  sports,  and  an  enthu- 
siastic, if  not  very  skilful,  golfer.  He  pre- 
sented the  Scrutton  cup  for  an  annual 
competition  between  the  Inns  of  Court. 
It  was  in  the  course  of  a  golfing  holiday  at 
Sheringham  in  the  long  vacation  of  1930 
that  he  was  found  to  be  suffering  from  a 
strangulated  hernia.     He  was  taken  to 


800 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Seaman 


hospital  at  Norwich  and  died  there  18 
August.  He  was  buried  in  the  Rosary 
cemetery  at  Norwich. 

In  addition  to  his  books  already  men- 
tioned Scrutton  produced  in  1891  The  Ele- 
ments of  Mercantile  Law  and  in  1895  an 
annotated  version  of  The  Merchant  Ship- 
ping Act,  1894.  The  other  three  Yorke 
prize  essays,  all  of  which  were  printed,  are 
The  Influence  of  the  Roman  Law  on  the  Law 
of  England  (1885),  Land  in  Fetters  (1886), 
and  Commons  and  Common  Fields  (1887). 
He  also  wrote  a  valuable  ari;icle  on  'The 
Work  of  the  Commercial  Coiuis'  {Cam- 
bridge Law  Journal,  vol.  i,  no.  1,  1921). 

Scrutton  was  a  fine  figure  of  a  man. 
There  can  never  have  been  a  court  of  so 
many  united  inches  as  when  he  sat  with 
Lord  Sterndale  and  Lord  Justice  Bankes. 
As  it  had  never  been  shaved,  his  beard 
became  a  feature  rather  than  an  appen- 
dage, and  was  so  clipped  as  to  give  him 
the  look  of  an  Elizabethan.  His  portrait 
was  never  painted,  but  an  excellent  photo- 
graph is  reproduced  as  the  frontispiece  to 
the  fourteenth  edition  of  his  Charterparties 
and  Bills  of  Lading.  A  cartoon  of  him  by 
'Ape  Junior'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
28  June  1911 :  this  depicts  him  in  a  charac- 
teristic pose. 

{I'he  Times,  21  August,  1  September,  and 
3  October  1934;  Manchester  Guardian,  21 
August  1934;  K.  N.  LleweUyn  in  Columbia 
Law  Review,  May  1936 ;  private  information  ; 
personal  knowledge.]      F.  D.  MacKinnon. 

SEAMAN,  Sir  OWEN,  baronet  (1861- 
1936),  poet,  satirist,  and  parodist,  was 
bom  in  London  18  September  1861,  the 
only  son  of  William  Mantle  Seaman,  a 
dressmaker  of  Suffolk  yeoman  stock,  by 
his  wife,  Sarah  Ann  Balls.  He  had  a  dis- 
tinguished academic  career  both  at  Shrews- 
bvuy,  where  he  was  captain  of  the  school, 
and  as  a  scholar  of  Clare  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  was  university  Porson 
prizeman  in  1882  and  was  awarded  a  first 
class  in  part  i  of  the  classical  tripos  of  1883. 
As  a  schoolmaster  at  Rossall  (1884),  pro- 
fessor of  literatiure  at  Durham  College 
of  Science,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  (1890- 
1903),  and  a  barrister  of  the  Inner  Temple 
(1897),  he  had  shown  so  remarkable  a  gift 
for  the  composition  of  fight  verse  that  he 
was  asked  to  join  the  staff  of  Punch  in  the 
last-named  year.  He  became  assistant 
editor  in  1902  and  was  editor  from  1906 
to  1932.  Horace  at  Cambridge  (1895)  was 
a  briUiant  undergraduate  exercise  in 
parody,  and  during  the  interregnum  in 
the  poet  laureateship  which  followed  the 


death  of  Lord  Tennyson  in  1892,  Seaman 
enlivened  the  p>eriod  of  suspense  with  a 
nvmiber  of  brilliant  parodies  of  elder  and 
contemporary  poets,  following  an  almost 
established  tradition  in  English  letters. 
The  Battle  of  the  Bays  (1896)  preserves 
some  of  the  best  of  these  imitations. 

Seaman  continued  to  write  parodies  and 
was  as  successful  with  the  blank  verse  of 
Tennyson  as  in  the  more  diificult  mode  of 
George  Meredith ;  but  a  great  deal  of  his 
verse,  in  whatever  form,  was  set  to  a  poli- 
tical tune,  as  he  followed  the  South  African 
war,  the  embarrassments  of  the  fiberal 
party  with  regard  to  home  rule  and  free 
trade,  and  the  pretensions  of  Imperial 
Germany.  His  aptitude  for  ridicule  within 
the  severest  forms  of  rhymed  parody  was 
unfailing;  and  in  this  respect  he  was  a 
worthy  successor  of  J.  K.  Stephen  and 
C.  S.  Calverley  [qq.v.],  although  his  vein 
was  too  robust  to  be  so  tenderly  mocking 
to  his  models  as  the  latter,  and  he  did  not 
attempt  to  foUow  or  assail  the  poets  of 
a  less  adaptable  idiom  who  deserted  the 
Victorian  and  Edwardian  styles.  In  a 
number  of  memorial  pieces  and  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918  he  composed  verses  of 
so  great  a  dignity  and  earnestness  that  he 
often  seemed  a  true  poetic  spokesman  of 
the  patriotic  mood. 

As  an  editor.  Seaman  was  assiduous  in 
the  encouragement  of  talent,  sparing  no 
pains  in  the  task  of  amendment  and  criti- 
cism, and  was  accustomed  to  write  long 
manuscript  letters  on  the  use  of  a  word  or 
the  turning  of  a  phrase.  A  wit  and  a  racon- 
teur, he  was  a  social  success  and  in  1914 
he  was  knighted,  a  testimony  rather  to 
the  genuine  merit  of  his  satire  than  to  the 
gratitude  of  a  government  which  he  had 
certainly  not  foUowed  with  his  pen.  In 
In  Cap  and  Bells  (1899),  Borrowed  Plumes 
(1902),  and  A  Harvest  of  Chaff  (1904)  he 
foUowed  his  earUer  parodies ;  more  serious 
verses  were  evoked  by  more  serious  events 
and  collected  in  War-Time  (1915),  Made  in 
England  (1916),  and  From  the  Home  Front 
(1918).  In  1929  he  published  Interludes  of 
an  Editor,  in  which  his  technique  remained 
as  skilful  as  ever,  although  the  occasions 
which  prompted  his  muse  were  less  memor- 
able. In  1934  he  wrote  a  prologue  for  the 
performance  of  Milton's  Comus  at  Ludlow 
Castle,  where  the  masque  had  been  first 
produced  300  years  before.  He  did  not 
aUow  the  levity  of  this  occupation  to  inter- 
fere with  his  sense  of  pubUc  duty,  or  with 
his  graver  preoccupations.  He  frequently 
lectured  on  Browning,  of  whom  he  was  an 
enthusiastic  admirer,  gave  much  time  to 


801 


3f 


Seaman 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  training  ship  Implacable,  and  to  the 
board  of  Putney  Hospital  for  Incurables, 
and  was  an  enthusiastic  Volunteer.  No 
satirist  can  have  been  less  Bohemian  in 
his  habits;  he  set  great  store  by  social 
activities,  shot  and  swam  well,  and  had 
been  captain  of  the  Clare  boats.  He  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  college 
in  1909,  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Durham  (1906),  Edin- 
burgh (1924),  and  Oxford  (1933),  and  was 
created  a  baronet  (also  in  1933)  He  died, 
unmarried,  in  London  2  February  1936. 

A  portrait  of  Seaman  by  H.  A.  Olivier 
hangs  in  the  offices  of  Punch. 

[The  Times,  3  February  1936;  Punch,  12 
February  1936 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  E.  V.  Knox. 

SELIGMAN,    CHARLES    GABRIEL 

(1873-1940),  ethnologist,  was  born  in 
London  24  December  1873,  the  only  child 
of  Hermann  Seligmann,  by  his  wife,  Olivia 
Mendez  da  Costa.  From  St.  Paul's  School 
he  gained  an  entrance  scholarship  to  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital,  where  in  1896  he  ob- 
tained his  first  medical  qualification  and 
was  awarded  the  Bristowe  medal  in  patho- 
logy. In  1897  he  served  as  house-physician 
there.  His  earhest  research,  pubHshed 
while  at  hospital  in  1896  and  1898,  was 
concerned  with  tropical  diseases  and  with 
abnormahties  of  bodily  form.  These  two 
interests  long  continued  with  him,  but 
they  were  soon  dominated  by  anthro- 
pology. In  1898  he  joined  the  Cambridge 
anthropological  expedition  to  the  Torres 
Strait  and  Borneo  under  the  leadership  of 
A.  C.  Haddon  [q.v.].  The  Reports  of  this 
expedition  contain  his  important  contribu- 
tions to  its  work.  On  his  return  to  England 
in  1899  he  resumed  his  pathological  re- 
search, often  in  collaboration  with  S.  G. 
Shattock  [q.v.],  at  St.  Thomas's  Hospital, 
where  in  1901  he  was  appointed  super- 
intendent of  the  clinical  laboratory. 

In  1904,  however,  SeUgman  returned  to 
ethnology.  In  that  year  he  persuaded  a 
wealthy  American  man  of  business,  Major 
Cook-Daniels,  to  entrust  him  with  the 
scientific  leadership  of  an  anthropological 
expedition  to  New  Guinea,  the  results  of 
which  he  published  six  years  later  in  a 
monumental  volume  entitled  The  Mela- 
nesians  of  British  New  Guinea  (1910).  In 
1906  he  and  his  wife  received  an  invitation 
from  the  government  of  Ceylon  to  make 
an  ethnographic  study  of  the  Veddas,  and 
in  1911  they  published  The  Veddas,  which 
is  still  the  standard  work  on  this  primitive, 
aboriginal  people.    SeUgman's  elaborate 


1 


j(^ 


third  volume  on  ethnological  field-work. 
The  Pagan  Tribes  of  the  Nilotic  Sudan,  ap- 
peared in  1932,  the  result  of  a  survey 
xuidertaken  by  him  and  his  wife  during 
several  visits  (beginning  in  1909-1910)  to 
that  coimtry,  thus  laying,  as  they  justly 
claimed,  'the  foundations  of  a  scientific 
study  of  the  peoples  of  the  Sudan'. 

In  1913  SeUgman  was  appointed  to  thi 
chair  £t  ethnology  in  the  university  of 
London.  This  he  held  until  1934  when 
he  was  compelled  by  ill  health  to  resig-n. 
From  1923  to  1925  he  served  as  president 
of  the  Royal  Antlu-opological  Institute,  of 
which  he  was  Rivers  medallist  (1925), 
Huxley  memorial  lecturer  and  medallist 
(1932),  and  Frazer  lecturer  (1933).  In 
1919  he  was  elected  F.R.S.  He  died  aW 
Oxford  from  infective  endocarditis  19  Sep4B 
tember  1940.  In  the  abundance,  breadth, 
and  systematic  thoroughness  of  liis  ethno- 
logical field-work  he  was  unsurpassed. 

Seligman  married  in  1905  Brenda  Zara, 
youngest  daughter  of  Myer  Salaman.  She 
survived  him  with  their  son. 

A  chalk  drawing  of  SeUgman  by  (Sir) 
William  Rothenstein  is  in  the  possessioi 
of  Mrs.  Seligman. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royc 
Society,  No.  10,  December  1941  (bibUography 
and  portrait) ;  Essays  presented  to  C.  G.  Selig- 
man, edited  by  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard  and 
others  (appreciation  by  A.  C.  Haddon  and 
bibUography),  1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
Charles  S.  Myers. 

SETH,  ANDREW  (1856-1931),  plulo- 
sopher.  [See  Pattison.  Andrew  Seth 
Pringle-.] 

SEXTON,  Sir  JAMES  (1856-1938), 
poUtician  and  labour  leader,  is  said  to  have 
been  born  at  Newcastle  13  April  1856.  His 
father,  James  Sexton,  was  Irish  and  his 
mother,  who  was  born  at  Warrington,  was 
of  Irish  extraction.  They  were  hawkers, 
and  after  tramping  to  Birkenhead,  set  up 
as  umbrella-menders  in  St.  Helens  when 
Sexton  was  six  naontlis  old.  The  eldest  of 
a  family  of  six  children,  he  was  educated 
at  Low  House  school  (the  fees  were  three- 
pence a  week,  with  sixpence  monthly  for 
coke  for  heating),  and  on  Saturdays  helped 
at  his  parents'  stall  in  the  market-place 
next  to  the  original  pitch  where  Thomas 
Beecham  [q.v.]  first  sold  his  piUs.  At  eight 
years  of  age,  just  before  leaving  school, 
Sexton  was  punching  holes  in  clog-irons, 
and  at  nine  was  earning  half  a  crown  a 
week  at  the  local  glassworks,  working  on 
twelve-hour  shifts.  His  father's  associa- 
tion with  the  Irish  RepubUcan  Brother- 


802 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Sexton,  T. 


hood  and  the  Fenian  movement  coloured 
the  boy's  outlook. 

In  1868  Sexton  drifted  to  Liverpool 
and  stowed  away  in  a  sailing-ship  boimd 
for  San  Francisco,  a  four  months'  voyage. 
After  some  experience  of  gold-digging  and 
service  in  a  lumber  ship,  he  and  others 
were  drugged  and  kidnapped,  to  awake  in 
a  vessel  bomid  for  London  via  Cape  Horn. 
On  reaching  Lancashire  again,  he  laboured 
at  a  chemical  works  for  fifteen  shillings 
a  week  for  three  years  before  returning 
to  sea,  this  time  on  the  Atlantic  passage. 
One  adventure  was  the  salving  of  Cleo- 
patra's Needle,  which  had  been  cast  adrift 
in  the  Bay  of  Biscay  in  a  steel  case. 

Dockside  work  at  Liverpool  followed, 
and  in  1881  defective  tackle  flung  Sexton 
into  a  ship's  hold,  smashing  his  right  cheek- 
bone, displacing  his  right  eye,  and  slightly 
fracturing  his  skull.  He  spent  nearly  two 
months  in  hospital  and  on  recovery  his 
employers  disclaimed  liabiUty  for  injury 
as  his  application  should  have  been  made 
within  six  weeks.  However,  they  found 
him  work  as  a  winch-driver  at  a  lower  wage 
and  deducted  half  a  crown  from  his  first 
week's  money  for  the  cab-fare  to  the  hos- 
pital when  he  was  injured.  Not  long  after- 
wards he  was  dismissed  and  became  a 
casual  dock  labourer  before  being  able  to 
set  up  a  small  business  of  his  own. 

Sexton  early  began  agitating  among 
the  dockers  to  secure  better  conditions, 
and,  joining  the  National  Union  of  Dock 
Labourers  in  1889,  he  became  its  secre- 
tary in  1893,  and  so  continued  until  the 
union,  with  twenty-three  others,  was  ab- 
sorbed in  the  Transport  and  General 
Workers'  Union  in  1922.  In  1892  Sexton, 
with  Ben  Tillett,  gave  evidence  before  the 
government  commission  on  accidents  at 
docks,  which  led  to  their  inclusion  in  the 
Factory  Acts,  and  influenced  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Workmen's  Compensation 
Act  of  1897. 

Sexton  was  a  foimder-member  of  the 
independent  labour  party  in  1893,  and 
at  the  Trades  Union  Congress  held  at 
Plymouth  in  1899  he  seconded  the  resolu- 
tion that  inaugurated  the  labour  party. 
He  served  on  the  parliamentary  committee 
(1900-1905,  1907,  1909-1921)  and  on  the 
general  coimcil  of  the  Trades  Union  Con- 
gress (from  1923),  and  presided  over  the 
congress  held  at  Hanley  in  1905. 

While  seeking  to  organize  continental 
dockers  in  1896,  Sexton  was  expelled 
from  Antwerp  and  Ghent,  but  afterwards 
associated  with  the  International  Trans- 
port Workers'  Federation,  and  in  1919 


attended  the  first  conference  of  the  Inter- 
national Labour  Organization  at  Washing- 
ton. In  1914  he  organized  Liverpool 
dockers'  battalions  under  the  command 
of  the  Earl  of  Derby,  and  was  a  member 
of  the  government's  transit  committee. 

Sexton  fought  unsuccessful  parliamen- 
tary contests  at  Ashton-under-Lyne  (1895) 
and  West  Toxteth  (1906  and  January 
1910),  but  he  was  returned  for  St.  Helens 
in  1918  and  retained  the  seat  until  1931, 
when  he  was  defeated.  He  was  appointed 
C.B.E.  in  1917,  was  knighted  in  1931,  and 
received  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Liver- 
pool in  1934,  after  serving  as  a  councillor 
from  1905  and  as  an  alderman  from 
1930. 

Sexton  was  the  first  labour  corresptondent 
of  the  Board  of  Trade's  Labour  Gazette, 
and  was  a  contributor  to  the  Seaman^s 
Gazette,  the  Clarion,  and  the  Liverpool 
Weekly  Post,  and  imder  the  pseud- 
onym of  'Tatters,  M.P.'  was  the  author 
of  several  parUamentary  and  other  rhymes. 
An  amateur  actor  in  his  youth,  he 
wrote,  besides  several  serial  stories,  a 
play  entitled  The  Riot  Act  (1914) ;  this  last, 
based  on  the  Liverpool  transport  strikes 
of  1911,  was  produced  at  the  Liverpool 
Repertory  and  the  Manchester  Gaiety 
theatres. 

Sexton  married  in  1881  Christina, 
daughter  of  William  Boyle,  painter,  of 
Everton ;  she  predeceased  him,  and  there 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage.  He  died 
at  Wavertree,  Liverpool,  27  December 
1938. 

[Sir  James  Sexton,  Agitator,  The  Life  of  the 
Dockers'  M.P.  An  Autobiography,  1936.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

SEXTON,  THOMAS  (1848-1932),  Irish 
politician,  the  son  of  J.  Sexton,  a  constable 
in  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary,  was  bom 
at  Ballygannon,  co.  Waterford,  in  1848. 
The  Christian  Brothers  undertook  his 
education  and  fotmd  in  him  a  clever  pupil, 
quick  at  figures  and  a  ready  writer.  His 
first  employment,  at  the  age  of  twelve, 
was  a  railway  clerkship  on  the  Waterford 
and  Limerick  Railway;  in  this  he  re- 
mained imtil,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  he 
foimd  a  position  in  Dublin  as  a  leader- 
writer  on  the  Nation,  then  the  chief  organ 
of  left-wing  nationalism.  A  little  later  he 
entered  political  life  as  a  member  of  the 
Home  Rule  League,  where  his  abilities 
attracted  the  attention  of  T.  M.  Healy 
[q.v.],  who  recommended  him  to  C.  S. 
Pamell  [q.v.]  after  the  latter  had_ dis- 
placed Isaac  Butt  [q.v.]  in  the  leaderehip. 


808 


Sexton,  T. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


At  the  general  election  of  1880,  as  repre- 
sentative of  ParneUism  and  the  Land 
League,  Sexton  ousted  Captain  E.  R.  King 
Harman,  one  of  the  great  Irish  landlords, 
and  a  home  ruler  of  the  conservative  school, 
from  his  seat  in  county  Sligo.  Sexton, 
who  held  this  seat  until  1885,  and  was 
member  for  South  Sligo  from  1885  to  1886, 
was  quickly  recognized  as  one  of  the  half- 
dozen  or  so  notable  men  of  the  untried 
party  that  Pamell  had  gathered  about  him. 
His  parhamentary  manner  was  suaver 
than  that  of  most  of  his  colleagues,  and  he 
could  deliver  in  a  musical  voice  an  endless 
stream  of  well-balanced  if  not  always  ex- 
pressive sentences — a  power  which  was 
useful  for  the  party's  poUcy  of  obstruction. 
On  Wednesday  2  February  1881  he  spoke 
for  three  hours  and  a  half  towards  the 
close  of  the  record  forty-one  and  a  half 
hours'  continuous  sitting  of  the  House  of 
Commons  which  had  begun  on  Monday 
31  January,  thus  provoking  Pamell  to 
remark,  'Get  Sexton  wound  up  and  he 
will  go  on  for  ever. '  At  the  same  time,  his 
ardour  for  the  movement,  especially  on  its 
agrarian  side,  was  not  in  doubt :  he  signed 
the  'No  Rent'  manifesto  of  1881  and  was 
for  a  while  with  ParneU  in  Kilmainham 
jaU.  His  great  triumphs  were  the  winning 
of  the  new  constituency  of  West  Belfast 
for  the  nationaUsts  in  1886,  when  he  was 
also  returned  unopposed  for  South  Shgo, 
and  his  interventions  in  the  same  year 
in  the  home  rule  debates.  Gladstone  de- 
scribed his  speech  at  the  second  reading  of 
the  home  rule  bill  as  the  most  eloquent 
that  he  had  heard  in  a  generation  of  great 
orators.  He  was  high  sheriff  of  Dublin  in 
1887  and  lord  mayor  m  1888-1889.  After 
the  Parnellite  split  Sexton  represented  the 
anti-ParneUites  in  North  Kerry  for  over 
three  years  (1892-1896),  having  lost  his 
seat  at  West  Belfast  in  1892 ;  but  he  had 
little  heart  for  internecine  controversy, 
and  in  the  last  year  he  retired  from  parUa- 
ment  after  having  had  an  opportunity  to 
display  his  remarkable  talent  for  financial 
detail  on  the  royal  conunission  on  financial 
relations  between  Great  Britain  and  Ire- 
land (1894-1896). 

Sexton  conducted  the  affairs  of  the  2^ree- 
man's  Journal  from  1892  to  1912 ;  but  this 
was  his  only  connexion  with  poUtics  after 
he  left  parUament,  and  of  the  events  which 
changed  the  face  of  his  country  after  1916 
he  seemed  to  be  a  detached  spectator.  He 
was  chairman  of  a  successful  bakery  and 
of  a  successful  Roman  Catholic  insurance 
society,  but  apart  from  these  business 
interests  and  his  service  on  the  viceregal 


1 


commission  on  Irish  railways  (1906-1910) 
he  cherished  up  to  the  time  of  his  death 
at  the  age  of  eighty-three  a  singular  soli- 
tude, eschewing  social  as  well  as  poUtical 
contacts.  He  died,  unmarried,  at  his  home_ 
in  Dublin  1  November  1932. 

[The  Times  and  The  Irish  Independent, 
November  1932 ;  F.  H.  O'Donnell,  A  History 
of  the   Irish   Parliamentary   Party,   2  vols.^ 
1910.]  Joseph  Hone.   S 

SHACKLETON,  Sir  DAVID  JAMES 

(1863-1938),  labour  leader,  politician,  and 
civil  servant,  was  born  at  Accrington 
21  November  1863,  the  only  son  of  William, 
Shackleton,  a  Nelson  watchmaker,  by 
wife,  Margaret  Gregory.  He  attended  the 
Haslingden  elementary  school.  At  the  a^ 
of  nine  he  began  work  as  a  'half-timer'  ii 
a  weaving-shed  and  continued  to  work  aa 
a  cotton  operative  up  to  the  age  of  twenty-J 
nine.  He  was  secretary  of  the  Ramsbottor 
Weavers'  Association  (1893-1894)  and  o^ 
the  Darwen  Weavers'  Association  (1894 
1907) ;  and  was  president  of  the  Weavers! 
Amalgamation  and  a  member  of  the  legis-l 
lative  cotmcil  of  the  Textile  Workers* 
Association.  In  these  offices  he  displayed 
qualities  of  leadership,  governed  by  wis- 
dom and  sound  judgement,  recognition  of 
which  established  his  reputation  in  Lanca- 
shire and  led  to  his  unopposed  return  as 
labour  member  of  parhament  for  the 
Clitheroe  division  at  a  by-election  in  1902. 
In  parliament,  as  on  the  trade  union 
platform,  Shackleton  made  no  pretence 
at  oratory ;  but  he  was  an  able  and  force- 
ful speaker,  simple  and  direct,  and  his 
fair  and  reasonable  attitude  in  debate 
(for  example,  on  the  much-discussed  trade 
disputes  bill,  1906)  and  his  knowledgeable 
contributions  on  workmen's  compensation 
and  on  factory  legislation  gained  for  him 
the  respect  of  aU  sections  of  opinion  in  the 
House  of  Commons .  By  assisting  the  passage 
of  the  Trade  Disputes  Act  (1906)  Shackle- 
ton, with  other  members  of  the  then  small 
labour  group  (James  Keir  Hardie  [q.v.], 
Richard  Bell,  and  Arthur  Henderson 
[q.v.]),  helped  to  secure  the  reversal  of  the 
Taff  Vale  judgement,  which  had  gravely 
disturbed  the  trade  union  movement.  He 
also  took  part  in  the  early  stages  of  the 
women's  suffrage  movement,  introducing 
in  1910  the  concihation  bill,  which,  after 
a  free  debate  in  which  government  and 
opposition  benches  were  equally  sharply 
divided,  secured  a  second  reading.  Mean- 
while, Shackleton  remained  a  prominent 
and  well-respected  figure  in  the  trade 
union  movement. "  He  was  a  member  of 


804. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Shannon 


the  parliamentary  committee  of  the  Trades 
Union  Congress  from  1904  to  1910,  and 
president  of  the  congress  in  1908  and  1909. 
He  became  chairman  of  the  national 
labour  party  in  1905  and  did  much  to 
mould  the  policy  of  what,  after  the  general 
election  of  1906,  was  an  important  group 
in  the  House  of  Commons. 

In  1910  Shackleton  resigned  his  seat  in 
parliament  and  gave  up  his  trade  union 
activities  in  order  to  join  the  civil  service: 
he  became  senior  labour  adviser  to  the 
Home  Office,  an  appointment  designed  to 
assist  that  department  with  advice  upon 
industrial  problems.  He  vacated  this  post 
in  1911  on  being  appointed  a  national 
health  insurance  commissioner,  an  office 
which  he  held  imtil  1916.  He  served  as 
member  of  two  royal  commissions,  on  the 
Land  Transfer  Acts  (1908-1910)  and  on 
railways  (1913-1914).  In  1916,  when 
the  Ministry  of  Labour  was  established, 
Shackleton  was  appointed  its  first  perma- 
nent secretary.  It  was  an  unorthodox 
appointment,  for  he  had  had  no  admini- 
strative experience  and  no  experience  of 
the  management  of  a  large  organization : 
the  difficulties  of  the  labour  situation 
during  the  war  period  and  in  the  early 
post-war  years  were,  however,  such  as  to 
need  in  the  permanent  secretary  of  the 
INIinistry  of  Labour  not  so  much  a  know- 
ledge of  administration  as  wisdom  and 
faimliarity  with  the  traditions  and  habits 
of  mind  of  the  leaders  of  the  trade  union 
movement.  In  these  respects,  as  in  ability 
to  gain  the  loyal  and  warm-hearted  sup- 
port of  his  civil  service  colleagues,  Shackle- 
ton was  well  quaUfled,  and  in  the  result 
the  appointment  proved  to  be  a  good  one. 
Ministers  of  labour  so  diverse  as  John 
Hodge  and  G.  H.  Roberts  (both  former 
trade  union  officials),  Sir  Robert  (after- 
wards Viscount)  Home  (conservative),  and 
T.  J.  Macnamara  (liberal)  [qq.v.]  relied  on 
his  advice  with  well-merited  confidence. 
The  control  of  the  Ministry  of  Labour  was 
rearranged  in  1921,  Shackleton  becoming 
chief  labour  adviser,  an  office  which  he 
held  until  his  retirement  from  the  public 
service  in  1925.  After  retirement  he  served 
as  a  member  of  the  Industrial  Transference 
Board  (1928)  and  of  the  South  Wales  Coal 
Mines  Arbitration  Board  (1934). 

Shackleton  died  at  St.  Anne's,  Lanca- 
shire, 1  August  1938.  He  was  appointed 
C.B.  in  1916  and  K.C.B.  in  1917.  He 
married  in  1883  Sarah,  daughter  of  John 
Broadbent,  of  Accrington,  and  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter.  He  was  a  hard  worker,  a 
teetotaller  and  non-smoker,  and  a  pleasant. 


imperturbable  colleague,  replete  with  pro- 
foimd  knowledge  of  the  ordinary  man. 

[The  Times,  2  August  1938 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Horace  Wilson. 

SHANNON,  CHARLES  HASLE- 
WOOD  (1868-1987),  lithographer  and 
painter,  was  bom  at  Quarrington,  Lincoln- 
shire, 26  April  1868,  the  second  son  of 
Frederick  William  Shannon,  rector  of 
Quarrington  with  Old  Sleaford,  by  his 
first  wife,  Catherine  Emma,  daughter  of 
Dr.  Daniel  Manthorp,  of  Thorpe  Abbey, 
Thorpe-le-Soken,  Essex.  On  leaving  St. 
John's  School,  Leatherhead,  he  was  ap- 
prenticed to  one  of  the  last  of  those  wood- 
engravers  upon  whom  then  depended  the 
existence  of  illustrated  books  and  periodi- 
cals. In  his  employer's  workshop  he  was 
joined  by  Charles  Ricketts  [q.v.]  with 
whom  he  entered  and  attended  the  Lam- 
beth School  of  Art ;  and  eventually  they 
shared  lodgings. 

This  early  companionship  decided  the 
future  circumstances  of  the  lives  of  Shan- 
non and  Ricketts ;  for  they  kept  house  to- 
gether until  the  death  of  the  latter  in  1981, 
pursuing  the  plastic  arts  in  almost  every 
form  with  single-minded,  ardent  intensity. 
By  the  time  that  they  had  qualified  in 
their  specific  art  it  was  dead,  kiUed  by 
photo-engraving.  Turning  wholly  to  crea- 
tive art,  they  worked  at  first  at  illustration, 
Shannon's  principal  drawings  being  done 
for  Quilter's  Universal  Review,  but  culmi- 
nating in  four  plates  for  Oscar  Wilde's 
A  House  of  Pomegranates  (1891),  a  book 
mainly  illustrated  by  Ricketts.  But  being 
consummate  wood-engravers,  they  were 
not  content  to  work  thus  for  publishers ; 
their  aim  was  to  engrave  their  own  design, 
controlling  all  the  circumstances  of  book- 
production;  and  so  to  create  a  complete 
harmony  with  their  blocks.  The  first  book 
thus  essayed  was  George  Thomley's  trans- 
lation of  Daphnis  and  ChloS  (1893),  in 
which  Shannon's  share  was  to  produce  a 
series  of  idylls  in  line  which  affected  his 
pictorial  invention  throughout  his  first 
period.  In  the  second.  Hero  and  Leander 
by  Marlowe  and  Chapman  (1894),  Shan- 
non's share,  if  smaller,  was  of  a  maturing 
delicacy.  Their  last  joint  enterprise  was 
The  Dial,  of  which  five  numbers  were  issued 
between  1889  and  1897  with  the  help  of 
the  poets  John  Gray  and  Thomas  Sturge 
Moore,  and  to  which  Shannon  contributed 
a  number  of  lithographs,  examples  of  an 
art  then  in  danger  of  falling  to  trade- 
printers  ;  and  the  great  series  of  Shannon's 
prints  in  this  medium  later  came  to  be 


805 


Shannon 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


recognized  as  one  of  the  major  British 
manifestations  of  that  art.  His  early 
prints  were  almost  wholly  begun  on  the 
stone ;  later  he  would  often  work  with  a 
transfer  throughout;  the  most  desirable 
proofs  are  those  which  came  from  his  own 
hand.  Of  this  period  Ricketts  listed  fifty- 
four  prints ;  they  are  idyUic  in  theme,  like 
his  wood  engravings.  Some  may  be  echoes 
of  his  boyhood,  most  are  studies  from  the 
nude ;  but  there  are  also  a  few  portraits. 
Throughout  there  is  a  pervasive  silvery 
quality,  an  Ulumination  and  beauty  that 
was  his  secret. 

When  this  work  had  apparently  come 
to  an  end,  Shannon  was  in  full  career 
as  a  painter  of  large  canvases  in  oils, 
that  brought  him  European  consideration. 
Many  of  these  were  worked  out  from  his 
lithograph  designs:  the  spare,  austere 
figures  and  cool  silvery  light  gained  in  the 
richer  medium.  At  the  same  time  the 
subtle  qualities  of  contour  and  texture 
found  equal  felicity  of  expression  in  a 
number  of  portraits  and  self-portraits, 
especially  in  Hon.  Mrs.  Chaloner  Dowdall 
('The  Lady  with  the  Cyclamen',  1899); 
while  some  of  his  most  successful  other 
works  of  this  time,  such  as  '  TibuUus  in  the 
House  of  Delia'  (1898)  (in  which  there 
are  portraits  of  himself  and  his  friends 
Ricketts,  Lucien  Pissarro,  and  Sturge 
Moore),  were  developed  from  his  first 
period  of  lithography. 

From  1904  to  1919  Shannon  returned 
to  lithography,  producing  forty-six  cata- 
logued prints.  These,  with  their  opulent 
contours  and  rich  darks,  showed  a  change 
of  purpose  and  conception ;  and  this  was 
further  manifested  in  his  painting,  which 
was  then  stabilized. 

Throughout  his  full  working  life  Shan- 
non had  followed  his  friend's  interest  in 
connoisseiirship  in  the  arts:  hke  the 
brothers  Goncoiui;,  by  their  flair  and 
deeply  foxmded  taste  they  had  formed 
outstanding  collections.  This  brought  its 
own  kind  of  fine  reputation,  but  it  may  be 
that  it  distracted  them  in  their  creative 
art.  At  any  rate,  Shannon  spent  his  later 
years  realizing  projects  that  had  their 
origin  in  the  imaginative  excitement  of 
youth,  and  did  not  proceed  to  further 
achievement. 

In  1928  Shannon's  native  county  tardily 
paid  him  the  tribute  of  a  one-man  exhibi- 
tion at  Lincoln.  On  certain  of  the  works 
shown  there  being  returned  to  his  studio 
in  January  1929,  he  was  re-hanging  them 
on  the  principal  staircase  when  he  fell  from 
the  ladder,  striking  his  head  on  the  marble 


pavement  of  the  entrance  hall.  No  frac- 
ture could  be  found,  and  after  hovering 
for  several  weeks  between  Ufe  and  death 
he  made  an  apparent  physical  recovery; 
but  he  was  never  again  conscious  of  his 
environment,  nor  even  recognized  the 
friends  who  ministered  to  him  until  his; 
death  which  took  place  at  Kew  18  Marc 
1937. 

Shannon  was  elected  A.R.A.  in  1911 
and  R.A.  in  1921.  There  are  important 
works  of  his  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  the 
Musee  du  Luxembourg,  Paris,  the  Metro- 
politan Museum,  New  York,  and  in  public 
galleries  at  Bremen,  Munich,  Venice, 
Liverpool,  and  Manchester.  Of  the  early 
lithographs  the  following  may  also  be 
mentioned:  'Shepherd  in  a  Mist'  (1892), 
'Apple-Gatherers'  (1895),  'The  Bathers' 
(1904);  of  his  portraits  'Mrs.  Dowdall' 
(1899),  'Mrs.  Patrick  CampbeU'  (1908), 
'Princess  Patricia  of  Connaught'  (1918- 
1919) ;  among  the  self-portraits  'The  Man 
in  a  Black  Shirt'  (1897)  and  'The  Man  in 
a  Striped  Shirt'  (1901);  and  of  the  other 
paintings  'A  Wounded  Amazon'  (1896), 
'The  Bath  of  Venus'  (1898-1904),  'The 
Romantic  Landscape'  (1904),  'Summer' 
(1905). 

There  are  self-portraits  of  Shannon 
(1897  and  1918)  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

[C.  Ricketts,  A  Catalogue  of  Mr.  Shannon's 
Lithographs:  this  contains  an  engraving  by 
the  author  of  an  admirable  medallion  of  Shan- 
non's head  modelled  by  Alphonse  Legros 
(Vale  Press),  1902 ;  Georges  Derry  (Rainforth 
Armitage  Walker),  The  Lithographs  of  Charles 
Shannon,  1920 ;  Masters  of  Modern  Art,  Charles 
Shannon  (containing  a  list  of  his  works  up  to 
1919),  1920 ;  E,  B.  George,  Charles  Shannon 
(Contemporary  British  Artists),  1924;  C. 
Ricketts  in  UArt  et  les  artistes,  vol.  x,  1910 ; 
The  Times,  19  March  1937;  personal  know- 
ledge. See  also,  for  much  illuminating  detail 
about  the  early  working  life  of  the  two  friends, 
Sir  Charles  Holmes,  Self  and  Partners,  1936, 
and  Sir  WiUiam  Rothenstein,  Men  and  Memo- 
ries, 3  vols.,  1931-1939.] 

Gordon  Bottomley. 

SHARPEY-SCHAFER,  Sm  EDWARD 
ALBERT       (1850-1935),       physiologist. 

[See  SCHATER.] 

SHAW,  THOMAS,  Baron  Shaw,  later 
first  Baron  Craigmyle  (1850-1937), 
lawyer  and  politician,  the  only  son  of 
Alexander  Shaw,  of  Dunfermline,  by  his 
wife,  Isabella  Wishart,  was  bom  there 
23  May  1850.  His  father,  who  was  of 
highland  origin,  and  carried  on  business 
as  a  baker,  died  when  Thomas  was  in  his 


is 

isl 

1 


806 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Shaw,  T. 


sixth  year,  and  thereafter  his  upbringing 
was  in  the  hands  of  one  of  those  inestim- 
able and  self-sacrificing  Scottish  mothers 
who  know  so  well  how  to  combine  for  their 
sons  affection  with  ambition.  He  attended 
the  High  School  of  Dunfermline  of  which 
he  became  dux  and  on  leaving  it  was 
apprenticed  to  a  local  solicitor.  He  decided 
on  adventuring  to  the  Scottish  bar  and 
proceeded  to  the  university  of  Edinburgh 
where  he  pursued  his  studies  in  the  facul- 
ties of  arts  and  law  with  ardour  and  dis- 
tinction. He  was  awarded  the  Hamilton 
fellowship  in  mental  philosophy  and  the 
lord  rector's  historical  prize,  and  for  a  time 
acted  as  assistant  to  Professor  Henry 
Calderwood  [q.v.]  in  the  class  of  moral 
philosophy.  In  1875  he  was  admitted  a 
member  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates. 

The  generous  and  democratic  fraternity 
of  the  Parliament  House  is  always  ready 
to  extend  a  welcome  to  abiUty,  however 
humble  in  origin,  but  at  the  price  of  con- 
formity with  its  high  professional  stan- 
dards. This  price  Shaw  was  not  invariably 
disposed  to  pay.  He  early  recognized  that 
for  him  the  path  of  advancement  lay  in 
politics.  He  did  not,  however,  neglect  the 
law  and  soon  acquired  a  considerable 
practice,  especially  in  jury  trials,  civil  and 
criminal,  which  provided  a  more  congenial 
Sphere  for  the  exercise  of  his  gifts  of 
advocacy  than  the  more  exacting  tasks 
of  legal  argument.  He  first  entered  parlia- 
ment in  1892  as  liberal  member  for  the 
Hawick  District  of  Burghs,  a  seat  which 
he  continued  to  hold  imtil  1909,  that  is, 
throughout  the  whole  of  his  poUtical  life. 
He  was  a  home  ruler,  an  opponent  of  the 
South  African  war,  an  ardent  land  law 
reformer,  and  in  Church  connexion  an 
irreconcilable  dissenter.  His  highly  effec- 
tive gifts  as  a  poUtical  orator  rendered 
him  a  valuable  asset  to  the  advanced  wing 
of  the  Uberal  party  in  Scotland.  In  1886 
he  set  foot  on  the  first  rung  of  the  ladder 
of  official  preferment  by  being  appointed 
an  advocate-depute  in  the  Crown  Office, 
and  from  1894  to  1895  he  was  solicitor- 
general  in  succession  to  Alexander  Asher 
and  became  a  Q.C.  in  the  former  year.  In 
December  1905  his  political  services  were 
rewarded  by  his  appointment  as  lord  advo- 
cate in  the  government  of  Sir  Henry 
CampbeU-Bannerman,  and  in  January 
1906  he  was,  as  is  customary,  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council. 

In  1909  Shaw  was  appointed  on  the 
nomination  of  Asquith  a  lord  of  appeal  in 
ordinary  in  circumstances  which  the  con- 
temporary press  described  as  'not  par- 


ticularly auspicious'.  On  2  February  1909 
Lord  Robertson  died  suddenly  in  the  South 
of  France,  thus  causing  a  vacancy  in  the 
appellate  tribunal.  Shaw,  who  was  at  the 
time  engaged  as  leading  counsel  for  one  of 
the  parties  in  a  divorce  case  which  had 
attracted  much  public  notice  and  was  then 
being  heard  in  the  Court  of  Session,  aban- 
doned his  client  at  a  critical  stage  of  the 
proceedings  and  departed  to  London  in 
order  to  urge  personally  upon  the  prime 
minister  his  claims  to  the  vacant  office. 
He  was  successful  and  received  the  ap- 
pointment and  a  life  peerage  with  the  title 
of  Lord  Shaw,  of  Dunfermline.  Among 
other  distinctions  he  was  an  honorary 
bencher  of  the  Middle  Temple  (1910)  and 
he  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  the  universities  of  St .  Andrews  ( 1 902) , 
Aberdeen  (1906),  Edinburgh  (1908),  and 
Pennsylvania. 

From  1909  to  1929,  when  he  resigned, 
Shaw  discharged  his  judicial  duties  in  the 
House  of  Lords  and  the  Privy  Council  with 
competent  assiduity.  The  judgements 
which  he  delivered  have  literary  style  and 
lucidity,  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  made 
any  distinctive  contribution  to  the  law. 
His  best-known  effort  was  his  dissent  from 
all  his  colleagues  and  all  the  judges  below 
in  Rex  v.  Halliday  (1917),  in  which  with 
much  vigour  he  condemned  as  illegal  a 
defence  of  the  realm  regulation  authorizing 
internment  made  during  the  war  of  1914- 
1918.  So  far  as  the  treatment  of  Scottish 
appeals  is  concerned  he  was  from  1913 
onwards  overshadowed  by  the  presence 
and  authority  of  Lord  Dunedin. 

On  several  occasions  Shaw  rendered  use- 
ful service  by  presiding  over  public  in- 
quiries, notably  the  royal  commission  on 
the  importation  of  arms  into  the  Dublin 
district  (1914),  the  Scottish  committee  on 
the  state  purchase  of  the  liquor  trade 
(1917),  and  a  court  of  inquiry  concerning 
the  wages  and  conditions  of  employment 
of  dock  labour  in  the  United  Kingdom 
(1920).  In  an  article  which  he  contributed 
to  the  Fortnightly  Review  in  1900  on  'The 
Scottish  University  Crisis'  he  made  a 
strong  plea  for  extending  free  education  in 
Scotland  to  the  universities  by  the  aboli- 
tion of  class  fees.  This  article  attracted 
the  attention  of  Andrew  Carnegie  [q.v.], 
a  fellow  native  of  Dunfermline,  and  un- 
doubtedly greatly  influenced  him  in  found- 
ing (1901)  the  Carnegie  Trust  for  the 
Universities  of  Scotland,  with  its  twofold 
object  of  assisting  students  by  the  pay- 
ment of  their  fees  and  of  improving  the 
equipment  of  the  imiversities. 


807 


Shaw,  T. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Shaw  always  retained  his  early  interest 
in  literature  and  was  himself  the  author  of 
a  number  of  books.  The  best  known  is  his 
Letters  to  Isabel  (1921),  an  unconventional 
autobiography  in  the  guise  of  a  series  of 
letters  written  to  one  of  his  daughters,  in 
which  he  describes  the  leading  features  of 
his  career  as  he  wished  it  to  be  appreciated 
by  posterity.  So  far  as  it  purports  to  nar- 
rate facts  and  to  convey  impressions  it 
must  be  read  with  considerable  reserva- 
tions. A  sequel  in  similar  vein,  entitled 
The  Other  Bundle,  appeared  in  1927.  In 
1911  he  published  a  lecture  on  Legislature 
and  Judiciary  which  he  had  given  at  Uni- 
versity College,  London ;  an  account  of  his 
visits  to  the  annual  meetings  of  the  Ameri- 
can and  Canadian  Bar  Associations  in 
1922  and  the  addresses  which  he  there 
delivered  are  to  be  found  in  a  volume 
entitled  The  Law  of  the  Kinsmen  (1923) ; 
in  1928  he  published  a  short  study  of  The 
Trial  of  Jesus  Christ  and  in  1933  John 
Marshall  in  Diplomacy  and  in  Law,  a 
sketch  of  the  life  of  Chief  Justice  Marshall 
of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court.  Plays 
in  verse  on  Darnley  (1925)  and  Leicester 
(1931)  further  testify  to  his  versatility. 

On  his  resignation  in  1929  Lord  Shaw's 
life  peerage  was  converted  into  an  ordinary 
barony  and,  taking  his  new  title  from  the 
estate  which  he  had  bought  in  Aberdeen- 
shire, he  was  thenceforth  known  as  Lord 
Craigmyle. 

However  much  controversy  attended 
his  public  career  Craigmyle  was  singularly 
happy  in  his  domestic  life  where  he  was 
assured  of  admiration  and  affection.  He 
married  in  1879  Elsie  Stephen  (died  1939), 
daughter  of  George  Forrest,  of  Ludquharn, 
Aberdeenshire,  and  had  a  son  and  three 
daughters.  He  died  at  Glasgow  28  June 
1937,  and  was  succeeded  as  second  baron 
by  his  son,  Alexander  (1883-1944),  who 
married  the  eldest  daughter  of  James  Lyle 
Mackay,  first  Earl  of  Inchcape  [q.v.]. 

[The  Times,  30  June  1937;  Scotsman,  15 
February  1909 ;  Lord  Shaw,  Letters  to  Isabel, 
1921,  and  The  Other  Bundle,  1927;  Journal  of 
Comparative  Legislation,  July  1921 ;  Thomas 
Shaw  (First  Lord  Craigmyle).  A  monograph 
by  his  son,  1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Macmillan. 

SHAW,  THOMAS  (1872-1938),  labour 
leader  and  politician,  commonly  known 
as  Tom  Shaw,  was  born  at  Waterside, 
Colne,  Lancashire,  9  April  1872,  the  eldest 
son  of  Ellis  Shaw,  miner,  of  Colne,  by  his 
wife,  Sarah  Ann  Wilkinson.  Tom  Shaw 
was  educated  at  St.  James's  elementarj'^ 


school  at  Waterside,  and  when  ten  years  old 
entered  a  textile  factory  as  a  half-time 
worker :  he  left  school  finally  at  the  age  of 
twelve.  Night  schools  and  technical  classes 
made  up  to  some  extent  for  his  lack  of 
early  education  and  developed  in  particu- 
lar a  linguistic  ability  unusual  in  such  cir- 
cumstances: his  aptitude  for  French  and 
German  served  him  greatly  in  later  life. 
Before  he  was  twenty-one  he  was  a  member 
of  the  Colne  Weavers'  Association,  subse- 
quently becoming  its  secretary:  he  alsoi 
promoted  the  formation  of  the  Northern 
Counties'  Textile  Federation,  which  em-1 
braced  all  the  main  sections  of  the  cotton  j 
trade  unions,  and  he  was  its  first  secretary. 
From  1911  to  1929,  and  again  from  1931 
until  his  death,  he  was  secretary  of  the  In- 
ternational Federation  of  Textile  Workers 
and  in  the  course  of  his  duties  visited 
every  country  in  Europe  except  Spain  and 
Portugal,  combining  an  intimate  know- 
ledge of  the  technicalities  of  the  develop- 
ing industry  with  a  grasp  of  industrial 
politics  both  at  home  and  abroad.  During 
the  war  of  1914-1918  he  was  director  of 
national  service  for  the  West  Midland 
region,  and  afterwards  urged  the  claims 
of  the  King's  Roll  for  the  employment  of 
ex-servicemen.  He  was  appointed  C.B.E. 
in  1919. 

An  enthusiastic  supporter  of  the  labour 
party  from  its  inception  (as  the  labour 
representation  committee)  in  1900,  Shaw 
was  returned  to  parliament  for  Preston  in 
1918  and  held  the  seat  continuously  until 
his  defeat  in  1931.  He  was  junior  labour 
whip  in  1919;  minister  of  labour  in  the 
first  labour  government  (January-October 
1924) ;  and  secretary  of  state  for  war  in  the 
second  labour  administration  (1929-1931). 
In  the  former  period  he  introduced  mea- 
sures which  enhanced  the  benefits  of  the 
Unemployment  Insurance  Acts.  He  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1924. 

Upon  the  reconstruction  of  the  Labour 
and  Socialist  International  at  Hamburg  in 
1923,  when  Arthur  Henderson  [q.v.]  was 
appointed  chairman,  Shaw  was  elected 
joint  secretary  with  Friedrich  Adler,  the 
Austrian  socialist,  its  former  secretary, 
with  whom  he  served  imtil  1925.  In  that 
capacity  he  visited  the  Ruhr  and  reported 
against  its  continued  occupation  by  French 
troops.  He  stressed  the  impossibiUty  of 
enforcing  the  German  reparations  laid 
down  in  the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  and  fore- 
cast the  probability  of  another  war  in 
twenty  years'  time. 

In  1926  Shaw  headed  a  delegation  to 
investigate  conditions  in  the  Indian  textile 


808 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Sheppard 


industry;  and  he  was  also  an  informed 
member  of  the  Holman  Gregory  commis- 
sion on  workmen's  compensation  (1917- 
1920).  A  convinced  champion  of  the 
League  of  Nations  and  the  International 
Labour  Organization,  he  was  diligent  in 
promoting  the  Washington  convention  for 
a  forty-eight  hours  working  week  (1919) 
and  was  highly  critical  when  in  1923  the 
British  government  declined  to  follow  the 
lead  of  France,  Belgium,  and  Holland  in 
ratifying  the  proposal.  A  bill  in  Shaw's 
name  for  implementing  the  convention 
was  before  parliament  in  1924,  when  the 
labour  government  fell. 

While  disagreeing  fundamentally  with 
communist  principles  and  the  Russian 
Soviet  system,  Shaw  favoured  friendly 
political  and  trade  relations  with  Russia 
and  supported  the  council  of  action  repre- 
senting the  British  trade  union  movement 
in  its  efforts  to  prevent  British  inter- 
vention in  the  Russo-PoUsh  conflict  in 
1921. 

From  1931  Shaw  devoted  his  energies 
to  the  International  Federation  of  Textile 
Workers,  and  it  was  in  his  capacity  as 
secretary  of  that  body  that  he  attended 
as  fraternal  delegate  the  anniversary  con- 
gress held  in  Brussels  in  1938.  There  he 
was  taken  suddenly  ill,  and,  returning  to 
London,  died  there  26  September.  He 
married  in  1893  Susannah  Whitaker  Sterne 
Ryan,  daughter  of  Charles  Woodhead, 
tackier,  and  had  four  daughters,  two  of 
whom  predeceased  their  father. 

Possessed  of  a  gift  of  plain,  blunt  speech, 
and  a  clear  and  logical  mind,  Shaw  was 
a  popular  figure  in  his  native  county  as 
well  as  in  the  wider  world.  He  had  no 
particular  hobby  beyond  the  collection 
of  'tacklers'  tales' — ^unique  examples  of 
Lancashire  factory  humour — ^which  he  told 
and  retold  with  unfailing  and  infectious 
enjoyment. 

[The  Times,  27  September  1938;  Colne 
Times,  30  September  1938 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

SHEPPARD,  HUGH  RICHARD 
LAWRIE  (1880-1937),  dean  of  Canter- 
bury, was  bom  at  Windsor  2  September 
1880,  the  younger  son  of  Edgar  Sheppard, 
later  sub-dean  of  the  Chapels  Royal  and 
canon  of  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor,  by 
his  wife,  Mary,  daughter  of  Richard  White, 
of  Instow,  Devonshire.  He  was  educated 
at  Marlborough  and  Trinity  Hall,  Cam- 
bridge (1901-1904),  and  after  periods  at 
Oxford  House,  Bethnal  Green,  as  lay- 


secretary  to  Cosmo  Gordon  Lang,  then 
bishop  of  Stepney,  and  at  Cuddesdon  Col- 
lege, was  ordained  (1907, 1908)  as  chaplain 
of  Oxford  House  of  which  he  became  head 
(1909).  Resigning  through  over-strain,  he 
again  became  secretary  to  Lang,  then 
archbishop  of  York,  until  he  was  given 
charge  of  St.  Mary's,  Bourdon  Street, 
London,  and  the  chaplaincy  of  the  newly 
founded  Cavendish  Club  (1911),  and  then 
of  Grosvenor  Chapel,  South  Audley  Street 
(1918). 

In  July  1914  Sheppard  accepted  the 
vicarage  of  St.  Martin-in-the-Fields,  Tra- 
falgar Square,  and  on  the  outbreak  of  war 
the  chaplaincy  (for  three  months)  of  Lady 
Dudley's  Australian  hospital  in  France. 
Despite  recurrent  attacks  of  illness,  his 
work  at  St.  Martin's  brought  it  world-wide 
fame  through  the  development  of  religious 
broadcasting  and  the  use  of  its  position  as 
a  church  open  day  and  night.  To  great 
organizing  ability,  intuitive  sympathy, 
and  simple,  kindly,  often  humorous  direct- 
ness of  speech,  Sheppard  united  an  irresis- 
tible desire  to  make  others  happier  and  to 
enlist  them  in  a  fellowship  of  service.  In 
1917  with  William  Temple  (afterwards 
successively  archbishop  of  York  and  Can- 
terbury) he  inaugurated  the  Life  and 
Liberty  Movement  which  led  in  1919  to  the 
establishment  of  the  National  Assembly 
of  the  Church  of  England.  In  1924  he 
published,  as  The  Human  Parson,  the 
pastoral  theology  lectures  which  he  had 
delivered  at  Cambridge  in  1921,  and  in 
1927  The  Impatience  of  a  Parson,  after  his 
resignation  of  St.  Martin's  through  iU 
health.  He  was  then  appointed  C.H., 
having  already  been  a  chaplain  of  the 
Order  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem  since  1910. 
In  1929  he  became  dean  of  Canterbury, 
and  exercised  remarkable  influence  but 
was  compelled  by  asthma  to  resign  in 
February  1931.  From  1934  until  his  death 
he  was  a  canon  and  precentor  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral,  and  in  1936  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Peace  Pledge  Union  to  which  he 
devoted  much  energy.  In  1927  the  uni- 
versity of  Glasgow  conferred  upon  him  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.D.,  and  in  1937  the 
students  there  elected  him  lord  rector  in 
preference  to  Mr.  J.  B.  S.  Haldane  and 
Mr.  Winston  Churchill.  He  died  suddenly 
in  London  31  October  1937  and  was  buried 
at  Canterbury. 

Sheppard  married  in  1915  Alison  Len- 
nox, only  daughter  of  William  Oswald 
Carver,  J.P.,  of  Cranage  Hall,  Holmes 
Chapel,  Cheshire,  and  had  two  daugh- 
ters.  A  portrait  by  (Sir)  G.  F.  Kelly  is  in 


809 


Sheppard 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  vestry-hall  of  St.  Martin's,  and  there 
is  another  in  the  deanery  at  Canterbury. 

[The  Times,  1  November  1937 ;  Dick  Shep- 
pard by  his  Friends,  1938 ;  R.  Ellis  Roberts, 
H.  R.  L.  Sheppard.  Life  and  Letters,  1942 ; 
personal  knowledge.]  Claud  Jenkins. 


SHORTT,  EDWARD  (1862-1935),  poU- 
tician,  was  bom  at  Byker,  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne,  10  March  1862,  the  second  son  of 
Edward  Shortt,  vicar  of  St.  Anthony's 
church,  Byker,  who  was  descended  from 
an  Irish  family  in  county  Tyrone,  by  his 
wife,  Josepha,  daughter  of  Joseph  Rush- 
ton,  of  Alderley  Edge.  Shortt  was  edu- 
cated at  Durham  School  and  at  Durham 
University,  where  he  was  Lindsay  scholar 
and  graduated  in  classics  in  1884.  In  1890 
he  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Middle 
Temple,  of  which  he  was  elected  a  bencher 
in  1919,  and  joined  the  North-Eastem 
circuit.  He  was  recorder  of  Sunderland 
from  1907  to  1918  and  took  silk  in  1910. 
Elected  as  a  liberal  for  Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne  in  January  1910,  he  retained  the  seat 
(Western  division,  1918-1922)  throughout 
his  parUamentary  career. 

Shortt  made  no  great  success  at  the  bar, 
but  in  parliament  he  was  more  successful. 
He  was  a  clear  and  lucid  debater,  and  as 
a  private  member  he  was  as  popular  in  the 
House  as  he  had  been  on  circuit.  On  the 
home  rule  bill  of  1912  he  spoke  frequently, 
and  his  mastery  of  the  details  of  the  mea- 
sure served  him  well.  In  June  1917  he  was 
appointed  chairman  of  a  select  committee 
set  up  to  review  the  general  administration 
of  the  MiUtary  Service  Acts,  which  reported 
in  August,  recommending  that  medical 
examinations  should  be  transferred  from 
the  War  Office  to  a  civilian  authority.  By 
his  firm  and  tactful  handling  of  a  subject 
bristling  with  difficulties,  he  recommended 
himself  to  Lloyd  George,  who  in  April 
1918  appointed  Shortt  to  succeed  Henry 
Edward  Duke  (afterwards  Lord  Merrivale, 
q.v.)  as  chief  secretary  for  Ireland.  In  that 
post  Shortt  was  confronted  by  serious 
trouble,  but  after  acting  promptly  and 
arresting  150  Sinn  Feiners  he  was  able  to 
report  in  July  that  the  situation  was  much 
improved.  In  January  1919  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Home  Office  in  order  to  deal 
with  the  threatened  poUce  strike.  In  that 
year  there  were  two  strikes,  in  March  and 
in  August,  of  which  the  second  was  the 
more  serious  in  the  provinces.  Shortt 
showed  skill  and  courage  as  well  as  sym- 
pathy in  remedying  genuine  grievances, 
and  a  satisfactory  settlement  was  reached. 


His  personal  popularity  with  the  force  was 
shown  on  his  resignation  by  a  remarkable 
tribute  from  the  constabulary  in  which 
full  recognition  was  made  of  the  work 
which  he  had  done  for  them  during  his 
term  of  office. 

With  the  fall  of  the  coahtion  govern- 
ment in  October  1922,  Shortt's  political 
career  came  to  an  end.  Not  so  his  activity. 
He  was  chairman  of  the  committees  on 
the  rating  of  machinery,  on  trusts,  and  on; 
heavy  motor  traffic,  as  well  as  others.  In 
November  1929  he  succeeded  T.  P. 
O'Connor  [q.v.]  as  second  president  of  the 
British  Board  of  Film  Censors,  a  salaried 
appointment  but  independent  of  trade 
control.  In  November  1933  he  was  ap' 
pointed  chairman  of  the  committee  o: 
investigation  into  the  Agricultural  Market- 
ing Act. 

Shortt  married  in  1890  Isabella  Stewart, 
daughter  of  A.  G.  Scott,  of  Valparaiso,  and 
had  a  son,  who  was  killed  in  action  in  1917,; 
and  three  daughters.  He  died  in  London  of 
septicaemia  following  influenza  10  Novem- 
ber 1935. 

Shortt  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
and  of  the  Irish  Privy  Council  in  1918. 
The  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L.  was  con 
ferred  upon  him  by  Durham  University 
in  1920. 

[The  Times,  11,  12,  15  November  1935.] 
E.  I.  Carlyle. 

SIDEBOTHAM,  HERBERT  (1872- 
1940),  journaUst,  was  born  at  Manchester 
21  December  1872,  the  only  son  of  Edmund 
Sidebotham,  of  Hyde  and  Manchester,  by 
his  wife,  Agnes  Greaves  Dixon.  Educated 
at  Manchester  Grammar  School,  he  went 
in  1891  as  a  scholar  to  BaUiol  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  was  awarded  a  first  class 
in  classical  moderations  (1893)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1895),  won  a  Craven  scholar- 
ship (1892)  and  the  Gaisford  prizes  for 
Greek  verse  (1893)  and  prose  (1894),  and 
was  proxime  accessit  for  the  Ireland  scholar- 
ship (1894).  Thence  he  passed  (1895)  into 
the  office  of  the  Manchester  Guardian  as  a 
leader-writer  under  its  famous  editor, 
C.  P.  Scott  [q.v.],  and  so  remained  for  over 
twenty -two  years.  Having  made  a  hobby 
of  military  history,  he  became  during  the 
South  African  war  the  paper's  military 
critic  under  the  pen-natne  'Student  of 
War' ;  and  the  great  credit  with  which  he 
filled  that  role  became  even  greater  when 
he  filled  it  again  during  the  war  of  1914- 
1918.  In  1918  he  transferred  to  London 
to  be  the  miUtary  critic  of  The  Times ;  but 
before  he  got  into  his  stride,  the  war  ended. 


810 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Sidgwick 


He  remained  with  The  Times  until  July 
1921  as  'Student  of  Polities',  writing  a 
series  of  brilliant  political  charaeter- 
sketehes,  reprinted  in  1921  as  Pillars  of 
the  State.  For  a  short  time  (1922-1923)  he 
became  (at  Lloyd  George's  suggestion) 
political  adviser  to  the  Daily  Chronicle; 
but  the  paper  could  not  offer  sufficient 
scope  for  his  pen,  and  he  transferred  to  the 
service  of  the  brothers  Berry,  who  owned 
conjointly  the  Sunday  Times,  the  Daily 
Sketch,  and  (later)  the  Daily  Telegraph. 
On  the  first  he  wrote  as  'Scrutator',  on 
the  second  as  '  Candidus ',  and  on  the  third 
as  '  Student  of  Politics ' .  In  the '  Scrutator ' 
articles  he  reached  his  highest  level ;  they 
combine  a  style  of  brilliant  maturity  with 
a  wealth  of  knowledge  and  often  an  almost 
uncanny  insight;  no  others  then  written 
were  more  widely  and  attentively  read  by 
influential  people.  His '  Candidus '  articles, 
in  a  Ughter  vein,  were  also  original;  in 
1938  he  made  a  book  of  them.  The  Sense 
of  Things.  A  personal  outside  interest  was 
Zionism ;  for  over  twenty  years  he  wrote 
articles  in  its  British  organs,  and  he  also 
published  two  books  on  the  subject,  Eng- 
land and  Palestine;  Essays  towards  the 
Restoration  of  the  Jewish  State  (1918)  and 
Great  Britain  and  Palestine  (1937). 

Sidebotham's  conversation  mirrored  a 
broad,  deep  culture;  he  never  forgot  his 
classics  (as  late  as  1937  he  printed  privately 
twenty  difficult  Shakespearian  sonnets 
done  into  Latin  elegiacs) ;  he  also  read 
foreign  books  voraciously.  He  was  a  good 
amateur  pianist,  early  addicted  to  Liszt, 
but  later  to  Mozart,  and  always  to  Bee- 
thoven. He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Inner  Temple  in  1912,  but  did  not  practise. 
He  married  in  1899  Florence,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Stephens,  a  Salford  alderman, 
and  had  three  daughters.  He  died  at  Roe- 
hampton  19  March  1940. 

[Private  information ;  personal  knowledge.] 
R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 


SIDGWICK,  ELEANOR  MILDRED 
(1845-1936),  principal  of  Newnham  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  was  born  at  Whittinge- 
hame,  East  Lothian,  11  March  1845,  the 
eldest  daughter  and  eldest  of  the  eight 
surviving  children  of  James  Maitland  Bal- 
four, of  Whittingehame,  by  his  wife.  Lady 
Blanche  Harriet,  second  daughter  of  James 
Brownlow  William  Gascoyne-Cecil,  second 
Marquess  of  Salisbury.  Among  her  five 
brothers  were  Arthur  James,  first  Earl  of 
Balfour,  Francis  Maitland  Balfour  [qq.v.], 
and  Gerald  William,  second  Earl  of  Bal- 


four. Lady  Frances  Balfour  [q.v.]  was  the 
wife  of  her  youngest  brother,  Eustace 
James  Anthony  Balfour. 

Eleanor  Balfour's  own  intellectual  gifts 
fitted  her  for  this  brilliant  family  circle. 
The  closest  bonds  united  her  with  her 
eldest  brother,  and  each  had  great  influ- 
ence upon  the  other's  thoughts  and  inter- 
ests. In  early  years  her  bent  was  towards 
mathematics  and  scientific  research,  stimu- 
lated by  her  brother-in-law  J.  W.  Strutt, 
third  Lord  Rayleigh,  the  joint  discoverer 
of  argon  [q.v.],  in  some  of  whose  work  she 
collaborated. 

In  1876  Miss  Balfour  married  Henry 
Sidgwick,  then  praelector  on  moral  and 
political  philosophy  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge  [q.v.].  Their  marriage  was  one 
of  great  happiness  and  shared  work,  broken 
only  by  his  death  in  1900.  They  had  no 
chUdren.  Even  before  her  marriage  Mrs. 
Sidgwick  was  practically  interested  in  the 
two  main  activities  with  which  her  name 
is  associated,  the  higher  education  of 
women,  and  the  Society  for  Psychical  Re- 
search. Sidgwick  was  one  of  the  pioneers 
through  whose  exertions  Newnham  College 
was  founded  at  Cambridge,  and  in  1880 
Mrs.  Sidgwick  became  its  sole  treasurer, 
a  post  which  she  held  until  1919.  From 
1880  to  1882  she  was  vice-principal,  and 
in  1892  she  succeeded  Anne  Jemima 
Clough  [q.v.]  as  principal,  and  so  remained 
until  her  resignation  in  1910.  The  growth 
and  success  of  the  college  were  largely  due 
to  the  wisdom  and  generosity  of  Henry 
and  Eleanor  Sidgwick :  it  is  calculated  that 
the  latter's  own  gifts  to  it  amounted  to 
over  £30,000.  In  1894  Mrs.  Sidgwick  was 
one  of  the  first  three  women  to  serve  on 
a  royal  commission,  being  appointed  to 
that  on  secondary  education  under  the 
chairmanship  of  James  (afterwards  Vis- 
count) Bryce  [q.v.]. 

In  1916  Mrs.  Sidgwick  left  Cambridge, 
and  went  to  Uve  with  her  brother  Gerald 
and  his  wife  at  Fisher's  Hill,  near  Woking, 
until  her  death  there  in  her  ninety-first 
year  10  February  1936.  During  these 
years,  in  collaboration  with  Gerald  Bal- 
four, she  concentrated  chiefly  upon  her 
study  of  psychical  phenomena,  and  evi- 
dences of  continuing  personality  after 
death,  conducting  her  investigations  with 
the  rare  degree  of  objectivity  characteristic 
of  her  approach  to  all  life's  problems.  She 
was  elected  president  of  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research  in  1908,  and  named 
'president  of  honour'  in  1932,  when  she 
relinquished  the  honorary  secretaryship 
which  she  had  held  for  twenty-five  years. 


811 


Sidgwick 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Her  last  address  to  the  society  was  read 
in  her  absence  by  Lord  Balfour,  whom  she 
authorized  to  state  that  she  had  reached 
{>ersonal  con^•iction  of  the  fact  of  sur- 
\ival. 

Mrs.  Sidgwick's  writings  are  chiefly  con- 
tained ia  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society' 
for  Psychical  Research.  In  1906  she  pub- 
lished, in  collaboration  with  her  brother- 
in-law  Arthur  Sidgwick,  Henry  Sidgivick, 
a  Memoir,  and  she  contributed  a  lecture 
on  'War  in  its  Ethical  and  Psychological 
Aspects'  to  The  International  Crisis  (1915). 
She  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
imiversities  of  Manchester,  Birmingham, 
St.  Andrews,  and  Edinburgh. 

A  i>ortrait  of  Mrs.  Sidgwick  as  a  yoimg 
woman  by  J.  J.  Shannon  hangs  in  the 
dining  hall  of  Clough  Hall,  Newnham 
College. 

[Ethel  Sidgwick,  Mrs.  Henry  Sidgenck, 
1938 ;  Blanche  E.  C.  Dugdale,  Arthur  James 
Balfour,  First  Earl  of  Balfour,  2  vols.,  1936; 
yetmham  College  Letter,  January  1937;  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Society  for  Psj-chical  Research, 
June  1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

BlANXHE  E.  C.  DUGDAI£. 

SBIPSON,  Sm  JOHN  \\TLLL\M 
(1858-1933),  architect,  was  bom  at  Brigh- 
ton 9  August  1858,  the  eldest  son  of 
Thomas  Simpson,  architect,  of  Brighton, 
by  his  wife,  Clara  Hart.  He  was  great- 
grandson  of  Robert  Simpson  [q.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  private  schools  and  sub- 
sequently attended  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools,  qualifying  A.R.I.B.A.  in  1882. 
After  his  election  as  a  fellow  in  1900 
he  became  closeh'  associated  with  the 
Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects :  he 
was  twice  elected  vice-president  and  was 
president  from  1919  to  1921 ;  and  he  was 
nominated  to  represent  the  institute  on 
the  coimcU  of  the  British  School  at  Rome. 
He  held  this  appointment  for  sixteen  years, 
being  one  of  the  original  members  under 
the  royal  charter. 

This  association  with  a  school  of  archi- 
tecture abroad  was  but  one  of  several 
enjoyed  by  Simpson,  who  was  president  of 
the  Union  Franco-Britannique  des  Archi- 
tectes  (1922-1923),  and  a  corresponding 
member  of  the  Institut  de  France,  the 
Sociedad  Central  de  Arquitectos,  Buenos 
Ayres,  and  the  Centralvereinigung  der 
Architekten,  Vienna. 

At  home  Simj>son  held  many  public  ap- 
pointments, including  that  of  secretary- 
general  of  the  Town  Planning  Conference 
held  in  London  in  1910.  He  specialized  in 
the  design  of  pubUc  buildings,  planning  (in 


collaboration)  the  Grafton  Street  Hospital, 
Liverpool,  the  National  Hospital  for  the 
Paralysed  and  Epileptic,  Queen  Square, 
London,  the  Art  Galleries  for  the  Corpora- 
tion of  Glasgow,  and  the  Victoria  Institute, 
Worcester.  He  was  solely  responsible  for 
the  Offices  of  the  Crown  Agents  for  the 
Colonies  at  Millbank  and  for  schools  as 
diverse  in  character  as  Roedean,  Gres- 
ham's  School,  Holt,  and  West  Downs 
School,  Winchester,  and  for  new  buildings 
at  Lancing  CoUege  and  Haileyburj-  Col- 
lege. He  also  undertook  the  design  of 
several  memorials,  including  the  Queen 
Victoria  memorial  at  Bradford ;  the  Royal 
Sussex  Regiment  memorial  at  Brighton; 
the  Onslow  Ford  memorial  in  St.  John's 
Wood  ;  and  the  Cartwright  Memorial  Hall 
at  Bradford.  In  domestic  architecture  his 
sldll  in  the  solution  of  difficult  technical 
and  engineering  problems  found  less  scop)e. 
He  was  best  known  to  the  public  for  his 
work  at  the  British  Empire  Exhibition 
held  in  1924  at  Wembley,  where,  in  colla- 
boration with  his  partner,  ^Ir.  MaxweU 
AjTton,  he  was  responsible  for  the  general 
layout,  the  stadium,  and  the  palaces  of 
industrj'  and  engineering. 

As  architect  to  the  Honoiu^ble  Society 
of  Lincoln's  Inn,  Simpson  restored  the  Old 
HaU  of  the  Inn  and  in  1928  pubUshed 
Some  Account  of  the  Old  Hall  of  Lincoln's 
Inn.  He  wrote  only  two  other  books. 
Essays  and  Memorials  (1928)  and  Paris 
Rosemary  (1927),  but  published  many  pro- 
fessional pap>ers  devoted  to  such  subjects 
as  'The  Planning  of  Cities'  and  'Open 
Spaces'. 

Simpson  died,  tmmarried,  at  his  home 
at  Highgate  30  March  1933.  He  was  ap- 
pointed K.B.E.  in  1924,  was  a  chevalier  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour,  and  was  awarded 
the  gold  medal  of  the  Societe  des  Artistes 
Fran^ais  in  1922. 

A  portrait  of  Simpson  by  Sir  A.  S.  Cope 
(1922)  is  at  the  Royal  Institute  of  British 
Architects. 

[Journal  of  the  Roval  Institute  of  British 
Architects,  29  April  and  13  May  1933;  The 
Times,  1  April  1933 ;  Sir  J.  Simpson's  own 
writings.]  W.  Gk)DFREY  Allen. 

SIMPSON,  Sm  WILLIAM  JOHN 
RITCHIE  (1855-1931),  physician  and 
pioneer  in  tropical  medicine,  was  prob- 
ably bom  27  April  1855,  the  only  child 
of  John  Simpson,  by  his  wife,  whose 
maiden  name  was  Arthur.  Both  were  of 
Scottish  descent,  and  died  when  he  was 
young.  The  place  of  his  birth  is  tmknown : 
family  tradition  says  that  it  was  Edinbiurgh: 


812 


D^3.  I«n-1M0 


SmiDie 


be  hifwgi»lf  at  iiwlrinilatiwi  attend  his 
bnthphMy  as  C3mgpw,  but  notfaer  stmte- 
mcnt  jg  confirmwl  by  official  reeotds.  He 
was  sent  to  aAooi  in  Jers^;  gEadoated 
ILB.,  CJl.  at  Abodeen  Univcnitjr  in 
1876;  and  in  1880  praoeeded  MJ).  (Abor- 
deen)  and  totdi:  the  dqdoma  of  public  health 
atCambtidge.  The  same  year  he  became 
medical  officer  of  health  at  Abeideen  and 
lectmer  on  hygiene  at  the  muvenity. 

After  studying  at  Kings  CMIege,  Lon- 
don, Simtwnn  bcrame  in  1886  the  first 
niw^iiwil  officer  of  health  for  Calcntta, 
^Hiere,  dmii^  ins  twidve  yeazB  there,  he 
found  afanoBt  the  idxrie  range  of  pcoblemB 
in  pobiic  health.  Wtth  tins  ivide  ezpen- 
enee  gained,  he  was  itcfl  qoafified  fior  the 
chair  of  byi^ene  at  King's  Ccflege,  London, 


to  ivhkfa  he  ivas  appointed  in  1898  and 
idnchhe  ocenpied  imtfl  his  leliwanent  in 
1923.  It  was  natural  that  he  should  oo- 
apaate  with  (Sr)  Patrick  Manson  [q.v.] 
and  (Sir)  James  CantKe  in  fownding  the 
London  ScImmI  oi  Tropical  Mrdirine, 
wiueh  was  opened  in  October  1899;  tikete 
he  lectured  on  tropical  hygiene  from  1898 
until  1923.  In  1926  he  was  one  of  the 
founders  d  the  Ross  TiMJiiJii*>  and  Hos- 
pital for  Tropical  Diseases  at  Putn^, 
where  he  became  the  fiest  director  of 
tropical  hygiene,  and  i^nrsician  to  the 
attadied  bospitaL 

Besides  his  regular  wotk  at  London  Uni- 
veisity,  Sinqnon  undertook  many  other 
impc^tant  tnsis.  In  1900  be  was  a  mem- 
ber of  a  commission  to  inquire  into  tfae 
dysentoy  and  CTity^ic  £cvcr  amoi^  the 
troqps  in  South  AMca.  He  had  hardly 
oonqpleted  this  task  when,  in  the  fonowii^ 
3rear,  plague  broke  oat  among  the  dense 
mass  of  refn^ees  from  the  war  area  hving 
in  uveictowded  and  insanitary  huts  in  the 
subuibsftfCa^Town.  Simpson  had  such 
success  with  his  contrtd  <rf  the  disease  that 
it  was  found  unnecessary  to  caned  the 
-visit  <rf  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Cornwall 
andYodc  Tbe  disease  was  soon  stamped 

out. 

His  wide  experienoe  of  hygiene  and  Ins 
success  at  Ci^e  Town  plaoed  Simpson  in 
tfae  front  rank  of  sanitaadans,  smd  the 
government  was  not  slow  to  reoD^iire  his 
value.  He  was  appoj"**^  f«mmissiinner  to 
investigate  plagae  in  Hoo^-Koa^  in  1908; 
sanitation  in  Sa^apore  in  1906  ;iJi^|ne  OP 
the  Gold  Coast,  and  public  health  in  Siena 
Leone,  tfae  Gold  Coast,  and  Southern 
Nigena  in  1908;  to  rqioct  on  plague  and 
public  health  in  East  Africa,  Uguda, 
and  TaawBtmr  ia  1913;  and  on  sanitatian 


in  tfae  Gold  CoMt  and  Ariianti  in  1924.  His 
last  Tirit  to  tfae  trapies  was  in  1M»  to  tfae 
Cheiter-Beatty  gnop  of  eopiwr  oanes  in 
Noitfaem  Rlwdrria  Aom  190t  onwanfe 
fae  advocated  tfae  poi^  of  (Sv)  BoBald 
Boas  [q.v.]  fior  tfae  eomlrol  of  makoia  by 
redneiag  the  moaqoto.  Inl913fae 
member  of  the  < 


in  Wot  Africa. 

SninMon  was  a  proMfie  writer,  not  onl^ 
of  oAeial  rqports.  He  was  editor  of  tfae 
Intfon  IfeiiDal  GaKOe  (188»-189i),  and 
joint  editor  of  the  Jmmmi  ti  Tmpitml 
MAJifMif  (London)  from  its  inception.  Efe 
WW  aathor  of  ^  TVeoiue  MB  Ptq^  (1905), 
The  Prmdpla  of  Hggieme  m  fwlaHem  i» 
TwapieaiamdSm^TrepiealCKmaitt  (1906). 
and  IfialmnBce  afHrniOk  m  At  Ttvfiet 
(1916).  He  also  wrote  aevcal  pt^ieas  on 
vawinallon. 


For  his  pubfic  services  ^"»f™» ' 
painted  CJi.G.  in  1909.  and 
1923.  He  received  tfae  Order  of  St.  Sava 
in  1918  for  work  in  Serbia  dnoing  the  war 
of  1914-1918.  He  gave  tfae  Ckoonian  leo- 
tnres  in  1907  at  tfae  College  of  Plijnilani 
of  widdihe  was  elected  aieflowinUOi^ 
and  he  was  president  of  tfae  Royal  Society 

rflVopieallirdicineand^nS'™^''*^^^"'*" 
don  from  1919  to  1921. 

In  1888  Shnpenn  manied  faab^a  liaiy 
Jane,  foactfadasi^itar  of  George  Jamieaan. 
DJ>.,  minirter  of  St.  Mncfaar's  rrthrdial, 
(Nd  Aberdeen,  and  had  a  son,  iribo  was 
kilkd  in  tfae  war  of  1914-1918,  and  a 
dao^dcr.  He  dBed  at  the  Ross  fwrtiliilr, 
Pntnqr>  20  Sqitember  19S1. 

light  in  bmU,  with  delicately 
feaimcs,  quiet,  ouuiieous,  and 
in  nnaner,  Snapoon  fisplayed  fais  eo>e  of 
native  gianity  when  he  was  wono^g  flor 
some  pnbfic  good.  It  was  rfaai  ai  li  riitir 
of  him  tlwt  his  last  cAorts  were  diieeted 
towards  retainig  open  spaees  in  London 
for  recreation,  partbnlaily  tfae  site  of  tfae 
FoondBiV  HospitaL 

There  is  a  bast  of  Simpson  by  Fiank 
Boocfacr  m  tfae  School  of  l^Fgiene  and 


^and  plagoe  in  the  mines  and  minii^villsgrff 

813 


Tropical: 

[AnUaUtfcfioaUMViMi;  1981,  voL  ii.  pp.  6SS 
anil68«(paiti«ft);  Ji— nMi^IViytesi  Mi* 
euK.  voL  xxzhr,  19S1 ;  Imttai,  im.  voL  1. 
p.  712  (portzait);  Tie  Timtz,  2*  ft. leather 
1931 :  pexsonal  knowledge.] 

Maloouc  WArsooe. 

«£^fTTJ.TR,  ROBERT  a857-19IO). 
labour  leader  and  poBtieiMt.  waa  born  of 
'vyocking-dBSB  Soottisfa  paimts  17  liarefa 
1857inBdAat.  He  and  has  elder  brodier 
woe  left  oipfaaas  at  an  eaily  age  and  woe 


Smillie 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


brought  up  by  their  grandmother.  He  left 
school  for  labour  at  the  age  of  nine,  but 
continued  part-time  schooling  for  three 
years  more.  Subsequently  he  joined  his 
brother  in  southern  Scotland  as  a  lad  of 
fifteen  already  broken  in  to  hard  manual 
work,  and  he  retained,  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  the  North  Irish  accent  of  his  boyhood. 
He  spent  the  whole  of  his  adult  life  in 
Lanarkshire,  and  was  by  most  regarded 
as  a  typical  Scot.  From  1878,  when  he 
married  Anne  Hamilton,  he  lived  at  Lark- 
hall,  in  the  same  house. 

Smillie's  first  post  in  the  mines  was  that 
of  pumpman,  thanks  to  unusual  physical 
strength;  within  four  years  he  was  a 
checkweighman  and  rising  to  recognized 
leadership  among  his  fellows.  Having  con- 
solidated the  local  union,  he  worked,  first, 
to  bring  it  into  association  with  other 
imions  in  the  area  to  form  a  single  body 
for  Lanarkshire ;  next,  to  get  the  Lanark- 
shire miners  federated  with  other  mining 
unions  in  Scotland;  finally,  to  bring  all 
mining  imions  in  Great  Britain  into  a 
single  all-embracing  federation,  with  close 
international  affiliations.  By  1888  these 
aims  were  accomplished ;  as  representative 
of  the  Lanarkshire  miners,  he  went  to  an 
all-British  conference  called  to  discuss  the 
demand  for  an  eight  hours'  legal  working 
day.  From  1894  to  1918  he  was  president 
of  the  Scottish  Miners'  Federation  (foimded 
1886-1887).  He  played  a  leading  part  in 
bringing  into  being  the  Miners'  Federation 
of  Great  Britain  (1888) ;  as  its  vice-presi- 
dent, he  bore  a  large  responsibiUty  for  the 
national  coal  strike  of  1912,  which  estab- 
lished the  principle  of  a  national  minimum 
wage,  although  the  Coal  Mines  (Minimum 
Wage)  Act  of  that  year  left  the  figures  to 
be  determined  locally. 

For  SmilUe,  trade  unionism  was,  in  the 
last  resort,  an  instrument  for  raising  the 
status  of  the  miner ;  he  was  always  clear 
that  if  their  ideas  of  social  justice  were  to 
be  realized  the  working  classes  had  to 
organize  poUtically  as  well  as  industrially. 
For  twelve  years  he  was  an  active  member 
of  the  Larkhall  school  board;  owing  to 
his  efforts,  this  was  one  of  the  first  places 
in  Scotland  to  supply  its  school  children 
with  free  books ;  he  campaigned  for  James 
Keir  Hardie  [q.v.]  in  many  an  election, 
and  himself  stood  no  less  than  six  times  as 
a  candidate  before  he  succeeded  at  Mor- 
peth in  1923,  a  seat  which  he  held  until 
1929.  He  was  a  foimdation  member  of 
the  Scottish  parhamentary  labour  party 
(1888)  and  of  the  independent  labom:  party 
(1893).  The  independent  labour  party  was 


indeed  spiritually  his  poUtical  home;  in 
1914  he  was  a  pacificist  of  that  brand,  and 
so  remained.  Two  of  his  sons  served  in  the 
army;  another  was  a  conscientious  ob- 
jector; but  there  was  no  breach  in  the 
SmilUe  home.  Moreover,  even  those  who 
disagreed  most  sharply  with  him  respected 
his  transparent  sincerity ;  his  power  among 
the  working  classes  was  such  that  in  1917 
Lloyd  George  invited  him  to  be  food  con- 
troller, but  he  refused. 

SmiUie's  great  opportunity  came  in  1919, 
when  his  evidence  before  the  royal  com- 
mission on  the  coal  industry  under  the 
chairmanship  of  Mr.  Justice  (afterwards 
Lord)  Sankey,  the  force  with  which  he 
stated  the  miners'  case,  and  the  skill 
and  profoimd  knowledge  displayed  in  his 
penetrating  cross-examination,  conducted, 
without  apparent  passion,  in  a  low  and 
gentle  voice,  made  plain  the  calibre  of  the 
man.  The  strain  of  his  labours  with 
the  commission,  and  the  disappointment 
caused  by  the  failure  of  the  government 
to  implement  the  Report,  seriously  affected 
his  health ;  in  1921  he  resigned  his  post  as 
president  of  the  Miners'  Federation  of 
Great  Britain,  which  he  had  held  since 
1912,  although  in  the  same  year  he  again 
became  president  of  the  Scottish  Miners' 
Federation  (a  post  which  he  retained  imtil 
his  death)  and  continued  active  work  in 
the  general  counsels  of  the  labour  party. 
He  refused  office  in  the  first  labour  govern- 
ment (1924),  and  after  its  fall  in  the  same 
year  retired  from  active  Ufe,  although,  to 
the  last,  the  simple  house  at  Larkhall  was 
the  bourne  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men  in  search  of  guidance.  He  died  at 
Dumfries  16  February  1940.  His  family 
fife — ^he  had  six  sons  and  two  daughters 
— was  singularly  happy. 

Smillie  pubHshed  in  1924  My  Life  For 
Labour;  it  is  rather  a  picture  of  mining 
conditions  and  the  miners'  struggle  than 
of  himself;  but  when  he  says  'I  was  hot- 
blooded  and  warm  hearted — ^not  always 
the  same  thing',  he  gives  a  hint  of  the 
secret  of  his  immense  influence.  He  was 
a  man  of  transparent  integrity,  in  whom 
pity  and  indignation  were  passions  wholly 
selfless :  and  he  inspired  entire  confidence 
and  respect  in  those  who  disagreed  with 
him.  Bound  in  close  friendship  to  Keir 
Hardie,  he  resembled  him  in  vision  and 
force  of  character.  Indifferent  to  worldly 
success  and  contemptuous  of  its  outward 
signs,  he  used  his  power  over  his  fellows 
in  the  furtherance  of  the  ideas  in  which  he 
believed,  the  welfare  of  the  mining  com- 
munity in  the  first  instance,  and  thence,  in 


814 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Smith,  C.  E.  K. 


extension,  the  promotion  of  his  general 
conception  of  social  justice. 

[The  Times,  17  February  1940;  R.  Smillie, 
My  Life  for  Labour,  1924;  personal  know- 
ledge.] IVIary  Agnes  Hamilton. 

SMITH,  Sir  CHARLES  EDWARD 
KINGSFORD  (1897-1935),  air-pilot,  was 
bom  at  Hamilton,  Brisbane,  9  February 
1897,  the  yoimgest  of  the  four  sons  of 
WiUiam  Charies  Smith,  bank  manager,  of 
Brisbane,  by  his  wife,  Catherine  Mary 
Kingsford.  After  attending  an  elementary 
school  in  Vancouver,  British  Columbia, 
where  his  parents  Uved  from  1903  to  1907, 
he  was  educated  at  Sydney  Cathedral 
School  and  Sydney  Technical  College.  In 
1913  he  became  an  engineering  apprentice 
at  the  Colonial  Sugar  Refining  Company, 
Sydney,  and  he  enlisted  in  1915  for  the 
duration  of  the  war,  serving  as  a  dispatch- 
rider  in  Egypt  and  GallipoU  in  1915  and 
in  France  in  1916.  Within  two  months  he 
was  recommended  for  a  commission  and 
went  to  England  for  training,  but  before 
the  end  of  his  course  he  was  transferred  to 
the  Royal  Flying  Corps,  and  was  com- 
missioned early  in  1917,  joining  No.  23 
squadron  in  France.  After  three  months' 
service  he  was  woimded  in  the  foot ;  a  long 
convalescence  followed  and  he  became  an 
instructor  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  with  the 
rank  of  captain. 

On  leaving  the  Royal  Air  Force  in  1919 
Kingsford  Smith  remained  in  England 
with  the  intention  of  winning  the  prize  of 
£10,000  offered  by  the  Austrahan  govern- 
ment for  the  first  flight  from  England  to 
Australia.  But  the  Australian  government 
insisted  on  his  abandoning  his  plans  and 
he  returned  by  way  of  the  United  States 
of  America,  spending  more  than  a  year  in 
California,  flying  for  the  films  and  in  flying 
circuses.  He  reached  Sydney  in  1921,  and 
after  giving  exhibitions  at  fairs  and  coun- 
try shows  for  Diggers  Aviation  Limited, 
he  eventually  joined  West  Australian  Air- 
ways. He  now  had  two  main  purposes 
before  him:  to  develop  inter-state  com- 
munication by  air  in  Australia  and  New 
Zealand  by  means  of  private  companies, 
and  to  fly  across  the  Pacific.  In  order  to 
make  money  to  realize  the  latter  he  joined 
another  pilot,  Keith  Anderson,  in  the  Gas- 
coyne  Transport  Company  at  Carnarvon, 
and  when  in  1926  he  had  acquired  suffi- 
cient means  to  buy  two  smaU  aeroplanes, 
he  founded  the  Interstate  Services  as  a 
'taxi'  firm  with  Charles  T.  P.  Ulm  as 
manager,  and  next  year  flew  with  him 
roimd  Australia  in  less  than  eleven  days. 


This  feat,  in  half  the  previous  record  time, 
induced  the  New  South  Wales  government 
to  grant  £8,500  towards  the  cost  of  the 
flight  across  the  Pacific.  With  Ulm,  he  at 
once  went  to  California  in  search  of  an 
aeroplane  that  was  within  the  compass  of 
their  meagre  resources. 

In  the  event,  by  loans  and  financial  help 
from  Mr.  Sidney  Myer,  of  Melbourne,  and 
finally  from  Captain  G.  Allan  Hancock, 
the  airframe  of  the  Fokker  used  by  Sir 
Hubert  Wilkins  in  the  Arctic  was  bought, 
then  re-equipped,  re-engined,  and  renamed 
the  Southern  Cross.  With  Ulm  as  second 
pilot  and  two  Americans  as  navigator  and 
radio-operator,  Kingsford  Smith  set  out 
on  31  May  1928  from  Oakland,  San  Fran- 
cisco, for  Honolulu,  about  2,000  miles 
away.  The  next  stage  to  Fiji  was  a  dis- 
tance of  3,1 50  miles,  and  the  Southern  Cross 
was  so  heavily  loaded  with  fuel  that  it  had 
to  take  off  from  a  beach  on  a  flight  that 
lasted  nearly  thirty -three  hours.  After 
some  delay  at  Fiji,  he  set  out  on  7  Jime  for 
thej^last  1,780  miles  to  Brisbane,  and  after 
passing  through  violent  storms,  he  made 
his  landfaU  110  mfles  south  of  Brisbane, 
and  so  won  £20,000  for  the  first  trans- 
Pacific  flight. 

This  was  only  the  first  stage  in  the  enter- 
prise of  flying  rovmd  the  world  which  was 
Kingsford  Smith's  aim,  and  on  31  March 
1929  a  false  start  nearly  cost  him  and  his 
companions  their  lives,  for  they  got  off 
course  and  were  forced  to  land  in  the 
Northern  Territory,  where  food  had  to  be 
dropped  to  them  by  aeroplane.  Only  two 
months  later,  on  25  June,  he  reached  Lon- 
don in  less  than  thirteen  days,  and  next 
year  he  took  the  Southern  Cross  from  Ire- 
land to  Newfoimdland,  and  thence  to  San 
Francisco,  thus  completing  his  flight  roimd 
the  world  on  1  July  1930,  a  httle  more 
than  two  years  after  he  had  begun  it. 
These  ocean  flights,  circling  the  earth  at 
its  greatest  circumference,  together  with 
a  flight  from  Melbourne  to  Perth  and  the 
first  crossing  of  the  Tasman  Sea  in  27  hours 
52  minutes  in  1928,  were  the  most  notable 
achievements  of  Kingsford  Smith's  flying 
career;  but  they  were  not  his  last.  In 
October  1933  he  made  a  solo  flight  from 
England  to  Australia  in  a  Percival  Gull, 
in  seven  days  five  hours.  The  following 
year  he  bought  the  single-engined  Lock- 
heed Altair  in  which  he  was  to  lose  his  life, 
and  flew  with  Captain  P.  G.  Taylor  from 
Brisbane  to  San  Francisco,  with  halts  at 
Fiji  and  Honolulu;  in  August  1935  he 
attempted  his  seventh  crossing  of  the 
Tasman  Sea  in  the  Southern  Cross,  but  had 


815 


Smith,  C.  E.  K. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


to  turn  back;  on  6  November  1935  he  set 
out  in  the  Altair  from  England,  accom- 
panied by  J.  Thomas  Pethybridge,  a  for- 
mer mechanic,  and  then  flying  instructor 
at  Sydney.  They  passed  over  Calcutta 
about  midnight  on  7  November  and  were 
never  seen  again.  One  of  the  wheels  of  the 
Altair  was  washed  up  on  the  coast  of 
Burma  in  1937. 

It  may  well  be  that  the  great  flight  in 
which  Kingsford  Smith  was  lost  would 
have  been  his  last  in  any  event,  for  he  was 
anxious  to  settle  down  and  devote  himself 
to  operating  air-lines.  The  flight  round 
Austraha  ia  1927  was  designed  to  promote 
a  scheme  for  inter-state  travel,  and  he 
fomided  in  1929  Austrahan  National  Air- 
ways, but  the  xmdertaking  Uved  for  only 
a  year.  The  abortive  flights  of  1935  were 
intended  to  improve  the  prospects  of  the 
Trans-Tasman  Air  Service  Development 
Company  of  which  Kingsford  Smith  was 
a  director. 

Kingsford  Smith's  temperament  was  a 
disadvantage  in  business.  He  inspired 
confidence  and  loyalty  in  those  who  were 
associated  with  him  personally  and  was 
always  willing  to  take  his  share  of  the 
drudgery,  but  he  had  neither  the  inclina- 
tion for  nor  the  skill  in  the  dull  and  routine 
processes  of  business  organization.  At  the 
end,  he  believed  he  could  obtain  air-line 
contracts  by  undertaking  spectacular 
flights  and  suspected  intrigue  when  he 
failed  to  get  them. 

Kingsford  Smith  was  twice  married: 
first,  in  1921  to  Thelma  McKenna,  only 
daughter  of  a  pastoraUst,  of  Meentheena 
Station,  Western  Austraha ;  this  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1930;  secondly,  in  1930 
to  Mary,  only  daughter  of  Arthur  PoweU, 
merchant  and  manufacturer,  of  Melbourne, 
and  had  a  son.  He  was  decorated  with  the 
M.C.  in  1917,  and  was  appointed  honorary 
air-commodore  in  the  Royal  Austrahan 
Air  Force  in  1930  and  K.B.E.  m  1932.  He 
was  the  author  of  The  Old  Bus  (1932),  the 
story  of  the  Southern  Cross,  which  was 
bought  by  the  Australian  government  in 
October  1933  for  £3,000,  the  sum  which 
Kingsford  Smith  had  paid  for  the  airframe 
in  1927. 

[The  Times,  7  December  1935;  Sir  C.  E. 
Kingsford  Smith,  My  Flying  Life,  1937 ;  Beau 
Shiel  (with  Colin  Simpson),  Caesar  of  the  Skies, 
1937 ;  Sir  C.  E.  Kingsford  Smith  and  C.  T.  P. 
Uim,  The  Great  Trans-Pacific  Flight,  1928.] 
E.  Colston  Shepherd. 

SMITH,  Sir  GRAFTON  ELLIOT 
(1871-1937)^  anatomist  and  anthropolo- 


gist, was  born  at  Grafton,  New  South 
Wales,  15  August  1871,  the  second  son  of„ 
Stephen    Sheldrick    Smith,    an    EnglisUJ 
schoolmaster   at    Grafton   and   later   atf 
Sydney,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Jane  Evans,  ol 
Carmarthen.     He   was   educated   at   his 
father's  school  at  Sydney,  and  in   1888 
entered  the  medical  school  in  the  uni- 
versity of  Sydney,  where  he  attracted  the 
attention  of  Anderson  Stuart  and  John 
Thomson  Wilson,  two  enthusiasts  of  the 
Edinburgh  school.  After  graduating  M.B., 
Ch.M.,  hx  1892,  EUiot  Smith  held  various 
clinical  posts  and  in  1894  began  his  career 
as  an  anatomist  and  investigator.    His 
intuition  may  be  seen  in  the  four  papersj 
published  in  1894,  dealing  with  a  hydatic 
cyst  in  a  congenital  hernia,  the  significance 
of  rare  anomalies  of  nerve« ,  muscles,  and| 
blood-vessels,  and  the  cerebral  commis- 
sures of  the  mammaha,  with  special  refer-] 
ence  to  the  monotremes  and  marsupials.] 
In  1895  he  gained  a  European  reputation 
and  gold  medal  by  his  M.D.  thesis  on  the] 
brain    of   non-placental    mammals,    and 
eleven  papers  dealing  with  the  evolution 
of  the  cerebrum,  cerebellum,  and  olfaction 
in  primitive  mammals. 

In  1896  EUiot  Smith  came  to  England 
and  continued  his  research-work  in  Cam- 
bridge under  Alexander  Macahster.  In 
1896  and  1897  he  published  eight  papers  on 
cerebral  morphology,  and  began  the  de- 
scriptive catalogue  of  the  brain  collection 
in  the  museum  of  the  Royal  CoUege  of 
Surgeons,  which  became  the  source  book 
for  a  generation  of  neurologists.  In  1900 
EUiot  Smith  became  the  first  professor  of 
anatomy  in  the  new  Government  Medical 
School  at  Cairo.  In  the  next  nine  years  he 
pubhshed  about  fifty  anatomical  papers 
on  the  brains  of  Uving  and  extinct  forms ; 
but  his  mighty  inteUect,  to  quote  Mon- 
taigne, was  'a  tool  adapted  to  aU  subjects 
and  meddles  with  everything ' .  He  became 
a  critic  of  the  methods  of  anthropologists, 
classical  scholars,  and  Egyptologists .  With 
Sir  Gaston  Maspero,  George  Andrew  Reis- 
ner.  Dr.  (Frederic)  Wood  Jones,  and  others 
he  began  the  Archaeological  Survey  of 
Nubia  involving  the  examination  of  20,000 
burials,  and  he  was  able  to  throw  light  on 
ancient  customs,  rehgion,  mummification, 
palaeopathology,  and  comparative  ana- 
tomy. 

In  1907  EUiot  Smith  was  elected  F.R.S. 
and  in  1909  he  was  appointed  to  the  chair 
of  anatomy  in  Manchester  University.  He 
became  involved  with  WiUiam  Halse  R. 
Rivers  and  Dr.  WiUiam  James  Perry  in 
the  investigation  of  the  early  origins  of 


816 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Smith,  H. 


magic  and  religion,  the  early  migration  of 
man,  and  the  diffusion  of  culture.  His 
belief  in  the  newer  inductive  methods  of 
human  biology  brought  him  into  conflict 
with  the  older  anthropologists  and  his- 
torians trained  in  the  classical  tradition. 

The  discovery  of  the  Piltdown  skull  in 
1912  brought  EUiot  Smith  into  close  con- 
tact and  occasional  differences  with  (Sir) 
Arthur  Smith  Woodward  and  (Sir)  Arthm* 
Keith.  In  1909,  1911,  and  1920  he  de- 
livered the  Arris  and  Gale  lectures  before 
the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  on  the 
evolution  of  the  brain ;  he  served  on  the 
General  Medical  Council  as  representative 
of  Manchester  University  from  1913  to 
1919,  he  collaborated  with  Rivers  and 
Professor  Tom  Hatherley  Pear  in  the 
treatment  of  shell-shock  during  the  war 
of  1914-1918 ;  he  inspired  the  Manchester 
Literary  and  Philosophical  Society  with 
his  radical  outlook.  He  received  a  Royal 
medal  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1912,  and 
dehvered  the  Croonian  lectures  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  in  1919  on 
'The  Significance  of  the  Cerebral  Cortex'. 
With  Pear  and  G.  G.  Campion  he  divorced 
psychology  from  sexology. 

In  1919,  persuaded  by  E.  H.  Starling 
[q.v.],  Elliot  Smith  accepted  the  chair  of 
anatomy  at  University  College,  London. 
From  1919  to  December  1932  he  devoted 
himself  to  the  new  Institute  of  Anatomy 
made  possible  by  the  benefaction  of  the 
Rockefeller  Foundation  and  put  into  prac- 
tice his  views  on  the  significance  of  ana- 
tomy. Practical  courses  in  histology, 
embryology,  neurology,  and  radiological 
anatomy  were  instituted.  Physical  anthro- 
pology and,  to  a  certain  extent,  cultural 
anthropology  were  taught  and  fostered. 
Liaisons  were  formed  with  University  Col- 
lege Hospital  and  with  the  prosectorium 
of  the  Zoological  Society.  He  scattered  his 
demonstrators  to  chairs  in  the  English- 
speaking  world  ;  he  attracted  post-graduate 
research  workers;  he  welcomed  overseas 
resident  magistrates,  medical  officers,  and 
men  of  varied  interests.  He  championed 
John  Irvine  Hunter  and  Norman  Dawson 
Royle,  of  Sydney,  when  they  revived  sur- 
gical interest  in  the  sympathetic  system. 
He  interpreted  discoveries  in  relation  to 
the  early  history  of  man.  He  stimulated 
research  in  many  fields  and  prepared  his 
assistants  to  profit  by  the  unexpected: 
Professor  Raymond  Arthur  Dart  in  South 
Africa  discovered  the  Taungs  ape,  David- 
son Black  in  Peking  the  Peking  skull.  He 
visited  the  United  States  of  America,  Indo- 
nesia, Java,  and  China.    He  was  largely 


responsible  for  winning  the  interest  of  the 
Rockefeller  Foundation  in  anthropological 
and  anatomical  research  in  China,  India, 
and  Australia.  He  was  Fullerian  professor 
of  physiology  at  the  Royal  Institute  in 
1938. 

Of  his  numerous  publications  The  An- 
cient Egyptians  (1911),  The  Migrations  of 
Early  CuUure  (1915),  Evolution  of  the 
Dragon  (1919),  Elephants  and  Ethnologists 
(1924),  The  Evolution  of  Man:  Essays 
(1924),  Human  History  (1930),  and  Diffu- 
sion of  Culture  (1933)  prove  Elliot  Smith's 
intellectual  stature  and  childlike  simpli- 
city of  approach  to  scientific  truth.  His 
work  was  done  in  spasms,  periods  of  idle- 
ness altematmg  with  bursts  of  intense 
activity.  From  1932,  when  he  was  par- 
tially incapacitated  by  a  stroke,  imtil  his 
retirement  from  the  chair  of  anatomy  in 
September  1936,  he  contended  cheerfully 
with  much  disability.  He  was  knighted  in 
1934  for  services  to  the  Empire  and  to 
science.  In  1911  he  received  the  Prix 
Fauvelle  of  the  Anthropological  Society  of 
Paris  and  in  1935  the  Huxley  medal  of  the 
London  institute.  He  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1899 
and  an  honorary  fellow  in  1931.  He  mar- 
ried in  1900  Kathleen,  daughter  of  William 
Latimer  Macredie,  of  Sydney,  and  had 
three  sons,  the  youngest  of  whom  pre- 
deceased his  father.  He  died  at  Broad- 
stairs  1  January  1937. 

[The  Times,  2  January  1937 ;  Sir  Grafton 
Elliot  Smith.  A  Biographical  Record  by  his 
Colleagues,  edited  by  W.  R.  Dawson,  1938 
(bibliography) ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  No.  6,  January  1938  (por- 
trait) ;  personal  knowledge.]  H.  A.  Harris. 

SMITH,  HERBERT(1862-1938),  York- 
shire miners'  leader,  was  bom  in  the  work- 
house at  Great  Preston,  Kippax,  in  the 
West  Riding  of  Yorkshu^,  17  July  1862. 
His  father  had  been  killed  in  a  mining 
accident  a  few  days  earUer  and  his  mother 
died  shortly  afterwards.  He  remained  at 
the  workhouse  imtil  he  was  adopted  by  a 
childless  miner  and  his  wife,  Samuel  and 
Charlotte  Smith,  whose  surname  was  his 
own.  After  education  at  a  dame's  school 
at  Glass  Houghton,  near  Castleford,  and 
at  a  British  school  at  Pontefract,  when  he 
was  ten  years  old  the  boy  went  into  the 
pit,  at  once  joining  the  Yorkshire  miners' 
movement,  then  known  as  the  West  York- 
shire Association.  It  was  said  of  him  as 
a  youth : '  He  was  frightened  of  nowt  1 '  and 
that  remained  the  key-note  of  his  charac- 
ter throughout  his  life.    He  served  for 


817 


So 


Smith,  H. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


thirty  years  (1891-1921)  on  the  Glass 
Houghton  school  board;  in  1894  he  was 
elected  to  the  local  parish  council,  and 
in  1895  to  the  Pontefract  rural  district 
council  and  Board  of  Guardians,  learning 
firom  the  last  the  problems  of  local  work- 
house administration.  From  1896  to  1904 
he  was  president  of  the  Castleford  trades 
council.  During  his  twenty-two  years' 
residence  in  the  Barnsley  district  he  was 
a  councillor  and  in  1932  was  mayor  of 
Barnsley ;  in  1903  he  won  a  seat  on  the 
West  Riding  county  council,  where  he 
specialized  in  public  health  and  education. 
He  also  served  as  a  magistrate. 

In  1894  Smith  was  chosen  a  check- 
weighman,  and  as  a  delegate  to  the  York- 
shire Miners'  Association  he  became  active 
in  trade  union  affairs.  Attracted  by  the 
independent  poUtical  poUcy  of  James  Keir 
Hardie  [q.v.],  he  agitated  for  the  miners' 
eight  hours'  day,  for  socialism,  and  for  the 
labour  party.  In  1902  he  was  appointed 
to  the  Joint  Board  of  the  South  and  West 
Yorkshire  Coalowners  and  Workmen.  For 
forty-six  years  he  was  an  official  of  the 
Yorkshire  Miners'  Association  and  was 
president  from  1906.  From  that  year  he 
represented  the  association  on  the  Miners' 
Federation  of  Great  Britain,  and  was 
president  from  1922  to  1929.  The  federa- 
tion unified  the  district  associations  behind 
a  demand  for  a  minimum  wage,  an  eight 
hours'  day,  the  nationalization  of  the 
mines,  and  the  aboUtion  of  mining  royal- 
ties. He  was  involved  in  the  formation  of 
the  triple  aUiance  of  railwaymen,  trans- 
port workers,  and  miners,  which  proved 
completely  ineffective  when  tested  in  1914. 
He  stood  unsuccessfully  for  Morley  as  a 
labour  candidate  at  the  general  election 
of  January  1910. 

Six  great  coUiery  explosions  in  six  suc- 
cessive years  (1908-1913)  brought  mining 
conditions  vividly  before  pubUc  attention, 
and  Smith  achieved  considerable  fame 
in  connexion  with  rescue  work  at  the 
Whitehaven  disaster  (1910)  and  his  cross- 
examination  at  the  government  inquiry 
which  followed.  Throughout  his  life  he 
was  foremost  in  rescue  work  in  French 
and  Belgian,  as  well  as  British  mines. 

Government  war-time  control  of  the 
mining  industry  ceased  in  1921.  Chaotic 
conditions  ensued,  and  within  a  few  years 
government  subsidies  totalled  £30,000,000. 
The  cessation  of  this  assistance  led  to  the 
lock-out  and  the  subsequent  sympathetic 
General  Strike  called  by  the  Trades  Union 
Congress  in  May  1926.  In  the  national 
strike  of  miners,  with  A.  J.  Cook  [q.v.]. 


secretary  of  the  federation.  Smith  was 
prominent  up  to  the  conclusion  of  the  dis- 
pute on  20  November,  when  the  owners 
insisted  upon  aU  negotiations  for  settle- 
ment, including  an  extension  of  hours, 
being  conducted  in  the  separate  districts. 
Local  agreements  were  made,  but  the 
federation  was  kept  in  being.  Smith  re- 
signed the  presidency  in  1929  in  protest 
against  any  lengthening  of  the  mining 
hours.  He  served  for  various  broken 
periods  between  1913  and  1931  on  the 
general  coimcil  of  the  Trades  Union  Con- 
gress, and  on  its  behalf  visited  Russia  in 
1924,  giving  special  attention  to  mining 
developments  in  the  Soviet  Union.  Hej 
was  president  of  the  International  Miners'  ] 
Federation  from  1921  to  1929. 

In  1931  Smith  was  again  prominent  in ; 
rescue  work  after  the  Bentley  explosion,] 
when   forty-five   men  were   killed,   and, 
although  in  his  seventieth  year,  he  was  as 
daring  as  ever  he  had  been.   Four  years! 
later  he  was  insistent  on  searching  the 
workings  after  an  explosion  at  Hemsworth 
and  found  a  missing  man.  When  attending 
an  International  Miners'   Conference  at 
Prague  in  1936  he  received  a  telegram 
stating  that  a  disaster  had  overtaken  fifty- 
six  men  at  WhamcUffe  Woodmoor;  by 
6  a.m.  next  day  he  had  landed  by  air  in 
Yorkshire,  and  by  9  a.m.  was  down  the  pit. 

At  a  by-election  held  at  Barnsley  on 
16  Jime  1938  Smith  was  the  first  to  vote 
for  the  labour  candidate,  Mr.  Frank  Col- 
lindridge,  and,  returning  to  his  office,  sat 
doAvn  to  his  desk  and  died.  His  funeral 
took  place  on  the  day  of  the  Yorkshire 
miners'  demonstration  and  the  twenty 
miles'  route  from  Barnsley  to  Castleford 
was  lined  by  miners  and  their  families  and 
the  people  to  whose  service  he  had  devoted 
his  life. 

In  1885  Smith  married  Sarah  Ann  Rip- 
ley, of  Castleford,  by  whom  he  had  four 
sons  and  five  daughters. 

A  bust  of  Smith  by  Jacobi,  unveiled  in 
1931,  is  in  the  Miners'  Hall  at  Barnsley. 

[J.  J.  Lawson,  The  Man  in  the  Cap.  The 
Life  of  Herbert  Smith,  1941.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

SMITH,  JOHN  ALEXANDER  (1863- 
1939),  philosopher  and  classical  scholar, 
the  second  son  of  Andrew  Smith,  of  Ding- 
wall, sohcitor  and  county  clerk  of  Ross, 
by  his  wife,  Jane  Eliza  Eraser,  was  bom 
at  Dingwall  21  April  1863.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Inverness  Academy,  at  the  Col- 
legiate School,  Edinburgh,  at  Edinburgh 
University  (where  he  was  Ferguson  classi- 


818 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Smith,  J.  A. 


cal  scholar  in  1884),  and  at  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  to  which  he  was  admitted  as 
Warner  exhibitioner  and  honorary  scholar 
in  Hilary  term  1884.  He  obtained  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1885)  and 
in  liierae  humaniores  (1887).  After  acting 
for  some  years  as  assistant  to  S.  H.  Butcher 
[q.v.],  professor  of  Greek  in  Edinburgh 
University,  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
Balliol  in  1891,  and  appointed  Jowett  lec- 
turer in  philosophy  in  1896.  In  1910  he 
was  elected  Waynflete  professor  of  moral 
and  metaphysical  philosophy  at  Oxford, 
and  became  thereby  a  fellow  of  Magdalen 
College.  He  was  elected  to  an  honorary 
fellowship  at  Balliol  in  1924.  He  retired 
in  1936,  and  died,  unmarried,  at  Oxford 
19  December  1939. 

At  Balliol  Smith  served  tinder  three  dis- 
tinguished masters — Benjamin  Jowett, 
Edward  Caird,  and  J.  L.  Strachan-David- 
son  [qq.v.] — and  was  one  of  a  very  able 
company  of  fellows,  which  included  R.  L. 
Nettleship,  Evelyn  Abbott,  W.  R.  Hardie, 
A.  A.  Macdonell,  H.  W.  C.  Davis,  and 
A.  L.  Smith  [qq.v.].  Of  all  that  band  he 
was  perhaps  the  most  variously  accom- 
plished. The  subject  which  he  taught  was 
philosophy,  and  many  Balliol  men  could 
bear  witness  to  the  width  and  exactness 
of  his  knowledge  of  the  subject  and  the 
stimulating  quality  of  his  teaching.  He 
was  a  very  fine  Aristotehan  scholar,  and 
in  1908  succeeded  Ingram  Bywater  [q.v.] 
as  president  of  the  Oxford  Aristotelian 
Society.  He  worked  for  many  years  at  an 
edition  of  the  De  Anima,  and  translated 
this  work  for  the  Oxford  translation  of 
The  Works  of  Aristotle  (vol.  iii,  1931) ;  he 
was  joint-editor  of  the  volumes  pubhshed 
between  1908  and  1912.  He  lectured  regu- 
larly on  the  Ethics,  and  in  order  to  get  to 
the  bottom  of  Aristotle's  theory  of  justice 
studied  deeply  in  Greek  law:  the  first 
volume  (1920)  of  the  Historical  Jurispru- 
dence of  Sir  Paul  Vinogradoff  [q.v.]  owes 
much  to  Smith's  learning  and  ingenuity. 
He  made  extensive  preparations  for  an 
edition  of  the  Poetics,  which  appealed  to 
his  hterary  as  well  as  to  his  philosophical 
interest.  In  his  general  philosophical  views 
he  maintained  on  the  whole  the  ideaUst 
tradition  established  by  T.  H.  Green  [q.v.] 
and  Caird,  but  while  much  influenced  by 
Hegel  he  was  always  a  critical  disciple. 

As  a  professor  Smith  had  a  wider  but 
probably  not  so  deep  an  influence,  since  he 
was  in  less  close  contact  with  his  hearers 
than  he  had  been  with  his  pupils.  He  came 
very  much  under  the  influence  of  Bene- 
detto Croce,  and  in  the  opinion  of  some  of 


his  friends  adopted  Croce's  views  too  im- 
plicitly. The  diversity  of  interests  which 
made  him  a  fascinating  companion  mili- 
tated against  the  continuous  effort  needed 
for  the  working  out  of  a  coasistent  system 
of  thought,  and  his  self-critical  temper  pre- 
vented him  from  writing  much  for  publica- 
tion. There  are,  however,  articles  by  him 
in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian 
Society  (new  series,  vols,  xiv,  xvii,xviii,  XX, 
XXV,  xxvi,  suppl.  vols.  V,  vi,  vii),  in  the 
Journal  of  Theological  Studies  (vol.  xxxi)  in 
Papers  read  before  the  Synthetic  Society, 
1896-1908  (1909),  in  the  Classical  Quarterly 
(vols,  xiv,  xviii),  in  Progress  and  History 
(ed.  F.  S.  Marvin,  1916),  in  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Sixth  International  Congress  of  Philo- 
sophy (1926),  and  in  S.P.E.  Tract  No. 
xxxiv  (1930).  He  published  separately  in 
1910  his  inaugural  lecture  on  Knowing  and 
Acting,  and  in  1924  a  paper  on  The  Nature 
of  Art .  In  1 9 1 6  he  deU  vered  the  Hibbert  lec- 
tures, on '  The  Nature  of  Spirit  and  its  Life ', 
and  in  1929-1931  gave  the  Gifford  lectures 
at  Glasgow  on  'The  Heritage  of  Idealism'. 
In  1930  he  presided  over  the  seventh  Inter- 
national Congress  of  Philosophy,  held  at 
Oxford.  He  left  behind  him  a  very  large 
number  of  valuable  impublished  papers ; 
a  selection  of  thosfe  on  Greek  philosophy  is 
deposited  in  Balliol  library,  and  a  selection 
of  those  on  other  subjects  in  Magdalen 
library. 

The  best  accoiuit  of  Smith's  later 
position  in  philosophy  is  to  be  found  in 
his  contribution  to  Contemporary  British 
Philosophy  edited  by  J.  H.  Muirhead  [q.v.] 
(second  series,  1925).  After  giving  an 
accoimt  of  his  earlier  views  and  interests 
he  describes  himself  as  having  received  his 
greatest  illumination  from  Croce  and  Gio- 
vanni Gentile,  and  states  a  creed,  or  rather 
a  set  of  'suppositions',  of  which  the  chief 
are  that  the  real  is  essentially  in  change, 
and  is  an  event  which  occupies  the  whole  of 
time ;  that  history  is  throughout  spiritual, 
and  yet  contains  a  distinction  (of  degree 
rather  than  of  kind)  between  the  mental 
and  the  non-mental ;  that  reality  manifests 
itself  most  fully  in  self-consciousness ;  that 
self-consciousness  is  not  a  fact  but  a  pro- 
cess, a  process  of  self-making ;  and  that  in 
making  itself  it  reveals  its  own  meaning. 

Smith  was  not  only  a  philosopher;  he 
was  an  admirable  classical  scholar.  A 
conspicuous  instance  of  this  is  supplied  by 
the  testimony  of  an  eminent  scholar  to  the 
effect  that  he  had  often  'discovered  imer- 
ringly  what  Pindar  meant,  where  every 
one  else  was  unconvincing ' .  He  was  deeply 
versed  in  philology  (and,  as  became  a 


819 


Smith,  J.  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Highlander,  not  least  in  Celtic  philology), 
and  acquired  with  extraordinary  facility 
at  least  a  reading  knowledge  of  many 
languages.  He  had  a  very  acute  feeling 
for  the  precise  meaning,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  meaning,  of  words.  His  in- 
genuity in  conjecture  was  very  great,  but 
a  growing  love  of  paradox  sometimes  led 
him  to  views  which  a  calmer  judgement 
would  have  rejected.  It  should  be  added 
to  the  tale  of  his  accomplishments  that  he 
was  an  admirable  talker  and  raconteur, 
and  sldlful  at  card  tricks  and  other  forms 
of  legerdemain ;  he  was  never  happier  than 
when  he  was  entertaining  children. 

A  pencU-sketch  of  Smith,  drawn  by 
Gilbert  Spencer  in  1936,  is  at  Balliol 
College. 

[The  Times,  20  December  1939;  Oxford 
Magazine,  18  January  1940;  personal  know- 
ledge.] W.  D.  Ross. 

SMITHELLS,  ARTHUR  (1860-1939), 
chemist,  was  born  at  Biu:y,  Lancashire, 
24  May  1860,  the  third  son  of  James 
Smithells,  railway  manager,  by  his  wife, 
Martha,  daughter  of  James  Livesey.  After 
two  years  at  Glasgow  University,  he  went 
to  the  Owens  College,  Manchester,  in  1878, 
and,  under  the  influence  of  (Sir)  Henry 
Roscoe  [q.v.],  became  a  chemist.  This 
training  was  extended  by  a  short  period 
abroad  with  J.  F.  von  Baeyer  at  Munich 
and  R.  B.  von  Bunsen  at  Heidelberg,  after 
which  he  returned  to  the  Owens  College  as 
assistant  lecturer  in  1883,  but,  at  the  early 
age  of  twenty -five,  he  was  appointed  to 
the  chair  of  chemistry  at  the  Yorkshire 
College  in  Leeds.  There  he  was  well  to  the 
fore  in  the  effort  wliich  resulted  in  the 
establishment  of  the  imiversity  of  Leeds 
(1904).  The  object  of  broadening  the 
cultural  basis  of  the  Yorkshire  College  was 
attained  while  developing  its  special  char- 
acter as  a  school  of  applied  science  with 
university  standards.  As  a  trusted  mem- 
ber of  senate  and  coimcil,  Smithells  placed 
himself  unsparingly  at  the  service  of  the 
university  in  this  pioneering  work,  which 
is  now  receiving  wide  recognition  by 
imitation. 

Meanwhile  Smithells  was  also  engaged 
on  that  series  of  researches  on  flame  struc- 
ture which  was  his  most  eminent  contribu- 
tion to  pure  science.  His  instinct  for  the 
practical  appUcation  of  science  led  him  in 
notable  lectiu"es  and  by  productive  con- 
versations to  make  contacts  with  the  gas 
industry.  Of  this  activity  one  outcome 
was  the  endowment  of  the  Livesey  pro- 
fessorship at  Leeds  in  1910  and  another. 


the  formation  of  a  joint  research  com- 
mittee of  the  gas  industry  and  the  imiver- 
sity, with  Smithells  as  chairman,  securing 
thus  a  fruitful  co-operation  of  unique  char- 
acter.   In  1911  he  was  elected  president 
of  the  Society  of  British  Gas  Industries. 
Other  activities  were  marked  by  his  presi- 
dencies of  the  Society  of  Chemists  and 
Colourists   and  of  the   Science  Masters' 
Association  (1923),  and  not  less  distinc- 
tively  by   his   appointment  in   1907  as 
education  adviser  on  home  science  and 
household  economics  at  King's  College  for 
Women,  London,  where  the  subject  later 
acquired  degree  status.  In  1910  he  was  ap- 
pointed president  of  the  Indian  Guild  of  J 
Science  and  Technology  and  in  1913  was  J 
invited  as  special  lecturer  to  the  Punjab! 
University;  he  accepted  willingly,  since} 
it  provided  an  opportunity  to  demonstrate! 
how  chemistry  might  be  made  to  appeal] 
to  the  Indian  student  and  carry  him  &ont| 
theory  to  practice. 

Smithells  was  greatly  shocked  by  the| 
outbreak  of  war  in  1914,  but  he  felt  im- 
pelled to  help  and,  as  visiting  lecturer  to 
the  Northern  Command  in  1915  and  later 
(1916-1919)  as  chief  chemical  adviser  on 
anti-gas  training  of  the  Home  Forces,  he 
rendered  services  which  were  recognized 
by  the  honorary  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel 
and  appointment  as  C.M.G.  (1918). 

In  1923  Smithells  resigned  his  professor- 
ship to  take  up  the  congenial  duties  of  the 
director  of  the  Salters'  Institute  of  Indus- 
trial Chemistry  in  London,  including  the 
selection  and  supervision  of  promising 
graduates  in  chemistry  who  might  receive 
a  further  training  carefully  planned  to  fit 
them  for  responsible  work  in  industry.  In 
this  period  he  interested  himself  especially 
in  the  Institute  of  Chemistry,  being  presi- 
dent from  1927  to  1930 ;  he  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  D.Sc.  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Manchester  and  Leeds  in  1923. 
He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1901  and  vice- 
president  of  the  society  in  1916.  Failing 
health  dictated  his  retirement  in  1937  and 
his  death  at  Highgate  8  February  1939 
ended  a  career  largely  spent  in  continuous 
and  successful  effort  to  break  down  the 
barrier  between  an  academic  science  too 
isolated  and  self-satisfied  and  a  com- 
mimity  not  yet  conscious  of  its  own  needs. 
A  Ufe  so  full  of  other  activities  left  little 
time  for  writing,  but  a  selection  of  his 
addresses  with  the  title  From  a  Modem 
University  was  pubUshed  in  1921.  These 
show  the  same  gifts  of  lucidity  and  cogency 
as  his  speech,  but  cannot  reproduce  the 
effect  of  their  spoken  delivery  and  the  im- 


820 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Snow 


pact  of  his  distinguished  personality.  His 
letters  too  were  valued  by  their  recipients 
for  the  same  qualities  and  intimate  human 
touches. 

Smithells  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1886  to  Constance  Marie  (died  1007), 
daughter  of  Frederic  Ma  we,  and  had  two 
sons  and  one  daughter;  secondly,  in  1908 
to  Katharine,  daughter  of  Arthur  Booth, 
and  had  one  son.  A  portrait  in  oils  by 
G.  Fiddes  Watt  hangs  in  the  great  hall  of 
the  university  of  Leeds. 

[The  Times,  9  February  1939;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (portrait);  Journal  of  the 
Chemical  Society,  July  1939;  Nature,  25 
February  1939 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  W.  Cobb. 


SNELL,  Sir  JOHN  FRANCIS 
CLEVERTON  (1869-1938),  electrical  en- 
gineer, was  bom  at  Saltash,  Cornwall, 
15  December  1869,  the  son  of  Commander 
John  Snell,  R.N.,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Hen- 
riette,  only  daughter  of  Frederick  William 
Pouget  Cleverton,  of  Saltash.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Plymouth  Grammar  School  and 
at  King's  College,  London,  of  which  he 
was  a  fellow  from  1929.  After  a  four  years' 
pupilage  with  the  electrical  firm  of  Messrs. 
Woodhouse  &  Rawson  he  became  asso- 
ciated first,  in  1889,  with  Colonel  R.  E.  B. 
Crompton  [q.v.],  who  employed  him  on 
electricity  supply  work  at  Kensington  and 
Notting  Hill  and  also  at  Stockholm ;  and 
then,  three  years  later,  with  Major-General 
C.  E.  Webber  [q.v.],  for  whom  he  carried 
out  many  country-house  and  other  installa- 
tions. 

In  1893  Snell  entered  municipal  service 
as  an  assistant  electrical  engineer  to  the 
(then)  St.  Pancras  Vestry,  and  three  years 
later  went  to  Sunderland  as  borough 
electrical  engineer,  becoming  also  borough 
tramways  engineer  in  1899.  In  1906  he 
began  to  practise  in  Westminster  as  a  con- 
sulting engineer,  and  in  1910  he  joined  the 
firm  of  Messrs.  Preece  &  Cardew.  During 
this  partnership,  which  lasted  until  1918, 
he  was  in  request  as  an  expert  witness,  the 
most  notable  case  in  which  he  was  engaged 
being  the  arbitration  in  1912  concerning 
the  terms  on  which  the  state  should  take 
over  the  National  Telephone  Company. 
In  that  arbitration  he  was  chief  technical 
witness  for  the  Post  Office  and  was  under 
examination  for  thirteen  days. 

During  the  war  of  1914-1918  Snell  was 
a  member  of  a  number  of  government 
committees,  including  the  water-power  re- 


sources committee  of  the  Board  of  Trade 
and  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture's  com- 
mittee on  electroculture,  of  both  of  which 
he  was  chairman.  In  1919  he  became 
electrical  adviser  to  the  Board  of  Trade 
and  was  appointed  chairman  of  the  elec- 
tricity commission  established  by  the 
Electricity  (Supply)  Act  passed  at  the  end 
of  that  year.  In  that  position,  which  he 
held  until  the  beginning  of  1988,  he  took 
a  leading  part  in  shaping  the  electrical 
policy  of  the  coimtry  and  in  bringing  about 
the  co-ordinated  system  of  generating 
electricity  and  transmitting  it  by  the 
'grid'  which  was  provided  for  by  the 
Electricity  (Supply)  Act,  1926. 

Snell  was  loiighted  in  1914  and  ap- 
pointed G.B.E.  in  1925.  He  was  president 
in  1902-1903  of  the  (Incorporated)  Muni- 
cipal Electrical  Association;  in  1914  of 
the  Institution  of  Electrical  Engineers, 
which  awarded  him  its  Faraday  medal  in 
1938 ;  and  in  1926  of  the  engineering  sec- 
tion of  the  British  Association  at  its  Oxford 
meeting.  From  1926  to  1931  he  was  a  vice- 
president  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  En- 
gineers, but  for  reasons  of  health  was 
obliged  to  decline  nomination  as  president 
in  1930  and  again  in  1931.  Besides  many 
technical  papers  he  was  the  author  of  The 
Distribution  of  Electrical  Energy  (1906) 
and  Power  House  Design  (1911  and  1921). 
He  was  fond  of  music,  particularly  the 
organ,  took  a  keen  interest  in  geology  (he 
was  a  fellow  of  the  Geological  Society), 
and  was  a  great  lover  of  birds  and  animals. 
He  married  in  1892  Anne  Glendenning, 
second  daughter  of  Henry  Bayly  Quick, 
of  Biscovey,  Cornwall,  and  had  a  son. 
He  died  in  London,  after  an  operation, 
6  July  1938. 

[The  Times,  7  July  1938;  Engineer  and 
Engineering,  15  July  1938  (portrait) ;  Nature, 
27  August  1938 ;  Journal  of  the  Institution  of 
Electrical  Engineers,  vol.  Ixxxiii,  1938;  Jour- 
nal of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers,  vol. 
X,  1938-1939.]  H.  M.  Ross. 


SNOW,  Sir  THOMAS  D'OYLY  (185»- 
1940),  heutenant-general,  was  bom  at 
Blandford,  Dorset,  5  May  1858,  the  eldest 
son  of  the  Rev.  G^eorge  D'Oyly  Snow,  of 
Langton  Lodge,  Blandford,  by  his  wife, 
Maria  Jane,  daughter  of  Robert  Barlow. 
He  was  sent  to  Eton,  and  passed  thence  to 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.  A  year 
later,  in  1879,  he  obtained  a  direct  com- 
mission in  the  13th  Foot  (Somerset  Light 
Infantry)  then  in  South  Africa,  and  thus 
at  once  saw  active  service  in  the  Ztdu  war. 


821 


Snow 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Snow  served  with  the  Mounted  Infantry 
in  the  Nile  campaign  of  1884-1885,  and 
was  severely  wounded  at  Gubat.  He  was 
promoted  captain  in  1887.  Having  re- 
ceived a  nomination,  he  spent  the  years 
1892-1893  at  the  Staff  College.  In  1895 
he  was  appointed  a  brigade-major  at 
Aldershot,  and,  after  promotion  in  1897 
to  a  majority  in  the  Royal  Inniskilling 
Fusiliers,  accompanied  Major-General  (Sir) 
W.  F.  Gatacre  [q.v.]  as  his  brigade-major 
in  the  Nile  campaign  of  1898  (Atbara). 
He  received  a  brevet  Ueutenant-colonelcy, 
and  in  April  1899  was  transferred  to  the 
2nd  battaUon  Northamptonshire  Regi- 
ment as  second-in-command,  and  thus 
spent  in  India  the  whole  period  of  the 
South  African  war.  He  retmmed  home 
on  promotion  to  substantive  lieutenant- 
colonel  in  March  1903,  but  never  com- 
manded his  battalion ;  for  in  June  he  was 
promoted  colonel  and  appointed  assistant 
quartermaster-general  of  the  IV  Corps 
(subsequently  renamed  the  Eastern  Com- 
mand). There  he  remained  until  1914,  as 
assistant  adjutant-general  (1905)  and  later 
brigadier-general,  General  Staff  (1906), 
until  October  1909,  when  he  was  given 
command  of  the  11th  infantry  brigade. 
He  held  it  for  only  a  few  months,  being 
promoted  major-general  in  March  1910. 

Early  in  the  following  year  Snow  be- 
came general  officer  commanding,  4th 
division.  In  this  appointment  his  gifts  for 
training  and  command  of  troops  were 
clearly  manifested.  He  concentrated  parti- 
cular attention  upon  making  junior  officers 
criticize  each  other's  work,  on  move- 
ment by  night,  on  march  discipline,  then 
in  its  infancy,  and  on  concealment  from 
the  air,  an  even  younger  matter,  and  pro- 
duced a  set  of  standing  orders  for  war 
which  were  made  use  of  by  other  divisions 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918.  The  4th  division, 
detained  in  England  for  a  few  days  in 
order  to  guard  the  east  coast,  had  its  first 
battle  at  Le  Cateau,  where  Snow,  agreeing 
with  General  Sir  H.  L.  Smith-Dorrien 
[q.v.]  that  they  must  fight,  covered  the 
left  flank  of  the  II  Corps,  and  then  success- 
fully brought  away  his  division. 

During  the  battle  of  the  Marne  Snow's 
tired  horse  (he  was  a  big  man  of  six  feet 
four  inches)  fell  and  rolled  on  him,  and 
cracked  his  pelvis;  before  he  had  com- 
pletely recovered,  at  Lord  Kitchener's  re- 
quest he  took  command  in  November 
1914  of  the  newly  formed  27th  division, 
made  up  of  regular  troops  from  overseas 
garrisons.  When  the  Germans  laimched 
the  first  gas  attack  in  April  1915  Snow 


was  the  only  divisional  general  with  head- 
quarters east  of  Ypres,  and  to  him  fell  in 
a  great  measure  the  conduct  of  the  de- 
fence. The  same  year  he  was  promoted 
to  the  command  of  the  VII  Corps.  In  the 
battles  of  the  Sonune  in  1916  it  was  his 
task  to  divert  the  Germans'  attention  to  the 
Gommecourt  salient,  a  task  which  he  per- 
formed with  thoroughness.  In  the  battles 
of  Arras  in  1917  his  corps  was  engaged  as 
right  wing  of  the  Third  Army.  At  the 
battle  of  Cambrai  (1917)  it  was  the  right 
pivot  of  the  operations,  and  unfortunately 
Snow's  warnings  of  the  German  counter- 
attack were  either  overlooked  or  dis- 
regarded. The  effects  of  his  fall  at  the 
Marne  were  lasting,  his  lameness  had  in- 
creased, and  as  the  winter  of  1917-191f 
approached  he  requested  to  be  relieved^ 
and  was  appointed  general  officer  com- 
manding-in-chief.  Western  Command  at 
home,  and  promoted  lieutenant-general. 
He  resigned  in  September  1919.  Forced  ^ 
to  use  a  bath-chair,  he  left  Blandford  and 
settled  down  in  Kensington,  where  he 
devoted  much  time  to  charitable  work 
and  became  chairman  of  the  Crippled 
Boys'  Home  for  Training. 

Snow  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1907, 
K.C.B.  in  1915,  and  K.C.M.G.  in  1917. 
From  1919  to  1929  he  was  colonel  of  the 
Somerset  Light  Infantry.  He  married  in 
1897  Charlotte  Geraldine,  second  daughter 
of  Major-General  John  Talbot  Coke,  of 
Trusley,  Derbyshire,  and  had  two  sons 
and  two  daughters.  He  died  in  London 
30  August  1940. 

[Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  History  of  the 
Great  War.  Military  Operations.  France  and 
Belgium,  1917,  vol.  iii,  1949 ;  The  Times,  31 
August  1940 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  E.  Edmonds. 

SNOWDEN,  PHILIP,  Viscount 
Snowden  (1864-1937),  statesman,  was 
born  in  a  two-roomed  cottage  in  the 
hamlet  of  Ickornshaw,  Cowling,  near 
Keigliley,  in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire, 
18  July  1864,  the  only  son  and  the  youngest 
of  the  three  children  of  John  Snowden,  of 
Cowling,  by  his  wife,  Martha,  daughter  of 
Peter  Nelson,  also  of  Cowling.  His  father 
was  a  weaver  in  a  miU,  who  had  begun  his 
working  life  on  a  handlooni  at  home  and 
still  used  it  to  make  pieces  for  his  family. 
Both  parents  had  abilities  above  their 
station  in  life ;  and  as  showing  the  quality 
of  the  local  Yorkshire  stock  it  may  be 
noted  that  the  row  of  thirty  to  forty  moor- 
land cottages  known  as  Middleton,  which 
included  Snowden's  birthplace,  included 


822 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Snowden 


also  those  of  two  other  labour  members 
who  sat  with  him  at  different  times  in 
parliament.  The  atmosphere  was  strongly- 
radical  and  Wesleyan  Methodist ;  and  the 
boy  imbibed  early  a  familiarity  with  the 
Bible  and  an  admiration  for  Gladstone, 
neither  of  which  ever  left  him.  Educated 
at  a  very  elementary  local  school  which 
the  Act  of  1870  turned  into  a  board  school, 
he  escaped  the  weaving-mill  by  becoming 
a  pupil-teacher;  but,  after  three  years 
this  career  was  cut  short  by  his  parents' 
migration  across  the  Lancashire  border  to 
Nelson,  following  the  failure  of  the  firm 
which  employed  them.  The  boy,  then 
fifteen,  became  a  clerk  in  an  insurance 
office,  where  he  remained  for  seven  years. 
At  twenty-two  he  passed  a  civil  service 
examination,  and  was  appointed  a  junior 
exciseman,  serving  subsequently  at  Liver- 
pool, in  the  Orkneys,  at  Aberdeen,  and  at 
Plymouth. 

It  was  not  until  1891,  when  he  was 
twenty-seven,  that  the  event  occurred 
which  changed  Snowden's  life.  Until  then 
he  had  been  physically  active  and  power- 
ful above  the  average ;  but  a  small  cycling 
accident  led  to  acute  inflammation  of  the 
spinal  cord  and  rendered  him  a  chronic 
cripple.  After  two  years  he  was  invalided 
out  of  the  civil  service.  During  convale- 
scence he  studied  sociaUsm  with  a  view 
to  reading  a  paper  on  it  at  the  local  liberal 
club,  and  in  the  process  he  became  a 
sociaUst.  This  was  not  very  long  after  the 
birth  of  the  independent  labour  party  (at 
Bradford  in  January  1893) ;  and  in  1894 
Snowden  addressed  a  meeting  for  the 
party's  Keighley  branch.  He  scored  a 
great  hit,  and  for  the  following  ten  years 
(1895-1905)  settled  down  to  the  career 
of  an  independent  laboiir  party  propagan- 
dist. Before  long  his  reputation  became 
national,  and  in  a  particular  kind  of  idea- 
listic, semi-religious  eloquence  he  had  no 
superior.  As  a  'draw'  at  meetings  where 
admission  was  charged  for,  he  was  second 
to  Keir  Hardie  alone.  About  1899  he 
settled  at  Keighley  in  order  to  serve  on 
the  town  council  and  the  school  board, 
and  to  act  as  editor  (for  8s.  a  week)  of  a 
local  socialist  paper.  For  the  years  1903- 
1906  he  was  national  chairman  of  the 
independent  labour  party.  But  it  was  a 
grinding  struggle.  His  impaired  physique 
had  come  near  breaking-point,  when  in 
1905  he  married  Ethel,  daughter  of 
Richard  Annakin,  of  Harrogate,  a  lady 
who  not  only  cared  for  him  devotedly,  but 
had  sufficient  means  to  enable  him  to 
work  at  less  strain. 


Meantime,  in  the  'khaki'  general  elec- 
tion of  1900,  Snowden  had  made  at  Black- 
bum  his  first  bid  for  parliament.  With  the 
tide  running  strongly  for  the  conservative* 
he  was  defeated,  but  achieved  great  per- 
sonal popularity  and  polled  over  7,000 
votes.  He  stood  as  an  independent  labour 
party  candidate  under  the  auspices  of  the 
labour  representation  committee,  a  body 
which  he  had  helped  to  found  at  the 
famous  Memorial  Hall  conference  in  Lon- 
don earlier  in  the  year,  and  which  in  1906 
changed  its  name  to  the  labour  party.  In 
1902  he  unsuccessfully  fought  a  by-elec- 
tion at  Wakefield ;  but  in  1906,  with  the 
tide  in  his  favour,  he  was  elected  for 
Blackburn  and  remained  one  of  its  two 
members  until  1918.  No  less  than  flfty- 
two  other  labour  members  were  elected 
with  him,  of  whom  twenty-eight  were, 
like  him,  returned  luider  the  labour 
representation  committee  to  sit  as  an 
independent  party. 

Snowden  in  the  House  of  Commons  was 
at  first  handicapped  by  his  physical  in- 
firmity, which  precluded  his  jumping  up 
to  catch  the  Speaker's  eye.  But  when 
once  arrangements  had  been  made  to  get 
round  this,  he  proved  himself  a  debater  of 
the  first  rank.  His  style  in  the  House 
differed  from  his  platform  style,  in  that 
the  latter  had  been  warming  and  idealistic 
and  had  helped  materially  to  make  British 
socialism  a  gospel  of  love,  not  hate ;  where- 
as in  parliament  he  became  much  harder 
and  terser,  and  developed  along  with  re- 
morseless logic  a  very  formidable  gift  of 
sarcasm.  Two  subjects  he  esp>ecially  made 
his  own — the  drink  question  and  national 
finance.  His  authority  on  the  latter  be- 
came much  enhanced  in  1909,  when  Lloyd 
George  in  framing  his  famous  budget  ap- 
peared to  have  gone  to  Snowden  for  some 
of  its  ideas.  When  war  came  in  1914 
Snowden  happened  to  be  out  of  the  coun- 
try ;  but  on  his  return  he  worked  hard  to 
rally  that  minority  in  the  labour  move- 
ment which  opposed  the  war.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  especially  identifying  with  it  the 
independent  labour  party,  of  which  he 
once  more  became  chairman  for  three 
years  (1917-1920) ;  and  he  was  a  constant 
champion  of  conscientious  objectors.  He 
paid  for  these  unpopular  courses  by  losing 
his  seat  at  Blackburn  in  1918. 

For  four  years  Snowden  was  out  of  par- 
Uament,  but  at  the  general  election  of 
1922  he  was  returned  for  the  Cobie  Valley 
division  of  his  native  county.  Wlien  in 
January  1924  Ramsay  MacDonald  [q.v.] 
formed    the    first    labour    government. 


828 


Snowden 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Snowden  inevitably  became  chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer  in  it,  and  was  sworn  of  the 
Privy  Council.  His  budget  was  free  trade 
and  Gladstonian  rather  than  specifically 
socialist.  He  abolished  the  protective 
'McKenna  duties',  the  corporation  profits 
tax,  and  the  inhabited  house  duty,  besides 
lowering  various  taxes  on  commodities. 
He  also  lowered  the  taxes  on  popular 
entertainments,  which  he  regarded  as 
valuable  rivals  to  the  pubUc-house.  From 
November  1924  to  June  1929  he  and  his 
party  were  out  of  office,  although  Snowden 
retained  the  Colne  Valley  seat.  During 
this  period  occmred  the  General  Strike  of 
1926.  Snowden  had  no  sympathy  with  it 
whatever,  but  in  1927  he  made  one  of  his 
most  effective  speeches  against  the  govern- 
ment's trade  union  bill  arising  out  of  it. 
In  the  same  year  he  quitted  the  indepen- 
dent labour  party,  which  he  regarded  as 
having  changed  over  from  evolutionary 
to  revolutionary  sociaUsm.  When  Mac- 
Donald  formed  his  second  Cabinet  in 
1929,  Snowden  almost  automatically  re- 
sumed his  place  at  the  Exchequer,  such 
was  his  prestige  in  that  field.  His  first 
task  was  to  attend  at  The  Hague  an  inter- 
national conference  upon  the  Young  Plan. 
Taking  the  view  that  it  fleeced  Great 
Britain  for  the  benefit  of  her  continental 
allies,  he  demanded  and  eventually  ob- 
tained large  changes  in  it.  The  prepon- 
derance of  expert  opinion  has  since  been 
that  his  view  was  wrong  and  the  changes 
unfortunate ;  but  the  John  Bullish  vigour 
with  which  he  urged  and  carried  them 
won  the  acclaim  of  his  fellow  coimtrymen, 
even  in  quarters  hitherto  hostile.  His  re- 
turn was  that  of  a  conquering  hero,  and 
in  due  course  he  received  the  freedom  of 
the  City  of  London. 

But  the  rest  of  Snowden's  period  as 
chancellor  was  darkened  by  the  great  de- 
pression, which  began  to  reach  Europe 
from  the  United  States  of  America  to- 
wards the  end  of  1929.  In  his  1930  budget 
he  confronted  an  estimated  deficit  of 
£42,264,000.  He  met  it  chiefly  by  raising 
the  income-tax  from  4s.  to  4s.  6df.  in  the 
£  and  increasing  the  surtax  to  yield  £12  J 
millions  extra ;  while  at  the  same  time  he 
spent  £5  millions  on  regraduating  the 
income-tax,  so  that  about  three-quarters 
of  those  paying  it  paid  no  more  than 
before.  Thus  almost  the  whole  of  the  new 
burdens  were  borne  by  incomes  of  over 
£1,000  a  year.  But  the  fall  in  trade  and 
unemployment  continued  to  grow ;  and  in 
a  debate  on  11  February  1931  Snowden 
took  parliament  into  his  confidence,  dis- 


closing the  extreme  gravity  of  the  covm- 
try's  situation  and  appealing  to  the  parties 
for  a  common  effort  to  overcome  its  diffi- 
culties. His  appeal  caused  a  great  sensa- 
tion, and  was  well  received  all  over  the 
House,  except  by  the  left  wing  of  his  own 
party.  A  three-party  committee  of  seven 
was  set  up,  with  Sir  George  (later  Lord) 
May  as  chairman,  to  review  expenditure 
and  explore  possible  economies.  Three 
weeks  later  Snowden  had  to  undergo  a 
serious  internal  operation,  which  kept  him 
away  from  the  House  for  seven  weeks. 
But  it  was  completely  successful,  and  he 
presented  his  budget  on  27  April. 

This  time  Snowden  estimated  a  deficit 
of  £37,366,000.  But  as  the  numbers  of  the 
unemployed  had  now  grown  to  2,600,000, 
he  did  not  wish  to  impose  new  taxes,  nor 
could  he  well  propose  economies  pending 
the  Report  of  the  May  Committee.  He 
therefore  raised  the  money  by  stopgap 
devices — mainly  by  taking  £20  miUions 
from  the  Exchange  Account.  The  contro- 
versial side  of  the  budget  lay  elsewhere. 
Snowden  included  in  it  certain  land  tax 
clauses,  providing  for  a  valuation  with  a 
view  to  an  eventual  tax  on  land  values. 
Here  he  had  trouble  with  the  Uberals,  who 
if  they  voted  with  the  conservatives  could 
oust  the  government;  but  at  last  he  got 
his  clauses  through.  Meanwhile  the  eco- 
nomic crisis  grew  rapidly  worse ;  foreigners 
with  sterling  balances  tended  to  vrithdraw 
them,  and  the  country's  stock  of  gold  fell. 
The  run  was  stimulated  by  the  pubUcation 
on  1  August  of  the  May  Committee's  Re- 
port, which  estimated  the  probable  deficit 
by  the  following  April  at  £120  millions, 
and  advised  an  immediate  saving  of  £96 
millions — over  £80  millions  out  of  social 
services.  On  12  August  the  Economy 
Committee  of  the  Cabinet  met  and  the 
opposition  leaders  were  sununoned  to 
London ;  and  for  the  ensuing  twelve  days 
a  many-sided  negotiation  went  on,  Snow- 
den's version  of  which  is  given  at  length 
in  his  Autobiography.  The  upshot  was  the 
resignation  of  the  labour  ministry  and  the 
formation  by  MacDonald  on  24  August 
of  a  new  three-party  'national'  ministry, 
in  which  three  other  members  of  the 
old  Cabinet — Snowden,  J.  H.  Thomas, 
and  Lord  Sankey  retained  their  places. 
Snowden  took  part  without  enthusiasm, 
but  from  a  strong  sense  of  duty.  He  was 
assured  that  the  ministry  was  not  to  be 
a  coaUtion,  but  would  deal  with  the  imme- 
diate crisis  only. 

Snowden's  own  main  contribution  was 
a   new  budget,   introduced   by   him   on 


824 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


SoUas 


10  September  1931.  He  estimated  that 
the  deficit  on  the  current  financial  year 
would  be  £74,679,000,  and  the  deficit  on 
the  following  one  would  (on  the  same 
basis)  reach£170miUions.  A  drastic  scheme 
balanced  both  the  figures — about  half 
by  cuts  and  half  by  new  taxation.  The 
speech  in  which  he  asked  for  and  ob- 
tained these  sacrifices  was  worthy  of 
the  occasion,  and  in  it  he  perhaps  touched 
his  highest  level.  Incidentally  the  finance 
bill  included  clauses  to  facilitate  the  con- 
version of  the  £2,000  miUions  of  5  per  cent, 
war  loan ;  and  it  was  by  using  these  that 
in  1932  Neville  Chamberlain  [q.v.]  was 
able  to  convert  the  loan.  But  Snowden's 
troubles  were  not  over,  and  on  21  Septem- 
ber he  had  to  suspend  the  gold  standard, 
the  speech  in  which  he  did  so  being  again 
one  of  his  best.  There  followed  in  October 
the  general  election.  Snowden  did  not 
stand  in  it ;  after  his  severe  illness  in  the 
spring  he  had  decided  not  to ;  instead,  he 
went  to  the  House  of  Lords,  being  in 
November  created  Viscount  Snowden,  of 
Ickomshaw.  But  by  two  election  letters 
and  a  broadcast  address  he  made  perhaps 
a  larger  contribution  than  anyone  else  to 
the  government's  victory  at  the  polls. 

In  the  reconstituted  ministry  Snowden 
became  lord  privy  seal,  and  held  that  posi- 
tion until  28  September  1932.  But  a  divi- 
sion soon  developed  in  the  Cabinet  between 
protectionists  and  free  traders,  Snowden 
being  particularly  strong  for  free  trade. 
An  attempt  was  made  to  preserve  unity 
by  the  famous  'agreement  to  differ',  an- 
noimced  on  22  January  1932 ;  but  when 
in  August  the  Ottawa  Economic  Con- 
ference was  held  and  resulted  in  a  scheme 
of  preferential  tariffs,  the  free  traders  felt 
their  position  to  be  impossible.  The  hberal 
party  was  spUt  between  Simonites  and 
Samuelites,  and  the  latter  resigned  with 
Snowden.  It  was  the  virtual  end  of  his 
career  in  poUtics.  He  completed  a  valu- 
able two-voliune  autobiography,  which 
appeared  in  1934,  when  he  was  seventy ; 
and  three  years  later  he  died  at  Tilford, 
Surrey,  15  May  1937.  He  had  no  children. 
He  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D 
from  the  universities  of  Leeds  (1927), 
Bristol  (1929),  and  Manchester  (1930). 

Snowden's  stature  was  curtailed  by  his 
infirmity,  but  he  was  very  broad-shoul- 
dered, and  gave  an  impression  of  his  for- 
mer strength.  He  was  noticeably  blond, 
with  pale  hair,  a  pale  skin,  and  Ught-blue 
'steely'  eyes.  Perhaps  his  most  marked 
feature  was  his  thin-hpped  mouth,  tightly 
pursed  to  utter  his  terse,  hard  phrases. 


Although  a  man  of  fundamental  generosity 
and  capable  of  great  charm,  he  was  not 
always  over-easy  to  get  on  with;  in  the 
party  it  used  to  be  said  that  he  was  not 
a  good  committee-man.  In  other  respects 
he  was  very '  Yorkshire ',  with  the  upright- 
ness, downrightness,  and  impatience  of 
sloth  or  crookedness  which  that  conveys. 
He  was  a  clear  rather  than  a  profound 
thinker,  but  his  party  owed  much  to  him 
for  the  sure  instinct  with  which  he  pre- 
sented socialism  in  an  English  dress, 
rejecting  the  unassimilable  elements  of 
continental  doctrine.  No  one  in  the  move- 
ment could  have  been  more  completely 
working-class  in  origin;  but  he  differed 
from  most  of  his  colleagues  in  not  having 
graduated  in  the  trade-union  machine, 
and  was  never  inclined,  as  some  of  them 
were,  to  put  its  claims  above  those  of  the 
democratic  parliamentary  state. 

A  bust  of  Snowden  was  made  by  the 
Hungarian  sculptor  Aloyse  Strobl,  of 
which  two  castings  exist:  one  is  at  the 
Treasury,  the  other  at  Leeds  University 
library.  A  massive  cairn  of  rough  granite 
marks  the  spot  on  the  wild  moorland  above 
Ickomshaw  where  in  1937  Snowden's  ashes 
were  scattered  to  the  wind. 

[Lord  Snowden,  An  Autobiography,  2  vols., 
1934;  The  Times,  17  May  1937;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  C.  K.  Ensor. 

SOLLAS,  WILLIAM  JOHNSON  (1849- 
1936),  geologist,  was  bom  at  Birmingham 
30  May  1849,  the  eldest  son  of  William 
Henry  SoUas,  shipowner,  by  his  wife, 
Emma  Wheatley.  He  was  educated  at  the 
City  of  London  School,  the  Royal  College 
of  Chemistry,  and  the  Royal  School  of 
Mines,  where  he  was  taught  by  John  Tyn- 
dall,  (Sir)  A.  C.  Ramsay,  and  T.  H.  Huxley 
[qq.v.],  and  in  1870  went  to  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  receiving  an  open 
scholarship  there  in  1872.  On  the  advice 
of  T.  G.  Bonney  [q.v.]  he  took  up  geology 
and  obtained  a  first  class  in  that  subject 
in  the  natural  sciences  tripos  of  1873,  and 
in  1882  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his  college. 
After  six  years  as  a  university  extension 
lecturer,  he  was  appointed  curator  of  the 
Bristol  Museum,  and  lecturer  in  geology  at 
the  University  College,  becoming  in  1880 
professor  of  zoology  and  geology.  In  1883 
he  went  to  Trinity  College,  Dubhn,  as  pro- 
fessor of  geology  and  mineralogy,  and  from 
1893  to  1897  he  was  petrologist  to  the 
Geological  Survey  of  Ireland.  In  1897  he 
was  appointed  professor  of  geology  and 
palaeontology  at  Oxford,  and  he  held  the 


825 


SoUas 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


chair  until  his  death  at  Oxford  20  October 
1936.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Univer- 
sity College  in  1901. 

The  research  work  which  Sollas  began 
as  an  undergraduate  led  him  to  the  subject 
of  sponges  in  general,  including  living 
forms,  culminating  in  a  monograph  on 
the  TetracHnellidae  collected  during  the 
voyage  of  the  Challenger,  and  in  papers  on 
the  origin  of  flints  and  of  freshwater  fauna. 
While  holding  the  chair  at  Dubhn  he  be- 
came interested  in  the  glacial  features  of 
Ireland,  and  in  pleochroic  haloes  in  the 
biotite  of  the  Leinster  granites  and  the 
igneous  rocks  of  Carlingford.  In  view  of 
later  discoveries  these  researches  showed 
a  remarkable  foresight. 

In  1896  Sollas  was  sent  by  the  Royal 
Society  in  charge  of  an  expedition  to 
Ftmafuti  in  the  South  Pacific  to  test  the 
rival  theories  of  the  origin  of  the  coral 
reefs  by  boring,  and  his  work  there  pre- 
pared the  way  for  (Sir)  T.  W.  Edgeworth 
David  [q.v.].  He  applied  with  success  the 
zoological  method  of  serial  sections  to 
fossil  reptiles  and  other  organisms  and 
devised  his  ingenious  'diffusion  column' 
of  heavy  liquid  for  the  determination  of 
the  specific  gravity  of  mineral  fragments. 
In  later  hfe  he  devoted  most  of  his  time  to 
the  study  of  palaeoUthic  man,  on  which  he 
became  recognized  as  a  leading  authority, 
making  first-hand  explorations  of  the  Pavi- 
land  cave  and  other  caves  and  river  terrace 
sites  in  western  Europe.  In  1911  he  pub- 
Ushed  what  will  perhaps  remain  the  best 
known  of  his  works.  Ancient  Hunters  and 
their  Modern  Representatives.  He  also  wrote 
an  essay  on  geological  time  which  was 
pubUshed  with  others  in  The  Age  of  the 
Earth  (1905)  and  he  supervised  the  transla- 
tion by  his  daughter,  Hertha,  of  Eduard 
Suess's  Das  Antlitz  der  Erde  {The  Face  of 
the  Earth,  1904). 

Sollas  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1889  and 
was  awarded  a  Royal  medal  in  1914.  He 
was  president  of  the  Geological  Society 
from  1908  to  1910,  and  he  received  the 
Bigsby  medal  in  1893  and  the  Wollaston 
medal  in  1 907.  He  was  elected  an  honorary 
fellow  of  the  Imperial  College  of  Science 
and  Technology  in  1934,  and  he  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Dublin,  Bristol,  Oslo,  and  Adelaide. 

SoUas  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1874 
to  Helen  (died  1911),  daughter  of  William 
John  Corin,  of  Redruth,  Cornwall,  and 
had  two  daughters ;  secondly,  in  1914  to 
Amabel  Nevill  (died  1928),  yoimgest 
daughter  of  John  Gwyn  Jeffreys  [q.v.] 
and  widow  of  H.  N.  Moseley  [q.v.]. 


In  his  prime,  Sollas  was  a  man  of  great 
erudition,  who  wrote  on  almost  every 
branch  of  geology  from  the  intimate  struc- 
ture of  crystals  to  the  form  and  figure  of 
the  earth  itself,  with  clarity,  vigour,  and 
humour.  He  was  a  gallant  and  doughty 
foe,  a  formidable  controversialist,  an  in- 
vestigator of  untiring  energy  and  unim- 
peachable accuracy,  and  a  constant  friend. 
At  Oxford  he  was  discouraged  by  the 
severe  inadequacy  of  the  equipment  in  his 
department,  and  in  later  years  he  suffered 
from  extreme  deafness. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  6,  January  1938  (bibliography 
and  portrait) ;  Quarterly  Journal  of  the  Geo- 
logical Society,  vol.  xciii,  1937-1938;  The 
Times,  24  October  1936 ;  Nature,  5  December, 
1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  W.  Watts. 

J.  A.  Douglas. 


SOMERVILLE,  Sir  WILLIAM  (1860-j 
1932),  agricultvurist,  was  bom  at  Cormis- 
ton,  Lanarkshire,  30  May  1860,  the  only] 
child  to  survive  infancy  of  Robert  Somer- 
ville,  of  Cormiston,  by  his  wife,  Margaret 
Alexander.  The  SomerviUe  family  seems 
to  have  settled  in  Lanarkshire  in  the 
twelfth  century,  and  at  one  time  held  very 
extensive  landed  estates ;  but  the  400  acre 
farm  of  Cormiston,  bought  in  1820,  was 
Robert  Somerville's  only  land.  He  farmed 
it  until  his  death  in  1879. 

WiUiam  SomerviUe  was  educated  at  the 
Royal  High  School,  Edinburgh,  and  soon 
after  leaving  attended  a  short  course  of 
lectures  in  agriculture  at  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity. Succeeding  to  Cormiston  at  the 
age  of  nineteen,  he  spent  the  following  six 
years  as  a  farmer.  The  experience  of  run- 
ning a  poor  farm  in  a  period  of  acute  agri- 
cultural depression  was  an  important  part 
of  his  education,  serving  to  develop  the 
cautious  business  outlook  on  farming 
matters  that  was  later  to  win  for  him  the 
complete  confidence  of  practical  men. 

In  1885,  when  Robert  Wallace  succeeded 
John  Wilson  [q.v.]  in  the  chair  of  agricul- 
ture at  Edinburgh,  and  when  the  univer- 
sity instituted  a  degree  in  the  subject, 
SomerviUe  returned  to  college  and  gradu- 
ated in  1887  as  one  of  the  first  smaU  group 
of  agricultural  students.  He  then  went  to 
Munich  in  order  to  study  forestry  under 
Heinrich  Mayr  and  Robert  Hartig,  and 
graduated  D.CEc.  in  1889.  In  the  same 
year  he  returned  to  Edinburgh  as  the  first 
lecturer  in  forestry.  During  his  brief  stay 
in  that  post  he  did  much  to  awaken  inter- 
est in  the  new  German  scientific  approach 


826 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Sorley 


to  forest  problems  both  by  his  contacts 
with  foresters  and  by  his  translation  of 
Hartig's  book  on  Timbers,  and  Hmv  to 
Know  Them  (1890)  and  afterwards  of  his 
Text-Book  of  the  Diseases  of  Trees  (1894). 

In  1891  Somerville  passed  on  to  the 
Durham  College  of  Science  (later  King's 
College,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne)  as  pro- 
fessor of  agriculture  and  forestry,  and  at 
once  began  the  big  programme  of  field 
experimental  work  that  was  to  prove  so 
fruitful  a  means  towards  better  farming. 
In  1899  he  moved  to  Cambridge  as  the 
first  Drapers'  professor  of  agriculture,  and 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  King's  College. 
Next,  in  1902  he  joined  the  Board  of 
Agriculture  and  Fisheries  as  assistant 
secretary,  but  found  the  work  of  a  govern- 
ment department  far  less  satisfying  than 
that  of  the  lecture  room  and  the  experi- 
mental plot.  In  1906  he  accepted  the 
Sibthorpian  chair  of  rural  economy  at 
Oxford,  and  thereby  became  a  fellow  of 
St.  John's  College.  At  Oxford  he  spent 
the  rest  of  his  working  hfe,  retiring  in 
1925. 

As  a  teacher  of  agriculture  Somerville 
made  a  strong  and  lasting  impression  on 
his  pupils,  many  of  whom  continued  to 
look  to  him  for  inspiration  long  after  they 
had  left  his  lecture  room.  In  middle  life 
he  was  probably  the  most  effective,  among 
all  academic  agriculturists,  as  a  speaker 
at  farmers'  gatherings.  Indeed,  no  one 
contributed  more  than  Somerville  to  re- 
moving the  suspicion  of  research  in  agri- 
culture which  was  entertained  by  farmers 
at  the  outset  of  his  career.  Moreover,  he 
was  a  notable  'improver',  for  he  bought 
two  dereUct  farms  ('Poverty  Bottom', 
near  Hastings,  and  Compton  Cassey, 
near  Northleach,  in  Gloucestershire)  and 
brought  both  back  into  full  and  profitable 
production. 

Among  Somerville's  many  contributions 
to  agricultural  progress  three  deserve 
special  mention.  The  first  is  the  evidence 
which  he  produced  that  phosphate  defi- 
ciency was  the  commonest  cause  of  low 
productivity  in  pasture  land,  and  that  in 
basic  slag  (until  then  regarded  as  a  worth- 
less by-product)  lay  the  means  of  im- 
provement. As  was  said  at  the  time,  he 
made  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  one 
grew  before,  and  also  made  them  better. 
The  second  is  the  development  of  the 
simple  field  experiment  as  a  means  of  dis- 
covering the  responses  to  fertilizers  of 
crops  and  grass,  of  testing  the  adapta- 
bility, in  particular  environments,  of  differ- 
ent species  and  varieties,  and  of  compar- 


ing the  long-term  results  from  various 
systems  of  cropping.  The  third  is  the  use 
of  the  animal  as  a  direct  measure  of  the 
feeding  value  of  pasturage.  In  all  his 
experiments  Somerville  so  contrived  the 
layout  that  the  plots  provided  striking 
visual  demonstrations,  and  he  invariably 
stated  his  resxilts  in  terms  of  profit  and 
loss.  His  method  is  illustrated  by  the  now 
classical  plots  in  Tree  Field,  Cockle  Park, 
Northumberland. 

Although  agriculture  became  Somer- 
ville's main  concern,  his  interest  in  trees 
was  maintained  to  the  end.  He  was  twice 
(1900-1901  and  1922-1924)  president  of 
the  Arboricultural  Society,  and  was  editor 
of  its  Journal  for  thirteen  years  (1910- 
1923).  His  last  book,  published  in  1927, 
bears  the  title  How  a  Tree  Grows. 

Somerville  was  a  very  complete  country- 
man: among  other  things  a  comi>etent 
field  botanist,  a  student  and  a  lover  of 
birds,  and  a  notable  fisherman.  Even 
after  his  health  gave  way,  he  maintained 
his  lifelong  interest  in  Alpine  gardening. 

Somerville  was  appointed  K.B.E.  and 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  St.  John's 
College,  Oxford,  in  1926.  He  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Edinburgh 
University  in  1922 .  In  1 888  he  married  Mar- 
garet Elizabeth,  fourth  daughter  of  George 
Gaukroger,  of  Southfield,  East  Lothian, 
and  had  two  daughters,  the  younger  of 
whom  predeceased  her  father.  He  died  at 
Boars  Hill,  near  Oxford,  17  February 
1932. 

A  fine  portrait  of  Somerville  by  G.  Hall- 
Neale,  presented  to  him  by  his  pupils, 
hangs  in  the  School  of  Rural  Economy, 
Oxford.  A  replica  is  in  the  hall  of  St. 
John's  College. 

[The  Times,  18  February  1932;  Nature, 
12  March  1932 ;  Agricultural  Progress,  vol.  x, 
1933;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] J.  A.  S.  Watson, 

SORLEY,  WILLIAM  RITCHIE  (1855- 
1935),  philosopher,  was  bom  at  Selkirk 
4  November  1855,  the  younger  son  of 
WiUiam  Sorley,  a  minister  of  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  by  his  wife,  Anna 
Ritchie.  He  was  educated  at  a  school  kept 
by  an  uncle  at  Birkenhead,  and  entered 
Edinburgh  University  when  about  fifteen 
years  old.  After  taking  his  degree,  he 
studied  theology  for  several  years  at  Edin- 
burgh, Tubingen,  and  Berlin,  with  a  view 
to  entering  the  ministry,  but  was  not 
ordained.  At  the  age  of  twenty-four  he 
began  a  further  course  of  study,  in  moral 
science,  at  Trinity  College,   Cambridge, 


827 


Sorley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


obtaining  a  first  class  in  the  moral  sciences 
tripos  of  1882. 

Sorley  was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at 
Trinity  in  1883,  and  from  1882  until  1887 
he  lectured  in  the  university  and  elsewhere 
on  ethics.  In  1888  he  became  professor  of 
logic  and  philosophy  at  University  College, 
Cardiff,  where  he  remained  until  1894,  in 
which  year  he  was  appointed  regius  pro- 
fessor of  moral  philosophy  at  Aberdeen 
University.  In  1900  he  succeeded  Henry 
Sidgwick  in  the  Knightbridge  chair  of 
moral  philosophy  at  Cambridge :  this  post 
he  held  until  his  resignation  in  1933.  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  in  1901. 

Sorley  inherited  from  his  father  both 
administrative  and  literary  ability.  At 
Cardiff  he  took  an  active  part  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  university  of  Wales,  and  at 
Cambridge  he  served  on  the  council  of  the 
borough  as  weU  as  on  that  of  the  senate 
of  the  imiversity :  he  welcomed  the  experi- 
ence which  various  kinds  of  business 
brought  him,  despite  the  distraction  from 
Uterary  pursuits.  Besides  editing  works 
by  Robert  Adamson  and  James  Ward, 
and  being  the  author  of  several  books,  he 
wrote  more  than  fifty  articles,  in  which  is 
to  be  found  some  of  his  most  original 
thought.  His  chief  work,  containing  the 
Gifford  lectures  delivered  at  Aberdeen  in 
1914-1915  and  published  in  1918  as  Moral 
Values  and  the  Idea  of  God,  has  played  an 
important  part  in  the  education  of  stu- 
dents of  philosophical  theology.  Among 
his  other  works  mention  may  be  made  of 
The  Ethics  of  Naturalism  (1885)  and  A  His- 
tory of  English  Philosophy  ( 1 920) .  Sorley 's 
philosophical  and  theological  position  was 
that  of  theism.  His  main  theistic  argu- 
ment was  based  on  considerations  concern- 
ing moral  values.  These,  he  maintained, 
are  objective  in  that  they  are  not  consti- 
tuted by  feeling  or  desire  and  in  that  they 
form  one  of  the  factors  which  a  compre- 
hensive philosophy  should  co-ordinate: 
the  relations  between  moral  values  and 
reaUty  he  beUeved  to  be  inexplicable  by 
any  non-theistic  theory.  A  measure  of  the 
value  of  his  writings  as  a  contribution  to 
knowledge  and  thought  in  the  estimation 
of  Sorley's  contemporaries  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  they  procured  for  him  the 
degree  of  Litt.D.  of  Cambridge  University 
(1905),  the  honorary  LL.D.  degree  of  Edin- 
burgh University  (1900),  and  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  British  Academy  (1905). 

Sorley  married  in  1889  Janett^  Colqu- 
hoim,  daughter  of  George  Smith,  journalist 
and  author,  of  Edinburgh,  and  sister  of 


I 


(Sir)  George  Adam  Smith,  the  Old  Testa- 
ment scholar.    They  had  twin  sons,  of, 
whom   the   elder,    Charles   Hamilton,   a] 
young  poet  of  genius,  was  killed  in  action ! 
in  1915,  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at  Cam- 
bridge 28  July  1935. 

[F.   R.   Tennant,    William  Ritchie  SorleyA 
1855-1935  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Aca-j 
demy,  vol.  xxi,   1935;   The  Times,  30  Julys 
1935 ;   private  information ;   personal  know- 
ledge.] F.  R.  Tennant. 

SPEYER,  Sir  EDGAR,  baronet  (1862- 
1932),  financier,  philanthropist,  and  patron 
of  music,  was  bom  in  New  York  7  Septem- 
ber 1862,  the  second  son  of  Gustavus 
Speyer,  a  Jewish  banker,  of  Frankfort-on- 
Main,  by  his  wife,  Sophia,  daughter  of 
Rudolph  Rubino,  of  Fritzlar,  Prussia,  and 
Frankfort. 

Educated  at  the  Realgymnasium,  Frank- 
fort, at  the  age  of  twenty-two  Speyer 
became  a  partner  in  his  father's  three 
associated  companies  in  Frankfort,  Lon- 
don, and  New  York.  In  1887  he  came  to 
London  as  director  of  Speyer  Brothers, 
who  were  interested  in  exchange  arbitrage 
with  the  continent  and  the  United  States 
of  America  and  in  railway  finance. 

This  connexion  with  railways  brought 
Speyer  into  prominence  in  the  business 
fife  of  London  and  contributed  towards 
his  great  fortune.  Electric  traction  had 
obvious  possibilities  of  application  to  Lon- 
don transport;  and  under  Speyer,  who 
was  naturalized  in  1892,  the  firm  was 
mainly  instrumental  in  financing  the 
MetropoUtan  District  Railway  Company. 
He  became  chairman  of  that  company  in 
1906,  and  in  July  of  that  year  was  created 
a  baronet.  In  1903  he  had  joined  the 
board  of  the  Underground  Electric  Rail- 
ways Company  of  London,  becoming  chair- 
man in  1906,  a  post  which  he  held  until  , 
1915.  Speyer  was  active  in  liberal  politics, 
and  a  friend  of  Asquith.  He  was  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council  in  1909. 

In  1902  Speyer  married  a  widow,  Leo- 
nora, daughter  of  Ferdinand,  Count  von 
Stosch,  of  Mantze,  Silesia.  She  had  been 
a  professional  violinist,  and  he  shared  her 
musical  interests,  becoming  chairman  of 
the  Queen's  HaU  Concert  Board,  and  pay- 
ing out  some  £2,000  a  year  for  many  years 
to  make  up  the  deficit  on  the  promenade 
concerts.  At  his  home  in  Grosvenor  Street 
there  were  many  concerts,  at  several  of 
which  Strauss  and  Debussy  conducted 
their  own  works.  Speyer  also  took  a  lively 
interest  in  philanthropic  and  cultural 
causes.    He  was  on  the  board  of  King 


828 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Sprigge 


Edward's  Hospital  Fund,  president  of 
Poplar  Hospital,  and  a  trustee  of  the 
Whitechapel  Art  Gallery.  In  the  years 
before  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  led  the 
life  of  a  wealthy  banker,  socially  well 
considered  and  lavish  in  entertainment, 
whether  at  Grosvenor  Street  or  at  Over- 
strand,  near  Cromer. 

But  in  1914  Speyer's  origins  were  re- 
membered, his  patriotism  was  called  into 
question,  and  he  was  even  accused  of  sig- 
nalling to  German  submarines  from  his 
Norfolk  home.  His  brother  James  in  New 
York  was  known  to  be  pro-German,  and 
Lady  Speyer,  incensed  by  the  ostracism 
of  those  who  had  claimed  to  be  her  friends, 
spoke  scathingly  of  their  ingratitude.  On 
17  May  1915  Speyer  wrote  to  Asquith, 
offering  to  resign  his  baronetcy  and  mem- 
bership of  the  Privy  Council,  but  Asquith 
replied  that  the  King  was  unwilling  to 
accept  the  offer,  and  added : '  I  have  known 
you  long  and  well  enough  to  estimate  at 
their  true  value  these  baseless  and  malig- 
nant imputations  upon  your  loyalty  to  the 
British  Crown.'  In  November  1915  Sir 
George  Makgill  obtained  a  rule  nisi  calling 
upon  Speyer  and  Sir  Ernest  Cassel  [q.v.] 
to  justify  their  membership  of  the  Privy 
Council.  In  December  a  divisional  court 
discharged  the  rule,  and  the  decision  was 
reaffirmed  on  appeal.  Nevertheless,  Speyer 
resigned  all  his  offices  and  joined  his 
brother  in  New  York.  In  December  1921, 
as  a  result  of  proceedings  of  the  National- 
ization (Revocation)  Committee,  his  name 
was  struck  off  the  list  of  Privy  Coimcillors, 
and  his  naturalization,  and  those  of  his 
wife  and  three  daughters,  were  revoked. 
A  White  Paper,  published  in  January 
1922,  accused  Speyer  Brothers  of  engaging 
in  1915  in  exchange  arbitrage  with  the 
firm  of  Teixeira,  of  Amsterdam,  knowing 
that  this  would  involve  traffic  with  Ger- 
many. There  were  other  charges,  but  in  a 
long  statement  to  Renter's  agency  Speyer 
characterized  them  as  'trivial  beyond 
words'. 

Speyer  Uved  on  in  New  York,  and  at  the 
time  of  his  death  in  Berhn  16  February 
1932,  was  a  director  of  the  banking  house 
of  Speyer-l^Uissen  there.  His  services  to 
London's  transport,  music,  and  hospitals 
need  not  be  obscured  by  the  events  of 
1915,  and  it  may  well  be  that  he  was 
guilty  of  no  more  than  minor  technical 
offences  against  the  laws  of  his  adopted 
cotmtry. 

A  portrait  of  Speyer  by  (Sir)  WiUiam 

Orpen  (1914)  is  in  private  possession.   A 

.  caricature  of  him  by  (Sir)  Max  Beerbohm 


is  reproduced  in  that  artist's  Fifty  Carica- 
tures (1913). 

[The  Times,  18  February  1982;  Daily  Tele- 
graph, 17  October  1921,  0  January  1922; 
Daily  Herald,  14  December  1921,  7  January 
1922 ;  Morning  Post,  18  February  1932 ;  E.  F. 
Benson,  As  We  Are,  1932;  private  informa- 
tion.] Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

SPRIGGE,  Sir  (SAMUEL)  SQUIRE 
(1860-1937),  medical  editor  and  author, 
was  born  at  Watton,  Norfolk,  22  June 
1860,  the  eldest  son  of  Squire  Sprigge,  a 
doctor  and  small  landowner,  by  his  wife, 
EUzabeth,  daughter  of  John  Jackson,  soli- 
citor, also  of  long-established  East  Anglian 
stock.  He  was  educated  at  Uppingham, 
at  Gonville  and  Caiiis  College,  Cambridge, 
and  at  St.  George's  Hospital.  After  gradu- 
ating in  medicine  in  1887  he  cultivated 
his  natural  taste  for  letters  and  for  the 
company  of  writers  and  artists,  by  be- 
coming secretary  to  (Sir)  J.  Russell  Rey- 
nolds [q.v.],  and  at  the  same  time  was 
persuaded  by  (Sir)  Walter  Besant  [q.v.] 
to  become  secretary  of  the  newly  formed 
Society  of  Authors,  of  which  he  was  later 
chairman  (1910-1913).  In  those  years  he 
made  many  valuable  friendships  at  the 
United  University  and  Savile  clubs.  He 
proceeded  M.D.  in  1904. 

The  turning-point  in  his  career  came  in 
1893,  when  Sprigge  accepted  an  invitation 
to  join  the  Lancet  as  assistant  editor.  He 
had  not  been  with  them  long  when  the 
editors,  T.  H,  Wakley  and  Thomas  Wakley 
[qq.v.],  son  and  grandson  of  the  founder, 
Thomas  Wakley  [q.v.],  gave  him  the  con- 
genial task  of  tracing  the  origin  and  early 
fortunes  of  the  paper;  the  result  was  a 
book  The  Life  and  Times  of  Thomas  Wakley 
(1897).  He  published  in  1905  his  Cam- 
bridge M.D.  thesis  in  book  form  under  the 
title  Medicine  and  the  Public.  The  senior 
editor  of  the  Lancet  died  in  1907,  the 
junior  survived  him  by  only  two  years, 
and  in  1909  Sprigge  took  over  the  editor- 
ship in  name  as  well  as  in  fact.  His 
tenure  of  it  during  the  next  twenty-eight 
years  proved  him  a  diplomat  and  man 
of  the  world,  upholding  the  traditions 
of  medicine  and  keeping  on  close  terms 
with  its  leading  figures.  Unlike  the  foun- 
der of  the  paper  he  preferred  urbanity  to 
combativeness,  and  his  advice  on  public 
medical  affairs  was  increasingly  sought. 

Sprigge  wrote  an  enormous  number  of 
unsigned  articles  on  medical  poUtics  and 
kindred  subjects,  which  came  out  week  by 
week  in  the  Lancet.  His  wit  and  pimgency 
of  phrase,  so  well  known  in  private  life, 


829 


Sprigge 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


h^l 


were  firmly  checked  in  these  careful  and 
balanced  writings  and  in  public  speech; 
but  flashes  of  them  shone  through  his 
early  books  Odd  Issues  (1899)  and  An 
Industrious  Chevalier  (1902),  and  in  Physic 
and  Fiction  (1921).  Quick  judgement  of 
men  and  an  all-round  view  of  situations 
were  notable  in  his  work  as  an  editor,  re- 
inforced by  many  social  and  intellectual 
contacts  beyond  the  world  of  medicine. 
Under  his  guidance  the  paper  outhved  the 
echoes  of  its  violent  adolescence  and  harsh 
middle  age  and  moved  into  a  period  of 
renewed  but  sober  youth. 

The  position  which  Sprigge  came  to 
hold  in  professional  life  was  recognized  by 
a  knighthood  in  1921,  by  election  as 
F.R.C.S.  in  the  same  year,  and  as  F.R.C.P. 
in  1927.  In  1928  he  delivered  the  Hun- 
terian  lecture  to  the  American  College  of 
Surgeons.  He  also  showed  considerable 
talent  as  a  water-colour  artist  and  was  an 
excellent  judge  of  this  branch  of  art.  His 
kindness  and  readiness  to  help,  financially 
and  by  his  advice,  his  friends  and  those 
who  worked  with  him,  endeared  him  to  all. 

Sprigge  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1895  to  Mary  Ada  Beatrice  (died  1903), 
daughter  of  Sir  Charles  Moss,  chief  justice 
of  Ontario,  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter ; 
secondly,  in  1905  to  Ethel  Coursolles, 
daughter  of  Major  Charles  Jones,  R.A., 
and  had  a  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
17  June  1937,  still  nominally  in  harness 
and  still  able  to  employ  his  alert  and  pene- 
trating mind  and  keep  up  his  friendships. 

[The  Times  and  Manchester  Guardian,  18 
June  1937 ;  Lancet,  1937,  vol.  i,  p.  1550  (por- 
trait); British  Medical  Journal,  1937,  vol.  i, 
p.  1346  (portrait) ;  personal  knowledge.] 

N.  Gerald  Horner. 

STAMFORDHAM,  Bakon  (1849-1931), 
private  secretary  to  King  George  V.  [See 
BiGGE,  Arthur  John.] 

STEEL-MAITLAND,  Sir  ARTHUR 
HERBERT  DRUMMOND  RAMSAY-, 
first  baronet  (1876-1935),  poUtician  and 
economist,  whose  original  name  was 
Arthur  Herbert  Drummond  Steel,  was 
bom  in  India  5  July  1876,  the  second  son 
of  Colonel  Edward  Harris  Steel,  Bengal 
Staff  Corps,  by  his  wife,  Emmeline,  daugh- 
ter of  General  Henry  Drummond.  He  was 
nephew  by  marriage  of  Flora  Annie  Steel, 
the  novelist  [q.v.].  From  Rugby  School, 
where  he  gained  many  distinctions  as  a 
classical  scholar,  he  passed  with  a  classical 
scholarship  to  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 
His  career  there  was  unusually  brilliant. 


1 


his  versatiUty  being  as  unbounded  as 
energy  and  industry.  Concurrently  with 
obtaining  a  first  class  in  classical  modera- 
tions (1897),  in  liter ae  humaniores  (1899), 
and  in  jurisprudence  (1900),  he  became  suc- 
cessively secretary,  junior  treasurer,  an( 
president  of  the  Union  (1899);  and  in  th( 
athletic  field  he  obtained  a  place  in  th( 
Oxford  boat  in  1899. 

Leaving  Oxford  in  1900,  with  an  Eldon 
scholarship  and  a  fellowship  at  All  Souls, 
Steel's  intention  was  to  be  called  to  the 
bar  and  later  to  enter  poUtics.  His  mar- 
riage in  1901  to  Mary,  only  surviving 
daughter  and  heiress  of  Sir  James  Ramsay- 
Gibson-Maitland,  fourth  baronet,  of  Barn- 
ton  and  Sauchie,  wrought  a  change  in  his 
plans,  and  at  once  opened  the  way  to  a 
political  career.  Upon  his  marriage  he 
changed  his  surname  to  Ramsay-Steel- 
Maitland  by  royal  ficence.  From  1902  to 
1905  he  was  private  secretary  to  two  chan- 
cellors of  the  Exchequer,  C.  T.  (afterwards 
Lord)  Ritchie  and  (Sir)  Austen  Chamber- 
lain. His  first  important  piece  of  public 
work  was  the  investigation  which  he  car- 
ried out  as  special  commissioner  (1906- 
1907)  to  the  royal  commission  on  the  Poor 
Laws,  concerning  casual  employment,  sea- 
sonal trades,  dangerous  occupations,  and 
bad  housing.  This  investigation,  which  he 
made  jointly  with  Miss  Rose  Elizabeth 
Squire,  is  embodied  in  an  appendix  (pub- 
Ushed  1907)  to  the  Report  of  the  royal 
commission.  In  1906  he  unsuccessfully 
contested  the  Rugby  division,  but  suc- 
ceeded in  January  1910  in  obtaining  a 
seat  as  conservative  member  for  East 
Birmingham.  In  1911  he  became  chair- 
man of  the  imionist  party,  a  post  for  which 
his  marked  ability  in  organization  and 
administration  admirably  fitted  him.  He 
continued  to  represent  East  Birmingham 
(which  on  redistribution  of  seats  in  1918 
became  the  Erdington  division)  until  1929, 
when  he  lost  his  seat  by  a  narrow  margin 
to  the  labour  candidate.  He  was  returned 
for  Tamworth  at  a  by-election  in  December 
of  the  same  year,  and  continued  to  repre- 
sent it  imtil  his  death. 

Steel-Maitland's  first  official  appoint- 
ment was  as  parliamentary  under-secre- 
tary  for  the  Colonies  from  1915  to  1917. 
During  the  next  two  years  he  held  office 
as  joint  parliamentary  under-secretary  of 
state  for  the  Foreign  Office  and,  in  his  ] 
capacity  as  head  of  the  Department  of 
Overseas  Trade,  as  parliamentary  secre- 
tary to  the  Board  of  Trade.  Whilst  in 
control  of  this  department  he  did  much 
to  improve  the  status  and  usefulness  of 


830 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Stevens 


the  consular  service.  In  1919,  with  a  view 
to  acquiring  a  first-hand  knowledge  of 
business  and  finance,  he  accepted  an  in- 
vitation to  join  the  board  of  the  Rio  Tin  to 
Company,  of  which  he  subsequently  be- 
came managing  director,  a  position  which 
he  relinquished  in  November  1924  when 
Baldwin  asked  him  to  take  charge  of  the 
Ministry  of  Labour.  This  office  he  held  imtil 
June  1929.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  on  joining  the  Cabinet.  To  his  task 
as  minister  of  labour  he  brought  a  combina- 
tion of  quahties  which  obviously  equipped 
him  for  the  post;  an  exceptionally  wide 
and  intimate  knowledge  and  experience  of 
the  conditions  of  labour,  a  tireless  energy 
and  inexliaustible  appetite  for  work,  and, 
what  is  perhaps  most  essential  of  all, 
an  ability  to  see  both  sides  of  a  question 
and,  in  negotiation,  to  handle  opposi- 
tion or  objection  with  good  temper  and 
tact.  It  has  been  truly  said  of  him  that  he 
regarded  the  great  problem  of  unemploy- 
ment as  something  with  which  it  was 
peculiarly  his  own  personal  duty  to  deal 
successfully.  He  laboured  incessantly  to 
bring  about  a  better  understanding  and 
closer  co-operation  between  employers  and 
the  trade  vmion  organizations;  and  even 
where  he  failed,  his  obvious  integrity  and 
sincerity  won  him  the  respect  of  aU  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact.  One  of  his 
heaviest  preoccupations  was  the  chronic 
trouble  in  the  coalfields,  which  in  May 
1926  developed  into  the  General  Strike. 
His  chief  legislative  measure  as  minister 
of  labour  was  the  Unemployment  Insur- 
ance Act  of  1927.  He  was  also  responsible 
for  the  proposal  to  set  up  an  Industrial 
Transference  Board  for  placing  unem- 
ployed workers  in  distressed  mining  and 
other  areas  in  employment  elsewhere. 

Although  a  fluent  speaker  and  debater 
and  always  completely  master  of  his  sub- 
ject, Steel-Maitland  somehow  missed  being 
altogether  a  successful  House  of  Commons 
man.  There  was  perhaps  something  a 
httle  too  didactic  and  academic  in  his 
manner  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  House,  and 
with  his  nicely  balanced  judgement  he 
wovdd  often  in  the  heat  of  party  contro- 
versy fail  to  make  debating  points  which 
would  have  been  helpful  to  his  pohtical 
friends. 

In  1933,  at  the  invitation  of  the  Rocke- 
feller Foundation,  Steel-Maitland  went  to 
the  United  States  for  foiu-  months  to  ex- 
amine into  the  economic  measures  which 
were  then  being  introduced  to  reUeve  and 
counteract  the  industrial  depression.  The 
conclusions  resulting  from  this  investiga- 


tion are  contained  in  his  book  entitled  The 
New  America  pubUshed  in  1934. 

Steel-Maitland  was  created  a  baronet  in 
1917.  He  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  Edinburgh 
and  St.  Andrews.  He  was  an  elder  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  and  a  delegate  to  the 
General  Assembly  for  many  years.  His 
chief  recreations,  after  he  gave  up  rowing, 
were  lawn  tennis  and  golf.  In  the  latter 
game  he  acquired  considerable  proficiency. 
It  was  on  the  golf  links  at  Rye  on  80  March 
1935  that,  after  making  a  good  drive  from 
the  tee,  he  instantaneously  collapsed  and 
died. 

Steel-Maitland's  wife  and  two  sons  and 
two  daughters  survived  him.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded as  second  baronet  by  his  elder  son, 
Arthur  James  Drummond  (bom  1902). 

[The  Times,  1  April  1935 ;  private  informa- 
tion.] Kenneth  R.  Swan. 

STEVENS,  MARSHALL  (1852-1986), 
one  of  the  foimders  and  first  general 
manager  of  the  Manchester  Ship  Canal 
Company,  was  bom  at  Plymouth  18  April 
1852,  the  eldest  son  of  Sanders  Stevens, 
a  shipowner  and  coal-merchant  there,  by 
his  wife,  Emma  Ruth,  daughter  of  James 
Marshall,  a  builder  in  the  same  town.  He 
was  educated  at  the  Mansion  House 
School,  Exeter,  and  in  his  early  years  he 
entered  his  father's  business.  His  grand- 
father, Thomas  Stevens,  was  the  head  of 
one  of  the  oldest  shipping  famiUes  in  the 
West  of  England,  and  his  great-uncle, 
Robert  White  Stevens,  was  the  author  of 
a  book  On  the  Stowage  of  Ships  and  their 
Cargoes  (1858,  7th  ed.  1878).  Another 
great-imcle,  John  Lee  Stevens,  was  one 
of  the  original  proprietors  and  for  many 
years  editor  of  the  Shipping  Gazette.  Stev- 
ens's interest  in  the  affairs  of  his  native  town 
was  shown  in  his  scheme  for  making  the 
Cattewater  into  an  open  seaport  where 
the  largest  liners  could  berth ;  his  adven- 
tiurous  spirit  appeared  when  at  the  end  of 
the  siege  of  Paris,  m  1871,  he  made  his 
way  through  the  German  lines  in  order  to 
obtain  a  consignment  of  hides,  only  to 
find  that  they  had  been  consumed  by  the 
hard-pressed  population. 

In  the  late  'seventies  Stevens  settled  at 
Garston  on  the  Mersey,  trading  with 
general  cargo  steamers  to  the  continent 
and  thereby  beginning  the  diversion  of 
trade  with  the  continent  from  east  coast 
to  west  coast  ports.  On  27  Jime  1882, 
however,  his  long  connexion  with  the 
Manchester  Ship  Canal  began  when  he 
attended    the    initial    meeting    of    the 


831 


Stevens 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


undertaking.  He  played  a  leading  part  in 
the  enterprise,  and  by  his  determination 
and  his  special  knowledge  of  railway  and 
shipping  conditions  he,  more  than  any  one 
else,  persuaded  parliament  to  grant  the 
necessary  powers,  and  the  bill  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  canal  became  an  act  in 
1885. 

In  that  year  Stevens  was  appointed 
provisional  manager  of  the  undertaldng 
and  later  became  general  manager,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  1896.  The  company's 
difficulties  were  not  over  with  the  passing 
of  the  Act,  for  unforeseen  engineering  diffi- 
culties used  up  all  the  subscribed  capital. 
It  was  this  period  of  his  life  more  perhaps 
than  any  other  which  called  upon  those 
qualities  of  great  determination,  persever- 
ance, and  persistent  energy  which  Stevens 
possessed.  It  was  he  who  persuaded  the 
Manchester  corporation  to  find  the  remain- 
ing capital,  and  the  canal,  constructed,  as 
he  proudly  stated,  without  a  penny  of 
Treasury  money,  was  opened  by  Queen 
Victoria  in  1894. 

This  transformation  of  inland  Manches- 
ter into  one  of  the  greatest  ports  in  Great 
Britain  was  Stevens's  most  important 
achievement  for  the  country  as  a  whole. 
Manchester  itself  has  to  thank  him  for 
changing  a  scheme  for  developing  Trafford 
Park  as  a  residential  and  sporting  area  into 
that  for  its  growth  into  the  great  industrial 
and  commercial  centre  which  it  has  now  be- 
come. He  was  the  first  managing  director 
of  Trafford  Park  Estates,  and  was  inter- 
ested in  the  Port  of  Manchester  Ware- 
houses, the  Trafford  Park  Cold  Store, 
and  other  aUied  undertakings.  On  matters 
of  transport  of  goods  and  storage,  Stevens's 
great  knowledge  raised  him  to  a  position  of 
international  importance,  and  his  evidence 
was  influential  before  many  parliamentary 
committees,  notably  those  considering  the 
establishment  of  the  Port  of  London 
Authority  (1909)  and  the  amalgamation 
of  the  railways  (1921).  He  was  a  supporter 
of  free  trade,  but  not  blind  to  its  diffi- 
culties, advocating  national  granaries  and 
the  imposition  of  customs  duties  to  coim- 
tervail  the  burden  of  rates  and  taxes  on 
home  manufactures.  Another  scheme  was 
the  formation  of  an  international  bank, 
the  bonds  of  which  should  be  guaranteed 
by  all  nations,  and  the  interest  on  which 
should  form  a  sinking  fimd  to  cover  de- 
fault by  any  country.  He  sat  in  parlia- 
ment from  1918  to  1922  as  coalition 
unionist  member  for  Eccles. 

In  1873  Stevens  married  Louisa  Blarney 
(died  1932),  daughter  of  Philip  Blamey, 


f 


of  Cusgame  and  St.  Blazey,  Cornwall,  and 
lady  of  the  manor  of  St.  Blazey.  He  was 
survived  by  three  of  his  six  sons,  one  of 
whom.  Colonel  T.  H.  G.  Stevens,  suc- 
ceeded him  as  managing  director  o; 
Trafford  Park  Estates ;  his  only  daughter 
died  in  infancy.  In  his  later  years  Stevens 
was  an  invalid,  but  he  showed  charac 
teristic  courage  in  his  illness,  and  divided 
his  time  between  his  villa  at  Roquebrune 
and  his  home  in  Cheshire.  Desiring  to 
visit  once  more  his  native  town,  in  July 
1936  he  journeyed  thither  and  died  there 
12  August  that  year. 

[Sir  Bosdin  Leech,  History  of  the  Manchester 
Ship  Canal,  1907;  Plymouth  Comet,  3  March 
1894;  Manchester  Guardian,  The  Times,  and 
The  Western  Morning  News,  13  August  1936 ; 
personal  knowledge.] 

G.  K.  S.  Hamilton-Edwards. 


STEWART,  Sir  HALLEY  (1838-1937), 
founder  of  the  trust  which  bears  liis  name, 
was  bom  at  Bamet  18  January  1838,  thej 
tenth  child  and  fifth  son  of  Alexander 
Stewart,  Congregational  minister,  of  Bar- 
net,  by  his  wife,  Ann  Kezia  White.  Like 
his  brothers  before  him,  he  went  to  his 
father's  school  at  Barnet,  later  at  Hol- 
loway. 

Stewart  went  to  Hastings  and  begao* 
the  long  career  in  which  the  ministry  and 
business,  journalism  and  poUtics,  were 
interwoven.  From  1863  to  1874  he  was 
pastor,  although  never  ordained,  of  Croft 
Church,  Hastings;  from  1874  to  1877  of 
Caledonian  Road  Church,  London ;  in  1877 
he  was  founder  and  first  editor  of  the 
Hastings  and  St.  Leonards  Times.  On  the 
sale  in  1900  of  Stewart  Brothers  &  Speni 
cer,  the  Rochester  and  London  oil-see(l 
crushers  and  refiners,  a  firm  which  he  had 
founded  in  1870,  he  turned  his  attentioa; 
to  bricks,  ultimately  becoming  vice-chair- 
man of  the  London  Brick  Company. 

Meanwhile  Stewart  had  been  taking  an 
active  part  in  politics.  An  advanced 
hberal,  he  advocated  adult  suffrage  for 
both  sexes,  the  land  for  the  people,  reli- 
gious equality,  and  the  abolition  of  heredi- 
tary legislators.  He  was  president  of  the 
Society  for  the  Liberation  of  Religion  from 
State  Patronage  and  Control,  and  also  of 
the  Secular  Education  League,  deeming  it , 
contrary  to  the  principles  of  Christianity 
and  democracy  to  tax  all  and  sundry  for 
the  teaching  of  a  particular  rehgion.  He 
contested  the  Spalding  division  of  Lincoln- 
shire misuccessfully  in  1885  and  1886,  but 
his  victory  there  at  a  by-election  in  1887 
heartened  the  divided  liberal  party.    He 


832 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Stewart,  J.  A. 


lost  his  seat  in  1895,  contested  Peter- 
borough unsuccessfully  in  1900,  but  was 
member  for  Greenock  in  1906,  until  he  re- 
t  ired  in  January  1910.  An  incisive  speaker 
and  a  good  debater,  his  independence  was 
as  manifest  Avithin  the  House  of  Commons 
as  without:  he  was  never  afraid  to  take 
his  own  line:  T.  M.  Healy  [q.v.]  said  to 
Stewart's  son,  '  So  you're  a  son  of  Halley 
Stewart.  We  respect  him  here — he  never 
trims  his  sails,  and  we  always  know  where 
he  stands.' 

A  deeply  rehgious  man,  Stewart  called 
liimself  not  a  CongregationaUst  but  'an 
independent  of  Independents'.  To  his 
own  denomination  he  was  a  generous  bene- 
factor, especially  for  Church  extension  in 
Hertfordshire  and  for  the  education  of 
ministers'  children,  but  the  conventional 
ways  of  giving  left  him  unsatisfied.  With 
a  keen  sense  of  stewardship,  he  felt  that 
his  wealth,  much  of  which  he  held  had 
•accrued'  not  through  his  own  labours, 
should  be  used  for  the  benefit  of  mankind. 
He  had  a  strong  aversion  to  endowing 
existing  institutions,  and  to  supporting 
organizations  with  a  theological  basis,  and 
lie  gave  much  thought  to  the  terms  of  his 
trust,  established  in  1924  for  'research 
towards  the  Christian  ideal  in  all  social 
life',  with  the  special  objects  of  advanc- 
ing rehgion  and  education  and  relieving 
poverty.  He  invited  his  three  sons  and 
four  others  to  join  him  as  trustees,  and 
guided  the  trust's  administration  luitil  his 
death,  invariably  reveaUng  the  belief  in 
independence,  the  passion  for  freedom, 
and  the  financial  acumen  which  had 
marked  his  life.  He  made  many  large  gifts 
to  the  trust,  which  was  also  the  residuary 
legatee  of  his  estate.  In  1933  the  Halley 
Stewart  laboratory  was  opened  at  Hamp- 
stead,  a  benefaction  to  King's  College, 
London. 

Stewart  declined  many  honovirs,  but 
accepted  a  knighthood  in  1932;  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  King's  College,  London, 
in  1936.  In  1865  he  married  Jane  Eliza- 
beth (died  1924),  daughter  of  Joseph 
Atkinson,  of  Upper  Norwood,  and  had 
seven  sons,  five  of  whom  predeceased 
their  father,  and  a  daughter.  He  died  at 
Harpenden  26  January  1937. 

[The  Times,  28  January  1937;  personal 
knowledge.]  Albert  Peel. 

STEWART,  JOHN  ALEXANDER 
(1846-1933),  philosopher,  was  born  at 
Moffat  19  October  1846,  the  elder  son 
of  Archibald  Stewart,  later  minister  of 
Glasserton,   Wigtownshire,   by  his  wife, 


Magdalene,  daughter  of  Henry  Goodsir. 
After  his  schooldays,  he  was  educated  at 
Edinburgh  University,  whence  he  gained 
a  scholarship  at  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 
He  obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  moder- 
ations (1868)  and  in  literae  humaniorea 
(1870),  and  was  awarded  the  Newdigate 
prize  for  a  poem  on  the  Catacombs  in 
1868.  In  1870  he  was  elected  a  senior 
student  of  Christ  Church,  a  position  which 
he  held,  together  with  lecturerships  in 
philosophy  at  Lincoln  and  Oriel  colleges 
(1874r-1875),  until  his  marriage  in  1875. 
He  remained  at  Clurist  Church  as  classical 
lecturer  until  1882,  when  new  statutes 
enabled  him  to  be  re-elected  a  student 
and  appointed  a  tutor.  In  1897  Stewart 
was  elected  White's  professor  of  moral 
philosophy,  thereby  becoming  a  fellow  of 
Corpus  Christi  College,  and  he  continued 
some  of  his  tutorial  work  at  Christ  Church 
until  1907.  He  resigned  his  chair,  which 
he  had  filled  with  marked  success,  in  1927. 
He  was  elected  an  honorary  student  of 
Christ  Church  (1907)  and  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Lincoln  (1920)  and  of  Corpus 
(1929);  he  received  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  from  the  universities  of  Edin- 
burgh (1896)  and  Aberdeen  (1934).  He 
married  Helen  (died  1925),  only  daughter 
of  John  Macmillan,  and  had  no  children. 
He  died  at  Oxford  27  December  1933. 

Stewart  pubUshed  two  noteworthy 
books.  His  Notes  on  the  Nicomachean 
Ethics  of  Aristotle  (2  vols.,  1892)  is  a  work 
of  permanent  value  from  the  exact  scholar- 
ship, the  very  wide  reading,  the  scrupulous 
and  objective  judgement,  and  the  tem- 
peramental sympathy  brought  to  bear 
upon  it,  and  for  many  years  it  held  its 
place  as  a  definitive  edition.  The  other 
was  The  Myths  of  Plato  (1905)  in  which 
the  mystic  and  the  poet  in  Stewart  came 
vividly  aUve.  The  book  revealed  the  range 
of  his  powers  and  showed  at  the  core  of  his 
thought  an  illuminative  appreciation  of 
hfe  at  its  highest  and  best.  His  point  de 
depart  in  pMosophy  was  neither  mathe- 
matics nor  natural  science.  He  relished 
the  quasi-biological  presentation  in  Aris- 
totle of  individual  and  group  life,  and  the 
subUmation  of  it  in  Platonic  teaching.  His 
absorbing  topic  was  life  throughout  its 
phases  and  implications  as  he  conceived 
them.  In  a  very  pertinent  sense  Ufe  for 
him  was  drama.  The  Myths  of  Plato  opens 
with  a  statement  of  his  views  of  what 
poetry  and  art  in  general  and  also  imagina- 
tive contact  with  nature  effect  in  the 
'patient',  namely,  that  they  give  rise  to 
transcendental  feeling,  by  wliich  he  means 


833 


8u 


Stewart,  J.  A. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


experience  of  a  uniting  and  reconciliative 
and  virtually  apocalyptic  sort  that  reaches 
deeper  than  conceptual  tliinking.  In  ex- 
plaining his  views  Stewart  avails  himself 
of  the  Kantian  distinction  between  cate- 
gories of  the  understanding  and  ideas  of 
the  reason  as  illustrating  what  was  implicit 
in  Platonic  doctrine.  This  novel  approach, 
which  may  be  said  to  outflank  the  absolu- 
tist trends  of  his  time,  is  elaborated  in  a 
detailed  discussion  of  the  myths  which 
reveals  unusually  wide  sympathies. 

Stewart,  a  Scotsman  of  imagination  who 
found  his  truest  home  in  Oxford,  and  a 
Victorian  imbued  with  the  urbane  opti- 
mism of  the  time  and  strongly  interested  in 
the  advances  of  modern  science,  had  gifts 
of  scholarship,  a  versatile  and  searching 
culture,  and  an  unfailing  memory.  He  tra- 
velled widely,  and  he  thought  propheti- 
cally of  North  America  as  the  ultimate 
citadel  of  western  civilization.  Distrusting 
philosophic  dogmatism  and  the  technical 
and  scholastic  trends  of  the  study,  he  pur- 
sued a  personal  path,  the  adherent  of  no 
school  and  the  friendly  judge  of  any  that 
answered  his  sense  of  humanity.  He  had 
little  confidence  in  discussion,  believing 
that  its  votaries  lack  the  directer  power  of 
vision  to  bring  them  into  one.  His  lec- 
turing method,  while  outwardly  austere, 
proceeded  in  a  gentle  rapture  of  belief  and 
persuasion.  With  a  tragic  sense  of  evil 
veiled  by  a  serene  and  stately  courtesy,  he 
combined  an  old-world  grace,  flavoured 
with  humour  and  a  delicate  irony.  To  his 
fineness  age  added  something  of  greatness. 

[The  Times,  29  December  1933  and  1  and  3 
January  1934;  Oxford  Magazine,  18  January 
1934 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Murray. 

STOCKS,  JOHN  LEOFRIC  (1882- 
1937),  philosopher,  was  born  at  Market 
Harborough  26  October  1882,  the  sixth 
son  among  twelve  children  of  John  Edward 
Stocks,  vicar  of  Market  Harborough  and 
afterwards  archdeacon  of  Leicester,  by 
his  wife,  Emily  Jane,  third  daughter  of 
Thomas  Mallam,  solicitor,  of  Oxford.  He 
was  educated  at  Rugby  and  at  Corpus 
Christi  College,  Oxford,  where  he  won  a 
scholarship  and  obtained  a  first  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1903)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1905),  and  was  captain  of  uni- 
versity hockey  ( 1 904-1 905).  In  1 906  he  was 
elected  fellow  and  tutor  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  where  he  remained,  except 
for  war  service,  until  1924.  In  1918  he 
married  Mary  Dan  vers,  eldest  daughter 
of  Roland   Dan  vers   Brinton,   M.D.,   of 


London:  she  was  great -grand-daughter  of 
J.  M.  Rendel  [q.v.]  and  great-niece  of 
G.  W.  Rendel  [q.v.].  There  were  a  son 
and  two  daughters  of  the  marriage.  Dur- 
ing the  war  of  1914-1918  Stocks  served 
from  July  1915  in  the  King's  Royal  Rifle 
Corps.  He  was  awarded  the  D.S.O. 
for  gallantry  at  Beaucourt  during  the 
battle  of  the  Ancre  in  November  1916 
when  he  was  wounded  and  subsequently 
sent  home  to  instructional  service.  In 
1924  he  was  elected  professor  of  philosophy 
in  the  university  of  Manchester  in  succes- 
sion to  Samuel  Alexander  [q.v.].  He  de- 
livered the  Riddell  memorial  lectures  in 
the  university  of  Durham  in  1983  {On  the 
Nature  and  Grounds  of  Religious  Belief, 
1984)  and  the  Forwood  lectures  in  Liver- 
pool in  1935  {Time,  Cause,  and  Eternity, 
1938).  During  all  this  period  he  was  also 
actively  interested  in  public  work,  and 
stood,  unsuccessfully,  as  labour  candidate 
for  the  university  of  Oxford  at  the  general 
election  of  1935.  In  1986  he  was  appointed 
vice-chancellor  of  the  university  of  Liver- 
pool, but  he  died  suddenly  while  on  a  visit 
to  Swansea  18  Jime  1987.  His  wife  and 
children  survived  him. 

Stocks's  main  technical  philosophical 
interests  were  in  Aristotelian  studies  and 
in  Epicureanism.  He  contributed  De  Caelo 
to  volume  ii  (1922)  of  the  Oxford  transla- 
tion of  The  Works  of  Aristotle,  and  certain 
studies  of  the  later  Epicureans  to  the  first 
series  of  the  New  Chapters  in  the  History  of 
Greek  Literature  (1921)  by  Jolui  Undershell 
Powell  and  Dr.  Eric  Arthur  Barber.  In  his 
wider  philosophical'  work  he  was  concerned 
to  make  explicit  the  principles  at  work  in 
different  kinds  of  moral  and  political  acti- 
vity. Here  he  brought  a  philosophical 
judgement  to  bear  on  his  practical  experi- 
ence in  university  administration,  in  guid- 
ing the  policy  of  the  Manchester  University 
Settlement,  and  in  other  work  for  political 
and  social  reform.  Instances  of  such  judge- 
ment are  to  be  found  tliroughout  the  two 
volumes  of  his  occasional  essays  and  ad- 
dresses. The  Limits  of  Purpose  (1982)  and 
Reason  and  Intuition  (edited  by  D.  M. 
Emmet,  1989).  These  also  reveal  some- 
thing of  the  character  of  the  man:  a  dis- 
cipUned  and  analytic  temper  of  mind 
combining  with  a  deep  underlying  concern 
for  justice  and  for  the  good  of  his  fellow 
men.  His  strength  of  character  may  have 
owed  much  to  the  latter ;  the  former  gave 
him  the  disinterested  detachment  which 
made  him  a  fighter  for  causes  without  a 
trace  of  personal  bitterness. 

[The  Times  and  Manchester  Guardian,  14 


834 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Strachey,  G.  L. 


June  1937;  Introduction  by  D.  M.  Emmet, 
and  Note  by  Sir  W.  D.  Ross  on  Stocks's  con- 
tributions to  studies  in  Greek  philosophy 
prefixed  to  J.  L.  Stocks,  Reason  and  Intui- 
tion, 1939;  foreword  by  William  Temple  to 
J.  L.  Stocks,  Time,  Cause,  and  Eternity, 
1938 ;  private  information ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] 

Dorothy  M.  Emmet. 

STRACHEY,  Sir  EDWARD,  fourth 
baronet,  and  first  Baron  Strachie,  of 
Sutton  Court  (1858-1936),  politician  and 
landowner,  was  born  at  Clifton,  Bristol, 
30  October  1858,  the  eldest  of  the  three 
sons  of  Sir  Edward  Strachey,  tliird  baronet 
[q.v.],  whom  he  succeeded  in  1901.  The 
baronetcy  had  been  created  in  1801,  in 
favour  of  Edward's  great-grandfather,  the 
poUtician  Sir  Henry  Strachey  [q.v.].  His 
mother,  who  was  his  father's  second  wife, 
was  Mary  Isabella,  daughter  of  J.  A. 
Symonds,  M.D.,  and  sister  of  the  author 
J.  A.  Symonds  [q.v.].  He  was  brother  of 
the  journalist  John  St.  Loe  Strachey  and 
first  cousin  of  the  author  (Giles)  L>i;ton 
Strachey  [qq.v.].  He  was  educated  pri- 
vately and  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

Strachey's  family,  like  those  of  most 
West  Country  landowners  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  had  been  staunch  sup- 
porters of  the  liberal  tradition,  and  he 
himself,  after  unsuccessfully  contesting 
North  Somerset  (1885)  and  Plymouth 
(1886),  represented  South  Somerset  as  a 
liberal  from  1892  until  his  elevation  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Strachie,  of  Sutton 
Court,  in  Somerset,  in  1911.  The  whole  of 
his  life  was  devoted  to  the  public  service, 
with  particular  attention  to  home  affairs 
and  to  the  landed  interest.  As  a  politician, 
he  was  responsible  for  carrying  the  Out- 
door Relief  Friendly  Societies  Act  (1894), 
the  Post  Office  Amendment  Act  (1895), 
and  the  Post  Office  Guarantee  Amend- 
ment Act  (1898).  In  1905  Campbell- 
Bannerman  appointed  him  the  spokesman 
of  the  Board  of  Agriculture  and  Fisheries 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  a  position 
which  he  held  during  four  of  the  five  years 
in  which  he  acted  as  junior  government 
whip,  and  from  1909  to  1911  he  was  par- 
liamentary secretary  to  the  Board,  when 
Lord  Carrington  (afterwards  Marquess  of 
Lincolnshire)  was  president.  In  the  former 
capacity  it  devolved  upon  Strachey  to 
pilot  the  agricultural  holdings  amendment 
bill  of  1906  and  the  small  holdings  bill  of 
the  following  year  through  the  Commons, 
when  he  displayed  so  much  tact  and  con- 
sideration that  it  was  admitted  by  his 
political  opponents  in  the  House  that  two 


good  acts  had  (in  1908)  been  made  out  of 
two  bad  bills.  In  the  Hou.se  of  I^rds  he 
served  as  paymaster-general  for  three 
years  (1912-1915),  and  was  spokesman  for 
Asquith's  government  on  various  occa- 
sions. He  was  sworn  of  tlie  Privy  Council 
in  1912.  In  1925  he  was  involved  in  a 
controversy  with  Lloyd  George  over  the 
liberal  land  policy,  which  he  thought  did 
considerable  injury  to  liberalism  and  did 
not  reflect  the  desires  of  the  rural  com- 
munity. 

In  local  administration  Lord  Strachie 
was  equally  zealous.  He  was  an  original 
member  of  the  Somerset  county  council, 
of  which  he  became  an  alderman ;  and  he 
was  a  vice-president  of  the  County  Coun- 
cils Association  and  of  the  Rural  District 
Councils  Association.  As  a  landowner,  his 
work  for  agriculture  in  parliament  was 
supplemented  by  service  in  many  volun- 
tary organizations.  At  various  times  he 
was  chairman  of  the  Central  Chamber  of 
Agriculture  and  president  of  the  Central 
Landowners  Association,  besides  being  a 
member  of  the  governing  bodies  of  several 
more  local  organizations  for  the  better- 
ment of  farming. 

Strachie  married  in  1880  Constance  (died 
1936),  only  child  of  Charles  Bampfylde 
Braham,  musician,  granddaughter  of  the 
singer,  John  Braham,  and  niece  of  Frances, 
Countess  Waldegrave  [qq.v.].  They  had 
a  son,  and  a  daughter  who  predeceased 
her  father.  Strachie  died  at  Sutton  Court, 
Pensford,  Somerset,  25  July  1936,  and  was 
succeeded  as  second  baron  by  his  son, 
Edward  (bom  1882). 

[The  Times,  27  July  1936;  West  Somerset 
Free  Press,  1  August  1936;  personal  know- 
ledge.] C.  S.  Obwin. 

STRACHEY,  (GILES)  LYTTON  (1880- 
1932),  critic  and  biographer,  was  bom 
in  London  1  March  1880,  the  fourth  of 
the  five  sons  of  Lieutenant-General  (Sir) 
Richard  Strachey  [q.v.],  by  his  second 
wife,  Jane  Maria,  second  daughter  of  Sir 
John  Peter  Grant  (1807-1893,  q.v.),  of 
Rothiemurchus.  He  was  first  cousin  of 
Sir  Edward  Strachey,  fourth  baronet,  and 
first  Baron  Strachie,  and  of  J.  St.  L. 
Strachey  [qq.v.].  Lytton  Strachey  evinced 
a  precocious  taste  and  talent  for  Uterature, 
which  were  sedulously  fostered  by  his 
mother.  After  a  short  period  at  Abbots- 
holme  School,  Derbyshire,  and  a  longer  at 
Leamington  College,  he  was  sent  in  1897 
to  Liverpool  University,  where  until  1899 
he  studied  history.  This  was  followed  by 
four  years  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 


885 


Strachey,  G.  L. 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


Here,  largely  under  the  influence  of  Dr. 
George  Edward  Moore,  he  formed  his 
ideas,  and  also  made  some  distinguished 
lifelong  friends,  including  John  Maynard 
(later  Lord)  Keynes,  Dr.  Edward  Morgan 
Forster,  Mr.  Desmond  MacCarthy,  Mr. 
Leonard  Woolf,  and  Mr.  Clive  Bell.  He 
won  the  chancellor's  English  medal  in 
1902,  and  obtained  second  classes  in  both 
parts  of  the  historical  tripos  (1901,  1903). 
After  failing  to  secure  a  fellowship,  he  took 
up  residence  in  London,  where  he  worked 
regularly  on  the  Spectator  under  the  editor- 
ship of  J.  St.  L.  Strachey  and  also  con- 
tributed to  the  Edinburgh  and  the  New 
Quarterly  Reviews.  This  work,  although  he 
disliked  it,  trained  him  in  his  craft.  Mean- 
while he  became  a  prominent  member  of 
the  celebrated  '  Bloomsbury '  literary  and 
artistic  circle,  composed  mainly  of  his 
Cambridge  friends  with  the  addition  of 
the  daughters  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  [q.v.], 
Vanessa  Bell  and  Virginia  Woolf,  and  in 
which  a  culture  of  extreme  refinement  was 
combined  with  open  rebellion  alike  against 
the  beliefs  and  the  habits  of  orthodox 
middle-class  Victorianism. 

Strachey's  first  book.  Landmarks  in 
French  Literature,  commissioned  by  H .  A .  L . 
Fisher  [q.v.]  for  the  'Home  University 
Library'  series,  came  out  in  1912.  After 
this,  his  friends  and  family  subscribed 
to  make  him  financially  independent  of 
journalism,  so  that  he  might  retire  to  the 
country  and  write  books.  His  activities 
were  not  interrupted  by  the  war  of  1914- 
1918,  for  he  was  a  conscientious  objector ; 
and  Eminent  Victorians  appeared  in  1918. 
This,  although  fiercely  attacked  as  irrever- 
ent to  the  illustrious  dead,  at  once  put  him 
in  the  front  rank  of  contemporary  authors. 
It  was  followed  by  Queen  Victoria  (1921), 
Books  and  Characters,  French  and  English 
(1922),  Elizabeth  and  Essex  (1928),  and 
Portraits  in  Miniature,  and  Other  Essays 
(1931).  The  university  of  Edinburgh  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.D.  in  1926.  In  1924  he  settled  at  Ham 
Spray  House,  near  Hungerford,  where  he. 
was  looked  after  by  his  friends  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ralph  Partridge  until  his  death  there 
from  cancer  21  January  1932.  He  never 
married.  Characters  and  Commentaries,  a 
posthumous  volume  of  collected  studies, 
published  and  unpublished,  appeared  in 
1933. 

Strachey  was  a  conspicuous  figure  where- 
ever  he  appeared,  with  his  wit  and  his 
silence,  his  tall,  emaciated  figure,  and  his 
red  beard.  Fastidious  and  ill-adjusted  to 
the  commonplace,  he  was  in  youth  often 


melancholy ;  but  literary  success  and  the 
friendships  which  he  cultivated  so  in- 
tensely made  his  later  years  agreeable. 
He  was  a  sensitive,  sensible  critic,  particu- 
larly remarkable  for  the  work  which  he 
did  in  awakening  Englishmen  to  the  ap- 
preciation of  the  classical  French  authors, 
notably  Racine.  But  his  most  memorable 
achievement  was  in  biography.  Here  he 
sometimes  showed  the  limitations  of  his 
civilized  Voltairean  rationalism,  which 
made  him  unable  to  enter  into  the  wild  or 
mystical  aspects  of  human  nature.  Nor 
was  he  a  profound  psychologist:  before 
complex  characters  he  was  apt  gracefully 
to  confess  himself  baffled.  But  his  eco-, 
nomical  mastery  of  design,  his  faculty  o£ 
vivid  story-telling,  and  the  mingled  ele-< 
gance  and  vitality  of  his  style  are  alike 
eminent ;  and  they  are  made  exhilarating 
by  the  continuous  sparkle  of  an  impish 
and  adroit  irony.  He  is  also  important 
historically,  first,  as  the  leader  of  that  re- 
action against  the  Victorians  which  fol- 
lowed the  war  of  1914-1918,  and,  secondly, 
as  the  inaugurator  of  a  new  type  of  bio- 
graphy, brief  and  brUhant,  in  which  fact 
and  reflection  are  fused  together  into  a 
work  of  art,  individual  and  creative  as 
a  novel. 

A  portrait  of  Strachey  by  Henry  Lamb 
is  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  and  a  chalk  drawing 
by  Nina  Hamnett  belongs  to  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

[Guy  Boas,  Lytton  Strachey  (English  Asso- 
ciation Pamphlet  No.  93),  November  1933; 
Sir  (H.)  Max(imilian)  Beerbohm,  Lytton  Stra- 
chey (Rede  lecture),  1943 ;  private  information  ; 
personal  knowledge.]  David  Cecil. 

STRACHIE,  first  Baron  (1858-1936). 
[See  Strachey,  Sir  Edward.] 

STRATHCARRON,  first  Baron  (1880- 
1937).    [See  Macpherson,  (James)  Ian.] 

STREETER,   BURNETT  HILLMAN 

(1874-1937),  divine,  was  born  at  Croydon 
17  November  1874,  the  only  son  of  John 
Soper  Streeter,  solicitor,  by  his  wife, 
Marion  Walker.  He  was  educated  at 
King's  College  School  in  London,  and  from 
the  time  when  in  1893  he  went  up  to 
Oxford  with  a  classical  scholarship  at 
Queen's  College,  his  life  was  that  of  a 
typical  Oxford  don,  the  one  college,  of 
which  he  became  successively  fellow,  dean, 
and  praelector  (1905),  chaplain  (1928),  and 
provost  (1933),  claiming  practically  the 
whole  of  his  academic  loyalty.  The  only 


836 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Streeter 


break  was  from  1899  to  1905,  when  he  was 
fellow  and  dean  of  Pembroke  College.  In 
1910  he  married  Irene  Louisa,  daughter  of 
Captain  Edward  Cuthbert  Brookes  Raw- 
linson,  formerly  of  the  Bengal  Cavalry, 
and  then  Uving  at  Slough.  The  marriage 
was  childless. 

Streeter's  academic  career  was  brilliant, 
with  a  first  class  in  classical  moderations 
(1895),  literae  humaniores  (1897)  and  theo- 
logy (1898),  and  a  series  of  theological 
prizes  and  scholarships.  It  was  his  work 
at  this  time  which  laid  the  foundation  of 
his  studies  in  the  New  Testament,  but  he 
himself  would  probably  have  regarded  the 
philosophy  of  religion  as  his  main  interest, 
viewing  the  various  fields  into  which  his 
inquiring  mind  was  led  as  all  subsidiary 
to  the  one  central  theme  of  the  interpreta- 
tion and  presentation  of  religion  in  the 
modem  world.  The  background  of  this 
was  his  intense  concern  and  care  for  people. 
Although  never  of  strong  physique  he 
rowed  for  his  college  as  an  undergraduate, 
and  throughout  his  life  retained  an  interest 
both  in  rowing  and  in  undergraduates 
which  was  very  closely  linked  in  his  mind 
with  his  academic  work.  His  numerous 
writings  were  in  almost  every  case  con- 
ceived and  written  with  the  student  world 
in  view. 

It  was  this  pastoral  and  human  interest 
which  led  Streeter  to  be  ordained  in  1899, 
despite  the  fact  that  his  faith  had  always 
something  of  the  character  of  a  quest. 
He  was  more  than  once  attacked  as  a 
t  modernist,  especially  after  his  contribution 
to  Foundations  in  1912,  but  the  obvious 
sincerity  of  his  religion  and  its  practical 
applicability  to  human  problems  were  a 
sufficient  answer,  and  the  attacks  were 
never  pressed  far.  He  was,  indeed,  a  regu- 
lar speaker  and  a  most  popular  figure  at 
Student  Christian  Movement  conferences. 
This  same  interest  in  human  movements 
of  thought  and  the  search  for  a  vital 
answer  to  the  problems  of  life  led  him  to 
undertake  lengthy  visits  abroad.  He  made 
two  long  tours  in  China  and  Japan,  lec- 
turing both  there  and  in  India,  and  he 
visited  the  United  States  of  America  several 
times.  In  his  closing  years,  after  he  had 
become  provost  of  Queen's  and  a  scholar 
with  a  world-wide  reputation,  he  joined, 
with  Mrs.  Streeter,  in  the  work  of  the 
movement  founded  by  Dr.  Frank  N.  D. 
Buchman,  widely  known  as  the  Oxford 
Group,  and  it  was  as  he  was  returning  by 
air  from  Switzerland,  where  he  had  spent 
a  long  convalescence  with  some  of  its 
members,  that  his  aeroplane  crashed  into 


a  mountain  near  Basle  in  a  fog,  and  he  and 
his  wife  were  killed,  on  10  September 
1937. 

Streeter  was  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished New  Testament  scholars  of  his 
day,  and  a  man  beloved  and  respected  by 
many  generations  of  Oxford  undergra<lu- 
ates,  but  apart  from  his  Oxford  life  few 
honours  came  his  way,  although  he  was 
a  member  for  nearly  fiifteen  years  (1922- 
1937)  of  the  Archbishop's  Commission  on 
Doctrine  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  was 
also  appointed  to  a  canonry  in  Hereford 
Cathedral,  which  he  held  from  1915  to 
1934.  This  latter  office  led  to  the  writing 
of  one  of  his  most  interesting  and  most 
learned  books.  The  Chained  Library  (1981), 
a  study  which  revealed  his  astonishing 
power  of  assimilating  large  ma.sses  of 
detail  in  a  subject  quite  remote  from  those 
which  had  already  made  him  famous.  He 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1925  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Pem- 
broke College  in  1933.  He  was  Dean  Ire- 
land's professor  of  exegesis  from  1932  to 
1933,  and  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
D.D.  from  the  imiversities  of  Edinburgh, 
Durham,  and  Manchester. 

Probably  Streeter's  best  work  was  that 
on  the  New  Testament,  which  attracted 
world-wide  attention.  He  came  into  the 
front  rank  of  scholars  with  his  essay  in  the 
Oxford  Studies  in  the  Synoptic  Problem, 
(1911),  and  this  was  followed  in  1924  by 
The  Four  Gospels:  a  Study  of  Origins  which 
has  become  a  standard  and  authoritative 
treatment  of  the  problems  of  New  Testa- 
ment criticism.  In  particular  he  developed 
two  new  hypotheses  of  great  importance, 
arguing  in  favour  of  an  early  Caesarean 
text  of  the  Gospels  and  of  an  original 
source  lying  behind  St.  Luke's  Gospel  in 
its  present  form.  The  great  value  of  his 
work  lies  in  its  entirely  first-hand  charac- 
ter. Whether  he  was  dealing  with  chained 
libraries  or  with  the  Gospels  and  the  manu- 
scripts he  went  direct  to  the  sources  and 
owed  very  little  to  the  work  of  other 
scholars. 

Streeter's  other  writings,  some  of  which 
reached  a  very  large  circulation,  were  in 
part  essays  in  apologetics  and  the  philo- 
sophy of  religion,  such  as  Reality:  A  New 
Correlation  of  Science  and  Religion  (1926) 
and  his  Bampton  lectures.  The  Buddha 
and  the  Christ  (1932),  and  in  part  contribu- 
tions to  composite  volumes  of  essays,  of 
which  the  earliest  and  that  which  caused 
most  stir  was  Foundations  .  .  .  by  Seven 
Oxford  Men,  a  work  which,  when  it 
was   published,   seemed  to  some  critics 


837 


Streeter 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


alarmingly  modernist,  a  judgement  which 
time  has  reversed. 

Streeter's  total  literary  output  was  con- 
siderable and  its  influence  was  very  great 
among  theological  students  and  in  univer- 
sity circles  generally.  But  apart  from  the 
solid  scholarship  of  The  Four  Gospels  the 
main  secret  of  that  influence  lay  in  his 
own  personality  with  its  great  sincerity 
and  its  attractiveness  to  students  of  every 
type. 

A  good  portrait  of  Streeter  by  Delmar 
Harmood  Banner  hangs  in  the  provost's 
lodging  at  Queen's  College,  Oxford. 

[The  Times,  13  September  1987;  The  Queen's 
College  Record,  November  1937;  Oxford, 
Winter  1937 ;  College  records ;  private  in- 
formation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

L.  W.  Grensted. 

STRICKLAND,  GERALD,  Baron 
Strickland,  of  Sizergh  Castle  (1861- 
1940),  colonial  administrator  and  politi- 
cian, was  the  eldest  son  of  Commander 
Walter  Strickland,  Royal  Navy,  by  his 
wife,  Louisa,  daughter  of  Cavaliere  Peter 
Paul  Bonici,  of  Malta,  and  niece  and 
heiress  of  Sir  Nicholas  Sceberras  Bologna, 
fifth  Count  della  Catena  in  Malta,  whom 
he  succeeded  as  sixth  count  in  1875,  vali- 
dity of  succession  being  confirmed  by  the 
Privy  Council  in  1882.  He  was  born  in 
Malta  24  May  1861,  and  educated  at 
Oscott  College,  Birmingham,  and  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge  (1884-1887),  where  he 
graduated  in  law  and  was  president  of  the 
Union  in  1887.  In  the  latter  year  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple.  He 
was  elected  a  member  of  the  Maltese  coun- 
cil of  government  in  1886,  and  in  1887 
represented  the  island  at  the  first  colonial 
conference  and  played  a  part  in  framing 
the  Maltese  constitution  (known  as  the 
Strickland-Mizzi  constitution)  of  that  year. 
He  also  organized  the  committee  which 
succeeded  in  stamping  out  a  serious  epi- 
demic of  cholera  in  Malta,  and  for  his 
services  he  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1889. 

As  assistant  secretary  (1888)  and  chief 
secretary  (1889-1902)  in  Malta,  Strickland 
introduced  many  reforms,  always  working 
for  equality  of  opportunity  for  Maltese 
within  the  British  Empire.  He  initiated 
drainage  and  electricity  works,  the  con- 
struction of  the  great  breakwater  across 
the  Grand  Harbour  at  Valetta,  and  secured 
to  parents  the  right  of  choice  of  English 
as  a  second  language  in  the  schools,  of 
which  he  built  twenty-six. 

Strickland  was  appointed  K.C.M.G.  in 
1897,  and  in  1902  became  governor  of  the 


Leeward  Islands,  where  he  successfully 
fostered  cotton-growing  and  co-operative 
sugar  refineries.  In  1904  he  was  promoted 
to  Tasmania,  going  to  Western  Australia 
in  1909  and  to  New  South  Wales  in  1913, 
in  which  year  he  was  appointed  G.C.M.G.<fl 
On  retiring  from  the  colonial  service  in^ 
1917  he  resumed  his  interest  in  Maltese 
politics,  assisting  to  draft  the  Milner- 
Amery  constitution  of  1921. 

Having  in  1896  acquired  Sizergh  in 
Westmorland  from  his  cousin  under 
family  settlement,  Strickland  now  divide 
his  time  between  his  English  and  Maltes 
estates.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Maltes 
legislative  assembly  from  1921  to  1930, 
and  formed  the  Anglo-Maltese  (later  styled 
the  Constitutional)  party.  After  two  par 
liaments  in  which  he  had  been  leader  of 
the  opposition,  in  1927  he  became  prime 
minister  of  a  constitutional-labour  coali 
tion  government  and  minister  of  justice 
In  the  meanwhile,  in  England,  at  the 
general  election  of  1924  he  was  returned 
as  conservative  member  of  parliament  for 
the  Lancaster  division.  Difficulties  might 
have  arisen  owing  to  this  dual  status,  and 
in  January  1928  he  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Baron  Strickland,  of  Sizergh 
Castle.  His  premiership,  during  which  he 
narrowly  escaped  assassination,  proved 
a  stormy  battle  against  the  influence  of 
fascism  and  Italian  interference  in  the 
domestic  affairs  of  Malta.  Unfortunately, 
this  was  aggravated  by  trouble  which 
arose  when  the  ecclesiastical  senators,  who 
held  the  balance  of  power  in  the  senate, 
refused  to  pass  the  first  coalition  budget. 
Words  used  by  Strickland  in  the  heat  of 
debate,  as  well  as  obstruction  to  the 
Church  authorities  in  certain  measures  of 
discipline  which  they  claimed  to  exercise 
over  members  of  their  religious  orders,  but,] 
which  Strickland  argued  infringed  the 
civil  right  of  the  individual,  brought  down 
the  censure  of  the  Church  upon  him  and 
his  party.  Later,  on  1  May  1930,  on  the 
eve  of  a  general  election,  although  Strick- 
land was  himself  a  member  of  an  ancient 
Roman  Catholic  family,  he  was  confronted 
by  a  pastoral  from  the  bishops  of  Malta 
and  Gozo  forbidding  their  flocks  to  vote 
for  him  or  for  his  followers.  The  Colonial 
Office  was  obliged  to  suspend  the  constitu- 
tion on  24  June.  In  1932  Strickland  made 
his  peace  with  the  Vatican  with  an  apology 
for  his  offending  words,  but  nevertheless, 
when  an  amended  constitution  was  re- 
stored that  year,  he  failed  to  retain  the 
premiership,  and  returned,  as  a  member 
of  the  senate,  to  leadership  of  the  opposi- 


888 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Sutro 


tion  against  a  pro-Italian  government.  In 
1933  the  Italian  influence  began  to  inter- 
fere so  flagrantly  that  once  more  the  con- 
stitution was  withdrawn.  Strickland  still 
worked  hard  for  a  limited  representation 
to  maintain  contact  between  the  British 
trovernment  and  the  people  in  case  of  war, 
and  in  1939,  succeeded,  becoming  leader 
of  the  elected  members  of  the  new  council 
of  government,  his  supporters  holding  a 
two-thirds  majority. 

In  order  to  assist  his  unceasing  efforts 
to  combat  Italian  influence  Strickland 
founded  the  Times  of  Malta  (daily),  Berka 
(the  first  vernacular  daily  in  Malta),  and 
the  Times  of  Malta  (weekly)  newspapers. 
His  publications  include  the  article  on  Malta 
contributed  to  the  thirteenth  edition  of  the 
Encyclopcedia  Britannica  and  a  monograph 
iititled  Malta  and  the  Phoenicians  (1925). 
Lord  Strickland  was  twice  married :  first, 
in  1890  to  Lady  EdeUne  (died  1918),  eldest 
daughter  of  Reginald  Windsor  Sackville, 
seventh  Earl  De  La  Warr,  and  had  two 
sons,  both  of  whom  died  in  infancy,  and 
six  daughters,  of  whom  all  except  the 
fourth,  who  died  as  an  infant,  survived 
him ;  secondly,  in  1926  to  Margaret,  fourth 
daughter  of  Edward  Hulton,  of  Ashton- 
on-Mersey,  Cheshire,  and  sister  of  Sir 
Edward  Hulton,  baronet  [q.v.].  He  died 
in  Malta  22  August  1940,  when  the  barony 
became  extinct. 

Strickland,  perhaps  from  his  early 
struggles  to  secure  his  Maltese  inheritance, 
and  partly  no  doubt  from  his  Maltese 
blood — to  which  race  legal  polemics  seem 
almost  necessary  to  existence — developed 
a  personality,  at  any  rate  in  his  political 
career,  which  merited  the  description 
given  to  it  of  dominating  and  aggressive. 
In  private  life  he  was  a  genial  host  and 
brilliant  controversialist,  but  the  very 
ardency  of  his  patriotism,  both  as  an 
EngUshman  and  as  a  Maltese,  brought  out 
a  pugnacity  of  manner  which  went  far  to 
antagonize  his  would-be  sympathizers, 
and  to  obscure  the  merit  of  his  argument. 
There  are  portraits  in  oil  of  Lord  Strick- 
land by  C.  Thorp  at  Sizergh  and  by  E. 
Caruana  Dingli  in  Malta.  A  cartoon  in 
racing  colours  by  'Hay'  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  4  May  1893.  A  statue  sculp- 
tured by  Anton  Sciortino  and  subscribed 
for  by  the  Maltese  people  stands  in  the 
Upper  Barracoa  Gardens  at  Valetta. 

[The  Times,  23  August  1940 ;  H.  Hornyold, 
Genealogical  Memoirs  of  the  Family  of  Strick- 
land of  Sizergh,  1928 ;  private  information ; 
personal  knowledge.] 

Henry  Hornyold-Strickland. 


STUART-JONES,  Sir  HENRY  (1867- 
1939),  classical  scholar.   [See  Jones.] 

SUMNER,      Viscount      (1859-1934), 
judge.    [See  Hamilton,  John  Andrew.] 

SUTRO,  ALFRED  (1863-1988),  play- 
wright and  translator  of  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck, was  bom  in  London  7  August  1863, 
the  third  and  youngest  son  of  Sigismund 
Sutro,  M.D.,  an  authority  on  continental 
spas  and  their  cures,  who  had  come  to 
England  from  Germany  as  a  young  man 
and  become  naturalized,  and  the  grandson 
of  a  German  rabbi  of  Sephardi  (Spanish- 
Jewish)  ancestry.  Sutro  was  educated  at 
the  City  of  London  School  under  E.  A. 
Abbott  [q.v.]  and  in  Brussels.  While  still 
a  boy  he  became  a  clerk  in  the  City,  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty  joined  his  elder 
brother,  Leopold,  in  partnership  as  whole- 
sale merchants.  It  was  while  in  this  busi- 
ness that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Alexander  Teixeira  de  Mattos,  like  Sutro 
of  Sephardi  Jewish  origin,  who  later  de- 
voted himself  to  the  translation  of  the 
works  of  continental  writers,  but  was  at 
that  time  the  representative  in  England 
of  a  Dutch  firm.  After  fourteen  years  in 
the  City,  and  soon  after  his  marriage  in 
1894  to  Esther  Stella,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Michael  Isaacs,  of  Upper  Norwood,  a  fruit 
broker  and  importer  in  Covent  Garden, 
and  sister  of  Rufus  Daniel  Isaacs,  first 
Marquess  of  Reading  [q.v.],  Sutro  gave  up 
business  and  lived  for  a  time  in  Paris  with 
his  wife,  who  was  an  artist  and  later  be- 
came a  writer  on  art. 

Among  the  friends  whom  they  made 
there  was  Maeterlinck,  with  whom  Sutro's 
relations  continued  very  close  throughout 
their  joint  lives.  While  still  in  Paris,  recog- 
nizing the  value  of  Maeterlinck's  work, 
Sutro  constituted  himself  his  translator 
into  English.  Almost  all  of  Maeterlinck's 
works  were  introduced  by  him  to  English 
readers,  the  most  noteworthy  being  The 
Treasure  of  the  Humble  (1897),  Wisdom  and 
Destiny  (1898),  and  above  all  The  Life  of 
a  Bee  (1901).  How  thoroughly  he  worked 
on  these  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
translation  of  the  last-named  occupied  six 
months  of  six  or  seven  hours  a  day.  Seven 
times  he  re-wrote  the  translation.  This 
masterpiece  had  in  the  first  instance  been 
dedicated  to  Sutro,  to  whose  play  The 
Cave  of  Illtmon  (1900)  Maeterlinck  also 
wrote  an  introductory  essay. 

Apart  from  his  translations  of  Maeter- 
linck and  desultory  journalism,  Sutro 
turned  to  the  writing  of  plays.  In  this  he 


839 


Sutro 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


had  many  disappointments  and  about 
ten  years  passed  before  he  achieved  a  real 
success.  He  even  collaborated  with  George 
Meredith  in  the  dramatization  of  The 
Egoist,  but  this  also  was  never  produced. 
Almost  despairing  of  success  as  a  dramatist 
Sutro  took  to  writing  duologues,  a  volume 
of  which  appeared  in  1902  under  the  title 
of  Women  in  Love.  His  first  play  to  be 
produced,  in  1895,  was  a  joint  adaptation 
with  Arthur  Bourchier  [q.v.]  of  Monsieur 
le  Directeur  by  Alexandre  Bisson,  entitled 
The  Chili  Widozv,  in  which  Bourchier,  who 
produced  it,  appeared  with  Violet  Van- 
brugh.  This  proved  a  moderate  success. 
His  great  success  came  nine  years  later 
with  The  Walls  of  Jericho  (1904).  Thence- 
forth Sutro  was  accounted  one  of  the 
leading  English  dramatists,  no  year  be- 
ing complete  for  theatre-goers  without 
a  new  play  from  his  pen,  sometimes  more 
than  one.  The  best-known  of  these  are 
Mollentrave  on  Women  and  The  Perfect 
Lover  (1905),  The  Fascinating  Mr.  Vander- 
veldt  (1906),  John  Glayde's  Honour  (1907), 
The  Builder  of  Bridges  (1908),  The  Per- 
plexed Husband  .(1911),  The  Two  Virtues 
and  The  Clever  Ones  (1914),  Uncle  Anyhow 
(1918),  The  Choice  (1919),  The  Laughing 
Lady  (1922),  A  Man  with  a  Heart  (1925), 
The  Desperate  Lovers  (1927),  and  his  last 
to  be  acted  Living  Together  (1929).  Most 
of  these  plays,  as  well  as  a  few  others, 
were  pubUshed  in  book  form.  In  addition 
there  were  The  Foolish  Virgins  (a  volume 
of  stories,  1904),  About  Women  (a  series  of 
sketches,  1931),  and  Celebrities  and  Simple 
Souls  (a  volume  of  reminiscences,  1933), 
in  which  he  wrote  with  a  kindly  pen  more 
of  others  than  himself.  This  book  was  pub- 
lished a  few  days  after  his  death.  Some  of 
his  plays  were  serious ,  others  light  comedies , 
all  were  equally  attractive  to  the  theatre- 
going  public.  He  looked  on  the  drama  as 
a  popular  art  and  strove  to  keep  it  so. 

Before  his  marriage  Sutro  had  been 
active  and  successful  in  the  direction  of 
working-men's  clubs.  During  the  war  of 
1914-1918,  although  over  fifty  years  of 
age,  he  enhsted  in  the  Artists  Rifles.  Later, 
he  was  on  the  staff  of  the  'War  Trade 
Intelligence  Department',  for  his  services 
in  which  he  was  appointed  O.B.E.  (1918). 

Sutro  died  after  a  few  days'  illness  at 
his  home  at  Witley,  Surrey,  11  September 
1983.  He  was  survived  imtil  1934  by  his 
widow.  They  had  no  children. 

[The  Times,  13  September  1933;  Jewish 
Chronicle,  15  September  1933;  A.  Sutro, 
Celebrities  and  Simple  Souls,  1933.] 

Albert  M.  Hyamson. 


SUTTON,  Sm  JOHN  BLAND-,  baronet 
(1855-1936),  surgeon,  was  bom  at  EnfieU 
Highway,  Middlesex,  21  April  1855,  th< 
second  child  and  eldest  son  of  Charl< 
William  Sutton,  of  Enfield  Highway] 
farmer,  market-gardener,  and  amateur" 
taxidermist,  from  whom  he  acquired  that 
keen  interest  in  natural  history  which  is 
so  apparent  in  his  writings.  His  mother 
was  Elizabeth,  eldest  daughter  of  Joseph 
Wadsworth,  farmer,  of  Long  Buckby, 
Northamptonshire.  His  second  name  was 
given  him  in  memory  of  his  maternal 
grandmother's  family,  and  in  1899  he 
assumed  by  deed-poll  the  prefix  surname 
of  Bland. 

Bland- Sutton's  parents  were  poor,  and 
being  originally  intended  for  the  pro- 
fession of  schoolmaster  he  qualified  as 
pupil  teacher  during  his  last  two  years  a1 
an  elementary  school  at  Enfield  Highway 
and  afterwards  in  London.  But  he  w{ 
determined  to  become  a  surgeon,  and  bj 
thrift  and  hard  work  he  managed  aftei 
four  years  to  save  enough  money,  witl 
help  from  his  mother's  family,  to  pay  th< 
fees  of  a  medical  school.  In  1878  he  begai 
work  at  Thomas  Cooke's  school  of  ana- 
tomy in  Brunswick  Square,  the  last  of  th( 
private  anatomical  schools,  and  a  littli 
later  in  the  same  year  he  joined  the  medics 
school  of  the  Middlesex  Hospital.  His  pro- 
gress was  rapid ;  he  won  prizes  and  scholar- 
ships, became  a  demonstrator  of  anatomy, 
and  in  1881  was  appointed  prosector  an< 
pathologist  to  the  Zoological  Society. 

Bland-Sutton  was  admitted  a  membei 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  of  Eng- 
land in  1881  and  rented  a  house  in  Gordoi 
Street  where  he  took  resident  pupils.  He 
was  admitted  a  fellow  of  the  college  ii 
1884  and  in  1886  was  appointed  assistant 
surgeon  to  the  Middlesex  Hospital,  be- 
coming surgeon  nineteen  years  later  (1905).j 
In  1892  he  won  the  Jacksonian  prize  of  th< 
college,  and  in  1896  was  appointed  surgeon 
to  the  Chelsea  Hospital  for  Women,  a  post 
which  he  held  until  1911.   This  gave  him 
the  opportunity  of  developing  his  chief 
surgical  interest,  which  had  been  aroused, 
by  the   subject   set  for   the   Jacksonian 
prize,  the  surgery  of  the  female  generative 
organs,  and  he  speedily  became  known  as 
the  leading  exponent  of  gynaecological 
surgery  of  the  day. 

Bland-Sutton  married  in  1886  Agnes 
Hobbs  (died  1898),  of  Didcot.  In  1899  he 
married  as  his  second  wife  Edith,  youngest 
daughter  of  Henry  Heather-Bigg,  a  lady 
of  great  social  accomplishments.  They 
lived  from  1901  to  1929  at  47  Brook  Street 


840 


D.N.B.  1031-1040 


Swift 


(now  pulled  down)  and  at  the  back  of  the 
house  he  built  a  remarkable  hypostyle  hall 
after  the  pattern  of  the  Apadana  (hall  of 
honour)  built  by  Darius  at  Susa,  the  roof 
of  which  was  supported  by  thirty -two  bull- 
columns  of  specially  constructed  enamelled 
bricks. 

Bland-Sutton  was  knighted  in  1912  and 
was  created  a  baronet  in  1925.  He  was 
president  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons 
of  England  (1923-1926),  and  was  Hun- 
terian  orator  (1923).  Many  other  honours, 
including  numerous  honorary  degrees, 
were  conferred  upon  him.  He  died  in 
London  20  December  1936,  having  had 
no  children  by  either  marriage. 

The  amount  of  research  work  which 
Bland- Sutton  accomplished  in  his  younger 
days  was  very  great.  Between  1882  and 
1895  he  made  152  communications  to 
various  medical  societies  dealing  with  com- 
parative anatomy,  comparative  embryo- 
logy, and  comparative  pathology.  Of  these 
the  most  noteworthy  are  Ligaments,  their 
Nature  and  Morphology,  expanded  into  a 
small  book  in  1887,  and  'On  Odontomes' 
which  has  formed  the  basis  of  all  subse- 
quent work  on  the  subject.  He  was  an 
original  and  arresting  writer,  and  his  best 
known  book,  Tumours  Innocent  and  Malig- 
nant (1893),  has  long  since  become  a 
classic.  Towards  the  close  of  his  life  he 
wrote  a  book  about  himself.  The  Story  of 
a  Surgeon  (1930). 

As  an  operator  Bland-Sutton  possessed 
brilliant  dexterity  of  hand  and  the  faculty 
of  instant  appreciation  and  decision,  but 
most  of  all  a  splendid  self-reliance  which 
overrode  all  obstacles  of  place  and  circum- 
stance. This  is  a  quality  less  essential  to- 
day when  a  surgeon  enjoys  so  many  aids, 
but  it  remains  the  first  attribute  of  a  really 
great  surgeon. 

His  conviction  that  a  wide  knowledge  of 
pathology  is  the  hub  of  all  medical  teaching 
led  Bland-Sutton  in  1913  to  present  to  the 
Middlesex  Hospital  the  Institute  of  Patho- 
logy which  bears  his  name,  and  his  widow 
at  her  death  in  1943  made  bequests  both 
to  it  and  to  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons, 
the  latter  taking  the  form  of  a  scholarship 
in  memory  of  her  husband. 

Bland-Sutton  was  a  small  man  with  fea- 
tures strongly  recalling  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte to  whom  his  mental  make-up  also 
bore  a  decided  resemblance.  He  was  terse 
and  decisive  in  speech;  his  humour  was 
puckish  in  quality  and  quite  pecuhar  to 
himself,  and  his  mind  betrayed  a  genius 
of  a  very  uncommon  type.  In  his  later 
years  he  entertained  lavishly,  but  there 


was  a  certain  aloofness  about  him  and  he 
had  very  few  intimate  friends ;  amongst 
these  was  Rudyard  Kipling,  with  whom  he 
maintained  affectionate  relations  for  many 
years.  He  had  the  gift  of  l>estowing  in- 
spiration on  those  who  worked  imder  him, 
for  he  invested  all  that  he  did  with  a  halo 
of  drama  and  romance,  and  many  of  his 
pupils  have  reason  to  be  very  grateful  to 
him. 

Bland-Sutton  was  the  product  of  an  age 
greatly  influenced  by  Darwin,  Huxley, 
and  Tyndall  and,  possessing  a  mind  avid 
for  discovery,  he  himself  made  the  means 
of  prosecuting  it.  In  his  earlier  days  he 
walked  more  nearly  in  the  footsteps  of 
John  Hunter  than  anyone  else  since 
Hunter's  time. 

An  oil  painting  of  Bland-Sutton  by 
John  Collier  (1925)  hangs  in  the  hall  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons.  An  earlier 
painting  of  him,  also  by  Collier,  belongs  to 
the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine.  There  is 
a  marble  bust  of  him  by  Sir  George  Framp- 
ton  in  the  Institute  of  Pathology,  Middle- 
sex Hospital,  and  a  bronze  replica  of  it  is 
at  Chelsea  Hospital  for  Women.  There  is 
also  a  drawing  by  George  Belcher  (1925) 
which  hangs  in  the  common  room  of  the 
Middlesex  Hospital  medical  school.  A 
cartoon  of  him  by  'Elf  appeared  in 
Vanity  Fair  3  February  1910. 

[Sir  J.  Bland-Sutton,  The  Story  of  a  Sur- 
geon, 1930;  G.  H.  A.  Comyns  Berkeley,  'The 
Seven  Stages  of  Sir  John  Bland-Sutton '  (Sup- 
plement to  Journal  of  Obstetrics  and  Gynaeco- 
logy of  the  British  Empire,  April  1037;  The 
Times,  21  December  1936;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Victor  Bonney. 

SWIFT,  Sir  RIGBY  PHILIP  WAT- 
SON (1874-1937),  judge,  was  bom  7  Jime 
1874  at  St.  Helens,  Lancashire.  He  was 
the  eighth  child,  and  the  eldest  child  by 
the  second  marriage,  of  Thomas  Swift, 
solicitor,  of  St.  Helens,  who  was  called  to 
the  bar  late  in  life  and  had  a  considerable 
practice  on  the  Northern  circuit  chiefly  in 
criminal  and  licensing  work  in  and  around 
Liverpool,  where  he  Uved  during  his  later 
years.  His  mother  was  Emily,  daughter 
of  Philip  Daft,  of  Nottingham. 

Swift  was  educated  at  Parkfield  School, 
Liverpool,  and  later  obtained  the  LL.B. 
degree  of  London  University.  His  training 
in  the  law  was  unusual:  he  left  school  at 
the  age  of  seventeen  and  entered  his 
father's  chambers  in  Harrington  Street, 
Liverpool,  and  father  and  son  remained 
together  until  the  death  of  the  former  in 
1899.    Swift  was  called  to  the  bar  by 


841 


Swift 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Lincoln's  Inn  in  1895  within  a  month  of 
reaching  the  age  of  twenty-one.  His  pro- 
poser was  Sir  John  Rigby  [q.v.],  a  cousin 
of  his  father.  In  due  course  he  joined  the 
Northern  circuit.  At  that  time,  and  for 
the  next  twenty  or  thirty  years,  the  circuit 
was  probably  stronger  than  at  any  other 
period  in  its  history.  Swift  soon  got  work : 
he  was  faithful  in  his  attendance  in  the 
Crown  Court  at  assize  time  and  was  always 
ready  to  undertake  a  dock  defence  or  to 
look  after  the  interests  of  an  accused  at 
the  request  of  the  judge,  and  from  this  he 
gained  invaluable  experience  in  advocacy. 
In  the  early  years  of  the  century  he  made 
rapid  progress,  and  in  1910  he  applied  to 
the  lord  chancellor  for  silk  and  moved  to 
London,  taking  chambers  at  1  Garden 
Court.  His  claims  to  silk  were  great:  he 
had  made  for  himself  a  very  substantial 
practice  and  had  held  it;  his  work  was 
varied ;  on  the  nisi  prius  side  it  may  well 
be  said  that  he  had  attained  a  position 
seldom  reached  by  any  junior  on  the 
circuit;  he  was  recognized  as  an  eminent 
advocate.  He  was  still  young,  however, 
and  probably  for  that  reason  he  had  to 
wait  two  years  for  silk ;  it  was  not  until 
1912  that  he  was  appointed  in  the  same 
list  as  Gordon  Hewart  (afterwards  lord 
chief  justice)  who  had  practised  up  to  that 
time  in  Manchester.  The  appearance  of 
these  two  new  King's  Counsel  meant  a 
great  change  on  the  Northern  circuit.  For 
a  few  years,  until  the  claims  of  London 
called,  they  were  opposed  to  each  other  in 
nearly  all  the  work  of  importance.  Swift's 
powers  as  an  advocate  grew  and  it  would 
have  been  difficult  to  find  a  better  jury 
advocate  anywhere ;  and  his  practice  was 
by  no  means  confined  to  jury  work. 

Meanwhile  Swift  had  been  elected  to 
parliament  as  conservative  member  for 
St.  Helens  in  December  1910,  after  having 
been  defeated  in  January  of  that  year.  He 
remained  member  until  his  defeat  at  the 
general  election  of  1918,  but  he  did  not 
take  an  active  part  in  debate.  He  was 
recorder  of  Wigan  from  1915  to  1920. 

For  some  years  Swift  had  an  extensive 
practice  in  London  and  his  services  were 
in  great  demand.  It  was  no  surprise, 
therefore,  when,  on  the  recommendation 
of  Lord  Birkenhead,  he  was  appointed  a 
judge  of  the  King's  Bench  division  of  the 
High  Court  in  Jime  1920,  and  his  appoint- 
ment was  welcomed.  He  was  forty-six 
years  old  and  for  a  time  was  the  youngest 
judge  on  the  bench.  He  certainly  added 
strength  to  the  judiciary:  a  sound  know- 
ledge of  the  law,  wide  experience  of  courts 


and  of  procedure,  a  quick  brain,  a  great 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  a  keen 
sense  of  humour  enabled  him  to  fill  the 
position  in  a  way  that  made  everything 
appear  easy. 

During  his  seventeen  years  on  the  bench 
Swift  was  frequently  in  the  public  eye  and 
presided  over  many  trials  of  general  inter- 
est. His  power  over  juries  was  soon  appar- 
ent ;  this  was  chiefly  due  to  his  ability  to 
marshal  the  facts  of  any  case,  however 
complicated,  and  to  put  them  before  the 
jury  in  an  attractive  way.  He  had  not 
long  been  appointed  when  in  1921  there 
came  before  him  a  case  in  which  seventeen 
members  of  the  Irish  RepubUcan  Army 
were  charged  with  treason-felony  at  Man- 
chester. It  was  no  easy  task,  but  his 
handling  of  it  showed  him  at  his  best.  In 
Nunan  v.  Southern  Railway  Company 
(1923),  the  widow  of  a  workman  sued  the 
company  for  damages  under  Lord  Camp- 
bell's Act  in  respect  of  the  death  of  her 
husband  who  had  been  killed  in  an  acci- 
dent on  the  railway.  The  husband  was 
travelling  on  a  workman's  ticket  upon 
which  was  printed  a  condition  to  the  effect 
that  'the  liability  of  the  Company  is 
limited  to  a  sum  not  exceeding  £100'. 
Swift  decided  that,  although  the  condition 
would  have  prevailed  in  an  action  by  the 
husband,  it  did  not  avail  in  an  action  by 
the  widow,  and  his  judgement  was  upheld 
in  the  Court  of  Appeal.  In  R.  v.  Wool- 
mington  (1935)  a  young  husband  was  tried 
at  Bristol  for  the  murder  of  his  wife  by 
shooting.  At  an  earlier  trial  at  Taunton 
before  Sir  William  (afterwards  Viscount) 
Finlay  the  jury  had  failed  to  arrive  at  an 
agreement.  Swifttoldthe  jury: ' All homi-  ! 
cide  is  presumed  to  be  malicious,  and 
murder,  unless  the  contrary  appears  from 
circumstances  of  alleviation,  excuse  or 
justification.  In  every  charge  of  murder 
the  fact  of  killing  being  first  proved,  all 
the  circumstances  of  accident,  necessity, 
or  infirmity,  are  to  be  satisfactorily  proved 
by  the  prisoner  unless  they  arise  out  of  the 
evidence  produced  against  him,  for  the 
law  presumeth  the  fact  to  have  been 
fovmded  in  malice  until  the  contrary  ap- 
peareth'  (a  quotation  from  Archbold, 
citing  Foster).  Later  he  said:  'The  Crown 
has  to  satisfy  you  that  this  woman  died 
at  the  prisoner's  hands.  They  must  satisfy 
you  beyond  any  reasonable  doubt.  If  they 
satisfy  you  of  that,  then  he  has  to  show 
that  there  are  circumstances  to  be  found 
in  the  evidence  which  has  been  given  from 
the  witness  box  in  this  case,  which  alleviate 
his  crime  so  that  it  is  only  manslaughter 


842 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Symonds 


or  which  excuse  the  homicide  altogether 
by  showing  that  it  was  a  pure  accident.' 
The  jury  convicted  the  prisoner  and  he 
was  sentenced  to  death.  After  an  appeal 
to  the  Court  of  Criminal  Appeal  had  failed, 
the  House  of  Lords  quashed  the  conviction, 
holding  that  the  direction  to  the  jury  was 
wrong,  and  that  the  onus  of  proof  always 
remained  on  the  prosecution  in  such  a 
case.  Although  Swift  was  held  to  be  wrong 
there  was  considerable  authority  in  sup- 
port of  his  view,  and  he  had  followed  a 
principle  laid  down  150  years  before. 

Swift  was  a  man  of  great  kindness  of 
heart  and  he  gave  away  much  of  the 
money  which  he  earned:  seldom  did  he 
turn  down  an  appeal,  and  many  a  member 
of  the  bar  who  fell  on  hard  times  had 
cause  to  be  grateful  to  him.  He  liked 
above  all  things  to  see  a  young  man  doing 
his  work  well,  and  he  never  forgot  one 
who  showed  promise.  No  one  did  more  to 
encourage  the  young  advocate  than  he 
did:  he  often  said  that  there  ought  to  be 
something  in  the  nature  of  a  school  of 
advocacy;  it  was  just  as  necessary,  he 
urged,  to  teach  men  how  to  speak  and  how 
to  present  a  case  as  to  teach  them  the  law. 

Swift  always  liked  to  go  his  old  circuit 
and  until  the  end  of  his  career  he  went  the 
far  north  at  least  every  two  years.  From 
1917  he  lived  at  Crowborough,  where  he 
took  a  keen  interest  in  the  golf  club  and  in 
his  farm.  He  was  fond  of  meeting  old 
friends;  he  enjoyed  entertaining,  and  he 
lived  well .  This  no  doubt  affected  his  health, 
and  during  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  he 
showed  signs  of  failing  and  was  apt  to  be- 
come somewhat  testy.  Yet  he  remained  all 
the  time  a  personality,  strong  and  fearless. 

Swift  was  made  a  bencher  of  Lincoln's 
Inn  in  1916  and  would  have  been  treasurer 
had  he  lived  a  little  longer.  In  1935  he 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  Liverpool  University.  He  married 
in  1902  Beatrice,  daughter  of  John  Banks 
Walmsley,  a  Liverpool  shipowner.  They 
had  no  children.  Her  death  in  April|1937 
was  a  blow  from  which  he  never  really 
recovered,  and  he  died  at  Crowborough  on 
the  following  19  October. 

[E.  S.  Fay,  Life  of  Mr.  Justice  Swift,  1939 ; 
The  Times,  20  October  1937.] 

John  E.  Singleton. 

SYDENHAM    OF     COMBE,    Baron 

(1848-1933),  administrator.  [See  Clabke, 
George  Sydenham.] 

SYMONDS,  Sir  CHARTERS  JAMES 

(1852-1932),  surgeon,  was  bom  at  Dal- 


housie,  New  Brunswick,  24  July  1852,  the 
second  son  of  Charles  Symonds,  barrister, 
by  his  wife,  Margaret,  eldest  daughter  of 
John  Maltby,  of  New  Brunswick.  The 
family  was  of  pioneer  stock  from  Massa- 
chusetts (1035) ;  Symonds's  great-grand- 
father had  settled  in  1764  at  St.  John, 
New  Brunswick,  and  established  the  school 
where  Charters  was  educated;  his  grand- 
father had  been  Speaker  of  the  house  of 
assembly  of  the  province  in  1828.  His 
father  died  in  1860;  nine  years  later  his 
mother  brought  Charters  to  London  and 
struggled  with  poverty  while  he  studied 
first  at  University  College  and  then  at 
Guy's  Hospital,  which  he  entered  in  1870". 
After  gaining  the  treasurer's  gold  medal 
(1875)  and  first  class  honours  in  medicine, 
he  was  from  1876  to  1879  demonstrator 
of  anatomy  at  Guy's,  and  was  elected 
F.R.C.S.  in  1881.  An  early  interest  in 
higher  medicine,  shown  by  his  taking  the 
M.D.  (Lond.)  in  1878,  was  held  by  many 
to  be  a  potent  cause  of  his  excellence  as  a 
surgeon,  for,  while  he  was  a  skilled  and 
courageous  operator  in  an  era  of  expand- 
ing surgery,  it  was  in  the  diagnosis  and 
decision  before  an  operation,  and  in  care 
after  it,  that  he  excelled  until  the  end. 

Appointed  assistant  surgeon  to  Guy's  in 
1882,  Symonds  became  one  of  the  greatest 
bedside  teachers  that  this  hospital,  and 
perhaps  any,  has  ever  known.  From  1882 
to  1888  he  was  surgeon  to  the  Evelina  Hos- 
pital for  Sick  Children,  where  he  worked 
in  close  association  with  (Sir)  Thomas 
Barlow ;  he  was  in  charge  of  the  new  throat 
department  at  Guy's  from  1886  until  1902, 
when  he  surrendered  the  post  on  becoming 
full  surgeon.  As  with  all  great  teachers 
there  was  a  bit  of  the  showman  in  him, 
though  never  of  the  mountebank.  To  a 
Monday  'round'  of  thirty  students  he 
could  make  a  patient  put  out  his  tongue, 
swallow,  and  say  'ee-ee'  in  order  that 
many  students  could  arrive  at  the  diag- 
nosis more  usefully  than  the  teacher  with 
a  single  pupil.  After  retiring  from  the 
active  staff  of  Guy's  in  1912,  he  taught 
fortnightly  at  Lambeth  Hospital  imtil  a 
few  months  before  his  death. 

Symonds  will  be  remembered  as  the  first 
surgeon  to  deal  (1885)  with  the  appendix 
vermiformis,  between  attacks  of  inflam- 
mation, by  the  removal  of  a  concretion 
from  within  it,  an  operation  that  was 
superseded  by  taking  out  the  whole  struc- 
ture. He  laid  down  a  classification  of 
cancer  of  the  gullet  which  still  holds  good 
and  introduced  his  treatment  for  this  dis- 
order by  intubation  which  is  only  now 


843 


Symonds 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


being  superseded  by  more  radical  methods. 
In  medical  literature  110  contributions 
stand  to  his  credit. 

In  1915  Symonds  was  sent  to  Malta 
as  consulting  surgeon,  with  the  rank  of 
colonel,  to  the  Mediterranean  Expedi- 
tionary Force,  and  dealt  with  the  cases 
from  Suvla  Bay;  for  the  last  two  years 
of  the  war  he  was  consulting  surgeon  at 
Netley  and  at  Southern  Command.  He 
continued  the  great  tradition  of  the  Vic- 
torians in  the  width  of  his  activities,  being 
chairman  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  Invalid  Children's  Aid  Association, 
treasurer  of  the  Royal  Medical  Benevolent 
Fund,  and  a  member  of  the  advisory  com- 
mittee to  the  home  secretary  on  vivisec- 
tion, as  well  as  taking  part  in  many  affairs 
closely  concerned  with  his  profession. 

Elected  to  the  council  of  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Surgeons  in  1907,  Symonds  served 
a  second  period  (1915-1923),  becoming 
vice-president  (1916-1918)  and  delivering 
the  Bradshaw  lecture  (1916)  and  the  Hun- 
terian  oration  (1921),  in  which  he  broke 
new  ground  by  speaking  about  Sir  Astley 
Paston  Cooper  [q.v.]  and  his  debt  to 
Hunter  rather  than  on  Hunter  himself. 
In  1929  the  imiversity  of  New  Brunswick 
conferred  upon  him  the  honorary  degree 
of  LL.D.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1916 
and  K.B.E.  in  1919. 

In  1889  Symonds  married  Fanny  Marie 
(died  1930),  daughter  of  Lieutenant- 
General  David  Shaw,  of  the  Madras  Army, 
and  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  is 
Sir  Charles  Putnam  Symonds,  F.R.C.P., 
physician  for  nervous  diseases  at  Guy's 
Hospital.  He  died  at  Harrow  14  Septem- 
ber 1932. 

[Guy's  Hospital  Reports,  vol.  Ixxxiii,  July 
1933  (portrait) ;  British  MedicalJournal,  1932, 
vol.  ii,  p.  611  (portrait);  Lancet,  1932,  vol.  ii, 
p.  709  (portrait) ;  The  Times,  16  September 
1932 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

T.  B.  Layton, 

TALBOT,  EDWARD  STUART  (1844- 
1934),  bishop  successively  of  Rochester, 
Southwark,  and  Winchester,  the  younger 
son  of  John  ChetwjTid  Talbot,  Q.C.,  son  of 
the  second  Earl  Talbot  and  a  leader  of  the 
parliamentary  bar,  by  his  wife,  Caroline 
Jane,  only  daughter  of  James  Archibald 
Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie,  first  Lord 
WharncUffe  [q.v.],  was  born  in  London 
19  February  1844.  The  Talbot  family  is 
an  ancient  one,  many  of  whose  members, 
including  Edward  Talbot's  nephew  Sir 
G.  J.  Talbot  [q.v.],  have  reached  legal  and 
pohtical  eminence.    His  father,  who  was 


a  strong  supporter  of  the  Oxford  move- 
ment, died  in  1852,  and  his  widowed 
mother  formed  a  close  friendship  with  the 
two  sisters  Lady  Lyttelton  and  Mrs.  Glad-^ 
stone.  Sent  as  a  day  boy  to  Charterhouse j 
he  was  compelled  by  illness  to  leave 
1858.  He  proceeded  to  Christ  ChurchJ 
Oxford  in  1862,  obtained  a  first  class 
liter ae  humaniores  (1865)  and  in  law  anc 
modem  history  (1866),  and  was  elected  h 
the  last-named  year  a  senior  student  o< 
Christ  Church,  where  he  remained  for  foi 
years  as  modern  history  tutor.  In  1869  hd 
was  appointed  first  warden  of  Keble  Col| 
lege,  Oxford,  and  was  ordained  deacon! 
In  1870  he  was  ordained  priest  and  marj 
ried  Lavinia,  third  daughter  of  Georg 
William  Lyttelton,  fourth  Lord  Lytteltoi 
[q.v.] :  her  eldest  sister  was  the  wife  of '. 
brother  J.  G.  Talbot. 

In  the  autumn  of  1870  Talbot  went  intc 
residence  at  Keble.  The  university  as  si 
whole  regarded  the  new  foundation  with 
contempt.  To  meet  the  situation  no  bettei 
warden  than  Talbot  could  have  been 
found,  and  for  eighteen  years  he  presided 
successfully  over  the  coUege.  He  aimed  at 
giving  it  a  sure  foundation  as  a  college  in 
the  university  where  men  of  Umited  means 
might  lead  a  full  common  life  under  the 
influence  of  the  Church  of  England.  A 
true  son  of  the  Oxford  movement,  Talbot 
acknowledged  the  Tractarians  as  his  spiri- 
tual fathers.  He  contributed  to  Liue 
Mundi  in  1889,  but  in  contrast  to  that  of 
Charles  Gore  [q.v.]  his  essay  on  'The 
Preparation  in  History  for  Christ'  did 
not  provoke  controversy.  Like  all  the  Lvus 
Mundi  school,  Talbot  was  concerned  to 
bring  Tractarian  principles  into  relation; 
with  the  thought  of  the  later  nineteenth 
centiuy.  It  was  mainly  due  to  his  initia- 
tive that  Lady  Margaret  Hall  was  founded 
at  Oxford  in  1878  as  a  definitely  Church  of 
England  college  for  women. 

In  1888  Talbot  accepted  the  vicarage  of 
Leeds,  where  he  remained  for  six  years 
(1889-1895).  It  was  a  profound  change  to 
a  busy  Yorkshire  parish,  where  he  found 
himself  in  contact  with  hard-headed  busi- 
ness men,  the  crowds  of  the  working 
classes,  and  many  members  of  the  Free 
Churches.  Once  when  asked  to  which  poli- 
tical party  he  belonged,  he  repUed:  'Con- 
servative with  a  bad  conscience.' 

Leeds  was  sorry  to  lose  him  when  in 
1895  Talbot  became  bishop  of  Rochester. 
To  the  episcopate  he  brought  high  aca- 
demic distinction  as  well  as  educational 
and  parochial  experience.  He  continued 
the  scheme  inaugurated  by  his  predeces- 


844 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Talbot,  G.  J. 


sors  of  dividing  his  unwieldy  diocese,  thus 
separating  the  agricultural  area  roiuid 
Rochester  from  the  populous  area  of  south 
London,  where  he  had  always  had  his 
bishop's  house.  After  protracted  negotia- 
tions the  work  was  accomplished,  and  Tal- 
bot was  able  to  complete  the  other  task  which 
he  had  inherited,  namely,  that  of  making 
the  old  church  of  St.  Saviour's,  Southwark, 
the  cathedral  of  the  new  diocese.  He  was 
enthroned  there  in  1905.  His  relationship 
with  his  clergy  was  friendly,  although 
breaches  of  Prayer  Book  order  by  some  of 
them  placed  him  in  a  difficult  position. 
The  evangelical  party  suspected  him  as  a 
Tractarian  bishop,  while  high  churchmen 
resented  his  efforts  to  restore  order.  As 
time  passed  he  was  understood,  and  won 
the  respect  and  love  of  all  his  clergy.  Not 
a  ready  speaker,  at  times  he  was  hesitating, 
and  in  his  anxiety  to  make  his  points  clear 
addressed  his  audience  at  too  great  a 
length.  He  showed  that  a  high  church- 
man could  work  with  evangelicals  and 
liberals,  and  could  understand  Free 
churchmen  also. 

In  1911  Talbot  was  translated  to  the 
bishopric  of  Winchester,  which  he  held  for 
twelve  years.  It  was  the  autumn  of  his  life, 
but  it  was  still  a  full  and  busy  life.  His 
prestige  stood  high  and  he  spoke  with 
great  authority  in  the  coxmcils  of  the 
Church.  One  of  Archbishop  Davidson's 
stavmchest  supporters,  he  was  noted  for 
his  width  of  view  and  his  great  gift  of  fair- 
ness. The  last  ten  years  of  his  hfe  were 
spent  in  retirement  in  Kensington,  where 
he  died  30  January  1934.  As  The  Times 
obituary  notice  rightly  says,  'he  helped  to 
create,  as  well  as  to  maintain,  a  tradition 
essential  both  to  reUgious  and  to  national 
life'. 

Talbot  celebrated  his  golden  wedding 
while  bishop  of  Winchester  in  1920.  Mrs. 
Talbot  survived  him  imtil  1939.  They  had 
three  sons  and  two  daughters.  Of  the 
sons,  Edward  became  superior  of  the  com- 
munity of  the  Resurrection ;  Neville  (died 
1943)  became  bishop  of  Pretoria  and  was 
afterwards  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  church, 
Nottingham ;  and  Gilbert,  in  whose  mem- 
ory the  original  Toe  H  was  foimded,  was 
killed  in  action  in  1915. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Talbot  by  George 
Richmond,  painted  in  1876,  hangs  in  the 
hall  of  Keble  College,  of  which  he  was 
elected  the  first  honorary  fellow  in  1931. 
There  is  another  portrait  in  Christ  Church, 
painted  by  H.  Harris-Brown.  A  cartoon 
of  him  as  bishop  of  Rochester  by  'Spy' 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  21  April  1904. 


[E.  S.  Talbot,  Memories  of  Early  Life,  1924 ; 
Gwendolen  Stephenson,  Edward  Stuart  Talbot, 
1844-1034,  1980;  A.  Mansbridge,  Edward 
Stuart  Talbot  and  Charles  Oore,  1986;  The 
Times,  31  January  1934.]  „ 

TALBOT,  Sir  GEORGE  JOHN  (1861- 
1938),  judge,  was  bom  in  London  19  June 
1861 ,  the  eldest  son  of  John  Gilbert  Talbot, 
conservative  member  of  parliament  for 
West  Kent  (1868-1878)  and  for  Oxford 
University  (1878-1910),  by  his  wife,  Meriel 
Sarah,  eldest  daughter  of  G.  W.  Lyttel- 
ton,  fourth  Lord  Lyttelton  [q.v.],  and 
sister  of  A.  T.  Lyttelton  [q.v.]  and  Alfred 
Lyttelton  [q.v.].  He  was  a  nephew  of 
E.  S.  Talbot  [q.v.],  bishop  of  Winches- 
ter. Talbot's  father  was  at  Charterhouse, 
but  his  disapproval  of  the  migration  of 
that  school  to  Godalming  caused  him  in 
1873  to  send  his  son  to  Winchester,  for 
which  the  son  was  ever  grateful.  In 
1880  he  gained  a  jiuiior  studentship  at 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  obtained  a  first 
class  in  classical  moderations  (1882)  and 
in  liter ae  humaniores  (1884),  and  in  1886 
was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  All  Souls. 

A  career  in  the  Church  or  at  the  bar  was 
obvious  for  Talbot.  Perhaps  the  claims  of 
heredity  prevailed  for  the  latter.  On  his 
father's  side  he  was  sixth  in  descent  from 
Charles,  Lord  Talbot  [q.v.],  lord  chan- 
cellor from  1733  to  1737:  while  on  his 
mother's  side  he  was  thirteenth  in  descent 
from  Sir  Thomas  Littleton  [q.v.],  judge  of 
the  Common  Pleas  (1466),  and  ninth  in 
descent  from  Sir  Thomas  Bromley  [q.v.], 
lord  chanceUor  from  1579  to  1587.  His 
grandfather,  John  Chetwynd  Talbot  (a 
son  of  the  second  Earl  Talbot),  whose 
ample  law  library  he  inherited,  had  a 
highly  successful  career  at  the  parlia- 
mentary bar  in  its  busiest  days  of  railway 
promotions.  As  all  these  ancestors  were 
members  of  the  Inner  Temple  Talbot 
naturally  followed  them,  and  was  there 
called  to  the  bar  in  1887.  He  took  silk  in 
1906,  became  a  bencher  of  his  Inn  in  1914, 
and  was  its  treasuj^r  in  1936.  Until  late 
in  his  career  at  the  bar  his  busy  practice 
was  mainly  before  parliamentary  com- 
mittees, and  in  work  of  a  like  character, 
e.g.  in  the  Railway  and  Canal  Commission 
Court.  He  was  also  a  learned  ecclesiastical 
lawyer,  and  was  eventually  chancellor  of 
six  dioceses.  He  was  counsel  to  the  uni- 
versity of  Oxford  from  1915  to  1923. 

In  October  1916  Lord  Buckmaster  was 
minded  to  recommend  Talbot  for  a  vacant 
judgeship  of  the  King's  Bench  division. 
Most    unhappily    the     lord    chanceUor 


845 


Talbot,  G.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


thought  it  right  to  consult  the  prime 
minister,  Asquith,  who  dissuaded  him 
on  the  ground  that  promotion  from  the 
parUamentary  bar  would  not  be  popular 
with  the  profession,  and  H.  A.  McCardie 
[q.v.]  was  appointed  instead.  This  was 
a  misfortune.  If  Talbot  had  been  ap- 
pointed at  the  age  of  fifty-five,  instead  of 
having  to  wait  as  he  did  until  he  was 
sixty -two,  there  is  httle  doubt  that  his 
judicial  career  would  have  ended  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  At  this  time,  and  increas- 
ingly, Talbot's  services  were  being  sought 
in  wider  circles  of  the  law,  especially  before 
the  House  of  Lords,  and  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee of  the  Privy  Council,  e.g.  in  Bow- 
man V.  The  Secular  Society  in  1917,  and  in 
Lady  Rhondda's  petition  before  the  Com- 
mittee of  Privileges  in  1922.  In  the  latter, 
it  is  the  opinion  of  Lord  Greene,  M.R., 
that  Talbot's  argument,  before  a  trouble- 
some and  divided  tribunal,  was  the  finest 
effort  of  advocacy  which  he  ever  heard. 

In  November  1923,  on  the  retirement 
of  Mr.  Justice  DarUng  [q.v.].  Lord  Cave, 
as  lord  chancellor,  redressed  the  mistake 
of  1916:  Talbot  became  a  judge  of  the 
King's  Bench  division.  It  would  be  hard 
to  decide  whether  he  was  in  every  way 
more  different  from  McCardie,  who  had 
supplanted  him,  or  from  Darling,  whom 
he  succeeded.  On  the  bench  he  displayed 
every  quality  of  the  ideal  judge.  He  had 
learning,  dignity,  industry,  patience,  and 
courtesy:  his  decisions  were  invariably 
right,  and  on  most  occasions  were  thought 
to  be  so  by  the  Court  of  Appeal.  And 
(although  he  tried  at  least  one  sensational 
murder  case)  his  name  was  unknown  to 
the  readers  of  the  cheap  newspapers.  The 
only  occasion  on  which  he  made  a  mistake 
was  when,  being  appointed  to  sit  in  the 
Commercial  Court,  he  started  there  with 
a  protest  against  one  with  so  Uttle  experi- 
ence of  that  class  of  work  being  selected. 
That,  however,  was  the  fault  of  a  very 
needless  modesty — ^he  did  the  work  as  well 
as  he  did  everything  else.  In  the  trial  of 
criminals  on  circuit,  of  which  he  had  had 
httle  experience  at  the  bar,  he  had  no 
contemporary  superior. 

Towards  the  end  of  1936  Talbot's 
powers,  both  physical  and  mental,  began 
to  fail.  In  Jvme  1937  he  resigned,  and 
thereupon  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 
His  resignation  would  probably  have  taken 
place  earher  if  he  Ixad  not  waited  in  order 
to  be  present  at  Winchester,  on  29  May, 
when  seven  Wykehamist  judges  were  re- 
ceived ad  portas.  He  died  at  Falconhurst, 
near    Edenbridge,    the    pleasant    estate 


I 


created  by  his  grandfather,  11  July  1938, 
and  was  buried  at  Markbeech  near  by. 

Talbot  was  a  tall,  handsome  man  with 
a  fresh  complexion.  He  was  ever  a  tireless 
walker  in  the  country ;  and  his  pleasure  in 
that  was  increased  by  his  being  an  ardent 
and  very  learned  botanist.  He  had  a  cold 
bath  every  morning,  and  was  never  known 
to  wear  an  overcoat  in  town  or  country. 
His  reading  was  widespread,  and  he  re- 
mained a  fine  scholar  all  his  days.  When 
leaving  Oxford  he  set  himself  a  great 
programme  of  Greek  and  Latin  Uterature, 
and  by  the  strict  devotion  of  a  fixed  daily 
time  he  completed  the  task  in  upwards  of 
thirty  years.  He  was  a  great  lover  of 
music,  especially  of  the  music  of  Handel, 
although  he  never  played  any  instrument. 
Nature  endowed  him  with  a  very  hot 
temper,  but  such  was  the  rigour  of  his 
self-discipline  that  those  who  knew  him  as 
a  man  did  not  readily  detect  that  fact.  He 
was  a  very  devout  churchman,  who  went 
to  the  early  Communion  on  every  Sunday 
and  all  major  saints'  days.  There  is  a  story 
that  some  foolish  person  once  asked 
Charles  Gore  whether  the  law  was  a  suit- 
able career  for  a  man  of  high  ideals :  the 
bishop  answered:  'Do  you  know  George 
Talbot?' 

In  1897  Talbot  married  Gertrude  Har- 
riot, fourth  daughter  of  Albemarle  Cator, 
of  Woodbastwick  Hall,  Norfolk.  They 
were  a  happily  devoted  couple,  who  wrote 
to  one  another  daily  when  parted.  They 
had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  Their 
only  great  sorrow  was  the  death  of  the 
elder  son  in  1922.  The  younger  son  fol- 
lowed his  father  to  the  Inner  Temple  and 
the  bar. 

Next  to  his  wife  and  family  Talbot's 
greatest  object  of  devotion  was  Win- 
chester College.  He  was  a  fellow  from  1930 
until  he  resigned  shortly  before  his  death, 
and  for  a  time  was  sub-warden.  To  be 
with  him  at  Winchester  was  to  see  him  at 
his  happiest.  In  1935  he  was  elected  an 
honorary  student  of  Christ  Church,  and 
he  served  for  thirty-five  years  on  the 
council  of  Keble  CoUege,  Oxford. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Talbot  by  W.  G. 
de  Glehn  at  Falconhurst. 

[The  Times,  14  October  1936  and  13  July 
1938 ;  The  Wykehamist,  25  July  1938 ;  Law 
Quarterly  Review,  July  1943 ;  private  infor- 
mation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

F.  D.  MacKinnon. 

TANNER,  JOSEPH  ROBSON  (1860- 
1931),  historian,  was  bom  at  Frome, 
Somerset,  28  July  1860,  the  eldest  son  of 


846 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Tanner 


Joseph  Tanner,  J. P.,  head  of  the  firm  of 
Butler  and  Tanner,  printers,  of  Frome,  by 
his  wife,  Fanny  Robson.  He  was  educated 
at  Mill  Hill  School  and  entered  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1879.  Thenceforth 
his  Ufe  was  associated  with  the  college; 
he  became  successively  scholar  (1881), 
lecturer  (1883-1921),  fellow  (1886-1931), 
tutor  (1900-1912),  and  tutorial  bursar 
(1900-1921).  He  obtained  a  first  class  in 
the  historical  tripos  of  1882  and  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Union  in  1883.  Having  a 
natural  aptitude  for  business,  he  was 
drawn  a  good  deal  into  university  admini- 
stration as  a  member  of  the  coimcil  of  the 
senate,  chairman  of  the  special  board  for 
history  and  archaeology,  and  a  syndic  of 
the  University  Press,  for  which  he  edited 
the  Historical  Register  of  the  University  of 
Cambridge  (1917),  and,  for  some  years,  the 
Univeisity  Calendar  and  the  Student's 
Handbook  of  the  University;  he  was  also 
treasurer  of  the  Union  (1902-1915).  He 
retired  from  college  work  at  the  end  of  the 
war  of  1914-1918,  and  shortly  afterwards 
ceased  to  lectxire,  leaving  Cambridge  for 
Aldeburgh,  Suffolk,  in  1921,  although  he 
was  pleased  to  be  recalled  to  act  as  deputy 
for  the  regius  professor  of  modem  history, 
J.  B.  Bury,  in  1926  and  1927:  'It  is  like 
being  taken  down  off  the  shelf  and 
dusted.' 

As  a  historian  Tanner's  interests  lay 
primarily  in  English  naval  history  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  in  which  he  broke 
new  ground,  and  the  modem  constitu- 
tional history  of  England.  In  1896  he 
edited  Two  Discourses  of  the  Navy  by  John 
Hollond  [q.v.]  for  the  Navy  Records 
Society,  and  in  1903  he  brought  out  the 
first  volume  of  his  Descriptive  Catalogue  of 
the  Naval  Manuscripts  in  the  Pepysian 
Library  at  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge, 
a  work  which  ran  into  four  volumes  and 
occupied  him  until  1923. 

Tanner's  retirement  from  teaching  and 
administrative  duties  gave  him  leisiu-e 
for  the  literary  and  historical  activities 
that  filled  the  last  decade  of  his  life. 
In  1918  he  had  become  one  of  the 
editors  of  the  Cambridge  Medieval  History. 
Although  he  was  not  a  medievaUst,  his 
gifts  as  an  editor  and  his  organizing  ability 
were  invaluable  to  this  great  co-operative 
history ;  and  the  association  in  the  editorial 
work  with  two  other  members  of  the  col- 
lege, former  pupils  of  his,  Charles  William 
Previte  Orton  and  Zachary  Nugent 
Brooke,  gave  him  much  pleasure.  He  had 
lectured  chiefly  on  English  constitutional 
history,  and  three  books  represent  the 

847 


fmit  of  years  of  labour  in  this  field :  Ttidor 
Constitutional  Documents  (1922),  English 
Constitutional  Conflicts  of  the  Seventeenth 
Century  (1928),  and  Constitutional  Docu- 
ments of  the  Reign  of  James  I  (1030). 

At  the  same  time  Tanner  continued  his 
work  in  naval  history,  particularly  on  the 
Ufe  of  Samuel  Pepys.  The  Lees  Knowles 
lectures,  which  he  delivered  at  Trinity 
College  in  1919,  were  published  the  fol- 
lowing year  as  Samuel  Pepys  and  the 
Royal  Navy.  These  were  followed  by  Mr. 
Pepys.  An  Introduction  to  (he  Diary,  together 
with  a  Sketch  of  his  Later  Life  (1925), 
Samuel  Pepys'' s  Naval  Minutes  (for  the 
Navy  Records  Society,  1926),  the  Private 
Correspondence  of  Samuel  Pepys,  1679- 
1703  (2  vols.,  1926)  and  Further  Corre- 
spondence of  Samuel  Pepys,  1662-1679 
(1929). 

Large  as  was  the  volume  of  his  historical 
work,  the  best  energy  of  Tanner's  life  was 
given  to  his  college  and  his  pupils.  By 
them  he  will  always  be  remembered  for 
his  sympathy,  humour,  and  inspiration. 
His  popularity  as  a  tutor  was  due  to  a 
genuine  interest  in  men  and  a  wise  and 
kindly  understanding.  In  the  teaching 
and  administration  of  the  history  school 
he  played  a  considerable  part  diiring  the 
years  in  which  it  was  rising  to  be  one  of 
the  largest  schools  in  Cambridge.  He  was 
an  excellent  chairman — effective,  concilia- 
tory, and  constructive.  His  lectures, 
always  read,  and  read  admirably,  were 
enlivened  with  happy  quotations,  and  for 
generations  attracted  large  classes.  Dis- 
tinguished alike  as  teacher,  scholar,  and 
administrator,  'his  many  gifts  and  activi- 
ties', in  the  words  of  an  old  pupil,  'were 
bound  together  by  an  artistic  faculty 
which  he  possessed  without  the  biurden- 
some  artistic  temperament'.  For  recrea- 
tion he  played  a  steady  game  of  golf;  he 
was  a  happy  racontevu:,  and  always  good 
company  in  work  or  leisure. 

Tanner  married  in  1888  Charlotte  Maria, 
second  daughter  of  George  James  Lark- 
man,  J.P.,  of  Belton,  Suffolk,  and  his  hospit- 
able home  was  a  second  centre  of  his  genial 
influence.  There  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Aldeburgh  1 6  January 
1931,  a  generous  benefactor  of  the  college 
to  which  he  was  devoted.  A  portrait  of 
Tanner  by  Mrs.  Lewis  Erie  Shore  is  in 
the  possession  of  his  widow. 

[The  Eagle  (magazine  of  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge),  vol.  xlvi,  pp.  184r-187,  1981 ;  The 
Times,  17  January  1931 ;  Cambridge  Review, 
80  January  1981 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  A.  Bknians. 


Tata 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


TATA,    Sir    DORABJI    JAMSETJI 

(1859-1932),  Indian  industrial  magnate 
and  philanthropist,  was  born  in  Bombay 
27  August  1859,  the  elder  son  of  Jamsetji 
Nasarwanji  Tata  [q.v.],  pioneer  of  Indian 
industries,  by  his  wife,  Heerabai,  daughter 
of  Kharsetji  Daboo.  Shapurji  Saklatvala 
[q.v.]  was  his  first  cousin.  In  1875,  after 
attending  the  Bombay  Proprietary  School, 
he  was  sent  to  England  to  a  private  tutor 
in  Kent,  and  in  1877  he  entered  Gonville 
and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
obtained  his  colours  for  cricket  and  foot- 
ball. He  returned  to  Bombay  in  1879, 
studied  further  at  St.  Xavier's  College, 
and  obtained  the  B.A.  degree  of  Bombay 
University  in  1882.  His  father  then  placed 
him  as  an  apprentice  in  the  office  of  the 
Bombay  Gazette  in  order  that  he  might 
gain  experience  of  men  and  affairs.  Two 
years  later  he  was  sent  first  to  Pondicherry 
and  then  to  the  Empress  cotton  mills, 
Nagpur,  for  training,  and  in  1887,  together 
with  his  cousin  R.  D.  Tata,  was  taken  into 
partnership  in  the  newly  formed  company 
of  Tata  «fe  Sons.  Under  his  father's  wise 
guidance  he  gained  greatly  in  knowledge 
and  understanding  of  Indian  industry  and 
finance,  and  on  J.  N.  Tata's  death  in  1904 
was  well  fitted  to  become  the  head  of  the 
firm.  During  the  next  twenty-five  years 
the  firm  (reconstituted  in  1907  as  Tata 
Sons  &  company,  and  again  in  1917  as 
Tata  Sons  Limited)  expanded  and  became 
the  largest  industrial  concern  in  India, 
with  aggregate  funds  estimated  in  1945  at 
£54,000,000  and  giving  employment  to 
120,000  men  and  women. 

Tata's  great  contributions  to  Indian  pro- 
gress are,  on  the  one  hand,  the  successful 
completion  with  the  able  assistance  of  his 
cousin  R.  D.  Tata,  his  brother  (Sir)  Ratan 
Tata  (died  1918),  and  the  chosen  heu- 
tenants  of  J.  N.  Tata,  of  the  three  bold 
and  far-sighted  projects  planned  and  initi- 
ated by  his  father|and,  on  the  other,  his 
munificent  public  benefactions.  Through 
his  keen  personal  interest  in  the  early  work 
and  his  energy  and  drive  in  finding  the 
capital,  the  first  project,  the  Tata  iron  and 
steel  works,  was  estabUshed  at  Jamshed- 
pur  in  1911.  To  his  father's  bold  plan  for 
harnessing  the  heavy  monsoon  rainfall  of 
the  western  ghauts  he  brought  the  same 
energy  and  resource  and  by  1919  three 
companies  were  in  being.  The  endowment 
and  establishment  in  1911  of  the  Indian 
Institute  of  Science  at  Bangalore  at  an 
initial  cost  of  £200,000  was  a  work  of  filial 
devotion  for  the  two  sons  of  J.  N.  Tata. 
Their  father  died  before  he  could  make 


the  bequest  and  his  sons  after  protracted 
negotiations    entered    into    a    tripartite 
agreement  with  the  government  of  India 
and  the  government  of  Mysore  whereby, 
in  accordance  with  the  plan  of  J.  N.  Tata, 
young    Indians    could    receive    scientific! 
training  at  a  high  level  in  India  and  by  the  | 
practical  applications  of  science  advance' 
the     industrial     development     of    their  | 
country. 

In  recognition  of  his  services  Tata  was| 
knighted  in  1910.  He  was  president  of  the! 
Indian  Industrial  Conference  in  1915  and! 
a  member  of  the  Indian  Industrial  Com-I 
mission  from  1916  to  1918.  From  early j 
manhood  he  took  a  keen  interest  in  Indiani 
cricket  and  athletics  and  did  much  to  brrngj 
about  India's  participation  in  the  Olympic  ^ 
Games.  He  was  a  patron  of  learning  as 
well  as  of  sport.  He  endowed  a  chair 
of  Sanskrit  at  the  Bhandarkar  Institute, 
and  helped  many  deserving  scholars  in 
their  researches.  About  1920  he  gave 
£25,000  to  the  university  of  Cambridge 
for  the  equipment  of  the  laboratories  in 
the  School  of  Engineering,  and  in  1922  he 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  old 
college.  His  private  charities  are  said  to 
have  totalled  £150,000.  After  his  wife's 
death  in  1931  he  set  apart  a  sum  of  nearly 
£200,000  for  the  Lady  Tata  Memorial 
Trust,  the  object  being  to  provide  prizes 
and  scholarships  for  research  in  any  part 
of  the  world  on  diseases  of  the  blood,  and 
for  work  in  India  on  subjects  related  to  the 
alleviation  of  human  suffering.  In  the  last 
year  of  his  life  he  created  the  trust  which 
bears  his  name  and  endowed  it  with  the 
whole  of  his  private  fortune.  In  accor- 
dance with  his  wishes  it  has  rendered  help 
without  distinction  of  caste  or  creed. 
The  endowment,  estimated  at  £2,000,000 
in  1945,  had  expended  £800,000  in  a  wide 
range  of  charities  including  the  endow- 
ment and  maintenance  of  the  Tata  Me- 
morial Hospital  for  Cancer,  the  Tata  Insti- 
tute of  Social  Sciences,  and  the  Tata 
Institute  of  Fundamental  Research  (the 
last-named  being  jointly  established  by 
the  government  of  Bombay  and  the 
trust). 

After  executing  the  trust  deed  Tata  left 
India  in  April  1932.  He  was  taken  seri- 
ously ill  in  Europe  and  died  at  Kissingen, 
Bavaria,  3  June  1932.  His  remains  were 
taken  to  England  and  laid  beside  his  wife 
in  the  Parsi  cemetery  at  Brookwood, 
Woking. 

In  1898  Tata  married  Meherbai,  daugh- 
ter of  a  distinguished  educationist,  Hor- 
masji  Jehangir  Bhabha,  inspector-general 


848 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Temperley 


of  education  in  Mysore.    There  were  no 
clxildren  of  the  marriage. 

[The  Times  and  The  Times  of  India,  4  June 
1  i)32 ;  F.  R.  Harris,  Jamsetji  Nusserwanji 
Tata.  A  Chronicle  of  his  Life,  1925 ;  records 
of  the  Sir  Dorabji  Tata  Trust;  private  infor- 
mation.] 

R.  Choksi. 


TAYLOR,  WILLIAM  (1865-1937),  de- 
signer of  scientific  instruments,  was  born 
at  Hackney  11  June  1865,  the  second  son 
of  Richard  Taylor,  hosier,  by  his  wife, 
Marian  Smithies,  the  daughter  of  a  draper 
of  York.  He  and  his  brother  were  mechan- 
ics from  cliildhood,  learning  their  crafts 
from  a  blacksmith  and  a  wheelwright, 
and  with  a  small  lathe  made  by  them- 
selves the  boys  learnt  the  elements  of 
turning.  They  gained  their  first  know- 
ledge of  science  from  the  Edinburgh  Ency- 
clopaedia, but  under  Richard  Wormald, 
a  pioneer  of  the  teaching  of  science  in 
schools,  their  knowledge  was  widened  at 
the  Cowper  Street  School,  Finsbury,  where 
they  even  learnt  turning,  joinery,  and 
cabinet-making  under  competent  instruc- 
tors. In  these  school  workshops  the 
brothers  made  a  pair  of  the  first  telephones 
ever  made  in  England  and  one  of  the  first 
copies  of  Edison's  tinfoil  phonograph,  and 
at  "home  they  built  and  fitted  up  a  work- 
shop. 

Taylor  spent  his  last  term  at  school 
learning  as  much  as  he  could  about  optics 
and  in  practising  the  use  of  logarithms  in 
order  to  learn  how  to  design  lenses,  in 
which  he  at  this  time  became  interested. 
He  became  one  of  the  first  students  at  the 
Finsbury  Technical  College  under  H.  E. 
Armstrong,  W.  E.  Ayrton  [qq.v.],  and 
John  Perry.  He  was  then  apprenticed 
to  Messrs.  Paterson  «&  Cooper,  and  while 
with  them  he  made  for  Ayrton  and  Perry 
their  famous  ammeter,  the  actual  instru- 
ment now  in  the  Science  Museum,  South 
Kensington.  In  1885  the  family  moved  to 
Leicester,  and  within  two  years  (1886)  the 
brothers  had  foimded  the  firm  of  T,  S.  & 
W.  Taylor  (afterwards  Taylor,  Taylor, 
&,  Hobson).  From  the  outset  William 
Taylor  did  most  of  the  designing,  and  it 
was  his  remarkable  talent  as  a  designer 
which  determined  the  character  of  the 
products  of  the  firm  and  their  m.ode  of 
production.  His  inventiveness  secured 
interchangeability  in  screws  for  the 
mountings  of  lenses,  for  Taylor  had  been 
much  impressed  by  the  degree  to  which  it 
had  been  raised  in  America,  but  it  was 
not  until  the  ideas  of  the  British  lens- 


makers  had  been  proved,  by  experiment, 
to  be  >vTong  that  the  trade  accepted  the 
specification  which,  embodying  Taylor's 
suggestions,  was  published  by  the  Royal 
Photograpliic  Society  in  1901. 

Although  Taylor  did  much  work  for  the 
government  and  for  various  committees, 
it  was  the  example  set  by  the  firm  imder 
his  direction  which  did  most  to  raise  the 
standard  of  mechanical  and  optical  manu- 
facture in  Great  Britain.  It  produced  the 
epoch-making  camera  lens  designed  by 
Harold  Dennis  Taylor,  and  adopted 
methods  of  mass  production  which  made 
possible  the  manufacture  of  very  large 
numbers  of  camera  lenses  of  such  high 
quality  that  they  acquired  a  command- 
ing position  all  over  the  world.  In  this 
achievement  Taylor's  study  of  factory 
organization  and  skill  in  design,  coupled 
with  the  novel  range  of  machines  for 
grinding  and  polishing  lenses  devised  and 
patented  by  him,  were  aU  essential  factors. 
Besides  this,  Taylor's  interest  in  the 
game  of  golf  led  him  to  study  the  form 
and  flight  of  the  golf  ball,  and  he  designed 
the  'Dimple'  ball  and  a  mechanical  driving 
machine  for  testing  the  balls.  He  also 
produced  an  engraving  machine  which  is 
in  use  all  over  the  world. 

The  distinguishing  features  of  Taylor's 
ability  were  a  comprehensive  knowledge 
of  engineering  practice,  an  authoritative 
grasp  of  the  result  desired,  and,  most 
marked  of  all,  untiring  patience  and  in- 
exhaustible stamina  in  persevering  to  the 
end  in  view. 

Taylor  was  appointed  O.B.E.  in  1918 
and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1934.  He  mar- 
ried in  1892  Esther  Margaret,  daughter  of 
John  Coy,  of  Leicester,  who  siurvived  him 
with  their  son  and  four  daughters.  He 
died  in  a  snowdrift  at  Laughton  Hills, 
Leicestershire,  28  February  1937. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society, No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait) ;  Nature, 
27  March  1937;  The  Times,  2  March  1987; 
personal  knowledge.]  F.  Twybian. 


TEMPERLEY,  HAROLD  WILLIAM 
VAZEILLE  (1879-1939),  historian,  was 
bom  at  Cambridge  20  April  1879,  the 
third  son  of  Ernest  Temperley,  fellow, 
bursar,  tutor,  and  mathematical  lec- 
turer of  Queens'  CoUege,  Cambridge,  by 
his  wife,  Marion,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Wildman,  D.D.,  episcopalian  chaplain  at 
Callander.  He  was  a  younger  brother  of 
Major-General  Arthur  CecU  Temperley. 
After  being  educated  at  Sherborne,  he 


849 


81 


Temperley 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


entered  King's  College,  Cambridge,  in 
1898  and  obtained  a  first  class  in  both 
parts  of  the  historical  tripos  (1900,  1901). 
In  1905  he  became  a  fellow  of  Peterhouse 
and  published  a  Life  of  Canning.  Between 
1907  and  1909  he  wrote  five  chapters  in 
the  Cambridge  Modern  History  on  Great 
Britain  in  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth, 
and  nineteenth  centuries.  His  interest  in 
the  Near  East  began  with  a  journey  to 
Serbia  in  1905.  A  visit  to  Slovakia  in  1907 
introduced  him  to  the  racial  problems  of 
Htmgary,  and  in  1910  he  contributed  a 
long  introduction  to  a  translation  of 
Henry  MarczaU's  Hungary  in  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century.  Senates  and  Upper  Cham- 
bers, pubhshed  in  the  same  year,  was 
suggested  by  the  rejection  of  the  budget 
of  1909  by  the  House  of  Lords.  Frederic 
the  Great  and  Kaiser  Joseph,  published  in 
1915,  described  the  war  of  the  Bavarian 
Succession  in  1778.  A  History  of  Serbia 
was  almost  completed  in  1914  although 
not  published  until  1917. 

The  general  war  of  1914^1918  revealed 
Temperley  as  a  man  of  action.  His  know- 
ledge of  the  Near  East  was  utilized  in 
various  missions;  he  saw  active  service 
with  the  Serbian  army  at  Salonica;  and 
his  services  were  recognized  by  appoint- 
ment as  O.B.E.  in  1920  and  by  decorations 
from  several  countries.  In  1919  he  was 
a  member  of  the  British  delegation  to  the 
Peace  Conference,  the  record  of  which  he 
was  invited  to  prepare.  The  authoritative 
but  unofficial  History  of  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence of  Paris,  to  which  he  contributed  nine 
chapters,  appeared  in  six  volumes  (1920- 
1924)  under  the  auspices  of  the  newly 
founded  Institute  of  International  Affairs. 
The  Second  Year  of  the  League,  a  study  of 
the  second  Assembly  of  the  League  of 
Nations,  pubhshed  in  1922,  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  postscript. 

After  the  war  Temperley  resumed  his 
duties  at  Cambridge.  He  was  appointed 
imiversity  reader  in  modern  history  in 
1919  and  was  the  first  occupant  of  a  chair 
of  modern  history  created  in  1931 .  He  was 
founder  and  first  editor  (1923-1937)  of  the 
Cambridge  Historical  Journal,  was  joint 
editor  of  'Helps  to  Students  of  History', 
and  edited  for  the  Historical  Association 
its  Annual  Bulletin  of  Historical  Literature 
(1922-1928).  He  coUaborated  with  Arthur 
James  Grant  in  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth 
{and  Twentieth)  Century,  1789-1914  (1927), 
which  went  through  five  editions,  the  last 
of  which  (1939)  brought  the  story  up  to 
the  Mvuiich  crisis  of  1938.  He  wrote  the 
chapter  on  Canning  in  the  second  volume 


of  the  Cambridge  History  of  British  Foreign 
Policy,  1783-1919,  published  in  1923,  and 
in  1925  he  completed  his  masterpiece,  The 
Foreign  Policy  of  Canning,  1822-1827. 
His  edition  of  the  Unpublished  Diary  of 
Princess  Lieven,  illustrating  the  sa 
period,  also  appeared  in  that  year.  H< 
collaborated  with  George  Peabody  Gooch' 
in  selecting  and  editing  British  Documents 
on  the  Origins  of  the  War,  1898-1914  (pub- 
hshed in  thirteen  volumes,  1926-1938). 
When  the  task  was  neartng  completion 
Temperley  embarked  upon  his  largest 
enterprise,  England  and  the  Near  East, 
designed  to  cover  the  years  1827  to  1878, 
of  which  the  first  and  only  volume,  The 
Crimea,  appeared  in  1936.  Foundations  of 
British  Foreign  Policy  from  Pitt,  1792,  tc 
Salisbury,  1902,  and  A  Century  of  Diplo- 
matic Blue  Books,  1814-1914,  both  pub 
Hshed  in  1938,  compiled  with  the  aid  ol 
Miss  LilUan  Penson,  were  intended  to 
facihtate  the  study  of  diplomacy.  Among 
his  later  interests  were  the  International 
Historical  Congress,  of  which  he  was  the 
second  president  (1933-1938);  the  ne^ 
Commonwealth  Institute,  of  wliich  he  waa 
the  first  president  (1934) ;  the  Royal  Com^ 
mission  on  Historical  Manuscripts;  and 
the  British  Academy,  of  which  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  in  1927.  He  initiated  a 
Cambridge  History  of  Poland  and  planned 
supplementary  volumes  to  the  Cambridge 
Modern  History.  He  was  elected  mastei 
of  Peterhouse  in  1938,  and  died  at  Cam- 
bridge 11  July  1939. 

Temperley  married  twice:  first,  in  1913 
Gladys  (died  1923),  daughter  of  Job  Brad 
ford,  barrister  of  Lincoln's  Inn ;  secondly, 
in  1929,  his  cousin,  Dorothy  Vazeille, 
daughter  of  Arthur  Temperley,  preben- 
dary of  Lincoln  Minster.  He  had  a  son 
by  his  first  wife.  The  universities  of  Dur- 
ham and  St.  Andrews  conferred  honorary 
degrees  upon  him  and  he  was  a  correspond' 
ing  member  of  many  foreign  academies 
A  man  of  boundless  energy  and  wide  sym- 
pathies, Temperley  possessed  friends  in 
many  countries.  None  of  his  contempo- 
raries did  more  to  secure  international 
co-operation  in  historical  research. 

[The  Times,  12  July  1939;  G.  P,  Gooch, 
Harold  Temperley,  1879—1939  in  Proceedings  ot 
the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxv,  1939  (portrait) ; 
Some  Historians  of  Modern  Europe,  edited  by, 
Bernadotte  E.  Schmitt,  1942;  L.  M.  Penson 
in  History,  September  1939 ;  personal  know-] 
ledge.]  G.  P.  Gooch 

TEMPLE,  Sir  RICHARD  CARNAC,! 

second  baronet,  of  The  Nash  (1850-1931),! 
soldier  and  oriental  scholar^  was  born  atj 


850 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Allahabad,  India,  15  October  1850,  the 
elder  son  of  the  Anglo-Indian  admini- 
strator (Sir)  Richard  Temple,  first  baronet 
[q.v.],  of  The  Nash,  Kempsey,  Worcester- 
shire, by  his  first  wife,  Charlotte  Frances, 
daughter  of  Benjamin  Martindale.  He 
was  educated  at  Harrow  and  at  Trinity 
Hall,  Cambridge,  of  which  in  1908  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow,  and  in  1871 
he  obtained  a  commission  in  the  Royal 
Scots  Fusiliers  and  embarked  with  them 
for  India.  Transferred  to  the  Indian  Army 
in  1877,  he  was  first  posted  to  the  38th 
Dogras,  and  with  them  took  part  in  the 
second  Afghan  war  (1878-1879).  He  next 
served  in  the  1st  Gurkha  Regiment.  Hav- 
ing been  mentioned  in  dispatches  for  his 
services  in  the  Afghan  campaign,  he  was 
selected  in  1879  for  the  post  of  canton- 
ment magistrate  in  the  Punjab,  where  his 
lifelong  study  of  Indian  history,  folk-lore, 
and  ethnology  was  initiated,  witness  his 
Legends  of  the  Panjdb  (3  vols.,  1883-1890) 
and  contributions  to  Punjab  Notes  and 
Queries.  In  1880,  while  stationed  with  a 
detachment  of  his  regiment  at  the  penal 
settlement  of  Port  Blair  in  the  Andaman 
Islands,  he  married  Agnes  Fanny,  second 
daughter  of  Major-General  George  Archi- 
medes Searle,  Madras  Staff  Corps.  The 
outbreak  in  1885  of  the  third  Burmese 
war  brought  him  once  more  on  active  ser- 
vice, and  led  in  1887  to  his  being  placed 
in  charge  of  King  Thibaw's  capital  on  this 
monarch's  deposition.  From  Mandalay  he 
was  promoted  in  1891  to  be  president  of 
the  municipality  and  port-commissioner 
of  Rangoon,  and  the  last  nine  and  a  half 
years  of  his  service  were  passed  in  the 
scene  of  his  early  romance,  as  chief  com- 
missioner of  the  Andaman  and  Nicobar 
Islands. 

After  succeeding  to  his  father's  baron- 
etcy in  1902,  Temple  retired  in  1904,  hav- 
ing reached  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel 
in  1897,  and  entered  upon  the  most  fruitful 
period  of  his  literary  activities.  His  edi- 
torial labours  produced  A  Geographical 
Account  of  the  Countries  Round  the  Bay  of 
Bengal,  1669-1679  by  Thomas  Bowrey 
(1905),  The  Travels  of  Peter  Mundy,  in 
Europe  and  A^a,  1608-1667  (5  vols.,  1907- 
1928),  The  Diaries  of  Streynsham  Master, 
1675-1680  (1911),  The  Papers  of  TJiomas 
Bavorey,  1669-1713  (1927),  and  New  Light 
on  the  Mysterious  Tragedy  of  the  'Worces- 
ter', 1704-1705  (1930),  to  mention  only 
a  few  of  his  best  known  works.  In  1913  he 
was  president  of  the  anthropological  sec- 
tion of  the  British  Association,  and  in  1925 
he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Aca- 


Terry,  C.  S. 

demy.  For  hb  services  in  India  he  was 
appointed  CLE.  in  1894,  and,  for  work 
connected  with  the  joint  committee  of  the 
St.  John  Ambulance  Association  and  the 
British  Red  Cross  Society  during  the  war 
of  1914-1918,  C.B.  in  1916.  He  was  also 
a  Bailiff  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of  St. 
John  of  Jerusalem  (1927). 

In  his  later  years,  from  1921  until  his 
death  at  Territet,  Switzerland,  3  March 
1931,  Temple  was  greatly  inconvenienced 
by  domestic  troubles  and  ill  health,  which 
led  him  to  an  enforced  exile,  mostly  spent 
at  Territet.  Here,  undismayed  by  his 
numerous  trials,  and  in  touch  with  many 
devoted  friends,  he  continued  his  literary 
activities,  including  the  editorship  of  the 
Indian  Antiquary,  of  which  he  had  been 
sole  editor  since  1892.  A  literary  col- 
league described  as  his  principal  character- 
istics 'his  indefatigable  industry,  amount- 
ing to  a  joy  of  work,  his  exceptional 
range  of  knowledge  and  interests,  cover- 
ing almost  aU  branches  of  Oriental  re- 
search, his  wide  personal  experience  of 
almost  all  provinces  of  the  Indian  Empire, 
and  his  liberal  and  broad-minded  outlook 
that  enabled  him  better  to  understand  and 
appreciate  the  cultures  of  the  East  as  a 
whole'.  He  wielded  sword  and  pen  with 
equal  skill  and  courage.  He  was  survived 
by  liis  wife,  by  his  only  son,  Richard 
Durand  Temple,  D.S.O.  (bom  1880),  who 
succeeded  him  as  third  baronet,  and  by 
his  two  daughters. 

[R.  E.  E[nthoven],  Sir  Richard  Temple,  Bt., 
1850-1931  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  xvii,  1931 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] R.  E.  E>rrHOVKN. 

TERRY,  CHARLES  SANFORD  (1864- 
1936),  historian  and  musician,  was  born  at 
Newport  Pagnell,  Buckinghamshire,  24 
October  1864,  the  elder  son  of  Charles 
Terry,  a  physician  there,  by  his  wife,  Ellen 
Octavia,  daughter  of  Octavius  Thomas 
Prichard,  physician,  of  Abingdon  Abbey, 
Northamptonshire.  Both  his  grandfathers 
and  two  of  his  great-grandfathers  were 
medical  men.  He  was  educated  at  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral  Choir  School,  King's  Col- 
lege School,  Strand,  Lancing,  and  at  Clare 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a 
second  class  in  the  historical  tripos  of  1886. 
From  1890  to  1 898  he  was  lecturer  in  history 
at  Durham  College  of  Science  (later 
Armstrong  College),  Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 
Thereafter  he  became  lecturer  in  lustory 
in  Aberdeen  University.  In  1903  the 
lecturership  was  raised  to  a  chair,  which  he 
held  imtil  his  retirement  in  1980.    He  died 


851 


Terry,  C.  S. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


at  his  home,  Westerton  of  Pitfodels,  near 
Aberdeen,  5  November  1936.  In  1901  he 
married  Edith,  eldest  daughter  of  Francis 
Allfrey,  brewer,  of  Newport  Pagnell; 
there  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

Among  those  Englishmen  who  have 
served  Scotland,  Terry  takes  a  high  place. 
He  was  not  greatly  concerned  with  the 
ideas  which  give  rise  to  history,  or  with 
personaUties :  his  interest  lay  in  the  pure 
course  of  events,  which  he  set  forth  not 
only  with  sound  scholarship,  but  with 
a  remarkable  clarity  and  conciseness  and 
the  power  of  marshalling  intricate  masses 
of  detail  into  a  lucid  and  balanced  narra- 
tive. These  gifts,  with  his  warm  and 
attractive  personality,  made  him  an  excel- 
lent and  beloved  teacher.  His  considerable 
bulk  of  published  work  includes  several 
useful  collections  of  material  concerning 
the  various  Jacobite  movements  and  an 
important  edition  of  the  Albemarle 
Papers,  1746-1748  (2  vols.,  1902).  His 
most  valuable  historical  work,  however, 
deals  with  the  seventeenth  century  in 
Scotland.  The  chief  of  it  is  contained  in 
his  Life  and  Campaigns  of  Alexander  Leslie, 
first  Earl  ofLeven  (1899)  and  John  Graham 
of  Claverhouse,  Viscount  of  Dundee  (1905), 
and  in  his  editorial  work  on  The  Crom- 
wellian  Union  (1902)  and  Papers  Relating 
to  the  Army  of  the  Solemn  League  and  Cove- 
nant (2  vols.,  1917).  These  books,  explor- 
ing involved  and  neglected  material, 
served  to  undermine  a  number  of  classic 
misstatements :  and  at  a  time  when  Scot- 
tish history  was  only  too  commonly  seen 
with  narrow  scope,  he  dealt  with  Scotland 
always  as  part  of  Europe. 

Terry  was  also  a  very  fine  musician, 
with  a  special  interest  in  Johann  Sebastian 
Bach.  His  Bach:  A  Biography,  pubhshed 
in  1928  (revised  ed.  1933),  was  received 
with  enthusiasm  in  Germany.  He  also 
wrote  on  the  Bach  family,  and  his  other 
editorial  and  critical  work  on  J.  S.  Bach 
includes  important  editions  of  the  Chorals 
(3  parts,  1915-1921),  Original  Hymn- 
Tunes  for  Congregational  Use  (1922),  and 
Cantata  Texts,  Sacred  and  Secular  (1926), 
and  critical  analyses  for  the  'Musical  Pil- 
grim' series,  founded  in  1924.  He  also 
contributed  to  the  third  edition  of  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Mtisic.  At  Aberdeen  he  vir- 
tually created  the  University  Choral  and 
Orchestral  Society,  acting  for  many  years 
as  its  conductor. 

Terry  received  honorary  doctorates  of 
music  from  the  universities  of  Oxford  and 
Edinburgh,  and  other  honorary  degrees 
from  Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  Durham,  and 


Leipzig.    This  German  degree  (Ph.D.)  ws 
conferred  upon  him  in  1935  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anni-< 
versary  of  the  birth  of  Bach.    He  ws 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Clare  Col- 
lege in  1929. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Terry  by  Al 
Sutherland  at  King's  College,  Aberdeen, 
but  the  likeness  is  not  so  good  as  in  the 
pencil  drawing  by  J.  B.  Souter,  which 
hangs  above  the  Bach  Collection  be- 
queathed by  Terry  to  the  library  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Music,  London.  A  photo- 
graph of  him  in  old  age,  of  admirable 
liveUness,  is  reproduced  in  vol.  xxiv  of  the 
Aberdeen  University  Review. 

[Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians, 
4th  ed.,  vol.  v,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes ;  The 
Times,  6  November  1936;  C,  S.  Terry's  own 
writings ;  private  information.] 

Agnes  Mure  Mackenzie. 


TERRY,  FRED  (1863-1933),  actor, 
was  bom  in  London  9  November  1863,  the 
youngest  son  of  Benjamin  Terry,  actor, 
by  his  wife,  Sarah  Ballard,  actress,  daugh- 
ter of  a  Scottish  minister  at  Portsmouth. 
Among  his  elder  sisters  were  the  actresses 
Kate,  Ellen  [q.v.],  Marion,  and  Florence 
Terry ;  and  Fred,  after  education  in  Lon- 
don, France,  and  Switzerland,  sustained 
the  family  tradition  by  going  on  the  stage 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.  He  'walked  on'  in 
a  celebrated  revival  of  Money,  with  which 
the  Bancrofts  opened  their  management 
of  the  Hay  market  Theatre  on  31  January 
1880.  After  experience  on  tour  Terry 
appeared  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre  in  July 
1884,  in  the  revival  by  (Sir)  Henry  Irving 
[q.v.]  of  Twelfth  Night,  as  Sebastian  to  the 
Viola  of  his  sister  Ellen  whom  he  resembled 
remarkably.  'I  don't  think',  Ellen  Terry 
wrote  in  later  years,  'that  I  have  ever  seen 
any  success  so  unmistakable  and  instan- 
taneous.' More  touring  followed,  in  this 
country  and  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  but  from  the  summer  of  1887  the 
young  actor,  with  his  fine  voice  and  pre- 
sence, was  fovmd  consistently  in  London. 
He  was  successful  as  Dr.  William  Brown 
in  Dr.  Bill  at  the  Avenue  Theatre  (Febru- 
ary 1890),  and  in  a  variety  of  parts  for 
(Sir)  H.  Beerbohm  Tree  [q.v.]  at  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre  between  the  years  1 890  and 
1894.  These  included  D'Aulnay  in  Comedy 
and  Tragedy  (1890),  John  Christison  in  The 
Dancing  Girl  (1891) — Julia,  daughter  of 
Alexander  Ritchie  Neilson,  of  London, 
whom  he  married  later  in  that  year,  was 
in  the  cast — and  Laertes  in  Hamlet.  Early 
in  1896  he  was  touring  with  (Sir)  John 


I 


I 


852 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Terry,  R.  R. 


Hare  [q.v.]  in  the  United  States ;  in  June 
of  the  same  year  he  was  Charles  Surface 
in  the  revival  at  the  Lyceum  by  (Sir) 
Johnston  Forbes-Robertson  [q.v.]  of  The 
School  for  Scandal. 

Don  Pedro  in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing 
(St.  James's  Theatre,  1898),  and  Squire 
Thomhill  in  Olivia  (Lyceum,  Jiuie  1900) 
were  among  the  numerous  performances 
which  preceded  Terry's  own  venture  into 
management,  with  his  Avife.  This  took 
place  at  the  Haymarket  on  30  August 
1900;  Terry,  superbly  made  up,  appeared 
as  Charles  the  Second  in  Sweet  Nell  of  Old 
Drury,  one  of  two  parts  with  which  his 
name  became  inseparably  connected. 
During  the  next  twenty-seven  years  Terry 
and  Julia  Neilson  kept  almost  entirely  to 
romantic-historical  plays.  Much  of  their 
time  was  spent  in  the  provinces ;  but  from 
1905  to  1913  they  had  annual  London 
seasons  of  six  months  at  the  New  Theatre. 
During  these  they  introduced  to  London 
such  plays  as  The  Scarlet  Pimpernel  (1905), 
with  Terry  in  his  other  famous  part  of  Sir 
Percy  Blakeney;  Dorothy  o'  the  Hall 
(1906);  and  Henry  of  Navarre  (1909). 
Terry  retired  from  the  stage  in  1927. 

Terry,  who  could  be  a  character  actor 
of  high  skill,  is  likely  to  be  remembered 
best  for  his  command  of  the  romantic 
flourish  and  for  his  manUness,  gaiety,  and 
unfaiUng  Terry  charm,  qualities  evident 
in  his  various  performances  of  Benedick 
(not  seen  in  central  London)  and  of 
Charles  Surface.  In  1918,  when  his  por- 
trait as  Sir  Percy  Blakeney,  painted  by 
Frank  Daniell  (now  in  the  possession  of 
Julia  Neilson),  was  presented  to  him  by 
the  managers  of  the  United  Kingdom 
(some  sixty  in  number)  whose  theatres  he 
visited,  it  was  stated  that  he  had  never 
appeared  in  a  variety  theatre  or  acted 
for  the  cinema.  He  died  in  London 
17  April  1933.  He  had  a  son,  Dennis 
Neilson-Terry,  whose  early  death  in  1932 
cut  short  a  promising  stage  career,  and  a 
daughter,  Phyllis  Neilson-Terry,  an  actress 
of  distinction. 

It  was  unfortimate  that  Terry  never 
used  his  powers  to  the  full.  He  was 
equipped  technically  and  physically  for 
more  testing  work  than  the  cape-and- 
sword  parts  in  which  he  established  his 
name;  but  once  he  was  accepted  as  an 
actor  of  the  romantic-historical  school, 
he  did  not  attempt  to  escape  from  the  con- 
vention. All  his  productions  were  set  in 
the  same  popular  mould. 

[Ellen  Terry's  Memoirs,  with  notes  and 
additional  chapters  by  E.  Craig  and  C.  St. 

858 


John,  1988 ;  The  Times,  18  April  1988 ;  Who't 
Who  in  the  Theatre,  1983.] 

J.  C.  Trkwin. 

TERRY,  Sir  RICHARD  RUNCIMAN 
(1865-1988),  musician  and  musical  anti- 
quary, was  bom  at  Ellington,  Northum- 
berland, 3  January  1865,  the  elder  son  of 
Thomas  Terry,  schoolmaster,  of  New- 
castle-upon-Tyne, by  his  wife,  Mary  Bal- 
lard, daughter  of  Walter  Runciman,  of 
Dunbar,  and  sister  of  Walter,  later  first 
Lord  Runciman,  of  Shoreston  [q.v.].  His 
career  as  a  professional  musician  op)ened 
in  1887  when  he  abandoned  a  choral 
scholarship  at  King's  College,  Cambridge, 
after  two  years  only  at  that  university, 
and  one  year  previously  at  Oxford.  Leav- 
ing Cambridge  he  went  as  music  master 
to  Elstow  School,  near  Bedford,  and  three 
years  later  as  organist  to  St.  John's  Cathe- 
dral, Antigua.  He  came  home  from  the 
West  Indies  in  1893  at  a  time  of  spiri- 
tual crisis;  his  decision  then  to  join  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  reset  the  course 
of  his  life,  and  the  career  that  gave  him 
international  fame  had  its  inception  in 
1896  when  he  was  appointed  to  direct  the 
music  at  the  Benedictine  school  of  Down- 
side. Here  his  supreme  talent  for  choir 
training  enabled  him  to  present  the  litur- 
gical music  by  sixteenth-century  Catholic 
composers  that  he  thenceforth  made  his 
Ufelong  study,  bringing  to  light  through 
luiremitting  researches  the  hitherto  un- 
known masters  of  the  Tudor  polyphonic 
school  which  culminated  in  William  Byrd 
[q.v.]. 

In  1901,  at  the  instigation  of  Cardinal 
Vaughan,  Terry  came  to  London  to  direct 
the  new  choir  of  Westminster  Cathedral, 
and  during  his  twenty-three  years  there 
he  initiated  the  Tudor  music  revival  by 
presenting  to  the  public  through  living 
performance  almost  the  entire  corpus, 
then  only  existent  in  obsolete  manuscript 
notation,  of  early  EngUsh  works  for  the 
Roman  rite.  The  perfection  of  his  choir 
and  the  musical  importance  of  his  services 
at  Westminster  made  the  cathedral  a  focus 
of  attention,  and  his  work  there  in  Tudor 
polyphony  was  a  powerful  motive  force  to 
the  young  composers  of  his  day,  a  fact 
publicly  recognized  in  the  honorary  degree 
of  doctor  of  music  conferred  upon  him  by 
Durham  University  in  1911  and  in  the 
knighthood  of  1922.  Terry's  research  in 
early  manuscripts  left  its  mark  primarily 
upon  performance,  and  his  vitality  of  mind 
and  heart,  allied  to  an  unerring  musical 
taste  and  scholarship,  made  him  a  potent 


Terry,  R.  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


influence,  although  his  legacy  to  the  world 
in  print  is  by  comparison  exiguous. 

As  a  Roman  Catholic  Terry  contributed 
materially  to  the  improvement  of  church 
music  by  his  published  works  on  hymno- 
logy,  carols,  and'plainsong,  but  it  is  as  the 
father  of  the  Tudor  music  revival  that  he 
has  a  permanent  place  in  history.  His  public 
success  in  other  musical  spheres  was  con- 
siderable, as  journalist,  lecturer,  examiner, 
and  shanty-collector,  which  last  owed  much 
to  his  seafaring  Runciman  inheritance. 

Terry  married  in  1909  Mary  Lee  (died 
1932),  daughter  of  Jasper  Stephenson,  of 
Ay  don-Castle,  Northumberland,  and  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  in  London 
18  April  1938. 

A  portrait  of  Terry  in  doctor's  robes,  by 
PhiUp  Hagreen,  is  in  private  hands. 

[Hilda  Andrews,  Westminster  Retrospect. 
A  Memoir  of  Sir  Richard  Terry,  1947 ;  Grove's 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  4th  ed., 
vol.  v,  edited  by  H.  C.  CoUes ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Hilda  Andrews. 

THESIGER,  FREDERIC  JOHN  NA- 
PIER, third  Baron  and  first  Viscount 
Chelmsford  (1868-1933),  viceroy  of 
India,  was  bom  in  London  12  August 
1868,  the  eldest  of  the  five  sons  of  Frederic 
Augustus  Thesiger,  second  Lord  Chelms- 
ford [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Adria  Fanny, 
eldest  daughter  of  Major-General  John 
Heath,  of  the  Bombay  army.  He  was 
grandson  of  Frederic  Thesiger,  first  Lord 
Chelmsford  [q.v.].  He  was  educated  at 
Winchester  and  Magdalen  College,  Oxford. 
He  obtained  a  first  class  in  jurisprudence 
and  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  All  Souls 
College  in  1892,  and  for  four  years  played 
cricket  for  the  university,  being  captain  of 
the  eleven  in  1892.  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1893,  but  by 
tradition  and  temperament  he  was  drawn 
to  a  pubhc  rather  than  to  a  professional 
career.  Recognizing  the  importance  of 
education  in  a  modern  democracy,  he 
began  to  study  the  British  educational 
system  and  from  1900  to  1904  he  served 
as  a  member  of  the  London  school  board. 
In  1904  he  was  elected  to  the  London 
County  Coimcil,  but  next  year,  which  was 
also  the  year  of  his  succession  to  the  title, 
he  was  given  the  opportunity  of  public 
service  in  a  wider  field  than  local  govern- 
ment. He  was  offered  and  accepted  the 
governorship  of  Queensland  (1905-1909) 
and  then  the  governorship  of  New  South 
Wales  (1909-1913).  Tall,  weU  built,  good- 
looking,  dignified,  sociable  and  easy- 
mannered,  he  was  admirably  qualified  for 


the  persona]  and  ceremonial  duties  of  the 
King's  representative  in  one  of  the  over- 
seas Dominions ;  and  he  soon  proved  him- 
self more  than  a  figurehead  in  the  politics 
of  Australia.  He  made  friends  with  the 
party  leaders,  and  their  recognition  of  his 
honesty  and  disinterestedness  enabled  him 
to  deal  firmly  and  successfully  with  the' 
crisis  in  Queensland  in  1907  over  the  grants 
of  a  dissolution  and  to  lighten  the  task  ofl 
the  first  inexperienced  labour  government 
which  took  office  in  New  South  Wales  in 
1910. 

Chelmsford  was  back  in  England  when 
war  broke  out  in  1914.  A  captain  in  the 
4th  Dorset  Territorials,  he  at  once  joined 
his  regiment  and  went  with  it  to  India.  He 
had  seen  no  fighting  when,  in  the  spring 
of  1916,  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Lord 
Hardinge  of  Penshurst  as  viceroy  of  India. 
It  was  an  imexpected  choice,  for  he  was 
only  forty-seven,  and  the  successful  gover- 
nor of  two  Australian  States  was  not 
necessarily  qualified  for  an  office  so  much 
greater  and  more  difficult.  Nor  were  the 
difficulties  eased  by  the  war.  The  prestige 
of  the  government  of  India  had  been 
seriously  damaged  by  the  mismanagement 
of  the  Mesopotamian  campaign,  and, 
although  the  loyalty  of  India  as  a  whole 
to  the  Allied  cause  was  not  in  doubt,  the 
new  viceroy  was  confronted  with  a  growing 
demand  among  the  intelUgentsia  for  con- 
stitutional advance,  and  in  one  or  two 
areas,  particularly  in  Bengal,  with  a 
terrorist  conspiracy  so  dangerous  that,  ia 
the  first  half  of  1917,  as  the  result  of  th< 
report  of  a  committee  presided  over  by 
Mr.  Justice  Rowlatt,  an  Emergency  Act 
was  passed  to  equip  the  government  with 
temporary  powers  of  repression.  Chelms- 
ford quickly  recognized  that  the  claim  for 
more  self-government  could  not  be  left 
unanswered  until  the  war  was  over,  and 
he  was  corresponding  on  the  subject  with 
(Sir  Joseph)  Austen  Chamberlain  [q.v.] 
before  the  latter' s  resignation  of  the 
secretaryship  of  state  for  India  in  July 
1917.  Chamberlain's  successor,  E.  S. 
Montagu  [q.v.],  was  a  more  forcible  char- 
acter. Within  a  few  months  he  obtained 
the  agreement  of  the  British  and  Indian 
governments  to  the  historic  announce- 
ment of  20  August  1917,  which  defined 
the  goal  of  Indian  poUcy  as  'the  progres- 
sive realization  of  responsible  govern- 
ment' ;  and  he  spent  the  following  winter 
in  India  discussing  what  the  first  step  in 
the  process  was  to  be.  Chelmsford  was  the 
antithesis  of  Curzon :  he  made  no  attempt 
to  dominate  his  executive  council ;  and 


854 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Thomas 


since,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions,  most 
of  his  official  advisers  were  opposed  to  the 
immediate  concession  of  any  radical  mea- 
sure of  self-government,  his  response  to 
Montagu's  proposals  was  cautious  and 
hesitating.  Ultimately  he  signed  the 
Montagu-Chelmsford  Report  (1918)  which 
inspired  the  Government  of  India  Act  of 
1919  and  so  set  British  India  on  the  path 
towards  full  parliamentary  'home  rule'. 

Meantime  a  wave  of  unrest  was  passing 
over  India,  and  the  launching  of  Gandhi's 
first  'passive  resistance'  movement  in  pro- 
test against  the  Anarchical  and  Revolu- 
tionary Crimes  Act  of  1919  was  followed 
by  murderous  disorder  in  the  Punjab, 
the  danger  of  which  was  enhanced  by  the 
simultaneous  outbreak  of  the  third  Afghan 
war.  The  crisis  was  mastered,  but  it  left 
behind  it  'the  shadow  of  Amritsar'.  Briga- 
dier-General R.  E.  H.  Dyer  [q.v.]  was 
eventually  censured  by  the  government  of 
India  and  other  authorities,  but  for  the 
long  delay  in  conducting  an  inquiry  into 
the  tragedy  Chelmsford  and  his  colleagues 
must  bear  their  share  of  blame. 

Back  in  England  in  1921  Chelmsford 
resumed  his  early  interest  in  education. 
He  was  chairman  of  the  University  College 
(London)  Committee  from  1920  to  1932 
and  of  the  statutory  commission  appointed 
in  1923  to  draft  revised  statutes  for  Ox- 
ford University  which  were  promulgated 
in  1926.  In  1924  he  accepted  Ramsay 
MacDonald's  invitation  to  join  the  first 
labour  government  as  first  lord  of  the 
Admiralty.  Thirteen  years  of  political 
neutraUty  oversea  had  freed  him  from 
party  ties ;  and  he  believed  that  as  regards 
the  navy  directly  and  India  indirectly  his 
inclusion  in  the  Cabinet  would  strengthen 
public  confidence.  The  government  feU 
before  he  had  had  time  to  prove  his  quality 
in  administration  or  debate.  He  was 
again  elected  a  fellow  of  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford,  in  1929,  and  in  1932  he  was  elected 
warden.  In  his  college  and  in  the  univer- 
sity he  was  as  warmly  liked  and  respected 
as  he  had  been  elsewhere,  but  the  prospect 
of  several  years  of  useftil  and  congenial 
work  was  cut  short  by  a  sudden  and  fatal 
heart-attack  at  Ardington  House,  near 
Wantage,  1  April  1933. 

Chelmsford  was  created  a  viscoimt  on 
his  return  from  India  in  1921 ;  he  was  also 
appointed  K.C.M.G.  (1906),  G.C.M.G. 
(1912),  G.C.S.I.  and  G.C.I.E.  (1916),  and 
G.B.E.  (1918),  and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1916.  He  received  honorary 
degrees  from  the  universities  of  Birming- 
ham (1927),   Oxford   (1929),  Edinburgh 


and  Sheffield  (1982),  and  was  elected  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Magdalen  College, 
Oxford,  in  1917.  He  married  in  1894 
Frances  Charlotte,  eldest  daughter  of  Ivor 
Bertie  Guest,  first  Lord  Wimbome  [q.v.], 
and  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  died 
of  wounds  received  in  action  in  Mesopo- 
tamia in  1917,  and  four  daughters.  He 
was  succeeded  as  second  viscount  and 
fourth  baron  by  his  younger  son,  Andrew 
Charles  Gerald  (bom  1908). 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Lord  Chelmsford 
by  David  KeUy  at  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford. 

[The  Times,  8  April  1988 ;  Oxford  Magazine, 
27  April  1938 ;  Report  on  East  India  Constitu- 
tional Reforms  [Cmd.  9109  of  1918];  E.  S. 
Montagu,  An  Indian  Diary,  edited  by  Venetia 
Montagu,  1930;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  COUPLAND. 


THOMAS,  HERBERT  HENRY  (1876- 
1935),  geologist,  was  bom  at  Exeter  18 
March  1876,  the  younger  son  of  Frederick 
Thomas,  of  Exeter  and  later  of  Harrow, 
by  his  wife,  Louisa  Pickford.  He  was  at 
school  at  Exeter  and  went  to  Cambridge 
in  1894  as  an  exhibitioner,  becoming  later 
a  scholar,  of  Sidney  Sussex  College.  He 
obtained  a  first  class  in  both  parts  of  the 
natural  sciences  tripos  (1897,  1898)  and 
won  the  Harkness  scholarship  for  geology 
in  the  latter  year. 

From  Cambridge  Thomas  went  to  Ox- 
ford in  1898  as  assistant  to  W.  J.  Sollas 
[q.v.]  and  entered  Balliol  College.  In  1900 
he  joined  a  party  of  scientists  and  geo- 
graphers on  a  journey  described  in  Across 
Iceland  (1902)  by  William  Bisiker.  He 
was  appointed  geologist  to  the  Geological 
Survey  of  Great  Britain  in  1901  and 
worked  mainly  in  South  Wales  until  his 
promotion  as  petrographer  to  the  survey 
ml911. 

Much  of  Thomas's  scientific  work  is  in- 
corporated in  memoirs  of  the  Geological 
Survey  and  in  papers  by  other  geologists. 
With  Donald  MacAlister  he  published  in 
1909  Tfie  Geology  of  Ore  Deposits,  and  he 
contributed  during  the  war  of  1914-1918 
to  numerous  reports  on  mineral  resources, 
refractories,  silica-bricks,  and  the  material 
for  their  manufacture.  Among  his  sepa- 
rately published  pap)ers  several  are  of  con- 
siderable importance.  His  earliest  work 
dealt  with  the  'heavy'  minerals  of  the 
Bunter  Pebble-Bed  (1902)  and  with  the 
New  Red  Sandstone  of  the  west  of  Eng- 
land (1909)  and  his  essay  on  this  subject 
won  the  Sedgwick  prize  of  Cambridge 
University  in  1903.  This  was  pioneer  work 


855 


Thomas 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


and  established  methods  since  widely  used 
in  sedimentary  petrography. 

A  paper  on  'The  Skomer  Volcanic  Series' 
describing  the  igneous  rocks  of  the  islands 
off  Wooltack  Point  and  the  adjacent  Pem- 
brokeshire coast  (published  in  1911)  was 
Thomas's  first  important  contribution  to 
this  branch  of  petrography.  In  1922  he 
published  an  important  paper  on  the 
sapphire-bearing  xenoliths  from  minor 
intrusions  in  Mull,  and  in  his  address  as 
president  of  the  geological  section  of  the 
British  Association  in  1927  he  gave  a 
risumi  of  the  state  of  knowledge  of  ter- 
tiary igneous  activity  in  Great  Britain, 
embodying  the  results  of  the  work  done 
with  Sir  Edward  Battersby  Bailey  and 
Dr.  James  Ernest  Richey  in  Mull  and 
Ardnammrchan.  His  last  purely  petro- 
graphic  paper  (with  W.  Campbell  Smith) 
on  'Xenoliths  ...  in  the  Tregastel- 
Ploumanac'h  granite  .  .  .'  was  pub- 
lished in  1932,  the  result  of  field  work  in 
Brittany. 

Thomas  was  frequently  called  upon  to 
identify  materials  for  archaeologists,  and 
when  he  was  asked  to  investigate  the 
stones  of  the  inner  circle  of  Stonehenge  his 
knowledge  of  the  rocks  of  South  Wales 
enabled  him  to  recognize  the  'blue  stones' 
as  identical  with  the  spotted  dolerites  of 
the  Prescelly  Mountains  in  Pembroke- 
shire. This  identification,  firmly  estab- 
lished in  his  paper  published  in  1923, 
settled  a  problem  that  had  baffled  petro- 
logists  for  fifty  years. 

Thomas  was  one  of  the  secretaries  of  the 
Geological  Society  of  London  for  ten  years 
(1912-1922).  He  was  awarded  the  Mur- 
chison  medal  of  the  Geological  Society  in 
1925  and  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1927.  He 
was  probably  one  of  the  best  known  and 
most  able  of  the  British  geologists  of  his 
time.  Gifted  with  a  genial  spirit  and  a 
warm  heart  he  had  a  large  circle  of  devoted 
friends.  He  was  a  keen  fisherman  and 
enjoyed  sketching,  and  frequently  illu- 
strated his  papers  with  his  own  drawings. 
He  married  in  1904  Arma  Maria,  eldest 
daughter  of  Oswald  Henry  Mosley,  rector 
of  Wentworth  in  the  Isle  of  Ely,  and  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  died  suddenly 
in  London  12  May  1935. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  4,  December  1935  (portrait); 
Quarterly  Journal  of  the  Geological  Society  of 
London,  vol.  xcii,  1936 ;  Mineralogical  Maga- 
zine, vol.  xxiv,  1937  (portrait);  Nature, 
20  July  1935;  The  Times,  13  May  1935; 
personal  knowledge.] 

W.  Campbell  Smith. 


ri 


THOMSON,  ARTHUR  (1858-1935),  s 
tomist,  was  bom  in  Edinburgh  21  Marcli 
1858,  the  youngest  son  of  John  Thomsoi 
fleet  surgeon,  R.N.,  by  his  wife,  Mai 
Arthur.    He  was  educated  at  Edinburgi 
Collegiate  School  and  studied  medicin^ 
at    Edinburgh     University,     graduatii 
M.B.  in  1880,  and  subsequently  sei 
as    demonstrator    of   anatomy    to    (Sii 
William  Turner  [q.v.]. 

In  1885  Thomson  was  appointed  to  tl 
new  post  of  university  lecturer  in  human 
anatomy  at  Oxford,  where  hitherto  ana-j 
tomical  teaching  had  been  undertaken  bj 
the  professor  of  comparative  anatomj 
The  medical  school  at  Oxford,  the  creatic 
of  Sir  H.  W.  Acland  [q.v.],  was  then  in  it 
infancy ;  Thomson's  first  class,  consisting 
of  seven  students,  worked  in  a  tin  she(^ 
The  new  anatomical  department,  largelj 
of  his  design,  was  opened  eight  years  laterJ 
From  1893  he  held  the  title  of  extra- 
ordinary professor  of  human  anatomy,  and| 
in  1919  became  the  first  Dr.  Lee's  pro- 
fessor, a  post  which  carried  with  it  a 
studentship  at  Christ  Church.  This  pro- 
cess was  part  of  the  development  of  the! 
whole  medical  school,  in  which  Thomson 
came  to  take  a  leading  share,  ia  the  face 
of  considerable  opposition.  The  work  of 
organization  was  eminently  congenial  to 
him;  and  to  it  he  devoted  much  of  his 
energies  for  the  greater  part  of  his  Ufe. 
He  brought  to  the  task  a  slow  and  cautious 
mind,  remarkable  tenacity,  and  a  fine 
sense  of  loyalty.  He  took  keen  personal 
interest  in  his  pupils ;  and  the  advice  and 
help  which  he  was  always  ready  to  give 
were  especially  valuable  in  the  early  days 
of  the  school,  when  there  was  no  dean  and 
few  of  the  colleges  had  medical  tutors.  He 
resigned  his  chair  in  1933. 

In  pure  research,  mainly  in  the  early 
development  of  the  human  embryo,  Thom- 
son was  indefatigable,  but  he  opened  up  no 
new  field  of  inquiry,  although  he  made 
several  fresh  observations;  his  work  on 
'squatting  facets'  on  the  knee  and  ankle 
bone  is  well  known.  Outside  his  own  sub- 
ject of  anatomy  he  was  greatly  interested 
in  ophthalmology,  being  the  author  of 
Anatomy  of  the  Human  Eye  (1912),  and 
anthropology,  being  co-author,  with  David 
RandaU-MacIver,  of  The  Ancient  Races  of 
the  Thebaid  (1905) ;  and  the  establishment 
of  a  diploma  in  each  of  these  subjects,  at 
his  instigation,  gave  him  great  satisfaction. 
As  a  lecturer  he  was  conscientious  and 
competent  rather  than  brilliant,  his  lec- 
tures being  principally  memorable  for 
their    magnificent    ambidextrous    black- 

856 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


board  illustrations.  For  Thomson  was  a 
bom  artist  and  lover  of  painting ;  sketch- 
ing in  water-colour  was  his  chief  recrea- 
tion. In  1900  he  was  appointed  professor 
of  anatomy  at  the  Royal  Academy,  a 
position  which  he  held  for  over  thirty 
years,  and  delighted  in  the  opportunities 
thus  afforded  for  meeting  other  artists.  In 
1896  he  pubUshed  A  Handbook  of  Anatomy 
for  Art  Students. 

Thomson  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Edinburgh  (1915), 
Durham  (1919),  and  Oxford  (1933).  He 
was  elected  F.R.C.P.  in  1907,  and  was 
a  representative  of  Oxford  University  on 
the  General  Medical  Council  from  1904  to 
1929.  In  1888  he  married  Mary  Walker, 
daughter  of  Norman  Macbeth,  R.S.A., 
and  had  two  daughters.  He  died  at  Oxford 
7  February  1935. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  1935,  vol.  i, 
p.  334 ;  Lancet,  1935,  vol.  i,  p.  405  (portrait) ; 
The  Times,  8  February  1935 ;  Nature,  23  Feb- 
ruary 1935 ;  private  information ;  personal 
knowledge.]  T.  B.  Heaton. 

THOMSON,  Sir  BASIL  HOME  (1861- 
1939),  colonial  governor  and  assistant 
commissioner  of  the  metropoUtan  poUce, 
was  bom  at  Queen's  College,  Oxford, 
21  April  1861,  the  third  of  the  four 
sons  of  WiUiam  Thomson  [q.v.],  provost 
of  Queen's,  afterwards  archbishop  of  York, 
by  his  wife,  Zoe,  daughter  of  James  Henry 
Skene,  British  consul  at  Aleppo,  and 
granddaughter  of  James  Skene  [q.v.],  of 
Rubislaw.  He  was  educated  at  Eton  and 
New  College,  Oxford,  and  served  in  the 
colonial  service  for  ten  years  in  Fiji,  Tonga, 
of  which  he  was  prime  minister,  and 
British  New  Guinea.  Having  been  called 
to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple  in  1896, 
he  was  that  year  appointed  deputy  gover- 
nor of  Liverpool  prison  and  was  succes- 
sively governor  of  Northampton,  Cardiff, 
Dartmoor,  and  Wormwood  Scrubs  prisons. 
In  1908  he  was  appointed  secretary  to  the 
prison  commission  and  in  1913  assistant 
commissioner  of  the  metropolitan  pohce. 
It  therefore  fell  to  his  lot  to  combat  suffra- 
gettes and,  even  before  the  outbreak  of 
war  in  1914,  enemy  espionage,  and  such 
was  the  completeness  of  the  preparations 
made  to  meet  that  emergency  that  it  was 
possible  for  the  police  to  lay  their  hands  on 
almost  all  enemy  agents  and  thereby  com- 
pletely to  baffle  the  German  intelligence 
service  in  this  country.  He  was  appointed 
C.B.  in  1916  and  in  1919  director  of 
intelligence  at  Scotland  Yard  and  K.C.B. 
for  his  services,  but  in  November  1921  he 


Thomson,  J.  J. 

resigned  owing  to  his  objection  to  a  re- 
organization of  the  office  which  would 
have  placed  him  under  the  immediate 
control  of  Brigadier-General  Sir  William 
Horwood,  the  commissioner  of  metro- 
politan police. 

Thomson  was  a  prolific  writer  whose 
works  include  books  on  the  customs  of  the 
people  of  Oceania  and  historical  subjects 
and  fiction.  Among  these  may  be  men- 
tioned Tfie  Diversions  of  a  Prime  Minister 
and  South  Sea  Yams  (1894);  A  Court 
Intrigue  (1896) ;  The  Indiscretions  of  Lady 
Asenath  (1898) ;  Savage  Island  (1902) ;  and 
The  Fijians  (1908):  his  numerous  publica- 
tions after  his  retirement  include  Qtieer 
People  (1922)  and  Mr.  Pepper,  Investigator 
(1925). 

Thomson  married  in  1889  Grace  Indja, 
only  daughter  of  Felix  Stanley  Webber, 
R.N.,  of  Shroton  House,  Blandford,  Dor- 
set, and  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter. 
He  was  the  recipient  of  several  foreign 
orders.  He  died  suddenly  at  Teddington 
26  March  1939. 

[The  Times,  27  March  1939.] 

E.  I.  Carlyle. 

THOMSON,     Sir     JOSEPH     JOHN 

(1856-1940),  physicist,  was  bom  at  Cheet- 
ham  Hill,  near  Manchester,  18  December 
1856,  the  elder  son  of  Joseph  James 
Thomson,  who  carried  on  his  father's 
business  as  publisher  and  bookseller,  by 
his  wife,  Emma  Swindells.  So  far  as  is 
known  the  ancestors  of  Joseph  James 
Thomson  were  entirely  lowland  Scottish, 
and  those  of  Emma  Swindells  came  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Manchester.  Thom- 
son was  educated  at  a  private  day  school ; 
when  he  was  sixteen  years  old  his  father 
died  and  his  mother  moved  to  Fallowfleld, 
nearer  to  the  Owens  College.  She  has  been 
described  by  one  who  knew  her  as  small, 
with  bright  dark  eyes  beaming  with  kind- 
ness, and  dark  hair  hanging  in  clusters  of 
ringlets  over  her  ears.  Her  two  sons  were 
devoted  to  her  and  the  three  always  spent 
their  summer  holidays  together  tmtil  her 
death  in  1901. 

It  was  intended  that  Thomson  should 
be  an  engineer,  and  it  was  by  a  mere  acci- 
dent that  he  became  a  physicist.  'In  those 
days',  he  wrote,  'the  way  of  entering  the 
[engineering]  profession  was  to  be  appren- 
ticed. ...  It  was  arranged  that  I  should  be 
apprenticed  to  Sharp-Stewart  &  Co.,  who 
had  a  great  reputation  as  makers  of  loco- 
motives, but  they  told  my  father  they  had 

a  long  waiting  list My  father  happened 

to  mention  this  to  a  friend,  who  said,  "If 


857 


Thomson,  J.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


I  were  you, ...  I  should  send  him  while  he 
is  waiting  to  the  Owens  College:  it  must 
be  a  pretty  good  kind  of  place,  for  young 
John  Hopkinson  who  has  just  come  out 
Senior  Wrangler  at  Cambridge  was  edu- 
cated there."  My  father  took  this  advice, 
and  I  went  to  the  College.'  This,  as  Thom- 
son points  out,  could  only  have  happened 
in  Ma"hchester,  because  in  no  other  English 
town  was  there  anything  similar  to  the 
Owens  College.  Thomson  was  then  only 
fourteen,  and  on  hearing  that  a  student 
of  this  tender  age  had  gained  admission, 
the  college  authorities  made  a  regulation 
raising  the  age  limit  for  entrance. 

When  Thomson  entered  the  Owens  Col- 
lege in  1871,  its  professoriate  could  com- 
pare not  unfavourably  with  that  of  any 
contemporary  university.  It  included 
Thomas  Barker,  Balfour  Stewart,  (Sir) 
H.  E.  Roscoe,  W.  C.  Williamson,  Osborne 
Reynolds,  W.  S.  Jevons,  (Sir)  Adolphus 
Ward,  and  James  (later  Viscount)  Bryce 
[qq.v.].  At  that  period  the  college^was  in 
a  struggling  and  formative  stage.  The 
natural  development  of  the  students  was 
not  restricted  by  manifold  regulations  and 
organization.  The  feast  was,  so  to  speak, 
spread  on  the  table  and  they  were  invited 
to  help  themselves.  These  surroundings, 
with  the  background  of  Manchester  itself 
in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
a  centre  of  great  scientific  achievement 
with  its  Literary  and  Philosophical  So- 
ciety, suited  Thomson,  and  he  stayed  there 
five  years.  He  obtained  a  certificate  and 
a  prize  in  engineering,  and  some  scholar- 
ships which  helped  to  defray  expenses; 
but  he  did  not  enter  for  any  degree 
examination.  During  his  last  year  he 
wrote  an  experimental  paper  'On  Contact 
Electricity  between  Non-Conductors', 
which  was  communicated  to  the  Royal 
Society  by  Balfour  Stewart  and  published 
in  the  Proceedings  (vol.  xxv,  1876).  To- 
wards the  end  of  his  time  at  Manchester 
he  became  acquainted  with  (Sir)  Arthur 
Schuster  [q.v.].  He  also  met  J.  H.  Poyn- 
ting  [q.v.]  and  thus  entered  on  a  friendship 
which  Thomson  has  described  as  one  of 
the  greatest  joys  of  his  life  and  which 
endured  imtil  Poynting's  death  in  1914. 

On  the  advice  of  Thomas  Barker,  Thom- 
son in  1875  entered  for  a  scholarship  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  but  was  un- 
successful ;  in  the  following  year,  however, 
he  obtained  a  minor  entrance  scholarship 
and  came  into  residence  inunediately.  As 
an  undergraduate,  he  exhibited  many  of 
the  characteristics  which  he  had  shown  in 
childhood  and  youth,  no  great  skill  with 


his  hands  (he  was  reported  to  be  of  Uttle 
use  about  the  house)  and  no  aptitude  tot 
open  air  sports,  although  to  the  end  of  hig 
life  he  was  very  fond  of  watching  goo(] 
cricket  and  Rugby  football.  For  exercise 
he  relied  on  the  usual  afternoon  walk  o| 
'grind',  and  in  this  limited  field  he  excellec 
both  for  speed  and  endurance.  But 
intellect  and  personality,  according 
A.  R.  Forsyth,  his  contemporaries  at  Cam- 
bridge, like  those  at  Manchester,  looked 
upon  him  as  outstanding.  In  the  mathe- 
matical tripos  of  1880  (for  which  he 
coached  with  E.  J.  Routh,  q.v.)  he  was 
second  wrangler  and  was  second  Smith's 
prizeman  with  (Sir)  Joseph  Larmor  at  the 
head  of  the  list. 

That  same  year  Thomson  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  Trinity,  the  award  being  made 
for  a  thesis  on  the  transformation  of 
energj''.  In  1883  he  was  awarded  the 
Adams  prize  for  an  essay  on  'A  general 
investigation  of  the  action  upon  each  other 
of  two  closed  vortices  in  a  perfect  incom- 
pressible fluid' :  the  subject  for  this  prize 
is  set  by  the  examiners,  not  chosen  by  the 
candidate.  This  was  published  as  A  Trea- 
tise on  the  Motion  of  Vortex  Rings  (1883). 
The  subject  of  his  fellowship  thesis  seems 
to  have  developed  as  a  kind  of  by-product 
of  a  train  of  thought  arising  from  a  course 
of  lectures  by  Balfour  Stewart  on  the 
principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy, 
which  he  had  attended  at  Manchester 
some  years  earlier.  Thomson  found  very 
perplexing  the  idea  of  one  kind  of  energy 
being  transformed  into  something  different 
— kinetic  into  potential  energy,  for 
example.  It  seemed  to  him  simpler  and 
otherwise  equally  satisfactory  to  suppose 
that  all  energy  was  of  the  same  kind  and 
that  the  transformation  of  energy  could 
be  more  correctly  described  as  the  trans- 
ference of  kinetic  energy  from  one  'home' 
to  another,  the  effects  which  it  produced 
depending  on  the  nature  of  its  home.  This 
had  been  recognized  in  the  case  of  the 
transformation  of  the  kinetic  energy  of  ■ 
a  moving  body  into  heat  on  striking  a 
target,  the  energy  of  the  heated  body 
being  the  kinetic  energy  of  its  molecules, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  same  thing 
might  apply  to  other  kinds  of  energy. 

In  a  situation  where  there  is  a  possibility 
of  this  kind  it  is  very  helpful  if  a  method 
can  be  found  of  calculating  the  effects  of 
such  transformations  independent  of  the 
nature  of  the  mechanism  involved.  The 
thesis  consisted  of  an  account  of  the  dis- 
covery of  such  a  method  based  on  the 
generalized  mechanics  of  Sir  W.  R.  Hamil- 


858 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Thomson,  J.  J. 


ton  [q.v.]  and  of  Joseph  Louis  Lagrange, 
and  its  various  applications.  It  was  never 
published  in  its  original  form  but  consti- 
tuted the  basis  of  two  papers  in  the  Philo- 
sophical Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society 
(vol.  clxxvi,  1885  and  vol.  clxxviii,  1887) 
and  of  a  book  Applications  of  Dynamics  to 
Physics  and  Chemistry  (1888).  The  scope 
of  the  method  is  very  wide. 

In  1881  Thomson  published  a  theo- 
retical paper  in  the  Philosophical  Maga- 
zine (5th  series,  vol.  xi)  in  which  he  proved 
that  an  electric  charge  must  possess  inertia 
and  showed  how  to  calculate  its  mass. 
Subsequent  history  shows  that  even  had 
this  achievement  stood  alone  it  would 
have  established  him  as  a  scientist  of  the 
first  rank.  It  also  implied  a  deep  insight 
into  the  problem  of  the  measurement  of 
the  mass  of  a  moving  charged  particle, 
a  matter  not  then  fully  appreciated.  This 
was  of  great  importance  for  his  subsequent 
experimental  work.  In  1882  he  was  ap- 
pointed a  lecturer  in  mathematics  at 
Trinity  and  became  a  university  lecturer 
in  the  following  year,  and  in  December 
1894  he  succeeded  J.  W.  Strutt,  third  Lord 
Rayleigh  [q.v.],  as  Cavendish  professor 
of  experimental  physics  in  the  univer- 
sity. The  Cavendish  professorship  was 
not  founded  until  1871.  Its  first  four 
holders  were  in  turn  James  Clerk  Maxwell 
[q.v.],  Rayleigh,  Thomson,  and  Ernest 
(later  Lord)  Rutherford  [q.v.],  a  succes- 
sion of  great  and  varied  talent  probably 
unequalled  among  the  occupants  of  any 
similar  chair.  It  was  no  light  task  to 
follow  two  such  predecessors,  but  it  was 
made  easier  for  Thomson  by  the  fact  that 
the  foundations  of  the  methods  of  teach- 
ing physics  in  the  laboratory  had  been  well 
laid  in  Rayleigh's  time  owing  chiefly  to  the 
exertions  of  (Sir)  R.  T.  Glazebrook  [q.v.] 
and  (Sir)  William  Napier  Shaw. 

Even  before  he  had  taken  his  chair, 
Thomson  was  occupied  largely  in  consoli- 
dating the  position  in  which  electromag- 
netic theory  had  been  left  by  Clerk 
Maxwell.  One  result  of  these  labours  was 
the  appearance  in  1893  of  Notes  on  Recent 
Researches  in  Electricity  and  Magnetism,  a 
volume  intended  as  a  sequel  to  Clerk  Max- 
well's treatise.  This  dealt  in  the  main  with 
the  solution  of  various  electrical  problems 
presenting  great  mathematical  difficulty, 
but  it  included  also  a  comprehensive 
account,  the  first  in  the  English  language, 
of  the  discharge  of  electricity  through 
gases.  The  compilation  of  this  and  the 
reflexions  which  it  induced  led  Thomson 
to  a  suspicion  or  intuition  that  the  next 


great  advance  in  our  knowledge  of  the 
relationship  between  electricity  and  matter 
would  be  derived  from  a  study  of  these 
phenomena,  and  he  set  to  work  vigorously 
attacking  the  problem  by  experiment. 
The  results  were  rather  disappointing. 
There  was  plenty  to  investigate  and  the 
phenomena  were  often  very  striking,  but 
they  were  also  very  complex  and,  not 
infrequently,  uncontrollable.  There  was 
nothing  that  one  could  pick  out  and  say 
'this  is  simple,  we  will  begin  by  finding 
out  what  is  causing  it'.  However,  the 
results  caused  Thomson  to  take  the  view — 
it  could  not  be  put  any  higher — that  the 
current  in  these  discharges  was  carried  by 
positively  and  negatively  charged  particles 
(ions)  formed  by  the  disruption  of  the 
chemical  molecules  of  the  gas. 

This  situation  suddenly  changed  in  1895 
when  Wilhelm  Konrad  Rontgen  dis- 
covered the  X-rays  and  found  that  they 
caused  the  surrounding  air,  which  is 
ordinarily  an  insulator  of  electricity,  to 
become  conducting.  This  method  of  pro- 
ducing a  conducting  gas  was,  from  an 
experimental  point  of  view,  simpler  and 
more  metrical  than  anything  hitherto 
available.  Thomson  immediately  recog- 
nized this  and  seized  the  opportunity 
thereby  presented  to  investigate  the  me- 
chanism of  the  conduction.  In  this  and 
subsequent  work  he  had  much  help  from 
the  increased  number  of  research  students, 
many  of  them  holders  of  the  recently  insti- 
tuted 1851  Exhibition  scholarships,  who, 
under  the  new  university  regulations, 
were  being,  in  effect,  invited  to  come  to 
the  Cavendish  laboratory.  Several,  coming 
from  all  parts  of  the  world,  were  men  of 
great  ability  who  afterwards  became  emi- 
nent, such  as  Paul  Langevin  (from  France) 
and  Rutherford  (from  New  Zealand). 

The  results  of  this  work  showed  that,  as 
Thomson  expected,  the  electric  currents 
were  carried  by  positive  and  negative  ions 
generated  in  the  gas  by  the  X-rays.  Their 
physical  properties  were  ascertained  and 
measured  and  found  to  be  such  as  would 
be  expected  if  they  were  generated  by  the 
disruption  of  the  molecules  of  the  gas. 

This  achievement,  important  though  it 
was,  dealt  only  with  the  fringe  of  the 
matter.  In  contrast  to  the  air  rendered 
conducting  by  X-rays,  the  electric  dis- 
charges in  rarefied  gases  imder  high  vol- 
tages were  luminous,  often  strikingly  so. 
From  1859  to  1862  Julius  Pliicker  had 
shown  that  in  these  discharges  radiation, 
called  by  Eugen  Goldstein  in  1876  cathode 
rays  (Kathodenstrahlen),  emanated  from 


859 


Thomson,  J.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  negative  pole  and  had  various  interest- 
ing properties.  Among  others  it  caused 
the  walls  of  the  glass  bulbs,  in  which 
experiments  of  this  kind  are  usually  made, 
to  glow  with  a  greenish  yellow  light  at 
the  places  where  the  radiation  fell  on  them 
and  these  spots  of  light  could  be  made 
to  move  about  by  changing  the  local  mag- 
netic field,  for  example,  by  shifting  the 
position  of  a  magnet  outside  the  discharge 
bulb.  For  half  a  century  a  sharp  contro- 
versy, which  had  a  curious  national  de- 
marcation, raged  as  to  the  nature  of  these 
cathode  rays.  The  German  physicists  were 
unanimous  in  claiming  that  they  were 
undulatory  like  light,  while  the  English, 
led  by  C.  F.  Varley  and  (Sir)  William 
Crookes  [qq.v.] ,  held  that  they  were  swiftly 
moving  material  projectiles.  It  is  suffi- 
cient here  to  say  that  in  this  war,  as  in 
others,  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  both 
sides. 

Thomson's  experiments  were  largely  in- 
strumental in  proving  that  the  rays  were 
rapidly  moving  material  particles  pro- 
jected from  the  negative  pole.  But  he  was 
not  content  with  this ;  he  decided  to  settle 
once  and  for  all  the  nature  of  these  electri- 
fied particles  by  measuring  their  masses. 
He  was  not  only  able  to  measure  the 
speeds  of  the  particles  but  also  the  values 
of  their  specific  charge  (e/m),  that  is  to  say, 
the  proportion  which  the  electric  charge 
of  a  particle  bears  to  its  mass.  The  mass 
of  any  one  of  these  particles  was  proved 
to  be  a  minute  fraction,  about  one  eigh- 
teen-hundredth part  of  that  of  the  atom 
of  hydrogen,  the  lightest  chemical  element. 
He  also  showed  that  similar  particles 
originated  in  a  number  of  different  ways 
and  that  all  had  the  same  mass  whatever 
the  chemical  nature  of  the  matter  from 
which  they  originated. 

This  was  not  merely  a  discovery,  it  was 
a  revolution.  The  chemical  atom  had 
stood  for  nearly  a  century  as  an  indivisible 
unit  in  the  structure  of  matter.  It  now 
appeared  that  there  was  a  more  funda- 
mental unit,  an  atom  of  pure  electricity, 
a  common  constituent  of  all  the  chemical 
atoms.  They  were  originally  called  cor- 
puscles by  Thomson,  but  later  this  was 
dropped  in  favour  of  electron,  a  word  sug- 
gested many  years  earlier  by  G.  Johnstone 
Stoney  [q.v.],  an  Irishman  with  pro- 
phetic gifts.  The  first  public  announce- 
ment of  their  existence  was  made,  by 
Thomson,  in  a  Friday  evening  discourse 
delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution  on 
30  April  1897  and  published  in  the  Philo- 
sophical Magazine  in  the  following  October. 


At  this  stage  it  was  not  proved  witi 
absolute  certainty  that  the  masses  of  the 
atoms  and  electrons  were  different,  al^ 
though  it  was  highly  probable.  The  masses 
themselves  had  not  been  measured  an<3 
compared.  The  measurements  gave  th^ 
ratio  of  the  mass  of  the  particle  concerned 
to  the  electric  charge  that  it  carried.  II 
was  still  possible  that  the  masses  of  thi 
particles  might  be  the  same  and  tm 
charges  very  different,  although,  had  this 
been  the  case,  it  would  have  been  difficult 
to  understand  the  facts  of  electrochem- 
istry. Still,  this  xmcertainty  existed,  and 
it  had  to  be  dealt  with.  Thomson  set  about 
this  problem  with  his  characteristic  energy 
and  proceeded  to  measure  directly  the 
magnitudes  of  the  charges  on  the  particles. 
The  method  used  was  one  the  general 
development  of  which  was  due  to  Dr. 
Charles  Thomson  Rees  Wilson,  with  im- 
portant contributions  by  (Sir)  John  Sealy 
Edward  Townsend  towards  this  particular 
application.  It  consisted  in  inducing  the 
charged  particles  to  load  themselves  with 
a  drop  of  water  of  known  weight  and  then 
to  observe  the  rate  of  fall  of  these  drops  in 
electric  fields  of  various  strengths.  Thom- 
son's experiments  left  no  doubt  that  the 
charge  of  each  of  the  particles  was  iden- 
tical with  that  of  a  hydrogen  ion  in  electro- 
lysis  within  the  (rather  considerable)  limits 
of  experimental  error.  The  conclusion  as 
to  the  identity  of  the  charges  was  con- 
firmed about  the  same  time  by  Townsend 
who  used  an  entirely  different  method 
After  that  there  was  no  room  for  furthei 
doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  Thomson's  reva 
lutionary  discovery. 

The  advent  of  the  electron  providec 
Thomson  with  more  than  ample  materia 
for  the  subsequent  exercise  of  his  great 
intellectual  gifts.  The  problem  of  th€ 
structure  of  matter  and  of  the  chemical 
atoms  in  terms  of  electrons  at  once  became 
pressing  and  towards  the  solution  of  this 
he  contributed  many  original  ideas.  Older 
branches  of  physics  such  as  optics,  magne- 
tism, and  spectroscopy  were  found  to  be 
clothed  with  new  life  and  interest,  and 
new  branches  of  knowledge  like  radio- 
activity, photo-electricity,  and  therm- 
ionics  sprang  up  out  of  the  fertile  soil.  In 
all  these  new  developments  Thomson 
played  a  great  part. 

Space  does  not  permit  a  survey  of  all 
Thomson's    contributions    to    this    new 
knowledge,  but  two  should  here  be  men- 
tioned. For  the  rest  of  his  Ufe  most  of  his  ; 
personal  experimental  work  was  directed  * 
towards  improving  the  technique  which 


860 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Thomson,  J.  J. 


had  succeeded  so  well  with  the  electron, 
and  applymg  it  to  ascertain  the  masses, 
energies,  and  electric  charges  of  the  other 
particles  occurring  in  electric  currents 
tlu-ough  gases,  and  especially  those  which 
were  positively  charged  and  called  by  him 
positive  rays.  These  were  found  to  be 
atoms  and  molecules,  singly  or  multiply 
charged  (in  terms  of  the  electronic  charge), 
but  a  large  proportion  of  them  were  quite 
unknown  to  ordinary  chemical  science. 
They  moved  very  fast  and  lasted  just  long 
enough  to  leave  a  track  on  a  photographic 
plate.  This  method  has  hardly  begun  to 
be  exploited  yet,  but  when  it  has  it  seems 
bound  to  shed  a  vast  illumination  on  the 
very  intricate  subject  of  the  inner  mecha- 
nism of  chemical  reactions.  Not  only  the 
molecules  but  the  atoms  also  were  found 
to  be  peculiar  or  unexpected.  Thus,  with 
the  inert  elementary  gas,  neon,  the  most 
abimdant  track,  as  indicated  by  the  photo- 
graphic intensity,  was  that  of  a  singly 
charged  atom  of  mass  20,  but  this  was 
always  accompanied  by  a  fainter  one  with 
an  atomic  mass  22.  Thus  was  discovered 
the  first  pair  of  isotopes  (elements  with  the 
same  chemical  properties  but  different 
atomic  masses)  except  for  those  which 
had  been  known  for  some  time  to  be 
present  among  the  products  of  atomic 
decay  (radio-activity). 

Thomson's  other  outstanding  achieve- 
ment, this  time  theoretical,  was  the  calcu- 
lation of  the  amount  of  scattering  of 
X-rays  by  the  electrons  in  atoms.  When 
combined  with  Charles  Glover  Barkla's 
experimental  data,  this  showed  that  the 
number  of  electrons  in  an  atom  was  close 
to  one  half  the  atomic  weight  for  all  the 
heavy  elements.  With  the  Ughter  ele- 
ments the  fraction  increased  gradually  to 
imity  for  hydrogen,  the  lightest  element. 
When  reinterpreted  later  in  terms  of 
atomic  numbers  (the  numbers  attributed 
to  the  elements  when  they  are  arranged  in 
order  of  increasing  atomic  weight,  starting 
with  hydrogen  as  number  1)  this  conclu- 
sion became  simpUfied  into  saying  that 
the  number  of  electrons  in  an  atom  is  equal 
to  its  atomic  number.  These  discoveries 
and  that  of  the  neon  isotope  were  impor- 
tant milestones  near  the  beginning  of  the 
road  that  led  to  the  theory  of  nuclear,  as 
well  as  of  atomic,  structure. 

As  president  of  the  Royal  Society  from 
1915  to  1920,  of  which  he  had  been  elec- 
ted a  fellow  in  1884,  as  well  as  in  other 
capacities,  for  example,  as  a  member  of 
the  Admiralty  Board  of  Invention  and 
Research,  Thomson  was  deeply  engaged 


throughout  the  war  on  government  work. 
He  was  active  in  the  formation  of  the  De- 
partment of  Scientific  and  Industrial 
Research,  and  was  a  member  of  the  advi- 
sory council  from  its  inception  in  1919  until 
1927.  He  presided  over  the  royal  commis- 
sion set  up  in  1916  to  inquire  into  the  state 
of  secondary  education.  In  1918  he  was 
appointed  by  the  Crown  to  succeed  H. 
Montagu  Butler  [q.v.]  as  master  of  Trinity 
College.  The  appointment  of  the  leading 
man  of  science  to  succeed  a  long  list  of 
distinguished  men  of  letters  was  to  some 
a  startling  departure  from  tradition,  but 
Thomson,  who  throughout  his  life  was 
generous  and  hospitable,  proved  well  fitted 
for  the  post.  Unlike  some  of  his  prede- 
cessors he  was  equally  at  home  with  the 
fellows,  undergraduates,  and  servants  of 
the  college,  and  it  prospered  under  his 
wise  counsel.  Although  in  infancy  he  had 
not  been  expected  to  live,  he  enjoyed 
vminterrupted  good  health,  and  he  stated 
in  his  autobiography  Recollections  and 
Reflections  (pubhshed  in  1936)  that  he 
could  not  remember  any  day  in  the  last 
sixty  years  when  his  work  had  been  inter- 
rupted by  bad  health.  It  was  not  until  the 
last  four  years  of  his  Ufe  that  a  progressive 
decline  in  his  memory  heralded  his  death, 
which  took  place  at  the  Master's  Lodge 
30  August  1940.  His  ashes  were  buried  in 
the  nave  of  Westminster  Abbey  hard  by 
the  graves  of  Newton,  Darwin,  Herschel, 
Kelvin,  and  Rutherford. 

In  the  Cavendish  laboratory  Thomson 
built  up  the  greatest  research  school  in 
experimental  physics  yet  seen.  He  was 
the  man  for  the  opportvmity.  The  high 
level  of  his  achievement  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  to  no  less  than  seven  men,  who 
were  trained  and  first  made  their  mark 
imder  him  there,  the  Nobel  prize  has  been 
awarded,  and  this  is  an  achievement  which 
has  never  yet  been  equalled.  What  made 
him  the  inspiring  leader  that  he  was,  came 
from  his  vital  personality,  his  enormous 
mental  energy,  and  his  conviction  that 
what  he  and  his  associates  were  doing  was 
something  very  important.  This  was  so 
patent  that  he  communicated  it  to  them 
without  any  apparent  effort  on  his  part. 
His  great  fertiUty  in  suggestion,  if  not 
always  practical,  and  an  imcanny  insight 
into  the  parts  of  the  literature  likely  to  be 
useful  were  also  valuable  factors.  More- 
over others,  seeing  what  important  results 
he  obtained  with  rather  poor  apparatus, 
were  encouraged  to  persevere  in  their 
efforts.  He  had,  in  a  degree  seldom 
equalled,  the  gift  of  understanding  the 


861 


Thomson,  J.  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


working  of  complicated  apparatus,  with- 
out using  it  himself.  He  was  accessible  to 
everyone  and  never  out  of  temper. 

The  growth  of  Thomson's  intellect  seems 
to  have  been  almost  complete  by  the  time 
he  left  Manchester.  Associated  though  he 
was  with  physicists  and  mathematicians 
of  great  eminence  at  Cambridge  there  was 
no  one  there  with  whom  he  came  into 
personal  contact  who  had  any  influence 
upon  him  comparable  with  that  of  Clerk 
Maxwell  (whom  he  never  met).  What 
Cambridge  did  for  him  was  to  supply  the 
mathematical  knowledge,  skill,  and  disci- 
pline which  enabled  him  to  understand 
Maxwell's  writings.  These  profoundly 
affected  him  and  the  resultant  struggle  to 
harmonize  the  view  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse which  he  had  formed  at  Manchester 
with  those  of  Maxwell  led  him  to  the  dis- 
covery of  the  electron.  He  was  assisted 
in  his  labours  by  a  very  comprehensive 
memory  embracing  a  great  variety  of 
subjects  from  science  to  athletic  records. 
But  it  was  Uable  at  times  to  fail  him  and 
he  was  known  to  repeat  the  same  story  to 
the  same  people  in  a  matter  of  minutes. 
But  there  were  other  instances,  not 
uncommon  in  the  laboratory,  which  were 
not  capable  of  easy  explanation.  A  re- 
searcher would  explain  to  'J.  J.'  (as  he 
was  universally  and  affectionately  known) 
what  he  beheved  was  the  theory  of  the 
experimental  results  which  he  was  getting. 
'J.  J.'  would  coimter  this  by  propounding 
quite  a  different  view,  and  the  argument 
would  continue  day  after  day  and  would 
finally  cease,  both  sides  being  unconvinced. 
Then,  perhaps  a  month  later,  'J.  J.'  would 
tell  the  researcher  that  he  had  found  the 
explanation  of  the  results  they  had  dis- 
cussed, and  would  give  a  detailed  accoxmt 
of  the  very  theory  the  researcher  had  pro- 
poimded.  If  generally  this  was  dismissed 
as  an  instance  of  the  vagaries  of  great 
minds,  it  did  from  time  to  time  lead  to 
difficulties  and  misunderstandiags. 

Being  a  man  of  very  varied  tastes  and 
interests,  often  unexpectedly  pronounced 
or  vmusual,  Thomson  would  talk  with 
anyone  about  almost  anything,  and 
seemed  to  be  bored  by  no  subject  except 
philosophy,  to  which  he  was  once  heard 
to  refer  as  a  subject  in  which  you  spent 
your  time  trying  to  find  a  shadow  in  an 
absolutely  dark  room.  Yet  he  was  at  times 
keenly  interested  in  psychical  research, 
telepathy,  and  water  divining,  particu- 
larly in  cases  where  he  thought  that  they 
could  be  investigated  by  physical  methods. 

In  person,  Thomson  was  of  medium 


height,  very  slightly  vmder  the  average, 
and  well  built.  His  head  was  large  an( 
squarish,  the  forehead  wide  and  high,  th 
face  strong  with  well-marked  features,  in 
eluding  a  broad  nose  and  pronoimce 
chin.  One  of  his  characteristic  traits  wai 
a  peculiar  grin  with  which  he  concludei 
many  of  his  utterances  as  though  challeng- 
ing dispute.  He  was  most  careless  in  his 
attire  and  appearance,  and  behaved  as 
though  it  were  a  matter  of  no  interest 
either  to  himself  or  others.  Withal,  he 
had  a  marked  aptitude  for  finance  and 
business.  He  was  sincerely  religious,  a 
churchman  with  a  dislike  for  Anglo- 
Catholicism,  a  regular  communicant,  who 
every  day  knelt  in  private  prayer,  a  habit 
known  only  to  Lady  Thomson  until  near 
the  end  of  his  Ufe.  A  ready  speaker,  with 
a  remarkable  command  of  EngUsh,  he 
could,  when  occasion  demanded,  define 
a  complex,  difficult,  or  delicate  situation 
with  a  precision  and  tact  which  few  could 
equal.  Travel  as  a  recreation  did  not  in 
itself  appeal  strongly  to  him,  and  before 
his  old  age  he  travelled  little  save  for  some 
honorific  occasion  such  as  to  deliver  a 
course  of  lectures,  or  receive  an  honorary 
degree,  a  medal,  or  a  prize.  Throughout 
his  mature  life  it  was  to  Cambridge  that 
he  ever  wished  to  return,  and  from  the 
day  when  he  entered  Cambridge  as  a 
scholar,  he  never  missed  a  term.  He  mar- 
ried in  1890  Rose  Ehzabeth,  secon 
daughter  of  Sir  George  Edward  Paget 
[q.v.],  and  had  a  son.  Sir  George  Paget 
Thomson,  also  a  physicist,  and  a  daughter 
Practically  all  the  honours  which  canl 
fall  to  a  man  of  science  were  bestowed 
upon  Thomson.  He  was  knighted  in  1908, 
and  admitted  to  the  Order  of  Merit  in 
1912.  He  was  appointed  professor  o] 
natural  philosophy  at  the  Royal  Institu 
tion  in  1905,  and  a  year  later  received  the 
Nobel  prize  at  Stockholm.  He  was 
awarded  the  Copley  medal  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1914,  having  previously  re 
ceived  from  it  a  Royal  medal  in  1894,  and 
the  Hughes  medal  in  1902 ;  he  was  twice 
Bakerian  lecturer  (1887  and  1913),  the 
first  fellow  to  be  so  since  1879.  He  was 
an  honorary  member  of  all  the  leading 
foreign  scientific  academies,  and  he  re- 
ceived honorary  degrees  from  twenty- 
three  universities.  He  was  president  of  the 
British  Association  in  1909.  After  resign- 
ing his  chairs  at  the  Cavendish  laboratory  ' 
in  1919  and  the  Royal  Institution  in  1920, 
he  was  appointed  honorary  professor  at 
each  place  in  1921,  but  he  did  not  cease  to 
come  to  the  Cavendish  laboratory. 


862 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Thornton 


Among  Thomson's  most  important 
l)ooks  these  others  may  be  mentioned: 
FAements  of  the  Mathematical  Theory  of 
Electricity  and  Magnetism  (1895,  5th  ed, 
1921),  Conduction  of  Electricity  through 
Gases  (1903,  3rd  ed.,  2  vols.,  with  G.  P. 
Tliomson,  1928  and  1933),  Electricity  and 
Matter  (the  iirst  Silliman  lecture,  1904), 
The  Corpuscular  Theory  of  Matter  (1907), 
and  Rays  of  Positive  Electricity  and  their 
Application  to  Chemical  Analysis  (1913, 
•Jnd  ed.  1921). 

There  are  portraits  of  Thomson  by 
Arthur  Hacker  (1903)  in  the  Cavendish 
laboratory,  Cambridge ;  by  G.  Fiddes  Watt 
( 1922)  in  the  Royal  Society's  apartments ; 
by  Rene  de  I'Hopital  (1923)  at  the  Royal 
Institution;  and  by  William  Nicholson 
(1924)  in  the  hall  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge. There  is  a  bust  by  F.  Derwent 
Wood  (1920)  in  the  Ubrary  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge ;  and  there  are  drawings 
by  William  Strang  (1909)  m  the  Royal 
Library,  Windsor  Castle ;  by  Francis  Dodd 
(1920)  in  the  FitzwilUam  Museum,  Cam- 
bridge; by  Walter  Monnington  (1932)  at 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery;  and  by 
Hendrik  Lund  (1932)  in  Oslo.  There  is 
also  a  talking  'film  portrait'  (1934)  in  the 
keeping  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Elec- 
trical Engineers. 

[Lord  Rayleigh,  The  Life  of  Sir  J.  J.  Thom- 
son, 1942  (list  of  distinctions);  Sir  J.  J. 
Thomson,  Recollections  and  Reflections,  1936 
and  'Survey  of  the  Last  Twenty-tive  Years', 
in  A  History  of  the  Cavendish  Laboratory, 
1871-1910,  1910 ;  Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows 
of  ttie  Royal  Society,  No.  10,  December  1941 
(bibliography  of  his  scientific  papers  and 
portrait);  Nature,  14  September  1940;  The 
Times,  31  August  and  4  September  1940; 
personal  knowledge.] 

Owen  W.  Richardson. 

THORNTON,  ALFRED  HENRY 
ROBINSON  (1863-1939),  pamter,  was 
born  at  Delhi  25  August  1863,  the  only 
chUd  of  Thomas  Henry  Thornton,  chief 
secretary  to  the  government  of  the  Punjab 
from  1864  to  1876,  by  his  wife,  Alfreda, 
daughter  of  J.  C.  Spender,  of  Bath  and 
Enghshcombe.  Sent  home  from  India  at 
the  age  of  seven,  he  was  educated  at 
Harrow  and  at  Trmity  CoUege,  Cambridge, 
where  he  graduated  in  1886. 

Travel  in  Germany  and  France  aroused 
in  Thornton  a  Uvely  interest  in  painting. 
Destined  for  a  career  m  the  Foreign  Office, 
he  worked  there  from  1888  to  1890,  but  at 
the  same  time  he  was  studying  at  the  Slade 
School  of  Art ;  and  in  1890  he  went  to  Le 
Pouldu,  in  Brittany,  to  paint.    At  this 


village  (where  Paul  Gauguin  was  then  at 
work)  he  spent  three  summers,  studying 
each  autumn  and  winter  under  Frederick 
Brown  at  the  Westminster  School  of  Art 
and  at  the  Slade  School. 

The  year  1893  saw  Thornton  launched 
as  a  practising  artist  in  London  and  (for 
one  session  only)  a  teacher,  in  partnership 
with  Walter  Richard  Sickert.  Later  he 
became  a  contributor  to  the  Yellow  Book, 
founded  in  1894,  and  in  1895  a  member 
of  the  New  English  Art  Club.  He  made 
a  wide  acquaintance  among  prominent 
artists  of  the  day,  including  J .  M.  Whistler 
and  Charles  Conder  [qq.v.]  and  Wilson 
Steer.  Roger  Fry  [q.v.J  gave  him  a  great 
deal  of  teclmical  information  about  the 
methods  of  the  old  masters. 

Thornton  was  primarily  a  landscape 
painter,  in  some  degree  influenced  by  the 
French  Impressionists,  but  never  dissolv- 
ing form  in  Ught  as  did  some  members  of 
that  school,  and  remaining  fundamentally 
English.  He  was  a  man  of  wide  culture  and 
alert  intellect,  who,  as  he  worked,  became 
more  and  more  keenly  interested  in  the 
philosophical  implications  of  painting  and 
in  the  underlying  motives  that  produce 
art.  In  1911  he  first  learned  of  the  psycho- 
logical theories  of  Sigmund  Freud  and 
proceeded  to  relate  them  to  aesthetics. 
With  the  psychologist  Dr.  Ronald  Gordon, 
of  Bath,  he  collaborated  in  three  articles 
on  this  subject  published  in  the  Burling- 
ton Magazine:  'The  Influence  of  Certain 
Psychological  Reactions  in  Painting'  (May 
1920)  and  'Art  in  Relation  to  Life'  (July 
and  August  1921). 

Always  ahve  to  innovation,  although 
not  himself  an  innovator,  Thornton  joined 
the  London  Group  in  1914.  His  associa- 
tion with  the  New  English  Art  Club  con- 
tmued  throughout  his  working  life,  and 
he  was  honorary  secretary  of  the  club 
from  1928  until  his  death.  In  1932  he 
acted  as  examiner  and  moderator  in  draw- 
ing to  the  Training  Colleges'  Delegacy  of 
the  University  of  London,  continumg  as 
moderator  from  1933  to  1935. 

Thornton  married  in  1900  Hilda,  daugh- 
ter of  Thomas  Walker,  of  Seaton  Carew, 
CO.  Durham ;  there  were  no  children  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Painswick,  Glouces- 
tershire, where  he  had  settled  in  1920, 
20  February  1939. 

Thornton  had  a  quiet,  naturalistic  style 
and  believed  in  a  high  degree  of  simphftca- 
tion  without  approacliing  the  extreme 
generalization  of  Cezanne  and  his  school. 
He  had  a  subtle  appreciation  of  tone- 
values,  which  is  especially  apparent  in 


868 


Thornton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


those  strong  monochromes  that  are 
among  his  best  works.  He  was  adept  in 
the  difficult  art  of  rendering  the  character 
of  trees.  His  work  is  represented  in  the 
Tate  Gallery,  the  British  Museum,  the 
Musee  du  Luxembourg,  and  the  public 
collections  of  Bath,  Bradford,  Leeds,  and 
Manchester. 

A  pen  and  ink  drawing  of  Thornton 
by  Cecily  Hey  is  in  the  possession  of 
Miss  Laura  Sapsford. 

[The  Times,  21  February  1939 ;  Artist,  May 
1936 ;  Alfred  Thornton,  2^he  Diary  of  an  Art 
Student  of  the  Nineties,  1938 ;  private  infor- 
mation ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Herbert  B.  Grimsditch. 

THRELFALL,  Sir  RICHARD  (1861- 
1932),  physicist  and  chemical  engineer, 
was  born  at  HoUowforth,  Woodplumpton, 
near  Preston,  14  August  1861,  the  eldest 
son  of  Richard  Threlfall,  of  HoUowforth, 
wine  merchant,  who  was  mayor  of  Preston 
in  1885,  by  his  second  wife,  Sarah  Jane, 
daughter  of  Joseph  Mason,  of  Stanmore, 
Middlesex.  He  was  educated  at  Clifton 
College,  and  in  1880  won  an  entrance 
scholarship  at  GonviUe  and  Caius  College, 
Cambridge.  After  obtaining  a  first  class 
in  part  i  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  of 
1882,  he  worked  for  nearly  a  year  at  Stras- 
burg  under  August  Adolph  Eduard 
Ernest  Kundt.  He  then  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge, and  was  awarded  a  first  class  in 
part  ii  of  the  tripos  of  1884. 

In  1886,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-five, 
Threlfall  was  elected  professor  of  physics 
at  Sydney  University.  He  arrived  to  find 
no  experimental  laboratory ;  but  through 
his  pertinacity  and  persuasiveness  fluids 
were  provided  by  the  government,  and 
a  good  laboratory  was  completed  in  June 
1888.  There  Threlfall  remained  for  thir- 
teen years,  busy  with  a  variety  of  re- 
searches, among  which  may  be  specially 
mentioned  the  construction  of  an  accurate 
portable  instrument  for  comparative 
measurements  of  gravity.  He  travelled 
over  6,000  miles  in  Australia  and  Tas- 
mania taking  observations  with  this 
instrument.  He  was  president  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  New  South  Wales  in 
1895,  and  chairman  of  the  royal  commis- 
sion on  the  spontaneous  heating  of  coal 
cargoes  in  1896.  His  energy  and  enthusi- 
asm for  scientific  work,  his  wide  range  of 
knowledge  and  interests,  and  his  powers 
of  leadership,  left  a  lasting  impression  in 
Australia.  He  may  justly  be  called  the 
father  of  physics  in  Sydney  University. 

In  1899  Threlfall  resigned  liis  professor- 


ship, and  joined  the  firm  of  Messrs.  Al- 
bright &  Wilson,  chemical  manufacturers, 
of  Oldbury,  Birmingham,  where  he  re| 
mained  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  For  the  ne? 
fifteen  years  he  devoted  himself  entirelj 
to  the  affairs  of  the  firm.  He  introduce^ 
many  improvements  in  the  production 
phosphorus,  worked  out  a  method  foi 
the  electrolytic  manufacture  of  sodii 
chlorate,  which  was  operated  on  a  lar£ 
scale  at  Niagara  Falls,  and  designed  an(j 
installed  at  Oldbury  a  gas  engine  plar 
for  the  production  of  electric  power, 
the  course  of  this  work  he  devised  ne\ 
and  accurate  methods  for  determining  tl 
efficiency  of  electric  generators,  and  for  th^ 
measurement  of  the  rate  of  flow  of  gases 
in  tubes  and  ducts. 

Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
Threlfall,  on  his  own  initiative,  arrangec 
for  the  exploration  of  sources  of  heUum  ii 
gas  weUs  in  America,  and  worked  out 
scheme  for  the  production  of  hehum 
quantity,  and  its  use  in  balloons  and  air^^ 
ships.  As  a  result  he  was  invited  by  the 
Admiralty  to  serve  on  the  Board  of  InveU'^ 
tion  and  Research,  which  was  formed 
1915.  A  little  later  (1916)  he  became  one 
of  the  original  members  of  the  government 
Advisory  Council  on  Scientific  and  Indus-^ 
trial  Research ;  he  served  for  ten  years  oi 
the  council,  and  remained  closely  associ^ 
ated  with  its  work  imtil  his  death.  He  wa 
chairman  of  the  Fuel  Research  Board  anc 
of  the  Chemical  Research  Board,  anC 
acted  as  the  first  (part-time)  director  o| 
the  Chemical  Research  Laboratory  at 
Teddington,  for  the  estabUshment  o| 
which  he  was  largely  responsible. 

Threlfall  was  appointed  K.B.E.  in  191'i 
and  G.B.E.  in  1927.  He  was  elected  F.R.S 
in  1899  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Gonvill^ 
and  Caius  College  in  1905 ;  he  received  th* 
honorary  degree  of  D.Sc.  from  Manchestel 
University  in  1919  and  the  gold  medal  ol 
the  Society  of  Chemical  Industry  in  1929." 

Threlfall  married  in  1890  Evelyn  Agnes 
(died  1929),  fourth  daughter  of  John 
Forster  Baird,  of  Bowmont  Hill,  Northum- 
berland. His  wife  was  an  accompUshed 
woman  who  pubUshed  three  books  of 
poems.  They  had  four  sons  and  two 
daughters.  He  suffered  from  a  stroke  in, 
1929  and  was  in  poor  health  until 
death  at  Edgbaston  10  July  1932. 

Threlfall  was  noted  among  his  contem-^ 
poraries  for  his  ingenuity,  accuracy,  anc 
persistency  in  experimental  work,  and  fol 
his  manipulative  skill ;  and  this  in  spite 
the  loss  of  two  fingers  of  his  right  handj 
and  of  injury  to  others,  in  the  course  of 


864 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Tomlin 


experiments  on  explosives  when  he  was 
a  boy.  Wliile  still  an  imdergraduate  he 
made  a  contribution  of  the  first  impor- 
tance to  biology  by  designing  and  con- 
structing the  first  automatic  microtome. 
In  1898  he  published  a  book  on  Laboratory 
Arts  which  remained  for  many  years  a 
standard  work  on  the  subject. 

In  person  Threlfall  was  short,  sturdy, 
and  muscular.  In  youth  he  was  a  famous 
athlete,  and  he  retained  throughout  life 
his  love  of  the  countryside  and  his  skill  at 
country  sports:  he  was  a  good  shot  and 
a  keen  fisherman.  No  portrait  of  him 
exists,  but  the  photographs  published  in 
the  Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society  for 
January  1937  are  excellent  likenesses. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  1,  December  1932  (portrait); 
Journal  of  the  Chemical  Society,  1937,  vol.  i 
(portraits);  Nature,  13  August  1932;  The 
Times,  11  and  14  July  1932 ;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.] 

H.  T.  TiZARD. 

TOMLIN,  THOMAS  JAMES  CHES- 
SHYRE,  Baron  Tomlin,  of  Ash  (1867- 
1935),  judge,  was  born  at  Canterbury 
6  May  1867,  the  elder  son  of  George  Taddy 
Tomlin,  of  Combe  House,  Canterbury,  by 
his  wife,  AUce,  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
William  John  Chesshyre,  of  Barton  Court, 
Canterbury.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow 
and  at  New  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
obtained  a  first  class  in  jurisprudence 
(1889)  and  a  second  class  in  the  B.C.L. 
examination  (1891).  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  by  the  Middle  Temple  in  1891,  being 
subsequently  (1892)  called  ad  eundem  by 
Lincoln's  Inn,  becon:ung  a  bencher  of  the 
latter  Inn  in  1918. 

Tomlin  read  as  a  pupil  of  R.  J.  Parker 
(later  Lord  Parker  of  Waddington,  q.v.) 
and  continued  with  Parker  as  his  'devil' 
until  Parker  (who  became  junior  equity 
counsel  to  the  Treasury  in  1900  and  never 
took  silk)  was  appointed  to  the  bench  in 
1906.  \Vhile  he  was  Parker's  'devil', 
Tomlin's  practice  was  but  moderate.  On 
Parker's  elevation  to  the  bench  Tomlin 
came  into  his  own.  His  experience  while 
Parker's  'devil'  had  equipped  him  to  cope 
more  than  adequately  with  the  large 
practice  that  immediately  came  his  way. 
In  drafting  pleadings  and  in  advising  on 
evidence  he  had  few  equals.  To  that 
technical  skill  there  was  added  a  wide 
knowledge  of  law  and  a  neat  method  of 
advocacy.  His  clearness  of  exposition  on 
both  fact  and  law  was  as  convincing  to  the 
bench  as  it  was  appealing  to  his  profes- 
sional and  lay  clients.    Tomlin  was  ap- 


pointed junior  equity  counsel  to  the 
Board  of  Inland  Revenue  and  certain 
other  government  departments  but 
although  more  than  one  vacancy  occurred 
while  he  was  a  junior,  he  was  not,  some- 
what surprisingly,  offered  the  post  of 
junior  equity  counsel  to  the  Treasury 
when  (Sir)  C.  H.  Sargant,  then  junior 
equity  counsel,  was  elevated  to  the  bench 
in  1913.  In  that  year  Tomlin  took  silk. 
He  attached  himself  first  to  the  court  of 
Sir  M.  I.  Joyce  [q.v.]  and  on  Joyce's 
resignation  in  1915  he  attached  himself  to 
the  court  of  Sir  Arthur  Frederic  Peterson. 
In  1919  he  'went  special'.  Tomlin's 
venture  as  a  silk  was  successful  from  the 
beginning.  His  practice  was  by  no  means 
confined  to  the  Chancery  division.  He  was 
often  engaged  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  the 
Privy  Council  in  a  wide  variety  of  cases. 

In  1923,  on  Sargant's  promotion  to  the 
Court  of  Appeal,  Tomlin  was  appointed 
a  judge  of  the  High  Court,  Chancery 
division.  In  1929  he  was  appointed  a  lord 
of  appeal  in  ordinary  without  having 
served  as  a  lord  justice  in  the  Court  of 
Appeal — a  course  for  which  at  that  time 
precedents  could  be  found  only  in  the 
cases  of  Lord  Blackburn  and  Lord  Parker 
of  Waddington.  He  was  created  a  life 
peer  and  took  the  title  of  Baron  Tomlin, 
of  Ash,  in  Kent.  A  few  days  earlier  he  had 
been  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  and  he 
became  a  member  of  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee. He  died  in  harness  at  Canterbury 
13  August  1935. 

Tomlin  proved  himself  a  soimd  judge 
in  the  court  of  first  instance.  He  was 
learned  and,  while  quick  and  intolerant  of 
irrelevance,  remained  courteous.  He  was 
indeed  prone  to  interrupt  an  advocate, 
but  his  interruptions  were  those  of  a  care- 
ful and  knowledgeable  judge  and  were 
directed  either  to  getting  clear  in  his  own 
mind  the  point  that  the  advocate  was 
trying  to  make  or  making  clear  to  the 
advocate  the  point  that  in  Tomlin's  view 
was  involved.  His  interruptions  did  not 
give  the  impression  that  the  case  was  not 
being  heard  with  an  open  mind.  The  good 
reputation  of  the  Chancery  division  was 
enhanced  as  well  by  his  judgements  as  his 
methods.  As  a  lord  of  appeal  he  was  no 
less  successful  than  as  a  judge  of  first 
instance.  His  pjcrsonal  charm  secured  the 
goodwill  of  his  fellow  law  lords  and  he 
earned  their  respect  as  a  lawyer  and  judge 
by  his  learning,  industry,  and  skill  of 
statement.  When  he  differed  from  the 
majority  he  took  his  points  firmly  but 
always  courteously. 


865 


8k 


Tomlin 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Tomlin's  judgements  and  opinions  are 
marked  by  learning,  clear  thinking,  and 
lucidity  of  statement.  The  point  at  issue 
is  always  made  clear  and  the  right  solu- 
tion is  sometimes  made  to  appear  obvious. 
It  is  a  curious  fact — due  perhaps  to 
Tomlin's  continuous  care  and  wide  know- 
ledge— that  few  of  his  judgements  stand 
out  from  the  others.  He  was  versatile. 
At  the  bar  he  had  handled  but  few  patent 
cases ;  as  a  judge  he  showed  remarkable 
qualities  in  trying  them.  His  success  as  a 
patent  judge  attested  the  correctness  of 
his  view  that  the  best  tribunal  for  such 
cases  is  the  legal,  not  the  scientific,  mind. 
His  decisions  were  admirable.  A  good 
judge  contributes  as  well  to  the  better- 
ment of  practice  as  to  the  elucidation  of 
the  law.  Among  Tomlin's  lasting  contri- 
butions to  better  practice  are  his  direc- 
tions on  the  role  proper  to  be  played  in 
patent  actions  by  expert  witnesses  (see 
British  Celanese  v.  Courtaulds,  52  R.P.C. 
171,  1935). 

Tomlin's  mind  struck  those  who  knew 
him  best  as  being  the  incarnation  of  pure 
common  sense,  an  uncommon  quahty. 
He  never  seemed  to  leave  the  firm  ground 
of  fact.  He  had  but  little  of  that  specula- 
tive interest  in  the  history  and  philosophy 
of  the  law  which  was  so  marked  in  the 
mind  of  his  master  Parker.  The  case  to  be 
dealt  with  was  to  Tomlin  the  matter  of 
interest. 

TomUn  imdertook  the  chairmanship  of 
various  commissions.  In  1923  he  became 
chairman  of  the  royal  commission  on 
awards  to  inventors  and  continued  in  that 
office  until  the  commission's  labours  came 
to  an  end  in  1933.  In  1925  he  became 
chairman  of  the  Child  Adoption  Com- 
mittee ;  in  1926  chairman  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  London  Commissioners;  and  in 
1928  chairman  of  the  Home  Office 
Advisory  Committee  on  the  Cruelty  to 
Animals  Act.  From  1929  to  1931  he  was 
chairman  of  the  royal  commission  on  the 
civil  service.  This  commission  was  an 
important  one.  The  reference  required 
the  commission  to  report  on  the  structure 
and  organization  of  the  civil  service,  the 
conditions  of  service,  and  retirement. 
The  MacDowell  commission  (1912-1915) 
had  dealt  with  much  the  same  subject  but 
the  service  had  in  the  meantime  under- 
gone considerable  change.  Its  functions 
had  been  extended ;  the  position  of  women 
had  been  altered  materially ;  new  methods 
of  wage  negotiation  had  been  introduced ; 
and  there  had  been  dislocation  of  normal 
methods  of  recruitment.  The  Report  was 


a  valuable  reasoned  document.  Mud 
matter,  some  of  which  involved  consider^ 
able  detail,  was  adequately  dealt  with,  bu^ 
on  some  important  matters,  in  particulai 
the  position  of  women  and  equal  pay,  the 
commission  failed,  to  Tomlin's  disappoint 
ment,  to  reach  agreement. 

Tomlin  was  elected  an  honorary  felloe 
of  New  College  in  1929  and  he  received  th« 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  univerJ 
sities  of  London,  Toronto,  and  Columbia. 
He  was  president  of  the  Harrow  Associa- 
tion from  1933  until  his  death.  He  married 
in  1893  Marion  Olivia,  elder  daughter  of 
Colonel  William  Garrow  Waterfield,  C.S.I., 
and  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  pre- 
deceased his  father,  and  two  daughters. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1935 ;  personal 
knowledge.]  Uthwatt. 

TONKS,  HENRY  (1862-1937),  painter 
and  teacher  of  art,  was  born  at  Solihull, 
Warwickshire,  9  April  1862,  the  second 
son  and  the  fifth  of  the  eleven  children  of 
Edmimd  Tonks,  brass-founder,  of  Bir- 
mingham, by  his  wife,  Juha,  youngest 
daughter  of  Henry  Johnson,  wine  mer- 
chant, of  London,  who  was  of  Northum- 
brian descent.  He  entered  Clifton  College 
in  1877,  and  later  studied  medicine,  first 
at  the  Royal  Sussex  County  Hospital, 
Brighton,  in  1880,  and  then,  in  1881,  at 
the  London  Hospital.  Here  he  was 
demonstrator  of  anatomy  and  enjoyed  the 
close  friendship  of  (Sir)  Frederick  Treves 
[q.v.],  to  whom  he  acted  as  house-surgeon 
in  1887 ;  he  was  elected  F.R.C.S.  in  1888 
and  was  later  senior  medical  officer  at  the 
Royal  Free  Hospital. 

Since  youth  Tonks  had  had  a  certain 
interest  in  art  and  towards  1890  this 
interest  became  very  strong.  About  this 
time  he  had  the  good  fortime  to  be  intro- 
duced to  Frederick  Brown,  who  had  for 
some  while  been  a  very  successful  art 
teacher,  especially  with  regard  to  draw- 
ing ;  briefly,  his  idea  was  to  return  to  a  free 
and  inteUigent  manner,  as  opposed  to  the 
sterile  conventionality  of  the  work  being 
done  in  art  schools  of  the  period.  Tonks 
studied  under  Brown  as  a  part-time 
student  at  the  Westminster  School  of  Art, 
and  when  in  1893  Brown  began  to  teach 
as  Slade  professor  of  fine  art  at  University  ; 
College,  London,  he  invited  Tonks  in 
1894  to  be  his  assistant  teacher  there ;  so 
Tonks  forsook  surgery  and  began  a  famous 
teaching  partnership.  He  and  Brown  .| 
were  shortly  joined  by  Wilson  Steer  as  ; 
teacher  of  painting  at  the  Slade  School  of 
Art;  their  students  were  imbued  with  a 


866 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Tovey 


new  sense  of  art,  and  especially  draughts- 
manship. In  time  a  widespread  change, 
largely  due  to  this  partnership,  was 
effected  in  British  art.  Among  their  early 
pupils  were  Mr.  Augustus  John,  (Sir) 
William  Orpen  [q.v.],  and  other  distin- 
guished students. 

Tonks  now  had  the  opportimity  to 
develop  his  painting,  first  working  mainly 
in  water-colour,  then  turning  to  oils.  As 
an  artist  he  was  essentially  English  in  out- 
look, loving  a  beautiful  and  elegant  sub- 
ject, tinctured  with  something  of  the 
spirit  of  the  pre-RaphaeUtes,  and  the 
illustrators  of  the  'sixties.  Besides  his 
search  for  beauty  of  drawing,  he 
gradually  became  intensely  interested  in 
the  possibilities  of  the  broken  handling  of 
oil-paint,  being  influenced  to  some  extent 
by  the  French  Impressionists,  but  mainly 
impelled  by  his  fervent  search  for  tone 
values.  Among  his  chief  works  are 
'Strolling  Players'  (Manchester  Corpora- 
tion Art  Gallery),  'The  Birdcage'  (Ash- 
molean  Museum),  and  a  number  of 
pictures  in  the  Tate  Gallery.  In  1895  he 
was  elected  a  member  of  the  New  English 
Art  Club,  and  from  1891  was  a  constant 
contributor  to  its  exhibitions.  In  1936  a 
special  exhibition  of  his  works  was  held 
at  the  Tate  Gallery. 

In  1917  Brown  retired,  and  Tonks,  his 
obvious  successor,  became  the  Slade  pro- 
fessor. He  was  the  outstanding  teacher  of 
the  age;  in  appearance  tall,  gavmt,  and 
severe,  his  criticisms  were  sometimes  the 
most  scathing  possible,  yet  his  students 
loved  him,  and  his  ultimate  love  was  for 
them.  He  never  tired  of  striving  to  incul- 
cate in  them  something  of  his  own  passion 
for  drawing.  Indeed,  the  particular 
historical  significance  of  Tonks  is  that 
during  the  period  from  1917  to  1930  he 
conducted  a  most  vigorous  defence  of  the 
traditional  spirit  in  art  in  general,  and  in 
draughtsmanship  in  particular,  at  a  time 
when  futurism,  abstraction,  and  so  on, 
were  assailing  all  that  he  held  most  dear. 
He  retired  from  the  Slade  School  in  1930, 
and  the  present  (1945)  energetic  strength 
of  the  traditional  movement  is,  in  a  con- 
siderable degree,  due  to  his  work. 

Tonks  had  a  host  of  friends,  with  an 
intimate  circle  including  Steer,  Dr.  D.  S. 
MacCoU,  J.  S.  Sargent  [q.v.],  George 
Moore  [q.v.],  and  Sir  Augustus  Daniel. 
He  engaged  in  fierce  controversies,  as 
was  inevitable,  and  the  fierceness  was  in- 
creased by  the  tenacity  with  which  he 
held  his  views,  and  the  vehemence  with 
which    he    expressed    them.     He    died, 


unmarried,  at  his  home  in  Chelsea  8  Jan- 
uary 1987. 

A  self-portrait  of  Tonlw,  painted  in 
1909,  is  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  and  a  pencil 
drawing,  with  P.  A.  Grainger,  by  G.  W. 
Lambert,  is  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery.  Portraits  of  Tonks  are  included 
in  (Sir)  William  Open's  picture  'The 
Selecting  Jury  of  the  New  English  Art 
Club'  (1909),  and  D.  G.  Maclaren's  'Some 
Members  of  the  New  English  Art  Club', 
both  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Joseph  Hone,  The  Life  of  Henry  Tonks, 
1939;  Henry  Tonks,  'Notes  from  "VVundcr- 
Years"',  Artwork,  Winter  1929;  The  Times, 
9  January  1937 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Georoe  Charlton. 

TOVEY,    Sir    DONALD    FRANCIS 

(1875-1940),  miisician,  was  bom  at  Eton 
17  July  1875,  the  youngest  son  of  Duncan 
Crookes  Tovey,  at  that  time  an  assistant 
master  at  Eton,  later  rector  of  Worples- 
don,  Surrey,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Fison,  who 
came  from  Norfolk.  Both  parents  were 
unmusical,  but  had  remarkable  Uterary 
gifts.  Donald's  prodigious  musical  apti- 
tude was  apparent  at  a  very  early  age; 
when  eight  years  old  he  is  said  to  have 
embarked  on  composition  on  an  extended 
plan.  It  was  the  acuteness  of  his  'ear'  in 
childhood,  and  the  correlation  of  pitch 
heard  and  pitch  sung,  that  attracted  the 
notice  of  Miss  Sophie  Weisse,  later  head- 
mistress of  a  girls'  school  at  Englefield 
Green.  To  her  Tovey  owed  his  entire  up- 
bringing and  education  until  he  was 
nineteen,  for  he  never  went  to  an  ordinary 
boys'  school;  moreover  it  was  Miss 
Weisse  who  launched  him  on  the  open 
seas  of  public  music-making.  These  early 
years  were  more  than  usually  important 
in  the  making  of  the  musician,  for  Tovey 
had  shown,  even  in  childhood,  his  remark- 
able power  of  absorbing  music,  both  from 
score  and  from  performance,  with  great 
rapidity  and  an  almost  mathematical 
accuracy.  It  was  wise  poUcy  that  sent  the 
boy  to  (Sir)  Walter  Parratt  [q.v.],  then 
organist  at  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor, 
for  counterpoint  lessons;  later  to  James 
Higgs,  for  whom  Tovey  never  lost  his 
admiration;  and  later  still  at  the  age  of 
thirteen  to  (Sir)  Charles  Hubert  Parry 
[q.v.],  to  whom  he  always  referred  as  'my 
master'.  A  visit  at  the  age  of  eight  or 
nine  to  Berlin,  where  he  heard  the  great 
violinist  Joseph  Joachim  play  the  Bee- 
thoven violin  concerto,  and  also  spoke  with 
him,  was  an  important  event.  Another 
early    influence    dating    from    boyhood 


867 


Tovey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


which  Tovey  publicly  acknowledged  was 
that  of  the  great  scholar  of  the  keyboard 
A.  J.  Hipkins  [q.v.].  In  this  formative 
period  his  mind  was  mainly  occupied  by 
music,  without,  however,  neglect  of  other 
spheres  of  knowledge;  for  Tovey  had  a 
strong  philosophical  power  of  thought, 
and  more  than  a  leaniag  towards  astro- 
nomy and  the  higher  mathematics,  re- 
taining to  his  death  a  fine  general  learning 
which  he  was  able  to  use  as  a  background 
for  even  his  most  speciahst  Avritings.  That 
he  studied  the  piano  with  Ludwig  Deppe 
appears  to  be  untrue,  but  he  was  brought 
up  on  his  methods  and  supported  them. 

In  1894  Tovey  went  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  as  the  first  holder  of  the  Lewis 
Nettleship  memorial  scholarship  in  music, 
and  in  that  same  year  he  appeared  in 
public  at  Windsor  as  a  pianist  with 
Joachim.  At  Oxford  Tovey  entered  what 
was  for  him  a  new,  comparatively  un- 
sheltered world.  Although  by  nature  and 
training  shy,  his  aboimding  natural 
humour  and  an  ingrained  kindliness 
found  him  a  place  even  among  the  athletes. 
He  read  voluminously,  scores  especially, 
and  never  forgot  what  he  read.  At  Balliol 
he  came  into  close  touch  with  Dr.  Ernest 
Walker,  who  even  at  that  time  was 
astonished  by  the  accuracy  and  readiness 
of  his  memory  in  the  wide  range  of 
classical  music.  In  1898  he  graduated 
B.A.  with  classical  honours;  in  1921  he 
was  awarded  a  doctorate  of  music  by 
decree  of  convocation  and  he  was  elected 
an  honorary  fellow  of  Balliol  in  1934. 

No  familiar  musical  pattern  in  the 
England  of  his  time  seemed  to  fit  this 
immensely  learned,  deeply  thinking,  ener- 
getic, if  absent-minded  young  musician. 
The  problem  of  opening  Tovey's  career 
was  solved  by  Miss  Weisse  who  arranged 
for  him  a  series  of  classical  chamber  con- 
certs in  November  1900  at  the  St. 
James's  Hall,  London,  at  which  he  gave 
not  only  some  quite  unusual  chamber 
works  of  the  classical  school,  but  also 
played  a  trio  and  quintet  of  his  own,  with 
many  piano  solos,  and  wrote  a  series  of 
programme  notes,  many  of  which  have 
been  reprinted.  This  series  and  another 
in  London  in  1901  were  followed  by 
recitals  in  BerUn  and  Vienna,  at  which 
Tovey  played  with  Joachim.  The  year 
1903  witnessed  an  orchestral  concert, 
under  (Sir)  Henry  Wood,  at  which  he 
played  his  pianoforte  concerto ;  this  work 
was  repeated  by  Hans  Richter  in  1906 
and  Tovey  also  played  it  at  Aachen  in 
1913.     All   through   this    second   period 


Tovey,  the  pianist,  was  playing  classic 
chamber  music  with  Lady  Halle  [q.v.]| 
Robert  Hausmann,  and  others.  The 
Chelsea  Concerts  Society  was  formed  ii 
1906  and  lasted  imtil  1912,  to  be  suc- 
ceeded by  the  Classical  Concert  Society^ 
which  was  revived  after  the  war  of  191< 
1918.  In  the  middle  of  all  this  concei 
work  came  a  request  from  the  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Britannica  to  write  the  articles  on 
music  for  the  eleventh  edition,  published 
by  the  Cambridge  University  Press.  It 
was  a  turning-point  in  Tovey's  life,  and 
that  was  a  seed  time  for  his  later  acti- 
vities. His  friendship  with  Mr.  R.  C. 
Trevelyan  from  1905  had  also  brought  to 
the  surface  his  lifelong  interest  in  the 
problems  of  opera,  and  in  correspondence 
with  the  poet  he  was  discussing  'The 
Bride  of  Dionysus'  from  which  emerged 
the  opera  produced  in  Edinburgh  in 
1929. 

In  1914  Tovey  successfully  applied  for 
the  Reid  professorship  of  music  in  the 
university  of  Edinburgh,  in  succession  to 
Frederick  Niecks.  He  was  appalled  by  the 
conflict  between  Germany  and  England, 
bitterly  regretting  the  break  in  the  ex- 
change of  musical  culture  between  the  two? 
countries.  A  new  venture,  started  in  1917, 
had  important  effects — his  founding  of  the 
Reid  Orchestra  in  Edinburgh,  with 
students  and  professionals  playing  the 
great  masterpieces.  Tovey  conducted, 
played,  and  wrote  numerous  occasional 
conunentaries  for  programmes — no\i» 
famous  in  their  reprinted  form  of  Essayi 
in  Musical  Analysis  (6  vols.,  1935-1939), 
The  selection  was  widely  representative 
of  every  phase  of  classical  music,  and  also 
of  the  newer  developments  of  Elgar, 
Dr.  Ralph  Vaughan  Williams,  Dr.  W.  T. 
Walton,  and  Mr.  Paul  Hindemith.  He 
originated  an  entirely  new  system  of 
university  training  in  music,  worked 
enthusiastically  at  his  lectures  and  his 
orchestra,  kept  up  his  active  piano- 
playing,  and  in  short  blossomed  out  into 
one  of  the  greatest  personalities  in  the 
musical  world  of  his  day.  He  visited 
California  in  1924-5-6,  New  York  and 
Boston  in  1926  and  1928,  Barcelona  in 
1928  and  1934.  He  conducted  a  volu- 
minous if  sporadic  correspondence.  He 
lectured  at  Glasgow,  Liverpool,  Oxford, 
and  elsewhere ;  broadcast  several  series  of 
talks;  edited  (1931)  Bach's  'Kunst'der 
Fuge',  finishing  the  last  incomplete  fugue 
and  writing  a  rich  commentary  on  the 
whole ;  continually  absorbing  music  by 
some  process  of  study  unknown  to  ordi-  ] 


868 


D.N.B.  1031-1040 


Tovey 


nary  musicians.  He  finished  the  opera,  and 
he  wrote  in  1933  a  'cello  concerto  for 
Senor  Paulo  Casals  (performed  in  1934  and 
1937).  All  this,  added  to  his  constant 
imiversity  work,  brought  on  illnesses  and 
an  increasing  rheumatic  disability  of  the 
hands,  which  crippled  him  in  his  last 
years.  He  died  in  Edinburgh  10  July 
1940.  A  previous  union  was  declared  null ; 
he  married  in  1925  Clara  Georgina,  young- 
est daughter  of  Richard  Wallace,  mer- 
chant, of  Edinburgh:  there  was  no  issue 
of  the  marriage.  He  was  knighted  in  1935. 

As  a  pianist  Tovey  was  without  question 
in  the  first  rank  among  players  of  his  day, 
though  he  never  embarked  upon  a  vir- 
tuoso's career.  He  played  chamber  music 
with  the  most  eminent  artists  only 
(Joachim  and  his  quartet,  Lady  Hall6, 
Hausmann,  Casals,  Madame  Suggia,  the 
sisters  d'Aranyi),  and  covered  a  wide  area 
in  his  performances.  Interested  in  the 
problems  of  piano-playing  (one  of  the 
first  indeed  to  play  the  double-keyboard- 
action  piano  of  Emanuel  Moor)  he  seemed 
to  unfold  and  expound  each  work — its 
history,  shape,  and  meaning — as  he 
played.  His  philosophy  of  art  held  that 
each  work  can  have  perfection,  and,  if  a 
great  work,  is  perfect.  As  a  composer  he 
wrote,  consciously,  in  the  idiom  of  the 
German  classics  and  has  been,  perhaps, 
unduly  neglected.  Yet  good  judges  have 
accounted  his  opera  to  be  a  masterpiece  of 
dramatic  declamation  and  of  instrumenta- 
tion, and  the  'cello  concerto,  long  though 
it  is,  has  magnificence. 

Although  five  years  after  his  death  he 
is  known  chiefly  as  a  musical  historian  and 
commentator,  the  writing  of  prose  was 
always  a  secondary  interest  in  Tovey's 
mind.  He  planned  books,  but  never  made 
a  whole  one  himself.  He  had  dreams  of  a 
complete  treatise  of  musical  instruction 
in  four  volumes,  but  wrote  none  of  it.  He 
wrote  prose  to  assist  the  occasion  of 
music,  to  expound  music,  or  to  clarify  it, 
and  he  was  surprised,  and  not  entirely 
pleased,  at  his  vmiversal  acceptance  as  a 
writer.  Actually  he  wrote  for  the  moment, 
and  his  writings  should  be  classed  as 
'occasional',  although,  collected,  they 
make  a  large  corpus  of  musical  learning. 
Apart  from  his  profound  knowledge,  his 
sense  of  exploration,  his  deep  behefs,  and 
examples,  always  apt,  illustrating  what 
he  knew  were  more  than  theories,  Tovey's 
writings  are  characterized,  like  his  talk, 
by  a  brilUant  and  allusive  humour,  by 
reference  to  authors  before  imthought  of 
as  contributing  to  the  practice  of  his  art 


(e.g.  Lewis  Carroll),  by  the  creed  already 
mentioned  that  a  work  can,  and  ought  to 
be,  perfect,  and  by  that  rare  continuity  of 
thought  which  comes  from  an  ever-ready 
mind. 

Those  who  were  not  able  to  be  his  pupils 
at  Edinburgh  University  may  get  some 
sense  of  Tovey  as  a  teacher  by  reading  his 
books  assiduously  and  with  proper 
humour.  His  work  at  Edinburgh  was  con- 
spicuous in  the  history  of  musical  instruc- 
tion in  Great  Britain,  for  it  was  alike 
theoretical  (in  the  learned  meaning)  and 
practical  (in  the  musical).  His  conducting 
of  the  Reid  Orchestra,  not  always  with 
very  good  forces  to  command,  was  vivid 
and  intensely  musical. 

Joachim  accounted  Tovey  the  most 
learned  man  in  music  that  had  ever  lived : 
on  the  ground  that  he  knew  it  all,  and  that 
nowadays  there  is  more  to  know.  He  was 
capable  at  any  moment  of  playing  any 
printed  classical  work  on  the  piano, 
whether  it  were  written  for  five  or  ten  or 
a  hundred  instruments,  and  whether  he 
could  ever  have  heard  it  or  not.  But  he 
was  far  removed  from  the  antiquary,  nor 
did  he  care  greatly  for  musicians'  lives. 

Tovey  was  a  tall,  large  man,  in  youth 
slender  and  ascetic-looking,  but  becoming 
in  appearance  more  robust  as  he  grew 
older.  His  eyes  would  wander  at  times, 
as  if  he  were  thinking  of  something  else 
than  the  subject  under  discussion  (for 
Tovey  discussed  interminably).  Yet  this 
was  not  inattention:  he  was  seeking  for 
the  modern  instance,  in  literature  or  else- 
where. When  he  digressed  from  his  argu- 
ments (as  he  did  at  enormous  length)  it 
was  found  that  the  deviations  were  per- 
fectly apposite  and  illuminating.  His 
reading,  outside  music,  consisted  of 
detective  stories,  humorous  works  of  all 
grades,  especially  verse  (he  set  Lear  and 
Hilaire  Belloc  brilliantly  to  music),  the 
EncyclopcBdia  Britannica,  and  any  book 
containing  information  about  the  arts. 
His  upbringing  led  him  towards  Bee- 
thoven as  the  principal  star  in  his  galaxy ; 
but  in  the  end  he  came  to  love  Haydn 
most  of  all,  and  he  was  very  sympathetic 
towards  the  less  formally  rhythmic  music 
of  Palestrina  and  of  the  EngUsh  Tudor 
masters. 

A  portrait  of  Tovey  by  Otto  Schlapp 
hangs  in  the  music  classroom  of  Edin- 
burgh University.  Two  portraits  by 
P.  A.  de  Ldszl6  and  other  pictures  hang 
in  the  Donald  Tovey  Memorial  Rooms  in 
Buccleuch  Place,  Edinburgh,  dedicated 
by  Dr.  Sophie  Weisse  to  his  memory,  with 


860 


Tovey 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


an  endowment  in  the  keeping  of  the 
university.  His  library  is  also  there,  in 
classrooms  used  by  the  faculty  of  music. 

[Preface  by  E.  Walker  to  Sir  D.  F.  Tovey, 
A  Musician  Talks  (edited  by  H.  J.  Foss), 
2  vols.,  1941 ;  Music  Review,  February  1942 ; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 
Hubert  J.  Foss. 

TOYNBEE,  PAGET  JACKSON  (1855- 
1932),  Dante  scholar,  was  born  at 
Wimbledon  20  January  1855,  the  third  of 
the  four  sons  of  the  aural  surgeon  Joseph 
Toynbee  [q.v.],  by  his  wife,  Harriet, 
daughter  of  Nathaniel  Holmes  and  niece 
of  the  antiquary  John  Holmes  [q.v.].  He 
was  a  younger  brother  of  Arnold  Toynbee 
and  a  second  cousin  of  Sir  C.  J.  Holmes 
[qq.v.].  Educated  at  Haileybury  and 
BaUiol  College,  Oxford,  he  worked  for 
some  years  as  a  private  tutor,  but  in  1892 
he  abandoned  teaching  and  devoted  him- 
self entirely  to  research,  more  especially 
to  the  study  of  Dante.  Noteworthy 
among  his  massive  contributions  to  Dante 
scholarship  are  the  Dictionary  of  Proper 
Names  and  Notable  Matters  in  the  Works 
of  Dante  (1898)  which,  with  its  revised  and 
abbreviated  edition,  the  Concise  Dante 
Dictionary  (1914),  became  the  indispens- 
able handbook  of  Dante  students ;  Dante 
in  English  Literature  from  Chaucer  to  Cary 
(2  vols.,  1909)  which  brought  together 
practically  all  that  was  written  in  English 
about  Dante;  and  his  very  valuable 
emended  text  of  Dante's  Epistolae  (1920) 
with  introduction  and  notes.  Although  he 
confined  himself  to  the  accumulation  and 
elucidation  of  facts,  making  no  attempt  at 
literary  appreciation,  his  exhaustive 
memory  and  tireless  energy  won  for  him 
a  world-wide  reputation  as  a  Dantist.  He 
was  one  of  the  very  few  Englishmen  to  be 
made  a  corresponding  member  of  the 
ItaUan  Reale  Accademia  della  Crusca. 

In  1894  Toynbee  married  Helen,  second 
daughter  of  Edwin  Grundy  Wrigley,  of 
Bury,  Lancashire,  who  devoted  herself  to 
editing  the  letters  of  Horace  Walpole. 
After  her  death  in  1910,  Toynbee  took  up 
the  imfinished  task  and  Horace  Walpole, 
to  whom  Dante  resembled  'a  Methodist 
parson  in  Bedlam',  thenceforth  shared 
Dante's  place  in  his  activities.  Three 
supplementary  volumes  of  Letters  (1918- 
1925)  and  the  Correspondence  of  Gray, 
Walpole,  West  and  Ashton  (2  vols.,  1915) 
are  representative  only  of  his  achieve- 
ments in  this  new  sphere.  Latterly 
Toynbee,  who  had  no  children,  lived  the 
life  of  a  recluse  at  'Fiveways',  the  house 


which  he  built  at  Burnham,  Buckingham- 
shire, his  principal  companion  being  al 
tame  robin.   He  emerged  occasionally  to] 
stay  with  his  friend  and  fellow  Dantist,] 
WilUam  Walrond  Jackson,  for  meetingsJ 
of  the  Oxford  Dante  Society,  of  which  hej 
was  for  long  the  moving  spirit.  Among  hisl 
last  services  to  Dante  scholarship  were  the 
revision  of  the  Oxford  Dante  for  its  fourth 
edition  (1924)  and  the  bequest  of  a  valu- 
able collection  of  books  to  the  Bodleian 
Library  to  which  he  had  made  notable 
benefactions  in  1912-1917  and  in  1923. 
He   died   at   'Fiveways'    13   May   1932. 
With  him  passed  the  last  of  the  great 
English  Dantists. 

Toynbee  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy,  of  which  he  was  Serena 
gold  medallist,  in  1919,  and  an  honorary 
fellow  of  BaUiol  College  in  1922.  In  1923 
the  university  of  Edinburgh  conferred 
upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 

[The  Times,  16  May  1932 ;  E.  G.  Gardner, 
Paget  Toynbee,  1855-1932  in  Proceedings  of 
the  British  Academy,  vol.  xviii,  1932 ;  Oxford 
Magazine,  26  May  1932 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Cecilia  M.  Ady. 

TRENT,  first  Baron  (1850-1931),  man 
of  business  and  philanthropist.  [See 
Boot,  Jesse.] 

TREVETHIN,  first  Baron  (1843- 
1936),  lord  chief  justice  of  England.  [See 
Lawrence,  Alfred  Tristram.] 

TROTTER,  WILFRED  BATTEN 
LEWIS  (1872-1939),  surgeon,  physiolo- 
gist, and  philosopher,  the  third  son  of 
Howard  Birt  Trotter,  merchant,  of  Cole- 
ford,  Gloucestershire,  by  his  wife,  Frances 
Lewis,  was  born  at  Coleford  3  November 
1872.  His  childhood  was  one  of  ill  health 
and  invaUdism  until  at  the  age  of  sixteen; 
his  father  having  moved  to  London,  he 
entered  University  College  School.  He 
passed  thence  in  1891  to  University 
College  and  University  College  Hospital, 
and  after  a  brilliant  career  as  a  medical 
undergraduate  he  qualified  in  1896, 
thereafter  rapidly  taking  the  higher 
medical  and  surgical  degrees  and  quaU- 
fications. 

During  his  student  years  and  in  the 
ensuing  period  Trotter  was  fortunate  in-; 
coming  under  the  influence  of  some  of  the 
eminent  men  who  at  that  time  adorned 
the  medical  faculty  at  University  College. 
His  reflective  mind  responded  to  the 
stimulus  of  such  teachers  as  (Sir)  Vic- 
tor   Horsley    and    (Sir)   J.   R.   Bradford 


870 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Trotter 


[qq .v.], themselves  distinguished  scientists 
and  clinicians  of  the  first  rank.  On  the 
technical  side  of  his  work  as  a  surgeon  he 
owed  a  great  deal  to  his  chief,  Arthur 
Barker,  who  was  a  pioneer  in  the  develop- 
ment of  those  refined  methods  that  distin- 
guish modem  surgery. 

In  these  congenial  surroundings  and  in 
this  inspiring  atmosphere,  Trotter  de- 
veloped those  balanced  and  harmonious 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart  which  marked 
him  out  as  at  once  the  superbly  skilled 
surgical  craftsman,  the  clinician  of  fine 
judgement  and  deep  human  insight,  the 
exact  and  imaginative  experimentalist, 
the  inspiring  teacher  and  philosopher. 
Throughout  his  active  life  his  range  of 
interests  did  not  diminish,  and  at  his 
death  he  had  achieved  an  influence 
amongst  his  professional  brethren  in  this 
country  that  has  scarcely  been  equalled  by 
any  man  since  the  days  of  John  Himter. 

In  the  opening  years  of  the  present 
century  a  delay  in  the  occurrence  of  a 
vacancy  on  the  surgical  staff  of  University 
College  Hospital  gave  Trotter,  then  a 
young  man  of  just  over  thirty,  the  leisure 
to  follow  his  scientific  and  philosophical 
bent,  and  in  1908  and  1909  there  appeared 
two  papers  by  him  in  the  Sociological 
Review  entitled  'The  Instincts  of  the 
Herd',  which  were  the  first  major  exposi- 
tion of  herd  psychology.  These,  together 
with  additional  essays  in  amplification  of 
his  original  theme,  were  published  in  book 
form  in  1916  under  the  title  of  Instincts  of 
the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War.  In  the  two 
European  wars  of  the  present  century,  the 
remarkably  penetrating  analysis  of  Ger- 
man mass  psychology  revealed  by  these 
essays  was  widely  recognized,  and  they 
have  been  amongst  the  formative  in- 
fluences in  the  growth  of  the  study  of 
social  psychology. 

During  the  same  period,  with  a  colla- 
borator, Mr.  Hugh  Morriston  Davies, 
Trotter  was  engaged  upon  an  extensive 
and  minute  investigation  of  the  physiology 
of  cutaneous  sensation  in  man.  Consider- 
ably amplifying  the  earlier  studies  on  this 
subject  of  (Sir)  Henry  Head  [q.v.],  the 
two  workers  divided  no  less  than  five 
cutaneous  nerves  in  themselves,  doing  this 
in  such  a  time-sequence  that  every  stage 
of  nerve  regeneration  and  sensory  restora- 
tion could  be  studied  contemporaneously. 
This  investigation  added  considerably  to 
that  of  Head  in  the  matter  of  the  actual 
information  obtained,  and,  in  virtue  of 
the  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  it,  may 
be   said   to   have   replaced   entirely   the 

871 


hypothesis  as  to  the  constitution  of  the 
afferent  nervous  system  postulated  by 
Head.  There  is  a  brilliance  and  minute 
accuracy  about  this  study,  and  a  masterly 
breadth  of  interpretation  of  the  facts  of 
observation,  that  make  of  it  one  of  the 
principal  pieces  of  modem  medical  re- 
search. It  bears  the  hall  mark  of  scientific 
genius. 

While  engaged  upon  these  diverse 
activities.  Trotter,  who  was  surgeon  to 
University  College  Hospital  from  1906  to 
1939,  was  also  building  up  a  reputation  as 
a  leader  amongst  practising  surgeons  and 
teachers  of  surgery.  His  diagnostic 
acumen,  his  gift  for  handling  the  human 
material  of  his  work,  and  his  refined 
surgical  technique  marked  him  out 
amongst  the  surgeons  of  the  opening  years 
of  the  century,  and  by  the  time  of  his 
death  had  gained  for  him  an  almost 
legendary  fame  within  the  ranks  of  his 
profession  and  of  those  who  were  his 
patients.  Much  new  work  in  surgery  came 
from  him ;  a  technique  for  dealing  with  a 
particularly  difficult  form  of  malignant 
disease,  advances  in  the  surgery  of  the 
brain  and  spinal  cord,  together  with 
original  papers  in  which  nosological 
entities  were  disentangled  and  clearly 
described.  Trotter's  teaching  of  surgery 
was  one  of  his  finest  gifts.  He  maintained 
it  on  what  Newman  would  have  regarded 
as  a  true  university  level,  and  it  was  never 
mere  technical  instruction.  It  was  charac- 
teristic of  him  that  in  1935  he  should 
have  retired  from  his  large  private 
practice  and  devoted  his  remaining  years 
entirely  to  his  work  at  University  College 
Hospital.  He  took  over  the  professorship 
of  surgery  and  the  directorship  of  the 
surgical  vmit  there,  and  for  the  three  years 
of  active  professional  hfe  that  were  left  to 
him  set  himself  to  the  training  of  a  few 
young  surgeons. 

During  the  last  fifteen  years  of  Trotter's 
life  there  came  from  his  pen,  usually  to  be 
delivered  as  addresses,  a  series  of  essays 
on  the  role  of  general  principles  and  of 
abstract  thought  in  the  development  of 
medicine,  the  relations  of  clinical  and 
experimental  study,  the  nature  and 
limitations  of  the  intellect,  and  upon 
divers  aspects  of  nervous  activity. 
Couched  in  a  clear  and  lively  English, 
informed  by  a  humane  and  philosophical 
spirit,  and  not  without  a  fine  wit,  these 
essays  have  come  to  exert  a  profound 
influence  upon  the  thought  of  those  young 
men  who  will  be  the  leaders  of  medical 
science   and   art.    Published   under   the 


Trotter 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


title  of  The  Collected  Papers  of  Wilfred 
Trotter  (1941),  they  promise  to  join  the 
select  list  of  classics  which,  like  Osier's 
Aequanimitas,  have  come  from  the  pens 
of  medical  men  to  whom  they  are  particu- 
larly addressed. 

Although  attaining  the  highest  place  in 
the  regard  and  respect  of  his  colleagues 
and  juniors,  Trotter  remained  a  naturally 
simple  and  modest  man.  He  lived  a  life 
apart  and  few  were  admitted  to  his  in- 
timacy, yet  in  company  his  conversation 
was  a  delight,  his  wit  of  rapier  quality,  and 
his  range  of  subjects  inexhaustible.  He 
was  a  lover  of  English  prose,  and  possessed 
a  wide  familiarity  with  English  literature. 
When  he  could  be  induced  to  discuss  it,  he 
displayed  a  keen  interest  in  the  modern 
schools  of  philosophy,  and  his  critical 
mind  moved  easily  and  with  delight  in 
this  difficult  field  of  human  thought. 

Many  academic  honours,  including 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Liverpool  and  Edinburgh,  were  conferred 
upon  Trotter,  He  was  elected  F.R.S.  in 
1931  (the  only  surgeon  of  his  generation 
to  be  so  distinguished),  later  becoming 
vice-president  of  the  Royal  Society  and 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  of  which 
latter  he  was  Hiuiterian  professor  in  1913 
and  Hunterian  orator  in  1922.  In  1928  he 
was  appointed  honorary  surgeon  to  King 
George  V,  and  in  1932  serjeant  surgeon. 
From  1929  to  1933  he  was  a  member  of 
the  Medical  Research  Council.  All  public 
honours  he  decUned,  out  of  a  sense  that  a 
man  should  be  content  with  the  judge- 
ment of  his  professional  and  scientific 
peers  and  seek  no  other  formal  distinc- 
tions. In  the  councils  of  his  profession  he 
held  a  tinique  place,  and  he  was  one  of 
those  rare  men  around  whose  name  and 
character  legend  begins  early  to  gather. 
He  may  be  judged  the  greatest  surgeon  of 
the  present  century  in  this  country,  and 
one  sure  of  a  permanent  place  in  the 
record  of  British  medicine. 

Trotter  married  in  1910  Elizabeth  May, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Jones,  colliery  owner, 
and  had  a  son.  He  died  at  Blackmoor, 
Hampshire,  25  November  1939.  A  por- 
trait of  him  by  M,  Ayoub  hangs  in  the 
medical  school  of  University  College 
Hospital. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  9,  January  1941  (bibliography 
and  portrait) ;  British  Medical  Journal,  1939, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  1117-1119;  Lancet,  1939,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  1244-1246;  University  College  Hospital 
Magazine,  vol.  xxv,  1940;  personal  know- 
ledge.] F.  M.  R.  Walshe. 


TROUP,  ROBERT  SCOIT  (1874 
1939),  forestry  expert,  was  born  al 
Neithrop,  near  Banbury,  Oxfordshire] 
13  December  1874,  the  second  son  ol 
James  Troup,  consul-general  at  YokoJ 
hama,  by  his  wife,  Hannah  Scott.  Edi 
cated  successively  at  the  Gymnasiur 
grammar  school,  and  imiversity  of  Aber- 
deen, he  went  in  1894  to  the  Engineering 
CoUege  at  Coopers  Hill  for  training  for  the 
Indian  forest  service.  He  passed  out  at 
the  head  of  his  year  and  was  posted  to 
Burma  in  1897.  As  a  relatively  junior 
officer  he  was  put  in  charge  of  the  impor- 
tant Tharrawaddy  division,  where  he  con- 
tributed much  towards  the  technical 
advance  in  the  raising  and  management 
of  teak  forests.  When  the  Forest  Re- 
search Institute  was  founded  at  Dehra 
Dun,  India,  in  1906,  he  filled  at  first  the 
post  of  forest  economist,  and  spent  two 
fruitful  years  collecting  and  publishing 
information  on  the  utiUzation  of  timberi 
and  other  forest  products.  He  then 
changed  to  the  study  of  Indian  silvi- 
culture in  which  he  was  especially  interested 
and  in  which  he  became  the  acknow- 
ledged leading  authority.  He  travelled 
extensively  in  India  and  Burma  recording 
detailed  observations  on  the  forests  and 
trees,  and  initiating  experiments  on  many 
forest  problems,  particularly  on  the 
growth  and  regeneration  of  the  main  tree 
species.  This  experimental  work  marked 
the  introduction  into  India  of  systematic 
research  in  these  subjects,  whilst  the 
collected  information,  supplemented  by 
the  results  of  his  experiments  in  the  pro- 
vinces  and  in  Dehra,  ultimately  appeared 
in  1921  as  his  most  important  publication, 
the  three  volumes  on  the  Silviculture  o] 
Indian  Trees.  Troup  did  not  publish  much 
statistical  work,  as  the  measurement  plots 
which  he  initiated  could  only  yield  the 
desired  growth  data  after  a  considerable 
lapse  of  time,  but  most  of  the  later  studies 
have  been  in  part  based  on  his  plots  and 
methods  and  would  have  been  consider- 
ably delayed  without  them. 

In  1915  Troup  left  Dehra  in  order  to 
become  assistant  inspector-general  of 
forests,  serving  with  (Sir)  George  Hart, 
and  in  1917  he  was  appointed  war  con- 
troller of  timber  suppUes  to  the  Indian 
Munitions  Board,  a  post  which  he  held 
until  February  1918.  His  services  to 
India  were  recognized  in  1920  by  his 
appointment  as  C.I.E. 

On  the  retirement  of  Sir  William 
Schlich  [q.v.]  .from  the  Oxford  chair  of 
forestry  in  1920,  Troup,  one  of  Schlich's 


872 


D.N.B.  1981-1040 


Tucker 


own  pupils,  was  elected  professor  and  held 
this  post  until  his  death  at  Oxford 
1  October  1939.  During  this  period  he 
was  a  fellow  of  St.  John's  College.  His 
interests  were  now  widened  to  include  the 
forests  of  the  Colonies  and  the  Empire, 
and  he  took  a  leading  part  in  successive 
Empire  Forest  Conferences  in  London 
(1920),  Canada  (1923),  AustraUa  (1928), 
and  South  Africa  (1935),  as  well  as  in  the 
International  Forest  Congress  at  Rome 
(1926)  and  at  Budapest  (1936).  It  was 
largely  on  account  of  his  representations 
that  the  Imperial  Forestry  Institute  was 
founded  at  Oxford  in  1924  for  higher 
studies  and  research  in  forestry,  he  him- 
self being  its  first  director  imtil  the  end  of 
1935.  Subsequently,  all  members  of  the 
Colonial  forest  service  have  attended  the 
institute  for  advanced  study.  Troup  also 
gave  courses  on  colonial  forestry  to  pro- 
bationers of  the  Colonial  administrative 
service  at  both  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
and  his  lectures  were  published  post- 
humously in -book  form  under  the  title 
Colonial  Forest  Administration  (1940). 
He  paid  official  visits  to  several  Colonies 
in  order  to  examine  the  forest  position  and 
problems  and  his  reports  on  Kenya  and 
Uganda  (1922),  Cyprus  (1930),  and  Tan- 
ganyika (1935)  are  important  historical 
documents.  For  this  work  for  the  Colonies 
he  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1934.  He  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1926. 

Troup's  specialized  knowledge  and 
experience  of  tropical  forestry  did  not 
preclude  a  keen  interest  in  British  and 
temperate  forestry.  He  made  a  useful 
contribution  towards  an  vmderstanding 
of  a  major  problem  through  one  of  his  last 
publications,  on  Forestry  and  State  Control 
(1938),  whilst  his  book  on  Silvicultural 
Systems  (1928)  is  the  standard  work  on  the 
subject. 

Troup  married  in  1901  Elizabeth  Camp- 
bell, elder  daughter  of  John  Mortimer,  an 
Aberdeen  merchant,  and  had  two  sons  and 
a  daughter. 

There  is  a  portrait  of  Troup  by  P.  A. 
Hay  (1932)  at  the  School  of  Forestry, 
Oxford. 

[The  Times,  8  October  1939;  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  8, 
January  1940  (portrait);  Empire  Forestry 
Journal,  December  1939;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.]  H.  G.  Champion. 

TUCKER,  Sir  CHARLES  (1838-1935), 
general,  was  born  at  Ashburton,  Devon, 
6  December  1838,  the  younger  son  of 
Robert  Tucker,  of  The  Hall,  Ashburton, 


by  his  wife,  Livinia,  daughter  of  William 
Hancock,  banker,  of  Wiveliscoml>e, 
Somerset.  He  was  educated  at  Marl- 
borough, and,  when  barely  seventeen,  was 
commissioned  in  1855  as  an  ensign  in  the 
22nd  (later  the  Cheshire)  Regiment.  Thus 
early  began  an  army  career  which  was 
to  last  almost  continuously  for  eighty 
years.  He  always  retained  a  regard  for  the 
rank  of  ensign  and  late  in  his  life  was 
urging  its  restoration  in  place  of  second 
lieutenant,  to  which  he  strongly  objected. 
When  over  ninety  he  acknowledged  a 
regimental  telegram  of  birthday  greetings 
with  the  reply :  'Aged  ensign  appreciates.' 
In  May  1860  he  was  promoted  captain  and 
in  November  transferred  to  the  80th 
Staffordshire  Volunteers  (later  the  2nd 
South  Staffordshire  Regiment).  Thus 
began  a  connexion  which  ended  more  than 
seventy-five  years  later,  when  he  died  as 
colonel  of  the  South  Staffordshire  Regi- 
ment. 

In  1865  Tucker  first  saw  active  service, 
when  his  battalion  was  engaged  in  the 
Bhootan  expedition  which  avenged  the 
massacre  of  a  British  post  at  Diwangari. 
Ten  years  later  the  battalion  was  stationed 
in  the  Straits  Settlements:  during  the 
minor  operations  at  Perak  in  1875  he 
held  his  first  staff  appointment  on  active 
service  as  brigade  major.  He  was  pro- 
moted brevet  major  in  1872  and  to  the 
substantive  rank  in  1877.  In  the  following 
year  he  was  second-in-command  of  his 
battalion  in  South  Africa  during  the  early 
operations  against  Sekukini,  the  Kaffir 
chieftain.  Before  the  year  was  out  he  was 
officiating  in  command  of  the  80th  Regi- 
ment in  the  valley  of  the  Pongolo  when  the 
full-scale  operations  against  the  Zulus 
began.  He  was  among  the  first  on  the  spot 
after  the  disaster  which  befell  one  of  his 
companies  at  the  Intombi  River  Drift.  He 
later  saw  that  disaster  avenged,  for  the 
80th  was  on  the  front  face  of  the  square 
at  Ulundi  (4  July  1879)  and  bore  the  full 
impact  of  the  charges  of  the  Zulu  impis 
in  that  action  which,  culminating  in  the 
destruction  of  the  town  and  the  chief's 
kraal,  brought  the  operations  to  a  close. 
He  was  promoted  lieutenant-colonel  and, 
with  two  mentions  in  dispatehes  to  his 
credit,  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1879.  After 
some  seven  months  on  half-pay  as  brevet 
colonel  he  was  appointed  commander, 
Middlesex  regimental  district,  Hounslow, 
in  February  1885,  and  in  1891  after 
another  year  on  half-pay,  he  was  first 
colonel  on  the  staff  and  later  brigadier- 
general  with  the  troops  in  Natal.  He  was 


878 


Tucker 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


promoted  major-general  in  1893  and  in 
1895  left  Natal  for  India  where  he  com- 
manded the  Secmiderabad  district. 

In  December  1899  Tucker  was  sent  to 
command  the  7th  division  under  Lord 
Roberts  in  South  Africa.  His  division 
fought  with  distinction  during  the  opera- 
tions for  the  reUef  of  Kimberley,  the 
rounding  up  of  General  Piet  Cronje,  and 
particularly  at  Poplar  Grove  (7  March 
1900)  during  the  advance  on  Bloem- 
fontein.  After  the  fall  of  Pretoria  he 
conunanded  a  mixed  force  which,  based 
on  Bloemfontein,  occupied  a  section  of  the 
lines  of  communication,  and  he  was  also 
in  charge  of  a  group  of  mobile  columns. 
His  services  gained  the  high  praise  of 
Roberts  and  were  recognized  by  his 
appointment  as  K.C.B.  in  1901.  In  1902 
he  was  promoted  lieutenant-general  and 
in  the  following  year  was  appointed 
commander-in-chief,  Scottish  district 
(later  Command).  He  retired  in  1905  and, 
being  a  close  personal  friend  of  King 
Edward  VII,  he  was  appointed  G.C.V.O. 
in  that  year.  He  spent  many  years  of  his 
retirement  at  Biarritz:  but  soon  military 
duties  brought  him  home  every  year,  for 
he  was  colonel  of  the  Cheshire  Regiment 
from  1909  to  1911  and  thereafter  colonel 
of  the  South  Staffordshire  Regiment,  an 
honour  of  which  he  was  extremely  proud. 
He  was  appointed  G.C.B.  in  1912. 

Tucker  was  twice  married:  first,  in  1865 
to  Matilda  Frederica  (died  1897),  daughter 
of  John  Hayter,  younger  brother  of  Sir 
George  Hayter  [q.v.],  painter-in-ordinary 
to  Queen  Victoria,  and  had  two  sons  and 
a  daughter;  secondly,  in  1902  to  Ellen 
Mary  (died  1945),  only  daughter  of  Sir 
Maurice  James  O'Connell,  second  baronet. 
He  died  at  Biarritz  22  December  1935, 
and  was  buried  with  fuU  military  honours 
at  his  Devon  home,  Ashburton. 

Tucker  is  probably  best  known  for  his 
forcefulness  of  expression ;  tales  about  him 
are  legion  and  his  reputation  on  this  score 
is  legendary.  But  he  was  no  less  forceful 
in  action.  A  firm  disciplinarian,  he  hated 
red  tape;  he  could  stand  up  to  higher 
authority  if  he  thought  that  the  services 
of  his  subordinates  or  the  welfare  of  his 
men  were  receiving  inadequate  recognition 
or  consideration.  Hence,  during  his  eighty 
years'  service,  he  was  both  greatly  loved 
and  highly  respected,  combining,  as  he 
did  in  a  most  marked  degree,  the  qualities 
of  humour  and  humanity. 

Two  portraits  of  Tucker  in  the  mantle 
of  a  Knight  Grand  Cross  of  the  Bath,  by 
H.  A.  Olivier,  are  in  the  possession  of  the 


South  Staffordshire  Regiment,  and  one  ot 
them  is  to  be  seen  in  the  regimental 
museum  at  Davidson  House,  Lichfield. 

[The  Times,  24  December  1935  ;  regimental 
papers ;  J.  P.  Jones,  History  of  the  South 
Staffordshire  Regiment,  1923 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] G.  Dawes. 

TURNOR,  CHRISTOPHER  HATTON 

(1873-1940),  agricultural  and  social  re- 
former, was  born  at  Toronto,  Canada, 
23  November  1873,  the  only  child  of 
Christopher  Hatton  Turnor,  whose  family 
had  been  seated  at  Stoke  Rochford,  near 
Grantham,  since  the  second  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  was  great- 
grandson  of  the  antiquary  Edmimd 
Turnor  [q.v.].  His  mother  was  Alice 
Margaret,  eldest  daughter  of  Hamilton 
H.  Eallally,  of  Toronto,  whose  family  had 
Canadian  blood  on  one  side,  a  fact  of 
which  the  subject  of  this  notice  was 
proud.  His  parents  were  ardent  Ply- 
mouth Brethren,  and  he  acquired  an  un- 
conventional education  with  them  as  a 
boy,  while  they  crusaded  up  and  down 
North  America,  from  Canada  to  Florida. 
There  followed  a  period  of  residence  at  the 
Royal  Agricultural  College,  Cirencester, 
after  which  he  matriculated  at  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  and  graduated  in  1896, 
On  leaving  the  tmiversity,  he  studied 
architecture,  and  the  Watts  Picture 
Gallery  at  Compton,  in  Surrey,  and  a  few 
private  houses  are  evidence  of  the  quality 
of  his  work. 

In  1903,  however,  on  the  sudden  death 
of  his  tincle,  Turnor  succeeded  to  Stoke 
Rochford  Hall  and  the  family  estates  ia 
Lincolnshire  of  some  24,000  acres,  and 
architecture  had  to  be  relegated  to  the 
background.  It  was  a  difficult  time  for  the 
yoiuig  heir,  for  agriculture  had  hardly 
then  emerged  from  the  great  depression, 
and  he  had  to  take  over  some  4,000  acres 
of  land  in  hand,  which  was  being  farmed 
at  a  loss.  Tumor  set  himself  to  study  the 
problems  of  administration.  He  was  not 
prepared  to  acquiesce  in  the  conventional 
attitude  of  many  of  his  contemporaries 
towards  their  estates.  He  did  not  believe 
that  there  was  no  future  in  the  land,  nor 
could  he  rest  content  in  the  mere  enjoy- 
ment of  its  amenities.  The  ownership  of 
land  was  a  trust,  and  he  was  convinced 
that  there  was  a  great  work  to  be  done  by  j 
anyone  prepared  to  devote  himself  to  it  1 
in  the  spirit  of  adventure.  Over  most  of 
England  agricultural  development  had 
been  at  a  standstill  for  five-and-twenty 
years,  and  he  threw  himself  with  zest  into 


874 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Tutton 


the  inauguration  of  a  new  era  of  estate 
management  on  his  property.  One  half  of 
the  land  in  hand  was  soon  re-let,  and 
highly  qualified  farm  managers,  one  of 
them  a  Dane,  were  placed  in  charge  of  the 
rest.  A  tenant  was  found  for  the  mansion 
at  Stoke  Rochford  and  for  much  of  the 
shooting.  Housing  for  the  rural  worker, 
the  evolution  of  the  stereotyped  local 
agriculture,  and  the  provision  of  small 
holdings  as  stepping  stones  for  enterprising 
farm  workers  emerged  as  Tumor's  parti- 
cular interests.  But  he  did  not  confine 
himself  to  agriculture,  and  in  later  years, 
when  he  had  resumed  occupation  of  his 
great  mansion  at  Stoke  Rochford,  he 
devoted  most  of  it  to  summer  schools  for 
teachers  and  for  Workers'  Educational 
Association  students,  and  to  conferences, 
both  organized  and  informal,  on  social 
and  religious  questions.  The  development 
of  education,  indeed,  might  be  regarded  as 
his  most  enduring  work.  His  agricultural 
activities  made  few  converts,  but  he  was 
a  convincing  speaker  at  any  gathering  at 
which  educational  reform  was  the  subject 
for  discussion,  and  he  gave  his  time  and 
services  extensively  to  this  cause.  The 
fruits  of  his  enthusiasm  are  to  be  seen  in 
the  teachers'  training  college  which  has 
been  established  in  the  mansion  at  Stoke 
Rochford.  He  was  the  author  of  the 
following  books,  which  embody  not  only 
his  theories  but  also  his  experience :  Land 
Problems  and  National  Welfare  (1911); 
Our  Food  Supply  (1916) ;  The  Land  and  the 
Empire  (1917) ;  The  Land  and  its  Problems 
(1921);  Yeoman  Calling  (1939),  and  of 
some  pamphlets  and  articles. 

Tumor  married  in  1907  Sarah  Marie 
Talbot,  only  child  of  Admiral  Walter 
Cecil  Carpenter,  of  KipUn,  Northallerton, 
Yorkshire;  there  was  no  issue  of  the 
marriage.  He  died  at  Torquay  19  August 
1940,  and  was  succeeded  at  Stoke  Roch- 
ford by  his  first  cousin.  Major  Herbert 
Broke  Turnor. 

[The  Times,  22  August  1940;  personal 
knowledge.]  C.  S.  Orwin. 


TUTTON,  ALFRED  EDWIN 

HOWARD  (1864^1938),  crystaUographer 
and  alpinist,  was  born  at  Stoclq)ort 
22  August  1864,  the  only  child  of  James 
Tutton,  Vfenetian  bhnd  manufacturer, 
by  his  wife,  Martha  Howard.  Leaving  the 
national  school,  Edgeley,  at  the  age  of 
thirteen  Tutton  entered  the  office  of  the 
town  clerk  of  Stockport,  and  in  the  even- 
ings attended  classes  at  the  Mechanics 
Institute  and  chemistry  lectures  by  (Sir) 

875 


Henry  Roscoe  [q.v.]  at  the  Owena  College, 

Manchester.  In  1883  on  the  results  of 
examinations  of  the  Science  and  Art 
Department  he  gained  a  royal  exhibition 
to  the  Normal  School  (later  Royal  College) 
of  Science  and  Royal  School  of  Mines 
at  South  Kensington,  where  he  won  the 
Murchison  medal  for  geology  and  the 
prizes  for  physics  and  chemistry.  After  a 
fourth  year,  with  a  teaching  scholarship, 
he  became  an  assistant  demonstrator  in 
chemistry,  being  promoted  full  demon- 
strator and  lecturer  in  1889. 

During  the  years  1886  to  1892  Tutton 
assisted  (Sir)  Edward  Thorpe  [q.v.]  in 
research  work  on  the  oxides  of  phosphorus 
in  relation  to  the  'phossy  jaw'  disease 
of  match-makers.  The  beautiful  cr>'stals 
of  the  new  tetroxide  (PJO4)  turned  his 
attention  to  crystallography  which  then 
in  private  laboratories  at  his  succes- 
sive homes  became  his  life's  work.  He 
speciaUzed  on  the  precise  measurement 
of  the  morphological,  optical,  elasticity, 
and  thermal  expansion  constants  of 
artificially  grown  crystals  of  various 
isomorphous  series.  One  large  series  of 
hydrated  double  sulphates  and  selenates 
of  alkaU  and  bivalent  metals  came  to  be 
known  as  'Tutton  salts'.  He  demon- 
strated that  in  each  series  these  physical 
constants  vary  with  the  atomic  weights 
of  the  replacing  chemical  elements.  All 
his  work  was  marked  by  the  highest  de- 
gree of  accuracy  down  to  the  minutest 
detail.  With  a  modified  form  of  his  inter- 
ferometer the  length  of  the  imperial 
standard  yard  was  determined  in  1931  in 
terms  of  the  wave-length  of  light,  his 
result  being  1,420,210  wave-lengths  of  the 
red  cadmium  line  at  62  degrees  Fahren- 
heit. 

In  1895  Tutton  was  appointed  inspector 
of  technical  schools  imder  the  Board  of 
Education,  being  located  successively  in 
Oxford,  London,  and  Plymouth.  While 
in  Oxford  he  took  the  degrees  of  D.Sc. 
(1903)  and  M.A.  by  decree  of  convocation 
(1905).  On  retiring  from  the  Board  of 
Education  in  1924,  Tutton  Uved  in  Cam- 
bridge, lecturing  on  chemical  crystallo- 
graphy until  1931  when  he  settled  at 
DaUington,  Sussex,  where  he  died  14  July 
1938.  He  married  in  1902  Margaret  Ethel 
MacLannahan,  youngest  daughter  of 
William  Loat,  of  Cumnor  Place,  near 
Oxford,  and  had  two  sons  and  four 
daughters. 

Tutton  wrote  five  books  on  crystals  and 
crystallography;  his  Crystallography  and 
Practical  Crystal  Measurement  (1911 ;  2nd 


Tutton 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


ed.,  2  vols.,  1922)  remains  a  standard 
treatise.  His  recreations  were  music  and 
alpine  photography.  For  thirty  years 
holiday's  were  spent  in  the  Alps  and  from 
his  numerous  photographs  lantern  slides 
were  made  for  his  lectures.  He  wrote  The 
Natural  History  of  Ice  and  Snow,  illus- 
trated from  the  Alps  (1927)  and  The  High 
Alps  (1931).  He  was  a  fellow  of  the 
Chemical  Society  for  fifty  years,  was 
elected  F.R.S.  in  1899,  and  was  president 
of  the  Mineralogical  Society  from  1912  to 
1915.  He  received  the  honorary  degree  of 
D.Sc.  from  Manchester  University  in  1926. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  7,  January  1939  (portrait) ; 
Mineralogical  Magazine,  June  1939  (portrait) ; 
Nature,  20  August  1038 ;  personal  know- 
ledge.] L.  J.  Spencer. 

TWEED,  JOHN  (1869-1933),  sculptor, 
was  bom  in  Glasgow  21  January  1869,  the 
elder  son  of  John  Tweed,  publisher,  of 
Glasgow,  by  his  second  wife,  Elizabeth 
Montgomery.  He  was  educated  at  Hutche- 
son's  Boys'  Grammar  School,  Glasgow. 
In  1885  his  father's  death  necessitated  his 
leaving  school  in  order  to  take  his  part  in 
the  family  business.  His  natural  talent  for 
drawing  and  modelling  occupied  his  leisure 
hours,  and  a  little  later  a  teaching  scholar- 
ship at  the  Glasgow  School  of  Art  gave 
him  the  opportunity  to  develop  this  more 
seriously.  During  these  years  he  worked 
with  the  sculptors  G.  A.  Lawson  [q.v.], 
J.  A.  Ewing,  and  J.  Pittendrigh  Mac- 
gillivray. 

Setting  his  heart  upon  the  career  of  a 
sculptor,  Tweed  was  able  to  sell  the 
publishing  business,  and  in  1890  he  left 
Glasgow  for  London,  where  he  had  been 
promised  a  teaching  appointment.  This 
appointment,  however,  came  to  nothing, 
and  instead  Tweed  was  taken  into  the 
studio  of  (Sir  William)  Hamo  Thorny  croft 
[q.v.].  During  the  next  two  years  he 
received  instruction  first  at  the  Lambeth 
School  of  Art  and  then  at  the  Royal 
Academy  Schools.  Success  in  a  competi- 
tion for  a  group  of  figures  on  the  fa9ade  of 
a  pubUc  building  in  Edinburgh,  and 
several  private  commissions  for  portrait 
busts  enabled  Tweed  to  visit  Paris  in 
1893  and  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the 
sculptor  Auguste  Rodin,  whom  he  especi- 
ally admired.  This  acquaintance  quickly 
developed  into  a  warm  friendship,  to  be 
terminated  only  by  Rodin's  death  in  1917. 
While  in  Paris  Tweed  worked  for  a  few 
months  at  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts  xuider 
Jean    Alexandre    Joseph    Falguiere.     In 


October  1893  he  returned  to  London 
order  to  execute  his  first  important  com^ 
mission.    This  came  from  Cecil  Rhodei 
and  was  for  a  relief  representing  'Th( 
Landing  of  Van  Riebeck',   destined 
decorate   Rhodes's   residence   at   Groo' 
Schuur.    The  model  for  this  work  wi 
exhibited  at  the  Royal  Academy  in  1894.^ 
Although  Tweed's  dealings  with  Rhodes 
were  marked  by  some  differences  of  feeling 
on  either  side,  this  South  African  com- 
mission was  followed  by  others,  notably 
for  full-length  statues  of  Van  Riebeck  in 
Cape  Town  (1899)  and  of  Rhodes  himself 
at  Bulawayo  (1902). 

During  the  next  ten  years  Tweed  made 
a  considerable  name  as  a  portrait  and 
memorial  sculptor.  In  1902  he  was  offered 
a  commission  which  resulted  in  an  acri- 
monious controversy ;  this  was  to  carry  to 
their  conclusion  the  designs  of  Alfred 
Stevens  [q.v.]  for  the  memorial  to  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 
The  controversy  was  too  involved  and 
drawn  out  to  be  described  here ;  but  when 
the  memorial — a  bronze  equestrian  statue 
— ^was  unveiled  in  1912,  it  met  with 
general  approval.  In  the  meantime  Tweed 
had  carried  out  several  important 
memorial  statues,  including  those  to  the 
third  Lord  Chesham  at  Aylesbury  (1910), 
Captain  James  Cook  at  Whitby  (1912), 
and  Lord  Clive  in  Charles  II  Street,  St, 
James's  Square  (1912). 

Tweed  spent  the  greater  part  of  the 
years  of  the  war  of  1914-1918  in  London. 
During  this  period  he  executed  a  memorial 
bust  of  Joseph  Chamberlain  [q.v.]  which 
was  unveiled  in  Westminster  Abbey 
1916,  and  the  recumbent  marble  effigy  of 
Sir  William  Anson  [q.v.]  for  All  Souls 
College  Chapel,  Oxford  (1918).  In  the  last 
named  year  he  spent  some  months  in 
France,  commissioned  by  General  Smuts 
to  make  sketches  for  a  South  African  war 
memorial ;  this  scheme,  however,  was  not 
carried  out.  After  the  armistice  he  was 
more  than  ever  occupied  with  memorial 
statuary :  he  executed  in  all  twelve  large- 
scale  works  between  this  date  and  1930, 
notably  war  memorials  for  the  King's 
Royal  Rifle  Corps  at  Winchester  (1922) 
and  for  the  Rifle  Brigade  in  Grosvenor 
Place,  London  (1925) ;  a  memorial  to  Lord 
Kitchener  on  the  Horse  Guards  Parade 
(1925) ;  and  two  memorials  to  Cecil 
Rhodes,  at  Salisbury,  Rhodesia  (1928), 
and  Mafeking  (1932).  He  also  executed  a 
statue  of  Lord  Ronaldshay  for  Calcutta 
(1923).  During  this  period  he  found  time 
to  travel  abroad,  twice  to  Egypt,  and,  in 


1 


876 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Unwin,  R. 


1928,  to  South  Africa,  where  he  was  able 
to  see  for  the  first  time  many  of  his  works 
in  their  final  situations. 

Tweed's  last  large-scale  imdertaking 
was  the  Peers'  war  memorial  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  which  was  unveiled  in  1932.  In 
Jime  1933  a  comprehensive  exhibition  of 
his  work  was  held  at  Messrs.  Knoedler's 
Galleries,  London.  His  heart  had  been 
failing  for  some  time  and  he  died  in  London 
12  November  1933.  He  married  in  1895 
Edith,  second  daughter  of  Wilham  Clinton, 
auctioneer,  of  Aldershot,  and  had  a  son 
and  two  daughters.  A  memorial  exhibition 
of  his  work  was  held  at  the  Imperial  Insti- 
tute, South  Kensington,  in  June  1934. 

Although  Tweed's  work  is  chiefly  notable 
for  its  rugged  power,  some  of  his  female 
portrait  busts  have  considerable  grace  and 
charm.  The  influence  of  Rodin  is  some- 
times apparent. 

A  portrait  of  Tweed  by  Theodore 
Roussel  is  in  the  possession  of  the  family. 

[The  Times,  13  November  1933;  Lendal 
Tweed  and  Francis  Watson,  John  Tweed, 
Sculptor.  A  Memoir,  1936  (with  list  of  works) ; 
Ulrich  Thieme  and  Felix  Becker,  Allgemeines 
Lexikon  der  Bildenden  Kilnstler,  vol.  xxxiii, 
1939;  Art  Journal,  February  1910;  private 
information.]  Jamks  Laveb. 

TWEEDSMUIR,  first  Baron  (1875- 
1940),  author  and  governor-general  of 
Canada.  [See  Buchan,  John.] 

TYNAN,  KATHARINE  (1861-1931), 
poet  and  noveUst.   [See  Hinkson.] 

UNWIN,  Sir  RAYMOND  (1863-1940), 
architect,  was  born  at  Rotherham,  York- 
shire, 2  November  1863,  the  yoimger  son 
of  Wilham  Unwin,  an  Oxford  private 
coach,  by  his  wife,  EUzabeth,  daughter  of 
James  Sully,  of  Bridgwater.  He  was 
educated  at  Magdalen  School  and  was 
afterwards  tramed  for  the  professions  of 
engineering  and  architecture,  in  the  latter 
of  which  he  began  to  practice  in  1896  in 
partnership  with  Richard  Barry  Parker. 
In  this  association  he  first  came  into 
prominence  by  their  planning  in  1904  the 
New  Earswick  model  village,  near  York, 
for  the  Joseph  Rowntree  Village  Trust 
[see  Rowntree,  Joseph,  1836-1925] ;  and 
afterwards,  on  a  larger  scale,  the  partners 
designed  the  first  Garden  City  at  Letch- 
worth  and  the  Hampstead  Garden  Suburb, 
which  was  opened  in  1907.  After  1910, 
when  he  organized  the  Town  Planning 
Conference  of  the  Royal  Institute  of 
British  Architects,  the  architectural  side 
of  Unwin's  hfe  was  almost  whoUy  devoted 


to  town  planning.  From  1911  he  was 
lecturer  in  town  planning  at  the  imivereity 
of  Birmingham  until  in  1914  he  became 
chief  town  planning  inspector  under  the 
Local  Government  Board.  The  war  of 
1914-1918  gave  him  fresh  opportunities, 
for  under  the  Ministry  of  Munitions  he 
designed  the  towns  growing  round  such 
munition  factories  as  Gretna  Green,  and 
thereafter  he  returned  to  the  Ministry  of 
Health  as  chief  architect  and  later  chief 
technical  officer  for  building  and  town 
planning.  His  most  widely  influential 
contributions  to  plannmg  may  be  con- 
sidered to  be  in  the  repjort  drawn  up  by 
the  Committee  on  Housing  of  which  Sir 
(John)  Tudor  Walters  was  chairman  (1918) 
and  in  the  Ministry  of  Health's  Housing 
Manual  (1918),  and  these  led  to  his  serving 
on  a  great  number  of  planning  committees 
such  as  the  Building  Research  Board  of 
the  Department  of  Scientific  and  Indus- 
trial Research.  He  retired  from  the  civil 
service  in  1928,  but  his  activities  were  not 
reduced.  From  1929  to  1933  he  served  as 
technical  adviser  to  the  Greater  London 
Regional  Town  Planning  Committee,  and 
from  1931  to  1933  as  president  of  the 
Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects,  the 
gold  medal  of  which  he  was  awarded  in 
1937.  But  in  1936  he  was  appointed 
visiting  professor  of  town  planning  at 
Columbia  University,  and  this  to  some 
extent  severed  his  connexion  with  Great 
Britain,  for  he  was  still  holding  the  post 
when  he  died  at  Lyme,  Connecticut, 
29  Jiuie  1940. 

There  was  a  poUtical  side  to  Unwin's 
Ufe.  In  his  young  days  he  joined  the 
Fabian  Society  and  spoke  frequently  for 
the  labour  'church'  and  the  Ancoats 
'  brotherhood ',  and  this  led  him  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918  to  become  a  member  of 
a  small  group  which  aimed  at  promoting 
a  league  of  nations.  The  fusion  of  this 
group  with  another,  quite  independent  of 
it,  under  H.  G.  Wells,  brought  about  the 
League  of  Nations  Union,  of  the  com- 
mittee of  which  Unwin  was  an  active  and 
constructive  member. 

Unwin  received  many  honours:  he  was 
knighted  in  1932,  and  the  universities  of 
Prague,  Toronto,  Manchester,  Trondhjem, 
and  Harvard  conferred  honorary  degrees 
upon  him.  He  married  in  1893  Ethel, 
elder  daughter  of  Robert  Parker,  bank 
manager,  of  Chesterfield  and  Buxton,  and 
sister  of  his  partner.  By  her  he  had  a  son, 
who  predeceased  him,  and  a  daughter. 
His  work  on  Town  Planning  in  Practice 
(1909)  is  a  classic  in  its  subject,  and  has 


877 


Unwin,  R. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


been  translated  into  French,  German,  and 
Russian.  There  is  a  portrait  by  Sir  George 
Clausen  in  the  rooms  of  the  Royal  In- 
stitute of  British  Architects. 

[The  Times,  1  July  1940 ;  Annual  Register, 
1940;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Barry  Parker. 

UNWIN,  WILLIAM  CAWTHORNE 
(1838-1933),  engineer,  was  born  at  Cogges- 
hall,  Essex,  12  December  1838,  the  eldest 
son  of  William  Jordan  Unwin,  pastor  of 
the  Congregational  chapel  at  Woodbridge, 
Suffolk,  and  later  principal  of  the  Congre- 
gational theological  college  at  Homerton, 
by  his  wife,  EUza  Davey,  daughter  of 
J.  Bailey  Tailer,  of  Woodbridge.  He 
attended  the  City  of  London  School 
(1848-1854)  and  studied  science  for  a  year 
at  New  College,  St.  John's  Wood,  passing 
the  London  matriculation  examination  in 
1855  with  honours  in  chemistry,  and  by 
dint  of  study  in  the  evenings  he  gradu- 
ated B.Sc.  (London)  in  1861. 

By  personal  introduction  Unwin  ob- 
tained in  1856  his  first  appointment  as 
scientific  assistant  in  Manchester  to  (Sir) 
William  Fairbaim  [q.v.],  who  was  then 
devoting  increasing  attention  to  research. 
During  the  next  six  years  he  assisted 
Fairbairn  in  important  researches,  includ- 
ing those  on  the  strength  of  boiler  flues, 
on  the  laws  governing  the  density  and 
expansion  of  steam  at  higher  tempera- 
tures, and  on  the  properties  of  saturated 
steam.  Unwin  took  a  leading  part  in  the 
trials  of  the  Fay  and  Newall  continuous 
mechanical  railway  brakes  in  1859,  which 
resulted  in  the  general  application  of 
continuous  brakes  to  all  passenger  rolling 
stock.  He  was  also  largely  concerned  with 
Fairbairn's  famous  early  experiments  on 
the  fatigue  of  wrought  iron  girders  (1860- 
1862),  and  the  work  of  the  Admiralty 
special  committee  on  iron  for  shipbuilding. 
In  1862  Unwin  became  works  manager  to 
Messrs.  Williamson  &  Brothers,  of  Kendal, 
but  continued  to  correspond  with  Fair- 
bairn on  technical  matters.  At  Kendal  he 
was  concerned  with  the  construction  of 
turbines  and  waterwheels  and  initiated  his 
subsequent  work  on  hydraulics.  In  the 
winter  of  1864-1865  he  gave  to  the  Royal 
Engineers  at  Chatham,  on  Fairbairn's 
recommendation,  his  first  engineering 
lecture.  In  1866  he  returned  to  Manchester 
as  manager  of  the  engine  department  of  the 
Fairbairn  Engineering  Company. 

Unwin's  inclination  was  towards  teach- 
ing, and  in  1867  he  returned  to  Homer- 
ton. Between  1868  and  1871  he  prepared 


and   deUvered   five   different   courses 
lectures  to  the  Royal  Engineers  on  a  wic 
range  of  civil  and  mechanical  engineerir 
subjects.    In  1869  he  was  appointed 
instructor  in  marine  engineering  at  thi 
Royal  School  of  Naval  Architecture  an^ 
Marine  Engineering  at  South  Kensingtoi 
the  forerunner  of  the  present  Royal  Nava 
College,  Greenwich. 

The  Royal  Indian  Engineering  College 
was  opened  at  Coopers  Hill,  Egham,  in 
1871,  for  the  training  of  engineers  for  the 
public  services  in  India.  Unwin  was 
appointed  professor  of  hydraulics  and 
mechanical  engineering  in  1872.  Here,  in 
addition  to  his  teaching  duties,  he  carried 
out  much  original  work.  The  first  edition 
of  his  famous  text-book.  The  Elements  of 
Machine  Design,  was  published  in  1877. 
He  contributed  the  article  on  hydraulics 
to  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica  (1881), 
which  was  for  many  years  a  foremost 
English  authority;  it  was  reprintec 
separately  as  a  Treatise  on  Hydraulics  ii 
1907.  Another  work  which  became 
leading  text-book  was  his  Testing  o% 
Materials  of  Construction,  published 
1883,  with  further  editions  in  1899  an<i 
1910. 

In  1884  the  Central  Institution  of  th€ 
City  and  Guilds  of  London  was  beinj 
completed  and  Unwin  was  appointee 
professor  of  civil  and  mechanical  engineer-j 
ing.  He  served  as  dean  of  the  college  froi 
1885  to  1896  and  again  from  1902  to  1904 
When  the  Central  Technical  College  wa 
incorporated  into  London  University 
1900  he  became  the  first  London  Univer-J 
sity  professor  of  engineering.  The  general 
organization  which  he  then  establishec 
was  changed  but  little  until  the  incorpora- 
tion of  the  coUege  into  the  larger  Imperial 
College  in  1910.  In  addition  to  administra- 
tion and  teaching  he  continued  researcl 
on  strength  of  materials,  hydraulics,  and 
steam  power.  In  1890  he  was  appointed, 
by  the  promoters  of  the  Niagara  Falls 
Power  Company,  secretary  of  the  inter- 
national commission  established  to  assess 
the  competitive  designs  for  the  first  major 
hydro-electric  power  scheme.  He  took  a 
prominent  part  in  the  development  oi 
the  project  and  was  appointed  one  of  the 
three  foreign  consulting  engineers  to  the' 
company.  In  connexion  with  this  work 
he  visited  the  United  States  of  America 
in  1892  and  subsequent  years,  as  well  as 
Germany  and  France.  He  did  much  work 
on  the  Canadian  Niagara  Falls  project, 
but  refused  an  invitation  to  go  to  America 
permanently  in  charge  of  the  work,  pre- 


878 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Vaughan 


1  erring  to  retain  his  'London  work'.  A 
development  of  his  earlier  work  on 
pneumatic  transmission  in  1877,  was  his 
establishment  of  the  principles  of  power 
transmission  by  compressed  air. 

At  the  same  time  Unwin  took  a  promi- 
nent part  from  1890  in  the  introduction 
and  application  of  the  internal  combustion 
engine.  He  tested  several,  including  the 
Priestman  (1890),  the  Hornsby-Ackroyd 
(1894),  and  the  Diesel  (1897).  His  report 
on  the  last  was  a  striking  forecast  of  the 
development  that  has  since  taken  place. 
He  took  up  in  1893  the  study  of  the 
stability  of  masonry  dams  for  the  water 
storage  reservoirs  then  under  construction, 
for  hydro-electric  power  schemes  for 
India,  the  Coolgardie  water  pipeline,  and 
others.  In  his  last  paper  before  his  re- 
tirement from  his  professorship  in  1904 
he  developed  the  principles  and  formulae 
that  have  since  been  used  generally  for 
determining  flow  in  gas  mains.  He  imder- 
took  some  of  the  earliest  work  for  the 
Engineering  Standards  Committee  and 
estabhshed  dimensions  for  standard  tensile 
test  pieces. 

After  1904,  when  he  attended  the  Inter- 
national Engineering  Congress  at  St. 
Louis,  Unwin  continued  to  be  consulted 
on  important  projects  and  to  give  his 
services  freely  for  the  advancement  of 
engineering  practice.  He  took  a  principal 
part  in  the  masonry  dam  controversy  of 
1905-1908,  when  his  practical  rational 
analyses  were  vindicated  fully  against  the 
incorrect  mathematical  premises  of  his 
opponents.  He  was  a  British  representa- 
tive at  the  meeting  in  New  York  of  the 
International  Society  for  the  Testing  of 
Materials  in  1912.  He  was  a  principal 
influence  in  fixing  membership  qualifica- 
tions by  examination  for  the  leading 
technical  institutions.  For  many  years 
he  gave  much  time  to  this  work,  in  addi- 
tion to  serving  on  the  governing  bodies  of 
London  University,  the  Imperial  CoUege, 
and  the  City  and  Guilds  College.  During 
the  war  of  1914-1918  Unwin  served  on  a 
number  of  technical  committees  of  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions,  After  the  war  he 
curtailed  his  activities  but  continued  to 
serve  occasionally  on  government  com- 
mittees and  to  produce  original  contribu- 
tions on  engineering  and  educational 
problems.  He  was  the  first  recipient,  in 
1921,  of  the  Kelvin  medal.  His  last 
important  work  was  a  report  for  the  con- 
sulting engineers  on  the  stresses  in  the 
Mersey  Tunnel  in  1922. 

Unwin's   technical   interests   were   re- 

879 


markably   widespread   and   he   attained 

eminence  in  all.  His  work  on  strength  of 
materials,  hydraulics,  and  water  and  steam 
power  started  at  the  l>eginning  of  his 
career;  he  continued  to  produce  original 
work  in  them  throughout  his  life.  His 
work  on  masonry  dams  and  on  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  principles  of  design  of 
reinforced  concrete  is  balanced  by  his 
research  work  on  steam  and  steam 
engines.  He  investigated  the  work  of  the 
pioneers  of  the  internal  combustion  engine 
and  was  a  leader  in  the  advancement  of 
engineering  education  and  training. 

Unwin  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1886  and 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D. 
from  Edinburgh  University  in  1905.  He 
was  president  of  the  Institution  of  Civil 
Engineers  in  1911  and  of  the  Institution 
of  Mechanical  Engineers  in  1915;  he  was 
an  honorary  member  of  eight  technical 
societies,  and  wrote  numerous  papers, 
lectures,  and  addresses.  He  died,  un- 
married, in  Kensington  17  March  1933. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Unwin  by  Wilfred 
Waters  is  in  the  Institution  of  Civil 
Engineers;  another,  by  Harold  Sp>eed,  is 
in  the  Institution  of  Mechanical  Engineers. 
A  copy  of  the  etching  by  Alphonse  Legros 
is  in  the  Imperial  College  of  Science  and 
Technology. 

[E.  G.  Walker,  The  Life  and  Worii  of 
William  Cawthome  Unwin  (with  biblio- 
graphy), 1947  (privately  1938);  Obituary 
Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  No.  3, 
December  1934  (portrait);  Minutes  of  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers, 
vol.  ccxxxvi,  1934,  p.  514 ;  Proceedings  of  the 
Institution  of  Mechanical  Engineers,  vol. 
cxxiv,  1933,  p.  789;  Transactions  of  the 
American  Society  of  Civil  Engineers,  vol. 
xcix,  1934,  p.  361 ;  The  Times,  18  March  1988 ; 
personal  knowledge.]  E.  G.  Walkkb. 

VAUGHAN,    WILLIAM    WYAMAR 

(1865-1938),  schoolmaster,  was  bom  at 
Hampstead  25  February  1865,  the  younger 
son  of  Henry  Halford  Vaughan  [q.v.], 
regius  professor  of  modem  history  at 
Oxford,  by  his  wife,  Adeline  Maria, 
daughter  of  John  Jackson,  M.D.,  of  the 
East  India  Company's  service,  the  leading 
EngUsh  physician  in  Calcutta.  He  was 
grandson  of  the  judge  Sir  John  Vaughan 
(1769-1839,  q.v.),  great-nephew  of  the 
physician  Su:  Henry  Halford  [q.v.],  and 
first  cousin  through  his  mother  of  H.  A.  L. 
Fisher  and  Sir  W.  W.  Fisher  [qq.v.].  He 
was  educated  at  Rugby,  New  College,  Ox- 
ford, and  the  university  of  Paris.  After  four- 
teen years  (1890-1904)  spent  as  assistant 
master  at  Clifton  College,  where  he  was 


Vaughan 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


for  long  head  of  the  modern  side,  he  was 
appointed  headmaster  of  Giggleswick 
School.  Six  years  later  (1910)  he  became 
master  of  Welhngton  College  and  in  1921 
returned  to  his  old  school,  Rugby,  as  the 
first  lay  headmaster  since  its  very  early 
days.  He  retired  in  1931,  and  went  to  live 
at  Princes  Risborough. 

Vaughan  was  president  of  the  Modern 
Language  Association  in  1915,  of  the 
Incorporated  Association  of  Headmasters 
in  1916,  of  the  Science  Masters  Associa- 
tion in  1919,  of  the  educational  section  of 
the  British  Association  in  1925,  and  after 
his  retirement  his  services  were  ever  in 
great  request  on  educational  bodies.  In 
1932  he  presided  over  the  International 
Congress  of  Secondary  Teachers  and  in 
1935  he  became  chairman  of  the  Central 
Council  for  School  Broadcasting.  He  also 
served  on  the  Consultative  Conunittee 
of  the  Board  of  Education  (1920-1926), 
on  the  government  committee  for  consider- 
ing the  place  of  science  in  education,  and 
on  the  Teachers'  Registration  Council  (1928 
-1932),  and  he  visited  the  Gold  Coast  as 
a  member  of  the  Advisory  Committee  on 
Education  in  the  Colonies.  It  was  as  a 
delegate  to  the  Indian  Science  Congress 
that  he  went  to  Agra  in  December  1937. 
While  visiting  the  Taj  Mahal  he  fell  and 
broke  his  thigh.  His  leg  was  amputated, 
but  he  died  of  pneumonia  at  Agra  4  Feb- 
ruary 1938. 

Broad-shouldered,  broad-minded,  large- 
hearted,  Vaughan  would  have  been  a 
prominent  figure  in  any  walk  of  Ufe :  but 
that  which  he  chose  was  particularly  well 
suited  to  bring  out  his  qualities.  In  him 
a  rapid  and  sometimes  explosive  reaction 
to  foUy,  neglect,  or  wrong-doing  was 
tempered  by  a  strong  sense  of  justice, 
deep  sympathies,  and  a  keen  sense  of 
humour.  He  was  fond  of  boys  and  under- 
stood them  and  he  had  a  remarkable 
power  of  remembering  their  names  and 
characteristics.  In  a  time  of  much  search- 
ing of  heart  in  the  educational  world  he 
showed  that  new  ideas  and  methods  can 
be  assimilated  without  sacrificing  what  is 
valuable  in  the  old,  that  freedom  is  not 
incompatible  with  discipline  nor  science 
with  the  humanities,  and  that  school 
education  is  only  the  beginning  of  what 
should  be  a  lifelong  activity. 

Vaughan  was  twice  married:  first,  in 
1898  to  Margaret  (died  1925),  daughter  of 
John  Addington  Symonds  (1840-1893, 
q.v.),  and  had  two  sons,  and  a  daughter 
who  became  principal  of  Somerville 
College,    Oxford;   secondly,   in    1929   to 


Elizabeth,  daughter  of  John  Geldard, 
Settle.  He  was  appointed  M.V.O.  in  19S 
and    received    the    honorary    degree 
D.Litt.  from  Oxford  University  in  1931.| 
A  portrait  of  Vaughan  by  Glyn  Philpc 
is  at  Rugby. 

[The   Times,   5   February   1938 ;   persons 
knowledge.]  H.  C.  Bradby. 

VESTEY,  WILLIAM,  first  Baron 
Vestey,  of  Kingswood  (1859-1940), 
director  of  the  Union  Cold  Storage  Com- 
pany, was  born  at  Liverpool  21  January 
1859,  the  eldest  of  the  six  sons  of  Samuel 
Vestey,  provision  broker,  of  Liverpool,  by 
his  wife,  Hannah,  daughter  of  WiUiara 
Uttley,  of  Westbar-in-Stansfield,  York- 
shire. He  was  educated  at  the  Liverpool 
Institute. 

When  he  was  seventeen  years  old  Vestey 
was  sent  to  the  United  States  of  America 
by  his  father  to  buy  and  ship  home  goods 
for  him.  Later  he  gave  his  attention  to  the 
canning  business,  and  at  thirty  he  had 
made  so  much  money  that  he  was  able  to 
retire  and  build  himself  a  house  at  Fresh- 
field  near  Southport.  After  a  few  years  he 
grew  tired  of  leisure,  and  went  out  to 
Argentina  in  order  to  study  the  preserva- 
tion and  storage  of  food  by  refrigeration. 
In   conjunction   with   his   brother,   (Sir) 
Edmund  Vestey,  he  started  a  cold  store  a 
Liverpool,  and  soon  operations  were  ex 
tended  to  London.   From  this  beginninj 
the  Union  Cold  Storage  Company  grew 
with   connexions   in   every   part   of  thi 
world.  Having  ui  1906  begvm  to  ship  eggs 
chickens,  and  other  produce  from  China 
the  brothers  acquired  one  or  two  boats 
and    converted    them    iato    refrigerate< 
steamers.    These  were  the  beginnings 
the  Blue  Star  Line.    One  of  the  mos 
difficult  periods  of  Vestey's  career  was  hi 
attempt  to  start  freezing  works  at  Poi 
Darwin  in  Australia.  Large  tracts  of  lane 
and  many  cattle  were  bought,  with  th< 
intention  of  developing  the  meat  industi 
in  AustraUa,  but  labour  difficulties  arose 
and  after  a  struggle  which  lasted  ove: 
eight  years,  the  works  were  closed  an< 
others  built  in  Argentina.  There  the  ship 
ping  companies  found  themselves  vmabh 
to  guarantee  sailings  to  England  with  th< 
output  of  the  factory.    It  was  therefor 
decided  that  the  Cold  Storage  Companj 
should  be  its  own  carriers  by  increasinj 
the  number  of  ships  of  the  Blue  Star  Line 
which    eventually     owned    the    largesi 
number  of  refrigerated  steamers  in  th< 
world.    The  Vesteys  also  acquired  manj 
retail  shops  in  England.    In  the  war  o| 


880 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Vines 


1914-1918  the  vast  resources  controlled 
by  the  company  in  ships,  stores  of  cattle, 
and  cold  storage  accommodation  were 
freely  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  govern- 
ment. 

Vestey  and  his  brother  deserve  to  be 
remembered  as  having  done  valuable 
service  by  improving  the  carriage  by  sea 
of  meats  and  other  perishable  goods,  and 
thus  increasing  the  food  supply  of  this 
country.  In  1934  they  made  a  notable  gift 
to  Liverpool,  by  offering  to  defray  the 
cost,  estimated  at  £220,000,  of  the  tower 
of  the  cathedral:  this  gift  was  made  in 
memory  of  their  parents. 

In  1913  Vestey  was  created  a  baronet, 
and  in  1922  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Baron  Vestey,  of  Kingswood,  Surrey.  He 
was  twice  married:  first,  in  1882  to  Sarah 
(died  1923),  daughter  of  George  Ellis,  of 
Tranmere,  Birkenhead,  and  had  four  sons ; 
secondly,  in  1924  to  Evelyn,  daughter  of 
Hans  Brodstone,  of  Superior,  Nebraska, 
U.S.A.  Vestey  died  at  Gerrards  Cross 
11  December  1940,  and  was  succeeded  as 
second  baron  by  his  eldest  son,  Samuel 
(born  1882). 

[The  Times,  12  December  1940.] 

Alfred  Cochrane. 

VICTORIA  ALEXANDRA  OLGA 
MARY  (1868-1935),  princess  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  was  born  at  Marl- 
borough House  6  July  1868,  the  fourth 
child  and  second  daughter  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Wales.  Living  constantly 
at  home  as  the  only  unmarried  daughter, 
the  princess  was  never  much  in  the  public 
eye  except  as  the  companion  of  her  father 
and  mother,  but  both  at  Marlborough 
House  and  at  Buckingham  Palace  she 
made  herself  their  indispensable  help- 
meet. During  Queen  Alexandra's  widow- 
hood she  was  her  mother's  inseparable 
companion,  and  it  was  not  until  her  death 
that  at  the  age  of  fifty-seven  the  princess 
gained  independence  in  a  household  of  her 
own  at  Coppins,  Iver,  in  Buckingham- 
shire. There  during  the  last  ten  years  of 
her  life  she  found  rest  in  her  favourite 
recreations  of  music  and  gardening,  and 
gave  full  rein  to  her  kindly  feelings 
towards  animals.  She  inherited  to  the  full 
her  mother's  endless  generosity  and 
sympathy  for  those  in  peed.  If  this 
benevolence  seemed  to  others  misplaced, 
such  a  consideration  was  never  allowed  to 
stand  in  the  way  of  a  benefaction,  once  she 
had  decided  to  make  it.  She  was  a  true 
and  lovable  friend,  and  no  common  bond 
of  affection  united  her  to  her  brother  King 


C^rge  V,  with  whom  scarcely  a  day 
passed  without  communication,  and  whose 
precarious  health  was  further  impaired  by 
the  shock  of  her  death  at  Coppins 
8  December  1985. 

[The  Times, 
knowledge.] 


December  1085;  personal 
Edward  Seymour. 


881 


VINES,  SYDNEY  HOWARD  (1849- 
1934),  botanist,  was  bom  at  Ealing  31 
December  1849,  the  only  child  of  William 
Reynolds  Vines,  a  schoolmaster,  by  his 
wife,  Jessie  Robertson.  For  part  of  his 
early  life  he  lived  in  Paraguay  where  his 
father  had  a  sheep  ranch.  His  formal 
education  began  at  a  Moravian  school  in 
Germany,  where  he  acquired  a  command 
of  the  language,  and  was  concluded  at 
Dr.  Dawes's  school  at  Surbiton.  Under 
paternal  persuasion  Vines  began  in  1869 
a  medical  course  at  Guy's  Hospital,  but  he 
disliked  certain  aspects  of  the  work  and, 
influenced  by  (Sir)  Michael  Foster  [q.v.], 
decided  to  specialize  in  physiology,  read- 
ing for  a  London  science  degree.  In  1872 
he  won  an  entrance  scholarship  at  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge ;  the  following  year  he 
took  his  London  B.Sc.  with  first  class 
honours  and  in  December  1875  was 
placed  first  in  the  natural  sciences  tripos 
at  Cambridge.  He  was  elected  to  a  fellow- 
ship and  lecturership  at  Christ's  in  1876. 
It  was  during  the  tenure  of  this  fellowship 
that  he  'personally  may  be  said  to  have 
founded  the  new  School  of  Botany  soon  to 
expand  under  the  hands  of  those  who  were, 
for  the  most  part,  his  own  pupils'. 

In  1870  academic  botany  in  Great 
Britain  was  moribund.  There  were  no 
laboratories  and  the  microscopical  and 
experimental  methods,  which  had  already 
yielded  brilUant  results  on  the  continent, 
were  unknown.  In  that  year  T.  H.  Huxley 
[q.v.]  began  a  short  practical  class  in 
biology  for  intending  school-teachers  at 
the  Royal  School  of  Mines,  South  Ken- 
sington. As  the  course  expanded  the  plant 
section  of  the  work  was  handed  over  to 
(Sir)  W.  T.  Thistleton-Dyer  [q.v.],  who 
invited  Vines  to  assist  him  during  the 
summer  sessions  of  1875  and  1876.  When 
Vines  began  his  college  lectures  at  Christ's 
in  the  autumn  of  1876  it  was  his  practical 
acquaintance  Avith  his  subject-matter  that 
made  his  presentation  a  revelation  to  the 
small,  but  very  able,  group  of  men  attend- 
ing them.  But  there  was  no  laboratory 
work  and  Vines,  wishing  to  gain  further  ex- 
perience before  he  organized  such  courses, 
spent  the  summer  of  1877  working  with 
Julius  von  Sachs  at  Wiirzburg.    During 

8L 


Vines 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


the  following  Michaelmas  term  laboratory 
work  was  started  at  Cambridge  in  a  room 
lent  by  Foster  and  equipped  with  micro- 
scopes and  apparatus  bought  at  the 
lecturer's  own  expense.  It  was  a  personal 
venture;  the  elderly  professor,  Charles 
Cardale  Babington,  did  not  approve  and 
the  university  officially  stood  by  and 
watched.  The  venture  was  a  great  success. 
In  1881  some  room  was  allotted  at  the 
Botanic  Gardens;  two  years  later  Vines 
was  made  a  reader ;  and  by  1887  a  building 
large  enough  to  take  classes  of  up  to  a 
hundred  had  been  provided.  But  Vines, 
full  of  enthusiasm,  ready  to  repeat  his 
practical  classes  two  or  three  times  because 
of  limitatipn  of  space,  and  prepared  to 
work  the  whole  night  through,  if  need  be, 
lecturing,  teaching,  translating,  and 
writing,  may  have  overtaxed  his  strength 
and  laid  the  foundations  of  ill  health  that 
influenced  his  subsequent  long  life. 

Vines  was  elected  to  the  Sherardian 
professorship  at  Oxford  (including  a 
fellowship  at  Magdalen  College)  in  1888, 
with  the  further  responsibilities  of  a 
botanic  garden  and  a  herbarium,  but 
without  the  stimulus  of  numbers  of 
enthusiastic  students ;  he  had,  moreover, 
to  be  careful  of  his  health.  During  the 
short  tenure  of  the  chair  by  (Sir)  Isaac 
Bayley  Balfour  [q.v.]  a  degree  of  re- 
organization of  the  small  department  had 
been  made.  It  was  thought  to  be  suffi- 
ciently equipped  for  the  needs  of  its  small 
elementary  classes,  but  facilities  for 
research  did  not  exist,  and  it  was  not  until 
twenty-three  years  later  that  Vines  was 
able  to  secure  any  considerable  addition  to 
the  laboratory.  The  energy  which  he  had 
displayed  at  Cambridge  seemed  to  have 
exhausted  itself,  and  except  for  his  period 
of  office  as  president  of  the  Linnean 
Society  (1900-1904),  notable  for  the 
decision  to  admit  women  to  fellowship  in 
1903,  he  was  rarely  seen  by  his  contem- 
poraries. He  did  not  go  to  congresses; 
iUness  prevented  him  from  attending  the 
British  Association  meeting  of  1900  when 
he  was  president  of  the  botanical  section ; 
and  he  became  almost  a  legendary  figure 
to  the  younger  men.  He  retired  in  1919 
and  shortly  afterwards  went  to  live  at 
Exmouth  where  he  died  4  April  1934. 

Vines  had  an  acquisitive  and  critical 
rather  than  a  constructive  mind.  He 
translated  the  second  English  edition  of 
Sachs's  Textbook  of  Botany  (1882)  and  in 
1886  published  his  own  Lectures  on  the 
Physiology  of  Plants.  He  was  not  an 
experimenter,  and  although  he  contributed 


•w 

J 


an  important  series  of  papers  on  protec 
lytic  enzymes  in  plants,  Uterary  worl 
appealed  to  him  more  strongly  thaij 
laboratory  experimentation.  He  foun<i 
pleasure  in  the  historical  treasures  of  th^ 
Oxford  department  and  collaborated  wit| 
George  Claridge  Druce  [q.v.]  in  books  oi 
the  Dillenian  (1907)  and  Morisonian  (191-^ 
herbaria.  He  was  one  of  the  group 
botanists  whose  memorial  to  the  Clarendoii 
Press  led  to  the  foundation  of  the  Annals' 
of  Botany  in  1887,  and  he  edited  that 
journal  for  the  first  eleven  years  (1887- 
1899)  of  its  existence. 

Vines  was  elected  F.R.S.  in  1885  at  the 
early  age  of  thirty-five.  In  1897  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  Cambridge 
college.  He  had  been  an  honorary  fellow_ 
of  the  university  of  London  since  1892. 

Vines  married  in  1884  Agnes  Berthaj 
eldest  daughter  of  Walter  Woodcocl 
Perry,  brewer,  of  Chelmsford.  He  had  twc 
sons,  of  whom  the  elder,  Walter  Sherard, 
became  professor  of  English  language  and 
Uterature  at  University  College,  Hull,  and 
a  daughter.  By  his  contemporaries  and 
friends  he  was  regarded  as  a  man  of  ex- 
ceptional abiUty  with  social  charm,  wide 
interests,  and  a  delight  in  music.  Although 
not  a  mountaineer,  he  regularly  visited  the 
Engadine  and  took  a  delight  in  alpine 
botany. 

A  portrait  of  Vines  by  John  CoUiei 
(1905)  is  in  the  possession  of  the  Linnean 
Society. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royc 
Society,  No.  3,  December  1934  (portrait); 
Proceedings  of  the  Linnean  Society,  Octobei 
1933-May  1934  (portrait) ;  Journal  of  Botany, 
vol.  Ixxii,  1934;  J.  Reynolds  Green,  A  Mis'- 
lory  of  Botany,  1914;  F.  O.  Bower,  Sixty 
Years  of  Botany  in  Britain,  1938  (portrait); 
Kew  Bulletin,  1934 ;  New  Phytologist,  vol.  xxiv, 
1925  ;  The  Times,  6  April  1934 ;  Nature,  5  Maj 
1934;  private  information.] 

T.  G.  B.  OSBOKN. 

WADDELL,  LAWRENCE  AUGUS- 
TINE (later  AUSTINE)  (1854-1938), 
medical  officer  in  the  Indian  government 
service,  traveller,  and  orientalist,  wag 
born  at  Cumbernauld,  Dumbartonshire 
29  May  1854,  the  son  of  Thomas  Clement 
Waddell,  D.D.,  schoolmaster  and  author, 
by  his  wife,  Jean,  youngest  daughter  of 
John  Chapman,  of  Banton,  Stirlingshire* 
From  a  private  school  he  entered  the  uni- 
versity of  Glasgow,  where  in  1878  he 
graduated  (M.B.,  M.Ch.)  with  the  highest 
honours.  After  being  resident  surgeon  ' 
the  Western  Infirmary,  Glasgow,  he 
entered  the   Indian  medical    service   ia 


882 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Waggett 


1880.  For  ten  years  from  1885  he  was 
assistant  sanitary  commissioner  and  from 
1888  to  1895  he  was  medical  officer  for  the 
Darjeeling  district.  From  1896  for  six 
years  he  was  professor  of  chemistry  and 
pathology  in  the  Calcutta  Medical  College, 
and  for  four  years  editor  of  the  Indian 
Medical  Gazette.  Accompanying  military 
operations  in  Bvirma  (1886-1887),  Chitral 
(1895),  Peking  (1900),  and  the  Mahsud 
blockade  (1901-1902),  he  won  miUtary 
decorations  on  each  occasion.  In  1903  he 
served  with  the  Malakand  expeditionary 
force.  His  scientific  pubUcations  include 
a  memoir  'Are  Venomous  Snakes  Auto- 
toxic?'  {Scientific  Memoirs  by  Medical 
Officers  of  the  Army  of  India,  1889),  and 
an  article  on  the  'Birds  of  Sikkim'  {SikHm 
Gazette,  1893). 

Interest  in  Buddhism,  first  perhaps 
kindled  by  the  time  in  Burma,  led  to 
Waddell's  explorations  of  sites  in  the 
fovmder's  coimtry,  in  particular  of  the 
ancient  capital,  PataUputra,  the  Pali- 
bothra  of  the  Greeks,  and  the  identifica- 
tion of  Buddha's  birthplace,  on  the  Nepal 
border :  also  in  the  course  of  his  mihtary 
services  on  the  North- Western  Frontier  he 
acquired  material  for  papers  on  the  early 
'Indo-Grecian'  Buddhist  art  of  Gandhara. 
Visits  to  Darjeeling  from  1884  and 
Waddell's  subsequent  official  connexion 
with  the  district,  besides  leading  up  to 
a  charming  descriptive  work.  Among  the 
Himalayas  (1899),  drew  him  to  the  study 
of  Tibet  and  Tibetan  Buddhism,  concern- 
ing which  he  contributed  numerous  papers 
to  orientaUst  journals  and  published 
a  highly  substantial  and  valuable  treatise, 
entitled  The  Buddhism  of  Tibet  or  Lamaism 
(1894,  2nd  ed.  1934).  As  chief  medical 
officer  accompanying  the  Tibetan  expe- 
dition of  1904,  and  with  a  special  com- 
mission, he  superintended  the  official 
collections  of  Uterature  and  art,  which 
were  later  distributed,  together  with  one 
private  collection  of  his  own,  to  libraries 
in  Calcutta,  London,  Oxford,  and  Cam- 
bridge. He  pubhshed  in  1905  Lhasa  and 
its  Mysteries.  On  his  return  to  England 
he  was  from  1906  to  1908  professor  of 
Tibetan  at  University  College,  London. 
His  retirement  to  Scotland  was  marked, 
until  about  1915,  by  contributions  to 
European  journals  and  encyclopaedias, 
continuing  his  studies  of  Buddhism  and 
Tibet. 

In  1917  Waddell  began  to  display 
interest  in  a  new  field,  that  of  ancient 
relations  of  India  to  the  Mesopotamian 
world.   This  led  to  large  volumes  such  as 

883 


Indo-Sumerian  Seals  Deciphered  (1925) 
and  a  theory  of  an  'Aryan'  origin  of  the 
Sumerian  and  Egyptian  civilizations,  and, 
more  generally,  of  the  'Ar\-ans'  as  The 
Makers  of  Cixyilizaiion  in  Race  and  History 
(1929)  and  the  ultimate  source  of  The 
British  Edda  Reconstructed  from  Mediaeval 
MSS.  (1930).  These  works,  containing 
much  painstaking  research  and  impres- 
sive to  many,  did  not  win  the  approval  of 
experts. 

Waddell  received  in  1895  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  the  university  of 
Glasgow.  He  was  appointed  CLE.  (1901) 
and  C.B.  (1904).  He  married  in  1895  Amy 
Louise  Reeves,  and  had  a  son,  who  was 
killed  in  the  war  of  1914-1918,  and  a 
daughter.  He  died  at  Craigraore,  Rothe- 
say, 19  September  1938. 

[Glasgow  Herald,  20  September  1988; 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  1939;  personal  know- 
ledge.] F.  W.  Thomas. 

WAGGETT,  PHILIP  NAPIER  (1862- 
1939),  divine  and  preacher,  was  bom  in 
London  27  February  1862,  the  second  of 
the  three  sons  of  John  Waggett,  a  distin- 
guished London  physician,  by  his  wife, 
Florence  Whitchurch,  who  was  descended 
from  non-juring  ancestors.  His  younger 
brother,  Ernest,  followed  his  father's  pro- 
fession and  became  consulting  surgeon  to 
the  Charing  Cross  Hospital.  Waggett  was 
educated  at  Charterhouse  and  at  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  where,  as  an  exhibitioner, 
he  was  awarded  a  first  class  in  natural 
science  (1884)  and,  after  a  year's  work, 
a  second  class  in  theology  (1885).  His 
interest  in  natiural  science  never  died 
away,  and  at  the  end  of  the  century  he 
impressed  so  exacting  a  critic  as  S.  J.  Gee 
[q.v.]  with  the  width  of  his  reading  and 
the  thoroughness  of  his  knowledge  of 
the  latest  medical  theories.  At  Oxford 
he  came  imder  the  influence  of  such 
leaders  as  Charles  Gore,  E.  S.  Talbot, 
Francis  Paget,  and  H.  S.  Holland  [qq.v.], 
whom  he  astonished  by  his  intellectual 
quickness. 

Waggett  was  ordained  deacon  in  1886 
and  priest  in  1886.  Drawn  like  very  many 
of  the  young  Anglo-CathoUc  clergy  of  the 
time  to  work  in  sliuns,  he  joined  the  staff 
of  Henry  Luke  Paget,  later  bishop  of 
Chester,  at  St.  Frideswide's  church.  Pop- 
lar, accompanying  him  in  1887  to  St. 
Pancras  church.  In  1889  Waggett  accep- 
ted the  headship  of  the  Charterhouse 
mission  in  Southwark,  where  he  proved  a 
keen  and  tireless  parish  worker,  although 


Waggett 


D.N.B,  1931-1940 


he  found  some  of  his  duties  luicongenial 
and  confessed  to  a  'constitutional  disUke  of 
high  spirits'  which  made  the  management 
of  boys'  clubs  very  difficult.  The  evan- 
gelical bishop  of  Rochester,  A.  W.  Thorold 
[q.v.],  heartily  disliked  the  services,  cas- 
socks, and  birettas  of  his  Anglo-CathoUc 
clergy,  but  he  yielded  to  the  brilliance  of 
Waggett's  conversation.  In  1892  Waggett 
joined  the  Society  of  St.  John  the  Evan- 
gelist, Cowley,  and  four  years  later  went 
to  South  Africa  as  priest-in-charge  of  St. 
Philip's  church.  Cape  Town;  after  three 
years  he  returned  to  England  to  gain  fame 
as  a  preacher,  missioner,  and  conductor  of 
'retreats'. 

In  1911  Waggett  was  made  head  of  St. 
Anselm's  House,  an  misuccessful  attempt 
to  estabUsh  a  Pusey  House  at  Cambridge ; 
and  on  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  he 
immediately  offered  himself  as  a  chaplain 
in  the  army.  These  years  as  an  army  chap- 
lain were  probably  the  happiest  of  his 
life :  he  was  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches 
and  in  1918  he  was  sent  to  Palestine  to  fill 
a  special  position  on  Sir  Edmund  AUenby's 
staff.  Among  his  duties  was  negotiation 
with  the  many,  and  always  difficult, 
ecclesiastics  in  the  Levant,  and  he  used  to 
relate  with  particular  zest  the  story  of  his 
relations  with  the  Catholicos  of  Kut.  The 
war  over,  he  delivered  the  Hulsean  lec- 
tures at  Cambridge  in  1920  (he  had  been 
appointed  lecturer  for  1914-1915)  and, 
after  going  to  India  with  the  Mission  of 
Help  in  1922-1923,  he  was  lecturer  to  the 
General  Theological  Seminary  in  New 
York  in  1924.  At  home,  he  had  been 
elected  a  proctor  in  convocation  for  the 
diocese  of  Oxford  in  1922,  and  he  took 
part  in  the  debates  on  the  revision  of  the 
Prayer  Book.  In  1927  his  community 
allowed  him  to  accept  the  living  of  St. 
Mary's  the  Great,  Cambridge,  but  by  now 
he  was  physically  a  broken  man,  and  he 
failed  to  exercise  the  influence  in  the  uni- 
versity which  had  been  expected.  So, 
when  he  resigned  in  1930,  he  retired  to 
spend  most  of  the  nine  remaining  years  of 
his  life  at  Cowley,  unable  to  take  any  part 
in  the  services  and  easily  wearied  by  the 
visits  of  the  friends  whom  he  cherished. 
He  died  in  a  nursing  home  at  Parkstone, 
Dorset,  where  he  had  been  living  with  his 
sisters,  4  July  1939. 

From  his  own  university  Waggett  re- 
ceived the  honorary  degree  of  D.D.  in 
1921.  During  the  years  before  the  war 
he  published  two  notable  books ;  The  Heart 
of  Jesus  (1902),  a  series  of  Holy  Week 
sermons  delivered  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 


and  The  Scientific  Temper  in  Religior 
(1905).  He  was  one  of  the  most  giftec 
figures  in  what  may  be  called  the  third 
period  of  the  Catholic  revival  in  the^ 
Church  of  England.  He  was  a  scientist, 
a  theologian,  a  philosopher,  a  monk,  andj 
withal  a  brilliant  and  witty  conversation'^ 
alist  with  a  love  of  paradox  that  startled 
and  sometimes  shocked.  In  common  witl 
many  other  of  her  outstanding  sons,  he 
was  a  priest  whom  his  Church  dehghted 
not  to  honour. 

[The  Times,  6  July  1939 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Sidney  Dark. 

WAIN,  LOUIS  WILLIAM  (1860- 
1939),  artist,  notable  for  his  drawings  of 
cats,  was  born  in  London  5  August  1860, 
the  eldest  son  of  William  Matthew  Wain, 
embroiderer,  of  Leek,  Staffordshire,  by 
his  wife,  Felicia  Marie  Boiteux,  who  came 
from  Paris.  He  was  educated  by  the 
Christian  Brothers  at  St.  Joseph's  Aca- 
demy, Kennington,  and  by  private  tutors. 
At  first  he  intended  to  make  music  his 
profession,  but  from  1877  to  1880  he  also 
studied  at  the  West  London  School  of  Art, 
where  he  was  an  assistant  master  from 

1881  to  1882,  and  he  came  to  devote  his 
energies  more  and  more  to  drawing.    In 

1882  he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Illustrates 
Sporting  and  Dramatic  News  and  in  188< 
that  of  the  Illustrated  London  News ;  fror 
1907  to  1910  he  visited  New  York,  wherfl 
he  worked  for  the  New  York  American. 

Wain  first  drew  cats,  of  which  he  ws 
a  devotee,  in  1883,  and  these  became  a  fe^ 
years  later  the  principal  subject  of  his  art^ 
A  rapid  worker,  he  could  produce  as  man) 
as  600  drawings  in  a  single  year,  and  the 
list    of   his    cat    books    occupies    several 
columns  of  the  British  Museum  Catalogue^ 
His  original  treatment  of  cats,  which  he 
usually    depicted    as    human    beings    ii 
comical  situations,  quickly  took  the  public 
fancy,  and  by  the  'nineties  his  name  hac 
become  a  household  word.    In  1901    he 
started  Louis  Wain's  Annual,  which  he 
ran  for  many  years.    But  during  the  wat 
of  1914-1918  he  lost  his  popularity  ;  there 
was  hardly  any  demand  for  his  drawings  ;| 
and  although  he  did  some  film  cartooi 
work   he   sank    into    poverty.     Lackinj 
business  acumen,  when  he  sold  his  draw-l 
ings  he  parted  with  his  rights  in  them  a 
moreover,  he  had  squandered  his  savings| 
in  a  rash  commercial  enterprise  while  he 
was  living  in  New  York. 

In  1884  Wain  had  married  Emily  Marie  J 
daughter  of  Thomas  Richardson,  fruiterer.l 


884 


D.N.B,  1081-1040 


Walker,  E. 


His  wife  died,  childless,  two  years  later 
ufter  a  long  and  painful  illness.  This 
bereavement  cast  a  heavy  shadow  over  his 
life  and  induced  a  melancholy  which  was 
in  striking  contrast  to  his  mirthful  draw- 
ings. After  the  war  mental  illness,  largely 
the  result  of  financial  anxiety  on  account 
of  his  sisters  with  whom  he  had  long  made 
his  home  at  Brondesbury,  gradually  de- 
clared itself,  and  in  1923  he  was  certified 
:is  insane.  Two  years  later,  he  was  rescued 
from  the  pauper  ward  of  an  asylum  and, 
by  the  aid  of  a  fund  which  was  raised  on 
iiis  behalf,  was  transferred  to  the  Bethlem 
Itoyal  Hospital,  where,  among  other 
amenities,  he  was  supplied  with  the 
materials  of  his  art.  An  exhibition  of  his 
work  was  held  in  London  at  the  Twenty- 
One  Gallery  in  October,  and  November 
1925.  He  died  at  Napsbury,  near  St. 
Albans,  4  July  1939. 

[The  Times,  7  July  1939 ;  Souvenir  of  Louis 
IVain^s  Work,  1925  (portrait).] 

M.  R.  TOYNBEE. 

WALKER,  Sir  EMERY  (1851-1933), 
process-engraver  and  typographical  ex- 
pert, was  born  in  Paddington  2  April  1851, 
the  eldest  of  the  three  sons  of  Emery 
Walker,  a  coachbuilder,  originally  from 
Norfolk,  who  was  compelled  owing  to 
blindness  to  relinquish  his  business  when 
they  were  still  children.  His  mother  was 
Mary  Anne  Barber.  After  receiving  a  little 
schooling  at  St.  Mark's  College,  Chelsea, 
he  began  at  the  age  of  fourteen  to  earn 
his  living.  He  was  engaged  in  a  succession 
of  more  or  less  laborious  occupations  until 
the  trend  of  his  life  was  fixed  by  a  chance 
encounter  with  a  man  of  remarkable  in- 
ventive gifts  named  Alfred  Dawson,  who 
l)erfected  a  form  of  etching  devised  in  the 
■forties  by  a  certain  Palmer,  who  called 
the  process  glyptography.  In  1872  Daw- 
son foimded  at  23  Farringdon  Street  the 
Typographic  Etching  Company,  which 
was  by  far  the  oldest  firm  of  process- 
engravers  in  this  country.  In  the  follow- 
ing year  Walker  joined  him  and  remained 
with  him  until  1883,  when  he  went  into 
business  with  his  brother-in-law,  Robert 
Dunthorne,  as  a  printseller.  But  finding 
this  change  uncongenial  he  returned  in 
1886  to  his  old  pursuit  and,  in  partnership 
with  Walter  Boutall,  foimded  the  firm  of 
'process  and  general  engravers,  draughts- 
men, map-constructors,  and  photographers 
of  works  of  art'  known  imder  the  succes- 
sive names  of  Walker  &  Boutall,  Walker 
&  Cockerell,  and  finally  Emery  Walker, 
Limited.  Its  office  was  at  16  CUfford's  Inn, 


next  door  to  the  chambers  of  Samuel  Butler 
[q.v.],  which  led  to  much  friendly  inter- 
course .  The  works  were  at  a  Georgian  houHe 
at  Hammersmith,  not  far  from  Walker's 
own  home  in  Hammersmith  Terrace. 

By  good  fortune  there  was  another 
riverside  dweller  at  Hammersmith  who 
shared  Walker's  tastes  to  the  full.  This 
was  William  Morris  [q.v.].  Their  acquaint- 
ance, begun  in  1883,  quickly  ripened  into 
an  affectionate  comrsideship  which  grew 
only  the  stronger  as  long  as  Morris  lived. 
Although  Morris  was  the  more  forceful 
character,  each  could  tell  the  other  much 
that  he  did  not  know,  and  they  saw  eye 
to  eye  on  all  important  topics.  Among  the 
subjects  in  which  they  were  both  deeply 
interested  was  the  art  of  typography,  then 
at  a  low  ebb.  Out  of  their  eager  talks  and 
some  preUminary  experiments  arose  the 
Kelmscott  Press,  wluch  was  established 
early  in  1891  in  modest  premises  close  to 
Morris's  Kelmscott  House.  Its  output 
during  the  seven  years  of  its  existence  was 
astonishing.  It  comprised  fifty -two  works 
in  sixty-six  volumes,  all  printed  by  hand, 
with  type  and  ornaments  designed  by 
Morris.  Walker  had  to  decline  to  be  a 
partner  in  this  costly  enterprise,  as  he  had 
no  capital  to  risk.  Nevertheless,  he  was 
all  the  while  a  virtual  partner,  and  no 
important  step  was  taken  without  his 
advice  and  approval.  This  was  not  the 
only  field  in  which  he  co-operated  with 
Morris.  In  1888  they  joined  Walter  Crane 
[q.v.]  and  others  in  founding  the  Arts  and 
Crafts  Exhibition  Society,  the  parent 
stock  from  which  many  kindred  societies 
sprang.  To  the  catalogue  of  its  first  exhi- 
bition Walker  contributed  an  article  on 
typography  in  which  important  principles 
were  laid  down  for  the  first  time.  At  about 
the  same  period  he  was  elected  to  the 
committee  of  the  Society  for  the  Protec- 
tion of  Ancient  Buildings,  founded  in  1877 
by  Morris  and  the  architect  Philip  Webb 
[q.v.].  These  men  were  prominent  in  a 
group  supporting  the  then  yoimg  and 
unpopular  sociaUst  movement.  As  secre- 
tary to  the  Hammersmith  branch  it  was 
Walker's  duty  to  organize  Sunday  evening 
lectures,  some  of  them  by  men  afterwards 
famous,  in  the  little  hall  adjoining  Morris's 
house. 

Morris's  death  in  1896  was  a  crushing 
blow,  but  Walker  braced  himself  to  con- 
tinue his  artistic  labours  more  persistently 
than  ever.  In  1900,  in  conjimction  with 
T.  J.  Cobden-Sanderson  [q.v.],  he  foimded 
the  Doves  Press  in  a  house  in  Hammer- 
smith Terrace,  a  few  doors  from  where 


885 


Walker,  E. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


they  both  lived.  For  this  renowned  press 
a  type  of  great  beauty  and  legibility,  based 
on  the  fifteenth-century  Venetian  type 
used  by  the  Frenchman  Nicolas  Jenson, 
was  cut  from  drawings  made  under 
Walker's  eye.  Unfortunately,  after  nearly 
twenty  volumes  had  appeared,  including 
the  five  volumes  of  an  EngUsh  Bible  (1903- 
1905),  a  disagreement  caused  a  severance 
of  the  partnership,  and  from  1909  to  the 
close  of  the  press  in  1916  Cobden-Sander- 
son  carried  on  the  Doves  Press  alone. 

The  Kelmscott  and  Doves  presses  will 
go  down  to  typographical  history,  together 
with  the  Ashendene  Press,  as  the  stately 
precursors  of  the  numerous  private  presses 
that  have  since  come  into  being,  and 
Walker's  name  wiU  be  inseparably  con- 
nected with  them.  But  his  great  reputa- 
tion among  students  of  typography  rests 
on  a  far  wider  basis,  for  he  was  keenly 
preoccupied  with  the  appearance  of  the 
everyday  book,  and  not  only  with  its  rich 
relations.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say 
that  his  influence,  direct  or  indirect,  can 
be  discerned  in  nearly  evety  well-designed 
page  of  type  that  now  appears,  and  that 
to  him  more  than  to  any  other  man  this 
century's  great  improvement  in  book  pro- 
duction has  been  due. 

Walker  was  knighted  in  1930,  and  in 
May  1933,  shortly  before  his  death,  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Jesus  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  He  was  Sandars  reader 
in  bibliography  at  Cambridge  University 
for  1924-1925.  Although  his  schooling 
ended  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  his  erudition 
was  extraordinary.  It  was  combined  with 
great  modesty  and  a  most  lovable  nature. 
He  married  in  1877  Mary  Grace  (died 
1920),  daughter  of  William  Jones,  super- 
visor of  inland  revenue.  Hammersmith, 
and  had  one  daughter.  He  died  at  his 
home  in  Hammersmith  22  July  1933. 

A  portrait  of  Walker  by  Sir  George 
Clausen  hangs  in  the  hall  of  the  Art 
Workers'  Guild  in  Queen  Square,  London. 

[Sir  Emery  Walker  (privately  printed,  with 
portrait),  1933 ;  London  Mercury,  September 
1933;  personal  knowledge.] 

Sydney  Cockerell. 

WALKER,  Sir  JAMES  (1863-1935), 
chemist,  was  born  at  Dimdee  6  April  1863, 
the  only  son  of  James  Walker,  a  flax  mer- 
chant in  Dundee,  by  his  wife,  Susan 
Hutchison,  daughter  of  Arthur  Cairns, 
also  of  Dundee.  His  early  education  at 
Dvmdee  High  School  awakened  in  him  an 
interest  in  science,  largely  owing  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  young  master. 


Although  Walker  passed  the  entranc 
examination  for  St.  Andrews  Universitj 
at  the  age  of  sixteen  he  did  not  proceed 
there,  but  became  an  apprentice  to  a  fla^ 
and  jute  spinner  for  three  years ;  yet  hi 
early  interest  in  science  remained  and  h^ 
finally  entered  Edinburgh  University 
1882.  Here  he  met  a  galaxy  of  talent  in"^ 
his  teachers,  George  Chrystal  [q.v.],  P.  G. 
Tait  [q.v.],  and  Alexander  Crum  Brown. 
In  those  days  specialization  had  hardly 
been  dreamed  of,  but  Crum  Brown  soon 
diverted  Walker's  enthusiasm  towards 
chemistry.  Graduating  B.Sc.  in  1885,  he 
intended  to  proceed  to  a  doctor's  degree 
but  was  discouraged  in  view  of  his  youth. 
He  overcame  the  difficulty  by  performing 
the  necessary  experimental  work  in  Uni- 
versity College,  Dundee,  during  his  vaca- 
tions and  graduated  D.Sc.  (Edin.)  in  1886. 
At  that  time  German  chemistry  was  in  its 
ascendancy  and  a  chemist's  training  was 
not  complete  without  taking  a  Ph.D. 
at  a  German  luiiversity.  Walker  there- 
fore proceeded  in  1887  to  Johann  von 
Baeyer's  laboratory  in  Munich,  a  strong- 
hold of  organic  chemistry.  The  'eighties 
saw,  however,  the  vigorous  growth  of  the 
new  science  of  physical  chemistry,  its 
leading  exponent  being  Wilhelm  Ostwald 
who  went  to  Leipzig  in  1887.  Walker 
succumbed  to  the  attraction  and  joined 

heartily  in  the  rapid  development  of  this 

new  branch  of  chemistry.  Having  ob- 
tained his  Ph.D.  at  Leipzig,  in  1889  he 
carried  his  new-found  enthusiasm  back  to 
Edinburgh  where  he  had  been  appointed 
research  assistant  to  Crum  Brown :  he  held 
this  post  for  three  years,  his  chief  work 
being  on  electrolytic  synthesis.  After  a 
year  Walker's  interest  wandered  again, 
this  time  to  the  laboratory  of  (Sir)  WiUiam 
Ramsay  [q.v.]  in  University  College, 
London,  at  that  time  the  leading  centre 
for  physical  chemistry  in  the  United  King- 
dom. He  entered  the  laboratory  in  1892, 
and  in  1893  became  Ramsay's  second 
assistant. 

In  1894  Walker  was  elected  professor  of 
chemistry  at  University  CoUege,  Dundee, 
and  threw  himself  immediately  into  the 
task  of  conducting  extensive  researches  in 
aqueous  solutions  and  to  furthering  the 
cause  of  physical  chemistry  in  this  country. 
He  succeeded  Crum  Brown  as  professor  of 
chemistry  in  Edinburgh  University  in 
1908.  The  war  of  1914r-1918  interfered 
with  academic  work,  and  Walker  devoted 
himself  wholly  to  the  war  by  setting  up 
in  Edinburgh  in  1915  the  manufacture  of 
trinitrotoluene    (T.N.T.),    then    in   great 


886 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Wallace 


demand  as  a  high  explosive.  'In  1918  he 
returned  to  the  manifold  problems  of  the 
post-war  period.  He  planned  and  saw 
built  one  of  the  finest  university  chemical 
laboratories  in  the  country  and  established 
a  research  school  in  it  in  order  to  provide 
the  higher  training  for  chemistry  now 
required  for  the  greatly  increased  British 
chemical  industry.   He  retired  in  1928. 

Walker  received  many  honours,  both  for 
his  academic  and  his  industrial  work. 
The  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  was  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  the  universities  of  St. 
Andrews  (1909)  and  Edinburgh  (1929). 
In  1900  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  by  which  he  was  awarded 
the  Davy  medal  in  1926.  He  was  knighted 
in  1921.  From  1921  to  1923  he  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Chemical  Society.  His  book, 
Introduction  to  Physical  Chemistry  (1899, 
10th  ed.  1927),  did  much  to  further  the 
cause  of  physical  chemistry  in  the  English- 
speaking  world.  His  advice  was  widely 
sought  on  a  great  variety  of  matters  and 
given  with  equal  readiness. 

Walker  married  in  1897  Annie  Purcell, 
elder  daughter  of  Lieutenant-Colonel 
WiUiam  Sedgwick,  of  Godalming,  and  had 
one  son.  He  died  in  Edinburgh  6  May 
1935. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,   No.   4,   December   1935   (portrait); 
Nature,  25  May  1935 ;  personal  knowledge.] 
H.  W.  Melville. 

WALLACE,  (RICHARD  HORATIO) 
EDGAR  (1875-1932),  noveUst,  play- 
wright, and  journalist,  was  born  in  Green- 
wich 1  April  1875,  the  son  of  Richard 
Horatio  Edgar,  an  actor,  and  Mary  Jane 
(Polly)  Richards  (nee  Blair),  an  actress. 
He  was  brought  up  by  George  Freeman, 
a  Billingsgate  fishporter,  and  his  wife, 
kindly  and  respectable  people  who  cared 
for  the  boy  within  their  Umited  means. 
At  the  age  of  eleven  he  played  truant  to 
sell  newspapers  in  Ludgate  Circus  a  few 
yards  from  the  site  of  the  bronze  plaque 
which  now  commemorates  him,  and  from 
the  age  of  twelve,  when  he  left  an  elemen- 
tary school  in  Peckham,  he  was  succes- 
sively employed  as  a  printer's  boy,  as  a 
newsboy,  in  a  shoe  shop,  in  a  mackintosh 
cloth  factory,  in  a  Grimsby  trawler,  as 
a  milk  roundsman,  and  as  a  road-maker 
and  builder's  labourer.  At  eighteen  he 
enUsted  in  the  Royal  West  Kent  Regiment 
from  which  he  transferred  to  the  Medical 
Staff  Corps  and  was  drafted  with  it  to 
South  Africa  in  1896.  By  this  time  he  had 
produced  his  earUest  work,  a  song  for  the 


comedian  Arthur  Roberts.  In  South 
Africa  he  wrote  poems  and  articles  for  the 
Cape  Times  and  other  papers  and  later 
became  successively  a  Reuter's  corre- 
spondent and  correspondent  of  the  Daily 
Mail.  In  1902  he  became  the  first  editor 
of  the  Rand  Daily  Mail  in  Johannesburg, 
and  on  his  return  to  England  again  worked 
for  the  Daily  Mail. 

The  first  of  the  novels  that  were  to  make 
Wallace  famous  was  The  Four  Just  Men 
(1905),  and  this  was  followed  by  a  series, 
most  of  which  were  sold  outright  for  small 
sums,  before  he  started  on  his  West 
African  stories,  of  which  two  were  Sanders 
of  the  River  (1911)  and  Bones  (1915). 
Throughout  his  life  he  was  interested 
principally  in  three  activities;  the  stage, 
newspapers,  and  novel  writing,  and  it 
would  be  true  to  say  that  he  regarded 
them  in  that  order  of  importance.  His 
only  relaxation  was  racing,  and  in  the  last 
few  years  of  his  Ufe  he  owned  and  enjoyed 
a  singularly  unsuccessful  string  of  race- 
horses. Graduating  from  music-hall  songs 
and  review  sketches,  he  began  to  write 
plays,  and  his  first  dramatic  success.  The 
Ringer  (Wyndham's  Theatre,  May  1926), 
marked  the  beginning  of  a  phase  in  which 
his  novels,  such  as  The  Crimson  Circle 
(1922)  and  The  Green  Archer  (1923),  were 
being  sold  in  their  tens  and  hundreds  of 
thousands,  and  he  sometimes  had  two  or 
three  plays  running  in  London  at  the  same 
time.  The  novels  for  which  he  was  most 
widely  known  were  those  detective  stories 
in  which,  without  the  use  of  false  clues  or 
supernatural  circumstances,  a  mysterious 
crime  was  solved  and  the  criminals  brought 
to  justice :  a  simple  formula  on  which  the 
freshness  and  ingenuity  of  his  invention 
worked  a  new  pattern  in  every  volume. 
His  writing  had  simplicity,  vigour,  and 
pace,  but  it  was  the  variety  and  originality 
of  his  plots  that  made  his  reputation :  that, 
and  lus  proUfic  output,  since  in  twenty- 
eight  years  of  authorship  more  than  a 
himdred  and  seventy  books  of  his  were 
published.  They  were  imiversally  trans- 
lated and  his  plays  were  produced  in 
Europe,  the  British  Empire,  the  Unit«d 
States  of  America,  and  the  Scandinavian 
countries.  His  daily  flow  of  magazine  and 
newspaper  articles  was  generally  dictated 
to  one  of  his  secretaries,  his  novels  were 
dictated  to  a  dictaphone,  and  his  plays 
were  written  by  hand.  He  worked  fast,  and 
the  best  of  his  plays.  On  the  Spot  (1931), 
was  written  by  him  during  a  week-end. 

Wallace  married  in  South  Africa  in  1901 
Ivy  Maud  (died  1926),  daughter  of  William 


887 


Wallace 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


Shaw  Caldecott,  a  Wesleyan  minister,  of 
Simon's  Town,  and  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter.  Their  marriage  was  dissolved 
in  1918,  and  in  1921  he  married  Ethel 
Violet  King  (died  1933),  by  whom  he  had 
a  daughter.  At  the  general  election  of 
1931  he  stood  unsuccessfully  as  liberal 
candidate  for  Blackpool.  He  died  suddenly 
10  February  1932  at  Hollywood,  Cali- 
fornia, where  he  had  been  writing  motion 
picture  stories.  The  first  of  these.  King 
Kong,  was  produced  shortly  after  his 
death.  He  was  chairman  of  the  Press 
Club  from  1923  to  1925,  inaugurated  the 
Press  Club  Fund,  and  was  one  of  the 
founder  members  of  the  Company  of 
Newspaper  Makers. 

A  portrait  of  Wallace  by  Tennyson 
Cole  is  at  the  Press  Club.  A  bust  was 
made  by  Jo  Davidson. 

[The  Times,  11  February  1932;  Edgar 
Wallace,  People.  A  Short  Autobiography, 
1926;  Margaret  Lane,  Edgar  Wallace,  1938; 
E.  V.  Wallace,  Edgar  Wallace,  1932.] 

Frank  Dilnot. 

WALLAS,  GRAHAM  (1858-1932), 
political  psychologist,  was  born  at  Monk- 
wearmouth,  Stmderland,  31  May  1858,  the 
fifth  child  and  elder  son  of  Gilbert  Innes 
Wallas,  by  his  wife,  Frances  Talbot  Pea- 
cock. His  father,  who  in  1858  was  curate 
at  Bishop wearmouth,  became  in  1861 
vicar  of  Barnstaple  and  later  rector  of 
Shobrooke,  Devon. 

Wallas  was  educated  at  Shrewsbury  and 
went  as  a  scholar  to  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  obtatued  a  second  class  in 
classical  moderations  (1879)  and  in  literae 
humaniores  (1881).  On  leaving  Oxford  he 
became  a  classical  schoolmaster,  but  re- 
signed from  the  staff  of  Highgate  School 
in  1885  'on  a  question  of  religious  con- 
formity', and  in  1890  gave  up  school 
teaching  for  tmiversity  extension  lectur- 
ing. In  1886  he  joined  the  Fabian  Society, 
and  in  1889  contributed  to  JPofeiaw  JSssai/s 
on  Socialism.  He  resigned  from  the 
society  in  1904  in  disapproval  of  its  sup- 
port of  Joseph  Chamberlain's  tariff  policy. 
In  1894  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
London  school  board,  becoming  chair- 
man of  its  school  management  committee 
in  1897.  In  1904,  when  the  school  board 
was  merged  in  the  London  Coimty 
Council,  he  was  elected  to  that  body,  re- 
maining a  member  for  one  three-year 
period.  His  experiences  of  London  elec- 
tioneering are  reflected  in  his  writings. 

Already  in  1895  Wallas  had  become  a 
lecturer  in  the  recently  founded  London 


School  of  Economics  and  Political  Science,] 
having  previously  been  one  of  those  who  | 
had  planned  the  creation  of  that  institu- 
tion. In  1914  he  was  appointed  to  the! 
newly  created  chair  of  political  science,.} 
which  he  held  until  1923.  Between  1890] 
and  1928  he  paid  four  visits  to  the  Unitedj 
States  of  America,  where  he  lectured.  He 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Manchester  (1922)  and 
Oxford  (1931). 

WaUas  published  five  books  during  his 
lifetime:  The  Life  of  Francis  Place  (1898), 
Human  Nature  in  Politics  (1908),  The 
Great  Society  (1914),  Our  Social  Heritage 
(1921),  and  The  Art  of  Thought  (1926):  to 
these  there  must  be  added  the  half- 
finished  Social  Judgment  (1934),  a  volume 
of  collected  essays  entitled  Men  and  Ideas 
(1940),  and  the  essay  on  'Property  imder 
Socialism'  in  Fabian  Essays,  already 
referred  to.  Of  these,  the  Life  of  Francis 
Place  is  a  work  of  historical  research, 
based  on  Place's  own  records.  The  other 
four  completed  works  are  seminal  in  the 
true  sense  of  that  word.  Wallas  spent 
upon  a  single  chapter  the  labour  that  most 
men  spend  on  a  book,  and  this  has  made 
his  work  a  storehouse  of  suggestion  for 
inquirers  in  many  fields.  In  Human 
Nature  in  Politics  he  criticized  the  intel- 
lectualist  assumptions  current  amongst 
political  thinkers  at  that  time,  and  pleaded 
for  a  closer  association  between  psycho- 
logical and  political  studies.  He  warned 
his  readers  that,  until  this  had  been 
brought  about,  the  future  of  democracy 
would  be  in  greater  peril  than  was  then 
realized.  By  1914  the  anti-intellectualist 
forces  had  shown  themselves  more  clearly, 
and  in  the  The  Great  Society  Wallas  urged 
the  need  for  sustained  thought  in  the  task 
of  humanizing  modern  large-scale  life. 
In  Our  Social  Heritage,  a  term  of  which  he 
was  the  first  to  fix  the  meaning,  he 
examined  that  part  of  human  personality 
which  is  transmitted  by  the  social  pro- 
cess of  teaching  and  learning.  In  The 
Art  of  Thought  he  examined  the  less 
conscious  factors  in  thought  in  the  light 
of  his  own  experience  as  a  teacher  and 
administrator  and  of  accounts  given  by 
poets  and  others  who  were  not  professed 
psychologists. 

Wallas  liked  to  describe  himself  as  '  a 
working  thinker',  and  much  of  his  work 
was  directed  to  the  attempt  to  improve 
the  mental  processes  of  those  who  occupy  j 
their  minds  with  public  affairs.  In  this  he 
marked  a  break  with  the  prevailing  radical 
and  socialist  tendency  of  his  time  which 


888 


D.N.B.  1081-1040 


Ward,  J. 


was  more  concerned  with  institutions  and 
systems  than  with  human  beings.  But  he 
was  also  a  lifelong  promoter  of  the  cause 
of  social  and  political  invention,  deliber- 
ately using  that  term  so  as  to  mark  the 
need  for  its  extension  from  the  purely 
mechanical  field.  As  a  teacher  Wallas 
excelled  equally  with  individual  students 
or  small  groups,  and  as  a  platform 
lecturer.  Through  his  books,  his  teaching, 
and  his  conversation  he  exerted  a  powerful 
influence  over  the  thought  of  his  time,  and 
as  the  importance  of  the  many  issues  to 
which  he  was  the  first  to  draw  attention 
l)ecame  more  widely  realized,  his  writings 
have  gained  increasing  influence  with  the 
passing  of  the  years. 

Wallas  married  in  1897  Ada,  daughter 
of  George  David  Radford,  draper,  of 
Plymouth,  a  member  of  a  family  well 
known  in  the  pubhc  life  of  that  area. 
Herself  an  authoress,  she  shared  in  her 
husband's  work  and  interests.  They  had 
one  child,  a  daughter.  He  died  at  Portloe, 
Cornwall,  9  August  1932. 

In  the  rooms  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  the 
'fotmders'  hang  drawings  of  Wallas  by  Sir 
William  Rothenstein  and  Robert  Austin. 

[Biographical  note  prefixed  to  Men  and 
Ideas,  edited  by  May  Wallas,  1940;  Graham 
Wallas  1858-1932:  addresses  given  at  the 
London  School  of  Economics  and  Political 
Science,  19  October  1932;  The  Times, 
11  August  1932;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Alfred  Zimmern. 

WARD,  JOHN  (1866-1934),  poUtician 
and  soldier,  was  born  at  Walton,  Surrey, 
21  November  1866,  the  son  of  Robert 
Ward,  plasterer,  by  his  wife,  Caroline 
Edmonds.  He  was  self-educated,  and  was 
considerably  influenced  by  Kropotkin's 
Appeal  to  the  Young  and  Henry  George's 
Progress  and  Poverty.  Beginning  work  at 
the  age  of  twelve  as  a  navvy  on  the 
Andover  and  Weyhill  Railway,  he  was 
employed  on  many  public  works,  includ- 
ing the  Manchester  Ship  Canal.  Volunteer- 
ing for  the  Sudan  campaign  in  1885,  he 
was  engaged  on  the  abortive  military 
railway  from  Suakin  to  Berber,  and  re- 
ceived the  Khedive's  bronze  star,  with 
medal  and  clasp.  In  1886  he  joined  the 
Social  Democratic  Federation  and  was 
selected  to  test  the  legality  of  the  procla- 
mation of  the  chief  commissioner  of  the 
London  metropolitan  police.  Sir  Charles 
Warren  [q.v.],  prohibiting  demonstrations 
of  the  unemployed  in  Trafalgar  Square. 
The  meetmg  was  held  on  Lord  Mayor's 


Day  (9  November)  1887,  and  Ward 
arrested  and  sentenced.  He  founded  the 
Navvies'  Union  in  1889,  and  exposed 
several  serious  sewer  contract  scandals. 
On  the  foundation  of  the  General  F'edera- 
tion  of  Trade  Unions  in  1901,  Ward  was 
elected  to  the  management  committee  and 
served  until  1929,  for  the  last  sixteen 
years  as  treasurer. 

As  a  liberal-labour  candidate  Ward 
unsuccessfully  contested  Aston  Manor  in 
1892.  Although  he  attended  the  early 
conferences  of  the  labour  party  in  1908, 
he  declared  his  opposition  to  its  inde- 
pendent political  policy.  Thereafter  he 
associated  with  the  liberal  party  and  was 
returned  to  parliament  for  Stoke-upon- 
Trent  from  1906  imtil  he  was  defeated  in 
1929  by  the  labour  candidate,  Lady 
Cynthia  Mosley  (Lord  Curzon's  daughter 
and  first  wife  of  Sir  Oswald  Mosley). 

When  war  broke  out  in  1914  Ward  was 
gazetted  Ueutenant-colonel  of  the  2l8t 
Middlesex  Regiment,  for  which  he  re- 
cruited five  labour  battalions,  and  served 
with  them  for  a  time  in  France.  On 
16  February  1917,  on  the  way  to  the  Far 
East,  the  troopship  Tyndareus  was  mined 
off  South  Africa,  but  he  and  his  men  were 
rescued,  and  afterwards  trekked  over 
6,000  miles  of  Russian  territory  from 
Vladivostock.  During  the  campaign  of 
intervention  after  the  Russian  revolution 
AUied  armies  sought  contact  with  the 
Don  Cossacks,  who,  imder  General  Kaledin 
and  General  Krasnov,  broke  away  from 
the  Moscow  government;  and  in  May 
1918  a  force  of  Czecho-Slovakian  prison- 
ers of  war  and  volunteers,  under  Keren- 
sky,  initiated  the  first  revolt  against  the 
Bolsheviks  and  threatened  the  Siberian 
railway  from  the  Volga  to  the  Urals. 
Admiral  Koltchak,  with  Allied  assistance, 
with  which  Ward  was  associated,  insti- 
gated a  rising  in  Vladivostock  and  a  new 
anti-Bolshevik  government  was  estab- 
lished there  and  also  at  Omsk ;  both  were 
later  suppressed. 

While  in  Hong-Kong  in  1917,  Ward  had 
urged  the  home  government  to  abolish  the 
sale  of  Chinese  women  and  children  in  the 
colony,  but,  although  representations 
were  continued  for  several  years,  no 
immediate  success  attended  his  efforts. 

Ward  was  appointed  C.M.G.  in  1918 
and  C.B.  in  1919 ;  he  received  the  French, 
Italian,  and  Czecho-Slovakian  Croix  de 
Guerre,  and  was  created  a  Cossack 
Ataman. 

Ward  was  exceptionally  tall  and  re- 
tained his  soldierly  bearing  throughout 


889 


Ward,  J. 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


his  life.  An  effective  speaker,  he  engaged 
in  most  of  the  campaigns  of  the  liberal 
party.  The  Navvies'  Union  passed  out  of 
existence,  the  newer  generation  of  neces- 
sity employing  mechanical  appliances  in 
place  of  the  pick  and  shovel  that  distin- 
guished the  old-time  navvy,  and  being 
catered  for  by  the  larger  general  labourers' 
unions. 

Ward  married  in  1892  LiUan  EUzabeth 
(died  1926),  daughter  of  George  Gibbs. 
She  shared  actively  in  his  pohtical  work. 
Their  son  served  in  the  navy  during  the 
war  of  1914-1918.  Ward  died  at  his  home 
at  Andover  19  December  1934.  A  cartoon 
appeared  in  Vanity  Fair  (29  January  1908), 
which  depicted  the  stalwart  figure  of  Ward, 
with  the  wide  awake  hat  which  he  affected, 
looking  down  at  the  diminutive  Ben  Til- 
lett  of  the  Dockers'  Union. 

[The  Times,  20  December  1934 ;  Reports  of 
the  General  Federation  of  Trade  Unions.] 

J.  S.  MiDDLETON. 

WARD,  WILLIAM  HUMBLE,  second 
Eakl  of  Dudley  (1867-1932),  lord- 
lieutenant  of  Ireland  and  governor- 
general  of  Austraha,  was  born  at  Dudley 
House,  Park  Lane,  London,  25  May  1867, 
the  eldest  of  the  six  sons  of  WilUam  Ward, 
first  Earl  of  Dudley,  by  his  second  wife, 
Georgina  EUzabeth,  third  daughter  of  Sir 
Thomas  Moncreiffe,  seventh  baronet.  He 
was  educated  at  Eton,  and  succeeded  his 
father  in  1885.  He  made  a  three  years' 
tour  round  the  world  from  about  1884  to 
1887. 

In  1891  Lord  Dudley  married  Rachel 
Anne,  younger  daughter  of  Charles  Henry 
Giimey,  a  partner  in  Saunderson's  Bank, 
London,  and  one  of  the  Gurneys  of  North 
Rimcton  Hall,  Norfolk.  His  wife,  a  lady 
of  beauty  and  talent,  had  a  great  influence 
in  turning  his  mind  and  energies  to  pubUc 
service.  He  sold  Dudley  House  and  a  part 
of  the  magnificent  collection  of  pictures 
and  china  formed  by  his  father.  He  began 
to  take  a  part  in  local  affairs  and  was 
elected  mayor  of  Dudley  in  1895  and  1896. 
He  also  began  to  speak  in  the  House  of 
Lords  and  in  1895  Lord  Salisbury  made 
him  parliamentary  secretary  to  the  Board 
of  Trade.  He  served  in  the  South  African 
war  with  the  Worcestershire  Yeomanry 
and  was  on  Lord  Roberts's  staff  as 
deputy-assistant-adjutant-general  for  the 
Imperial  Yeomanry.  In  1902  he  was 
appointed  lord-Heutenant  of  Ireland  and 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Coimcil.  His  tenure  of 
the  lord-heutenancy  was  a  great  social 
success,  but  his  belief  in  the  'devolution' 


poUcy  of  his  friend  the  chief  secretary, 
George  Wyndham  [q.v.],  aroused  th€ 
hostility  of  Ulster  towards  him.  But, 
although  Wyndham  was  obUged  to  resignj 
Dudley  continued  to  hold  office  until  the 
fall  of  Balfour's  administration  in  1905, 
Thereafter,  from  1906  to  1908,  he  served 
as  chairman  of  the  royal  commission  oi 
congestion  in  Ireland. 

In  1908  Dudley  was  appointed  governor- 
general  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Australia. 
He  held  office  until  1911,  and  his  years  in 
Austraha  were  most  successful.  He  and  his 
wife  were  popular,  and  he  maintained  the 
impartiahty  which  the  office  demanded. 
In  the  war  of  1914-1918  Dudley  com- 
manded the  Worcestershire  Yeomanry 
and  saw  service  in  Egypt  and  Galhpoli  in 
1915.  Lady  Dudley  died  in  1920,  and  in 
1924  Lord  Dudley  married  Gertrude, 
daughter  of  John  Millar,  and  widow  of 
Lionel  Monckton  (better  known  under  her 
stage  name  of  Gertie  Millar).  Dudley  was 
appointed  G.C.V.O.  in  1903,  G.C.M.G. 
m  1908,  and  G.C.B.  m  1911.  He  died  in 
London  29  Jime  1932,  and  was  buried  in 
the  family  burial  ground  at  Himley  Hall, 
Staffordshire.  By  his  first  Avife  he  had  four 
sons  and  three  daughters,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded as  third  earl  by  his  eldest  son, 
WilUam  Humble  Eric  (born  1894),  who, 
as  Viscount  Ednam,  had  been  conserva 
tive  member  of  parUament  for  Hornsey 
(1921-1924)  and  for  Wednesbury  (sinc^ 
1931),  and  had  served  with  distinction 
the  war  of  1914-1918. 

There  was  a  portrait  by  Arthur  Ellis, 
at  Himley  HaU,  of  Lord  Dudley  as  a  young 
man,  just  before  he  went  to  the  South 
African  war ;  a  charcoal  drawing  of  him 
by  P.  A.  de  Laszlo  (1914)  is  in  the 
possession  of  his  widow.  There  is  also  a 
portrait  by  the  AustraUan  artist  (Sir) 
John  Longstaff  in  ParUament  House, 
Canberra. 

[The  Times,  30  June  1932 ;  private  infor- 
mation.] K.  C.  Wheare. 


WARNER,  SiK  GEORGE  FREDERIC 

(1845-1936),  palaeographer  and  scholar, 
was  born  at  Winchester  7  April  1845,  the 
fourth  son  of  Isaac  Warner,  soUcitor,  ot 
Winchester,  by  his  wife,  Susanna,  daughter 
of  John  Witt,  who  held  a  high  position  in 
the  shipping  business  at  Southampton. 
He  was  educated  at  Christ's  Hospital  and 
at  Pembroke  CoUege,  Cambridge,  of  which 
he  was  a  scholar:  he  obtained  a  second 
class  in  the  classical  tripos  of  1868.  In 
1871  Warner  entered  the  department  of 
manuscripts    in    the    British    Museum, 


890 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Warrington 


where  he  served  for  forty  years,  becoming 
assistant  keeper  in  1888  and  keeper  and 
l^gerton  librarian  in  1904.  He  acquired  an 
exceptionally  thorough  knowledge  of  all 
branches  of  the  department,  and  from  the 
time  of  his  becoming  assistant  keeper  he 
in  effect  directed  most  of  the  general 
administration  of  it. 

Warner's  special  interests  were  in 
palaeography  and  illuminated  manu- 
scripts. He  was  associated  with  his  senior 
colleague  and  friend  Sir  Edward  Maunde 
Thompson  [q.v.]  in  the  publications  of 
the  Palaeographical  Society  (1873-1894) 
and  in  1903  founded  the  New  Palaeo- 
frraphical  Society,  of  which  he  remained 
an  editor  until  1915.  For  many  years  he 
revised  and  edited  the  quinquennial 
volumes  of  the  Catalogue  of  Additions  to 
the  Department  of  Manuscripts  and  himself 
superintended  the  volume  for  1900-1905 
(1907).  In  1894  he  initiated  A  Catalogue 
of  Western  Manuscripts  in  the  Old  Royal 
and  King^s  Collections,  which  was  pub- 
lished, in  conjunction  with  his  successor 
in  the  keepership,  Julius  Parnell  Gilson 
[q.v.],  in  four  volumes  in  1921.  In  the 
sphere  of  illuminated  manuscripts, 
Warner's  principal  official  publications 
were  the  facsimile  of  the  Sforza  Book  of 
Hqurs  (1894),  two  sets  of  facsimiles  of  the 
best  manuscripts  in  the  Museum  (the  first 
comprising  four  series  in  colours,  1899- 
1903,  and  the  second  three  series  in  black 
and  white,  1907-1908),  and  Queen  Mary's 
Psalter  (1912).  Unofficial  pubUcations  in- 
cluded the  Miracles  de  Nostre  Dame  (1885), 
the  Benedictional  of  St.  Mthelwold  (1910), 
the  Gospels  of  Matilda,  Countess  of  Salis- 
bury (1917),  and  the  Guthlac  Roll  (1928), 
all  for  the  Roxburghe  Club,  of  which  he 
became  a  member  in  1911 ;  also  a  French 
version  of  Valerius  Maximus  with  minia- 
tures of  the  school  of  Jean  Fouquet  (1907), 
and  a  catalogue  of  the  illuminated  manu- 
scripts in  the  collection  of  C.  W.  Dyson 
Perrins  (2  vols.,  1920). 

Warner's  most  important  works  of 
scholarship  were  his  edition  of  the  travels 
of  Sir  John  Mandeville  {The  buke  of  John 
Maundeuill,  Roxburghe  Club,  1889),  in 
which  he  identified  the  author  and  traced 
the  sources  from  which  he  derived  his 
romance,  and  the  Libelle  of  Englyshe 
Polycye  (1926),  in  which  he  elucidated  the 
authorship  of  this  plea  for  English  sea- 
power.  He  was  an  exceedingly  careful  and 
accurate  scholar,  with  a  minimum  of  dis- 
play. He  was  an  admirable  administrator 
of  his  department,  thorough,  courteous, 
and  helpful ;  but  an  embarrassing  stammer 


precluded  him  from  public  appearances. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Britbh 
Academy  in  1906,  and  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Pembroke  College  in  1911,  and  received 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.I^itt.  from  the 
university  of  Oxford  on  the  occasion  of  the 
tercentenary  of  the  Bodleian  Library  in 
1902. 

After  retiring  from  the  Museum  in  1911, 
in  which  year  he  was  knighted,  Warner 
lived  successively  at  Beaconsfield,  Ealing, 
and  Weybridge,  and  at  Weybridge  he  died 
17  January  1936.  He  married  in  1884 
Marian  Amelia,  daughter  of  Richard 
Budd  Painter,  M.D.,  of  Brompton,  and 
had  a  son,  who  died  young,  and  a 
daughter.  A  good  photograph  is  prefixed 
to  a  volume  of  Miniatures  and  Borders 
from  a  Flemish  Horae  presented  to  him  on 
his  retirement. 

[The  Times,  18  January  1986;  Sir  F.  G. 
Kenyon,  Sir  George  Warner,  1865-1936  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  xxii, 
1936 ;  personal  knowledge.] 

F.  G.  Kenyon. 

WARRINGTON,   THOMAS   ROLLS, 

Baron  Wabrington  of  Clyffe  (1851- 
1937),  judge,  was  bom  in  London  29  May 
1851,  the  only  son  of  Thomas  Warrington, 
a  partner  in  the  firm  of  Messrs.  Garrard  & 
company,  silversmiths  and  jewellers,  of 
London,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Jane,  daughter 
of  Henry  George  Radclyffe.  He  was 
educated  at  Rugby  and  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  was  elected  to  a 
foundation  scholarship  and  obtained  a 
second  class  in  the  classical  tripos  of  1873. 
He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Lincoln's  Inn 
in  1875,  and  became  a  pupil  of  F.  C.  J. 
Millar,  Q.C.  He  soon  acquired  a  reputa- 
tion as  a  junior  and,  to  quote  from  the 
letterpress  of  the  cartoon  of  him  in  Vanity 
Fair,  'by  dint  of  care,  industry  and 
ability  acquired  a  large  practice  on  the 
Chancery  side'.  He  took  silk  in  1895,  and, 
in  accordance  with  the  system  then  in 
force,  attached  himself  to  the  court  of  Sir 
Arthur  Kekewich  [q.v.].  He  soon  estab- 
lished a  considerable  influence  over  that 
judge.  The  possibility  of  such  influence 
was  one  of  the  main  objections  to  the  'tied 
siUc'  system,  but  it  can  be  said  with 
certainty  that  Warrington  never  abused 
the  influence  which  he  obtained  and 
thoroughly  deserved  the  confidence  of  the 
judge.  To  other  counsel  he  set  a  fine 
example.  He  knew  his  pap>ers  thoroughly ; 
he  treated  his  jimior  with  a  courtesy 
almost  amounting  to  deference  and  his 
opponent,  whether  experienced  leader  or 


891 


Warrington 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


young  junior,  with  exemplary  politeness 
and  respect.  He  was  elected  a  bencher  of 
his  Inn  in  1897. 

In  April  1904  Warrington  was  appointed 
a  judge  of  the  Chancery  division  of  the 
High  Court.  His  appointment  was  univer- 
sally approved  and  he  at  once  gained,  and 
retained,  the  respect  and  affection  of  those 
who  practised  before  him.  In  1915  he  was 
promoted  to  the  Court  of  Appeal  and 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  He  retired  in 
October  1926.  On  his  retirement  he  was 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Warrington 
of  Clyffe,  of  Market  Lavington,  in  Wilt- 
shire, and  continued  for  many  years  to 
render  valuable  service  in  a  judicial 
capacity  both  in  the  House  of  Lords  and 
in  the  Privy  Council. 

Warrington's  contribution  to  legal 
literature  was  not  comparable  with  that 
of  Sir  George  Jessel,  Lord  Macnaghten,  or 
Lord  Parker  of  Waddington  [qq.v.],  but 
he  was  a  sound  equity  judge  and  it  was 
said  of  him  with  truth  that  'the  higher  he 
went  the  better  he  got'.  It  did  not  often 
fall  to  his  lot  to  adjudicate  upon  cases 
which  attracted  popular  interest,  but 
among  important  cases  with  which  he  was 
associated  were  Hammerton  v.  Earl  of 
Dysart  (1915),  de  Keysets  Royal  Hotel 
(1919),  and  Banco  de  Portugal  v.  Waterlow 
&  Sons  Ltd.  (1932).  The  first  case  related 
to  an  ancient  ferry  at  Twickenham,  and 
Warrington's  judgement  in  the  Chancery 
division,  reversed  by  the  Court  of  Appeal, 
was  restored  by  the  House  of  Lords.  In 
the  de  Keyser  case  Warrington,  in  the 
Court  of  Appeal,  helped  to  establish  the 
important  principle  that  the  Crown  is  not 
entitled  as  of  right,  either  under  the  pre- 
rogative or  by  statute,  to  take  possession 
of  the  land  or  buildings  of  a  subject  for 
administrative  purposes  in  connexion  with 
the  defence  of  the  realm,  without  paying 
compensation.  The  Portuguese  Bank  case 
gave  rise  to  much  divergence  of  judicial 
opinion  as  to  the  measure  of  damages  for 
breach  of  contract  for  which  the  printers 
of  bank  notes  were  liable  by  reason  of  their 
delivery  of  some  of  the  notes  to  an  un- 
authorized person  who  had  placed  them  in 
circulation  without  authority.  Warring- 
ton in  the  House  of  Lords  was  one  of  a 
dissentient  minority  who  held  that,  on  the 
facts  of  the  case,  the  bank  had  proved  no 
loss  beyond  the  cost  of  printing  notes 
to  replace  those  which  it  had  had  to 
withdraw. 

Warrington  had  interests  outside  the 
law.  During  his  early  years  at  the  bar  he 
was  an  enthusiastic  member  of  the  Inns  of 


Court  Rifles.  His  principal  private  interest 
was  his  house  and  garden  at  Clyffe  HallJ 
to  which  he  was  devoted.    In  1883  hef 
married  Emma  Maud,  eldest  daughter  of 
Decimus  Sturges,  barrister,  of  Lincoln's} 
Inn.    He  had  no  children.    He  died  at 
Clyffe    HaU    26    October    1937.     A    car- 
toon by  'Spy'  appeared  in  Vanity  Fair 
27  November  1907. 

[The  Times,  27  October  1937 ;  Law  Reports ;' 
private  information.]       Lionel  L.  Cohen. 

WARWICK,  Countess  of  (1861-1938). 
[See  Greville,  Frances  Evelyn.] 

WATKINS,  HENRY  GEORGE, 
'GINO'  (1907-1932),  Arctic  explorer,  was 
born  in  London  29  January  1907,  the 
eldest  child  and  elder  son  of  Colonel  Henry 
George  Watkins,  of  the  Coldstream 
Guards,  by  his  wife,  Jennie  Helen,  third 
daughter  of  Colonel  Bolton  Monsell,  of  the 
73rd  Highland  Regiment.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Lancing  and  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  came  in  contact  with 
many  yotuig  polar  explorers  at  a  period 
when  Arctic  travel  had  become  a  Cam- 
bridge enthusiasm.  He  had  already 
become  a  skilled  climber  in  the  Alps  and  a 
flying  enthusiast  when  in  1927  he  organ- 
ized and  led  a  smaU  but  useful  expedition 
to  Edge  Island,  Spitsbergen  (Svalbard). 
Next  year,  eager  for  more  Arctic  ex- 
perience, he  turned  his  attention  to 
Labrador,  which  had  become  prominent 
owing  to  the  boundary  arbitration  with 
Canada.  He  spent  a  year  with  Mr.  J.  M. 
Scott  and  various  trappers  exploring  and 
surveying  in  the  upper  reaches  of  the 
Hamilton  (Grand)  River  system.  On  his 
return,  Watkins's  interest  in  flying  led 
him  to  organize  and  carry  through  a  large 
expedition  to  eastern  Greenland  in  the 
hope  of  investigating  the  possibiUties  of 
an  air  route  between  England  and  Canada 
across  southern  Greenland.  The  British 
Arctic  Air  Route  expedition  of  1930-1931 
was  marked  by  originaUty  in  conception 
and  efficiency  in  execution.  All  the 
members  were  young,  and  few  had  pre- 
vious polar  experience.  The  expedition 
learnt  from  the  Eskimo  the  technique  of 
living  off  the  land,  including  skill  in  hunt- 
ing and  dog-driving.  Two  parties  crossed 
the  ice-sheet  of  the  interior  and  others  did 
much  survey  work  on  a  boat  journey  along 
the  south-east  coast.  The  boldest  feat  was 
the  successful  maintenance  of  an  observa- 
tory on  the  ice-sheet  at  an  altitude  of  8,000 
feet  by  Augustine  Courtauld  through- 
out   the    winter.     On    his   return   from 


892 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Watson 


Greenland  Watkins  planned  an  Antarctic 
expedition  but  failed  to  find  the  money 
iind  so  returned  in  1932  to  his  work  in 
(Greenland.  On  or  about  20  August  1932, 
although  he  had  acquired  the  skill  of  an 
expert  Eskimo  in  the  handling  of  a  kayak, 
lie  lost  his  life  by  drowning  in  Lakefjord 
when  engaged  alone  on  a  seal  hiuvt.  The 
work  of  the  expedition  was  continued 
under  Mr.  John  Rymill. 

A  zest  for  living  and  a  joy  in  overcoming 
difficulties,  in  which  he  showed  a  rare 
combination  of  daring  and  caution,  made 
Watkins  an  ideal  polar  explorer.  Although 
not  a  specialist  himself,  he  had  full 
appreciation  of  the  scientific  problems  to 
be  solved.  The  value  of  his  work  is  shown 
by  the  many  awards  which  he  received, 
all  of  them  in  1932  and  most  of  them 
never  previously  given  to  so  young  a  man. 
They  included  the  Polar  medal,  the  Hans 
Egede  medal  of  Denmark,  the  Founder's 
medal  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society, 
and  the  Bruce  medal  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Edinburgh.    He  was  unmarried. 

A  portrait  in  oils  of  Watkins  by  his 
father  is  in  the  keeping  of  the  family,  and 
there  is  a  bas-relief  by  Cecil  Thomas  at  the 
Scott  Polar  Research  Institute,  Cam- 
bridge. 

[J.  M.  Scott,  Gino  Watkins,  1935,  and  The 
Land  God  Gave  Cain,  1933 ;  F.  S.  Chapman, 
Northern  Lights,  1932,  and  Watkins's  Last 
Expedition,  1934;  Geographical  Journal, 
October  1932;  Polar  Record,  Nos.  1-5,  1931- 
1933;  The  Times,  25  August  1932;  private 
information.]  R.  N.  Rudmose  Brown. 


WATSON,  Sir  (JOHN)  WILLIAM 
(1858-1935),  poet,  was  born  at  Burley-in- 
Wharfedale,  Yorkshire,  2  August  1858,  of 
Yorkshire  ancestry  on  both  sides.  He  was 
the  son  of  John  Watson,  master  grocer, 
afterwards  a  merchant  in  Liverpool,  by  his 
wife,  Dorothy  Robinson. 

Educated  at  a  school  at  Southport,  he 
began  to  contribute  verse  to  the  news- 
papers at  the  age  of  fourteen.  His  first 
volume  of  verse,  The  Prince's  Quest,  pub- 
lished at  his  father's  cost,  appeared  in 
1880:  this  was  followed  by  twenty-seven 
other  works,  mostly  poetry.  It  was  not, 
however,  until  1890  that,  with  the  appear- 
ance of  Wordsworth's  Grave  and  Other 
Poems,  Watson  began  to  attract  pubhc 
notice.  Lachrymae  Musarum  (1892),  a 
dirge  for  Tennyson,  gave  its  name  to 
another  volume  of  poems  in  1893.  His 
work  was  greatly  admired  by  Gladstone, 
and  Watson  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the 
few  poets  who  were  considered  for  the 

898 


laureateship  when  Robert  Bridges  [q.v.] 
was  appointed  in  1918.  At  the  end  of  1894 
Watson  commemorated  his  recovery  from 
a  serious  illness  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  his  poems,  'Vita  Nuova',  published  in 
the  volume  entitled  Odes  and  Other  Poems. 
This  in  turn  was  succeeded  by  The  Father 
of  the  Forest  (1895),  by  The  Purple  East 
(1896),  and  by  the  well-known  Ode  on  the 
Day  of  the  Coronation  of  King  Edward  VII 
(1902). 

Watson  complained  in  prose,  and  fre- 
quently in  his  verses,  that  modem  life  had 
moved  away  from  poetry,  but  he  himself 
was  constantly  inspired  by  current  events, 
and  was  able  to  claim,  without  anyone 
being  able  to  find  fault  with  the  claim,  of  a 
certain  association  that  troubled  the  Near 
East: 

'Who  among  singers  sang  for  Man  but  me?' 

It  is  pyerhaps  for  the  reason  that  he  fought 
so  courageously  with  his  pen  among  the 
dust  of  passing  events  that  recognition  of 
his  work  was  fitful,  for  no  man  can  take  a 
vigorous  part  in  poUtical  affairs  without 
making  enemies.  Indeed  the  vigour  with 
which  he  championed  oppressed  Armen- 
ians must  have  caused  some  anxiety  to  the 
British  Foreign  Office,  when  it  led  him  to 
write  in  the  Westminster  Gazette  of: 

'Abdul  the  Danmed  on  his  infernal  throne' . 

There  was,  in  fact,  a  saeva  indignatio  in 
Watson,  which  did  not  decrease  with  age. 
William  Archer  [q.v.]  in  his  Poets  of  the 
Younger  Generation  (1902),  in  an  ample 
estimate  of  Watson,  complains  that  he 
might  possibly  have  been  a  greater  poet 
'had  the  imaginative  in  his  composition 
been  less  exactly  balanced  by  the  logical 
element'.  This  balance  in  the  poet  was 
accurately  perceived,  yet  it  seems  hardly 
a  thing  to  regret,  but  rather  to  resemble 
the  ideal  collaboration  between  a  diamond- 
miner  and  a  diamond-cutter,  the  one  to 
find  a  fine  stone  and  the  other  to  cut  it 
perfectly:  so  Watson  would  find  a  truth 
and,  making  it  sparkle  to  its  utmost  by  his 
art,  would  lay  it  before  the  public  with  all 
the  radiance  due  to  it. 

By  the  year  1913  two  troubles  obviously 
oppressed  Watson,  the  one  that  is  shown 
in  the  very  title  of  the  book  which  he 
published  in  that  year.  The  Muse  in  Exile, 
by  which  he  deplored,  in  no  mere  personal 
sense,  the  neglect  of  poetry  at  that  time  in 
England ;  and  the  other,  those  influences 
that  he  feared  were  weakening  the  British 
Empire.  But  immediately  the  war  of 
1914r-1918  broke  out  he  wrote  what  was 


Watson 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


probably  the  finest  sonnet  produced  by 
that  war : 

'At  last  we  know  you,  war-lord.   You 

that  flung 
The   gauntlet   down,    fling   down   the 
mask  you  wore, ' 

wherein  he  showed  his  faith  and  trust  in 
British  strength. 

Watson's  own  verses  reveal  an  estimate 
of  himself,  as  a  singer  pledged  to  the 
muses,  which  is  a  just  one,  and  which  is  weU 
borne  out  by  his  fine  appreciations  of  other 
singers,  not  all  of  them  human,  as  in  his 
poems  to  Wordsworth,  SheUey,  Keats, 
Tennyson,  Burns,  and  the  skylark.  One 
of  his  sonnets  is  a  curious  example  of  how 
a  poet  may  gather  his  material  from  the 
future  as  well  as  from  the  present  or  the 
past,  a  poem  to  France,  in  which  he  says, 
amongst  other  things  that  are  observed 
to-day : 

'Nation  whom  storm  on  storm  of  ruin- 
ing fate 

Unruined  leaves.' 

It  was  written  in  1894.  He  published 
Selected  Poems,  with  Notes  by  the  Author  in 
1928,  and  The  Poems  of  Sir  William 
Watson  appeared  posthumously  in  1936. 

Watson  visited  the  United  States  more 
than  once  and  lectured  there  with  success ; 
several  of  his  poems  show  gratitude  for 
recognition  generously  given  to  him  there. 
In  1917  he  was  knighted.  He  married  in 
1909  Adeline  Maureen,  daughter  of  Harry 
Pring,  of  Dundalk,  co.  Louth,  and  many 
of  his  poems  record  that  it  was  a  very 
happy  marriage.  They  made  their  home 
at  Rottingdean,  He  died  at  Ditchling 
Common,  Sussex,  11  August  1935,  and 
was  survived  by  his  wife  and  their  two 
daughters. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1935;  W.  Archer, 
Poets  of  the  Younger  Generation,  1902.] 

DUNSANY. 

WELLCOME,  Sir  HENRY  SOLO- 
MON (1853-1936),  manufacturing  chemist 
and  patron  of  science,  was  born  in  a  log 
cabin  at  Almond  in  the  State  of  Wis- 
consin, United  States  of  America,  21 
August  1853,  the  yoimger  son  of  the  Rev. 
Solomon  Cummings  WeUcome,  farmer  and 
itinerant  missionary  to  the  Dakota  Indian 
tribes,  by  his  wife,  Mary  Curtis.  His  early 
education  was  received  at  frontier  schools. 
Much  of  his  boyhood  was  spent  in  Garden 
City,  Minnesota,  where,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  WilUam  Worrell  Mayo,  he  began 
to  take  a  lively  interest  in  pharmacy.  He 


quaUfied  at  the  Philadelphia  College 
Pharmacy  and  served  his  apprenticeshij 
with  various  reputable  American  flrr 
during    which    period    he    explored    thd 
cinchona  forests  of  Peru   and  Ecuador 
where  he  first  became  interested  in  thi 
history   of  medicine.    His   progress   wa 
rapid  and  in  1880,  at  the  age  of  twent) 
seven,  he   came   to  England,   where 
entered  into  partnership  with  S.  M.  Bui 
roughs,  also  an  American  by  birth.   The 
firm  of  Burroughs,  Wellcome  &  company 
were    manufacturers    of   fine    chemicals, 
alkaloids,   and  pharmaceutical  products 
including  a  special  range  of  compressed 
drugs  for  which  the  trade-mark  'tabloid' 
was  invented.    The  firm  prospered  and, 
on  his  partner's  death  in  1895,  WeUcome 
acquired  the  whole  business. 

Wellcome  was  now  a  wealthy  man  and 
in  a  position  to  carry  out  his  long  cherished 
schemes  for  the  advancement  of  medical 
research  and  education.  He  was  essen- 
tially a  patron  of  science ;  he  provided  the 
conditions  necessary  for  successful  medical 
research.  In  1894  he  founded  the  labora-_ 
tories  known  as  the  Wellcome  Physic 
logical  Research  Laboratories,  in  1896  th^ 
chemical  research  laboratories  ia  Londoi 
which  bear  his  name ;  in  1901  he  inspire 
the  creation  (1903)  imder  the  direction  o| 
(Sir)  Andrew  Balfour  [q.v.]  of  the  tropic 
research  laboratories  in  connexion  witi 
the  Gordon  Memorial  College  at  Khar| 
toum,  providing  all  the  necessary  equij 
ment.  In  1913  he  founded  in  London  th^ 
WeUcome  Historical  Medical  Museum  fc 
which  he  had  been  collecting  for  manj 
years.  In  1913  also,  the  WeUcome  Bureaii 
of  Scientific  Research  was  established 
London  for  the  investigation  in  England 
of  tropical  diseases,  and  with  this  ia  19M 
was  associated  a  museum  which  lateij 
became  the  WeUcome  Museum  of  Medica 
Science  (1923).  All  these  were  subse-i 
quently  incorporated  in  the  WeUcome 
Research  Institution  as  a  part  of  the 
WeUcome  Foimdation  estabUshed  in  1924 
to  imite  the  business  of  Burroughs,  WeU-^ 
come  &  company  with  the  various  labora-^j 
tories  and  museums.  To  crown  his  many 
benefactions  WeUcome  left  practically  the 
whole  of  his  wealth  to  scientific  researcl 
and  education. 

WeUcome's  activities,  however,  were 
not  confined  to  the  estabUshment  o^ 
medical  research  laboratories  anc 
museums:  he  encouraged  and  supportec 
archaeological  research  in  Africa  anc 
Palestine.  At  Gebel  Moya,  in  the  Sudai 
he  selected  a   late   neolithic  site  whei 


894 


D.N.B.  1081-1940 


Welldon 


extensive  excavations,  which  he  himself 
directed  for  a  number  of  years  up  to  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1914,  were  carried  out. 
It  is  probable  that  his  interest  in  geo- 
graphical exploration  was  stimulated  by 
his  friendship  with  Sir  H.  M.  Stanley 
[q.v.],  of  whom  he  was  an  ardent  sup- 
porter. He  took  an  active  interest  in 
medical  missionary  work  and  was  a  de- 
voted champion  of  General  W.  C.  Gorgas 
in  his  pioneer  sanitary  efforts  which  made 
})ossible  the  construction  of  the  Panama 
Canal.  Wellcome's  early  contact  with 
American  Indians  bred  in  him  a  lifelong 
sympathy  for  them,  and  for  many  years 
he  was  engaged  in  a  thankless  and  costly 
legal  struggle  on  behalf  of  a  dispossessed 
tribe  from  Fort  Simpson,  British  Columbia, 
whose  history  he  published  in  The  Story 
of  Metlakahila  (1887). 

When  in  1928  the  senate  of  Edinburgh 
University  conferred  upon  Wellcome  the 
honorary  degree  of  LL.D.,  the  dean  of  the 
faculty  said:  'Mr.  Wellcome  has  a  three- 
fold claim  to  academic  distinction:  he  is 
a  princely  patron  of  medical  research,  a 
generous  friend  of  missionary  enterprise, 
and  an  enthusiastic  promoter  of  geo- 
graphical and  archaeological  explora- 
tion. .  .  .'  This  tribute  covers  to  a  large 
extent  the  range  of  Wellcome's  activities. 

Wellcome  was  a  fellow  or  member  of 
numerous  learned  societies,  and  in  later 
Ufe  he  was  the  recipient  of  many  honours. 
In  1932  he  was  elected  one  of  the  few  lay 
honorary  fellows  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons  of  England  and  was  also  elected 
F.R.S.  The  same  year  he  was  knighted 
in  recognition  of  all  that  he  had  done  for 
science  and  the  British  Empire,  and  he 
was  made  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  in  1936.  He  married  in  1901 
Gwendoline  Maude  Syrie,  daughter  of  the 
philanthropist  Thomas  John  Bamardo 
[q.v.],  and  had  one  son.  The  marriage  was 
subsequently  dissolved.  He  was  natural- 
ized in  1910.  He  died  in  London  25  July 
1936. 

[Obituary  Notices  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  No.  6,  January  1938  (portrait) ;  The 
Times,  27  July  1936;  original  documents; 
personal  knowledge.]  S.  H.  Daukes. 

WELLDON,  JAMES  EDWARD 
COWELL  (1854-1937),  successively  head- 
master of  Dulwich  and  of  Harrow,  bishop 
of  Calcutta,  and  dean  of  Manchester  and 
of  Durham,  was  born  at  Tonbridge  25 
April  1854,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Rev. 
Edward  Ind  Welldon,  second  master  of 
Tonbridge    School,    by   his   wife,   Ellen 


Laura,  second  daughter  of  Samuel  Byles 
Cowell,  head  of  a  printing  firm  in  Ips- 
wich. After  being  at  school  at  Eton,  of 
which  he  was  a  scholar  and  where  he  won 
the  Newcastle  scholarship  in  1878,  he 
went  as  a  scholar  to  King^s  College, 
Cambridge.  Here  he  won  the  Bell  and 
Craven  vmiversity  scholarships  (1874  and 
1876)  and  was  Browne's  medallist  (Greek 
ode,  1875  and  1876)  and  senior  classic  and 
senior  chancellor's  medallist  (1877).  In 
1878  he  was  elected  into  a  fellowship  at  his 
college,  where  he  remained  until  he  was 
appointed  master  of  Dulwich  College  in 
1883.  In  that  year  he  was  ordained  deacon, 
and  priest  in  1885.  He  raised  Dulwich 
from  a  low  ebb  to  the  position  that  it  has 
since  retained.  The  school  song,  'Pueri 
Alleynienses ',  was  his  composition.  But 
at  Harrow  he  established  his  fame  as  a 
great  schoolmaster.  His  lifelong  love  for 
Harrow  and  his  undying  interest  in  the 
careers  of  his  pupils  revealed  the  depth  of 
his  affection  for  the  school,  which  he  ruled 
with  the  masterly  force  of  an  infectious 
personality  for  thirteen  years  (1885-1898). 
The  dinner  which  200  old  Harrovians 
gave  to  him  on  his  eightieth  birthday  was 
a  fitting  response  to  his  large-hearted 
interest  in  'his  old  boys'.  At  Calcutta,  as 
metropohtan  of  the  Indian  Church  (1898- 
1902),  he  diligently  tried  to  master  Indian 
problems  and  travelled  to  every  part  of  the 
country  in  order  to  get  in  touch  with 
Indian  Christians,  but  ill  health  and  an 
unfortunate  disagreement  on  missionary 
questions  between  him  and  the  viceroy. 
Lord  Curzon,  led  to  his  resignation.  This 
setback,  if  it  can  be  so  called,  probably 
prevented  him  from  gaining  that  position 
in  the  Church  to  which  his  personaUty  and 
abiUties  pointed,  but  his  complete  lack  of 
resentment  was  nobly  sealed  by  his  magni- 
ficent bequest  to  the  work  of  the  Indian 
Church  and  he  gave  himself  whole- 
heartedly to  the  considerable  offices  to 
which  he  was  successively  appointed.  His 
health  was  re-estabUshed  by  an  operation 
and  by  four  and  a  half  years  of  quiet  work 
as  canon  of  Westminster  (1902-1906). 
The  history  of  Westminster  Abbey  ap- 
pealed to  him  strongly  and  he  enjoyed 
showing  parties  of  visitors  from  the 
Dominions  and  other  parts  of  the  Empire 
over  the  Abbey.  The  coronation  of  King 
Edward  VII,  in  which  he  took  an  im- 
portant part,  was  the  leading  event  at  the 
Abbey  in  his  time. 

As  dean  of  Manchester  (1906-1918) 
Welldon  devoted  himself  zealously  to  the 
cathedral,    which    became    a    centre    of 


895 


Welldon 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


spiritual  and  civic  influence.  His  over- 
flowing humanity  compelled  him  to  get 
into  touch  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men.  The  story,  which  he  told  against 
himself,  of  an  old  Lancashire  woman  in  a 
tram,  who  tapped  him  on  the  knee  and 
said : '  Dean,  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  you  spout 
too  much',  is  to  his  credit  in  more  ways 
than  one. 

When  Welldon  went  to  the  deanery  of 
Durham  in  1918  he  was  past  the  age  for 
initiating  new  undertakings,  but  he  ad- 
ministered the  cathedral  with  due  regard 
to  its  traditions  and  took  a  deep  interest 
in  the  work  of  the  university.  His  serene 
composure  was  manifested  on  one  occasion 
when  by  some  mistake  he  had  been 
severely  jostled  by  a  party  of  miners  and 
very  nearly  rolled  into  the  river.  After 
changing  his  clothes  before  preaching  he 
delivered  to  the  same  men  a  sermon  full  of 
kindliness  without  an  allusion  to  the 
subject.  A  serious  fall,  which  crippled  him 
for  the  rest  of  his  life,  led  to  his  resignation 
in  1933  shortly  after  the  death  of  a  faith- 
ful servant  who  had  been  with  him  in  close 
companionship  for  nearly  fifty  years.  He 
retired  to  Sevenoaks,  where  he  died 
17  June  1937.    He  was  immarried. 

Welldon's  brilliant  scholarship  gave  to 
the  world  translations  of  Aristotle's 
Politics  (1883),  Rhetoric  (1886),  and  Ethics 
(1892).  Aristotle  coloured  both  his  style 
and  his  manner  of  reasoning.  He  had  a 
wide  knowledge  of  EngUsh,  French, 
German,  and  Italian  literature.  His 
historical  sense  was  keen:  his  theological 
outlook  both  orthodox  and  human  {The 
Hope  of  Immortality,  incorporating  his 
Hulsean  lectures  delivered  at  Cambridge 
in  1897  and  1898,  1898 ;  The  Revelation  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  1902;  an  edition  of  St. 
Augustine's  De  Civitate  Dei,  2  vols.,  1924). 
As  an  ecclesiastic  it  is  impossible  to  give 
him  a  party  label.  Brought  up  in  the 
strict  evangelical  tradition,  he  shook  him- 
self free  of  all  narrow  conceptions,  retain- 
ing that  sense  of  individual  relationship 
to  the  Person  of  Jesus  which  was  the  key- 
note of  his  thinking.  He  was  a  frank  but 
friendly  critic  of  all  parties  and  denomina- 
tions, measuring  them  by  a  robust 
common  sense  and  untarnished  sincerity. 
He  was  a  believer  in  the  national  character 
of  the  Church  of  England  (The  Religious 
Aspects  of  Disestablishment  and  Dis- 
endozvment,  1911 ;  The  English  Church, 
1926)  but  nourished  the  hope  of  reunion, 
first  with  the  British  nonconformists  and 
ultimately  with  all  Christian  Churches. 
He  was  an  impressive  preacher  and  several 


volumes  of  sermons  mark  the  stages  of 
ministry.    His  autobiographical  writin. 
Recollections  and  Reflections  (1915)  an( 
Forty  Years  On  (1935),  are  a  storehouse 
his  views  on  various  topics. 

Welldon  was  a  great  personality 
stature  and  physical  bulk,  his  men 
strength,  his  emotional  fervour  all  denot( 
power.  There  was  no  finesse  about  hi 
A  professor  once  said  of  his  examinatioi 
work :  '  I  can't  say  much  for  his  style,  but 
it  is  like  his  fives-playing.  The  ball  always 
nicks.'  A  great  traveller,  he  was  a  real 
citizen  of  the  world.  He  was  a  genial  host, 
a  good  talker,  a  reservoir  of  choice  stories, 
packed  with  humour.  Of  malice  or  resent- 
ment he  was  incapable. 

A  portrait  of  Welldon  by  John  Collier 
(1898)  hangs  in  the  Vaughan  library  a1 
Harrow. 

[The  Times,  19  June  1937 ;  J.  E.  C.  Welldo; 
Recollections  and  Reflections,  1915,  and  Fori 
Years  On,  1935 ;  private  information ;  pe; 
sonal  knowledge.]  J.  W.  S.  Tomlin. 


er 

I 


WEMYSS,  ROSSLYN  ERSKINB 
Bakon  Wkster  Wemyss  (1864-1933) 
admiral  of  the  fleet,  was  born  in  Londoi 
12  April  1864,  the  youngest  and  post 
humous  son  of  James  Hay  Erskin* 
Wemyss,  of  Wemyss  Castle,  Fife,  by  hi 
wife,  Millicent  Ann  Mary,  daughter 
Lady  Augusta  Kennedy  Erskine,  th( 
fourth  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Clarena 
(later  King  William  IV)  by  Mrs.  Doroth] 
Jordan  [q.v.].  His  paternal  grandfather 
Rear-Admiral  James  Erskine  Wemyss 
was  great-great-grandson  of  David,  thirc 
Earl  of  Wemyss  [q.v.],  vice-admiral  o 
Scotland,  and  his  own  maternal  great 
grandfather,  King  William,  had  been  th( 
last  holder  of  the  office  of  lord  higl 
admiral  of  the  United  Kingdom ;  thus  th< 
naval  strain  in  his  ancestry  was  strong. 

Wemyss    entered    the    training    ship 
Britannia  in  1877  with  his  third  cousins, 
the  Royal  Princes  Albert  Victor  (later 
Duke  of  Clarence)  and  George  (later  King 
George  V).   On  passing  out  in  1879  with^ 
distinction    he    was    appointed    to    the^ 
Bacchante  under   Captain   Lord   Charles  i 
Thomas    Montagu-Douglas-Scott    [q.v.], 
in  which  the  princes  were  to  spend  three 
years  on  a  memorable  cruise  round  the 
world.   On  its  termination  he  was  sent  to 
the     Northumberland     in     the     Channel 
squadron  for  eight  months,  and  then  was  • 
appointed    senior    midshipman    of    the 
Canada  on  the  North  America  and  West 
Indies  station  in  which  Prince  George  was 
his  next  jimior.     While   in   her   he  was 


896 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Wemyss 


promoted  sub-lieutenant  and  in  August  1 884 
came  home  for  the  normal  twelve  months' 
courses  at  Portsmouth  and  Greenwich. 
He  then  spent  eighteen  months  in  the 
Jlecla,  torpedo  depot  ship,  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, being  promoted  lieutenant  in  her 
in  March  1887.  In  October  of  that  year  he 
was,  naturally  from  his  early  associations, 
selected  for  service  in  the  royal  yacht 
Osborne  for  two  years,  after  which  he 
became  flag-lieutenant  in  the  Anson  to 
Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  R.  E.  Tracey  [q.v.], 
second-in-command  of  the  Channel 
squadron,  and  left  her  in  March  1890  to 
spend  two  years  in  the  Undaunted  (serving 
under  Captain  Lord  Charles  Beresford, 
q.\.)  in  the  Mediterranean.  He  then 
returned  to  the  Channel  squadron  for  two 
years  in  the  Empress  of  India,  flagship  of 
Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  Edward  Seymour 
[q.v.]  and  after  one  year  as  first-lieutenant 
of  the  Astraea,  2nd  class  cruiser,  in  the 
Mediterranean,  resumed  royal  yacht  duty 
as  first-lieutenant  of  the  Victoria  and 
Albert  in  1896.  On  completion  of  this 
service  he  was  promoted  commander  in 
August  1898  in  accordance  with  established 
custom.  He  was  commander  of  the  cruiser 
Niobe,  detached  from  the  Channel  squad- 
ron for  special  service  at  the  Cape  during 
the  first  year  of  the  South  African  war. 
He.  was  disappointed  in  having  no  oppor- 
tunity for  fighting  service  ashore,  his  ship 
being  employed  on  ancillary  duties,  in- 
cluding that  of  transporting  Boer  prison- 
ers to  St.  Helena  and  guarding  them 
there.  On  return  to  England  at  the  end  of 
1900  he  was  invited  by  the  Duke  of  York 
(later  King  George  V)  to  accompany  him 
as  second-in-command  of  the  Ophir  (a 
specially  commissioned  passenger  ship) 
on  his  tour  to  the  overseas  Dominions, 
which  was  arranged  mainly  for  the  open- 
ing of  the  first  parliament  of  the  Common- 
wealth of  Australia.  Queen  Victoria's 
death  temporarily  delayed  the  prepara- 
tions for  this  cruise,  but  it  took  place  from 
March  to  November  1901.  Wemyss  won 
golden  opinions  from  all  concerned  and 
was  specially  promoted  captain  and 
appointed  M.V.O.  on  its  conclusion. 

At  Christmas  1902  the  second  Lord 
Selborne's  memorandum  launched  the 
new  scheme  of  naval  education  promoted 
by  Sir  John  Fisher  [q.v.].  Its  first  and 
most  important  part  provided  for  the 
establishment  of  a  new  cadets'  college  on 
novel  lines  and  Fisher  had  already  marked 
down  Wemyss  as  the  ideal  man  to  be  its 
first  captain.  He  was  accordingly  em- 
ployed at  the  Admiralty  in  working  out 


the  details  of  the  new  organization  and  of 
the  building  of  the  college  in  the  grounds 
of  Queen  Victoria's  house  at  Osborne 
until  August  1903  when  he  was  appointed 
to  its  command.  The  initial  and  con- 
tinued success  of  this  remarkable  enter- 
prise was  largely  due  to  his  qualities  of 
energy,  resource,  and  tact,  and  his 
buoyant  good  temper  and  infectious 
enthusiasm.  He  won  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  civilian  masters,  ofllcers, 
and  cadets  alike,  and  the  entire  approval 
of  the  Board  in  Whitehall. 

After  two  years  at  Osborne  Wemyss  was 
glad  to  return  to  the  sea  as  captain  of  the 
Suffolk  in  the  Mediterranean  where  Beres- 
ford was  then  commander-in-chief.  He 
paid  her  off  in  April  1908  and,  after  a  few 
months  conmiand  of  the  Albion,  flagship 
in  the  Atlantic  Fleet,  next  year  was 
appointed  commodore,  2nd  class,  of  the 
royal  naval  barracks  at  Devonport. 

Wemyss's  service  there  was  interrupted 
for  several  months  in  1910  while  he  com- 
manded the  Balmoral  Castle  which  was 
conmiissioned  to  take  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Connaught  to  South  Africa  for 
the  opening  of  the  first  Union  parliament. 
He  had  accepted  the  offer  of  this  com- 
mand in  April  when  the  Prince  of  Wales 
had  intended  to  vmdertake  the  ceremony, 
but  the  death  of  King  Edward  VII 
necessitated  a  change.  King  George  made 
him  extra  naval  equerry  after  his  acces- 
sion and  he  was  appointed  C.M.G.  after  the 
voyage.  In  April  191 1  he  reached  flag  rank, 
only  twelve  and  a  half  years  after  promo- 
tion to  commander,  and  in  October  1912 
he  was  appointed  for  a  year  rear-admiral 
in  the  second  battle  squadron  of  the  Home 
Fleet  (flag  in  the  Orion). 

On  1  August  1914,  when  war  became 
imminent,  Wemyss  was  app>ointed  to  the 
command  of  the  twelfth  cruiser  squadron 
(flag  in  the  Charybdis)  with  orders  to  act  in 
concert  with  the  French  Admiral  Rouyer 
in  charge  of  the  western  patrol  in  the 
English  Channel  for  the  protection  of  the 
transports  conveying  the  British  Expedi- 
tionary Force  to  France.  Constantly  at 
sea  in  an  old  uncomfortable  ship  without 
any  sign  of  the  enemy,  Wemyss  found  this 
a  tiresome  task,  and  was  glad  when  in 
September  his  squadron  was  sent  to 
Canada  to  escort  the  first  contingent  of 
30,000  Canadians  to  England.  This  duty 
was  successfully  accomplished,  although 
Wemyss  himself  considered  that  old  slow 
cruisers  were  a  risky  protection  to  a 
convoy.  He  then  resumed  charge  of  the 
western  patrol,  transferring  his  flag  to  the 


897 


3m 


Wemyss 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Euryalus  until  February  1915,  when  he 
hauled  it  down  on  the  dispersal  of  his 
cruiser  force. 

Wemyss  was  at  once  selected  for  a  new 
duty  as  governor  of  the  island  of  Lemnos 
and  to  take  charge  of  a  naval  base  to  be 
created  at  Mudros  for  the  impending  naval 
and  mihtary  Dardanelles  campaign, 
although  occupying  a  most  anomalous 
position  in  foreign  territory  without  staff 
or  detailed  orders  to  guide  him.  He  was 
required  to  organize  and  equip  a  base  for 
a  great  army  and  fleet  on  an  island  which 
had  no  facilities  for  landing  troops  or 
discharging  cargo,  no  water  supply,  and 
no  native  labour.  He  set  to  work  at  once 
with  great  energy  and  resourcefulness  and 
in  a  few  weeks  troops  were  able  to  land  and 
assemble  for  the  attack  on  the  GallipoU 
peninsula.  In  March  Vice- Admiral  (Sir) 
S.  H.  Garden  [q.v.],  the  commander-in- 
chief,  had  to  give  up  the  command 
through  ill  health.  His  second-in-com- 
mand, Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  J.  M.  De 
Robeck  [q.v.],  was  junior  to  Wemyss, 
although  older,  but  Wemyss  with  great 
pubUc  spirit  himself  proposed  that  De 
Robeck  should  succeed  Garden  with  the 
acting  rank  of  vice-admiral,  remaining 
himself  in  charge  of  Mudros. 

In  April  Wemyss  was  able  to  take  an 
active  part  in  the  landing  operations  in 
command  of  the  first  naval  squadron, 
being  in  charge  of  the  HeUes  section,  with 
his  flag  in  his  former  flagship  Euryalus, 
and  having  Lieutenant- General  Sir  Aylmer 
Hunter-Weston  [q.v.]  and  his  staff  on 
board.  Throughout  this  critical  and 
dangerous  work  he  maintained  close  co- 
operation with  the  military  authorities, 
readily  accepted  ideas  from  his  own 
officers,  such  as  the  celebrated  beaching  of 
the  cargo  ship  River  Clyde,  and  helped  to 
maintain  the  morale  of  the  whole  expedi- 
tion by  his  indomitable  cheerfulness  and 
imperturbability.  In  August  he  was 
mentioned  in  dispatches  for  his  invaluable 
services  in  the  GaUipoli  landing. 

In  November,  diuring  De  Robeck's 
absence  on  leave,  Wemyss  was  appointed 
acting  vice-admiral,  transferring  his  flag 
to  the  Lord  Nelson.  Gommodore  (after- 
wards Admiral  Lord)  Keyes,  De  Robeck's 
chief  of  staff,  had  obtained  his  admiral's 
leave  to  go  to  London  to  urge  one  more 
naval  attempt  to  get  through  the  Straits 
before  the  evacuation  recommended  by 
General  Sir  Gharles  Monro  [q.v.]  was 
effected.  De  Robeck  himself  did  not 
advise  this  proposal,  but  Wemyss  en- 
thusiastically pressed  it  upon  the  generals 


on  the  spot  and  by  telegrams  to  A.  34 
Balfour  [q.v.],  the  first  lord.  But  militai 
opinion  was  adverse  and  the  Admiralty 
did  not  support  him.  In  the  actus 
evacuation  of  Suvla  and  Anzac  Wemyss! 
although  detesting  the  decision  to  effec 
it,  threw  himself  into  the  naval  directioi 
of  the  operation  with  courage  and  opti'^ 
mistic  determination,  thereby  sustaining 
the  spirits  of  doubting  generals,  and 
deserved  a  full  share  of  credit  for  its  being 
carried  out  almost  without  loss. 

In  January  1916  Wemyss  was  appointed 
K.G.B.  for  his  Dardanelles  service  and 
commander-in-chief  of  the  East  Indies  and 
Egypt  station.  The  Euryalus  was  again 
his  flagship  and  he  soon  found  oppor- 
tunities of  effective  co-operation  with  the 
military  commanders  in  the  defence  of 
Egypt  against  the  Turks  and  the  Senussi 
rising  and  in  the  support  of  General  Sir 
Archibald  Murray's  advance  to  Sinai.  He 
then  took  his  squadron  to  the  Persian 
Gulf  and  went  himself  up  the  Tigris  in  a 
river-gunboat  to  try  to  relieve  the  critical 
situation  in  Mesopotamia.  In  a  forlorn- 
hope  of  saving  the  garrison  of  Major- 
General  Sir  G.  V.  F.  Townshend  [q.v.]  at 
Kut  from  surrender  he  attempted  to  get  a 
food  ship  through  to  the  town ;  it  failed, 
but  he  could  not  rightly  refuse  the 
military  appeal  for  help.  He  then  com- 
pleted his  tour  of  his  station,  visiting  both 
India,  where  he  saw  the  viceroy.  Lord 
Ghelmsford,  and  Geylon,  and,  after  meet- 
ing Rear-Admiral  (Sir)  W.  L.  Grant, 
commander-in-chief,  Ghina  station,  at 
Penang,  he  returned  to  Egypt  in  August 
in  time  to  support  the  advance  by  General 
Sir  Edmund  AUenby  [q.v.]  into  Palestine, 
and  foster  the  Arab  revolt  by  his  patrols 
in  the  Red  Sea.  He  estabUshed  cordial 
relations  with  the  Emir  Feisal  and  T.  E. 
Lawrence  [q.v.],  as  well  as  with  the 
generals.  He  was  promoted  vice-admiral 
in  1916. 

In  Jiuie  1917  imder  an  agreement 
between  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Italy 
it  was  decided  to  appoint  a  vice-admiral 
as  commander-in-chief  of  the  British  ships 
in  the  Mediterranean  with  headquarters 
at  Malta.  Wemyss  was  offered  and  ac- 
cepted the  appointment,  but  on  returning 
to  London  for  instructions  he  was  invited 
by  Sir  Eric  Geddes  [q.v.],  who  had  just 
succeeded  Sir  Edward  Garson  [q.v.]  as 
first  lord,  to  join  his  Board  as  second  sea 
lord;  that  official  had  hitherto  been  ex- 
pected to  take  the  place  of  the  first  sea  lord 
in  his  absence.  But  on  further  reflection 
Geddes  decided  to  leave  the  second  sea 


898 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


Wemyss 


lord  to  carry  on  his  personnel  work  and  in 
September  created  a  new  office  of  deputy 
sea  lord  for  Wemyss. 

Geddes  had  been  instructed  by  Lloyd 
George  to  proceed  at  once  with  the  de- 
velopment of  the  war  staff,  already 
inaugurated  by  Mr.  Churchill  in  1912  on 
a  much  more  extensive  scale  and  on  the 
lines  of  the  General  Staff  of  the  army. 
Wemyss  had  no  previous  experience  of 
Admiralty  administration  but  entered 
with  zest  upon  his  new  duties  and  arranged 
for  Keyes  to  join  him  as  director  of  the 
new  Plans  Division.  Admiral  Sir  John 
JelUeoe  [q.v.],  the  first  sea  lord,  did  not 
feel  justified  in  handing  over  responsi- 
bihties  to  his  new  deputy  and  his  differ- 
ences with  both  Geddes  and  the  prime 
minister  led  to  his  being  replaced  at  the 
end  of  the  year  (1917)  by  Wemyss  him- 
self. Thus  at  the  age  of  fifty -three  Wemyss 
had  reached  the  highest  position  in  the 
naval  service.  Throughout  1918  he  worked 
in  complete  unity  with  Geddes.  He  dis- 
liked office  work  but  beUeved  thoroughly 
in  devolution  of  duties  to  trusted  col- 
leagues and  subordinates  and  was  able, 
by  co-ordinating  the  several  divisions  of 
the  war  staff  into  a  team,  to  inspire  all 
with  his  own  infectious  enthusiasm.  His 
success  in  dealing  with  the  prolonged 
submarine  menace  was  mainly  due  to  this, 
and  the  dramatic  exploit  of  Zeebrugge 
(April  1918)  was  an  enterprise  after  his 
own  heart.  He  was  appointed  G.C.B.  in 
Jime  1918  and  promoted  admiral  in  1919. 

Wemyss's  intimate  knowledge  of  foreign 
affairs  and  friendships  with  the  leading 
French  admirals  with  whom  he  served  in 
the  AUied  naval  command  were  of  great 
advantage  as  the  armistice  with  its  inter- 
national problems  drew  near,  and  he 
represented  the  Allied  navies  with  con- 
spicuous distinction  together  with  Marshal 
Foch  at  the  final  capitulation  of  the  Ger- 
mans at  Compiegne.  His  success  in 
securing  what  he  considered  to  be  the 
minimum  of  naval  terms  in  the  settlement 
was  only  obtained  after  vigorous  resist- 
ance to  the  readiness  of  some  members  of 
the  War  Cabinet  to  weaken  them,  and  to 
the  blank  ignorance  of  the  French 
generals  about  the  naval  conduct  of  the 
war.  With  the  new  year  preparations  for 
the  Peace  Conference  began  in  Paris  and 
Wemyss  was  charged  with  the  difficult 
task  of  maintaining  the  naval  interests  of 
this  country:  as  at  the  armistice  he  suc- 
ceeded in  spite  of  many  obstacles  in 
getting  his  terms  accepted  by  both  the 
Allied  statesmen  and  the  Germans. 


At  home  Wemyss  took  a  leading  part  in 
securing  substantial  increases  in  the 
remuneration  of  the  naval  service.  His 
new  chief  in  Whitehall  was  Walter  Long 
[q.v.],  and,  much  hurt  by  an  anonymous 
press  agitation  demanding  his  replace- 
ment by  Sir  David  Beatty  [q.v.]  and  by 
his  exclusion  in  July  from  the  list  of 
peerages  and  money  awards  to  the 
principal  war  leaders,  in  that  month  he 
asked  his  leave  to  resign.  Long  refused, 
but  a  few  months  later  feeling  himself  out 
of  sympathy  with  the  government's 
attitude  to  the  revolutionary  Russian 
regime  and  to  the  maintenance  of  this 
coimtry's  naval  supremacy,  Wemyss  de- 
cided definitely  to  resign  and  left  office  on 
1  November  1919,  being  specially  pro- 
moted admiral  of  the  fleet  and  raised  to 
the  peerage  as  Baron  Wester  Wemyss,  of 
Wemyss,  co.  Fife,  the  title  of  an  ancient 
Scottish  barony  in  his  family.  He  re- 
mained on  half  pay  imtil  he  reached  the 
age  Umit  and  retired  in  1929,  having 
received  no  further  government  employ- 
ment as  a  governor  or  ambassador  which 
he  felt  he  had  a  right  to  expect,  and  Uved 
mainly  at  Wemyss  and  at  Cannes.  But 
he  was  actively  engaged  as  director  of  the 
Cables  and  Wireless  Company  and  the 
British  Oil  Development  Company,  con- 
ducting a  successful  mission  on  behalf  of 
the  latter  to  the  Middle  East  in  1927  and 
to  South  America  on  behalf  of  the  former 
in  1929.  He  maintained  his  intense 
interest  in  foreign  affairs  and  occasionally 
expressed  his  views  in  the  House  of  Lords 
and  in  the  press,  particularly  his  hostiUty 
to  the  Turkish  treaty  of  1920,  and  to  the 
Washington  naval  treaty  of  1922. 

Wester  Wemyss  much  enjoyed  his 
duties  as  president  of  the  Institution  of 
Naval  Architects,  which  he  became  in 
1928.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from 
the  vmiversities  of  Oxford,  Cambridge, 
and  St.  Andrews,  and  the  freedom  of 
the  last  named  city.  His  foreign  decora- 
tions included  the  grand  cordon  of  the 
Legion  of  Honour,  the  French  medaiUe 
militaire  (conferred  by  President  Millerand 
at  the  unveiling  of  the  Armistice  monu- 
ment in  1922),  the  United  States  D.S.M., 
and  the  highest  distinctions  of  the  other 
AUied  coiuitries. 

Wester  Wemyss  possessed  the  great 
advantage  of  a  most  attractive  courageous 
personality,  although  with  no  claim  to 
deep  technical  knowledge  in  his  profession. 
Nicknames  are  said  to  be  some  guide  to  a 
man's  character,  and  the  fact  that  he 
was  imiversally  known  as  'Rosy'  since 


899 


Wemyss 


D.N.B.  1931-1940 


childhood  is  a  tribute  to  his  bright  and 
sunny  disposition.  He  was  a  man  of  the 
world  in  the  best  sense  of  the  phrase,  with 
a  simple  faith  in  his  own  star  and  a  cheer- 
ful optimism  which  carried  him  through 
many  difficulties.  A  genial  and  generous 
host,  he  made  friends  readily  and  won  the 
loyal  devotion  of  his  staff  and  subordi- 
nates. He  had  no  opportunity  of  showing 
his  qualities  as  a  fleet  leader,  but  as  a 
naval  statesman  he  deserved  well  of  his 
coiuitry  in  maintaining  to  the  full  the 
great  traditions  of  his  post  in  Whitehall. 
His  knowledge  of  French,  much  enhanced 
after  his  marriage  by  his  wife's  foreign 
connexions,  contributed  greatly  to  his 
intimate  friendship  with  many  of  the 
great  French  officers  of  his  time  and  made 
him  a  popular  figure  at  many  international 
meetings.  He  published  in  1924  The  Navy 
in  the  Dardanelles  Campaign,  a  lively 
account  of  his  own  experiences  and  views. 

Wester  Wemyss  married  in  1903  Vic- 
toria, the  only  daughter  of  Sir  Robert 
Burnett  David  Morier  [q.v.],  the  eminent 
diplomat,  and  had  one  daughter.  He  died 
at  Cannes  24  May  1933  and  was  buried  in 
the  chapel  garden  of  Wemyss  Castle  after 
preliminary  services  at  Cannes  and  West- 
minster Abbey,  at  which  naval  honours 
were  officially  accorded  to  him. 

There  is  a  drawing  of  Wester  Wemyss 
by  Francis  Dodd  in  the  Imperial  War 
Museum,  and  his  portrait  is  included  in 
Sir  A.  S.  Cope's  picture  'Some  Sea  Officers 
of  the  Great  War',  painted  in  1921,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

[Admiralty  records;  Sir  H.  Newbolt, 
(Otficial)  History  of  the  War.  Naval  Opera- 
tions, vol.  iv,  1928 ;  C.  F.  Aspinall-Oglander, 
(Official)  History  of  the  Great  War.  Military 
Operations,  Gallipoli,  vols.  1  and  ii,  1929-1932  ; 
Lady  Wester  Wemyss,  The  Life  and  Letters  of 
Lord  Wester  Wemyss,  1935 ;  private  informa- 
tion ;  personal  knowledge.] 

Vincent  W.  Baddelky. 

WESTER  WEMYSS,  Baron  (1864r- 
1933),  admiral  of  the  fleet.  [See  Wemyss, 

ROSSLYN  ErSKINK.] 

WESTON,  Sir  AYLMER  GOULD 
HUNTER-  (1864r-1940),  lieutenant- 
general,  was  born  at  Hunterston,  West 
Kilbride,  Ayrshire,  23  September  1864, 
the  elder  son  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Gould 
Read  Hunter- Weston,  twenty-sixth  laird 
of  Hunterston,  by  his  second  wife,  Jane, 
elder  daughter  of  Robert  Hunter,  twenty- 
fifth  laird  of  Hunterston.  After  his 
maternal  grandfather's  death  in  1880,  his 
father  assumed  by  royal  licence  the 
prefix    surname    of    Hunter.     He    was 


educated  at  Wellington  College  and  tl 
Royal  Military  Academy,  and  was  cor 
missioned  in  the  Royal  Engineers  in  1884 
Hunter- Weston  served  in  the  Miranz8 
expedition  (1891)  and  was  promote 
captain  in  1892.  He  was  wounded  whi 
in  command  of  the  Bengal  Sappers  wit 
the  Waziristan  Field  Force  (1894-1895) 
receiving  the  medal  and  clasp,  and  was 
made  brevet  major.  In  1896  he  served  in 
Egypt  on  the  staff  of  Lord  Kitchener 
[q.v.],  in  the  battle  of  Firket  (7  June), 
receiving  the  Queen's  medal  and  the 
Khedive's  medal  with  clasp.  He  entered 
the  Staff  College  in  1898.  The  following 
year  he  commanded  the  first  Mounted 
Engineers  in  South  Africa,  participating 
in  many  engagements,  his  most  conspicu- 
ous exploit  being  the  cutting  of  the  railway 
near  Blocmfontein,  capturing  valuable 
railway  stock,  and  preventing  General 
Piet  Joubert  from  reinforcing  the  Boers 
in  that  town.  His  reckless  courage  com- 
bined with  technical  skill  and  great  cool- 
ness in  emergency  carried  him  through 
this  and  other  adventurous  undertakings. 
In  1900  he  received  his  brevet  Ueutenant- 
colonelcy  and  the  D.S.O.,  and  on  his 
return  home  was  appointed  general  staff 
officer.  Eastern  Command  (1904-1908), 
gaining  his  brevet  colonelcy  in  1906. 
From  this  he  was  promoted  colonel  and 
chief  general  staff  officer,  Scottish  Com- 
mand, in  1908,  and  three  years  later 
became  assistant  director  of  Military 
Training  at  the  War  Office,  where  he 
remained  until  1914. 

In  this  year  Hunter- Weston  was  given 
command,  as  brigadier-general,  of  the 
11th  Infantry  brigade  at  Colchester.  He 
took  the  brigade  to  France  in  1914,  and 
for  his  magnificent  handling  of  his  troops 
at  Le  Cateau  and  on  the  Aisne  in  the  same 
year  was  promoted  major-general.  Early 
in  1915,  in  command  of  the  29th  division, 
his  successful  landing  at  Cape  Helles 
earned  him  promotion  to  temporary 
lieutenant-general  and  the  command  of 
the  VIII  Corps,  but  severe  sunstroke 
necessitated  his  leaving  this  area  and  he 
returned  to  France  still  in  command  of  the 
VIII  Corps ;  for  his  distinguished  service 
he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches  ten  times 
and  confirmed  as  lieutenant-general  in 
1919.  He  retired  from  the  army  in  1920, 
and  became  colonel-commandant  of  the 
Royal  Engineers  in  1921. 

At  a  by-election  in  October  1916 
Himter- Weston  was  elected  unionist 
member  of  parliament  for  North  Ayrshire 
and  for  the  next  nineteen  years  gave  his 


900 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


White,  H.  J. 


attention  to  public  affairs,  representing 
Buteshire  and  North  Ayrshire  from  1918 
to  1935.  He  was  appointed  C.B.  in  1911 
and  K.C.B,  in  1915.  He  married  in  1905 
Grace  Strang,  only  daughter  of  "William 
Strang  Steel,  of  Philiphaugh,  Selkirkshire, 
and  founder  of  W.  Strang  Steel  &  com- 
pany merchants  in  Burma.  He  died,  child- 
less, as  the  result  of  a  fall  from  a  turret 
at  his  home,  Hunterston,  18  March  1940. 

[The  Times,  19  March  1940;  C.  F.  Aspinall- 
Oglander,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great  War. 
Military  Operations,  Gallipoli,  vols,  i  and  ii ; 
Sir  J.  E.  Edmonds,  (Official)  History  of  the 
Great  War.  Military  Operations,  France  and 
Belgium,  1914r-1918,  vols,  i-v.] 

C.  V.  Owen. 

WHITE,  Sir  (CYRIL)  BRUDENELL 
(BINGHAM)  (1876-1940),  general,  was 
bom  at  St.  Arnaud,  Victoria,  Australia, 
23  September  1876,  the  third  son  of  John 
Warren  White,  of  Brisbane  and  co.  Clare, 
Ireland,  by  his  wife,  Maria,  second 
daughter  of  Robert  Nassau  Gibton,  of 
Tallaght,  co.  Dublin.  He  was  educated  at 
Brisbane  Normal  School  and  at  Eton 
School,  Nundah,  Queensland.  From  1892 
to  1899  he  was  in  the  service  of  the 
Australian  Joint  Stock  Bank,  Brisbane. 
In.  1899  he  joined  the  Queensland  per- 
manent artillery  and  saw  service  in  the 
South  African  war  in  1902,  receiving  the 
Queen's  medal  and  three  clasps.  In  1906 
he  was  the  first  Australian  to  be  chosen 
for  entry  into  the  Staff  College,  Camberley. 
From  1908  to  1911  he  was  at  the  War 
Office  (captain,  1908 ;  major,  1911)  whence 
he  was  appointed  director  of  Military 
Operations,  Australian  Military  Forces 
(1912-1914),  being  promoted  lieutenant- 
colonel  in  1914.  He  was  responsible  for 
the  scheme  which  was  successfully  imple- 
mented when  the  AustraUan  Imperial 
Forces  were  mobilized  in  August  1914. 
As  chief  of  staff  he  landed  the  first  division 
of  the  AustraUan  Imperial  Forces  at 
GaUipoli  (April  1915)  and  later  he  planned 
the  historic  evacuation  of  the  Anzacs  and 
the  subsequent  expansion  of  the  AustraUan 
Imperial  Forces  in  Egypt.  He  was  pro- 
moted colonel  in  1915,  and  received  the 
D.S.O.  He  was  promoted  brigadier- 
general  in  1915  and  went  to  France  as 
chief  of  staff  to  the  I  Anzac  Corps  under 
General  William  (later  Lord)  Birdwood. 
He  was  promoted  major-general  in  1917  and 
as  temporary  lieutenant-general  accom- 
panied General  Birdwood  as  chief  of  the 
General  Staff  when  the  latter  took  over 
command  of  the  British  Fifth  Army  in  1 9 1 8 . 


White  returned  to  Australia  in  1919  and 
was  appointed  chief  of  the  General  Staff, 
Australian  Military  Forces  (major-general, 
1920),  retiring  in  1923  to  become  chairman 
of  the  PubUc  Service  Board.  In  1928  he 
retired  from  the  army  and  entered  busi- 
ness, becoming  chairman,  vice-chairman, 
and  trustee  of  many  Australian  under- 
takings. 

White  was  one  of  the  ablest  British  staff 
officers  produced  by  the  war  of  1914r-1918, 
and  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939 
he  was  given  the  rank  of  lieutenant- 
general  and  recalled  to  resume  his  post  as 
chief  of  the  General  Staff,  Australia.  His 
age  and  long  retirement  occasioned  some 
criticism,  but  he  soon  proved  that  he  was 
weU  equipped  and  able  to  resume  high 
responsibilities  and  was  promoted  full 
general  in  March  1940.  His  services  to  his 
country  were,  however,  to  be  of  short 
duration,  for  he  was  killed  in  an  air  crash 
at  Canberra  13  August  1940. 

In  1916  White  was  appointed  C.B., 
C.M.G.  in  1918,  K.C.M.G.  in  1919  (and 
aide-de-camp  to  the  king),  K.C.V.O.  in 
1920,  and  K.C.B.  in  1927.  For  his  services 
in  the  war  of  1914-1918  he  also  received 
many  military  decorations  including  those 
of  France,  Belgium,  Portugal,  Montenegro, 
and  Japan.  In  1905  he  married  Ethel, 
eldest  daughter  of  Walter  Davidson,  of 
CoUban  Park,  Elphinstone,  Victoria,  and 
had  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 

[The  Times,  14  August  1940 ;  Fred  Johns, 
An  Australian  Biographical  Dictionary,  1934 ; 
Australian  Encyclopcedia,  1926 ;  C.  F.  Aspinall- 
Oglander,  (Official)  History  of  the  Great  War. 
Military  Operations.   Gallipoli,  vol.  1,  1929.] 

C.  V.  Owen. 

WHITE,  HENRY  JULIAN  (1859- 
1934),  Latin  biblical  scholar  and  dean  of 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  was  born  at 
Islington  27  August  1859,  the  younger  son 
of  Henry  John  White,  of  the  Mercantile 
Marine  service,  and  afterwards  on  the  staff 
of  a  local  bank  at  Islington,  by  his  wife, 
Susannah  Wadeson.  Educated  at  the 
Islington  Proprietary  School  and  privately. 
White  went  up  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
in  1878,  and  after  graduating  in  classics 
was  awarded  a  first  class  in  theology  in 
1883.  He  obtained  the  Denyer  and 
Johnson  theological  scholarship  in  1884 
and  the  senior  Greek  Testament  prize  in 
1885.  In  the  latter  year  he  was  ordained 
deacon,  and  priest  in  1886.  One  of  his 
examiners  in  the  theological  school  was 
John  Wordsworth  [q.v.],  who  as  early 
as    1884    had    appointed    White    as    his 


901 


White,  H.  J. 


D.N.B.  1981-1940 


assistant  in  the  great  critical  edition  of  the 
Vulgate  New  Testament  upon  which  he 
had  embarked  six  years  previously.  Thus 
began  the  association  which  was  to  mean 
much. 

In  1885  Wordsworth  was  consecrated 
to  the  see  of  Salisbury ;  and  in  1886,  after 
a  year  as  curate  at  Oxted,  Surrey,  White 
followed  him  in  order  to  become  his 
domestic  chaplain  and  (in  1887)  vice- 
principal  of  the  Theological  College.  At 
Salisbury  White  remained  until  he  became 
theological  lecturer  and  chaplain  of  Mer- 
ton  College,  Oxford,  in  1895 ;  and  it  was 
these  years  which  saw  not  only  his  main 
contributions  to  the  series  of  Old  Latin 
Biblical  Texts  but  also  the  first-fruits 
of  the  partnership — the  'Wordsworth 
and  White'  Vulgate  Gos